Justin Germino Ramblings

Honestly, with social media exploding over the past few years and customers sharing more feedback than ever about the products and services they interface with you can’t afford not to have somebody doing Online Reputation Management if you sell products or services.

Granted smaller companies and bloggers have limited budgets and pretty much have to rely on things like Google Alerts and manual queries to find out what is being said and try to get on top of potential issues, misinformation.

I have seen numerous WordPress plugin purveyors I work with have negative feedback left on various blogs and Facebook channels and I never see or hear a reply from the company or owner of said products so I wonder if they ever learned about the feedback or attempted to address it.

Nothing is worse than no response at all, leaving a customer feeling ignored or unimportant is a sure fire way to lose business and eventually have reputation damage that will be very costly to recover from.

It is of the utmost importance that if you offer out products or services you make sure you do some Online Reputation Management to make sure you can respond to customers or users who may speak negatively about your product or brand so that you can interface with them and clear up misconception or confusions.  It also may be a good way to see who is positively promoting your products or services and possibly offer some reward or incentive to try new products/services as a thank you for being a loyal customer as well.

-Justin Germino

I am excited that I will be kicking off my largest contest ever on DragonBlogger.com really soon and am still in the phase where I am partnering with sponsors to help cover funding for contest prizes, shipping and promotion materials.

In three years of blogging, this was my first time asking my peers to see if they wanted to join up as sponsors and I was amazed and delighted at the reaction. Some really great bloggers like Ileane from Basic Podcasting Tips, Francisco from iBlogZone, John Paul Aguiar who just launched his Twitter Followers Direct program and Dave Doolin from Website in a Weekend were just some of the initial sponsors who signed up.

I want this to be a huge contest and am giving away Kindle Fire devices as the perfect holiday gift for my technology blog to host as a giveaway. I will be giving away more than 1 Kindle Fire if I can get enough sponsorship to purchase multiple devices.

My target is for at least 2-3 Kindle devices, but I am still looking for contest sponsors and accepting sponsors until November 25th. If you are interested, the following are the sponsorship packages:

Just go over to the contest sponsorship signup page now and help become part of this incredible contest.

-Justin Germino

Today I am travelling back to AZ after finishing the CA World 2011 conference and networking with peers in the IT industry.  I focused most of my time on security, authentication, identity related sessions rather than the cloud tracks only because it is of the most important to my direct position at my day job. 

It will be good to be back and see my kids, I haven’t seen them since Friday of last week.  Ironically I have to get out the Christmas decorations this weekend and start doing some decorating since we are going out of town for Thanksgiving weekend.

Meanwhile, I was able to get a fair amount of blogging in at night from my hotel room and early morning hours as well as keep up with all my social media communications.  I didn’t get to a twitter poetry game because I was tied up in sessions but hope to have one tomorrow on Friday.

-Justin Germino

Despite the repeat recommendations from security experts it is still too common a situation where people are using weak or insecure passwords and worse using the same password between multiple online accounts and applications.

The security risks for using the same password for say your World of Warcraft or Facebook account and your financial institutions or Amazon.com are tremendous should those services be compromised.  Even the mighty game company Steam recently reported that their user database was accessed where encrypted credit card information may have been accessed.  Steam has over 30+ million user accounts and imagine the data that could be compromised the scale would be larger than even the Sony Playstation network in my opinion.

So what can we do? 

First, make sure your passwords are difficult.  For sure you need to think about never using just a plain word with numbers and you must not only mix case lettering but toss in special characters.  Don’t use a dictionary word and don’t use any dates or family member/pet names as a framework since most of this can be gathered from your social media profiles at some point.

Passwords should be compressed phrases, or meaningful enough that you can remember them, but obscure enough they aren’t easily cracked via a brute force attack.

A good example of a secure password would be taking the phrase:  The ice cream truck

And turning it into this:  Th3!ceCre@mTr*ck

Secondly, you can create a Base password that is like your framework for other websites, so all passwords are similar but unique enough that one can’t compromise another.

Something like:

PH@bulo*s   but you can add to it to make it unique for Facebook/Twitter…etc

PH@bulo*sTwt  or F@cePH@bulo*s for (Twitter/Facebook versions)

Take responsibility for your online accounts and make sure you don’t leave credit card profiles in your online accounts unless you have to.  Opt not to remember a credit card and save it to your profile unless you need to for most gaming accounts or online bill payment services.

