HereNextYear Web Marketing

One Big Reason Why WordPress is Better than Drupal

Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 04:51:36 +0000

Of 100 requests for quotes to convert a website to WordPress, 20 of those websites will be in Joomla, 10% of them will be produced using old HTML code using Dreamweaver, Website Tonight or even raw hand-coding. The remaining 5-10% will be from websites created with Drupal software. This morning a quote request came in asking why WordPress is so much better than Drupal. Here is my response:

“Possibly the greatest benefit of WordPress over Drupal is that WordPress is universally supported. Drupal is a fine tool if you have a complex website with multiple users and even multiple develoers needing concurrent access to the back-end of the site. You really should have either your own in-house development crew. If not, I would only suggest Drupal to someone that uses a freelance developer or even a partner with tons of Drupal experience and ONLY if that person has worked with you for a couple of years and you’re confident the person will not be gone forever next month. The minute you bring in someone from the outside to administer/develop a Drupal site, they’ll want to redo it their own way. With WordPress, any WordPress-knowledgeable developer can jump in and go from there.”

Can you contribute any other reasons that Drupal would be a better fit for a website than WordPress or why WordPress is a better fit for everyone over Drupal?

Post Author: Marty Dickinson

Terry Brock Speaking to NSA Colorado About Technology

Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:58:10 +0000

Terry Brock is doing a great job teaching NSA Colorado audience at the i”Heart”Tech about using Skype video for interviewing experts. Next up Gina Carr to talk about Klout Score.

All HereNextYear speaker clients are encouraged to connect with both Terry Brock and Gina Carr so that you can stay ahead of technology and social media to forward your speaking career.

Post Author: Marty Dickinson

MyColumnWeaver Plugin for WordPress is Live!

Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 21:14:07 +0000

Here Next Year, LLC officially announced today its launch of MyColumnWeaver, an in-house developed plugin for WordPress. Its function is to allow a user with no HTML or CSS experience to add columns to their website.

Here Next Year president, Marty Dickinson, suggests, “The most common use for this plugin will be featuring an image in a left column with descriptive content in a right column such as the following display:

“Amazon, eBay and even ChristianMingle present the contents of their website in this familiar format and anyone that features product for sale on their website should follow their example,” Dickinson says.

This feature is typically requested when promoting shopping cart style products, books, CD’s or services, like in the example of AIA – Alliance of International Aromatherapists, a Here Next Year client and extensive WordPress user. AIA president, Bev Day, comments, “I’ve used Dreamweaver for years and really missed the ease of editing and moving cells and rows of images and content once we moved to WordPress. MyColumnWeaver makes this process easy again.”

MyColumnWeaver is available for free 5-day download and costs only $14.95 for a lifetime license on a single site. The company is already laying the ground work to offer discounted licenses for agencies that specialize in WordPress website production.

For more details, please contact Here Next Year president, Marty Dickinson, or visit the MyColumnWeaver download page for product details.

Post Author: Marty Dickinson

42 IM Tips for Business Communications

Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 20:33:49 +0000

For the past six months or so, I’ve been encouraging (maybe even urging) all of my clients to converse with me by Skype Instant Messaging before sending me emails or trying to reach me by phone.

What IS IM Anyway?

IM, stands for “Instant Messaging,” where a person types a message inside a message sending window and the intended recipient sees the message immediately. An ongoing log of messages can be seen by each participant. Email is very similar except you have to be very careful of your word choice because your email may get stopped by spam filters. With email, you really are not sure of when someone will respond. Instant Messaging connects the two (or more) recipients together first and then provides immediate delivery and response for as long as the discussion is required.

Why Do I Prefer Skype IM in Particular?

I particularly like Skype IM because:

It’s free (as most IM systems are).
If you’re chatting away on a topic, it’s easy to send a message and upgrade the chat to a live call if you need to (also free). And, Skype has a setting where you can exchange live cam video as well if you prefer (also free).
No special setup or directory pathing needs to be made to archive your discussions; so even the least technical can figure it out.

Benefits of Instant Messaging

Do I suddenly not like talking to my clients and am trying to get away from live voice discussions with them? Have I become so busy that I don’t have time for phone discussions anymore? Is this some desparate need for me to cling to new technology just because it’s new?

Naa, none of these is true. In fact, I’m using IM more than ever before for the exact opposite of all of these reasons.

I enjoy conversing and strategizing with my clients; even more so now with Instant Messaging. IM allows me to conduct detailed and in-depth discussions over time with my clients that neither one of us would be able to schedule in multiple sittings by phone. Using IM daily has actually brought me a lot closer to the clients I’ve connected with by chat because I get to drill down deeper to get to their real personalities and issues. clients get to learn a lot more about me as well than I would typically share in a phone conversation or email.
IM has added an estimated 3-4 hours to my day in productivity because I don’t have to play phone tag and leave messages or read long and involved one-sided emails. I post my message and then when the client is available, we have an IM chat back and forth, where I might be having 5, 6, or even more one-on-one private chats…at the same time.
Instant messaging is far from new technology. If anything, I think I’ve taken a few years longer than I should have to really embrace it. I’ve been using IM for discussions every day with my web services team for nearly 10 years now, but I’ve only recently suggested open chat to my clients. I have an old laptop on my desk that is devoted to doing nothing other than IM chat. That’s how important IM is to me now. Haa, that old laptop I won at a seminar years ago. It’s too slow to do anything else! And, my chat windows are open from early morning hours to late at night.
I know, I know, the phone is better because you can get a lot more detail said in a phone conversation than you can typing back and forth, right? I used to think that too, until I started having trouble keeping all of my notes organized; and for whomever I’m conversing with, the same is true. Now I see IM as the ultimate way to stay organized with thoughts, brainstorming ideas, and handling requests from clients.

For example, when I’m providing a 30-minute consulting call, my covering a dozen topics with a client or more is common. It’s too much to ask anyone to write that fast to keep up and all those great ideas from both sides seem to fall though the cracks when it comes time to implement.
Probably my favorite benefit of all for IM’ing is that I’m simply able to give better, more complete, more insightful information to a client or coworker during an online IM chat than any other communication method. It works with my brain speed. I love that I can receive a comment or question and then think about it for a few seconds or even a minute or two before responding. If I don’t have my thoughts quite together, I can respond with something that indicates I need more time, like, “OO! Good question! Let me think about that for 2 minutes.”

