I just got off the phone with my friend Chris and we talked about how we hardly blog anymore. Also about how nothing seems that exciting in tech lately. It’s mostly about Google and the iPhone over and over. Are we just cynical or have things quieted down considerably?

My take is when something is new and beginning it has a certain romance about it that is alluring. The charisma pulls you in. You’re willing to make sacrifices (go for longer periods of time without sleep or eating) and spend a lot of your time thinking about the Internet, web 2.0, your blog posts. I used to really track my numbers and have regular conversations on the phone about who said what, how many reads, the comments we got.

But later you reach a different stage - maintenance. Things are more old hat. You go to work, you come home and it’s possible you don’t get online (at least not for hours). We’ve noticed we have less to blog about and the community feeling has faded. Bart, who sits next to me chimed in that he blogs less too. I’m not saying that blogging is a waste or that it doesn’t work (it certainly does), it’s just not as exciting as it once was. The news in the tech world seems to be the same.

What have you noticed - are you still blogging as much? Is it the economy (we’re all working hard rather than talking)? Are we burned out? Or is this just a natural evolution?

Comcast is on Twitter and I’m pretty impressed with their responsiveness. I complained about my experience, and they asked how they could help. How they could help - a cheatsheet to all the deals, when they expire, what they include, what the prices are, and what fees they have.
I’m trying to figure out the cost/benefit of getting Comcast and wade through all the deals and when they expire. If I have cable internet for 6 months at $19.99 that’s straightforward. But I could get 3 months of cable TV free and get a better deal with a package price for the two services. But one will run out and then the regular pricing applies. Each offering has a million choices and different hook up fees.

Then there is trying to get a technician to come when I can be there. You schedule a block of time, and the days I can do that are the days they can’t. At least not for several weeks.

Also, I can’t decide whether to keep my wireless card so I can work anywhere (but isn’t as fast and won’t work for video and other things that require more bandwidth) or get Comcast at home so all computers there can be online. It will cost a few hundred to break the wireless contract. If I keep both I’m paying $100 a month.

I’m not trying to get philosophical or metaphysical when I ask the question: who am I. I’m trying to sort out my identity. First, I can’t decide what my last name is. It’s Meiners in the online world and now Thaeler in the world outside of the Internet. It gets tricky.

Sometimes I introduce myself with different names to different people going to the same meeting! But I’m not throwing away all the search engine rankings for Janet Meiners, plus I’m not used to Janet Thaeler yet. It’s time to update my signature at work and phase in Thaeler. I hope there will come a time when I don’t have to think of which name to use in each situation.

I’m learning attention to detail like I’ve never known. Starting with meeting with Vicki, I have learned to be more organized in the physical world. Next we’ll work on time management. My husband notices every detail and remembers everything. I always say I’m bad at gossip and good at forgiving. There is no time to keep score and I can’t recall the history of what happened. But anyway, you should see our home! I keep thinking I’m staying at a nice hotel, but the service is even better. It’s energy efficient! We compost! We have a yard with a few fruit trees and are growing a few vegetables!

With change comes some degree of feeling disoriented. I’ve always gravitated towards community and now I’m in a new one. A new thing called being married. I still get lost trying to find our house (the freeway exit is strange so I find myself driving right on by but not being able to get off until the next exit). I love the Internet because I can’t get lost, I sit down and site see from one place.
Every time I go to work at the fabulous OrangeSoda the question changes from “Who am I?” to “Who are you?” Every day a new face - this place is growing like crazy. We relocated to a bigger building and are already filling it up. The move, like mine, took a lot of time and involved a lot of work and had some bumps along the way - like new phone numbers!

[Note: If you are in Utah and know anyone who wants to carpool from Fruit Heights to American Fork, Utah please let me know. I have one lead that I haven't followed up with but they are going from Salt Lake to Lehi.]

I’m sure I’ll work out these new identities and get to know some of the new faces. In the meantime, I request a little extra slack.

I’m focusing more and more on social media lately and I’m more and more interested in PR and social media (surprise - if you read my blog you already know this). I still love working with smaller clients when it comes to online PR, especially when I’m consulting (not OrangeSoda work).

Large companies have PR departments that massacre my work. They remove or change the placement of keywords, they make plain things sound complicated. They expect immediate results. They make their press releases so company-centric that it’s boring to everyone but the company and their competitors. And it takes FOREVER to get the job finished, and then get paid. Not all large companies are this way, but it’s more common than in small companies.

Social media and PR are building relationships. Relationships are organic. They don’t take a linear path. It’s like the stock market, you see ups and downs in the short-term but you hope to see an upward trend over time. Like the stock market you probably will if you don’t get out too soon.
How do you measure trust and love? When it comes to building a community, social media is a long-term investment of building relationships. You can think it’s not worth it and be too impatient and stop participating, and not see the results. That’s when you say social media doesn’t work - because it’s not working for you. Businesses who are hierarchical and based on concentrating power and ego have a tough time with this concept. They should just pay for advertising where it’s much more black and white and they can control many aspects.
Right now I’m more focused on building community in my personal life - I miss the friends I had who I shared life with day to day. I moved. Now I don’t see them anymore. I moved to an incredible community that is unfamiliar to me so far. I’m impatient to make new friends. I’m starting to recognize people and feel comfortable chatting but it’s not the same. Eventually I’ll have people who I’m close to, who I see often and talk to often. Who trust me and who I trust. What is the value of that? That is life!