Some credit cards offer 1 time numbers to make payments which is another good option.

-Justin Germino

If you haven’t followed my technology blog then you are missing out on a contest where I am giving away a BlogEngage membership + a 1 year Gold RSS Syndication plan.  Both combined packages are over $80 value and will help bloggers gain backlinks, connections, traffic and engage others in the blogging community.

I am running the contest through Rafflecopter which keeps track of all entries and helps select a winner randomly which makes it so easy to offer so many ways to enter the contest.  You can even gain an entry everyday by tweeting from the contest post each day.

Win a BlogEngage Membership by entering the contest and see what BlogEngage can do for your blog and networking circle.

Enter the contest now!

-Justin Germino

Hootsuite still holds the top spot as the most used application for managing my Social Media accounts on Twitter and I do a little bit of broadcasting on Facebook and LinkedIn with it as well.  Hootsuite can easily be turned into a desktop application with the Google Chrome browser which makes it more useful to load separately and have it be separated from your normal web browser so you can be more productive with Hootsuite.

I did a video on how to turn Hootsuite into a Windows Desktop application which only takes a few minutes.

[youtube width=”550″ height=”343″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7O80AesjLM[/youtube]

Hootsuite is also a tremendous benefit for running Social Media across multiple devices.  Hootsuite uses the same profile across all devices, so my Blackberry or iPad Hootsuite apps have the same exact stream/columns as my Windows Desktop Hootsuite.

For doing replies, Hootsuite now offers the ability to drag and drop user profiles into your message box so you can quickly reply or send a tweet to more than 1 user.  Here is a video demonstration on using Hootsuite to reply to more than 1 person quickly and easily:

[youtube width=”550″ height=”343″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PWbr2xQLrY[/youtube]

As if that isn’t enough recently I realized the benefits of Hootsuite Premium which allows you to have a staff of people manage the same account, this allows you to literally keep track of who says what and you can even set it up so a manager or Social Media lead has to approve every message before it launches.

I have seen and used UberSocial, Tweetdeck, Twinbow, Grouptweet, Twirl, Spaz and honestly Hootsuite is my preferred Twitter client for many reasons.  The free account suffices for most people, but you need a Hootsuite premium account for the multiple profiles and to connect more than 5 social media accounts.

Here was an overall tutorial of Hootsuite, some additional options were added since then but it is still relevant:

[youtube width=”550″ height=”343″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HtrCS8cuTg[/youtube]

-Justin Germino

This post was written for the cash giveaway by Successful Blogging and RocketFuel who connect brands with bloggers.

One trend noticed years previously is how Amazon affiliates can really take advantage of the holiday season to boost Affiliate earnings.  I can already see an uptick as normal converts lead to many additional items being added to people’s carts and hope it brings a much needed boost to blog earnings for November / December.

I imagine Black Friday and the deal days of December are among the best to showcase products and try to let readers know what’s available and what deals they can get in the hopes of getting that 4-6.5% earning commission for a user purchasing the product through your store or blog.

Social Media is also a good way to promote a product on Amazon with your affiliate link provided you do it tactfully and not spammy.

Some tips I use to promote affiliate items from Amazon:

Use Separate Tracking ID’s

Use separate tracking ID’s for all your social media accounts and blogs so you can easily pull reports to see where your referrals are coming from and which ones lead to sales.

Use EasyAzon

The EasyAzon WordPress plugin allows you to instantly and seamlessly search for Amazon products with your Affiliate ID and insert images that link to the product on Amazon.  Don’t waste images by having them go nowhere when clicked and turn every image into a potential sale.

I use it on all of my blogs including my poetry blog for when I find images to put with my poems.

Promote Only What You Know

Only promote a product you have actually used or can show you have purchased/tested.  Include a picture of yourself with the product to show readers you aren’t just promoting something random and you can build trust by showing you actually use/test the brands you are sharing.  I do this often with my Keurig, iPad….etc.  I believe in what I buy and when I find a product I love, I talk about it and tell people why I love it.  Did you know that I have sold over 20+ Roku XDS from my Amazon Affiliate because I talk about the product so much and share that often between my blogs.  This was about $80 in commissions but really adds up with other products.