42 Instant Messaging IM Usage Tips

About once a week, I convince a client to start IM’ing with me on Skype. By the end of the first conversation, they get it. It might take a few weeks for them to commit to using Skype IM every day, but eventually they usually come around to do so. I’ve been keeping notes on usage tips for using IM for business conversations and suggestions I’ve been offering to first-time users. Here are those tips for your use in as good of a step-by-step as I could come up with:

Add a photo to your profile that invites the kind of conversations you want to have. The picture you supply to your IM chat profile will be the one your recipients see throughout your chat discussions. Choose a photo for yourself that is welcoming and shows you’re in a good mood. I definitely see a difference in the way I read questions and comments on chat and how I reply to them depending on if my recipient has a photo at all versus if they have a picture with a positive vibe or a negative one.
Once you’re connected, assure your settings are adjusted to automatically turn on your IM chat when your computer turns on. That way you don’t have to remember to activate it every day when you begin working. You might at first start using IM only when it’s conventient for you or when you have a question that you’re looking for help with. Try to get beyond that hump and see IM as an efficiency builder instead of something that will just suck more time out of your day. Embrace IM so that you can use it all day long to communicate with your clients, customers, service providers, vendors, employees, and contractors.
Always ask the recipient if it’s a good time to have an IM chat or ask for a better time…at least until you get to know the person well. Then it’s usually okay to barge in and start right off in the conversation knowing your recipient will respectfully halt you if the timing is not good. I’ve been in the middle of conference calls on the phone where I’ll receive an IM. Do I get angered by this intrusion? Of course not! I just politely tell my inquirer that I’m on a call and when to expect a reply. When I am off the call, I can connect to my chatter in seconds by saying “done” or “back” or “off the phone.”
Be courteous by telling your active IM readers why you might not be able to reply right away. If you’re on the phone, say something as simple as, “Sorry, on the phone for a few.” If you just got into work and turned on your computer only to find a dozen IM messages waiting for you to logon, say, “gimme a few…just getting in.”
Never start IM chat sentences with capital letters like you would if you were typing sentences in a blog post like this one or some other content for a website. Using capital letters to start sentences just takes too long and carries with it too much potential for spelling errors. I think using capital letters to start sentences somehow formalizes the chat process too and becomes less conversational. Whenever someone new starts chatting with me for the first time, and they start all of their sentences with capital letters, I’m almost always correct that they are new to the IM chat process. And, yes, I think I probably approach my IM conversations a little differently too when I’m sure a person is new to IM chat.
Don’t bother using capital letters for “I” or first letters of states or countries or probably 90% of what you would normally capitalize. “i live in denver co” is absolutely permissable in IM chats whereas you would never misuse punctuation like that on a website, in social networking or even in an email.
Be forgiving of misspelled words entered by your chatting partner. Misspelled words are sometimes seen as respectful! Can you believe I just said that? Well, it’s true. If I am chatting with a client and they misspell a word and do NOT spend the extra time to change it, I am usually appreciative. Why? Because, the client has full confidence that I will not think less of them because they misspelled a word. Instead, I’ll be grateful that they respect my time enough to not worry about perfect spelling or sentence structure and fucus on getting their thought across to me in a timely manner. Now, of course, this concept can be taken overboard too. You sure don’t want 5 misspelled words in a single sentence. I’m just saying to not get all offended when someone does type a word incorrectly. They’re just making best use of their time and yours by not requiring every word to be perfect.
Use commas and multiple periods to connect sentences. For example, consider this reeeealy awkward sentence: “If you were to see printed words in a book, that had nothing but commas, to excentuate pauses in speech, or breaks in a sentence….you’d think i was crazy to publish something like that, right?” In IM, commas in weird places and lots of periods are okay and part of every day communication through Instant Messaging chat.
Know your homophones and use them properly and correct them immediately if you post them wrong in a chat. A homophone is a group of words that sound identical but mean very different things (and are spelled different too). Here are four examples:

Two, too, and to – Sample sentence: Two of them went to the movie too.
They’re, there, and their – Sample sentence: Their brother went over there and they’re soon going to leave.
It’s and its – Sample sentence: It’s really too bad about its future.
Your and you’re – Sample sentence: Your first step is where you’re going to go forward.

I’ll add in another one here just because it’s so common (and one of my wife’s big pet peeves in writing) but it’s not truly a homophone. Do you know the difference between ‘lose’ and ‘loose’? Here’s a sample sentence to help differentiate the two: If you lose the game, they’ll let the balloons loose. I probably see these two words misused two or three times a day on social media, so I thought I’d point it out as one that gets on peoples’ nerves.
Be respectful – Don’t start up an IM conversation with someone because you’re bored or looking for a pick-me-up; unless, of course, it’s their job to support you in this manner.
Abbreviate words but only to the point where your recipient understands them. I’ll use “tho” a lot and “tru” but I deliberately keep my abbreviations to those that everyone knows, for example.
Don’t end sentences with a question mark…unless you’re asking a question. It just irritates some people for some reason to see sentences like, “I sure wish the sun would come out today?” That’s not a question. And, in the use of IM, a sentence like that could even trigger wonder in your recipient if there was something more to the sentence that was left out. It’s just confusing, so only use question marks in questions that require them.
Just like what you’ve been hearing about for years about how to write effective emails, STOP USING CAPITAL LETTERS TO EMPHASIZE POINTS!!! IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU’RE YELLING!!! Be very sparing of your use of capitalized words and exclamation points in Instant Messaging conversations. It’s very easy for recipients to get the idea that you’re upset with them personally, when you’re really not, just by the way you craft a sentence. Then you wind up spending the rest of the chat session trying to prove to the person you’re really not upset at them!
If you really ARE upset with your employee, vendor, service provider, (notice the appropriate use of capital letters) NEVER use IM to battle out a fight. Written words of displeasure will only escalate the situation to outright war. Inevitably, the person you’re chatting with will abruptly leave the conversation once that escalation occurs. There will be no warning. All of a sudden, you will be in mid argument stating your case, and the person’s “away” sign comes on. It’s infuriating to be left like that. I know…it’s happened to me enough times that I’m willing to share my experience here with you publicly in hopes that you don’t make the same mistake. Take my word for it when I say IM is NOT the place to hash out an argument or dispute. Be quick to spot a problem and offer to click the “Call” button on your Skype IM window to initiate a live conversation to hammer it out.
Use small talk to kick things off. Where most communications and Instant Messenger “experts” will tell you to not use IM for small talk, I’ve found that people are much more at ease to talk about important stuff after they’ve chatted a bit with some small talk. This is the first place in this blog post that I’ll suggest that you really want to start getting to know those you’ll be chatting with. I might start a conversation like this: “are you dug out of that snowstorm yet?” or “can you believe we’re only a week away from spring break again?” Notice how I did not use capital letters to start the sentences? I’ll do that a lot in this document, so don’t be alarmed when you see punctuation with no capital letters.

