First of all, I apologize to everyone who got a double dose of the last blog post on “How mug shots matter.” I forgot that I had our email blaster on auto-pilot after I had already sent it out via on-demand last week.

It’s been a hectic week. I put the finishing touches on a 50-plus page marketing directive for one of my global consulting clients, worked hard on transitioning Oddpodz into a more social and user-friendly Website, and took my mom to Chicago for two days to see Oprah.

Early next week, I’ll blog about my trip to Chicago and the Oprah experience.

This week I’m focusing on an important aspect of entrepreneurship, or what I call “the high cost/high return of learning curves.” My goal is to share some lessons that hopefully will help you turn your learning curve experiences into meaningful milestones too.

Most of you know, the Oddpodz team has been at this community-building thing for a few years now. The founders had strong marketing and business backgrounds, however, none had technology expertise. But, we are a Web-based business so naturally the Oddpodz business model is reliant on technology.

Sound like a crazy path to take? And a bit risky? It was. But if you look at successful businesses throughout history, it’s not what they didn’t know that really mattered, it’s how they managed their weaknesses and leveraged their strengths.

Our company’s lack of in-house technology has definitely been one of our most challenging obstacles. This was evident from our first major Web site build in 2006. We hired the wrong Web development firm, expended over $400,000; lost 18 months in time-to-market, then realized our site was total crap and had to rebuild it just to meet basic functionality standards. During that time, we also needed to manage our content changes and hosting fees in a cost-effective manner, which brings us to today; we have our interim site up and running but with a whole new slew of flaws.

These could have killed us. But they didn’t. They made us stronger.

Fortunately, in 2007, when it came time to re-build and launch our second site, we connected with a Web development company that worked in .php open source (versus .net- or Microsoft-based), and also needed branding services, which I could provide. So we bartered about $40,000 in fees and kept our shaky train on the track. The good news, this technology time around, was that our leadership team was starting to gain a little ground on the IT learning curve. The new site was built with a much more user-friendly content management back-end called Joomla; we could make more updates ourselves. However, we were still very dependent on a fee-based, external team for support and many site changes.

Our second site was light years better than our first one, and it functioned. But soon after its launch, the honeymoon was over. Oddpodz was not generating revenues, our funding was gone, and the amount of cash we had to invest with our Web development company was not significant enough to get any timely service. This is one of the challenges of being small. Read more.

This put us in a very tough situation. Social media sites are continuously evolving. The industry is learning what users want from a Web site and community experience, new tools are becoming available; but without in-house technology expertise at the time, we were unable to move forward.

We needed to find a new Web service provider. Unfortunately, moving from one Web developer to another, or even finding an independent programmer can be risky, time-consuming, and potentially costly.

Even in a perfect world, a switch in developers can open up a can of worms. Custom programming and issues with workaround applications are discovered and then a blame game starts between the old and new resources.

For us, it all boiled down to Oddpodz having to choose its pain: stay and suffer, or switch and suffer.

I started researching alternate Web developers that knew Joomla. Through a Joomla training company, I was referred to several resources.

I soon found a company that I was comfortable with and they seemed to welcome small businesses accounts. I provided the contact with our back-end access so he could carefully look at our site before we made the move. He assured me his firm could help us and their fees and hosting costs would be substantially lower than what we had been paying. He also mentioned that our site was built in Joomla 1.0, which is no longer supported. He stressed the importance of upgrading of our site to Joomla 1.5 soon, or our site could experience all sorts of problems with no easy answers. We discussed upgrade costs and he said most conversions cost between $3,000-$4,000.

All of that sounded great to me; significantly reduce our hosting fees, upgrade our back end, and have a firm that seemed like it was truly interested in helping us with affordable services.

During this time of trying to source a new Web service provider, our current Web Company was beginning to generate more frustration. Our site programmer unexpectedly left and no one who remained seemed to have a clue what he had been doing for us. I felt like a change had to be made quickly.

So I pulled the trigger with the new company. This “simple move,” as sold to me, was not. This was due to both parties; the old company not being responsive to what the new company needed and the new company had not really looked under our hood while they were pitching us on the smooth hosting transition.

