Think about paper clips for a moment. They are about the most basic thing you will find in your desk drawer. When you consider your marketing, try to imagine selling paper clips. You probably do not think much about what brand you are buying when you need to replenish your paper clip supply. This is likely true of your product or service, too. Unless people have a good reason to remember you, it will be a lot harder to grow your paper clip market share and to become more prosperous.

If you challenged multiple companies with a truckload of paper clips to sell, somebody would sell out sooner than the rest. One would almost surely hit their stride and empty that truckload of paper clips before the others, and there must be a reason.

As a kid, I recall many times when good thinking would elude me. Those were the times when my father would say, “Do I have to draw you a picture?” Dad got pretty good at drawing when I was a kid. Now that I am a dad, I often find myself drawing pictures, too. These days, we call this kind of pictures “infographics” (informational graphics). I drew one for you, plus an alternate just in case.

Why the Infographic?

There is a constant challenge for marketers to explain the process of social media marketing and search engine optimization. The many various Internet marketing methods and tools which we use cannot be summed up in just one infographic. However, I believe that this infographic provides an explanation of the job sufficient for most clients, while not overwhelming them with information.

Have you been here before? I do not just mean here at my blog, but have you been faced with questions or doubts about your efforts. Maybe you question whether people understand the intent and purpose of your blog, or maybe you question the intent and purpose of the blogs you read. These are legitimate considerations for a lot of bloggers, whether producers or readers.

I am a big proponent of blogging. In fact, if you just google “reasons to blog”, you can see that I am practically a poster child for the benefits of blogging. If you need encouragement, I suggest giving my list of “10 Really Good Reasons to Blog” a thorough read. If you need blogging tools, I would recommend “6 Essential Blogging Tools for Bloggers and Non-Bloggers“.

Let’s face it, great blogging is hard work. I have actually considered making a video of my steps to produce a blog article, but then I want to break my own fingers just to avoid the temptation of all the video editing on top of the other efforts.

What does it take to produce a blog article? Here is a one-sentence rundown for you: I get a bright idea, then I research, write, print, proofread, edit, print, give it to an editor, edit again, find a graphic, edit the graphic, categorize it, tag it, keyword it, write a description, produce an excerpt, record a podcast, upload podcast, tag the podcast, preview the article, edit it, preview it again, publish it, tweet it, facebook it, linkedin it, stumble it, reddit it, ping it, diigo it, mixx it delicious it, then watch my web stats and keep my fingers crossed while hoping that some people will digg it, stumble it, facebook it, and etecetera.

I am such a fan of this product that I want to tell you this right upfront: I have not been hired by Wibiya to market for them, and I do not have anything at stake here. My reason for blogging my review of Wibiya is nothing of the sort. It is just so cool that I was compelled to give my testimonial. Now, shouldn’t we all be so fortunate to have fans who feel like that?

Wibiya is kind of a funny name, and it may not just roll off the tongue the way Twitter, Facebook, or Squidoo does. All the same, I think this is a social media service you will see in use a lot more in the future.

Website Toolbars Are Not Created Equal

I have used toolbars on various websites before, and some were pretty cool. I have even scripted my own website toolbars from scratch and made them work really nicely with social sharing links, custom URL shortener, and all of the neat stuff you can pack into the little 50-80 pixel space you would expect from a toolbar. I am kind of geeky like that. I very often choose the hard way of programming, by doing it all myself from beginning to end. That way I get the exact result I am looking for, and not include all of the extra junk that most off-the-shelf programming code will include for meeting every possible scenario on every possible type of website. As you can see at the bottom of each page on my blog, I have chosen Wibiya on this website, and for some good reasons.

If you are not going to eat that Digg fame, may I have a bite?

I was feeling a bit down about Twitter yesterday after remembering those days when Twitter was the next big Digg.com-like traffic-generating left-coast geek craze. If you were there, you would know it as the days when everybody who Kevin Rose (of Digg.com) had worked so hard to encourage to get their moment of Digg fame had become Twitter-stunned. It was back when anybody who had been kicked off Digg.com professed that tweets were the new diggs, and it was time to adapt to the new rules.

What The Heck is Digg?