It doesn’t take too many minutes of conversing at this level before your recipient will be at ease and yet also very responsive to getting down to business. Remember too that most parents love to talk about their kids. Fortunately, I love to hear about kids’ accomplishments! So, it’s pretty easy for me to pick up on a conversation with someone on IM from the day before or the week before with, “i’ve been anxious to hear how your girl did in the swim meet yesterday!…how did it go?” Small talk really sets the mood for a constructive, efficient, creative chat session rather than just jumping into your business agenda immediately. And, it shows you’re a human being with a genuine interest in the well-being of your clients.
Always begin your conversation with something to show the recipient you’re in a good mood. After all, who wants to chat with a grump? Stressing your discontent in your first line of chat could find yourself waiting a while for a response. I start every IM conversation with my implementation team in the morning with a long spelled out “mooooorning”. When they see that, they know I’m in a good mood and ready to start the day off right.

They’ve also learned if I start the conversation off with “geez” or “good grief” or “can’t believe it” or “must be monday” essentially ANYTHING other than “moooorning” that Marty isn’t in the best of moods so let’s get to it!
Know what you can ask about and what you should avoid. As a general rule, I will always suggest that you stay away from tabboo subjects like religion and polics. It’s just far too easy to get in trouble with clients and even staff when going into those issues. There’s too much at stake if you allow a normal day to turn into a heated political or religious discussion with a client or helper.

But, now let’s stay on this topic but use a different example. Imagine if your client was out all week for surgery, and they finally appear on IM with a question for you. The temptation might be for you to immediately want a lot of details about the surgery. Or, you might not want to hear about it at all. Just depends on your personality I suppose. But, how much is too much so that you’ll scare your recipient into wondering why you want to know so much? How little is too little to the point your client feels like just a number and you don’t care at all about something important that might be going on in his or her life? These are very important questions you need to ask yourself when you’re chatting with people. And, often you only have a split second to decide. My only advice here is that you have to use your instinct and you really need to know the person you’re chatting with to help make those decisions. Effective IM chatting is much more an art than it is a technology. Phrases like, “everything go okay last week?” or “welcome back!” sure go a long way. Let your recipient be the one to expand. It’s your task to put a limit on the casual discussions and bridge the topic back to work related topics.
Let consistency work for you. Let’s say, for example, you seem to always be able to chat with a specific co-worker or vendor someone between 8and 10am in the morning. Then, one day the person’s IM displays they’re “away” or “idle.” Try again…send the message anyway because fluke displays appear within IM chat systems sometimes; the person might be there and available even if you think otherwise. Always rely on your instincts and double check to see if the person is truly unavailable if you believe the person is there.
Use lots of fluff words to reinforce your points. “Woohoo!” is a favorite of mine for sharing in someone’s success and keeps the conversation upbeat with excitement.
Compliment your recipient with a “nice job” for a job well done or “great idea!” when brainstorming.
Use emoticons for smiley faces or frowns but don’t get too carried away with this tool. Save your smileys (or frowns) for when you really need to make sure your message is going to be received correctly.
Use acrotalk that fits your personality. Somewhere, you’ve probably seen LOL (which means “laughing out loud”), ROFL (rolling on the floor laughing), brb (be right back). These are known as “acrotalk” and are used to add emotion to your chat conversations. For example, consider this discussion:

ME: “awww, i was sitting in my chair and the arm broke off just now!”
YOU: “LOL”

ME: “the other broke off last week, so now my chair has no arms at all”
YOU: “ROFL”

ME: “i need to get a screwdriver and fix this before I put it off, brb”
YOU: Okay.
Use other well-known emotional tie-ins to begin and end your sentences. Some of my favorites are “eew” and “ick” for things that are not so good and “yum” and “coolness” for things that are good. “hmmmm” i might use to start conversing about good or bad situations. For example:

“ick, i can’t believe it’s really going to snow saturday again” or “you really got that to work already?? coolness!” or “hmmmm…i wonder how that’s going to work out”
Abbreviate words where you can but only to the point where your recipient understands the meaning of the abbreviation. Two of my favorites are “haa” (my preference over LOL or ROFL as those just seem to teenager-y for me) and the letter “k” (okay).
If you’re instructing someone to do something, be overly descriptive and exact. What you are thinking in your mind is almost always not transferred to your fingers in the same amount of detail as your mind is thinking it. Safer to over-describe than to under-describe.
Correct important mistakes quickly. If you make a mistake in your typed description, add a new line quickly. I like to preface my own mistakes with a “awwwwwww…” or “did i really say that?” This is especially important if you are in a leadership position in your company or communicating to contractor helpers that you keep instructions on a level that’s concise but not abrupt.
Avoid using curse words. This goes for anywhere online really. There’s no need to use offensive words of any kind in your chat conversations. The occasional “dammm i can’t believe it happened again” or “dude, that was friggin BRILLIANT!!!” is about as close as you want to come to crossing that line. Even misuses of “God, what is happening here!!” can be offensive to some. I haven’t come across anyone being offended by my using “dang it” or “noooooooo not again!!!” or even using characters in place of swearing like “#$@$#$%!!!!” yet so I choose to stick with those.
If you are “the employee” or the hired contractor and you receive instructions, don’t leave your boss hanging by suddenly leaving for two hours or taking off for the day. Reply as soon as you can that the request is complete or at least that you got the message and that you’re working on the issue. If you can’t attend to it immediately, acknowledge that you’ve seen the request and that there are a few things in line before that issue can be addressed.

You might even recognize the request as a higher priority than anything you’re working on. In that case, ask if it truly is the highest priority. You can make that request in two ways; you can sound snotty about it, even if you’re not intentionally trying to sound snotty. The snotty approach: “I’ve got 8 other things I’m working on that you gave me yesterday and now you’re piling this on me??? Get SAM to do it!!”

The more accepted-by-the-boss approach: “oo, you’re right, that’s an important thing to get fixed right away…probably even more important than the A, B, or C project I’m fiddling with here. Would you agree?”