Yes, our site was moved to new servers. And we were saving some money. But at this point, lots of site functionality was lost for a host of reasons, including certain applications tied to old IP addresses. Others were just not available at all. Bottom line, we incurred $500.00 in troubleshooting fees just to get the site to function at 90 percent. Among the ten percent not functioning was our member sign up. So, if you came to our site, you could read content, but you couldn’t socialize or sign up as a new member.

This was not acceptable.

When I contacted our new Web developers, I was told that Oddpodz must upgrade to Joomla 1.5. But with this new information, the cost would not be $3,000-$4,000, but rather more like $16,000, and more for our testing time and involvement.

This totally sucked.

We would have been better off overpaying and getting under-serviced from the old company… at least the community worked.

Hence, my quandary: I believe Oddpodz can start generating revenues by offering tools and content for a fee. There are many successful sites that do this every day and one of our company’s strengths is creating solid content. But can we earn $16,000 in a few months to cover this investment? With our current team and resources, I don’t think so.

So what were our other options?

Using our in-house expertise, rebuild in Wordpress, add an ecommerce section and focus on our strengths in content development? This would cost under $5,000.

Upgrade the site to Joomla 1.5, but scale back functionality? This would cost around $8,000?

Throw in the towel and just focus on my other businesses.

After much deliberation, I concluded we would rebuild in Wordpress with our core team of contractors. We will leverage as many free tools as possible, build it slowly, and build it right.

This journey I just walked you through has been a big expensive pain. A lot of it was due to my and my partners’ lack of knowledge in Web technology, and not knowing what questions to ask the service providers when we engaged them.

Today, everyone is a lot smarter. And the company is still swimming toward success without water in its lungs.

The happy ending to these chapters of learning curves is, every one of these experiences taught us valuable lessons in technology and managing service providers. Even though these lessons are in hindsight, this entire learning curve has been a meaningful milestone.

1. Don’t let your fear of not knowing something stop your dream from launching.

2. Don’t let the fact that you don’t now beans about some part of the business stop you either. Life is a learning journey. Just know that it may get bumpy.

3. Don’t beat yourself up when you make mistakes. Stay focused on what you need to do to keep moving forward.

4. No matter how excited you are about building something, when you are making a big investment in your company, ask questions of yourself and your vendors about worst-case scenarios.

5. Don’t delegate a major project to a lone team member who does not have expertise in that area. As the leader of the company, don’t micro-manage, but do stay engaged with that person until you are enjoying smooth sailing.

6. If you have at least $100,000 to invest in technology, consider hiring someone (a programmer) who just works for you, not a company.

7. Beyond the time anyone says it takes to build a Website, add 10 percent for testing, and 10 percent for unforeseen changes.

8. Don’t build anything in a version of software that will soon be outdated, just to get something up, unless you are certain of the cost for the upgrade.

9. When a company is giving you a bid on a technology build project, if they have not thoroughly looked under your hood, be prepared for a higher cost.

10. Journal all your learning curves. At least once a year, pull them out and remind yourself of the progress you made because of them.

I am fortunate that in addition to Oddpodz, I operate a successful consulting practice. I can continue to fund and contribute to this company until we really start rocking and making some money.

Within the next 30 days you will see a new and improved site and community. It will still be a work in progress, but it will be another important milestone toward our success.

About the author: Karen Post, a.k.a. The Branding Diva® is an international authority on branding, marketing, and entrepreneurial matters. She has been featured as a business expert in print publications; on TV, radio, and on Web channels. Karen authored the best-selling book Brain Tattoos Creating Unique Brands That Stick in your Customers’ Minds and she is co-founder and CEO of Oddpodz.com.

Whoever said “No pain, no gain,” obviously had a few start-ups and small businesses under his or her belt.

The past few months for Oddpodz have been a period of growth and transformation. We are happy to report, we are still moving forward, however, we’ve also had a good share of “OUCHES!”

We have struggled through a frozen economy.

We have danced with investors and fundraising gurus in “not-much-action-for-pre-revenue-deals” funding market.

