But unfortunately, it was no match for whatever the virus is that I caught and am still fighting against Actually, my symptoms have changed and shifted: my throat and chest are not so sore but I still have a cough … though it’s different to the way it was before. Anyway, on the grounds that generally speaking I am lucky enough to be fit and healthy, I feel as if I ought to be doing better. Truth is though that whatever it is, this bug continues to suck my energy.

So every now and then, I have to take time out and have a breather. Well, more often than not, a little nap. Let’s face it, at the moment, I’d be a gold medal contender at the Sleep Olympics ! BUT … I have to say that whilst I have been suffering like this, I have been able to do some good things.

For example, I have been able to do some research on twitter, something that I have been long overdue in getting to grips with. I am steadily building my following and hope to break through the four digit barrier in the next couple of weeks. I am also looking in to a number of different tools to use with it, although IMHO, this is dangerous territory.

Why ? Because there are so many of them ! In some ways, it’s very possible to get lost down the rabbit hole investigating tools for use with twitter in the same way that it is when you’re actually using twitter manually. However, I have found one or two ideas which I think will prove useful.

I read somewhere recently that twitter has now gone past “The Threshold” where it’s a geeky, nerdy thing and that it’s now “Mainstream” … whatever that means exactly ! Whatever, it passed 50 million unique users this summer and growth continues at a seemingly exponential rate. I guess this puts quite a strain on the IT infrastructure. My own subjective experience is that at busy times, it just drops offline for very short periods. It usually comes back pretty quickly, but it must be something of a nightmare for their IT guys.

We’ve also seen Facebook announcing what look to me like “me too !” features, adopting the @name nomenclature as well. In terms of numbers, I understand that Facebook is still light years ahead of twitter. But, a recent report on brandrepublic.com suggested that it’s actually serving two increasingly distinct audiences. The report quotes Nielsen as saying that only 16% of twitter’s users are under 25.  It goes on to say …

According to one theory, teens are more interested in Facebook than Twitter because their lives tend to revolve around their friends and Facebook is more oriented around friend groups.

Twitter however is better for broadcasting comment, ideas or products to the outside world, to people users have never met.

Evan Williams, Twitter’s co-founder and chief executive, said: “Many people use [Twitter] for professional purposes — keeping connected with industry contacts and following news.

“Because it’s a one-to-many network and most of the content is public, it works for this better than a social network that’s optimized for friend communication.”

Source: brandrepublic.com, 26 August 2009

Interesting, no ?

Meanwhile, back in the real world (whatever that is !), my researches have caused the seed of an idea to germinate. It combines the use of twitter with some of the ideas taught by my internet marketing mentor, Alex Jeffreys. As best I can at the moment, I am looking in to setting up a little trial and when I do, I’ll let you know about it.

Final word today: I will be dosing myself with all the necessary to allow me to stay up and listen to my co-student Rob Canyon give a totally unique talk to a strictly limited number of people. The title of the talk is How I Made $3,758 In 21 Days Online With My Double Click Blueprint Strategy. I know that Rob is a great marketer some I am signed up already.

The thing is that for tonight only, he will explain this strategy for free ! After that, he’ll be charging several hundred dollars for people to discover his secrets. Time is tight now and there’s a limit of 200 people for tonight’s webinar, so I can offer no guarantees as to whether you’ll get in. But if you have a chance, click on that link and follow Rob’s instructions. Hope to see you there.

As it turned out it was NOT easy to do ! I could do it even better, but I have lived, breathed and slept this for the last few days and I have been neglecting the rest of my life (including my other marketing activities) trying to finish it. But even if it was late, I was determined to finish it anyway. I should say that the first character you see is not really me. Various technical difficulties prevented me filming myself … that’s what forced this approach. And in case anybody is in any doubt, it’s NOT Alex either … but you have to watch it to understand why

PS:  if anybody is interested in how it was done, leave a comment and I will post a little on the technicalities.