Remember, the great thing about IM is that it’s in writing. So, if a week goes by and you were pulled off a project to work on something else, you can always use that written request as proof if things at the office get tense.
Write in single lines or single sentences that wrap around to a second line. You may have a full paragraph worth of description to say. But, break it up into one liners or at least single sentences that cover only two lines. Not only will your content be more easily digested, but you as the writer will appear less frantic too. Here, I’ll give you an example of “frantic.” Read this sentence of how a client might come onto IM with a frantic sounding service request for me:

FRANTIC CLIENT: i need a new addition to my website immediately where the opt-in will show up on the right column so that i can start capturing email addresses and building my list because i hear that is the most important thing on the web is building your list how fast can you get an opt-in onto that right column so that i can start building my list?

See what I mean? It’s just waaaaaay too much text to read, seems like the client is upset or frantic or even desparate. Now read the same thing as presented through one-liners and with using a few suggestions from this list. I’ve placed “SAM the CLIENT” and “ME” before the line to indicate what you would see on an IM chat screen after the chatters hit enter one line at a time:

SAM the CLIENT: yoooo…marty are you around? [hit enter here]
ME: mooooornin…yeperooo, what can i help with sam? [hit enter here]
SAM the CLIENT: i need a new addition to my website immediately if humanly possible [hit enter here]
SAM the CLIENT: the website needs an optin added to the right column [hit enter here]
SAM the CLIENT: so i can start capturing email addresses [hit enter here]
SAM the CLIENT: and building my list [hit enter here]
SAM the CLIENT: i hear that’s still the most important thing on the web these days [hit enter here]
SAM the CLIENT: i know, i know, you’ve been saying that for years! haa [hit enter here]
SAM the CLIENT: i’m finally ready to do it! [hit enter here]
SAM the CLIENT: what else do you need from me to make that happen? [hit enter here]
Let your chatting partner finish his or her thought. Hold yourself back from answering questions before the questions are completely described. Yes, I know it’s tempting to barge in to someone’s thought, especially if they’re describing something in one-liners like I’m suggesting. Just be patient and make sure the entry is complete before responding.
Carefully keep the conversation moving forward. Your conversation will have a sort of rhythm to it. You’ll type a sentence. Your recipient will reply in a certain number of seconds or minutes. After a few back and forth replies, you’ll discover the rhythm of the conversation. If suddenly, you don’t receive a reply for twice as long as that rhythm suggests you should, then ask something nicely to assure you still have a connection. You have to be careful with this one because you don’t want your recipient to feel like you’re being too pushy. Comments like, “Did you do it yet?” or “You’re getting right on that right?” can be easily misconstrued as your being too pushy.
Use your copy & paste feature to speed up reminding someone what they said earlier in the day or in a chat from a previous day.
Customize what you copy and paste between IM’s. I often have a conversation where I’ll have one of my implementation team talking about something they just fixed on a client’s website and then I’ll copy and paste their description of what they fixed into the client’s IM conversation. This is a great way to convey accurate information exactly as it was decribed by my, much more technical than I, team members. Just be very careful with that wording as you might want to chop off the part that could be insulting to the client.
Apologize immediately when you post to the wrong IM window. As you get used to using IM daily, you will eventually find yourself having more than one conversation going at the same time. As a result, you can very easily type in the wrong chat window. Apologize immediately if you post to the wrong IM and get to the next point. I like to tack on some verbal language we’re all familiar with, but typed as a non-verbal filler word. For example, I might type something like, “awwwww, sorry, wrong IM, meant for Donna.”
Only transfer files through Skype IM if you really have to. Transferring files sometimes clogs chat sessions; and don’t even get me started about viruses. Better to email images, screenshots and files. Also, I have three computers on my desk. I don’t want to save transferred files onto my dedicated chat laptop. Sending emails with attachments gives your recipient the choice of where they would like to save what you’re sending to them.
If you are asked to do something over IM, reply that you’re working on it. And, when complete, write “done.” It’s short, simple, and it gets the message across.
Be on the lookout for when a chat should escalate to a phone call or schedule an in-person meeting. IM should not be thought of as a total replacement for one-on-one in person or voice contact. This is particularly the case for sales opportunities. If you use an online chat like I have on the HereNextYear.com site, try to answer questions without attempting to close the sale through IM. I’ve managed to close a few deals through IM, but it takes three times as long and gives the prospect way too much opportunity to bug out. If you see an opportunity where a prospect or an existing customer really needs something you offer, ask that a phone conversation be made to answer questions more efficiently than IM will allow.
Remember, EVERYTHING is saved. Don’t be too worried if your computer shut off when you were at lunch. Just turn your computer back on and you’ll see the most recent discussions with all the details.
Remember everything IS saved, so watch what you say. That might sound like a duplicate, but for good reason. We don’t hear this message enough. Be VERY careful what you say on IM chat or anywhere else on the web. Do not chat usernames or passwords. I don’t even write my children’s names in IM or anyplace else on the web. I simply refer to them as “the 14yo” or “the 8yo.”
Remember, everything is SAVED. Consider your chat content to be usable for blog posts and articles. Keep an ongoing diary or log of topics discussed and ideas and solutions presented. Heck, you could convert many of your actual IM chats into even a book one day! If nothing else, at least transcribe some of the takeaways from your IM chats and save them into a file so that you can refer to them later.
Know your conversation is being saved…on the other end too. Most IM systems will save an archive of your conversation without any additional setup steps by your chat partner. You can reference a conversation you had even a month or two ago and tell your recipient to go review what was discussed.
Sign-off from your chat by telling your recipient that you’re leaving. But, “how” you describe that you’re leaving is very important. For example, probably the most inconsiderate way to leave a chat is to just turn off your IM in the middle of a conversation–especially if you’re both working on a specific problem that needs immediate attention. At least complete the discussion and even ask if your recipient feels the conversation is over before pulling the plug. The key to a successful exit is to set an expectation for the discussion. For example, “We can go over this now but just to let you know, I simply MUST be out this door to a meeting in 4 minutes or I’m a dead duck!” sounds a lot better than if I was to say to you, “You got 4 minutes.” Doesn’t reading that sound condescending? Sure does when I read it! So, you have to really be careful how you use words and short phrases in instant messaging. Because it’s very easy for something to be taken the wrong way.

Instant Messaging IM Tips Summary:

Once you see how powerful and time-saving IM is for you, you’ll want to get every client, vendor, service provider you have Skyping with you through IM chat. Upgrade your communication to incorporate IM chat into your daily work life. You’ll be glad you did.

What other suggestions can you provide for using IM chat?

What systems do you use that you prefer and why are they better than Skype IM?

Why have you chosen to NOT us chat of any kind?

Let’s keep this discussion going and remember that I reply to every comment personally. Happy chatting!

