Chris Treece Blog

Author Chris Treece Releases Excerpt From His Book â€œDrivenâ€

It was important to me to release some of the book so readers come get a glimpes of what the were actually buying"-Chris Treece An Excerpt From My Book "Driven" Overcoming Obstacles and Hardships To Becoming Successful

I shouldn't even be here. All of my family thought I would be dead before the age of 25. I was more than crazy. I had no regard for life. I truly lived everyday as if it were my last. I would try to do anything just for the thrill. Here is my story. My long road started on January 13, 1968 when I was born. I had your typical childhood, so I thought. I played, went to school just like other kids and got into my fair share of trouble as well. My dad went to Germany to work for six months early in my life, at the same time that I discovered sports. My mom wouldn't let me play sports because she said I was too small and would get hurt. So I did what many kids my age would do at the time, I started sneaking away and playing anyway. We had no cell phones back then, so it was easy to get away all day without being found. Once she found out, my coaches convinced her to allow me to continue playing. I couldn't get enough. I had to play everything. I excelled naturally at football, basketball, baseball and track. Sports were easy until my freshman year in high school. That year it all changed. I came to a crossroad in my life.

To order your copy of "Driven", please visit www.christreece.com/driven Remember 50% of ALL Proceeds go to Cancer Research and Domestic Violence Prevention.

Search Engine Traffic vs. Social Media Traffic? Which is Better?

It's important to understand and know what is best for you and your blog, when you start blogging and invest your valuable time writing for your blog, you want good return over the time you have invested. The way you will gain your profits is by getting more and more visitors to your blog. Now which is a better way to gain visitors social media or search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and other.

Social media traffic - Positive side:

It can bring huge amount of traffic to a blog or website in a very little amount of time.
Your blog get exposure to new visitors, readers and advertisers.
It also gives you rise in your revenue sometimes.
A popular story on Digg, Stumbleupon or Reddit makes people link your story with their blog or bookmark in other social media websites like Delicious, Netscape and more, which helps in creating backlinks to your blog.

Social media traffic - Negative side:

To bring traffic from social media you need a network of friends active in social media which demands lot of time investment, it completely depends on you if you want to invest your time to build a network in social media.
Social media traffic is not reliable because some day you might get peak in traffic and the other day you might get nothing also social media will only give you traffic until your post is popular and visible to mass audience.
Don't expect social media traffic to click on anything else on your page, majority of traffic will not even bother visiting any other web page of your blog which will lead to high bounce rate of your blog.
Eats up lot of bandwidth with almost nothing in return other than lot of page impressions and large spike in increased traffic.

Organic Search engine traffic:

Search engine traffic provides targeted traffic to your blog, your visitors will look for more similar stuff on your blog if they like your posts and also will subscribe to your blog and more over spend time on it, all these factors will result in low bounce rate of your blog.
Gives you a moderate traffic but the traffic is steady and you will not face ups and downs in your traffic unlike social media traffic.
Search engine traffic pays you in long run.
Money makers: Search engine visitors are those visitors who come to your blog looking for something that they really want and if there is something you have which is useful to them then they would even won’t mind paying money to get it.

Social media has evolved as a very powerful tool in recent times and the traffic from social media is very tempting to every one and to achieve that level of traffic people don't mind spending hours getting their story voted by others to make it popular.
I can only say that both the channels have their own power and importance in blog promotion. I prefer search engine traffic over social media traffic but also I like sharing some unique and interesting stuff with my social media friends once in a while because it also keeps my blog visible in social media also.

You can't just focus on either one of the channel's because you will be missing out on potential visitors from the other channel, so it's ideal to manage social media and search engines on regular basis and you can do this by optimizing your blog regularly for search engines and also chipping some posts for social media freaks to gain benefits from all the available resources available to generate traffic.

Do Your Homework Online Before Meeting Someone New

Admit it, you’ve Googled someone before. Maybe it was someone you were dating. Maybe it was someone you had a crush on.But how about when you have a sales meeting and are about to meet a new prospective client?If you are an experienced salesperson, I’m probably preaching to the choir. For those like me who are in the consulting & services business and relatively new to the sales role, I have this to say:Do your homework whenever you meet someone new.This applies all around the sales cycle. From following up on leads to meeting other stakeholders to getting their team introduced with yours. Throughout this process, you are likely to meet several different people (or one person fulfilling all of these roles):

Primary stakeholder – the person with the budget
Influencers – other stakeholders who have a say in this decision
Project manager – the person who coordinates the work between your client and your team, also often the main point of contact
Workers – employees from your client’s team with whom your team will have to interact

Do your homework on each of them. For a service organization, all the members of your client’s team are important and critical to your success.

