People have taken to calling me “Ms. Web 2.0″ and “social media maven” and whatnot.  This is hilarious to me because I didn’t set out to become anything of the sort — I’ve just been doing it as a consequence of my promotional activities on behalf of other people (and lately, my own radio show Subversive Science).

And when I talk about the sorts of analytics I do to prove the effectiveness of my actions on Twitter or Facebook or what-have-you, the usual reaction is, where did you learn to do internet marketing?

Well.  On the internet.  Through other internet marketing websites. But most of all, from other people’s email marketing newsletters, which everyone knows are just a way to get you to sign up for more stuff or buy stuff, but I sign up for them anyway.

Hell yes I will sign up for your free email newsletters.  As many as I can get.  Why?

1 – Zero cost. Unlike the average schmoe who (according to my casual glances at other people’s email managers) doesn’t aggressively filter their email, pragmatically I have all the control.  I look at email when I choose to look at it, not in a massive inbox jumble.  So my subscriptions cost me nothing – no money obviously, but also no loss of control or intrusion into my brain.

2 – Internet marketers give away all their secrets without knowing it.

Here’s an excerpt from an email I got from Kevin Gianni of LiveAwesome.com recently, regarding a special workshop he’s going to hold just outside of the Raw Spirit Fest in Santa Barbara on “how to turn your unique passion into financial freedom”:

In this talk, I will explain…
- How to reach new audiences online and offline.
- How to bring floods of traffic to your site without having to pay for it.
- How to build credibility quickly even if you’ve just started in the business.
- How to contact others to get them to promote what you’re doing.
- How to avoid the most common mistakes made as a business owner.

He’s going to charge people $98 to do this workshop.  I believe you’ll get your value from that, sure.

But!  Here’s what you just got in your email: A breakdown, play-by-play list of what Kevin Gianni did to become successful at what he does.

If you have this, you have all you need to emulate him. Because everything he learned, he learned from the internet.  And if you’re even halfway internet savvy — which I hope you are, if you’re considering increasing your web presence in any way — you can use Google and figure out the “how to” of each thing on that list.

Hell, I’ll do one better, I’ll explain each bit.

So here’s the play-by-play — how to get successful as an “internet personality”:

• You need to find more audiences, both online and offline.
• You need to bring floods of traffic to your site — without paying for it — which means NO ADS.
• It’s possible to build credibility quickly, even if you’ve just started in the business.
• Want to promote yourself? Contact others in the same business and have them promote you.
• Start considering yourself a business (not just a website, or a person), and seek out some simple business advice.

Audiences: The answer to the first one is simple.  How do you get people to pay attention to you?  How do you find people who will be interested in what you have to say, do, and offer?

YOU HAVE TO GO WHERE PEOPLE HANG OUT.  Bam. Done. Next.

Floods of traffic: That’s all about search engine optimization and social media interaction.  If you’re a total beginner in this, I recommend The Thirty Day Challenge. 

And if you’re not on Twitter, for gosh sakes get on it.  Your self-education in social media starts there.

Credibility: This third thing isn’t even a thing.  Just a psych-up: don’t worry about being seen as an expert.  If you’re doing anything at all, with any amount of conviction, you immediately have an edge over 99% of everyone else in your niche, because you’ll be the only one who wants to lead, wants to be seen as the expert, and so on.

Promotion: The guy’s just flat-out telling you what to do.  Don’t be shy.  Are you interested in hyping your obscure Japanese punk pirate radio stream or podcast?  Go to Pirate Cat Radio and contact one of the DJs. I guarantee you’ll at least make some contacts if not get some great cross-pollination going.

Business: How do you avoid common business mistakes? Alright, that’s beyond the scope of my article here.  Suffice it to say, though, that the basics of running a business are well-established all over the web.  You could start with The US Small Business Administration, a government website that helps small businesses, especially new ones, plan out their approach. 

Really, when in doubt… Google it! 

And don’t be afraid to sign up for a dozen email lists and glance at them from time to time.  I guarantee you’ll get a lot more out of that gradual learning-by-absorption than by spending $100 or more on some tunnel-visioned courseware developed by people who basically just Googled it all in the first place.

Technorati Tags: internet marketing, promotion, social media, subversive science, the web

It’s 1 am and I have a commitment in the early morning, so I’m going to bed before I start typing anything significant.  Instead I’ll cop out with a bunch of twitter hash-tags:

#fopl

#w2e

#cultureclash

#piratecatradio

#hackathon

And by the way, if you want to swing by the Web 2.0 Expo, you can get a free floor pass by registering with this code: websf09hack

Technorati Tags: expo, hackathon, the web, w2e

I sit at my computer gently tapping away at some project or another, my third cup of black tea by my side, the increasing light gradually revealing my nightly crime: that yet again I have forgotten to go to bed.

Those who’ve known me a long time would no doubt recognize the scene as belonging to the early dot-com era when I lived with my grandmom, worked a programming job by day, did freelance websites (and a lot of Starcraft) by night.

Yet the author of the above statement was my housemate, just this moment, coming up to take his shower.  His tone was facetious, of course.

My grandmother would have said something very similar, though much more concernedly.  One morning, awake and floating down the stairs at 6am as she always did, utterly perplexed at finding me still at the computer where she left me, she recited me these two lines of a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay:

“I burn my candle at both ends,
it may not last the night…”

I felt chastised.  But I never felt I could explain what it was that kept me up all night.

I also never knew the other two lines of the poem, strangely enough, until a few years later:

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends–

It gives a lovely light!

Ah hah, I have my answer for my grandmother, sadly too late (she is dead).

The light of the world isn’t enough for me; I need to create my own.  Whether it burns me away just doesn’t matter, not right now.  I’m striving for something brighter — sleep be damned.

Insomniac phase 1: 1998 : web 1.0

Insomniac phase 2: 2009 : web 2.0

Technorati Tags: insomnia, kathleen mauchly, poetry, the web