Nothing Happens by Itself
Copyright © 2021 Karl W. Palachuk
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There are many ways to give advice or share information. Some of them are quite declarative: This is the way. The only way. The right way. The just and noble way. |
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I try to be a little more humble than that. I try to never say that my way is the only way. Instead, I explain what I do and how I do it. I present my SOPs and checklists. And then I say, "But you probably don't live in my city, have my employees and my clients. So you need take this information and fine-tune it for your business.
As I'm preparing to teach classes on social media, I am finding a lot of "best practices" that all sound like people simply repeating advice they heard from someone else.
In fact, I went back and edited this memo Sunday after talking to a friend who was worried about some "guru level" advice he'd received. His newsletter has an outstanding open rate and click-through rate. But he was worried that his newsletter had too many outbound links.
One oft-repeated piece of advice is to limit your newsletter to only a few links to your own web site. But, as you know from this newsletter, you can make exceptions to that "rule."
But when you realize that what you are doing for your audience works, it's okay to ignore advice.
Here's another example: I have a friend and advisor who is constantly telling me to get off Constant Contact and use another method for sending my newsletters.
The basic argument is: There is a certain "penalty" for using a service known to be used for email campaigns. Therefore, many blocklists will block all email or mark it as spam.
The counter argument is: I use a service that people know enforces anti-spam restrictions. For example, if someone removes themselves from this newsletter, I cannot add them back.
But the important thing is: I have amazing open rates (25-50%, depending on the topic) and great click-through rate (7%). The industry average click-through rate is 2%. So, the bottom line for me is that hassling with another system is a bit like adding pin stripes to a race car. It's a change, but it's not really going to improve performance.
The "general" advice I violate in this newsletter includes: 1) It is long. Some say very long. 2) It repeats information - the calendar of events - every week. 3) It has lots and lots of links to outside sites. 4) I never change the subject line, except for the date.
But who cares? About 2,500 people open this email every week. Several people have told me that they set aside this email until they can get to it. People send me emails, so I know they're actually reading.
And here's the big, big, big reason I know I've stumbled onto something that works: When announce something in this email, I get traffic. That's the measure of my success. How well does it drive traffic to web site, classes, webinars, vendor events, etc.? The answer is: Very Well Indeed.
My blog is similar. Common wisdom is to keep blogs short. But my posts are often very long. The original Managed Service in a Month book was based on eight blog posts. So, who cares what the gurus say?
I have repeated this advice many times in many places: Do business the way you want to do business, then go find people who want to do business your way. In other words, You Be You!
Remember, in social media or anything else, there are people who simply won't do business with you or consume the information you put out in the world. That's okay. I estimate that seven billion people never read this newsletter. But I don't need seven billion. I've got my ten thousand, and a healthy bunch of them make this newsletter succeed at what I'm trying to do.
Plus - Running your business your way is a lot more relaxing than trying to always play someone else's game.
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Manifesto Watch
Heads up. I am working on a bit of a manifesto for our industry. On one hand, we have more opportunities for success than at any time in history. On the other hand, we also face greater challenges than ever before.
The SMB IT community (as I have always called it) has evolved tremendously in the last two decades. That's about the time when we started to coalesce as a self-aware industry. I remember when Arnie Belini was alone in a room as the only vendor in the vendor hall at SMB Nation. Two years ago ConnectWise was purchased for $1.5 Billion. In many ways, those are the book ends of the maturity of our industry.
Today we are several years into a mergers-and-acquisition frenzy that is making a lot of people rich but doing no good for end users or the quality of technical support. And, in fact, it's doing some damage to the industry as a whole.
And as legitimate computer users all over the globe are under unprecedented ransomware attacks from truly evil actors, we are coming under greater and greater scrutiny from legislators and regulators. Because of all that, insurance premiums are going through the roof.
The time is right for the SMB IT community to take control of our destiny with a big-picture view of what we want to be and how we're going to get there.
I certainly don't have all the answers. But I want to begin the discussion.
Calendar Tweak
Michael Siggins over at ChannelPro corrected my CP listings. Not sure why no one else noticed. I had the dates for Raleigh and Atlanta reversed. The Raleigh ChannelPro Summit is October 6th. Atlanta is July 8th.
And, as you can imagine, the folks at ChannelPro are VERY excited about kicking off live events again in Dallas in a couple weeks!
ASCII "went live" last week with great success (and appropriate fanfare).
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Final note: We already have a bunch of people signed up for the new Social Media Course. Join us!
Thanks for reading my random thoughts.
Have a great week.
-- Karl W. Palachuk
:-)
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Optimize Your Social Media
Marketing and Advertising
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All New Class for 2021!
Sign up today.
Optimize Your Social Media Marketing and Advertising
Course 5W23
Taught By: Karl W. Palachuk
Five Tuesdays
- All classes start a 9:00 AM Pacific
Part of the "Social Media Super-Charge" Series for Small Business
This course covers the key elements of designing, planning, and executing a modern social media strategy in the Small Business environment. We cover the use of social media for both marketing and sales.
