The Keeme Chronicles

I have been blogging since 2003 and podcasting since 04. I tried various ways to get my inner child out there for the world to love. Although I did not fail (because there was no money, not real money involved i.e. income generated), I feel like I did. I only feel this way because I am not generating millions of d/loads, hits, tweets etc. I have been successful in the quality of people I now call friends. There is no denying that I found, or they found me and we pretty much dig each other. Hell, they are the people most likely to be reading this post. THANK YOU GUYS!

I decided to take the advice of one of my amigos, Rob (from ChaosDigest), was cool enough to give me feedback on my silly questions. I had many of these from the moment I met him, from politics to social media. The latter is the latest and I have finally taken this to task. He said “get into social media dude!” This was so long ago I cannot tell you when he told me but I’m telling you what he told me. I get it now Rob, social media is going to be big/HUGE and had I listened back then I may have been a little more “successful” with my social skills had I attached them to the right outlets.

So, I did not buy Apple stock when they started out. As for Social Media bandwagoning, I am doing it now. Better late than later. Here is what I have done. The past few nights I revived my almsot non existent blog back to life (Keeme.com, where Haggis Ain’t Cake!). I also revived the fatguycooking site and should be uploading videos on a regular basis there too. I added Facebook pages, twitter and links to both sites. I read up on how to do it (I just googled “how do I add my site to FB” or “I want to link my blog to twitter”) and I got the answers. I followed the directions and added plugins (I run all this on WordPress hosted by godaddy) and VOILA, I tried the wordpress.com stuff but I felt limited. They may have changed how all that runs and the best part is it is free! If you don’t have a blog and are looking to put yourself out there with all the free stuff you can, blogspot, wordpress and others are the key. I like the fact I own a million domains and have the option to change it at anytime or add video/pics etc.

I am not done revamping my new Keeme enterprise, I have to start a newsletter (it helps with bringing in new and keeping the already connected readers/listeners). I am also looking to have people help out with a few roles around here in the near future as well. I cannot do all the heavy lifting and having someone to do show notes or even take on a scheduled column or segment can go a long way to getting more subscribers. The least of all this effort is having a better product to showcase.

Then comes the thing we all think about (we=social media ESCORTS); Monetization. It is the thing we all really want to do when it comes to creating a professional setup. If you are into this for “just blogging for the fun of it” then that is time you’re willing to invest and thats about it. If your thing is Video blogging or podcasting in any form, it is gonna take some money one way or another. I was listening to Today in Podcasting (a show for podcasters made by some of the better known casters). The thing that got me thinking was when they talked about a couple celebrity podcasters and how the d/load counts were in the millions. That does not equal millions of dollars (or maybe it could) but the fact there are so many d/loads advertisers would be willing to pay to have an ad run on that show. With the d/load on demand that podcasts offer it makes it even a sweeter deal for them. If I get my ducks in a row, I want to be able to present potential clients with demographics and all the information I glean from my followers to make me a hotter commodity. I don’t think it is a sellout, it is more like of a way to stay connected and bringing even more content to my audience. Money to pay for rent, no worry, I will put out more shows which will earn me more money.

In a perfect world huh.

For now, I want the best social media experience I can have. I want to have people come hang out on my site and feel the sense of community that was HUGE back when many of us started blogging/podcasting. I miss that and I missed the boat on making it better and profitable.

That is the gist of this post. If you are going to do any social media sharing, make sure it is your best. If you are not, maybe just add your family on FB and copy paste songs your listening to and posts no one gets “TO THE GUY AT WALGREENS! I COULDA LOVED YOU HAD YOU NOT TAKEN THE LAST BAG OF CHEETOS.” Been there done that.

Here is the list I started out with to get my social empire started

Create links to all social media (FB, MS, TWITTER etc).
Create landing pages on blogs and FB
Create a schedule for blog posts and do research for any products/websites/people etc
Get the word out to get bloggers/podcasters involved in projects and submit content/conduct interviews
create newsletters for each site/cast
Some references I used to get my stuff going

Today in podcasting

For newsletters and reasons for having one
Problogger

Creating a FB page
Facebook

Free blogs
WordPress
Blogger

Feedburner (great for showing stats and getting the rss out there!)GoDaddy (for buying and hosting a website)

Godaddy (domains and hosting on your own)