Write a Review Instead of Direct Link to Amazon

Instead of promoting a sales page on Amazon.com directly, write a review on your blog and share your review page which has links to the product you are promoting.  This has a longer lifespan as a promotion and you can get purchases months later from people who may find your post online.  I get numerous random sales from Earl Grey Tea’s on a post I did a long time ago about my top Earl Gray tea brands.

Top Lists and Holiday Gift Bundles

Make a top 5 or top 10 list or a best for holidays list and you can really start to give people choices and options.  You may sell one or two of the products or gain interest in something completely unrelated.  This are great ways to spur interest in a variety of items on a single post.

Talking about what you will buy during the holidays with link to Amazon banners is also a good option for personal blogs as it may convince others to check it out, once they click on the  link they set the Amazon cookie which may help you get cross sales earnings.

These are just some of my tips for boosting Amazon affiliate sales during the holiday seasons.  What are some of your tricks for boosting your affiliate sales during the Holiday Season?

-Justin Germino

After doing over 70+ video’s for YouTube I find that I still have a problem when doing audio recording that I tend to fill a silent gap with “umm” which is unprofessional.  Ironically I don’t do this on conference calls or when speaking over the phone, but it happens primarily when recording my voice on a microphone.  My mind takes a moment to process what I want to say next and fills the silent space with an umm.

Fortunately I use post video editing with Camtasia Studio to remove these but it means more editing time for my video’s.  I actually wasn’t even aware that I was doing it, until I listen to my own recording and find out how many times I actually say um when recording a presentation.

I need to train myself to remove these audible pauses so that it saves time on video editing or I probably just need to write and read from a script more often which I don’t really like doing but probably should start to.

I have seen many video’s by other bloggers which need post editing, but too many directly feed the webcam recording or video cam recording directly to YouTube.  Sometimes they are audio background feedback issues, other times they are just minor audio or visual issues like pauses when someone is searching for something or primarily when I see people demo’ing something and wait far to long for a website to load and you are just stuck there waiting in silence.

It is important if you do video demonstrations to review them and make video/audio edits where you can to improve the quality and professionalism of the recording.  This is especially true if you are trying to establish yourself as an authority in your field and building a reputation.

-Justin Germino

On Friday I will be flying out to Las Vegas on Veterans day in preparation for attending CA World starting Sunday the 13th through the 17th of November 2011.  Though I won’t be speaking this year (I presented at the last 2 CA World expo’s) I do make a point to attend as many sessions as possible from both a learning perspective on the software as well as the networking potential.

I actually am pretty terrified of public speaking and even though I have spoken twice I still get very uncomfortable.  I was considering finding a local place that allows for amateur poetry reads and just getting used to standing up in front of crowds by reading some of the hundreds of poems I have written on Wanderer Thoughts Poetry but I never can find the time and don’t know if any places exist within 50 miles of where I live honestly.

My goals are to become more comfortable with public speaking as I see it as part of a natural progression of where I am going with my primary career and even my secondary hobbies honestly.

-Justin Germino

It is amazing how ironic it is when driving down the street and actually seeing people carrying signs that say “Repent” or “The end is near” or “Give your life to Jesus”…etc.

I completely and utterly respect everyone’s beliefs and right to believe whatever they will, I just think that when it comes to blatant pandering or proselytizing one should at least be considerate of others. 

I often tell my wife “The crazy don’t realize their crazy” and it really is true.  There is far too much hatred, anger and intolerance in this world and I don’t mean for crooked companies, governments that overcommit and spend our tax dollars but for each other as human beings.

I would pay no more disrespect to another human being than I would to my own family, we are all a living sentient race on this Earth and deserve to be recognized as such.  The fact that genocide occurs in Africa, religious intolerance and hatred in the Middle East predominately but everywhere really is absurd.

The fact that even in America people would trash talk a presidential candidate because he is a Mormon is insane.  I don’t practice religion but I can damn well tell you that religion and churches have done good things for people and communities.

Sure, doesn’t matter if you believe in god or not.  I have seen Mormon communities help each other in times of need.  I have seen the way communities stick together and form that friendship of helping fellow brothers or sisters out.

You see this same community in all religions to some extent, but I just use Mormon as an example because in Arizona and particularly in Mesa and Casa Grande I have personally seen more Mormon communities lately.

There is no room for intolerance in a civilized world, humanity must be better than that.

-Justin Germino