Gary has resurrected an idea that he tried out for the 1.0 students, a game (?) of what I shall call “blog tag”. You can read all about it here. Anyway, rog-blog.com Blog Of The Day Award winner, Heidi Passey has “tagged” me, so now I have to reveal all ! Deep breath – in no particular order … here goes !

1. I lived in Scotland for 8 years when I was a teenager. I never picked up an accent, but I will occasionally come out with one or two Scottish idioms in my speech.

2. Like Gary, I can’t stand beetroot ! Which is odd, because my mother told me that when I was a babe, I would gorge myself on cheese and beetroot sandwiches. Euch !

3. Again whilst younger, my mother would lift me up to the kitchen cupboard and ask what I wanted for supper. Apparently, I would point at the Marmite jar and say “shammydid”. It took my parents months to work out that what I was asking for was a Marmite sandwich ! (Aussies will recognise Marmite as the nearest thing to Vegemite, which I think is slightly different. If you have no idea what I am on about, check out these links: Marmite and Vegemite.)

4. I can do the waltz, the slow foxtrot, the quickstep, the tango and the Viennese Waltz (which is different than the ordinary waltz – much faster, a little more “dangerous” !). On the latin side, I can do the cha-cha-cha, the rumba, the samba and the jive. I also dance salsa and have previously studied two styles of tango argentino (which is quite different from “ballroom” tango) and the mambo.

Those of us that have been dancing from w-a-y back felt very smug a few years ago when it suddenly became cool to be able to dance following the success of Strictly Come Dancing and Dancing With The Stars. But unlike them, we don’t dress up with sequins and split to the navel shirts. Everybody should learn to dance. Highly recommended.

5. I like tuneful music. That can cover everything from classical to pop via jazz to folk with a number of stops in between. If you love music, it definitely enhances your love of dancing too !

6. I sung in the choir at school and we were broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland. But I’m afraid that my singing voice is pretty poor these days

7. I would like to learn to play the bass guitar.

8. I have logged more time in the air at supersonic speed than most pilots in the Royal Air Force. At least, this is what I was told when I was a passenger on one of the charter flights that used to be run on Concorde before she was taken out of service. I don’t know whether that’s true, but I can tell you that the sense of acceleration when we took off is unlike anything I have ever experienced ! They told us that we’d be accelerating from 0 to about 240mph in less than 30 seconds. Our 90 minute flight from London’s Heathorw airport went out over the Bay Of Biscay before heading to Paris. We returned home next day on a Boeing 737. By comparison, going down the runway in that felt like travelling behind a horse and cart !

9. I have flown over the Grand Canyon in both a jet plane and a helicopter. Wow !

10. I was (still am pretty much) sports mad as a youngster. For those that don’t know the wonderful subtleties of the game of cricket, this will mean nothing. But at the age of 11, I took a wicket with my first ball in competitive cricket (for my school side). It was a full toss and the batter smashed it past me – I took the catch, throwing myself full length to my left like a soccer goalie. The batter couldn’t believe it ! (Neither could I !) My bowling analysis that day: 5 overs, 4 maidens, 3 wickets for 2 runs.

11. I carried on playing cricket in Scotland – yes, there is a hard core of very keen cricketers in Scotland ! My single biggest sporting claim to fame: I took a run from the bowling of the man who (I was told) had previously held the world record for achieving the highest score in first class cricket. Those in the know will probably be able to guess who this was, though I won’t name him in case what I was told was wrong. And besides which, it would then not be much of a claim to fame !

12. In my last year at school, I won the prize for French. But it was more than 20 years before I actually visited France.

13. I have twice appeared on stage in improvised comedy shows before paying customers. I learned how to do this on workshops run by a fantastic little company in London called The Spontaneity Shop. It’s NOT stand-up – the nearest thing that most people are familiar with is the old Whose Line Is It Anyway ? tv shows. I am delighted to see these being rerun in the UK on Dave.

14. I used to take, process and print my own black and white photographs, “analogue style” ! That’s to say, in a dark room with an enlarger and trays of developer, “stop” and “fixer”. Digital technology makes it all too easy these days !