Post Author: Marty Dickinson

Get More Friends and Fans to See Facebook Posts

Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 00:41:19 +0000

It’s not new news, but if you haven’t heard the statistic before that only 2% of any post you make on facebook will be seen by your facebook fans and friends, then it’s new to you! And, it’s important for everyone to take action toward increasing that number.

Actually, I’m starting to wonder if even 2% is true. I’m seeing an overwhelming set of familiar faces posting content these days. I see the same faces every day. And yet, there are hundreds of people I’m “friended-up” with, and business pages that I’ve “liked” and yet I see nothing posted from them…whether I visit their profile pages or business pages or not.

See, it used to be that all you had to do was go visit a person’s page and checkout some of their pics and videos and then all of a sudden you would see their postings in the news feed area. I believe even this is diminishing.

What I’m hearing is that facebook is just really pushing for everyone to buy facebook ads of some sort to get your message out to a higher percentage of your friends and fans. That makes sense because they are a public company now. We should expect things like that. It happened with Google too. As soon as Google went public, all the SEO changes started happening on a monthly basis.

Facebook too is on that path of continuing to change things on a monthly basis, sometimes whether changes need to be made or not. And, we should be under no hidden mask to believe they have any other motivation than money for those changes.

Also not new is the solution to how to get more friends and fans to see your facebook posts. For some reason, practically everyone I talk to has no clue that this solution exists. It’s tedius at first, but if you stick with me, you’ll be able to pick 30 or 40 of your closest friends, relatives and business colleagues and be at least “more” assured to see their every post. Here’s what you do.

1. Login to your facebook account and go to the search box at the top of the screen to search for a business page, book page, product page or person’s page you know for a fact that you’ve “liked.” Hopefully, you’ve liked my Web Marketing All-in-One for Dummies book page, so feel free to search for “web marketing book 2012″ and it should come up top of the list.

2. Put your mouse over the “Like” tab as shown in the figure below and you’ll see a drop-down appear.

3. Click the “Get Notifications” link and a check mark will appear.

The same thing works with personal profile pages too. So, for friends, family and even clients that I’ve grown close to over the years, they’ll want to see every post I make to facebook just as I will want to see theirs.

Here’s a screen shot showing the “Friends” tab instead of the “Like” button. The same rule applies. Just click on the tab that says Get Notifications.

>>Here’s What’s REALLY Important About Get Notifications<<

Once you’ve found this simple little change, and you’re now receiving posts from people you haven’t heard from in months, share this information with everyone on your list…just like I’m doing today. Instruct your friends, relatives, followers, likers, bikers, and hikers (meaning, everyone you come into contact with on facebook) to go to your profile and/or business page and click the “Get Notifications” tab.

In fact, I’ll even suggest you share this post with your list and network so that they know what to do when they get to your profile page or business page. Here’s a “short url” http://herenextyear.com/get for you to copy and paste into your email or facebook post which will point people right to this page when they click on it or copy and paste it to their own browser.

Again, know in advance that most people do not know about this feature. Or, they heard about it a few months ago but didn’t pay much attention to it.

Well, the notice is that something has changed in facebook recently so that you’re going to see even less posts and comments from those you care about the most. So, it’s important now more than ever to use the Get Notifications feature.

After you make the change, please come back here and report your results. Did you see more posts from people you haven’t heard from in a while?

Post Author: Marty Dickinson

What We Learned About Business from the 2012 Election

Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 04:59:57 +0000

No matter which candidate you voted for in the 2012 presidential election, you have to give both credit for their 24/7 determination and unending energy of middle aged men as if they were two 10-year-old boys attempting to impress the new girl at school that just moved in from out of state.

Right before our very eyes, without their even knowing, we received two years worth of weekly and eventually daily (and even sometimes hourly) seminars on how to build a modern-day business as well as some things not to do.

Just in case you got caught up in all the vocal banter and over sized balloons, I’d like to feature a top 10 list of things we learned about using the Internet to grow a business. The parallels are just too obvious to ignore.

Here is Marty’s Top 10 List of What the 2012 Election Teaches Us About Growing a Business Today Using the Internet

10. People of America still know the meaning of loyalty – From job-hopping millenials to skeptical seniors to the Latino and African American vote, the election taught us that people still have dedication to their beliefs, causes, and lifestyle. If your business is experiencing poor customer loyalty, don’t blame people in general for not being dedicated to you. Evaluate why people are so quick to leave and why they might be searching for something else.

9. People who know YOU can promote YOU best – Clearly, beyond all the advertising we couldn’t stand any longer on t.v., the real mover with this election was the use of social media. There’s no question about it any longer. Social media sells.

And, people are getting masterful at using it. If you want your business to accelerate in 2013, stop focusing so much on traditional marketing methods and dive in to finding out how to get other people talking about your business on social media.

8. People wait till the last minute to take action – A record number of people were reported to vote early with mail-in ballots than in any election in history. Still, people stood in line across the country for 4+ hours to cast their vote well into the night on election night. After all the pleas, phone calls, and door knocking trying to get people to vote early, many people waited until the last minute.

The message here? Never give up on your promotions!

How often have you found yourself giving up on promoting a product or service simply because the first email you sent to your list didn’t bring any sales?

Assign a deadline to your offer and stick to it. And, know in advance that no matter what you try, you’re going to get a lot of people to buy what you’re selling at the last minute before the deadline.

7. People can’t make all people happy – Romney appealed to some groups of people and Obama appealed to other groups of people. This is an important lesson in niche marketing.

I’m excited to see the upcoming movie, Lincoln. One of the things I’m betting I’ll walk away with is that even president Lincoln was not liked and supported by everyone, even though we practically worship him today.

No politician in history has ever appealed to simply every person in the country…just like no product is made for everyone.

So, why do so many continue to attempt to offer products, books, keynotes, services, that claim to be needed by simply everyone? It just doesn’t happen that way. And, when you try to make things that make everyone happy, you place unrealistic expectations on yourself and your results.

Niche your offer and make it as specific as possible…and then niche it down some more. Your sales will increase as a result.

6. People openly bring politics to their businesses – When I was growing up, political choice was very private. Two things you just never brought up with anyone was how much money they made per year and who they voted for.

Today, my dad is rolling in his grave as things are much different. We’re taught to brag about how much money we make in order to get more sales and people on social networks will tell you straight-up, “Please unfriend me and I will not do business with you if you voted for [fill in political party here].

If you want to increase your business, don’t exclude 50% of your market right off the top. Provide your service knowing people are people and we are all worth helping in this very short life. Serve as the better example by not letting your personal political view dictate your company’s future.