Why?

The goal isn’t to stalk the person. It’s to find meaningful connections. If the person likes the San Francisco Giants, and hey, so do you, then bring it up. If you’re not a fan, then keep your mouth shut. Don’t be insincere with these connections. Use them only if they honestly exist. Otherwise, you might find yourself in a TV sitcom where you’re trying to lie and squirm your way out of a totally alien discussion. And all without a laugh track.If there are no connections, consider identifying a key achievement that person has made and offering congratulations. Perhaps the person started a company that launched a successful product in the past. Perhaps the person wrote a book or article you’ve read. Again, don’t be overtly insincere, though a little flattery can get you a long way.It also helps to understand the person’s background. If he/she comes from a technical background, then you can tailor your sales pitch to a more technical audience. If he/she comes from a marketing background, then emphasize potential branding and identity benefits. Use key terminology from their background.So far, I haven’t had a case where a person has been offended or frightened by this research. In fact, many seem to be flattered by it, even expect it. Some don’t care though; they’re more interested in the deal and how it can help them.All of this assumes you’ve already done your homework with the company, their department, and their needs. Don’t even bother researching the people if you haven’t researched their business.Ultimately, you want to form a connection with these stakeholders. If they feel they can relate to you on a personal level, and they feel you can sincerely understand them on a professional & personal level, then they are more likely to sign a contract with you.

How?

Here’s what I do:1. Google (GOOG) – I start with a good, old-fashioned Google search. This usually gives me most of the information I need, such as links to a blog, Twitter account, resume, etc.I always start with the blog, if one exists. This gives me a good overview of the person and his/her personality & interests. Does the person have a sarcastic sense of humor? A dry wit? Does the person have any hobbies or interests with which I can relate? Has this person done anything notable that I want to call out?2. LinkedIn.com – If the previous search doesn’t turn up a LinkedIn profile, then I perform one specifically on this site. Most people in my industry have a LinkedIn account.This gives me an overview of the person’s education and career path, which tells me the language he/she speaks (technical, marketing, design, financial, etc) and how I should tailor my sales pitch.

Others – I know some salespeople go further and check out Facebook, MySpace, and other similar sources. Personally, I don’t. If you aren’t a member of that person’s Facebook network, then you won’t be able to see deeper details. Also, the interests and photos included on Facebook don’t help as much as a blog or personal website. It’s tough to form a connection on a favorite TV show, especially if you don’t know how much they like it, or if their profile has been updated recently. My experience, anyways; some still do this research all the time. And practically no one in my industry uses MySpace (that I know of).

Once you have this information, share it with your team. Help them to understand the client better. This can strengthen the relationship on both sides.There will be a few cases where such web research doesn’t help because the person keeps a private offline life. That’s fine. That’s where you’ll need to muster up your interpersonal skills and form a connection the old fashioned way. These tips just offer an extra advantage. If the information is out there, why not use it, right?

How to Manage Your Online Reputation

If you've ever Googled your name, you know how important managing your reputation online can be. Each day, thousands of individuals are searching online for information about others simply by searching on Google or other leading search engines. With information being so readily available, managing your reputation is more important than ever.

