Power of Social Media!!!

Today was awesome!! I was at home all day due to the snowpocalypse here in Seattle (I do NOT claim to know how to drive in the snow we Seattlites are notorious for claiming). It was last night I started hearing the murmurings of Wikipedia blacking out their site today...then I heard about it from RedditTroubledTeens, well saw it on facebook when the profile picture was changed to this:

I followed suit and started sharing only the relevant links as I saw them...my favorite being the YouTube video where Ben Huh makes a cameo appearance ... "The day the Lolcat died".

It was an absolute blast to experience the solidarity across the web, Google, Wikipedia and more all directing people to contact their representatives (and I did!).

Eventually I got a little distracted and was spreading some Troubled Teen stories around when I got the NYT Afternoon Update and the story that even a co-founder of SOPA was withdrawing support. After reading about that I joyfully scrolled through my facebook newsfeed via my iphone posting the news article in the comments of those just catching on that SOPA and PIPA are a real threat.

Maria Cantwell has posted something about #OPEN as she called it...something bipartisan that is better...we will see.

Now I will be working on using this experience to learn about spreading the important news I have to share about Mitt Romney's Troubled Teen Industry connections and how the kids at these programs keep dying that sort of thing... Inspiring day, absolutely inspiring.

Much love to Wikipedia, Ben Huh (LolCats), Google, and everyone else who joined in this movement of online occupation.

In Solidarity - Kristin Bennett

Crowdfunding

I just started my first attempt at this thing called crowdfunding today, if you are not familiar with it, it is when you put your idea/project/business up on a crowdfunding site, and people can invest in micro installments to reach your goal. Like the redwoods you see in the picture, it is based on the fact that we are not alone in the world, we are all here together, and the well being of each one of us is a benefit to us all.

It was at my leadership training course that this value was really instilled in me, the fact that we are all connected. Redwoods are extremely tall (that's an understatement) but the roots actually aren't very deep. They manage to stand tall because of the way their roots spread and intertwine to keep themselves and every other tree standing. I'm not a redwood but I'm definitely a redhead and this is an experiment to see if I can get the support that I need to do good. 

So it is in this way, that small donations from a lot of people, can lead to big things.

My first campaign is to fund the redesign of a site that has no funding otherwise, you can see the campaign HERE. Please check it out and let me know what kind of big idea you would like to see get funded in this way! 

Defining Your Blogs Niche

Now this is Marketing! by Russ and Lori, on Flickr

When you decide to start a blog and have the intention of it becoming a high traffic go-to place for people, it is generally good to focus down on a niche, or target market if you will. When you do this, the quality of people you will attract to the site is much higher, and since it is deliberate, you do not need to spend as much time doing it.

I think the best example of this from the work I have done is a site that I created, using the Ning platform, for Mother's diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. It was a niche that I found accidentally, a mom I was chatting with mentioned not having a place to go to talk to other moms with MS and when I did a pretty thorough search online I agreed! There seemed to be nothing there. I saw parents with MS, I saw Parenting forums within MS sites, and that was about it! Later I saw it as a small sub group of mothering sites, but there wasn't a high number of members, probably because the moms at the particular sites were already pretty filtered down to that sites niche.

So back to the story, the site launched and it has been booming ever since, it's been mentioned 2 times in national publications, once in a magazine and once in a newsletter, and also in 2 local publications, a women's magazine and a local chapter mailing.

Easiest way to find your niche is to look around you, talk to the people you know. Think of all of these things and hopefully it'll come to you.

If it still doesn't come to you then just start blogging, as much as you can, and after a week or two (more if you haven't written much) look back over what you have written and see if you notice any trends in your writing. Once you do, you can focus on that.

Obviously if you have a business that does something in particular like a bookstore you probably already have a niche pretty well carved out, your local area + books, but think about what kind of books, what kind of people, maybe it will be about mystery books and tea (might want to serve/sell it too if you do that!) and cats if your store has one of those cats in the window that watches over everything. Something like that gives you both flexibility and also a focus for your blog to fall back on.

So what is your niche?

