Something a little bit different here. It seems there are these social media awards called the Shorty Awards that actually have people nominate them for awards in different social media categories and allow people to ask for others to nominate them. Voting ends on February 17th and there is one winner per category.

Click the image!

I decided to ask for some support in getting nominated for a Shorty, and I’m posting this on multiple blogs, slightly changing the wording.

You need to know my Twitter handle to nominate me, which is mitch_m. You also have to have a Twitter account to vote unfortunately, but that’s how they track things.

My general pitch for why I feel I deserve to be nominated is because I’ve written around 2,700 posts on 5 blogs, including just hitting a milestone of #1,200 on one of my other blogs. I’ve written more than 900 posts on this blog.

I don’t expect to win a Shorty because I’m starting too late. The contest started on January 3 and runs through February 17th, so I’m already two weeks behind. The leader in the category already has more than 9,000 votes, and the closest competitor is more than 4 times behind him. However, the person in 10th only has 166 votes, and I think I could finish in the top 10. That’s really all I’m shooting for.

It’s a little self serving, but if you don’t ask… Vote me in for a a target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow” title=”Click to share on Twitter!” href=”http://twitter.com/home?status=I nominate %40mitch_m for a Shorty Award in %23blogger because [add reason here]“>Shorty; thank you very much!
 

Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2012 Mitch  Mitchell

This is something different for me, at least on this blog. Over the past couple of months, there have been a couple of free ebooks released talking about blogging, motivation, business, and life, all tied into each other. If you’re out of the blogging loop in general you may have missed out on these, but I figure, since they’re free, I don’t mind helping to promote them, though on the second one you’ll know more on why I don’t mind.

The first book is titled Life Lessons—The Best Self-Reflections From 108 Bloggers, and it’s a short collection of statements from many bloggers on life and/or blogging. It was put together beautifully and is visually stunning in its own way, and I appreciate seeing the thoughts from these people, some of whom I know. It’s not a large ebook, but when you click on the link above, you’ll be asked to download it as a zip file and then to open it on your computer.

The second book offers something slightly different and a bit more enhanced. It’s titled The Synergy of Business and Blogging and is more of a connection between blogging and business with a bit of motivation thrown in. This ebook, which you can download by right clicking on that link and then saving it to your computer, has full articles from around 35 contributors, of which yours truly is one of them. I think it was put together fairly well also, and if the only reason you decide to download it is to read what I had to say, skip to page 67 and go for it. But it wouldn’t hurt for you to read the rest of the articles as, once again, I know many of the people who contributed to it.

Actually, now that I think about this, I have been talking about the business of blogging lately, most recently in my 800th post, and before that telling business people what they were doing wrong with their blogs, and a host of other articles that touched upon it a little bit. It’s a new world out there, and businesses that don’t embrace it won’t know what they’re missing out on until it’s too late.

There you go, two free things; enjoy!

Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch  Mitchell

I don’t talk all that often about the other side of my business here, that being social media and many things web business related. I am today because I happen to be doing two presentations locally, one week apart, at the same place.

I will be doing two seminars at the Dewitt Community Library on March 7th and March 14th. The first topic is titled Increase Your Success With Social Media, and I’ll be talking about different social media methods and how one can apply them to their business. The second topic is titled Optimize Your Website’s Potential, and I’ll be talking about business websites and how to help make them work better for you. The flyer for both presentations can be viewed here, in a pdf format.

I usually talk more about these topics on one of my other blogs, I’m Just Sharing, but every once in awhile, other than when I’m promoting something I’m going to be doing, I bring it up here because it’s an important topic for business owners, and of course leaders in general, to know something about. For instance, back at the beginning of January I wrote a post on business blogging that, though it didn’t get a lot of comments, was read by a number of people. Businesses that don’t have blogs are missing out on a great marketing opportunity to show their expertise.

Then there’s the other world of social media in general and it’s impact on all parts of our lives. Many business owners aren’t up to date on what’s going on, and not only are they missing out on marketing opportunities but they’re missing out on how it could work for their customer service issues, their communications with both potential customers and their employees internally, and of course having their finger on the pulse of what’s going on within their businesses.

