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TheMichaelBeebe

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Rockets Red Glare

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This morning I should be waking up for the day, right around the time of this 9AM posting, with a dehydration headache and a sunburn. It’s become an annual tradition that came to an abrupt end last year. I know, sunburns aren’t healthy and I need to drink more water when I’m in the sun all day, but it’s one day a year so please, cut me some slack. Last night should have been the annual fireworks display in Michigan City, the culmination of an entire day of beach-going fun, but it didn’t happen.
Like so many people, I love going to see the fireworks. Any chance to see colored explosions in the sky is an excuse to go see a firework display and the festivities surrounding the birthday of our nation’s beginnings is the best excuse of all. There are a ton of displays on July 4th to choose from every year and the competition to pull an audience is fierce.
In past years, Michigan City has had the forethought of putting the air show off a week or so and holding it the Sunday following the Fourth of July unless the Fourth was Thursday, Friday, or Saturday; then it’d be a week from the Sunday immediately following. In this year’s case, it should be July 12. Mayor Ron Meer has unilaterally chosen to hold the festivities on July 4th in an effort to make it more of a local event. That’s a great gesture since he also killed the fireworks a year ago. With the competition for attendance at a 4th of July celebration, especially from its nearest neighbor, La Porte (the annual honorary state capital for the day).
The Michigan City Air Show (“air show” is another word used for firework shows that some communities use) is more than a holiday celebration and more than just a local community event. In the 1990’s there had years with a confirmed 50,000 people in attendance and estimates have ranged anywhere between 75,000 and 100,000 attendees. People make a full day of it and if you weren’t in Washington Park by 11:00 AM, you had to park off-site and walk to the park. There were food vendors, face painters, and helicopter rides till near dusk; it was literally you and 70,000 of your new closest friends in what looks like a Moroccan bazaar. Michigan City has a population of around 30,000 and if my math is correct, unable to produce the 50,000 people that would show up unless those people were visiting from out of town and having been part of the mass exodus at the conclusion of the show, I can assure you on the excessive traffic flow east out of town and at least ten miles of stop-and-go driving. Over the years, I’ve gone all major directions out of town after the fireworks and it’s like that in every direction.
This year Michigan City has a budgetary shortfall and with the economic impact that 50,000 plus people can bring to the city for just one day, it’s no small wonder the city has such a crisis this year. Thanks to the shortsightedness of Mayor Ron Meer, the city has to make even more cuts than already and that means cuts in services to the city’s residents.
The fireworks have a long standing tradition in the area of being plagued with crime and it’s pretty accurate. There used to be an annual shooting or stabbing and you can clearly see drug deals all around you. Poverty is a leading contributor to illegal activity, so if the city wants to eliminate crime, make it illegal for people whom are impoverished to be anywhere in public. This will be a fun feat since Michigan City has the second lowest cost of living in the nation right now and with nothing on the horizon to fix that truth; the city is impoverished and this tradition has been a source of community enjoyment for decades.
I ask that the next Mayor of Michigan City to have the vision lacking in Mayor Meer and restore this city-wide festival to its rightful day, away from any competition for other displays.
Mayor Meer’s solution was to cancel the fireworks last year because the city needed to cut costs and put it at a date and time where there is heavy competition for the event to reduce the economic impact tourists have on Michigan City for this year. A private group of citizens even tried finding it last year and was told that they needed 90-days notice to hold an event at Washington Park. Basically, the Mayor just didn’t want this to happen. He felt The People doing something on their own circumvented his authority over the city and he couldn’t tolerate that kind of descent. I hope The People remember his short sightedness when they go to the polls on Tuesday, November 3rd this year.
Mayor Ron Meer has failed Michigan City.
For more pieces like this one, please visit TheMichaelBeebe.com.
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LinkedIn 301: LinkedIn Part 3

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My last piece, LinkedIn 201: LinkedIn Part 2, gave some good beginner advice, but today I need to focus on some more intermediate concepts. This is what will get you really noticed among your peers on LinkedIn.

 

 

View

LinkedIn offers a really cool option that lets people see who have viewed their page. Use this and see who all has looked at you. View them back. They will know you checked them out, but so what? That’s the idea here. That shows interest in them and they like being noticed as much as you do. With that, look at their skills. If you know them and have an idea that they posses the skills they say, endorse them. Either way, make sure you look any anyone who has looked at you. This is not a dating site where you want to be coy about who you’re looking at, but job searching is a lot like dating too. Sometimes you don’t want to be caught looking at the person because there will be a never-ending conversation about hair or them trying to sell you something (that goes for dating or sales people both). Either way, you never know who tomorrow’s customer or human resources executive will be. Get seen!