15. I am a Friend of Shakespeare At The Tobacco Factory, the highly acclaimed theatre company based in what was (believe it or not) a tobacco factory in Bristol. Now in its 10th year, it has survived more than one funding crisis to go on and sell out for almost every performance in recent years. It regularly garners huge critical acclaim for its minimalistic productions, performed “in the round” in the Tobacco Factory’s unique space. Last year, the world famous polymath, Sir Jonathan Miller directed a fantastic performance of Hamlet. Unmissable.

16. Favourite musical artistes ? Mike Oldfield and Keith Emerson (of Emerson, Lake & Palmer).

17. When I first started in IT, I was a programmer. We wrote our COBOL program instructions down in pencil on sheets of paper that were transferred on to 80 column punched cards that were fed in to the “beast”, a huge mainframe computer that occupied all of the ground floor of our building.  “Personal Computers” had still not been invented at this point (1980), but now even your mobile phone could probably out-perform it. We have come a l-o-n-g way since then !

18. I know for a fact that programs that I wrote more than 20 years ago are still in daily use today.

19. When I was at school in Scotland, I was asked if I wanted to learn to play a musical instrument. Having struggled with the piano in earlier years, for some reason, I was keen on learning to play the clarinet. On asking for this, I was told that there were no clarinets left in the school orchestra. “But,” they said, “You can learn the viola if you like … it’s just like the clarinet !” The lessons lasted for a year. It’s not like the clarinet at all !

20. I returned to the piano in later life and also took lessons on the Spanish Guitar – a beautiful but infuriating instrument. Not like the clarinet either !

21. My first foreign trip was to Portugal. I wanted some stamps to put on post cards (remember them ?) to send home. I memorised the Portuguese for “Please can I have four stamps to send post cards to England ?” and walked in to the store. The lady behind the counter looked me up and down as I entered and said “Yes, can I help you ?”

22. One of my all time heroes: Spike Milligan. He used to list himself in his scripts as “Spike Milligna, the well-known typing error” ! He is the so-called “father of alternative comedy” because he inspired the members of Monty Python and others too numerous to mention. Retrospectives have shown that in many respects, he was clearly not a balanced individual, but he was an inspired comic and is sadly missed.

23. Last summer, I emerged from a greetings card store near my home in Bristol, only to be confronted by John Cleese, one of the members of Monty Python’s Flying Circus who went on to become an international star of TV and movies. He was back in town to speak to his alma mater, Clifton College, and to visit the neighbouring Bristol Zoo, where he fell in love (as it were) with the lemurs when he visited as a schoolboy. I was so taken aback, I couldn’t think of anything to say. Probably just as well … he had his “Basil Fawlty” look on.

24. Current favourite tipple: Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Beer drinkers in the UK generally take a dim view of American beers, but many smaller US brewers produce excellent stuff. However, I discovered SNPA a few years ago when my local supermarkert started selling it. Best with a curry. Try it – you may like it !

25. Like Garry, I love the English language. I don’t really know the proper syntax most of the time, but I do try to write so that it sounds “proper” I know that language shifts and changes, and I like that, but a lot of the mangling of language offends my sense of aesthetics … in other words, it just sounds naff !

For example, I get frustrated when radio and TV presenters use singular verbs with plural nouns and vice versa. They should know better ! For example, today I heard somebody say, “There is traffic problems south of London”. You mean “There are traffic problems south of London”. Grrrr ! A grammar-policeman would say “problems” is clearly plural so you use “are” not “is”. And that’s true, but for me, it just sounds so ugly and that’s the worse offence. My old English teacher must finally have stopped turning in his grave now that I am starting to pick others up on proper grammar. Shame it’s from the BBC. Rant over.

26. I would love to learn how to ride a horse !

27. I like to over-deliver.

OK, I am tagging:

• Gil Dotan
• Roger Neumann
• Shirley Cheung
• Iain Buchanan
• Paul Lear

Is it really almost a week since I last blogged ? And when I did, was that post on the importance of blogging ? LOL !