We have squeezed 18 hours of productivity out of 8-hour work days with a limited team.

And we have kept smiles on our faces, when inside we were often scared and freaked out.

If being an entrepreneur—starting and leading a small business—is in your life path, put your thick skin on and embrace the ability to let challenges not defeat you, but drive you forward.

Progress and change are essential for business success. But when you are a young and small enterprise they also bring several suitcases of uncomfortable side effects.

For almost a year, Oddpodz knew our Web development company was not the right fit. They were not a bad company, but our needs and budget and their needs and budgets were miles apart. We didn’t make a change because the interruption and anticipated new expenses outweighed the acceptance of sluggish service, spending more than we needed to for hosting, etc., so we just carried on.

For nearly eight months, Oddpodz has been operating with a half-tank of gas too. Running a community, marketing, producing content, managing a site, and still earning a living to fund a pre-revenue producing company requires a full tank of dedicated resources.

No matter how creative and passionate we were, this combination was not going to take us to the Promised Land. In fact, it was likely moving us closer to the end.

No matter how painful it was going to be, change had to happen.

We needed a new, responsive, affordable Web partner.

We cut our ties with our old dev firm and found a new resource. They are 3by400. They are Joomla specialists, (Oddpodz is build in Joomla), they have a track record of social media and ecommerce successes, and most of their clients are our size; small, but with potential to scale up quickly. Today we had our first strategic planning meeting with Brent, Kim, and Beth. We heard about many new applications and solutions and are looking forward to enhancing our community platform and site with their expertise.

We needed an additional dedicated, strategic partner, and contributor.

If the one lone founding partner was to lead and fund the company’s growth, at a pre-revenue stage, we needed another social media- and business savvy entrepreneur to add to the team. Rome or any city of stature was not built by one person. We drafted a very comprehensive position description for an ideal community manager. We placed it on high traffic social and job sites and started the process of finding Oddpodz a new community master. Ultimately the winning candidate came through a Twitter post. His name is Keith Burtis. He is a balance and mix of techno-dude, market maker, and creative wonder. He resides in my old stomping grounds outside Buffalo. Oddpodz is ecstatic about our new relationship. We will share more about Keith soon, but just know that there are lots of exciting and new things around the corner for the company and you.

Yes, all this progress is exciting. But with it comes time-consuming, brain-stretching, and investment-needing stuff too.

Turns out our old site was pretty cobbled together with lots of out of date applications and workarounds from a programming team that was no longer anywhere to be found. In fact, Joomla 1.0 had no support and the hosting and IP change caused many features to not transfer or function.

Yikes! This kind of progress hurts a lot until you start reaping your first season of fruit.

Our new community master is awesome. Smart, thoughtful, and creative. His presence feels like a double shot of B12. And once our immune system gets strong again, we are confident there are no marathons we won’t be able run.

We know many of you fellow entrepreneurs are feeling this stress too. Here are five tips to help you manage through your progress and change too.

1. Stay focused on the big things that matter. Answering every email and looking at vendors’ offers when you don’t have the time or resources to invest in them are a huge waste of time.

2. Amp up your efficiency, in everything you do. Put instructions and expectations in writing, start every meeting with an agenda, and utilize productively tools to maximize the hours in your day. While this takes time, it saves a lot more in the end.

3. Keep your standards high and don’t compromise because you are feeling beat up or frustrated. This will, in the long run, produce better results.

4. Do not worry or obsess about things that you cannot control or are in the past. Channel your unequivocal energy on finding solutions that get you closer to your goals.

5. Make your physical and mental fitness regime a top priority. Exercise daily, stretch, meditate, and take deep breaths often. Eat right and sleep enough.

In this time of change we are doing our best to support and grow our community. What types of things can we do better? What types of features would be valuable to you?

Until next time

Thank you for your continued support, your visits, time, and suggestions.

About the author: Karen Post, a.k.a. The Branding Diva® is an international authority on branding, marketing, and entrepreneurial matters. She has been featured as a business expert in print publications; on TV, radio, and on Web channels. Karen authored the best-selling book Brain Tattoos Creating Unique Brands That Stick in your Customers’ Minds and she is co-founder and CEO of Oddpodz.com.