 

Share

One statistic I saw said that people should share something weekly on LinkedIn. I don’t know if that is the case, but I talked about the toggle switch in LinkedIn 101. By now, that toggle should be switched back to “on” from its default position and your connections will see your activity any time you have any. Have some! It gets you into their line of sight that many times. The numbers that seems to be the most common are two and three. Share or post between two or three times a week, though with this site, I’d suggest only two (that is personal opinion). You can share pictures, websites, posts, or just a quick status. Make sure they are professional! No one gives a shit about your photos of your trip to Tahiti. One thing I don’t like is that you don’t have photo albums. I want to set my Thirsty Thursday Tip of the Week photos into my personal LinkedIn page, but I don’t want to go back and add the first ten right in a row. I will do so, but with the toggle turned to off so other’s don’t see them added. I wish they added photo albums so things like my T3 could be separated from the future political cartoons HoosierPoliticsToday.com will host and I would also like to add.

 

Post

I separated this part because it’s so important. Every time I post a new piece on FullTiltBusiness.com, I use a plugin that automatically posts it to the business pages for the site on Google+ and Facebook and then my personal LinkedIn page. This embeds as a post. You also have the “publish post” option on your LinkedIn page incase you want to write a piece from your own blog. The casual passerby won’t notice if the post you did was written in LinkedIn directly or posted from an outside source, so don’t worry about that. Posting is important. It creates a link to an idea and people love ideas, especially when they are hiring you. A résumé doesn’t always shoe the ideas behind who you are on paper, but posting does; it can tell a company if you are a good fit for a potential job or not or if your views fall in line with the views of the company. As you can see from my LinkedIn account, I have recently founded a small corporation. With the potential exception of teaching college level again or working in radio again, I am not “job hunting” now, but promoting me and trying to get connections who will, in the future, be interested in the newly formed company and what we will be offering. So why bring that up? Unless you are directly involved in politics or religion and want to make a career path out of one of those two areas, DO NOT post anything about either on LinkedIn.

 

Acting as an intermediate overview, I hope this gave a good follow-up to LinkedIn 201 for everyone and it gave some ideas of things to try tonight. Now get back to work; it’s a weekday.

 

Connect with me on LinkedIn by clicking HERE.

 

For more pieces like this please go to TheMichaelBeebe.com.

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How to Make the Most out of Network Marketing

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I know a big part of my audience is involved with various Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) organizations. Another name for an MLM is “Network Marketing.” The two are nearly interchangeable in every aspect, so I will just refer to them as MLMs since the word is shorter. This piece is directly related to that industry and ways to use multiple types of online tools to your advantage, but it will be of interest to any business as well. It is intended as a quick overview of what can be done online to help drive MLM style sales and use a generic MLM design for any examples. One thing that I do assume here is that you do understand how to use social media a little bit and know some of what I am talking about.

Overview.

First, what is Multi Level Marketing? A MLM is a group of people selling products or services in a higherarchy-style design that allows people to pass money from one level to another in exchange for these products and services. The people at the very bottom are the customers and at the very top are the owners. There are multiple commissions, again, paid out along this model. Each MLM is different, but they have a series of strict promotions based on benchmarks that a person must achieve. As you increase your level, you have to recruit more people to sell under you and build a team. The team building is typically done by a management-style pressure for lower level petiole you manage (called “downlinks” or “downlines”) to sell more and recruit new salespeople. Commissions are paid from the bottom to the top. The commission rates very and I know of one that allows a salesperson to earn six different commission rates at the same time. You can make some serious money in an MLM and most require the sales people to buy product in advance. Some (the good ones) simply give you a website or a link to promote so you get credit for your sales and the salespeople below you are catalogued into your commission rates. Just like any CEO, the top level makes the most money. My only critique of an MLM is that it doesn’t create new wealth, but simply passes wealth around. With that said, the bonuses paid to high performers and the amount of money some are making is amazing. A lot of people hate the idea of a MLM, but I have no feelings one way or another on the design and I think anyone who has a gift for sales and leadership should at least investigate being part of one, though my personal preference is affiliate marketing (which I will write a piece on for overview at some point soon). With that said, how do you market your product online?

Facebook.

Facebook (Business).

Normally I would post the Business Page after the personal page, but I’ll get to my reason for going out of order in a moment. Building a Facebook page is a simple task and if you need a quick overview on how to do it, please check out my tutorial at Tutorial 002: Build a Facebook Business Page. You can create just about any type of Business Page you want, but make sure you are choosing options that work best for the product you’re promoting. One of the best features of Facebook is the ability to schedule posts. That allows you to post things whenever you like for up to six months in advance of the posting.

 

Now why did I switch the Personal and Business Page order for just this section? Because of IFTTT, a website and selection of mobile applications that allow for automation of a multitude of social networking (and other) types of websites. IFTTT means “IF This, Then That” and is a series of algorithms that allow you to have one social networking site create a cascade into other social sites. Since a Business Page is able to be scheduled, this can act as a master link to the algorithm, including adding an auto repost to your personal Facebook page. You can download IFTTT on your iPhone or Android and use the website at IFTTT.com. I highly recommend their services, even if they can seem a bit complex.

 

Facebook (Personal).

