Hmm, going by this blog my “status” as a “professional” blogger may be under threat, as I’ve only made 7 posts here in the whole of 2009!

but to be fair that kinda sums up the year for me, as I didn’t really get an awful lot of work done until the last few months of the year, when I finally managed to get my head straight and find the right frame of mind to move on after my divorce, mostly thanks to a couple of good friends, who know who they are, thanks guys!

so what’s that got to do with getting out of my comfort zone?

easy, one of the things that I did do more of this year was go to internet marketing events, and as always, it proved to be a good thing. I’ve met many great new friends, people who I am already working together with on different projects.

as an example of that I’ve already got a great interview done with Jit Uppal (who I met at Lee McIntrye’s workshop) as the giveaway in preparation for my next new product – http://adswaplistbuilding.com

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One of the biggest differences to my working day over the last year or so was starting to keep a daily “To Do” task list.

Now I do have piles and piles (I can count 23 right now) of post it note pads with list after list of things that I need to do, which I’ve tried several times to feed in to a spread sheet for the sake of improved efficiency, but that’s not what I’m actually talking about.

I have a little A5 size notebook that at the end of each day I write down the list of tomorrow’s tasks that I want to get done. Admitedly most days I don’t get them all done, but having the list sat in front of me helps me keep on target and remember what I most need to accomplish each day.

It also happens to be a great kick up the bum if I get totally off target (e.g. lost in warcraft for a few hours), as it’s sat there staring up at me…

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Is Internet Marketing Bad For Your Health?

one of the best things I ever did for my internet business was visit a marketing event.

it was run by Robert Puddy, who’s doing another one in the US in Oct (LFMpires Workshop US), and it made a massive difference to my online business!

I admit, I wasn’t looking forward to going and having to do all that “networking” stuff, mostly because that always sounds to me like standing around in a room full of people you don’t know, trying to start up a random conversation, not exactly easy or pleasant, unless of course you’re a bit of an extrovert!

as it happens, all my “networking” ended up being done either in the bar, or outside having a smoke, so starting conversations wasn’t forced, it just happened naturally.

And of course the plentiful flow of Guiness helped!

In fact it was while I was outside having a smoke (that’s the unhealthy bit) that I met (and made friends with) many of my best joint venture partners, well known and very succesful marketers like (in no particular order): -

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This is a real quick update just to let you know that there’s a small (aka select) Internet Marketing Workshop happening in London (UK) on Sunday 26th July and there are just a few places left if you want to get in…

UK IM Workshop

the workshop is being run by Kevin Brown and the main speakers will be Kevin Riley, who is a top dog when it comes to product creation, and Lee McIntyre who was a school teacher up until just a couple of years ago and has built up profitable online business and an excellent reputation for delivering high quality advice, tips and products.

The Workshop starts at 10am Sunday July 26th 2009

It’s also pretty cheap for such an event, at just $177 (inc 15% VAT), and as it’s not a massive overcrowded event you’ll have more chance to network with people and make some great new contacts…

I’ll probably get to the hotel on Saturday afternoon, so if you’re coming you should be able to find me in my usual spot (at the bar) from early evening onwards.

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Here are my top five Twitter tools and sites for getting the most out of your twitter account and automating as much as you can to make your twitter experience, quicker & easier…

1st up, the most essential tool for any serious “twitteree“, or “twitterette“, imho, is a desktop app to make the whole experience easier.

I started off with Thwirl and liked it’s simplicity, but then came across TweetDeck

The first time I looked at TweetDeck I have to admit, I didn’t like it, mostly because of the black color, but now I wouldn’t go back to Thwirl.

TweetDeck just presents tweets, @’s and DM’s in such a clear way it’s easy to keep track of what’s going on, which can be very important when you end up in a 4, 5, or 6 (or more) different conversations at the same time, with a mix of @’s and DM’s coming at you left right and center!

With TweetDeck you know exactly where everything is…

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I mentioned in my last post (5. Getting out and meeting people, aka “networking”) how important it is to get and get together with other marketers whenever possible.

I managed to make it down to London a couple of weeks ago for Martin Avis’ London Lunch for the first time in well over a year, and it was great to see so many people there!

It was also great to catch up with a whole bunch of people (fellow internet marketers) who I’ve not seen in months, although I didn’t manage to chat with everyone I wanted to (sorry Rob!), and I forgot to take any photos, too busy nattering away, sorry!

So there’s 2 points to this post, first is an invite to what will be a great internet marketing workshop weekend that I’m going to, and the 2nd is more of a proposal based on having some kind of informal getogether in Cheltenham every couple of months…

Bristol Internet Marketing Workshop

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I would credit my success online down to 6 main things: -

1. PMA – “Positive Mental Attitude”

If you have a negative attitude to being successful then you’re going to end up sabotaging your own efforts.

Likewise if you listen to others with a “that will never work” attitude, then they will have a negative influence on your efforts, so don’t do it.

Instead start seeking out and mixing with people who have the same positive attitude and are interested in the same things as you, see No. 5 below.

I posted a great example of how a self defeating negative outlook can be recently here: -

Nothing Works Part 2

Warning – it’s a LONG read!

2. Investing in your own education

If you wanted to be a Doctor, Engineer, Lawyer or any other high paid offline “professional” you would have to spend a small fortune getting the education you need.

Why should you expect to get the REAL knowledge you need online to be for free?

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I was recently asked by a fellow marketer, who shall rename nameless to save his embarrassment , where he could find his facebook profile link, so that he could create a simplified link, like mine: -

http://mattgarrett.com/facebook

so here’s a quickie on how to find the link, and although Andrew   didn’t need this bit, I’ll also show what html code to use to create the link.

when you log in there should be a link with your name on the right at the top of the page, the link will look something like -

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=776035400&ref=name

then just remove the “&ref=name” bit from the end so it’s like this - 

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=776035400

you can then use this url in a standard html page for the redirect, here’s the html code to use, just replace the url with your own profile url: -

url redirect html

then save the file as index.html and upload it to a NEW folder called “facebook” and you will end up with a link that looks like this and is easier for people to remember: -

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I was going through some notes I’d made a little while back last night and came across a little golden nugget that was given to me by fellow marketer Simon Hodgkinson..

Simon’s a pretty smart marketer with a fairly impressive array of products, which you can check out on his Hodgkinson Publishing site, as well as his own book

Simon was checking his Gmail account while we were sat at the bar and mentioned another marketer (who’s name I can’t remember) who had his gmail account broken in to after accessing it on an unsecured network at a hotel, and subsequantly had many of his websites, servers and other business assets attacked!

The problem is that gmail is accessed via http instead of https (secure encrypted) as a default, so if you use Gmail I recommend you take a moment and go in to your “Settings” (from the top right hands side of the page when you’re logged in) and then scroll down the page to the bottom to find the option to change to logon via https as a default.

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It seems I must be doing something right with Twitter, even though I don’t twitter everyday, and sometimes even miss a week or two, my twitter followers count continues to climb…

It seems the automated BlogMyTweet.com plugin that I have added to my main blogs (like this one) does help to even bring in some traffic to the blogs as well, so it appears that I’m not just twittering away to myself, phew!

lol…

I’ve recently added a twitter “Follow Me on Twitter” graphical button to my blogs to see if they help to pick up even more new “followers” and it does seem to be helping.

Here’s three of the best sites I’ve found with free Twitter “follow me” buttons you can use: -

Free Twitter Buttons

Free Twitter Graphics

Free Twitter Follow Me Buttons

I’ve also added the TwitterCounter.com chicklet to display the number of followers I currently have, which seems to add a nice touch of social proof, encouraging people to go ahead an follow me.

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