For all the doubters and naysayers, social media can bring in the Benjamins. In fact, for my consulting practice, Brain Tattoo Branding, Twitter scored an exciting, new, six-figure assignment.

So how did it happen?
First, you’ve got to be signed up. It’s easy and painless. If you are clueless to the new world of Twitter, watch the video on the Twitter web site and also check out these excellent books on the subject.

All A Twitter by Tee Morris

Twitter for Dummies by Laura Fitton, Michael Gruen and Leslie Poston

Secondly, you need to understand what Twitter is and is not. In a bird shell, Twitter is a micro blog that enables you to post and read “tweets.” A tweet is a text message in a concise, less than 140-character format. A tweet post has no content boundaries other than length. You can tweet or twitter anything, from a question, a quote, an opinion; a status on what you are doing, feeling or about to do; share resources, or dish an experience.

Twitter is a real-time communication channel for personal and business purposes. It is intended to adhere to the new social media etiquette and be more about dialogue and helping rather than hard selling. But, like many things in life, there are always a few bird brains that don’t seem to get that part.

Back to how I did it.
I set up my profile, selected a handle — @brandingdiva.com, uploaded a photo, and added keywords that are relevant to my world. Now, as a twitterer, I get to follow others, which means their posts are in a timeline on my Twitter page. It’s not about quantity, but quality. You must follow people who can add to your success.

A few years ago I joined a mentor group lead by The Million Dollar Consultant, Alan Weiss. Alan has authored over 32 books and is one of the smartest cats I know. He helped me improve my business proposals, leverage my intellectual property, and just become a better consultant. I delete reams of newsletters and mail in my inbox daily, but, I’m very religious about reading Alan’s stuff.

In a recent email, he suggested I follow him on Twitter @BentleyGTCSpeed. And because I like Alan’s thinking and humor, I thought this would be a great way to get bite-sized samples of his brilliance, fast. So I started following him.

That Saturday night, I was drinking my BV cab and perusing my tweets, and I saw one from Alan. It read something like: Global industrial company looking for branding and naming specialist, interested parties contact XYZ.

So I did, right that moment. I shot an email to the contact listed. My branded email was formal and included my contact info, background on me, services summary, web site links, and an article from a prominent business publication in India that highlighted me and my views on brand naming.

Within minutes, I heard back from the contact; we exchanged a few more emails and then chatted on the phone. It turned out that he had also been in Alan’s mentor program. He was not the client, but was making recommendations to the client. After all of our dialogue, I was on the short list.

A few weeks later, I got a call from the client outlining the actual assignment, background on the company, and other details. I listened more than I talked. From there, he requested a proposal. I explained to him, that before I could produce the proposal, I needed some additional information from him and agreement on key issues around the project. My list was extensive, but he promptly answered all my questions and I submitted my proposal.

My proposal was brief; not a lot of selling, but it did include our agreed-upon goals, measure of success and value expected, pricing options, and a strong overview of my company’s credentials and B2B experience.

Three weeks later, I get another call. They want me to come to their home office to meet the team. They also requested I summarize my proposal into 3-4 pages. I obliged, on my nickel. For those you who squirm at shelling out travel expenses in advance of getting a deal, I say get real, if you are worth your proposal, you will earn this back quickly.

As it turned out, they were interviewing several firms and I was still in the hunt. To reinforce my position as a branding authority who works in diverse sectors, I prepared and did as much homework as I could. I flew in the night before, leaving nothing to chance, flight delays, bad weather, etc.

In my pitch I stressed my creative problem-solving ability above my knowledge of their industry. I rehearsed my key points and continued to listen and ask questions. In fact, I walked in with a list of both, so I wouldn’t forget anything. While I had plenty of B2B experience, I did not have hands-on experience in their specific industry category. However, I presented my lack of specific experience as a strength, not a weakness.

A few weeks later, I got the bright green light and today I’m working with a great company on a challenging project. Once we take it public, I will share with you more on the branding and project processes and outcome.

