I recently became a partner of MENG, which is the Marketing Executives Networking Group organization (similar to FENG (financial), TENG (technical), etc.). I’ve always respected these long-lasting organizations, and it really makes me proud to see this, on the bottom of the main MENG website:
I think that’s pretty dang cool!
Check this out – I finally accomplished my lifelong goal to get my inbox under control. I grabbed this just a few minutes ago:
See that? NO email in my inbox! Yeehaw! or w00t or yippee or whatever.
The thing is, I didn’t get to this monumentous point by abiding by the Tim Ferriss 4 hour work week ideas, or by applying Nerd Guru’s ideas (using GTD), or by listening to Kent Blumberg’s tips…
I got to this point by accidentally, permanently deleting every singe message that was in my inbox – almost 600 messages.
Yeah, it sucks big time. But I can’t really do anything about it. Dangit. Sometimes the grass isn’t greener…
I just saw a thread on a LinkedIn Bloggers pointing to Dennis Kennedy’s Why I blog post. He quips he blogs because he can’t play the guitar (me too) :p One of his commentors say “I blog because if I didn’t, I’d explode.”
Fun stuff!
Made me think, though, why I blog. I’ve been blogging almost every day at the JibberJobber blog for two main reasons (off the top of my head… there are other reasons): SEO and community.
If I don’t blog frequently, I think I’ll lose out on building a solid community (where’s Jason??), and google will think I’m not that important. But super-frequent blogging (once a day) seems to appease both of those.
Oh yeah, I also blog because I get to develop great relationships with people. Otherwise I’d just be a website service with no voice, name or personality. But people learn what drives me nuts, and what makes me happy. And our relationships can go beyond corporate. That’s huge.
I started the LinkedIn blog before I finished my book, so that I could build a community there for people who read my LinkedIn book, or were looking for LinkedIn help. Again, SEO and community. But it’s been a great tool to help me collect information, thoughts and stories around LinkedIn. I’ve been pretty good about updating that blog, usually getting in at least one post a week.
I started the Facebook Advice blog with Jesse Stay for the same reason, although we both have been pretty bad at keeping that as updated as we should have kept it. I really want to resolve that. I just need another me, and a few more hours a day. As it is, sleep is getting in my way of being as productive as I want to be 😉
I started this Jason Alba blog because there are things I want to jot down, share, think about, etc. that just don’t fit anywhere else. Like some very cool You Tube videos I found. Are rants, or raves… stuff that was just off-brand for my other pages. I had to clean up my tone a bit when I made this my professional speaker’s page though.
Maybe, at the end of the day, I blog because I’m addicted to blogging.
Or wait, maybe it’s because blogging is therapeutic.
Whatever it is, I can’t image not blogging.
Here’s another spam comment I got. Interestingly enough, the comment is RIGHT ON BRAND. It is a part of the conversation… it complements what I’ve said, and fits in nicely. Can you see the problem?
The post was How to find a job in a recession… and the comment was right on, right! Here’s my problem:
Alas, I get so much spam on my blog I don’t even look at the spam folder anymore. I simply go in every few months and delete all spam. Soon enough I’ll have over 500,000 spam comments that Akismet has caught:
This comment is a big FAIL!
UPDATE 8/10/2010: Ted Stevens dies in plane crash in Alaska. Rest in peace…
Geesh, this is sad. 84-year old Senator Stevens, from Alaska, was found guilty by a jury of a bunch of stuff. Click on the image for the breaking story at CNN.
You may remember Ted Stevens as the guy who made himself famous (at least, he came across my radar) when he described the Internat as a series of tubes. There are a bunch of YouTube videos of this… it’s “not a big truck…” amazing.
I talk about 2 sins of bloggers. There are two, absolute, must-haves if you are a blogger and care to have readers. One of them is to put a “subscribe by email” or “receive posts by email” or some form like that…
When I started blogging all the kewl kids on the block were all over RSS. RSS is cool technology, that’s true, but I personally don’t like it. And most people I talk to have NO idea what RSS is, how to set it up, etc. It’s like jargon… useful but not universal.
But everyone knows what email is, right? RIGHT? Why, then, if you are a blogger, do you NOT offer your readers the option to read your posts right in their inbox, in the format they know and love? If you don’t offer that, you are violating one of the Two Sins of Blogging.
Today, I was delighted to get an email from one of my favorite blogs, written by Kent Blumberg. Kent one the You Get It award a couple of years ago, but took a LONG break from blogging as he was getting his business up and running. Why the break? You’ll have to ask him. All I know is he started blogging again, and THE ONLY reason I know is because I signed up to receive his posts by email. Now, I can’t find that form on his blog now, maybe because he planned on not returning, but he had it there a while ago, and because of that, his brand is back on my mind. Or, in my email.