Well, yes. And even though I feel a little guilty about that, on reflection, I feel that I shouldn’t be too hard on myself. Because in the time since I last posted, I have been busy.

The thing that has taken most of my time is a project that I really still really can’t talk about as it is some way from fruition. But one that I can describe is the addition of a new product to my portfolio.

This is another product from Alex Jeffreys, one that he has kindly made available to people like me, students on his Marketing With Alex 2.0 training programme.

It’s another of his fantastic free reports, Post Launch Profits Secrets.

I could go on at great length about why you should get your own copy at absolutely no cost right now, but it would be easier to let the man himself tell you more about it.

You can find out more here.

As the title of this post suggests, in marketing circles Rich is often known as The Guru’s Guru. That’s because he has “made” more millionaires than any other coach. Marketers that are already very successful pay him not 4-figure, but 5-figure sums to go on his training programmes.

That’s why my internet marketing coach, Alex Jeffreys, paid an eye-watering sum to be coached by Rich. And I know that Alex assigns huge credit to Rich for his own spectacular success over the last couple of years.

So it was a stunning surprise to find that Alex had arranged a bonus webinar with Rich for his Marketing With Alex 2.0 training programme students. For me, Alex didn’t need to big this up because I was already aware of Rich and his status within the marketing community. I knew that this was the kind of session that you just don’t normally get the chance to hear unless you part with BIG bucks. I knew it would be good. But even I was surprised !

What struck me about Rich was that he is very, very focussed. He tells you what he’s gonna tell you, then he tells you. His mind is so sharp and incisive and he brings such huge experience to the table. What’s more, as the King of Over-Delivery, he stayed on the call for around two and a half hours, way beyond the allotted time.

So BIG thanks to Rich for his time, expertise and skill and a HUGE thank you to Alex for pulling off this coup. Oh, and one last piece of advice …

If you ever get the chance to listen to, read or watch Rich Scheferen, grab it as quickly as you can ! You won’t be disappointed.

I’d like to thank everybody that supported Blog Of The Day. It was an experience that taught me a lot and I aim to apply what I have learned in my blogging in the future. I should also add that there were some great blogs that I couldn’t include in the awards, simply because there were not enough days !

Finally, two things: first, I started out with the intention of making occasional awards for Commendable Comments … but I just didn’t have the time to read all the comments for all of the posts on all of the blogs I looked at. Sorry folks.

Secondly, I will continue The rog-blog.com Blog Awards in some format in the future. I haven’t dcided quite how, but it won’t be daily. More likely weekly or monthly. Watch this space for more news !

So here it is: a review of the winners followed by the revelation of the winner, The Blog Of Blogs. My congratulations to the winner !

The Bad News is that I am still between a rock and a hard place because there are several contenders for that last place ! So, if you didn’t make it, I’m sorry … I had to pick one and just one today. Let me tell you about it, because I think that it has an important message for us all.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have tried to look at as many blogs as I can, as often as I could manage. Today’s winner followed the same path as quite a few others: an initial struggle to overcome technical problems followed by a change in look and feel, then steady improvement.

But looking at it today, I found a post which touched and inspired me. I won’t say more because you will have your own reaction to it when you read it.

I should also say that after starting to write this post, I wondered if some people might consider my drawing attention to it like this to be “bad form”, that what it describes is too personal to be trivialised by associating it with my little contest.

If you feel like that, I’m sorry, I don’t. I assume that the story was posted so that readers can learn from it. If that’s so, then I want to draw even more people’s attention to it. Please read it. I’d ask you to consider how it affects you and (more importantly perhaps), what you will do differently because of that … not just in terms of our coaching and your business, but also in terms of your life.

So the final Blog Of The Day Award goes to Huddson Lee for www.EnjoyMarketingOnline.com. (An appropriate domain name too.)

Congratulations Huddson – your Blog Of The Day badge may be little consolation in the circumstances, but thanks for sharing your story with us.