I am thrilled that a new social media like Twitter made this opportunity possible. I hope it soon does the same for you. Following are the key lessons I took away from this experience.

Lessons learned:

1) Twitter is tool, just like your business card.
2) Twitter is not an autopilot sales associate.
3) Twitter is a marketing tactic that you must use strategically.
4) Social media is not a magic potion that cures all; it is one piece of your marketing arsenal.
5) Jump on opportunities when you see them. Even on the weekends.
6) First impressions only come once.
7) Be efficient and “on your brand” with all of your touch points.
8) Not having experience in someone’s business is not a deal killer.
9) Listen more. Talk less.
10) Do your homework on the prospect’s competition, their leadership, and the challenges they face.
11) Proposals are to confirm goals, methods, measures, and expectations; not to convince.

About the author: Karen Post, a.k.a. The Branding Diva® is an international authority on branding, marketing, and entrepreneurial matters. She has been featured as a business expert in print publications; on TV, radio, and on Web channels. Karen authored the best-selling book Brain Tattoos, Creating Unique Brands That Stick in your Customers’ Minds and she is co-founder and CEO of Oddpodz.com.

Have you ever misinterpreted an email message and reacted like a crazy person? And soon found out that the message that you read in your head was not what the sender intended at all? YIKES!

Caution fellow tweeters, the same thing can happen in the new world of very abbreviated tongue.

Tweet in point, last week I get a direct message from someone. The tweet read: “Consult, don’t sell”.

I’m having a day from hell, full throttle PMS, allergies, rained on my tennis game and feeling a bit cranky.

I’m thinking who is this tweet chick insinuating that I’m behaving badly, breaking the rules of tweet etiquette by hard selling?

Needless to say my feathers were ruffled, because I am very conscious of the golden rule in social media, never sell, spam or whore dog in any way!

I first fire back with a direct message back to my follower. “What exactly are you referring to?”

Twenty four hours goes by and no response. Now I’ve been stewing on this bird crap criticism of me being a sleaze and selling instead of consulting.

I discuss this whole matter with some of my fellow tweeters. What would you do? What do you think? They all banded with me. You don’t sell they confirmed. What’s she drinking? If she does not like your style of Diva-ness, tell her to opt her tweet butt out.

Yeah. They are right.

So I get back on my high-horse bird and fire another message, this time it’s going public, no direct soft tweet here.

I repeat to my follower “What exactly are you referring to? If you don’t like my style of content, opt out. Funny, my other 1400 followers have never thrown me a sour grape”.

It’s interesting how a sour tweet spreads like the swine flu. Some of my other followers even queried me, “what’s up with the cat fight on twitter?”. I explained the deal and felt like I had handled a big bully.

What a difference a tweet makes!

So today, I’m trolling through all my tweets and I notice one from that tweople who got my panties all in a big wad.

Oh my gosh—

I felt a giant black twitter egg growing on my face as I read her words.

The tweet read: >@Brandingdiva, you posted a list of ways to be different in your blog, and asked for ideas, I was contributing to your list, “consult, don’t sell”.

Moral to this bird-brained story.

Tweeting can cut out words, leave out previous posts and vital data. When this happens, find the spatula and start scrapping the big egg off and immediately apologize.

To my follower carolyngoodman

So sorry I pole vaulted to a wrong conclusion.

K

Most people hang in jobs they hate for years. Work for bosses they despise and accept an easy career path instead of pursuing their dreams and passions.

OK, collecting an unemployment check may make life a little tough, but at least you are one big step out of a gloomy career rut.

The world is changing at the speed of sound. This recession will end and it does have an upside. It is producing many new business sectors, start ups are emerging, and your pink slip may actual be your big pass to an opportunity of your lifetime, it’s just in total disguise.

Whether you are thinking about birthing a new biz, rebranding you or merely finding an ideal company to work with, you’ve got to:
* Lose all the resentment
* Embrace the challenge
* And get focused on finding the career that you love, not a job that makes you sick.