One of the most common way for a person to use their Facebook page to their own advantage and move product is a simple daily posting. This is easy to do and gives you a good cross section of friends that are potentially like-minded. The biggest obstacle here is your other postings. I have run for office a few times now and I do have political discussions on my personal Facebook page, but I have also referred to people as “douche bag” and “ass hat” before, with the latter being one of my personal favorites and it has worked its way into my personal lexicon for everyday life. A lot of people don’t take “that guy” seriously. Some of these are people you went to high school with and they remember you from those days. How does someone I went to college with take me seriously? When I first did a public announcement that I was running for office on my Facebook page, one girl I went to Purdue-Cal with immediately responded with, “You? You’re joking, right?” Never the less, I was running and had to overcome this obstacle and be seen as a serious candidate. How do you overcome that obstacle with people remembering you? You remember them too. Everybody was a dumbass in school and then they got older. Your parents were dumbasses and so were your grandparents. The perception of a person from their Facebook posts isn’t the obstacle a lot of people might think they are, provided there are no racist remarks or overly sexist jokes. If you have to ask yourself if you need to be “reborn” on Facebook, the answer is “yes” and you should delete the account and just start over. If it was simple dumbassery, don’t worry about it.

 

So now that being a dumbass is out of the way, post daily. Post something pertaining to your business every day. Most MLM’s give a gigantic resource of pictures, product videos, and product samples that you can get pictures of. You have a URL you can embed in your posts and they show the links pretty nicely.

 

Facebook (Groups).

The Facebook Groups are an awesome way to communicate ideas to large (yes) groups of people. Depending on what you are selling, you can find a group to fit your needs and possibly more than one. There are two options here. The first option is to start a group and add your closest friends that are sympathetic to your needs. Ask them to network and add their friends and create it as an “open” group so there is direct advertising to the group. Your other option is to comment in groups. Find the Groups that match your products best and push for sales. Now you can’t really just add links to sakes sites without pissing some (a lot) of people off and being “the annoying sales person.” The best advice is to find people asking questions and answer them with helpful answers publicly. This helps build up a relationship with the people in the group and this can help you make some sales.

Twitter.

If you remember the “push and pull” method I talked about in my piece titled Pinterest Strategies that Work. Use it the same way on Twitter. That’s how you get leads. Just follow the followers of your competition products. If you sell a product similar to Herbalife, follow Herbalife followers and expect a 20% to 30% follow-back rate. Growth is not immediate, especially is you have no substantial content.

 

By going to Facebook.com/twitter, you can link your Facebook page to Twitter and post directly to Twitter when you post on Facebook. You’ll have to link your accounts, which is explained pretty easily and your posts on Facebook will then post on Twitter at the same time. That’s another great use of the Facebook automation.

Instagram.

You can’t automate Instagram, which is very unfortunate, because it’s a great resource. As I pointed out earlier, many of the products you sell will give you a gargantuan supply of product pictures. Load them on your phone and list them on Instagram! Do this now! You can’t schedule posts, but you can post while taking a leak or ordering at a fast food place from the app on your phone. Also, you can link the app directly to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, and FourSquare. There are a couple others you can link and they are in languages I don’t speak. When linking Instagram to another service, look at the automation you have set up first. If you link to Twitter and Facebook, your Instagram will go to Twitter, Facebook and because of automation, back on Twitter so you’ll have two tweets at the same time of the same thing.

Pinterest.

Without going into any details, Pinterest is your target audience. There is one downside, though, is the lack of automation. Even with IFTTT, you can only send automation scripts from Pinterest, not to it, so while you can post things automatically that were on your Pinterest account, you can post from it. Don’t worry about this. You can post on Pinterest and reach your audience very quickly. With the various search options, you can easily target the group’s you want to attract and the mobile apps are freaking awesome. Post your information frequently and repin other people’s stuff. You’ll get people (eventually) letting you pin to their boards as well. Likes are good, repins are better. Try getting people to repin your pins.

Tumblr.

Tumblr is a blogging site. I will be discussing it in-depth in next week’s blog, but it works pretty well to write about topics you know well enough to discuss and write blogs about. You can also post pictures, video, and links to your product page and once again, it is able to be scheduled for when you want to post. Just like my push and pull method, you can follow the followers of the competition. As a word of advice, focus on the people who reblog other’s posts in their own feeds. That will allow you the greatest growth.

LinkedIn.

LinkedIn (Personal).

The how-to of setting up the LinkedIn account is less important than doing it. If you are proud of your résumé and want to show your involvement in the MLM, this is a great place to do it. You can brag about your accomplishments and brag to your connections about them. This can be a valuable tool in building your team and showcasing your skills and talents. The time is longer to get noticed, but the target market for a lot of MLMs are the ever-coveted 25-45 year old crowd and they populate LinkedIn in droves

 

LinkedIn (Business).

Like Facebook, you can set up a business (company) page. If you like what you do, do this to promote it. Make it personalized since an MLM is so large and you don’t have full rights to the company name, but you can make your own fan site that promotes a product you are selling with supplied product reviews, testimonials, and images.

Google+

Google+ (Personal).

This is analogous to a standard personal Facebook page, but more boring. This attracts a more no-nonsence crowd, so you (fortunately) won’t see many “grumpy cat” photos. Make frequent postings on this as you do with your personal Facebook page. It’s less cluttered with crap. Use this to your advantage and post away on Google+. It will add more legitimacy to your product and to you as a salesperson. By doing this, you can target your friends who otherwise dismissed you. It ties into your Facebook account if you set it up to do so and allows you to find contacts from there or people you have emailed from your Gmail account, so you should have no problem finding your already existing friends. I will warn that it has a slightly higher learning curve than Facebook, but you will get used to it.