5. People disconnect from too much repetition – Just like we learned from Google banner ads years ago, people start to look past promotions when they see them too often.

More money was spent on political ads this go-round than any time in history! And, Newt Gingrich discovered the hard way that playing nice with his t.v. ads wouldn’t win any votes, despite his admirable desire to keep everything positive.

So, not only did there have to be ads, there had to be all very negative ads. I think the repetition of the negative ads just made all of us feel worse as a society.

If you’re a Napoleon Hill disciple, you know how important positive affirmations are and how damaging constant negative information can be to our mindset. This is an important balance to understand as a business owner.

First, your prospects still need repetition before they’re willing to buy…so building a list and marketing to that list is still very current and vital to your success.

Second, sure, scare tactics will get peoples’ attention, but if you want to get people to buy, you need to build a positive repetition in your marketing approach without going overboard and turning off your potential audience.

This is a delicate balance and requires ongoing testing and monitoring to find out where that perfect balance is. “Testing” is a lost art of web marketing I feel. It takes time, patience, and discipline to test. If you really want to watch your sales increase, test.

4. People who keep up with the times win – One of the criticisms I heard from news casters after the speeches were done last night was that Mitt Romney lost the election because “he’s stuck in the 1950′s with his beliefs.”

You might strongly agree with that statement or you might laugh in disbelief. I too have wondered if Mitt even knows how to send an email with an attachment whereas Obama managed his own Twitter account.

If you want the truth, I believe BOTH are out of touch with how much of a role the Internet plays in our economy. And if either embraced us who use the Internet to grow our businesses, he would’ve easily brought over 5-10% more voters.

But, the Internet wasn’t even mentioned by either campaign even once that I heard.

You may snicker at this statement that I’m about to make but I’m going to guess that more than 70% of all business owners are JUST like the two candidates; they’re simply overlooking the true potential of what the Internet “could” be offering them in business growth potential.

Most people are still stuck in this rut of posting blog posts once a month or even less frequently, for example. The thought of making a blog post of value every day or even every week apalls them as a dramatic waste of time.

Far too many people still think facebook is only good for finding out what friends ate for breakfast; and that old-school belief from 5 years ago is so justified in peoples’ minds that they’ve totally turned the light switch off from all social networking possibilities!

Want to increase your leads and sales by keeping up with the times? Choose today…right now…to evolve to a new level of understanding of how business works on the web today.

Some people educate their followers with newsletters. Some use webinars or tele-seminars. I prefer something a bit more closely-knit. The HereNextYear Level 1 membership area is free for life when you sign-up just once. There you have access to some useful tools, several in-depth whitepapers, a slew of articles available only to subscribers, and an archive of audio recordings presenting various web marketing strategies.

I invite you right now to take IMMEDIATE action by staying up-with-the-times by subscribing to my Level 1 membership area. Give it a whirl. It’s free for as long as you want to receive timely updates on topics related to growing your business using cutting-edge web marketing strategies.

Join Level 1 Members Area Now!

3. People who succeed know how important presentation really is – You have to admit both candidates were lookin’ gooood! Every time we saw them on t.v. or in person, they were sharply dressed, clean-cut, and made-up by a pro makeup artist to shave off some of those years of stress. And, those suits were not bought second hand at the thrift store!

Still, their visual presentation is only one small part of success for both candidates that eventually brought one to be victorious.

And, that was attention to every single presentation detail.

Every word was crafted, every hand gesture rehearsed. Mitt Romney was even taught how to sit on a stool for one of the debates because he had never been in a bar!

To succeed in business and truly dominate your industry, make a list of every potential nuance of your company, product offering, and marketing tools (website, seo, social networking etc) and evaluate how its presentation can be improved.

Remove the letters “i” and “d” from the word president and what’s left? “Present!” Presidents “present” and it’s your job as the business owner to evaluate on a daily basis how your business could be better presented.

We offer several private documents to our Level 1 members who want more indepth study on how to “present” their business with more impact online. Just join the Level 1 free members area now to get unlimited access for LIFE!

2. People can’t be successful alone – No matter how many times you heard “I will as president” throughout the campaign, do not be fooled into believing either candidate is solely responsible for their accomplishments and failures. Both sides have extensive (exhausted) teams that have been recruited, employed, contracted or volunteered to implement each candidates agenda.

There are just too many pieces to the pie to expect anyone to become president and operate as president of our country by oneself.

The same applies to using the Internet to build a business. The web has become too complex; there are just too many pieces to the pie for anyone to think they can single-handedly use the Internet to its fullest potential to increase leads and sales for one’s
business.

Yet, a larger core of daily activities need to be implemented in these times than were even required just three years ago.

Couple that with the fact that more and more business owners are finding less and less interest in learning what to do and when to do it, and we’ve got a real problem on our hands as a country wanting to grow in prosperity and inspire economic recovery!

We’re launching a new program here at HereNextYear where we simply take over everything online for you. Your website, your website traffic building, your SEO, your blog posting, your sales copywriting, simply everything. All you have to do is contribute where and when you can.

I’ve outlined this new program in our Level 1 members area, which is free for you to join where you’ll have access to all of my free white papers and some very useful tools.

1. People still buy from people – You heard the phrase a few times throughout the campaign and in previous presidential campaigns, “It’s the Economy Stupid!” Well, the candidates learned the hard way that the secret to winning was really about “people” rather than any policy or political topic.

If one of the candidates rallied their campaign around “It’s PEOPLE Stupid!” he would’ve won in a landslide victory over the other.

People buy from people they know, like and trust. It’s been that way forever I suspect but for some reason we lose sight of that fact quickly.

People are also selfish by nature. The old saying “What’s in it for me?” has increased in importance over recent years. Votes were cast not for some lofty, worldly cause like saving the planet or feeding the hungry in Africa. No, we voted for whom we felt would best allow our lifestyles to continue and improve.

The sooner you admit that claim to yourself, the better, because it’s the same in business today. Your customers of today and 2013 don’t care about supporting your lofty cause. They simply want to know what problem your product will solve, how your service will save them time and money. That’s pretty much it. It’s all about them…the people you serve.

So, how do you do both (enhance your people stature and focus your offer toward people) at the same time? By supplying free content of extreme value and then offering a higher-level solution with a paid product or service.

This is another example of why blog posting is so crucial to your business and why Google is shifting from measuring PageRank for your website to watching your earned AuthorRank. Even Google has finally realized that “websites” don’t supply unique content of value–it’s the “authors” of the content–it’s people.