Here’s 5 tips that can help.
1) Accept what is and work on creating what you want.
2) Do what you need to, to pay your bills and protect your credit. This may mean swallowing your pride and taking an “in the meantime gig” to bring in some short term cash.
3) Get out of your comfort zone. No risk, No nothing.
4) Be proactive. Most opportunities do not know where you live and won’t find your door step. Network every day. Reach out to people you don’t know and be clear on what you are seeking to do and how you add value back to them.
5) Hang around other positive people who have made the leap from recently unemployed to totally empowered.

There is only one person who controls your destiny. There is only one person who can make you feel great or like crap.

You are the lucky one because you have access to them 24/7.

Saturday I drove from Tampa to Hilton Head. It was a 7 hour drive and a good opportunity to listen to CD’s and podcasts. I stumbled upon some awesome free business ones on itunes. They were produced by Sales Gravy and truly gave me a nice kick in the butt. I highly recommend these to anyone feeling the pressure of the times and also level of self inflicted doubt. The reality is only you can bring on doubt and only you can remove it.

Jeb Blount the voice behind the message was really good. He addresses self-esteem, fears and choices in a very direct way. Which are all key factors in moving from pining to achieving results.

Jeb has over 20 years experience in sales and marketing. As a business leader he has extensive experience turning around and righting troubled organizations. He has a passion for growing people and the unique ability to see potential in everyone. Over the span of his career he has coached, trained, and developed hundreds of Sales Professionals, managers and leaders.

Beyond his podcasts, his site has a network and loads of good resources, all worth checking out. A lot of what he says you know. But he delivers it in a very compelling and inspirational style. As I was finishing the 10-12 segment series, a buddy of mine called. He was down and out and feeling very discouraged. His car broke down, his cash was almost gone and he was feeling like a big looser. I joked about him listening to the podcasts and considering pole dancing for extra cash, he was not amused and grumbled something back at me. While I feel his pain, hanging in that attitude is not going to put a deposit in his bank. Listening to to this podcast will.

I know it’s tough to smile when you feel like you are being shot at, but moving and grooving forward will significantly increase your chances of avoiding deadly bullets. Many a great successful leader felt like this, the same despair and they did not crater, they focused on action and attitude.

If being an entrepreneur was easy, everyone would be doing it.

Personal branding “Me 2.0″ style
Stop loosing opportunities. Be your strongest business magnet, exude authority, earn trust and enjoy more success today.

My friend Dan Schawbel’s new book, Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success is out today. It’s a great read for its dedicated audience of young professionals, along with us older folks who act all different ages.

Here are some pointers I soaked up from the book and some inspirational, insightful thoughts from a couple of my favorite business experts.

Dan professes, “personal branding describes the process by which individuals and entrepreneurs differentiate themselves and stand out from a crowd by identifying and articulating their unique value proposition, whether professional or personal, and then leverage it across platforms with a consistent message and image to achieve a specific goal. In this way, individuals can enhance their recognition as experts in their field, establish reputation and credibility, advance their careers, and build self-confidence .”

He also suggests you ask yourself this important question before you launch off into your Me 2.0 initiative.

Does your career path make you happy?

If yes, great keep working it. Make the most of your talents and skill set to achieve maximum success.

If no, change it. Find the right path for you and focus on making it work.

If you’re unsure about your future—define it. Weigh all the factors that matter to you and find the career path that fits best.

Dan believes it takes a four-step process to build a powerful personal brand for a successful career:
Discover. In the discover step, you will learn about yourself, figure out what makes you distinctive, and learn how to develop the right skills.

Create. In the create step, you will build a complete marketing kit that you can use in interviews or when networking.

Communicate. In the communicate step, you will take everything you’ve created and promote it to others.

Maintain. In the maintain step, you will perform routine maintenance so that your reputation is monitored and protected.

A big chunk of his book is focused on e-Branding through social media and online channels. Here are some great tips.

When applicable
-Always include your name, picture, and personal brand statement.
-Always include personal information, not just professional experience, so that the user can get a feeling for your eBrand.
-Always keep your site engaging, user-friendly, and easy to navigate.
-Always use aesthetic choices (font style, background color, logos, etc.) that will capture and hold your audience’s attention without annoying them.
-Always use design choices, including a color scheme, that represents your personal brand.

