Hello again; Since there has ben such good response to posts recapping the google hangouts, I thought I would continue the practice. I think we had another good event last Wednesday. And I’m looking forward to an even better one this coming Wednesday April 9, at 10 PM Eastern, 9 PM Central, 7 PM Pacific, etc.

After two very solid shows, this week’s was a little bumpy. Google moved the box where i invite people into the hangout after it is started, and it took about half the show to find the box and invite everyone. This meant I was trying to carry on a monologue while searching for the invite people box. I finally found it, and me and Mitchell had a nice conversation about social media. Well, we picked up where I had left off talking about my experiences with the various social media networks. The question came from Ashley Faulkes of www.madlemmings.com and I wish I had done a better job of answering him. I will say now that most all of my social media activity is conducted using email notifications whenever possible.

The Show Video

You can click this link to watch the show video on my site.

And if you want to click a direct link to the video on youtube, then go to

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFNs_FKznF8

Social Media Network History

Thought I’d share a bit of my history with social media. You will notice a progression. Its one I suggest for all new website and blog owners. Pick one network and really invest yourself in it. Once you feel you have mastered that network, then move on to another one. I started with Myspace. At that time it was still the dominant network, and people were using it to create websites similar to pages on Face Book now. It was accessible for most things, but I never got the hang of the website part of it. I was glad when Face Book came along. And I loved FB when I first started using it. They had a mobil version that was so easy to use with my screen reader. I would often look up and find out I had been reading posts and replying to them for over an hour at a time. I don’t view that time as wasted because I was getting to know people. It wasn’t like I was playing farmville or slots, but it wasn’t the most productive use of my time. So they may have done me a favor when they started making all the changes that made their site more difficult to use with speech. I don’t know if it was before or after I started with Face Book, but my next network was Merchant Circle. I still use it although not as faithfully. It is very accessible with a screen reader, and I highly recommend it especially to business owners who don’t need to target customers outside of their local area. They also have a way to create websites and blogs on there. Next, I joined linked in which is my favorite site. First, because it is strictly for professional or business users. It may have started as a site for posting job listings and resumes but it has come so much farther. I find it the most accessible of all the major networks. They have made some changes that my screen reader didn’t like. They changed the groups so much that I had to send a request to tech support. But in their defense someone from Linked in got right back to me. They gave me instructions I could follow, and the problem was solved. Next, I joined twitter. I don’t care for the speed at which the feed updates. I find that people are friendly on there. The 140 character limit does keep people from rambling on. This is th only social network I am on where at least once a week I visit the site and respond to all activity that happened since my last visit. This may have something to do with the fact that I can easily navigate twitter using night owl. However, they do have a good email alert system for when friends post while I am absent. After that, I joined google plus. It was completely accessible until just recently when the circles part of g plus stopped talking to my screen reader. I also wish they offered more extensive email notifications as that is how I prefer to handle most of my social media interaction. Then I expanded into the world of Pinterest. You can read about that here, but I have managed using it just fine. And I am finding that the more I am on it the more other people are using the 500 characters that Pinterest gives you to describe your photos. So, now you know where I’ve been. Next we’ll talk about where I’m going with social media.

Future Social Networks

Now, I want to talk about a few networks that I am new to or that I have complaints about. First, my brother Michael suggested Reddit. He said its a site with a lot of passionate users. I joined it, and it looks promising. However, you have to enter a captcha for every action. And there is no audio or non visual option for this captcha. So, even though I would love to share my posts on reddit, I don’t because of this. I know I could ask my brother Patrick to solve it for me, and I would if I only had to do it each time I sign int. So, if you are a member on Reddit, please make it known to the site owners that they need to join the other top social networks and fix this. Next, I want to talk about triberr and bizsugar. I am new to both of these and hope my readers and viewers will give me some pointers. I understand bizsugar more than triberr. Its a site where people share business related posts. You have to build up credit by commenting on and sharing other peoples posts. Until you build up that respect, you can only post one link a day. This isn’t a problem because I usually share more posts from other bloggers than I do of my own anyway. I am looking forward to being more active there. And triberr is one I’m just starting to wrap my mind around. It seems you join groups of people called tribes and tribes share info and posts with each other. so the more tribes you belong to and the more members in each tribe the better your posts will get shared. I’v joined some tribes and I’m trying to meet more people there. I could use some help figuring out how to comment on a post there. I can find the enter field but can’t figure out how to post the entry. I hope you will reach out to me on the social media network of your choice. And please subscribe to me on youtube.