Let us help you get the AuthorRank building process started for you. Join our free Level 1 members area to hear the audio I made the other day.

If you’re not quite ready to sign-up for our free members area, at least take a read through our recent blog post presenting how Google is making a big change in a recent blog post and made a free audio recording to present the topic to you more conversationally, which is available in our Level 1 members area. So, join our Level 1 members area and you’ll see the play button when you login.

To conclude, you must engulf yourself into your business 100%, 7 days a week (at first), 365 days a year to truly win and even earn the right to dominate your target market and come out on top when your own personal “election day” arrives.

Try to avoid cutting corners with important presentation items like your website design or search engine optimization tactics. Stop trying to do everything yourself and form or hire a team to help.

Most important of all, and my wish for you is that you walk away from this 2012 presidential election with a newly found understanding of what you’ve learned from your U.S. candidates about building your business using the Internet. Now all you have to do is take the next step and put it all into ACTION!

Post Author: Marty Dickinson

Google Makes Major Change

Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 16:48:02 +0000

Beginning more than 16 years ago, since the early days of AOL and Yahoo!, I’ve had a fascination with how search engines determine what website and what page of a website gets positioned on a search result and where that ranking occurs.

For my entire full-time web marketing career, more than 70% of my traffic building energy has been to get better search positions for my own 100+ websites and websites owned by my professional speaker, author, and company clients.

You can bet that when Google starts even working on changes to their system, I find out about it ahead of most people. It’s that important to me to stay on top of search progress.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been noticing some funny things about Google organic search. So, I’ve been researching, and testing, changing some things, and doing some blog posting and cross linking. My findings are totally confirmed. I can tell you for certain that Google is changing something major right now…as I write this.

Technically, they’ve been working on this for the past few years. And, truthfully, I’m wondering why it took them this long that organic search really needed to evolve into this direction.

It’s bigger than the “Penguin” update and much more widely ranged than the “Panda” update. This Google change will impact simply everyone that has a website.

I’m going to inform you of the details for this big Google change a bit differently than usual.

Tomorrow, Nov 2, 2012, I will send out a massive announcement in a very short email instructing you to go login to the HereNextYear Level 1 free members area. There you will have access to my full disclosure of what’s going on with Google search. If you are:

Already a Level 1 HereNextYear member – Try logging-in just to make sure you have a current username and password. If not, click the link to reset your password or create a new account. You will receive my notification tomorrow that something has been added to the Level 1 area regarding this new Google change.
Already a HereNextYear client, do nothing – You will receive an email tomorrow too.
NEW to this website – Sign-up immediately for our Level 1 free-for-life membership and you too will receive the announcement tomorrow.

I know what you’re asking: “Marty, why are you not just writing a blog post about this like usual?”

Because I’m finding my blog posts all over the web! And, not necessarily always in a good way!

Duplicated word-for-word with other peoples’ names attached to them as the author on not just one or two sites but DOZENS of the same document and other people getting credit for the content.

Me is definitely tired of zat!

Maybe my Web Marketing All-in-One for Dummies (2nd edition) book hitting shelves around the world July 2012 had something to do with that, and suddenly I’m an easy target, I dunno.

Anyway, my hope is that by having just one level of security through an opt-in, I’ll be able to keep this one under wraps a bit and only available to those that are most dedicated to growing their business.

Oh, and don’t worry. This membership doesn’t end in 30 days or demand you to pay to continue. It’s a lifetime, free membership, and how I distribute all of my important notices to my network.

One final note about Google’s big change. You’re either going to need to jump into the game or watch your search results plummet, maybe never to see the light of the first page again because of this change. It’s really that big.

Again, here’s that sign-up area: http://members.herenextyear.com/signup/index

Post Author: Marty Dickinson

Surviving Your Own Hurricane Sandy

Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 16:11:50 +0000

Growing up around New York City until my mid-20′s, and now living in Colorado, I still can’t imagine fully the thoughts and fears people must be going through as they prepare for surviving Hurricane Sandy. Damage has already started and the eye hasn’t even reached land yet and now they’re predicting a “12″ feet high storm surge!! High rise buildings will see sustained winds of more than 100 mph at the top of the buildings!

And, there’s no telling how many electrical lines will be down for weeks from fallen trees.

Surely there are millions and millions of dollars worth of damage on the way.

We all have our own hurricane Sandy eventually though, right? We’ve had a lot of state emergencies here related to forest fires burning down houses, 2′ snow storms shutting down metro Denver for a week or two (and we’re about ripe for another one).

But, even something that impacts your own personal emergency can seem like a Class 4 hurricane slamming through your house. Events like this come to mind like gas leaks causing explosions, water pipes breaking while you’re at work, a tree crushing your house from a wind storm.

I suspect that in any of these cases, the normal family would follow the same steps of evacuation, which would be:

Get your family safe
Get your pets safe (please don’t leave your pets behind!)
Keep YOU safe so you can continue to protect your family
Grab a few items that you simply can’t live without (medication, coat, gloves, boots, hat)
Take your ID file (a file you should keep that has proof of identification, birth certificates)

What’s particularly curious to me is that so many people forget to plan for the protection and rescue of their business during their own personal hurricane, whatever that might be.

For most people I know, their business is in their computers. If they were to suddenly lose their computers due to damage from storm, fire, or other devastation, their business would be dealt a severe blog. Sure, there are external hard drives for backup, but what happens if you’re at work one day and you come home to find your computer AND your external hard drive is completely ruined?

The answer is to backup your hard drive, external hard drive and all of their components using a web-based backup system. There are numerous backup systems available. Here is the system we use and recommend:

Not only is the system very easy to use, but even with a few spare minutes in the midst of whatever Sandy Hurricane you’re going through at the moment, you can literally setup an account and follow the short series of steps and let the system do its thing while you are packing up your house or business and getting you and your family safe.

So, to sum up this blog post, as I work at my nice and dry desk, in nice and dry Colorado, watching CNN and following Hurricane Sandy, I can’t help be grateful for the many families who have survived the hurricane by evacuating their residence. I just hope they had something in place to backup their computers off-site so they can jump right back into business when they get back to their lives.

Post Author: Marty Dickinson

SEO Gamers Laying Low

Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 16:00:24 +0000

For the first time in probably 10 years, I’ve finally seen a decrease in off-shore SEO Gamers pounding my emails (and client emails) trying to offer their latest “guaranteed #1 position on Google for $50/month” program.

