Claire here.
You’re on my blog, ClaireDiazOrtiz.com, where I write things. Good things, bad things, things in the middle between bad and good.
Today, I’m writing to ask you a kinda weird thing.
Here goes.
What do you need?
Yup.
Is there a way that I can help you?
I’m not being weird. I’m genuinely curious.
Many things might come to mind when I ask that question. Here are few ideas:
- You want to learn to start a blog and turn that blog into a business.
- You need advice on how to find your passion in life and turn it into a career.
- You want to know how to use social media to rock the world.
- You need a cookie. A big one. With milk.
- You want me to start emailing you my blog posts. Go here. Or you want me to stop. (Hit unsubscribe at the bottom of any note I send and it’ll do the trick.)
Whatever it is, I’d like to know. If there is something I can do, shoot me a note (claire@clairediazortiz.com). Leave a comment. I’ll read every one, and I’ll respond to as many as I can.
Have a great week,
Claire
I’m not going to lie. A really big cookie and milk are exactly what I need right now.
Hi Claire, among other things, question two made me call out ‘Bingo’ when I read it. I have a career that is earning enough to pay the bills (just). What I would love to do is to replace my wages income with my own business, and as a budding and frustrated intrepreneur with a book of product samples in concept stage (and no capital to start prototyping myself) I find it extremely difficult to ‘link in’ with companies that will give me the time of day. Being in Brisbane, Australia (NOT the one in Canada), I would love to know if there is any ‘secret recipe’ for finding professional companies that will be interested, and what approach is needed to get them to be interested (preferably excited) in working with you (either as a contractor or partner – remember; no capital) to advance my IP idea toward a mutually beneficial outcome?
I know to them it might be seen as suspicious or one-sided, but it is extremely hard to get your face through the door once you jam your foot in.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions you may have.
Kind regards
Brett Watkin
Just wanted to say: way to go!!!
Hey Claire. Happy to hear your thoughts on something. Social media platforms are powerful, easy to misuse, and you seem like an expert 🙂 I will try to phrase this as best as I can! How do I find the happy medium for my tweets/blogs/shares in my field, between being morbidly focused on the technical subject of interest vs. content that’s attention grabbing for any reader? Any advice would be much appreciated!
Hi Claire,
I have two questions.
1. I’ve suggested we start a blog at work because I think it could be a great PR bed and allow us to share so much interesting content regarding regarding our employer brand. The tricky thing is that I’m a little worried about how I’m going to organize it, what themes to cover, how to categorize the content, how to manage multimedia (videos, pictures etc). Basically I just don’t know where to start. It might be worth mentioning that I am part of an in-house recruitment team. Can you give me some pointers to organize all my fleeting thoughts, please!?
2. My friend and I are in the middle of revamping our blog and we want to be hear on social. It seems that now it’s getting harder and harder to grow organically and obviously we don’t have the funds to promote tweets or our account or buy Facebook ads. We’re realigning our goals and our content which will hopefully help, but can you share some tricks of the trade with us please?
Thanks!
Hi Nicole! Clearly your request is for Claire’s help but in perusing the content above mine, I noticed your mention of lack of funds for Twitter and FB promotions. Claire will probably have MUCH better advice for you, but I did want to offer that I did a FB experiment with a $10 promoted post and the results were astounding! It reached almost 2,500 people with 105 engaged users and generated 57 stories/shares. This is an extremely small page, so the increases were sometimes in the 1000% mark. Don’t know if this helps or seems like really small potatoes to you but thought I would share regardless. Here’s a link to my March/April newsletter if you’re interested in reading more stats. http://cynthiawrites.com/free-e-pubs/
Good luck!
Hey Cynthia, thanks for the suggestion. That seems pretty reasonable, so we’ll definitely have a go. And so people were really engaged with the post?
Yes, users were engaged. They referred the post multiple times…commented…reposted, etc. As I said, it is a VERY small secondary FB page so my users are few. But the percentage increases were impressive. Good luck!!
😉
WOW Cynthia! What amazing results! Had you seen significantly LESS engagement when you didn’t run the ads? i.e. What was the engagement on the organic posts like?
My wife and I are beginning a new podcast in the Fall and want to know the best way to help it really “hit the ground running.” We already have a blog that is beginning to see some level of success, but we want to add this outlet.
Our struggle is that we don’t have a ton of money to buy all the “top end” equipment to make it sound like super-podcasters we love (Erik Fischer, for example), but we still want to do the best we can, because we think the program will truly help and encourage people. Thanks for any suggestion you can give! Love the blog!
DId you check out some of these tools here? http://wp12.temp.domains/~clairfi4/the-podcasting-tools-you-need/
One of the microphones is low-end at about $40…
Hi Claire,
I love the impetus of this post. So generous of you. I actually do need something…a bit of advice. I have an e-book that is near completion, and I am trying to find the best publisher/distributor. I have been led time and again to Book Baby but just through research, not referrals. Do you have an opinion on them and/or do you have another company you would recommend? Thanks for any input you can give. And thanks for the offer of help to begin with!!
I didn’t know about Book Baby until now. So it’s a service that gets your book ready for Kindle, Nook, etc?
Hey Claire
Love your blog and have used a few of your ideas (like Word of the year) to inspire our staff.
Like many posts above – my plea is for advice on social media, and specifically blogging to create or improve business.
We are a couple of Aussies with an IT business located in Mauritius. We have a new website set up and are trying to make it interesting and dynamic. We are already looking at Twitter and the types of tweets we can send out that are clever play on words or informative. We are looking to include a blog on our website, which will probably link in somehow with our Facebook page as well. My questions are however,
1) how often should you write a blog?
2) how long should it be? and more importantly…
3) how do you make boring topics interesting…we sell software systems to a very narrow market, yawn, yawn…and so I wondered – should the topics be broader than just your product & services if it’s on a company website or should it just be focussed on those?
If you could help out with any advice, even a little tidbit, that would be awesome 🙂
Thanks heaps
Today, I went to the beach front with my children.
I found a sea shell and gave it to my 4 year old daughter and said
“You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear.” She placed the shell
to her ear and screamed. There was a hermit crab inside and it
pinched her ear. She never wants to go back! LoL I know this
is totally off topic but I had to tell someone!
When some one searches for his vital thing, therefore he/she desires to be available that in detail, thus that thing is maintained over here.
Hi Claire,
I’m really enjoying reading your blog and I’m working on starting one of my own. Just one question, where/how do you get your pictures? Thanks!
I’d love to learn how to blog…find that one thing that really inspires me and talk about it. And yes, if I can actually get a little $$$ along that way, I say no harm no foul. I am passionate about the IT field, but there are so many IT blogs out there, how do I make mine unique? I’d love to tie in a blog, twitter, facebook, and even linkedin. Thanks for the help.