 

Google+ (Business).

This works a lot like Facebook Pages and includes an automation system that allows for scheduling of posts in advance. That is a great design, but when coupled with IFTTT, it can move your posting up to the next level. Important areas to note are the clientele and the design. The clientele is totally different than the regular Facebook user. With this, in mind, they are usually more business-minded and that’s the information they are looking for in the site. The design is also a little different (insert the word “boring”) and that goes back to it being more business-minded. It’s very functional and no frills.

YouTube.

I was half tempted to add this as a subcategory under Google+, but I was talked out of it with the thinking that it is used as a separate entity, so it has it’s own separate area in my piece as well. YouTube is freaking huge! Everybody knows YouTube so it sells itself. It allows you to post videos of whatever you want. Get permission from your MLM that you work under and get hard video to upload. It will be branded as the company video, so they maintain the credit for it, but you can embed your own sales links into it. Product demonstrations are big right now with the most views and this could truly drive your sales with an infomercial-like strategy. In addition, you can monetize YouTube. You know those fifteen second commercials that play before every third video you watch? The person who’s site that commercial plays on (in its entirety without the viewer collapsing the screen) gets paid. Some get paid more than others, but they get paid. If you get a big enough audience and following, you can make a side income from these commercials.

FourSquare.

I’ll keep this short. Check in on FourSquare. Set up your home as an official FourSquare site (it costs $1 on a credit card) and that’s it. Make sure you check in every time you get home. Yes, your home is now a public place that people online see, but your name is in the phone book and you are a business owner, so suck it up. Instagram and Facebook will both integrate in various ways to FourSquare, so your checkins are also posted on Facebook and your Instagram photos can be easily geotagged for location. This helps you on Instagram because when you go out to eat you can share a photo to Instagram and check in to the restaurant at the same time. That puts your photo (of the products you are selling) directly on Foursquare when strangers look at that restaurant and check in there. It’s a whole new marketing outside of your personal network.

Forums.

Forums can be a great if you have an intimate knowledge of the products and services you are selling. To get started, type in a google search for “Business Forums” and replace “business” with whatever word you want that works with what you are selling. When you set up a profile, you can include a link to a website. For that space, include the website for your sales linkage. Many times, you can also add your personal LinkedIn account. Do so! Now search the topics that people have posted and help them. Just talk to them and offer advice. Do not go for a hard sell immediately. Answer a few questions in a few different threads. Advertise your product, but not overtly. Make sure people can contact you and do so directly, not just through the forum messaging system. This will help propel your target audience to your site more frequently.

Craigslist.

Yep! People forget Craigslist.com all the time, but they shouldn’t. Craigslist offers a wide range of items for sale and your website link, phone number, email address can pop up in searches for items people are searching for and these people are actively searching for products to buy. It’s the ultimate classified ad and it’s free!

The main goal of this writing was to show my readers what they can do to promote their product or service while spending just twenty minutes a day (at most) actively engaged. Not all aspects will work with synchronicity in both directions for automation, but by pre-scheduling posts, a lot of the issues can be dealt with easily and allow you more time to handle other aspects of your new career path. Each one of these listed sites will be the subject of a future video tutorial, starting with setting up a Facebook Business Page and other blog pieces with some descriptions of each of these setups. I may have to skip video on Instagram and Foursquare since they are designed primarily as mobile applications instead of websites with applications that simply accompany them.

 

Take care and be creative with your sales and promotions. You have to promote your product so a single potential buyer sees the product seven times in an eighteen-month period of time. This isn’t just me throwing a dart at a number or pulling it out of my ass. It’s an actual statistic and you can feel free to look it up. So for you to make your first sale, you have to have that person see your product seven times on Facebook in their newsfeed or in a combination of multiple feeds that they see.

 

As a final note, I would like to apologize to any grammar Nazis out there. I wrote nearly this entire piece in the notepad of my iPhone with a tiny keypad. It’s 3,000 words long, so give me a break and just read the damn thing for what it is.

 

For more pieces like this please go to TheMichaelBeebe.com.

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Increase Your Facebook Presence

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One issue many businesses have is increasing their Facebook presence. First, people think Facebook matters and it actually does, but it should only be used as one piece of your social media campaign. With that said, I hope to give some insight on how to grow a Facebook presence on the cheap. Yes, I will be breaking one of my cardinal rules in my advice and that means you may have to spend a few dollars. As my readers all know, I am one cheap bastard and I hate spending money on social media. My tips are geared around a frugal method on increasing your presence, but I will spend some of your money in this one as a potential option.

 

This was originally written as a short answer on a Facebook page to a friend of mine running for a city council seat. He wrote on his personal page that he only had 53 likes on his election page and that was out of his 200 or so friends. Actually, a 25% follow-back rate isn’t too bad for personal sharing only, but we need to look more into how to grow a Facebook presence quickly and easily.