Dan knows first hand about creating a personal brand. For being on earth for only a short time, he walks his talk. Personal brand requires hard work and dedication. But if you’re dedicated and create an online and offline brand presence that relates to the demands of your target audience and delivers what they’re looking for, they will embrace it. When this happens, you’ll be amazed to see how many opportunities for success open up.

Just consider these cool, smart guys quoted in Dan’s book who have certainly earned their top places in business and society through their strategic and persistent online footprints.

“I kicked off my un-keynote at the first PodCamp by telling everyone there that they were superheroes. Why? Because through their use of social media, they had the power to bypass hierarchies, discover and connect to meaningful two-way conversations, and build value and brand without getting permission to do either.” —Chris Brogan, cofounder, PodCamp

“People should do what they do/love as well as they can. For me, it’s blogging and speaking. My thinking is that if you do good stuff, your brand will naturally come out of your actions. But if you focus on ‘what makes me look good,ʼ you’ll just be a slick and shallow persona.”—Guy Kawasaki, managing director, Garage Technology Ventures

Keep up the great work gentlemen and congrats Dan on a solid, valuable book!

That’s an interesting mix of subjects that should resonate with most of our readers. I must admit, I’m starting to really enjoy this blogging thing. Sharing what I know and what I believe with a bunch of creative-minded biz friends is fun and challenging.

Blogging.
As I sit down at my keyboard tonight and begin to write this week’s posts I ponder about some things.

1) Should this blog and Oddpodz for that matter be more narrowly focused, our content, tools and offerings?
Today, we strive to give creative-minded business people and organizations, from a 1 person solo practice to a 500-person enterprise, good ideas, free tools and a network to find and connect with other valuable resources and people.

Is diversity a good thing? Or is a more laser-like target better? Please tell us what you think.

2) What does it take to build a power blog?
In general terms, we know it’s about good content, ongoing SEO efforts and participating in other high traffic communities and blogs. But what are the top 10 most powerful actions a blogger can do to significantly move the reader meter.

I’m going to post both of these questions in our forum and invite you to add your feedback. I’ve been using my Linkedin groups quite a bit to have discussions on a bunch of issues. I’ll be compiling these soon and sharing them with in Oddpodz.

Headlines.
It was my intention to next blog about my friend Dan Schawbel’s new book Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success

Me 2.0 teaches people how to use social media tools for personal brand building and is the first book of this kind written for the millennials generation. I suppose us older folks can also learn from this book, since we often act like we are 30 something. The book is great and I will be posting a review in the book review section in the Oddpodz forum and will dedicate our Tues. blog to some of the book’s highlights and the topic of personal branding.

Sorry, I got side tracked.
As I was crafting my blog title on personal branding, I discovered a very cool, free tool that analyzes headlines for its emotion marketing impact. As you know, reaching your customers in a deep and emotional way is a key to successful copywriting, and your headline is unquestionably the most important piece of copy you use to reach prospects.

The Advanced Marketing Institute provides the free headline analysis tool.
The Advanced Marketing Institute is a group of researchers, educators, and developers who have come together to provide real tools and knowledge to businesses and individuals who are tired of struggling to control their chaotic systems.

How does the Headline Analyzer work?
Simple go to: Headline Analyzer

Type in your headline. It must be under 20 words. Hit analyze this.
Your headline will be analyzed and scored based on the total number of Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) words it has in relation to the total number of words it contains. This will determine the EMV score of your headline. In addition to the EMV score, You will find out which emotion inside your customer’s your headline most impacts:

Intellectual
Words which are especially effective when offering products and services that require reasoning or careful evaluation.

Empathetic
Words which resonate in with Empathetic impact often bring out profound and strong positive emotional reactions in people.

Spiritual
Words which are especially effective when offering products and services that require reasoning or careful evaluation. Words which resonate in with Empathetic impact often bring out profound and strong positive emotional reactions in people. Words which have the strongest potential for influence and often appeal to people at a very deep emotional level.