Mitchell’s New Site

My moderator Mitchell Walker got a new website this week, so I wanted to mention it here. The url is http://roguegeeks.weebly.com He told me in four days he has already had 50 plus visitors. I told him that that wasn’t right. lol I told him that if I wasn’t his friend, I could hate him for that. Then I told him people all over the world would probably hate him for such quick results. I then told him that in my first year I was lucky to get 250 visitors in a month. He also talked about his resource page., so I want to list that too. If you have a service, you are welcome to suggest it be added here. Rogue Geek’s Network I explained to Mitchell that as soon as possible he needs to get a self hosted site so he will own his work. I then went on to mention that my friend lorraine reguly of www.wordingwell.com has written what i consider to b the definitive post on the whole subject of when to decide to go from free to self hosted and how to go about it.

MVP Network

MVP On Demand is the brand name for my friends at the brian the hammer jackson radio show on blog talk radio. I appear there most friday mornings to talk about my business and small businesses in general. They do a lot of good work by having guests on with causes to promote. Brian probably falls somewhere between howard stern and paul harvey. He is very funny and also pretty smart, but he is never going to be featured on american family radio. He has a great staff who have helped me a lot. They include Carrie Brooks, Kelly Corbin along with dianne ellen and her daughter. They have put me in contact with the lady that runs their production company. She is going to edit a video i took recently of a product demonstration so it can be turned into a proper commercial for the sure step process. I will be doing this one at my expense. but they explained to me that I shouldn’t be doing that. So, in future i will b telling clients that I have a production company I work with and what the costs will be to have a professional commercial quality video made. It isn’t all that expensive. And if any of you are interested, we can work with any existing videos that you have recorded. We can also quote a project from beginning to end including story ideas, recording the video, and editing it for prime time use.

The Blog HOp

Then I talked about being invited to participate in the blog hop. I thanked Johnny bravo for inviting me and mentioned the two ladies Elaine hunt and kerry kijewski who participated with me. I mentioned that i decided to make a concerted effort to involve other blind bloggers because of visiting many of their blogs and being disappointed that no on was reading their posts or leaving comments and shares if they did. so, please visit these blogs.

Guest Opportunities

I mentioned that to me guest opportunities are only good if both parties benefit. I then told people that when i have been in guest opportunities i have worked my but off promoting the site owner. And I am hopeful of getting more such opportunities in the future. If you would like me to write a guest post or take part in an interview for your blog or podcast just ask. I can get together with you via email skype face time or google hangout. I’m very flexible. I’m also very open and honest. I look forward to seeing what else is in store.

Sharing Is Caring

I would love it if you would share the video or the post or both with your friends and family. I would also be very happy to finally get one of my videos favorited on youtube. I noticed that youtube has installed even more sharing buttons, and I hope you will use them. But If I have to pick one favor to ask you, it would be that you visit the sites of the people mentioned above. These people have taken part in or supported me in some other way. I believe I should always be humble and show my thanks any way I can. Thanks for your help with this.

Well, that’s it for this week’s recap. I always love hearing from my readers, so feel free to drop me a line through the contact form. Whether you have a question, or just want to chat; I’m here for you. Perhaps you just want to say hi and get to know me or tell me a little more about yourself. That’s fine too. I hope to here from you all soon. Thanks and take care out there, Max