The Dark Side of Social MediaThis is a guest post by Danny Iny from Firepole Marketing, who caught my attention when I read a fantastic guest post of his on another blog. I’m currently taking a couple days off to enjoy time with my family for Thanksgiving, but I encourage you to read this important post about the other side of Social Media that’s not talked about very much. I’ve written about the Dark Side of Blogging and The Downsides of Working from Home before, but Danny beautifully captures the good, the bad and the ugly side of Social Media, and injects some interesting thoughts and questions that you’re welcome to chime in on at the end.

Happy holidays to everyone, and enjoy!

Don’t you love social media?

I certainly do.

On a personal level, it has connected me to dozens of new friends, hundreds of business contacts, and thousands of fans and followers.

On the community level, it has allowed people to mobilize, fight unjust governments, and rapidly spread the word to save lives from natural disasters.

And on the business level, it has turned the tables on giant corporations, and given consumers the power to unleash Dell Hell when treated unfairly.

What’s not to like?

Actually, quite a lot. Social media has a dark side. It can creep up on you and turn the nicest of people into angry, snarling monsters.

Do you think I’m exaggerating? Think again…

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I love to give advice here on the blog, but when people take action, implement those ideas and see massive results - I love it even more!

This is why I do what I do.

A couple of days ago, I received an email from Jim Harmer, an SPI fan who blogs at Improve Photography:

“Hey Pat. From your last podcast [session #23], I implemented your tips on how to drive more traffic to a website.  Check out the JPEG screen capture that I attached to this email to see how your tips have impacted the traffic to my site in the last few days!  It has been INSANE!!!  One of the articles I posted a couple days ago has been shared over 1,000 times on facebook/twitter/google+.

And here is the screen capture Jim sent along with his email, which is really what caught my attention:

improve Photography Stats Click Here to Read More About Jim’s Viral Content Strategy

Twitter LogoI don’t discuss Twitter very much, but I’m an avid user and have definitely experienced the benefits of having a Twitter account for my brand.

If you’re on Twitter, you’ll definitely want to pay attention to this killer app combo that was brought to my attention by my good friend Cliff Ravenscraft of PodcastAnswerMan.com.

He showed this to me the other day and it blew me away, and I’m happy to pass it on to you.

I’ll walk you through this 2-step (FREE) process to make it easy for you. Click to continue…

building an online brandLast week, an SPI reader asked me the following question:

“Pat. You seem to be EVERYWHERE online. Everywhere I go, people are talking about you and your name always comes up. How do you do it?”

To be honest, I never believed I would become this successful online, especially with SPI – a blog in the “make money online” niche, which as you probably know is wildly over saturated. Although my success is partially accidental I know exactly why I’m here.

What it really comes down to is this:

If you want to become successful online, you must think about what you do as building a brand. In order to build a brand, you must do what you can to be everywhere.

A successful blogger is not just a blogger. True – it’s the blog where things get started. It’s where authority is constructed and content is published. But if you stick to just a blog, you’ll be just that – stuck to your blog.

Your blog or your website is only the beginning. It’s your hub, your homebase where people can go to find out more about who you are and what you do, but it’s also just one piece of the giant puzzle that is your brand – your omnipresent, influential and (if applicable), money making brand.

Below are 7 ways to simply be everywhere: Click to continue…

The end of a blog post is just the beginning.

What I mean by this statement is that a lot of a blog’s success is not only determined by what you write, but what some of your readers do after they finish reading what you write.

Blog readers are divided into two groups: those who just read, and those who read and take action. One isn’t better than the other (since our primary goal is to reach and teach as many people as possible), but it’s obvious which group of people help to accelerate a blog’s success.

So how do we convert the “just readers” to become those who take action? We don’t.

Click to continue…

iStock_000006031387XSmallHere are 51 blogging and internet marketing tips that you can use as inspiration for the upcoming year.

Mindset

1. Revisit your goals. Take a moment and rewrite your goals. You may find that they may have changed since the last time you really took a good look at them. If you don’t have any goals, than what are you working towards?

2. Remember where you were. Where was your online business or blog at one year ago? Are you seeing any improvements? If yes, be proud of how far you’ve come along and the fact that you haven’t given up. If you haven’t seen any improvements, why do you think that is?

3. You can always do a little bit more. If you’re up to it, try this 2-step exercise:

  1. Raise your hand as high as you can.
  2. Raise your hand even higher.

If you do this exercise, you’ll notice that you can always stretch your hand a little higher, even though you were told to put it as high as you can at first. When I did this exercise as a teenager, it changed how I thought about everything I did after that moment. It made me realize that I can always do a little bit more. Apply this to what you do online.