Most small businesses "use" social media, but don't really have a strategy for using social media effectively. That strategy starts with understanding the strengths and weaknesses of various platforms. And it culminates with a unified approach to branding and how your company presents itself across a variety of platforms.
This course starts with a business-focused overview of social media marketing and sales. We discuss taking control of your brand and managing how you show up on the web. We present a strategy for creating and managing your overall branding across all social media. Finally, we do a deep-dive into automating and managing your social media presence going forward.
This course is taught by Karl W. Palachuk, a social media influencer who "touches" over one million people per month. Karl has been using these social media for more than ten years, and has demonstrated mastery across all of the major social media that small businesses need to be successful.
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Weekly Agenda
Week One - Introduction, Overview. Marketing vs. Sales
- The Plan of The Course
- Take-Aways And Goal-Setting
- What is Marketing?
- What is Sales?
- Developing a Funnel System
- Schedules – Manual and Automated
- Which Social Media are Best for You?
Week Two - Google, Apple, SEO, And Managing Your Company's Meta Data
- Meta Data Basics
- Taking “Control” Of Your Google, Apple, and Other Meta Data
- SEO Checklist
- Data Maintenance
- Organizing and Tracking Meta Data
- Meta Data in the Big Strategy
- Choosing Social Media platforms
Week Three - Graphics Overview And Tools Management
- Graphics Overview
- Branding Basics
- A Storage Strategy
- Updates, Versions
- Graphics in the Big Strategy
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Week Four - Automating Your Social Media Marketing
- The Benefits of Automation
- Pacing – Creation and Publishing
- Popular Tools
- Free vs. Paid
- Focus on Your Prime Social Medium
- Strategy, Planning, and Tracking
- Hiring/Outsourcing Assistance
- Automating Social Media in the Big Strategy
Week Five - When to Pay for Advertising and Tools
- Free - A Great Place to Start, and Often the Most Expensive Option
- Comparing Tools, Features, and Prices
- Start Small – Don’t Buy Everything You Find
- Get the Most from as Few Tools as Possible
- Avoid Trying to Do Everything and Measure Everything
- Measuring Your Success
- Social Blade
- Social Bluebook
- TubeBuddy
- HootSuite, etc.
- Paid Tools in the Big Strategy
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Only $299 per student
Delivered by Karl W. Palachuk
Karl W. Palachuk, blogger and author of the most popular books on managed services.
Includes five weeks of webinars with related handouts, assignments, and "office hours" with the instructor. All classes are recorded for download. All classes include suggested "homework" that is totally action-focused and intended to move your company's marketing forward.
This course is intended for business owners and managers. It is particularly useful for Sales Managers and Marketing Managers.
A Few Details . . .
- Each course will be five one-hour Zoom webinars
- There will be handouts and "homework" assignments
- Class webinars will be recorded and made available to paid attendees only.
- All calls start at 9:00 AM Pacific Time
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All the Resources That Are Fit to Print |
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Recent Blog Posts, Podcasts, and Videos |
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Small Biz Thoughts Blog:
Relax Focus Succeed:
SMB Community Podcast - New episodes drop every Thursday
The Killing IT Podcast - New episodes drop every Tuesday
The Cheeky Sales Coach Podcast / Video - New episodes drop every Wednesday
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SOP: IP Address Allocation |
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Selected Recent Videos and Webinars:
Note: We started auto-posting the podcasts to YouTube. Those are not listed here as YouTube Videos since they're listed under the podcasts above.
A quick guide to my Playlists:
- Total: More than 730 videos on the Small Biz Thoughts channel
- 275+ SOP videos
- 40+ Relax Focus Success videos
Plus . . .
- Training, Courses, Seminars on Managed Services
- Product Reviews
- and more
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Small Biz Thoughts Community News
SmallBizThoughts.org
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FREE Members-Only DNS Training Thursday |
Of course we have a Community meeting every Thursday. And we've had some really great meetings the last few weeks! Thank you all for that.
But this week we have even more. After our 9AM Pacific call, we are having a special members-only DNS Training. See the What's New section in the Community to register.
Plan on attending - or downloading after the recording is posted.
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And . . . the June News will be out Friday.
Keep your eyes open for that.
The New Ecommerce program is progressing.
Kara is working hard to get this to launch. Our Working group is meeting this week. If all goes well, we'll launch in June.
This program is only available to SBT Community members.
Classes have been super popular!
Remember: Members get huge discounts on classes. And, as a result, attendance is way up. Remember, you save way more than the cost of membership if you take advantage of this discount.
. . .
See you Thursday at 9AM Pacific time! The link is at the top of your Community Dashboard.
If you need something, please post a question in a forum or email Kara (your Community Manager) or me.
:-)
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When is a warranty not a warranty?
When it comes from a car dealership.
My car battery died. I blame Covid. Anyway, as I put it on the charger overnight, I was pleased to see that it has a 100 Month Warranty!
Normally, I don't get things like this at the dealer because they charge too much. But since my car is barely 60 months old, I took it to the dealer.
Turns out, the warranty is only good for the original owner (I bought my car when it was one year old). AND it's pro-rated. So for 64 of those 100 months, you don't get a free replacement battery. AND labor's not included.