For my readers unfamiliar with Digg, I will explain it in simple terms. Digg.com is a massively important … no, wait … monumental piece of Internet marketing history. It is a largely bullshitopotomus platform for zit-faced Star Wars fans to gain importance by stroking each other’s ego. The primary demographic are 17 year olds pretending to be 30, and 45 year olds still wearing Scooby Doo pajamas. Digg users can be largely summed up as semi-adult with $200 per hour talent getting paid $13 per hour to submit “diggable” stuff without looking like a “business digger”. They will carefully digg a squillion things per day while they sit in their mother’s basement passing time until she kicks them out on the street to get a real job and stop playing on that damn computer.

If you have used Twitter for very long, you surely know the type. It is the popular Twitter user like that jerk in high school all the kids wanted to be like but nobody could really say for sure just why. Fortunately for you, I have taken it upon myself to tell you how to become popular on Twitter without actually being useful. This is that secret recipe all the cool and popular people on Twitter did not want you to know about, but I am telling you. Let the death threats begin.

Now Let’s Make You One of the Popular People on Twitter

Follow along, because you don’t want to do this wrong. If you tweet the wrong thing, people will hate you. They will rip you up and make you wish you left your iPhone on the night stand and never downloaded that fancy-schmancy Twitter application. They may even unfollow you, and the “unfollow” on Twitter is worse than a bad fart on an airplane.

If you follow this list without deviation, you are sure to become massively popular. Just remember that if anybody says “I hate you and hope you die a miserable death” or “You deserve a really bad case of herpes” … those people are just jealous because they will probably never be as popular as you. Just as long as they don’t “unfollow” you … that is when you know it has gone beyond jealousy and they may actually hate you.

Here is the secret list. It is not an all-inclusive list, but it will get you started. If you want the whole story, I guess you will just have to buy the book.

I thought for a moment that this article belongs on another of my blogs, but then I realized how it fits here as well. This is a bit different from my typical marketing article. It is a piece that I posted on Facebook in November of 2008 addressing the power of written words. It is not specifically marketing oriented, but it does involve something that bloggers and marketers deal with, which is that of having the right words, and the importance of written words. In this case, it addresses the power of a love letter, but it has a good message that can be applied to many other relationships in your life.

I will note that today is number 3,479. It is is my eighth wedding anniversary, which gives me even more reason to honor the day with something meaningful. This story is about day 2,912. I hope that you will enjoy this inspiration …

I know, I just slapped a lot of Facebook’s 400,000,000+ users with an insult. The real insult is how many “Chicken Little” minds there are out there crying “The sky is falling!” You are a “grown up” right? You can take responsibility for things you say and do, right?

I have read about the biggest fear-mongering pitches ever surrounding Facebook’s privacy settings. I see people moaning about how all their privacy has been taken away and they feel all exposed. They whine about the fact that they actually have to take responsibility for the stupid things they don’t want the rest of the world to see. For me, that has simply been obvious. I mean, I keep my wallet in my pocket instead of leaving it on a counter at the airport. I have routers and virus protection to keep my data safe from prying eyes. If I don’t want somebody to have something, I just don’t give it to them.

Free Facebook Privacy Guide

Didn’t anybody ever read the privacy information published by Facebook in “A guide to privacy on Facebook: Understand and control how you share information” or was that too much work? The service is free, but people still want to complain that it has some rules and guidelines.

I guess it should not shock me to see the many Facebook profiles with a company logo or even a company name instead of a person. It seems that a lot of people simply do not realize the difference between a Facebook Profile and a Facebook Page. I will break this down really simple for anybody who is confused.

• Facebook profiles are for people, and not businesses. Facebook will delete your account for using a profile for a business. They may not catch each one, but I have seen it happen, and there are a lot of people out there who will report businesses using Facebook Profiles for business. It is written clearly in the Facebook rules as follows: “You will not use your personal profile for your own commercial gain”.
• Facebook Pages are for business, and include features that are better suited for a company seeking to do business on Facebook. They are easy to create, and may save you from a deleted account. Go and check it out for yourself. Here is the link to create a Facebook Page.

I added a Facebook Like button to my blog today (at the top of each blog post), and I must say that I like it. I like it very much. So, what does it do and how does it work?

The Facebook Like Button is the fastest and easiest way to share things with Facebook friends to date. It is as fast as if you “Like” something right on Facebook. That is because it actually is on Facebook and uses an iframe. If you like, there is an alternate implementation, but the iframe is just fine for most websites. It requires no additional action from users … no popup, no filling out a Captcha, no adding descriptions. It just takes a single click to “Like” something.