 

The Meetup

Meet up with a couple friends at McDonald’s (or anywhere with wifi). Since this was written for a political campaign, I suggested McDonald’s as a way to be seen. Politicians need people to see them doing stuff in public and McDonald’s has so many people that come there on a regular basis that it just makes sense. Also, with the age of the people who sit around McDonald’s in the morning, it seems to have your potential voters right there. If you want to do this for a business, do so in a private place if you wish so as to keep this a secret. Have them bring their laptops and make them temporary administrators. This will allow them, like anyone, to invite people to your page. The difference is, when people get the invite it will say “Bob Smith wants you to like his page.” It becomes a personal endorsement from them and their friends view it as being an active partner in your campaign. Their friends will have a greater likelihood of liking your page than the standard invite from friends that says, “Bob Smith invited you to like a page.” There is a psychological component at play here and the only real difference is “his” verses “a” and that difference personalizes it for potential future likes.

 

Spend Money

Here it goes. If you spend about $25 or so, you can use the “promote my page” feature to get likes faster. Once you hit 50 likes, you can promote your page on Facebook. This is an advertising method that increases growth quickly. I recently saw one Facebook page spend $50 and added over 1,500 likes in five days after setting a maximum daily limit of $10. A month later, her engagement with her audience was phenomenal and she said it was well worth the money. You can target your advertisement to various groups and locations based on age and geography.

 

Pictures Sell

Okay, you wont actually make money with pictures. It’s more of a figure of speech, but pictures work. Add pictures and infographics slowly. An infographic is a picture with words that explains or inspires the viewer, like my Thirsty Thursday Tip of the Week. By Facebook default, hey stay in the newsfeed of fans longer than just a text update and increase the odds of your friends sharing your page’s post.

 

Share Bomb

We all know about the Ron (now Rand is doing it) Paul Money Bomb. They try and get supporters to get a little bit of money to them in a twenty-four hour period for usually a specific need. The share bomb is the same idea. Message your friends, arrange a share-bomb day, and have everyone share it at different set times throughout the day. Pick Tuesday to Thursday from 9am to about 6pm. Those are the most viewed times for Facebook and the times and days with the greatest interaction with Facebook users. Convince your friends to share a special post with their friends. Have them add it to groups, other pages, and with all of their friends on their Facebook walls.

 

A Share Deal

In a society, we all need to work with other people. Business campaigns are no different. You need others to promote for you and help raise awareness of your product and maybe you can help them. Mutual shares for each other’s pages can be beneficial for you and for them. They endorse your product and you endorse theirs. No, this shouldn’t be done with businesses that are in direct competition for the same product and customer, but take a supplier for instance. If you have a restaurant selling a specific brand of hot dog, work with the supplier to promote your Facebook page as you promote their product line. It can give you some new ideas on products to carry and they can get some new likes for you. This is the same for political campaigns; work with businesses. You need businesses to support you if you are a pro-business candidate. Some who publically back you will be willing to share your page on their site and you can talk up their business on yours. It’s good business for them to get new likes and it’s good for you to get that kind of exposure.

I really hope this gave some good insight for businesses and politicians to use in the future. This is not an exhaustive list of ways to increase your Facebook presence, but it’s a damn good start.

 

For more pieces like this please go to TheMichaelBeebe.com.

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The Six Families

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Last Tuesday was the Primary Election in Indiana for municipalities and in that light, it’s time for our post-primary healing. I’m not sure if it’s by design, but primaries splinter our party into factions and then afterwards, we need to work together for a common goal of winning for our candidates. We need to let our wounds heal and put aside the differences that divided us and be a whole party again.

 

While researching this, I used Wikipedia (honestly everyone does and it was just for some basic background information so I could easily add what I wanted and see the layout they used) and found some baseline information on the six primary types of conservatives in the Republican Party. I have a quick rundown of the different main types of Republicans.

 

Fiscal Conservatives

This group wants a reduced spending and in that reduction, they want fewer social entitlement programs. They want lower spending, lower taxes, and lower government debt. Supporting a balanced budget over extra government regulations, they want every taxpayer to keep money in their pockets. Supply-side economics is king to the fiscal conservative.

 

Social Conservatives

The Social Conservatives base their entire political ideology on conservative principals when it comes to social interactions. They push for laws against homosexuality, drugs, and alcohol; while promoting Christianity in it’s many forms and pushing for a return to traditional values.

 

Paleo-Conservatives

This right here is the most common form of Republican. It’s a mix of both the Social-Con and Fiscal-Con to create it’s own unique breed that wants lower taxes and less spending and couples that ideology with pressing for fundamental Christian ideas to be prominent in the government.

 

Traditionalist Conservatives

Looking at this as a primal version of conservatism, it looks to reduce controls over people with the thinking that people will control themselves. Traditionalists believe that the smaller government entities should have the greatest influence of the people it serves, while being controlled by those very people. In essence, a nation is made up of small groups with a weaker central government that these groups control. This is anti-jingoistic by it’s very nature.