I use the term SEO Gamers because these are the guys that keep looking for ways to work around Google SEO standards to the point where they’re gaming the system. Eventually, Google catches on and penalizes a high percentage of websites that possess those sneaky workaround features.

An early example of SEO Gaming that practically everyone can relate to is the almost comical history of the Keywords Meta Tag feature found inside the HTML code of most websites. If everyone would’ve just used that feature properly by adding just a few keywords that only had to do with that particular page, the tag would still have relevance today. But, due to the wide range of abuse of the meta keyword tag (like stuffing 100 keywords into the tag in hopes of getting on top of Google search for ALL of those keywords…haa!) Google hasn’t paid attention to the keyword meta tag in its ranking for years.

Today, SEO gamers are much more skilled and creative than simple keyword stuffing. Rather than my regurgitating all of their little tricks, here’s a link to a page on Google that lays out exactly what Google staff are looking for.

You will see on that page that a lot of the tricks have to do with links on other websites pointing to yours. In a nutshell, if some seo guy in India decides to blast your website onto 1,000 fake or ultra low quality blogs just to get you more links, Google will see it, and your site’s search positions will be penalized.

So, even if you DO pay for SEO help, you need to start policing your own links! Google has created a tool for you to do just that which is found in your Google Webmaster account and use the “DISAVOW” feature.

If you find a website with a link to yours, you can now request Google to NOT factor that link into your authority quotient.

I figure enough website owners have been stripped of their positions that even the Seo Gamers are holding back a bit until they figure out the next way to pull a fast one on Google.

>Why is all of this important anyway? Well, all you have to do is ask yourself a question: When was the last time you searched for something on Google?

Exactly. Google search is STILL important to the success of your business. Either learn how to do all this yourself, and do it right, or hire a reputable SEO company and be willing to pay them handsomely to manage your website’s Google search positions.

Post Author: Marty Dickinson

3 Types of Web Marketing Mentors

Marty Dickinson of HereNextYear — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 19:32:15 +0000

Let’s face it. Web marketing has become just too complex to do on your own anymore. You can go to all the conferences and Meet-up groups you want, but when it comes right down to it, successful web marketing for your business means having a team of people working hard through a process…in the right places at the right time…to achieve more online leads and sales.

I’m seeing a resurgence in the interest of mentoring by the emails and phone calls I get. It’s kind of funny how some people think of mentoring as inviting an expert to a cup of coffee for an hour or two so that they can learn all the secrets they need to go make a million bucks online. But, that’s just not the case anymore, if it was ever true before in the first place.

People also seem to be confusing mentoring with coaching. For example, here’s an older post I wrote that very clearly defines the difference between a web marketing mentor versus coach.

And here’s another post that describes why web marketing coaching doesn’t work.

When you get a mentor, you’re much more joined at the hip than with a coach. Your success becomes your mentor’s genuine interest and you should expect to work together for YEARS to come rather than just a few coaching sessions to get you started.

With all that said, I thought it would be fitting to make a post for you that covers what I believe to be 3 types of true web marketing mentoring programs. At HereNextYear, we offer all of these as paid services to our clients, of course, but my point is that you need to be asking your potential coaches and mentors questions to find out exactly what THEIR intentions are by getting you signed-up with one of their programs.

Internet Marketing Mentor Type I – Individual One-on-One Mentoring

If you are lucky enough to find someone who is truly skilled in the many aspects of Internet marketing AND is willing to teach you “their own process” as opposed to following some sort of coaching script, be ready and willing to pay top dollar. $250-$1500 an hour is not unusual for one-on-one premium-grade web marketing mentoring.

If you’re burning to know, sure, I offer one-on-one mentoring on a very select basis. Your first call with me is for an hour at $350. Or, I can do a more formal website and web marketing evaluation for you at $500 where we get on the phone once at the beginning and then again after I’ve done my research thing. After that, we determine if we’re a good fit for each other to work together on your project for a longer term.

Why so pricey for just talking on the phone? I mean, what work is that?!

Well, I’ll answer that first by saying successful web marketing mentors really don’t offer charity consulting as much as you hear. I get phone calls and emails offering to buy me coffee in exchange for picking my brain for an hour or two.

Sorry, although I’m very much a people person, and truly would enjoy your company, business is business. I just don’t have the time to give away to be honest. Every hour I take out of my day could easily be spent on a website I own and am already familiar with.

More importantly, I’m confident you will see in the first 10 minutes of our discussion that I’m very different than any other marketing coach, consultant, trainer, speaker you’ve ever worked with. An hour’s time with me will give you a DAY’s worth of to-do action steps

It’s your task as a student to do anything you can to get me interested in helping you with your project.

Taking on your project requires a mentor to stop thinking about his own projects and prioritize yours. We have to be incentivized and excited to do that…and to do it right.

If you would like to talk to me about a one-hour consult, evaluation, or a more extended mentoring program, complete the form below.

Internet Marketing Mentor Type II – Group Mentoring

Group mentoring usually features the same Type I mentor leading web-based training sessions using GoToMeeting or equivalent screen sharing tool. Type II is less costly than the Type I mentoring but you definitely should expect limited, if any, one-on-one time with the leader.

There is a benefit with Type II as you get to meet and network with the other students. I’ve had good success with using Type II mentoring by leading more of a mastermind group where I add 15-30 minutes of training as part of each session. I occasionally open these up for new members or start new groups as you can see in what I call the Facebook Mastermind Group.

It just goes to show that there are a variety of programs available under Type II mentoring. Be careful to make sure you know what you’re getting when you sign-up for that kind of program and that your leader is committed to ongoing group session leading over the long-term. It’s not easy to

Internet Marketing Mentoring Type III – Combined Mentoring

This is the type of mentoring we practice at HereNextYear where my whole team is involved in your success. Clearly, Type III is the most effective of any mentoring program possible. The concept is simple: Combine the act of serving as a mentor and service provider. Not only do we help construct a plan of implementation (like a coach), but we will actually perform the tasks you don’t want to do while mentoring and training you to participate in the process as well. We truly become part of your web marketing team.

So, Which Internet Marketing Mentoring is Right for You?

Let’s face it. It’s just next to impossible to do EVERYTHING on the web all by yourself in order to get to the success level you really want. You either need to recruit, train, and monitor helpers of your own OR find an existing team and pay them what they really are worth to get the job done. Are you ready to make some real progress?

Simply fill out the form below and ask a question about any of our programs or request a quote. No question is too big or too small. Please be as detailed as you can and we will get back to you usually within just an hour or two.

Post Author: Marty Dickinson

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