I found this gem that describes how I view the Internet:

The Internet is more than a medium. We believe it is more than a marketplace. The Internet is a community. Much more than some communities based on geographic location, the Internet is a community of real people sharing real experiences in real time.

That is what I have built and have neglected lately - my online community. I’m focusing on an offline community, because I need both and having just moved my offline community based on geography has shifted dramatically. An online community is as real as any offline community. Both happen over time and they evolve over time, just like people do. Blogging and forming an online community has been invaluable to my life and career. Blogs, social networks, and other social media are tools to form or join online communities. And they can be hugely valuable for your business.

“Voices of Search” blog compiled a list of the most popular search engine marketing blogs. The good news is Newspapergirl made the list.  The bad news is I didn’t break the top 200! I guess it might help if I were actually blogging regularly. Marketing Pilgrim, who I write for (which is not a lot lately) came in at #30.

At some point I went from learning and reading about Internet marketing to doing it. Much of it doesn’t seem new or exciting but I still love it. To write well you must read well and lately my reading has been confined to the newspaper and books that have nothing to do with my work.

I’m glad to have made the list with many people I look up to and respect. Now if I could get my blog updated and redesigned and make it a point to post more often!

I’ve been inspired by a few people recently for their ethics of giving. Several weeks ago I met with Kim Brown who owns a PR firm Kim Brown and Associates (whoa, that page took a long time to load!). If you live in Utah you’ll see her husband Brent Brown bending over backwards on billboards. He owns car dealerships around Utah and from what I’ve heard he really does bend over backwards to be sure his customers and employees are taken care of.

Later Kim and I met with Scott Lazerson who is a philanthropist with Interface Foundation. Both of them have a commitment to giving back but in different arenas. Kim is more locally focused, which I love. Scott mixes with celebrities and connects them and other people with means with financially responsible nonprofit organizations. He is tireless and both are inspiring because now this is on my mind mind much more - when I have discussions about marketing I often discuss ways they might incorporate giving into their business.
Then I met with some of the folks at uPlej which is a social network that helps people give to nonprofits by signing up for a low cost monthly donation.

My friends at HugaMonkey are giving away a free baby sling a month to military moms and dads. I’m proud of John Keller, a friend and entrepreneur who has started a socially responsible company called Worldwide Book Drive.
I’ve always been a cheerleader for people who make a contribution to others through philanthropic giving and by incorporating giving into their business. I worked for a business that didn’t want to publicize what they did in the community. While I don’t think it’s good to brag about, it gives me hope when I know the companies I buy from or work for help people with the profits they make. In other words, I want to hear about it, so please tell the story (of course the story is more powerful when someone else tells it).

I’m convinced there is room to give whether it’s millions or a few dollars a month, and that doing so is good for you and for business.

Let’s hear what your story - how are you or how is your business giving back? Leave a comment and let me know.  

Until now you could only get relative numbers of searches from Google’s keyword selector tool. It was somewhat useful, but it’s much better now because you can get actual numbers of searches.

For example, Google reports that on average 100 people type the words, “learn affiliate marketing” into the search box.  This is for the exact phrase, not a combination of the words or the words in any order. You can look at the various match types to see what the volume is for each.  The numbers are rounded up.
The average search volume for the term “newspapergrl” - a highly competitive term is 28. At least their is search volume though! Try it out - type in words that relate to your business and get an idea of how many people are searching for various terms. Then look at the competition (here’s one way - by typing allintitle:”keyword phrase” into Google and noting the number of results).  Another way to look at competition is to use a free tool (this is the SEO tool I use that is an extension of Firefox) that tells you how many links to the site there are, how long the site has been around, etc.

If you want to dig further, SEO Book’s Aaron Wall has a great article on keyword research and SEO.

When I got back from my honeymoon this week (I was offline 99% of the time) I had an order from my online store, paisleybabies.com. Had I known I would’ve hired someone to mind the store - basically to email in the order. Then today I got another order. Which means it’s being found (must have search engine rankings).
What is surprising about this is that I haven’t done anything to promote it besides onsite optimization (incorporating keyword phrases on each page). I put up the site almost a year ago and the only order I got until now was from a friend. I set it up so I could learn the ecommerce solution I was teaching others.

Most of the people I taught never got an order on their online store in the time I worked with them. However, if they applied what I taught and also built links, they probably have started making money by now. The problem is they were led to believe it would happen within 90 days.

My blog took a few years before I made money - not that making money was the purpose. It still isn’t, but I was learning affiliate marketing and wanted to test out what I was learning. It worked. I still prefer affiliate marketing because work I did over a year ago is still selling and I don’t have to do anything else. No customer service, answering emails, returns, etc. I just refer the orders to someone else and make a commission on every sale.
I also had a check from Google when I got home - another surprise. I always think they’re junk mail. The first check (you must make at least $100 before you get paid) took over a year to arrive, this one took months. I don’t use much Adsense on my sites, but a little.

It took several months to get 1,000 followers on Twitter but then only a few months later, I’m at over 1,800.

I’m sure I could’ve make money quicker had showing me or if I outsourced more of the work. I learned by practicing. After some momentum and time (search engine rankings aren’t instant) it is now almost effortless. I have a little more flexibility in my life now so I can do more to promote my sites, including a redesign of Newspapergrl.