Welcome back Kent, you’ve made my day. (this is where I should say “go put that form back!” but… I won’t ;))
grabbed this from TwilightGuy.com
I wondered if I’d find an internet stalker to stalk me. Maybe now I can say I’ve arrived. I’m going to take a page out of TwilightGuy’s book and replace all the potty language with something else, so you can see the original message without polluting your mind too much 🙂 Here’s a comment I got on my post about retiring my email signature:
You fish-head. You are so far up your own OINK!! you can probably smell dinner cooking.
Why don’t you go get a proper job and stop exploiting the goodness of people too kind to tell you to go SNORT!!! yourself – seeing that you’re obviously so damned good at it!
Pop out to the woods – and don’t forget to take a loaded weapon – bears are bright, but not being able to read; they may well never have had the pain of reading your stinking diatribe all over the http://www. However, even if they have, it does nothing to decrease the chances of your head getting ripped from your cretinous shoulders.
Good Luck…..
I was pretty sure I knew who left the message, considering there’s a person on a mailing list who’s made it a point to write this blather about me for a few months now. But I had to check… here’s how he signed the comment:
Smart enough to not put his real name (his initials are actually J.L.E.). The website he put was my own, and of course he put my gmail account because that’s how he knows me (that’s what I use on the forum where he met me). Just to be sure it really is J.L.E., I checked out the IP addess (no, he’s not bright enough to leave that, but it does it by default. Sorry J.L.E., why don’t you NOT be anonymous next time?):
Now, not that it has to be J.L.E., just because it’s in the UK. But with all the other harassment I’ve received from him, I’m sure this is the same guy. Oh yeah, just a couple of days ago I got an email saying I left his Yahoo Group… which I didn’t apply to leave… he just kicked me out.
I’m guessing this is a chemical thing, or some psychological obsession, not a normal guy who’s ticked. Oh, I should mention, this guy has adult children, so I’ll just assume he is a grandpa… it’s just not normal for a grandpa to be so mean like this to someone he’s never met.
So, back to business… this internet stalker stuff is pretty common. What can you do about it??
Twighlight guy makes fun of his stalker on his blog (and then, his readers continue to make fun of the loser). It’s pretty funny… check out this post. But not everyone is a blogger. Here’s what I recommend:
DO NOTHING. Seriously. You aren’t going to get anywhere. Do the best you can to ignore everything, even the biting, personal attacks.
IF there’s a chance the online harassment could go offline, or if it just doesn’t end, I suggest you get official help. File a report with the cops. Why? I bet they won’t do anything about it… but at least you can establish a history of complaints, so in a year you call they won’t say “you should have reported this earlier… just let us know next time it happens.”
So that’s it… do nothing. Move on in life – you probably have other, better things to do. It sucks being attacked, but I just don’t have the bandwidth to do anything… and anything would likely be the same as, as they say in the Bible, kicking against the pricks.
I’m a strong advocate of having an email signature that helps me know who you are. I want you to know who I am, and what I can offer you. Thus, I created and have used this email signature for a long, long time:
In Outlook (with html):
In Gmail (no html):
After getting a comment on my LinkedIn blog (it’s pretty funny), and another comment on Young PR Pros (in jest, of course), I decided it was time to try something else.
So here’s my new signature:
I could only do this since I redesigned JasonAlba.com (it used to just be a blog, but now has a landing page with all my other stuff).
I worry that people won’t know about all the cool stuff I do, and not know what I’m about. It’s kind of scary. However, I wonder how many people previously sifted through my other signature… how many JibberJobber signups I got because of my sig, how many book sales, blog readers, CEO Webinar purchases…
It’s kind of like when you come up with your 30 Second Commercial… you feel like you are leaving so much out, and how in the world could you cut stuff out?? But you have to. And so did I.
It’s a new day, and perhaps I’ll regret it, but I doubt anyone will suggest I shorten my signature. Scary but good… that’s my gut feel right now.
When I first read this blog title it reminded me of Amway. I thought it was going to be a lot of hype. It would be the same ol’ cliche things you always read about:
If it were a post about that stuff, with the same ol’ cheer leading, I wouldn’t talk about it here.
In fact, each of the five points above are the same five points in the What it takes to Go Big blog post. But you HAVE TO click over to see the post. It’s fascinating, and even if you don’t READ any of the descriptive paragraphs, the images say it all. AWESOME post.
Hat tip to Chris Brogan on Twitter who shared the link.
I’ve been preaching Yahoo Groups as social tools, and recently started a new Yahoo Group as part of my marketing makeover.
I got the idea a few days ago and it got me really jazzed. Kind of (KIND OF) modeling it off of what FlyLady has done (not as intrusive, though), I’ll send out ONE actionable career management tip each day (probably limited M-F). I came up with about 30 things already, and am tapping into my partners for more.
Since I set up the JibberJobber One Thing Group, I have made a few necessary changes as a Group owner:
I also blogged about it, and I tweeted it a few times, and there are 47 members. I need to promote it elsewhere, which I’ll do over time. For now this is a good start.
Next on my list, read Kathie Thomas’ posts about Yahoo groups:
What you should and shouldn’t do at Yahoogroups
Let me know what else I need to know! I think the key for me now is to GET THE POSTS OUT daily!