So I tested out a few headlines. There is no limit to how many headlines you can get feedback on.

Remember this title is for a blog post for Dan Schawbel’s new book,and other personal branding insight.

My first headline: Be a business magnet Project Authority Earn trust Win Contracts
My Headline’s EMV Score: 40%

My 2nd headline: How to be a business magnet, project authority, earn trust and win contracts today
My Headline’s EMV Score: 42.86%

My 3rd headline: Stop losing opportunities. Be your strongest business magnet, exude authority, earn trust and win more clients today My Headline’s EMV Score: 52.94%

This score indicates that my headline has a total of 52.94% Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) Words. To put that in perspective, the English language contains approximately 20% EMV words. And for comparison, most professional copywriters’ headlines will have 30%-40% EMV Words in their headlines, while the most gifted copywriters will have 50%-75% EMV words in headlines.

Yahoo, I’m gifted! For at least a few minutes.
This is a cool tool and gets you really thinking about how to write more emotionally charged copy. But for a blog title, it also has me thinking search engine results. So my recommendation is: Headlines should be short and include keywords, use the highest rated title as a subtitle.

In closing, what does constipation have to do with any of this?
Well for starters, brilliant comedians have been leveraging this writing technique for years. It’s called a triple. Two words are normal, expected and could go together. The last word is goofy, unexpected and some times shocking. Which makes the choice and combination of these three words so effective in getting attention and hopefully a laugh. You can use this method when you are speaking or writing.

Last week I talked about dealing with creative brain freeze, which could also be described as creative constipation. This week I’ve been jamming, pumping out ideas and enjoying my favorite things, writing, thinking and problem solving. If my thawing your brain tips and the free ebook on creative productive we recommended didn’t help, start reading Mark McGuinness’ blog, it’s amazing! Or, eat more fiber.

Tampa TweetUp.

Saturday night I was drinking red wine, munching on pretzels and tweeting with some 60 new tweeple at Walker Brands. Why spend three hours with a bunch of strangers and their keypads seeing random text notes under 160 characters of what they are doing, thinking and why anyone should care on a big screen?

Copyright 2009 Michael Alex Wasylik

I was curious.
This was the fifth gathering sponsored by The Tampa TweetUp. It was organized by Tampa Bloggers’ Founder Josh Carrico and Brand Tampa Creator Julia Gorzka, both self-proclaimed social media junkies. The first official Tampa TweetUp was held in March.

I’ve been tweeting for a couple months, follow me @Brandingdiva. I see how it can be a good communication tool and a way to bring awareness to your business. Has any of this tweeting translated into cha ching, can’t report that yet.

Was it fun and worth my tweet time?
Yes. I met a bunch of cool people (bloggers, marketers, and business owners) that I would likely have passed by in my regular life walk. Many of these tweeters have checked out Oddpodz and signed up. That’s a good thing. I also connected with a couple reporters who could become meaningful contacts and I witnessed how an online phenomenon like twitter expands its purpose and passion offline. And as a bonus the TweetUp hosts facilitated 30-minute think tanks where guests could collaborate on some creative issues and learn about more about tweeting.

If your community offers TweetUps, I’d say check them out and support the effort. If your community is not hosting TweetUps yet, jump in and be a tweet leader. It’s a powerful new way to further bridge technology and business relationships.

For more on the Tampa Tweet, visit Tampa TweetUp, Tampa Bloggers’ and Brand Tampa. And note the Twitter Hash Tag is #tbtweet. Tag your posts with this code and all the Tampa TweetUper will get the tweet.

No matter what your budget is you can launch this priceless campaign and start reaping the rewards right away.

Say thank you to your customers, your employees, your prospects and your vendors. And not just when you like what they dished out.

When they do business with you
When they compliment your company
When they offer suggestions
When they try something new
When they recommend a friend
When they are patient
When they help you serve them better
When they complain
When they make you smile

If you have a budget, say it with a note, a gift, a card, a phone call, a meal or with a personal visit. Emails count but, not as much.

Thank you for reading this blog.