No Twitter Please

Can someone please tell me what a micro blog actually does to help build equity in a brand? Can anyone explain why we all care so much about who is using the bathroom at what given time, beyond our own perverse voyeuristic reasons, such as killing time at a job we don’t like much to begin with? To be clear, I have nothing against Twitter, and all the buzz around it as a innovative Web app. Twitter as a technology is very interesting to say the least, but I believe it not only does not help you make money online, it might impair your chances if used in certain ways.

Twitter as I understand it works like an instant message application with a twist of emailing and text messaging for good measure. The fundamental problem with such a blended and abbreviated mode of communication is that it is too short to accomplish anything worth communicating when it comes to your business, yet too long to be ignored. If you are attempting to build a brand, does it really help to share with your customers that you had tacos for lunch?
Would I be more apt to buy something from Trump or Diddy if I read their Twitters and found out either one of them just rented Indiana Jones on DVD? The answer is a resounding no. What could someone write on Twitter that would get me to buy something from them more so than if it were written in an email or on a Web site?

All this deep thinking begs the question, what, in a business / internet marketing sense of the word, does Twitter really do to help build a brand? This is a question I’ve struggled with as I drag my digital feet in signing up for such services. I’ve already deactivated my Facebook account for reasons that should be reserved for another post. A question I can answer about Twitter is this, what can Twitter do to ruin a brand? It can expose all those human sides of people that make their Brands less elite, less prestigious, and in some cases offensive to those that value it. Just heard a funny joke about people that live in California? Don’t share the joke on Twitter unless you want to offend and possible lose all your California based customers that happen to read it. Control is in the most valuable currency of the information age, and I for one like to have as much of it as I can when it comes to building a brand online.

New Internet Marketing Book Finished!

I just finished the manuscript for my new internet marketing book called Strange Business. It's so weird the way it turned out, I had envisioned it being 45k words, and since I write my books chapter by chapter in unique MS Word files to keep things simple, I had no clue how long it would be when I put it all together. Sure enough, it was 44,733 words long. How crazy is that? I was almost spot on to where I wanted it to be.

After 3 rounds of editing I'm sure it'll balloon to around 50k words, which isn't that bad at all, should be around 200 pages or so when it hits shelves this spring. I should have the e-book up and running within a month or so.

Things seem to get easier when you do them over and over again, at least it seems that way when it comes to writing and publishing a book.

Another IM Rockstar Tee Sighting

There has been yet another IM Rockstar t-shirt sighting online. This guy with obvious good taste and business savvy was rocking my shirt this weekend on his blog. Enkay is his name, and he runs one of the top 100 make money online blogs on the net as ranked by 45n5.com.

Of course if you want your own IM Rockstar tee all you got to do is click HERE. It's certainly a conversation starter.

When No Football Is on TV Saturday

So what in the world can you do when no football is on TV for the better part of Saturday morning and afternoon? Build a Web site for the heck of it!

I spent a bit today grabbing the domain ChowGermanShepherd.com which I was shocked was still available, and then building out a basic site using Wordpress. I think this site will rank #1 for the term in about a week from now, so when anyone wants to see what a Chow German Shepherd looks like, they'll see my dogs!

As many of you know I'm a dog lover, some have called me a dog nut! I love dogs, and have 4 right now, and seriously if I lived on a ranch like I want to, I'd have 10 or more! My lawn guy has 18 Beagles, but that is for another blog post.

My two rescue dogs are Chow German Shepherd mixes, at least that is what we think they are. Since I've had a lot of time to hang out around the house, I'm really loving on my dogs extra these days. These two really hit the jackpot when they were rescued, I have nothing else to do these days but hang with my pups, and maybe build them a Web site or two!

I put AdSense on the site so I could appropriately track search traffic, I wonder, is there anyone else searching for this rare mix? Only time will tell!