 

Neo-Conservatives

Jingoistic in nature, this group believes in promoting America, American interests, and American business; if necessary, by force. Neo-Cons are the anti0communist movement and were created in the effort to fight the ideas of communism and socialism. They believe the American “sphere of influence” in the world is one of our most important potential assets.

 

Libertarian

This is with the lower-case “L” and not part of the Libertarian Party that has sprung up, but it closely resembles the Libertarian Party. They want lower taxes, fully free speech, and almost no gun control. Many believe in the concepts of a “fair tax” or “flat tax” at the federal level and want the IRS abolished.

 

Additionally, each of these six groups has moderates in their ranks. A person who cares about the budget, but doesn’t care about gay marriage could be a moderate fiscal conservative. The groups tend to mirror each other at times, but have distinct differences to the point that each faction is, itself, factioned.

 

Each of the six faction of the Republican Party refers to other factions as RINOs, Republicans In Name Only, and our party has never been more in need of unification.

 

Each of these six groups has negative feelings and prejudices against the others. Instead of looking at our differences, we need to start looking at what unites us as a group. Lower taxes and fewer restrictions on businesses seem to be the two points all factions agree on so we could start there. This is not the time to even discuss what points and projects we are okay with, but just that we need to reduce taxes. We need reduced restrictions on businesses, but, again, to what level is a moot point at this time. Let’s unify based on what we agree on, not fight about what we disagree with. There is plenary of time during the primary races to debate, but the day after, we need to have an organized, solid front for which we stand, focused on the points we can agree on, and not constantly fighting deep into general election season about our internal differences.

 

Let’s discuss lowering spending. Where can we all agree that spending cuts need to be made? Where do we want these cuts and how deep of cuts can we, as four different factions, agree to go? Let’s ask questions like that and work together instead of apart. We have too many commonalities to stay so splintered. Yes. We have differences.

 

We need to go back to basics in our own party and build a stronger, more unified Republican Party that will be a lasting testament to, at least, the most basic of conservative values that we all cherish. One former GOP County Chairman created an idea that helped us do that. He created “The Five-Tenants of the Republican Party.” A group of candidates running for the general election sat down with our chairman and worked together to make up a list of five things that we can’t disagree on. We need lower taxes. We need more jobs. We need lower crime. I can’t remember what the other two were, but you get the idea. Who can dispute that we need more jobs? It was something that unified our party and our candidates that year and it was rather effective at creating a singular message for us to push. Even though we each may have a different take on these ideas and how to accomplish them, we agreed on the principles. As you may or may not have guessed, I was one of the candidates that year. I was asked about how lowering crime could be done. It’s one of the primary ideas that we are using. I responded with how creating jobs would be a deterrent to people committing crimes. It actually wasn’t a bullshit answer and I firmly believe that lower unemployment also lowers crime rates. The candidate running for Judge that year had a different answer, as did the Sheriff candidate. Though we had different answers, we held a unified front.

 

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Personal Efficiency

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Why did you go into business for yourself? I bet it wasn’t as a means to avoid your family and miss your friends. At a certain point, “daddy has to work” or ” mommy is bringing home McDonald’s” just doesn’t cut it and you need to scale back your time at work. How do you do that? Why should you do that? Does your family really “understand” why you’re not home?

 

Let’s go with the last part first. Does your family really “understand” why you’re not home? Absolutely not! For a little while they will, but eventually they will want to see you more than your cash flow and resent you for not being there. If you don’t believe me, that’s fine, but don’t be shocked if they grow more and more distant from you over time. Let me play out a scenario for you. You work all the time, but you have two kids. Now your two kids want for nothing. You teach them work ethic by always being at work. You make the kids study and send them to college and give them an opportunity you never had. Now they graduate and get jobs where they put in the same work load you did. You retire and want to spend time with your family but it’s too late. They are gone, resentful that they never really felt important to you (if it’s true or not doesn’t matter as much as their perception of the truth), and they are just as busy as you were; missing every holiday. You can say how proud you are of them, but you know you wish they would come visit. Turnaround is a real bitch.

 

I’m not proposing being home constantly, working from home (which I couldn’t do long-term) or anything radical. Every entrepreneur needs to establish a work-life balance. This can be established by observation of key distractions at work and asking the key questions of how to fix them.

 

Establish a Process.

The first recommendation I have is to look at your routine tasks that have a set process that repeats. How much time do you spend repeating the same task on a daily basis? Generally this task can be broken down by various methods. When I’m working on FullTiltBusiness.com, most of my work is now automated. With the exception of the writing of pieces like this one (which is generally written on my iPhone while I lay in bed or while I wait for waitresses to bring food out), I generally spend thirty minutes a week on Full Tilt Business. Sometimes I know that isn’t possible and need to put a specific amount of time into growth of something or designing a new section, but I generally only do 30 minutes a week. Thirsty Thursday Tip of the Week (T3) is automated on Facebook. Facebook posts directly to Twitter. I post myself to Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, and the FTB LinkedIn business page. That takes fifteen minutes. That’s Thursday. On Monday my blog posts. I use an interface that posts to Tumblr, Facebook (which automatically posts directly to Twitter), Tumblr (when the interface works), Google+, and my personal LinkedIn page. I manually post to Tumblr (when automation didn’t work), Pinterest, and the LinkedIn business page. I share it on my personal Facebook and Google+ accounts and I am all done. It’s not worth it to me to hire a virtual assistant to handle all of those tasks. With VA’s working for as low as$2 an hour, the price is there, but I can’t justify spending $1 a week for these routine tasks. Do you have to repeat the same process over and over again? Does bookkeeping take up half your day? It might be a faster and more efficient use of your time to email scans of your daily receipts and email them to a virtual assistant in the Philippines to work on organizing for you. You create the process and they can duplicate it and you can’t even find an illegal to work for the wages they work for over there.

