Archive | August 2017

Podcast Episodes To Enjoy

By Cheval John

This week has been one of the most interesting weeks of 2017.

The solar eclipse took place on Monday which allowed millions of Americans to see the rare siting on mainland soil.

Most of us who live in the Houston area had to prepare for hurricane harvey,
which thankful downgraded to a tropical storm after it arrived in the coastal area of Texas.

Since I could not go to the library in downtown houston to write a blog post, I decided to share the last three episodes of What’s The Word? below in order to stay consistent in publishing an article weekly.

Hope you enjoy these episodes which was recorded on Facebook Live via Blue Jeans Network before airing on BlogTalkRadio.

Zala Bricelj, Storyteller and Twitter Chat Co-Host

Jim Palmer, Author and Business Coach

Laura Petersen, Author and Entrepreneur

Growing Your Community Through E-Mail

By Cheval John

Today’s blog post is the beginning of a series on how you can grow a community for your business.

Having a community is highly important because you bring together like-minded people who will support each other.

Social media has amplified the opportunity for anyone to build a community.

At the end of the day, social media platforms is just rented land.

You could lose the audience you built over time due to the algorithm changes or the disappearance of the social platforms.

One of the ways to maintain the community you have built over time is with the old fashion e-mail list.

Your e-mail list is your very own real estate.

It allows you to build an audience over time.

Even if you end up losing followers due to the disappearance of the platforms, your e-mail list will help you maintain your audience due to consistency in providing value to them.

Here’s what not to do when building your e-mail list from social media.

1. DO NOT SEND AN AUTOMATED DIRECT MESSAGE

Just because someone followed you on social media does not give you the right to send automated direct messages to like their facebook page or subscribe to your website.

This gives off the impression you are only looking to sell to them and people hate being sold to.

2. COPY THEIR E-MAIL ADDRESS FROM GROUPS PAGES

This is very unprofessional because they did not give you permission to add them to your blog.

3. HAVE POP-UPS ON YOUR WEBSITE

This is annoying because a person will be reading your blog post and all of a sudden, they get out of rhythm due to the pop-up e-mails.

You might believe it is a quick way to capture the visitors to your site before they leave.

However, this tactic will damage your business because people know they will be spammed with pop-ups every time they visit your site.

You must focus on providing value to your audience which is solving their pain points consistently.

When you do this, your visitors will decide on their own you are worth listening too and eventually sign up for your e-mail list.

Do you have anything to add? You can leave your comments below

Using Influence Responsibly

By Cheval John

I do not have an “official” blog post for this week.

However, I will mention it is important to know everyone are influencers in their respective space.

Just because you are not recognized by a major publication does not mean you do not have influence.

People always do great work in making their friend’s life better by sending an encouraging note or message with social media.

Especially with 19 million plus blogs in the world, you have a voice.

The only thing I would tell you is use your voice responsibly because you have an impact on everyone.

And to sum up this post, I want to recognize Dr. Karen Freberg and Dr. Ai Zhang on their research on teaching social media education in universities, which was recognized as a top paper at a major conference in Chicago.

Both of them are walking the talk about being social on social media and are influencing their university students to use social correctly.

Building Online Presence One Step At A Time

By Cheval John

The old days of having a career at one company is over.

This holds true for journalists too.

The sequence for every journalist back in the day were:

Spend a couple of years in a smaller media market in order to gain work experience before moving on to a top ten media market like New York City, Houston and Chicago.

Move on from the major media market and work for national media like ESPN, NBC, CBS or ABC.

In this environment where technology is changing the way how we consume content, major media and news stations are cutting back on staff to save money.

Sometimes though, people who work in journalism, decides to leave the profession because the work is demanding.

They might end up leaving for positions in media relations for a large company, a professional sports franchise or even the athletic department at a university.

They believe the transition to a media relations role is easy.

They get a rude awakening of how challenging being in media relations is.

Erica Holloway depicted the transition from journalism to public relations with her article here.

Though journalists stayed at one place their entire careers in the past, some still made a change in careers because they were led to.

Sabrina Cadini spent a couple of years as a television announcer in her native Italy before moving to the United States

She transitioned to event planning and is now the owner of La Dolce Idea Wedding and Soiree, a wedding planning company.

She explained to me how she made the transition to wedding planning

One thing to note.

Sabrina knew how important live streaming is for her business and is using Periscope on a weekly basis to share tips with her audience about social media.

Smart people like Sabrina understand the dynamic of live streaming, podcasting and blogging because it saves them a whole lot of money on their marketing budget.

People who are looking to make transitions in their careers should be building their online presence one step at a time because they never know when their department will shut down.

Are you building your online presence now through social media? Leave your comment below