Last night, I attended a networking mixer for the Southern Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce, of which I am a member. (I got my plaque last night, too, although I have no storefront in which to display it!) I brought a job-seeking friend with me for company and to hopefully help her get some leads for work. I am so glad that she came along, because it would have been completely insufferable otherwise.
I write because I’m not good talking to people, especially people I don’t know very well. And strangers? Forget it. I can’t walk up to someone I don’t know and strike up a conversation. I’ll talk to someone who approaches me, but I’m like a seventh grade girl at a middle school dance, standing at the punch bowl waiting for a boy to talk to me. I’m going to make a generalization and say that many of us who are writers – and many of us who are into social media – are much better off socializing through text than we are through speech. I know there are exceptions. I’ve met some of the exceptions. But going to the Type-A Mom Conference taught me that many bloggers are a lot like me… although a little bit of alcohol, an adult toy giveaway, and some Guitar Hero karaoke can loosen us up.
But at that Type-A Mom Conference, at Social Media Breakfast Tech Valley, and at the local mom networking nights I’ve been to (one of those is being held again tonight) – it’s been easier to talk to people because I have “met” at least a handful of the other attendees online. We’ve chatted. We’re not complete strangers. Saying, “Hi, I’m Christina Gayle on Twitter” or “I blog at Cutest Kid Ever” is quite the ice breaker. The usual response is, “Oh! I’m [insert Twitter or blog name here]! Nice to meet you in person!”
The Chamber of Commerce event last night had no such ice breaker. I didn’t know anyone other than my friend and one or two staff members from the Chamber. The event was held in a banquet room of a restaurant that was too small for the crowd. There weren’t enough chairs for everyone, so once people sat down, they didn’t move so as not to lose their seats. People conversed in packs, and it seemed as if they already knew each other anyways. There were so many people standing that you had to say “excuse me” at every step, even when up at the hors d’oeuvres tables. It was not conducive to meeting new people and, well, networking. At the networking mixer.
My friend and I ended up talking to the other people who had managed to grab seats at the same table as us, though none of us had skills that really benefited each other. I did talk to a guy near the bar who runs a local business journal and may suggest that people who send him press releases hire me to write them. There are a lot of bad press releases out there. (Don’t we all know it?) I talked with someone else who may want to send me some of his excess blogging work. My friend didn’t find anyone there who was hiring, but the former Chamber president gave her a lead and told her to use his name, so that was pretty awesome for her.
But mostly? It was a very painful experience. Much like that middle school dance, I was hanging out with my best friend, waiting for someone to notice me. She’s far more outgoing than me, so she did strike up a few conversations on her own, which was great. But me? It’s really not my thing. I wish they were all on Twitter so we’d know at least something about each other going in.
I’ve committed to doing the next Chamber mixer, though, since they forgot to call me up to give my “30 second pitch” when giving me my plaque. She found me at my table and gave me my plaque there. Everyone else had been called up to the podium. It’s probably just as well she didn’t, though, because it was too loud in there, and the microphone did not amplify throughout the whole room. Next time, everyone should be able to hear me, since I’m hoping it will be a more suitable location.
Tonight, I’m going to an event where I get to bring my son along for a pizza party and play time at Tumbling Tykes while the moms chat in the other room. I’ve met a few of these ladies previously, and several of us are Twitter friends. This will be a fun mixer.
To all the veterans who have served our country and helped to keep us safe so that we don’t have to live in fear – THANK YOU. Happy Veteran’s Day.
I wish I had thought to ask my grandpa about his time in the service when he was still alive. Now that he’s gone, I only have a few details from the documents my grandma kept. Leaving his name out, I’d like to share them with you. I’ve tried to find out more information about what his unit did, but there has been precious little I could find online. (All information I’ve found pertaining to the 40th Tank Battalion is from WWII.) What I do know is that he was deployed to Germany shortly after the end of the Korean War.
It’s bad enough when you get spam email trying to pitch dubious SEO services to you. It’s worse when the spammers visit the contact form on your Web site to make the pitch. I thought this was a legitimate request for my services via Phenomenal Content. Instead, this spam came from a Gmail address with no company name attached, although “Melodie” listed her URL as google.com:
We would like to get your website on first page of Google.All of our processes use the most ethical “white hat” Search Engine Optimization techniques that will not get your website banned or penalized.Please reply and I would be happy to send you a proposal.In order for us to respond to your request for information, please include your company’s website address (mandatory) and or phone number.