 

I know it was a long preceding paragraph, but the concepts of the duplicating of a process and using a virtual assistant are potentially two sides of the same coin.

 

Outsource.

Moving on, what are the other things you can or need to do? How about a lawn service? As a hypothetical, let’s say you have a lawn service and you’re doing well. You have a couple crews and they are working all the time. You have employees out there working and you’re making good money, but you have to be the boss. So why do you have employees? With all the independent contractors doing that work, why not work with one to represent your company and go out to do the work for you? Let them handle all the human resources crap of the crew they run and you just make your same profit. Now you can be on the phone for the day and make your contacts with clients without pushing a lawnmower yourself. Most importantly, you can reduce your overhead from keeping a full sized garage full of lawn equipment to just keeping an office space.

 

Website.

Using the same lawn care service as an example, how can a website help you? We all know websites are fantastic marketing methods, as are social media accounts, but what more can a website do? How about booking customers? With various types of simple widgets and low-cost paid services, your business can accept scheduled jobs and set prices automatically. Customers can pay with credit cards online and the money is directly deposited into your account, minus their fee. This benefits everyone involved. While you’ll make slightly less money per client, you are not limited by the number of contractors you have that bring their own equipment and you won’t run out of storage space.

 

With maximizing productivity as your main goal, you can have it all. You can have the business everyone knows, the family life you dreamt about, and extra time to go golfing.

 

Why did I write this piece for today? On April 21 I bought the domain name HoosierPoliticsToday.com, which is designed to be a political blog emanating from the great Hoosier state. On May 1, I will be forming Beebe Digital Media, Inc, as an entirely new venture, which is owned by my holding company and will feature a large scope of associated websites. I needed to remind myself of this more than my readers, but I think my readers will appreciate the information from here.

 

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LinkedIn 101

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According to Alexa, LinkedIn is the number thirteen site in the world and number nine website in the US. With the number of job-seekers, it’s no small wonder why, but LinkedIn is more than just job seeking. LinkedIn is the modern, more professional version of comparing penis size. Your friends and colleagues post something new so you feel the need to out do them. Your buddy from college learned Spanish and added it to his, so you learn Japanese. It seems like a lot of competing, but it’s really motivational for individuals.

 

 

So who uses LinkedIn? Everybody! It’s used mostly by job-seekers across the board to look good in front of human resources people, but it really lets people show their entire résumé online. Artists can show work, writers can show off their latest pieces, and businessmen can talk about their latest accomplishments. It is literally business bragging.

 

Personal Information. 

When you set up your account, make sure to add your photo. Even if you’re ugly, set the photo up. People like to see who they are talking to. Add all contact information you want to give out. This includes email addresses and phone numbers. This allows people who already have your contact information to find you easier and add you. These are friends and colleagues. Being popular is very important on LinkedIn. I’ll explain why friends are important later.

 

Résumé Section. 

Be thorough. Add your full job history, dates, responsibilities, and anything else it asks for. This gives your work history and human resources people look at it to see if you are a good fit. Even if some of your work history isn’t relevant to the job you are seeking, it may prove handy to show how well-rounded you are.

 

Endorsements. 

LinkedIn will ask you about specific job skills. Add them. If you know PowerPoint, let LinkedIn know about this. As you add these skills, they will pop up to allow your contacts to endorse you and you endorse them. One tip I need to throw in here is you should never endorse a skill that you have not directly observed. With that, text all your buddies on LinkedIn and have them endorse your skills after you endorse theirs. Don’t endorse every skill they have, but just ones you have directly observed. It shows who all endorsed a skill to any third-party who views your page, so it’s a red flag if it’s the same person endorsing every skill you claim to have. Make sure you have all skills listed, even skills that aren’t associated with your current because you never know who will see your profile and what they may be interested in.

 

Other Stuff. 

LinkedIn allows for other bragging rights beyond skills and will constantly ask you about these areas. Have you returned to college? Have you learned a new language? Are you published or a contributing author antes here? Add as much as you can about yourself and LinkedIn will give you just about every possibility you can think of. They also include links for portfolios, so artists and writers, take note. That works for you.

 

Premium. 

I don’t use the paid premium version and throughout my pieces, you’ll see I mostly only talk about free methods to use social networking, but there is a premium upgrade service and from my understanding, if you’re looking just to find a new job, it’s completely worth the price, so I give it an untested recommendation. I believe in the product that LinkedIn is that much.