PS: As promised, I will announce the overall winner of the title Blog Of Blogs after Alex’s traffic competition ends. But I have a busy day tomorrow, so it will probably be Sunday. Watch this space.

But today’s winner is somebody that I just can’t leave out. For a long time now, he’s been producing some really good content on his blog, both text and video. He’s been innovative too: for example, he’s run one competition already and has another planned for later this month. Plus, he has just started a beta video marketing site, that that looks like an interesting idea.

This guy would be another in the hypothetical “Where the Heck Does He Find The Time ?” category of my awards.

I say this because he’s doing most of this whilst working away from home. This is something that I used to do and I know that it can take an awful lot out of you. I used to wake up in the mornings and look to see which side of the bed my alarm clock was on – that was what told me where I was ! But our winner today seems to be doing all of this whilst working full time in a foreign country. Quite how he’s doing this amazes me !

Apart from his own videos, he’s also found one or two really cracking videos that really address some of the issues that should be at the forefront of our minds as entrepreneurs and marketers. For example, I particularly like the one about the cab driver

So for sheer all round energy, innovation and versatility, today’s winner has got to be Iain Buchanan for www.iainbuchanan.me.

Congratulations Iain, your Blog Of The Day badge will be on its way  to you very soon

Update: whoops ! I forgot to update The Roll Of Honour – now corrected !

Although today’s winner is one of the last to pick up his award, the first time I noted him was some time ago, about 10 days before Alex Jeffreys’ traffic competition even started. He posted a video to his blog about social media marketing. I don’t think he’d mind if I call it a rant !

But it was a controlled rant, it brilliantly summarised the way that a lot of us feel about what’s going on at lots of social media sites, particularly twitter. In many ways, I’m still getting to grips with twitter and I’m kind of having a love-hate relationship with it. I can really see the power of how to reach lots of people that you want to build a relationship with. But like today’s winner, I can also see that it has huge scope for ticking people off with floods of tweets about get rich quick “opportunities”.

So even before Alex’s contest started, I knew this was a guy to watch. And since then, I’ve seen more good content going on to his site. A lot of it is on video and there’s a nice mix between “how-to”, motivational and personal posts.

But the thing I get most from this guy, the thing that has clinched the award for him today is that he seems to be having so much fun with this ! He is just loving what he is doing and that enthusiasm really comes through in pretty much everything you find on his blog. And we all know that if you are really enjoying what you do, then your chances of success just sky-rocket.

Finally, I must ask if it’s a coincidence that this guy shares our mentor’s name ? There ! I’ve given it away … because fellow students of Alex Jeffreys will instantly know that today’s Blog Of The Day Award goes to the irrepressible Alex Lim for alexliminc.com.

Congratulations Alex, your award badge is on its way !

Today’s winner is one that has upped his game significantly during the course of Alex Jeffreys’ traffic competition.

A few weeks ago, he felt that his blog wasn’t cutting the mustard, so he made some changes. It looks quite different from Heidi’s (yesterday’s winner) but it works for me … as always, no one answer is “right”.

And he wins today’s award not only because of that, but also because he has recently been finding and focussing on corners of the internet marketing landscape that are potentially extremely useful and/or profitable, and then passing the good word along. His recent video about trendrr.com is a great example of this.

His latest post has a series of “how-to” documentary videos that look over his shoulder during the construction of his first Squidoo “lens”. I have toyed with Squidoo in the past, but it’s something that I’ve neglected a little recently, so it was interesting to watch these and see how things have changed recently. What I like about this is that it’s “warts and all” … in other words, you are genuinely getting the same raw experience that he had, even when things don’t quite seem to go the way he expects !

He’s also got a fascinating product lined up for a launch in October. The Science of the Sale hooks in to his own personal knowledge of the psychology of selling. He’s really moving ahead on several fronts and this makes his blog a site to watch.

So for all-round improvement and for massive future potential, today’s Blog Of The Day Award goes to Alan “The Schwa” Harris for alanharrisonline.com.

Congratulations Alan, your Blog Of The Day badge is on the way !