Finding GREAT Photos For Your Site

Photo by stefg74 on Flickr

I have found myself talking to people on both sides of what I'm about to describe at lot recently. This includes both photographers who want their work to be put to use as well as people who are not photographers who simply want some high quality photo's on their site.

There are places that you can get awesome free photos! For example the photo above was obtained from here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/freeuse/ which is a group on Flickr where photographers who want to share their photos can post them. They do for the most part all require that we photo appreciators give them credit where credit is due however! For example the photo above is by a user called stefg74 and if you click on the photo you can see more work by this photographer that they have on Flickr.

You can even search the group for particular pictures! For example, I got stung by a bee today. I like to blog about such eventful things (especially since I'm 'able' due to my finger that got stung not swelling up). I didn't have a good photo though, I suppose I could have thought about it, found a way to photograph my finger or hunt for a bee to photograph but no, I decided to search for a bee picture instead and you can see how I used it HERE. I got to write about my experience without worrying about taking the perfect picture for it!!

Likewise with this post, I just wasn't as specific, I looked at the photos and just found one that I really liked! I love coffee so this one seemed highly appropriate (thanks stefg74!!).

If you ever have questions about if it is ok to use a picture I recommend contacting the person who posted it!

How do I enhance my online presence?

If your goal is to be an online expert in anything there are a few sites that I recommend. There are exceptions and for some industries there are some specific sites you want to be sure to be a part of, but here are a few basics that are relevant for virtually all industries. I have linked to my profile in the first link of each so you can see some of what can be done, the second link is to the site itself and will most likely direct you to sign up if you haven't already.

Quora :: Quora.com is a site that is a place where people ask questions, and answer questions. Be sure to sign up as an individual, not a business as that is frowned upon. When you sign up, sign up to follow anything that you either know a lot about or are interested in. Once you do this, click on "Home" (left part of menu in top right) and then select the "Open Questions" to see some questions that you can potentially answer. After this look through the site, and feel free to contribute any wisdom you have to share on questions you see that you can add some value to. Have fun!

Klout :: Klout.com is a site that measures your influence, not so much of an influence builder per-say, it can let you know where you stand and give you a number of variables you can use to create goals to increase your influence. It measures things like the number of followers/friends you have on various social networking sites as well as what happens to the content you post. For example if your content is regularly "liked" "shared" or "retweeted" then your scores will go up. If your goals include being a go-to resource for information this is a great way to see where you are at. Be sure to connect to all of the various networks you are a part of to get a more accurate score, you can also sign up for the ones you aren't already a part of though if you don't plan to use them there isn't much point to this.

The following two sites are a little bit different in that they have first and foremost the specific purpose of growing business or finding employees/employment. They are also used, like the first two, as a way to boost our network and/or reputation however, let me explain:

LinkedIn :: LinkedIn.com is a site that you have hopefully heard of! It is a place to stay in touch with your past co-workers and look for jobs. Beyond this, many people don't know that it is also a place to build on your network, knowledge and reputation in a given field. There are groups that you can join and you can also write articles that will get your name out there in the topic you cover. When you join these groups it will also give you a relatively niche crowd to pose any questions related to the group topic. This is nice because you are asking (or answering!) people who know what is being talked about, much more direct way to get/give information than using your facebook friends for example.

Biznik :: Biznik.com is a social network for small business owners that is actually about networking not just in line but IN PERSON. When you look at my page, what you see when you look at the groups I'm a part of is probably going to be totally different than the groups you see when you are logged into your account/profile. This is because the groups I am a part of for the most part are local to Seattle, and likewise unless you too are in Seattle, you will see groups local to you so long as you have properly filled out your profile. I find these meetings very useful for meeting local business owners to do business with and to share/learn from each others experiences. To boost your reputation in this field you can, like linkedin write articles and participate in discussions, and you also can organize events in your field! The benefit of this is that you can share your knowledge to people who want to learn (potentially gaining clients!) and also design networking events to your liking.

There are lots and lots of other sites for networking and they can all be used to boost your reputation, these four I think are most relevant to EVERY business owner though. If you are interested in what I recommend for your industry please ask in the comments and I will let you know as soon as possible in a later blog post!