How to Manage Your Reputation Online

Fortunately, managing your reputation online isn't all that difficult, but it does take work. Here are 7 basic steps you can take to ensure that your reputation doesn't become negatively impacted by what's being said about you online. 1. See where you stand. Start your reputation management initiative by Googling your name. Try it with quotes and with out (first and last name together). Look through each of your results on page one and page two of Google. Are there any negative items you wish to remove?2. Set up a Google alert. Visit Google and set up an alert for your name. After setting up the alert Google will send you and email to confirm that you wish to receive the updates. Accept the alert and each time your name is published to the Web, you'll know about it.3. Contact website owners for name removal. If there are sites that include your name and commentary that is less than desirable, contact the appropriate websites requesting that the information be removed. More often than not, website owners will agree to remove your name and/or inappropriate information.4. Purchase a domain with your name. Add sites and WebPages associated with your name and watch negative search results get pushed lower on Google rankings. Visit GoDaddy or another provider of website URLs and hosting, and purchase a domain that contains your name. Even if your name is rather common, experiment with variations until your name can be established in the form of a dot com. Once you own a domain, publish a webpage with your personal profile.5. Start a blog under your name. Blogger is a great tool for setting up your own blog which can be used to publish information about yourself. Popular blog sites are often picked up by Google and you can control the content. Be sure to sign up for Technorati after your blog has been published. Submit your blog for review and its popularity will increase, improving search rankings and continuing to push down negative search results.6. Free press release. Use free-press-release.com or a similar free press release site to publish favorable information about your and your reputation. This form of reputation management is easy and costs nothing. Be sure to use your name throughout the release and in the release title.7. Author articles in your field. Publish article relative to a particular topic or area in which you've done some work or have experience. Use article distribution services to build online references to your content. Make sure your articles contain an about the author section that links back to your main website.There are a variety of strategies you can use to manage online references about you, your family, or others that need to manage their reputation online. Other online sites like Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, and Squidoo, offer ample opportunity to deliver favorable search results that can push unfavorable results down in search engine rankings. The key is to start today - proactively manage your reputation and put yourself in a favorable light.

â€œThe Social Media Scientistâ€ Dan Zarrella on The Chris Treece Show

Please Join The Chris Treece Show on January 13, 2010 at 11 am CST as my guest will be “The Social Media Scientist” Dan Zarrella. He will be discussing his new book, “The Social Media Marketing Book”. Call in number is 347-633-9495. www.blogtalkradio.com/Chris-Treece

Dan Zarrella is an award winning social, search, and viral marketing scientist and author of the upcoming O’Reilly media book “The Social Media Marketing Book”. He has a background in web development and combines his programming capabilities with a passion for social marketing to create applications like the social URL shortener Votrs.com, Link Attraction Factors keyword tools, as well as TweetPsych, TwitterBrandSponsors, TweetBacks and TweetSuite.
His Link Attraction Factors report helped readers determine which topics, days, times, and keywords attract links in social media stories for semantic content optimization, while his Viral Content report details the motivations, preferences and habits involved in online content sharing.
Dan has written extensively about the science of viral marketing, memetics and social communications on his own blog and for a variety of popular industry blogs, including Mashable, CopyBlogger, ReadWriteWeb, Plagiarism Today, ProBlogger, Social Desire, CenterNetworks, Nowsourcing, and SEOScoop.
He has been featured in The Twitter Book, Fast Company, The Financial Times, NYPost, The Boston Globe, Forbes, Wired, The Wall Street Journal, Mashable and TechCrunch. He was recently awarded Shorty and Semmy awards for social media & viral marketing.
He has spoken at PubCon, Search Engine Strategies, Iowatasmic, Convergence ’09, 140 The Twitter Conference, The Cool Twitter Conference, WordCamp Mid Atlantic, Social Media Camp, Inbound Marketing Bootcamp, and The Texas Domains and Developers Conference, and he currently works as an inbound marketing manager at HubSpot.

Social Media Marketing: Friends With Benefits

Nowadays, social media marketing is very much akin to a friends with benefits type of situation. Always bear in mind when thinking about and planning social media marketing campaigns and strategy that you have to focus more on making friends than selling your products and promoting your business! Social media is just that, social. In order to utilize social media marketing effectively, it is important for you to understand and realize that fact. Be friendly. Be sociable. Be somebody that other people want to get to know better instead of only trying to be somebody people will buy things from. Actually, one of the basic tenets of salesmanship is that people will buy from those people they like. So, if you are likeable and friendly on social sites, you will certainly be much more likely to make sales to the friends and followers you acquire along the way! One word of caution: If you are not yet active in social media marketing but plan to be in the near future, you had better go ahead and reserve the user name you want to have on the social sites you plan to frequent. All of the major social media communities such as Facebook and Twitter are growing at astounding rates and adding new members daily. So, this might well be a situation of he who hesitates is lost, because if you wait long, someone else will probably grab the user name you want. When using SEO with social media, though, keep in mind that you are writing for real people, not a search engine. Remember that you are addressing friends, not Google. Make your Twitter tweets and Facebook Wall posts, etc. accordingly! If you go at social media marketing expecting to run it solely in a business-like way with lots of sales hype, you’ll be doomed before you even get started. Think of social media marketing more along the lines of friends with benefits that can help you grow your online business!