4. Take action. As I mentioned in my first law of business and success, every business in a state of motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. With that in mind, you can read and get inspired all you want, but nothing will happen unless you take action. Become the external force that is required to get your blog, business and life to exactly where you want it to be.

5. Flaunt your unique. In other words, know what makes you stand out from the crowd, and milk it. In order to succeed, especially online, you can’t blend in and just be another blog or website that talks about X. Your site can still be about X, but you should be one of the only ones that does Y, or Z.

6. No fear. Fear kills progress, and it kills business. When you’re reluctant to take an action or do something new, take a minute and think to yourself, “what’s the worst that can really happen?”. The worst usually isn’t as bad as you might think.

7. Failing is okay. We all want to succeed, but we shouldn’t ever be afraid of failing. Failing is part of the process and teaches us valuable lessons along the way. Learn from your mistakes, and improve on your next attempt.

8. Don’t work more, work smarter. When we think of putting in the extra mile to get things done, we often think that means just putting in more hours of work. Instead, think of ways that you can work smarter, which will accomplish the same (or even more), in a considerably less amount of time. It may take a small investment of time in the beginning to figure out how to work smarter, but you’ll make up for that time (and stress) soon enough.

9. Give back. I truly believe in “online karma”. The more you help others and the more you give back, the more success you will find. If your primary motivation is just to make as much money as you can and do things just for yourself, you’re only going to see a limited amount of success, if any.

10. Just freakin’ enjoy what you’re doing! If you enjoy what you’re doing, it doesn’t become work anymore. You’ll accomplish more, and be happier. If you’re not doing something you enjoy, why not? Click to continue…

Over thfacebooke last month, I’ve been trying to figure out how to best utilize Facebook as a blogger. To be more specific, I wanted to focus on what Facebook could offer me as far as:

  1. Getting traffic to my blog
  2. Interacting and building relationships with my target audience
  3. Helping to establishing myself as an authority

These three things are all important aspects of becoming a successful blogger, as you probably already know.

I tried to look for posts from the big time bloggers specifically about Facebook and how one could utilize it for their blog, and if it was even worth it. Well, I couldn’t find any definite answers, so I figured I’d just do it myself, see what happens, and report my findings back here for you. That’s kind of what I usually do on this blog.

Anyways, the following is a compilation of what I’ve learned, which I hope many of you can use as a guide if you’re at all interested in using Facebook for something useful other than poking your old high school friends, or showing off your latest Bejeweled Blitz scores and Farmville achievements.

facebook-bejewled-blitz Click to continue…

pat-flynn-facebook-pictureFacebook. I hear that word everywhere now: on the radio, on television, and even in conversations while I’m standing in line at the grocery store. Facebook seems to be taking over the world…and judging by the numbers, that statement isn’t that far off.

  • Over 300 million active users (that’s one for each U.S. citizen!)
  • An Alexa ranking of 2, just behind Google.
  • The fastest growing demographic is people age 35 and older.
  • People spend an average of 20 minutes a day on Facebook.

A couple of notable points here:

  1. That’s a LOT of people. A lot.
  2. The fastest growing demographic (35 years and older), is probably the same demographic that has and is spending the most money.
  3. Guess what the average time people spend on a given website is…10 seconds. Facebook: 20 minutes.

Ridiculous numbers. Ridiculous.

I guess this is why we’re seeing more and more companies today ditch the website address on commercials and are putting in their Facebook addresses instead. It makes perfect sense, and it’s a sign that we should be doing the same thing. Click to continue…

Just a week ago, I added a new WordPress plugin to my blog’s arsenal. It’s called digg digg.

It could also be called awesome awesome, because it is. It’s an all-in-one plugin that allows you to easily add the digg and retweet button onto your blog posts or page. You can see it in use on the upper left part of my posts when you’re on the website. It also has reddit and buzz.yahoo.com, but I don’t use those right now. It’s customizable with a few different options and it was exactly what I was looking for.

A couple of months ago, I would never of thought of adding a retweet button to my blog posts, but now because twitter is growing at such an alarming rate, I thought I’d give it a shot. Twenty-five minutes after I posted my first post after installing the plugin, I saw this in twitter: Click to continue…

Every once and a while I’ll come across a video on youtube that I’ll want to share with you, usually because it’s contains some valuable information. Here is the first one, and it’s a great lesson given by Perry Belcher about how he thinks Social Media should be used to make money:

Click to continue…