Weighing the hassle factor, I went ahead and let the dealership rip me off.
Some lessons in life you just have to keep learning over and over until they stick.
:-)
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What's Here?
This calendar lists two kinds of things: LIVE in-person events from any organization that focuses on the SMB consulting community; and MY events, whether live, webinar, etc.
If you have live events on your calendar that may be useful to others in the SMB Community, please let us know. We'd be happy to list them.
Of course: Everything here is subject to change based on Covid. Click the links for the latest details. Please send updates so we can post them.
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May
Channel Strong Tour
May 24
Cleveland, OH
More Info: https://mspinitiative.com/channel-strong/
Channel Strong Tour
May 25
Pittsburgh, PA
Channel Strong Tour
May 26
Columbus, OH
Channel Strong Tour
May 27
Cincinnati, OH
Channel Strong Tour
May 28
Indianapolis, IN
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June
ChannelPro SMB Forum - Hybrid Event - But you can attend LIVE!
June 9, 2021
Dallas, Tx
ASCII Success Summit
June 16 & 17
Cincinnati, OH
IT Nation Secure
June 21-23
Orlando, FL
James Kernan's Millionaire Mastermind Event
Omaha, NE
June 24-25th
Channel Sec Europe
June 24th
London
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July
ChannelPro SMB Forum - Live Event
July 8, 2021
Atlanta, GA
ASCII Success Summit
July 21 & 22
Chicago, IL
Retail NOW 2021
July 25-27
Nashville, TN
Black Hat USA
July 31-August 5
Las Vegas, NV
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August
IT Nation (Connectwise) Evolve Peer Groups
August 2-6
Englewood, CO
Defcon 29
August 5-8
Las Vegas, NV
SMB Roadshow - Manchester, UK
August 10th
Tentative . . . but count on it!
More info: https://www.smbroadshow.com
Join me Live!
SMB Roadshow - Cardiff, UK
August 12th
Tentative . . . but count on it!
More info: https://www.smbroadshow.com
Join me Live!
SMB Roadshow - London, UK
August 17th
Tentative . . . but count on it!
More info: https://www.smbroadshow.com
Join me Live!
ASCII Success Summit
August 18 & 19
Raleigh, NC
IT By Design Build IT LIVE 2021
Aug 30 - Sept 1
Jersey City, NJ
IT Nation (Connectwise) Evolve Peer Groups
Aug 30 - Sept 1
Gold Coast, Aus
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September
CEDIA Expo
Sept 1-3
Indianapolis, IN
ChannelPro SMB Forum - Live Event
Sept 2, 2021
Boston, MA
SMB Roadshow - Vancouver
Sept 7th
Join me Live!
SMB Roadshow - Toronto
Sept 9th
Join me Live!
SMB Roadshow - Montreal
Sept 14th
Join me Live!
Managed Services Summit Live
Sept 15th
London
SMB Roadshow - Providence, RI
Sept. 16th
More info: https://www.smbroadshow.com
Join me Live!
Channel Live
Sept 21-22
Birmingham, UK
ASCII Success Summit
September 22 & 23
NY / NJ area
James Kernan's Millionaire Mastermind Event
San Diego, CA
Sept 23-24th
IT Partners
Sept. 29-30
Disneyland, Paris
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October
ChannelPro SMB Forum - Live Event
Oct 6, 2021
Raleigh, NC
DTX 2021 (Digital Transformation)
Oct. 6-7
London, UK
DattoCon 2021
Oct 11-13
Seattle, WA
SMB IT Professionals National Conference - Australia
Oct 15-16
Surfer's Paradise
Join me Live. I'm going to do my best to be there!
Sherweb Accelerate
Oct 18-20
Hollywood, FL
More Info: https://info.sherweb.com/accelerate.html
Kaseya Connect IT
Oct 19-22
Las Vegas
ASCII Success Summit
October 27 & 28
Orlando, FL
I'm hoping there's a trip to the Gold Coast in my future. Stay tuned.
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November
Channel Partners Evolution
Nov. 1-4
Las Vegas, NV
Managed Services Summit Live
November 2nd
Amsterdam
ASCII Success Summit
November 3 & 4
Houston, TX
IT Nation (Connectwise) Evolve Peer Groups
November 15-19
Sydney, Aus
Managed Services Summit North
November 16th
Manchester, UK
ChannelPro SMB Forum - Live Event
Nov 16, 2021
Los Angeles, CA
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December
ASCII Success Summit
Orange County, CA - December 8 & 9
James Kernan's Millionaire Mastermind Event
Dallas, TX
Dec 9-10th
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If you know of in-person events we should list, please let us know.
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January
Send us your updates!
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February
Send us your updates!
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March
Cloud Expo Europe
March 2-3, 2022
London, UK
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April
Send us your updates!
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May
Send us your updates!
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June
Send us your updates!
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Note: If you know of any in-person event for SMB Consultants, please send info to karlp@greatlittlebook.com. |
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Small Biz Thoughts is a subsidiary of Great Little Book Publishing Co., Inc. |
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