On Tuesday, Bess and I hosted our weekly Blab and our host was Joshua C. Johnson. He reveals himself as the owner of the funny yet really effective Instagram account of @OrlandoKingCobra. About a month ago or so there was a king cobra snake that got away from its owner. After a few days of it being missing I noticed a parody Instagram account with this snake head and how he’s making his way around town. You can catch up on all the funny images and things here.
While this was all funny to read and get updates on, there were a LOT of really good marketing lessons that Joshua learned and observed while managing this account. He shares all of that and more in this replay.
For the past few years I’ve been involved with WordCamp Orlando from a support role to conference photography. This year was the first year that I applied to speak and my only regret is not applying sooner.
If you’re not familiar with WordCamp, it’s a conference that takes place in a lot of major cities around the country. Usually it last about 2-4 days with talks, round tables, tech sponsors, swag, networking and so much more. I highly recommend attending as many as you can both near and abroad just to get a well rounded perspective on the attendees and speakers from each city. One of my goals next year will be to attend a WordCamp out of the state of Florida.
In the meantime I wanted to share my slides from my talk here for those of you who attended and those who may have missed it. Any questions feel free to comment below.
Hello all, I wanted to share this quick video on how to get the embed code to be able to show your live Blab show on your website or post. If you’re not familiar with Blab, it is a live forum for up to four people to using video to discuss a subject while using Twitter on the right to chat and engage. It’s really new and really cool. I’ve been on a few Blab as a participant over the past few weeks, and each Tuesday I am on with Bess Auer of Gotta Get Blogging for what we call #BlogTalkTuesday, where we discuss all things trending in social media, marketing, events, and more. Here is a link to our next show.
For the past five years or so, I’ve been really into Podcasts. For me they were an alternative medium for consuming media of all types, from entertainment to business. What I enjoyed the most was being able to listen or watch my content wherever I wanted regardless if I was connected to the internet. It took me back to when I got my first walkman. Anyway, below is a list of Podcasts I listen to that I wanted to share for your enjoyment and inspiration.
This podcast has setup their series into seasons, much like a television show. I would highly suggest you start listening from the beginning and binge your way to the most current episode. StartUp profiles their own business behind the scenes on a weekly basis from team meetings, proof of concept, investor meetings, and a whole lot of other transparent takes on their “startup” business. The second seasons profiled an online dating startup.
Amy Porterfield has been inspiring I’d say hundreds of thousands of people with her smart and easy to consume marketing tips. She occasionally will interview marketing gurus that we all have heard of and probably follow to pick their brains on current trends, how they got started, hurdles they’ve overcome, and then tips and freebies for listeners.
This one is brought to you by the folks at studios of the Dave Ramsey show. Each week they provide great business tips mainly from a leader or business owner perspective. Team building, corporate environment, and topics all in between. Occasionally they’ll interview well known industry leaders to talk about their experiences as well. This podcast usually is about 45 or so minutes each week, but is really worth your time, especially in a long commute.
I really look forward to starting my day with the energy that Omar Zenhom has for his shows. This guy actually produces a 10min podcast for every day of the week. That’s right, 7 days a week he’s got a show for you to listen to. Each day he offers great tips on marketing, small business advice, good habits, and more. Once you’ve listened to a few of his shows, you can see why he has an award winning show, but also a great business behind it due to the wealth of knowledge he puts out in bites for free each day.
Michele Badie is a friend of mine, and is here in Orlando. She is the author of this weekly “Confidence Conversation” with local movers and shakers of various industries around Central Florida. What I admire about her most is that she interviews people that’s she’s never met. Typically when you hear interviews they’re by people who have a good enough connection to approach the ability to have someone sit down and open up about their history and experiences. Be sure to check out her casual podcast to learn more about some influential local leaders around Orlando, FL.
These podcasts above are really just a few that I listen to. If you have some that you listen to, let me know in the comments below. I’m seeing Podcasting really pick up over the last two years and there are plenty of great content creators out there publishing information that we can all benefit from.
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This past weekend I attended the Florida Bloggers Conference at Full Sail University, and really had a blast. I met a lot of new people, and some of them I have talked to virtually on social media like Twitter but most were new. For me that was probably the most exciting part of the conference was getting to met other bloggers and hobbyists and professionals.
A brief description about #FLBlogCon is a one day conference for bloggers around Florida (and beyond) to hear from influential leaders and speakers on topics from social media, monetizing, blogging tips, legal, and more.
Bess Auer is the founder and main organizer of this event and has been doing so for over four years and it continues to get sold out weeks after tickets are announced. This year’s conference started with a really cool launch party at Universal Studios for the Blue Man Group. I’ve never been, but was so excited to be going with my wife Nicole to experience this show. I won’t talk about any spoilers in this post so I’ll let you have that to yourself, but if you’ve gone already I would love to discuss it in the comments below.
While I did take a few photos of the day, I think my greater take-a-ways were some notes I took to take action with my business, website, and blogging tactics.
Monica Dawn Stone talked some pretty good points in terms of monetizing your blog. Some of my take-a-ways were:
Create a media kit with logo, stats, social media links, your offerings, rates, banner sizes, analytics
Create a “pitch letter” to the brands you’re targeting. How can you help them, how you can help readers
She has a bunch more if you visit her website you’ll be enlightened!
Tom Jelneck from OnTarget Web Solutions talked about Google Analytics. Some points that resonated with me where:
A low bounce rate may not be a bad thing depending on the type of website and business that you have. A high bounce rate with a great call to action is a good thing.
Use FeedBurner to see your subscribers and blog reach
Understand your engagement rate. Should be higher if people are talking back to your blog
Food for thought: Users and readers visit 10.4 places/sites before buying a product
Assign a monetary amount to Google Analytics Goals based on what people do from your website
Define your blog/website goals
Justice Mitchellprobably had the most energetic and lively presentation I’ve attended…. I’d say ever. Absolutely loved his quick hits and fell back in my seat with excitement for his surprise “Bonus Round”
Get an influencer or performer to promote your products. Be it a shirt, hat, tool, etc.
Construct a social group or community (Facebook groups, TweetChats, etc)
Create This vs. That content (because everyone has an opinion, and they’ll want to weigh in)
Construct Infographics
Challenge people to do the same photo as you in a blog post
Solve a problem a day for your audience
Create inspiraGrams on Instagram (inspirational quotes with serene backgrounds)
Write blogs about your own historical content (this date on this year. …)
Well that’s my wrap up. I’m still swimming in a bunch of ideas and things that I want to try and map out for the next few weeks and months. I’ve also taken action on a few things right out of the gate. If you also attended or have more to add please do so in the comments below and lets share some great ideas.
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A close friend of mine has been crushing it with teaching people different forms of Yoga. Her name is Cheryl Snyder. I took a body flow class with her not long ago and I’m looking forward to my first hot yoga class soon.
The photos here were from a shoot we did for her at the beach. My associate photographer that day was Trevor King of KingTMedia. It was a fun shoot capturing different poses of Cheryl as she performed some of her routines as well as some popular and difficult positions for this shoot. Check out the photos and let me know what you think in the comments below.
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