I will bet that there isn’t a single business that hasn’t had an employee sending a text message to someone or somewhere because they got upset about something, or they see something going on at your company that they don’t like, yet feel no one at the company will listed to them. Facebook has those types of things all over, and just recently the National Labor Relations Board found that employees have the right to rant about who they report to and the company they’re employed at and can’t be terminated because of freedom of speech. Isn’t that something more businesses should be aware of?

If businesses don’t start worrying about how they want to get their message out someone else will be doing it for them. It could be an employee or it could be a consumer. If the message is good, you have nothing to worry about. But let there be just one error, one customer upset by a company’s customer service or a company responding to an issue in the wrong way and, if your business was on shaky footing, it can collapse altogether. Who wants to deal with that?

I’d recommend at least hiring someone (like me) to talk to you about it, or doing a little bit of research on the subject if you’re unsure what it’s all about. You’d better believe your competition is learning about it. Or come to one of my presentations, starting next Monday, and get a sample of what you might be up against. It’s a new world out there; don’t get left behind.

Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch  Mitchell

I haven’t been writing as many posts lately, and with good reason. I’ve been working on a workshop I’m presenting in the Cortland, NY area on July 22nd and August 19th.

It’s titled “Make A Splash With Social Media Marketing”, and that obviously means it’s a social media marketing workshop. I’m putting it on with Renée Scherer of Presentations Plus at Hope Lake Lodge and Indoor Waterpark, which is pretty neat I must say. I got to take a tour of the place last week and it’s just great. As a matter of fact, Greek Peak, the owner of said lodge, is helping us get the word out in an attempt to help them market the water park, which is very new.

This is a 5+ hour presentation, which is why it’s taken up a lot of my time; that plus I’ve had some other work to catch up on as well. I hope I can make it a lot of fun for those folks who are coming. If you’d like to see more information on it and want to think about coming down, click on this link. Just so you know, there’s also a special deal for anyone who comes to bring their families and enjoy the park at a discount rate for the day, since the water park is normally only for people who stay at the lodge, and there will be a special coupon given out for attendees as well.

It’s about 45 minutes from Syracuse, 25 minutes from Binghamton, and that’s about all I can guess for you. I’d love to see you at either one of our presentations; the room holds 100, and though I definitely don’t expect we’re going to have close to that many people, the more the merrier I always say.

Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch  Mitchell

I’m going to be doing a webinar on the topic of Social Media, SEO & Your Business In 90 Minutes on June 30th, which is this Tuesday, starting at 11AM. It’s happening because of the second of two interviews I gave, which was on social media. As some of you know, I have a second company called SEO Xcellence, which does search engine optimization and things related to it. Well, one of my friends listened to the second interview on social media and wanted me to do a webinar with her.

Okay, I’m actually doing the webinar, but it’s her software. Her name is Renee Scherer of Presentations Plus, who still has open her MS Word webinar for July, which you can still register for. Actually, it’s on the same page as the advertisement for my webinar, and hers is three weeks of seminars for one price, so you’ll be getting plenty of good information, for sure.

Anyway, back to me for a minute. I couldn’t be happier to see some of what’s been going on for me lately, what with the interviews I gave above, and now this new interview that I gave to Murray Newlands for his blog of the same name, and another interview I gave that’s been posted on a site called Clickkt Dot Com, written by a young man named Toan Nguyen Minh. Add that to my being in the local newspaper, and someone else writing a very nice blog post about me after the second interview, and I’ve had quite the last five or six weeks.

It’s odd talking about social media when it hasn’t been a core of my business, and yet, as I’m going through a slight transition in my business, it seems apropos to where I’m heading. Hey, none of us can afford to stand still anymore, as I wrote when I was talking about reinventing yourself. I guess I really am a jack of many trades; I hope I end up being a master of one of them.

Anyway, I hope you check out the link to my webinar, and I hope you sign in; it should be fun, and it’s my first so it should also prove to be interesting.

Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch  Mitchell