 

Final Tip.

In your settings there is an option that has a toggle that allows your updates to show up in the feeds of your friends. While building your page, toggle it to the off position. Everything you do will show up to your entire contacts list and they will get annoyed with you as you make updates while building the page. After you are done setting it up, then toggle it back so your updates show up in the feeds of your contacts. Now when you get that dream job of yours, they will see it, but they won’t see every change you make. Ask yourself if you’re changes will just start to piss off your contacts and if the answer is “yes,” toggle it to the off position and back on once you’re done with upkeep-style changes.

 

I rank in the top 39% of my LinkedIn connections. It’s a nice feeling since I was never studious enough in high school or college to rank that high and I’ve taught myself and had others teach me many things which I excel at. I know I need to do some more work on my personal LinkedIn Page, but I’m happy with my current rankings since I’m not a job seeker currently.

 

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Pinterest Strategies that Work

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I love Pinterest. Now I am not a middle-aged housewife with a pill and gin problem or a middle-aged woman who still wears flip-flops and posts about wine all the time, yet denies she has a drinking problem. I am a guy and I have found Pinterest as one of the best ways to get your point out to the masses and I have some awesome tips for my readers in this piece. Anyone wanting to send information out en mass should read this about Pinterest. This piece started as a project after I gave a good friend of mine advice on how to market a product she is selling with the bulk of orders being online, so thank you Deb for inspiring this piece with our text message conversation.

 

First, what is Pinterest? Pinterest is ranked by Alexa as the thirty second website in the world as of this writing. That’s not bad for a company that was also launched five years ago this month. Happy fifth birthday, Pinterest!

 

Name Optimization. Come up with a searchable name for your business Pinterest account. The name for the Full Tilt Business account on Pinterest is “FullTiltBiz” and when you go there, you will actually see the page labeled as “Full Tilt Business.” This REALLY helps with your search results when people do a Google search for your business’ name. These will increase your actual meta score and bring your search ranking higher and move you up a few pages on Google when people look up your business name.

 

Push and Pull. This is a great method for using Pinterest and I will probably dedicate an entire video tutorial to it down the line. I call it the “Push and Pull” method, but there isn’t a “Pull” in this one. The Pull is a Twitter thing and I will explain that in a similar piece when I discuss Twitter later. Anyway, follow people! Go to sites similar to yours and follow their followers. If you are a marketing company, follow the followers of your competition. You should expect about a 25% to 30% follow-back rate. Follow similar companies to your competition. If you are promoting your marketing group, follow the followers of bloggers that are similar and deal with the same types of issues and give similar advice.

 

Posts. So what should you post? Links and pictures. Links for your website will get out and circulate. Make sure that your website has pictures to Pin and you will be a hit. My website has a rather generic look to it (intentionally), so it’s bland with the same picture used multiple times, but my recommendation is that you have a different picture on each page so when you Pin an item, they all look different. That helps people of varied tastes open your pin and read it. Blogs are the exact same. The next area is pictures. These are popular. Pictures can be regular pictures or infographs. An infograph is just a picture with words on it, similar to my Thirsty Thursday Tip of the Week (T3). Click that link to take a look. Anyway, infographs get around. They will get pinned and re-pinned over and over again. The pictures also increase the time your Facebook’s business Page is posted in the general newsfeed. I will also discuss this a bit more in depth in another, later piece that is just about Facebook. Anyway, people love pictures and that is what Pinterest is mostly about, pictures and websites with pictures.

 

Geotag. If you are working with Pinterest on your computer, you will have an option to add locations to any and every post you make. This is a must-do if you have a location that your website is “from” or another piece of advice is to geotag pictures into large, metropolitan areas that are either of interest to your viewers. The geotag is a location and people on Pinterest love looking at things tagged near them.

 

The Source. Type https://www.pinterest.com/source/fulltiltbusiness.com/ into your browser when you are signed in to your account. Where it says “fulltiltbusiness.com” put your own business URL in there. That will show you every link that has been pinned from your website. The one thing that is a must is to verify your website on Pinterest, which is an easy process that you can find while setting up your Pinterest account originally. When you go to Pinterest.com, set up a “business page.” The page will ask for your business URL and there will be three options for verification to your website.

 

Downfalls. What are the downfalls to Pinterest? You know there has to be a few. You can only follow 300 people in any given hour. You can’t just spend the entire day following person after person, but you can stagger your sessions out. In theory you could still follow 7,200 people in a single day and with a 25% follow-back rate, have 1,800 new followers based on that 24-hour period. Not everyone that will follow you back will do so immediately, but that is about the number you can expect after a week. So if you religiously follow people every hour and split the task up with a trusted friend when you need sleep, you could have 12,600 followers after a week of doing that method. The other problem isn’t that big of a deal, but the Pinterest website sucks when you try following people en mass from a list of another’s followers, but both the iOS and Android apps work amazingly for this task.

 

This should conclude a quick overview of the biggest and best uses of Pinterest for your social media campaign. I will probably write an entire piece on Search Engine Optimization for Pinterest down the line and do some video tutorials as well on the topics covered.

 

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