Nick Bostic

Contests coming soon, read on for details!

[UPDATED BELOW: Added donations to charities as future "prizes"]

I had mentioned a while back that I was going to be running some contests and promotions on this site. Let me make my motives clear:

I am more than willing to give away something of value, but I need something in return, in this case knowledge.

I also need to make my investment in the prizes worthwhile, which will typically mean a certain number of entries.

Now I didn’t want my site to just turn into a giveaway factory, so to stay informed of the coming contests, you must do one thing:

Subscribe to my RSS feed. You can choose to see it in your reader or in your email, it doesn’t matter to me.

At the bottom, before the related posts you will see my copyright information (as well as possibly some links to companies I approve). Soon, however, you will start to see information regarding upcoming contests and promotions.

Prizes

Of course, I’m sure many of you are here for the prizes. So here’s a list of some of the items I’m planning on giving away over time:

Donations to various charities
Amazon/iTunes gift cards
Seagate Free Agent Go 320GB
Flip Mino HD
Dell Inspiron Mini 9
Free hosting
Free blog design and setup
Plus anything else I can find that might be fun!

So subscribe to the feed and stay tuned for contest details as they start to roll out early next year!

6 Steps To Achieve Social Media Optimization

There are so many social media services out there – some that are just plain fun, some to watch over your kids, some to stay connected to old friends or colleagues and some that are industry specific. If you try to join and participate in all of them, you will never have true social media optimization and you will annoy friends and family members with your obsession.

Social Media Optimization

You’ve heard it all before, but it’s true that the first step to social media optimization is to analyze your goals, your likes and your industry. In real estate, it makes sense to be on ActiveRain. If you are a restaurant owner, Yelp may be more important. If you are a chiropractor, naturopath or acupuncturist, creating word of mouth via Twitter may be your best bet. Figuring out these specifics is something I can help with.
Next grab ALL of your usernames. Yes, even though we are only picking and choosing certain networks, grab your username as many places as possible to protect your online identity. Use UserNameCheck.com to see the most popular sites and search them quickly. You may want to bookmark this page since grabbing your usernames may take a while.
Now, starting with the sites from step 1, fill out your profiles. This is different for each site, but coming soon, I will have detailed instructions showing you how to get going on the most popular sites. Eventually, you’ll want to complete profiles on every site, but for now, just stick with the ones we’ll be using. Each profile should be almost identical, using great keywords you want to be identified with. Again, let me know if you need help.
Find people you know. It’s always easier to talk to someone you know than a complete stranger. Most of the social media sites will allow you to import contact lists from GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo! or Outlook. USE THESE TOOLS CAREFULLY! At some point, every single one of these social media sites will ask if you want to invite people who aren’t on the site. This is considered by many to be SPAM! So just use the tools to connect with your contacts that are already on the network, then selectively invite people in a personal way.
Go listen. Too many people getting into small business online marketing sign up and immediately want to see business flowing in or start spamming their message out. You need to establish relationships and trust first. So go listen and figure out the tone of the network before you engage.
Have fun. They’re called social networks because they are supposed to be social. Business will come, but you have to build your presence first through careful social media optimization.

If you are just getting started with social media, this can be something of a lengthy process just getting setup and started. If you are already established, social media optimization is necessary from time to time in order to weed out networks that aren’t helping and are just competing for time.

Again, if you need help with your small business online marketing and social media optimization, let me know.

Conversation Prism Courtesy of Brian Solis

Paradigm Shift - A Wonderful Article about Changing Focus

Paradigm Shift: Changing the Human Experience
Thank you Ardell! This is an excellent point that all businesspeople need to be looking into over the next few months to survive going into the future: how to better serve customers instead of yourself. This is great stuff, a definite must-read.

Twitter be Nimble, Twitter be Quick, if you don’t know Jack, try these
Coming back at you with some daily online marketing tips and tricks, here’s a great summary of getting going with Twitter and using it more effectively.

Ready for 2009

I was going to do one of those “Look back at 2008” posts, but realized it would be far too depressing, at least for me. It’s been a very rough year. So I am looking very forward to 2009.

Instead of resolutions, I have some goals. To help me achieve them, I’m putting them down for all the world to help keep me accountable.

In no particular order:

Lose 10 pounds. I want to lose more than that in body fat, but put on some muscle, so that’s a good number.
Get to 500 RSS subscribers. Should be pretty easy, at my current pace I should have that done in 2Q.
Get my time on site back up to over 10 minutes. I’ve slipped down to about 8.
Generate an extra $2k per month (average) between consulting business and sponsors/advertisers. Remember, I am working a full time day job, so I can only take on so much work
Have the best Oregon Country Fair and Burning Man to date.
Learn to stilt walk.
Get my saxophone back out and get good again.
Read a book a month.
Be one of the stars of an incredible festival weekend sometime in June
Get help. I’m a mess and some help would be good. No rehab, not that kind of mess
Make at least half of the Portland Beer & Blog events.
Keep the house clean and finish the fireplace, kitchen touch-ups and flooring upstairs and down by the end of 2Q.
Learn to build stuff. Wood, metal, whatever, figure it out.
Talk to (and learn from) one of the best financial planners/real estate investors out there to get to work on my Purposeful Planning.
Be the best person I can be.

Any other good ideas to add to the list?

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