Let’s pick this apart a piece at a time.
- The spammer listed her company URL as google.com, trying to falsely lead me to believe she works for Google.
- I run a quality copywriting company and you don’t put a space in between your sentences? Fail.
- My Web site is already on the first page of Google for my company name. I bet that’s how they planned to “get” me on the first page of Google. I also happen to be on the first page for “content creation services.” Maybe that’s why they targeted me – if I didn’t know that, they could claim they did it for me.
- I love how “white hat” is in quotation marks.
- Won’t get me banned or penalized? After sending me spam, I hardly believe that.
- Wait, they used the contact form on my Web site, and they need me to remind them of my URL?
File this one under spam. Sadly, even a Captcha field can’t guard against humans who opt for manual spamming techniques.
I got all angry about Google’s Matt Cutts waxing poetic about Amazon Mechanical Turk as a form of sweatshop labor for linkbait. I shouldn’t be surprised that they’re not just interested in getting the written word on the cheap… they actual want professional artists to work for free! (Because Google really has to worry about their budget these days – they only reported a profit of nearly $1.5 billion in the first quarter of this year.)
[click to continue…]
Back in April, I wrote about how my mommy blog had been targeted by a comment spammer. Since then, Carla from My SEO Gal emailed me, and I need to share what she told me.
Carla apologized for spamming my site. In her defense, she didn’t realize it was spam until she followed the link to my blog post from her referrer log. I hope she doesn’t mind me quoting her email to me:
I truly never meant to spam your blog at all and I feel absolutely horrible and have definitely lost some sleep over it this past weekend… after careful consideration, I have removed the service from my site. That is not the type of reputation I want to portray to anyone nor do I want to offer a service to anyone that might be unethical or disrespectful to others.
I appreciate that she took the time to respond to me and to reconsider the service she was offering. This story has a happy ending. I only wish that the gazillion other people who are spamming blog posts would have the same revelation… but I think most of them know what they’re doing. And they just don’t care.
Thanks, Carla, for caring.
My political leanings are far to the left, and I am very passionate about workers’ right. I am disgusted when employers provide water for their farm workers because they legally have to, but then they intimidate those workers not to drink the water or take bathroom breaks. Farm workers die in the California heat every year due to exploitation by their employers. It’s despicable when employers lure foreign workers here with the promise of a good job, only to perform the bait and switch with low pay, no vacation, and simple theft of wages and tips. And don’t get me started about Wal-Mart’s “labor relations” – forcing employees to work off-the-clock, violating the FMLA, and not allowing their employees to take federally mandated breaks.
If one more person tells me that employment is voluntary and that if you don’t like the work you don’t have to do it – I’m going to scream.
[click to continue…]
If you’re recently self-employed like I am, you may have somehow forgotten that your quarterly estimated taxes are due tomorrow. And it’s not like when you file your tax return in April… this isn’t a postmark deadline. This is a “we need your check in our hand” deadline.
Oh snap.
If you’ve properly enrolled with the IRS to make your payments online at EFTPS.gov, you’re all set. (For your federal taxes, at least… You’re on your own for your state and local taxes.) Or if you’re like me, you enrolled with your EIN instead of your SSN, and you can’t make a 1040-ES payment as a business entity.
[insert angry noises here]
There’s still hope! You can pay your taxes RIGHT NOW at Pay1040.com, a service of H&R Block. I paid both my federal and my state taxes through their Web site. So they can’t penalize me for being late. [thumbs nose at IRS] I was charged a $3.95 convenience fee for both tax payments – the same amount for the hundreds I paid the state and the thousands I paid the IRS. It’s a better deal than you get when you e-file your tax return in April.
So pay your taxes NOW.
I have not been compensated for writing this post in any way, shape, or form. I am just very pleased that I could use this service to avoid getting a penalty for a late payment on my estimated taxes.
According to Matt Cutts of Google, Internet marketers should avoid the unethical practice of buying links by paying a few pennies to the folks who complete tasks via Amazon Mechanical Turk and scoring free links from their efforts. Let me rephrase that: Google says it’s wrong to pay for other people to link to your Web site, but it’s totally cool to score hundreds or thousands of links – not by paying a professional copywriter to create an awesome resource for you – but by spending about 20 bucks for a handful of people to perform cheap labor for you with Amazon Mechanical Turk. Don’t believe me? Watch this video.
[click to continue…]
