I invite you to listen to the podcast and leave your questions in the comments.

I don't know if you know me well enough yet to know that I can get pretty excited about little things like a new tool to engage my website visitors. This morning I received a Facebook message (I really have to tell my Android phone not to wake me with messages) from Stephanie Blake from Social Sparrow. I had subscribed to her Facebook messenger bot a while ago.

Stephanie's agency provides technology-based marketing solutions to their clients. From building a strategy to Facebook ads to measuring results, Social Sparrow's focus is on providing the maximum ROI (Return on Investment) to their clients. As a team that is up to date on the newest developments, Stephanie and her team are experts in using Facebook messenger bots.

Like anything that is new, messenger bots show amazing results. Apparently open rates for messages are around 90% - not bad compared to an average email open rate of 20 - 30%. But I don't want to bore you with a rant about spamming and misusing your audience. I am confident that those that use these tools wisely will win over those that only sell, sell, sell all the time. At least in the long run.

my site 24/7 and I don't have an international team to back me up. I'm also a little afraid to add a whole bunch of emails to my daily workload.

What Stephanie introduced me to is different though. This chat tool is linked to my Facebook Messenger account. I use Messenger more and more and have it installed on my phone. For me, it's much more convenient to answer a message than to log into my website and answer an inquiry there or by email. And it's more likely that my reply gets seen immediately.

Find more information and all the links on my blog at https://www.businessbluebird.com/interesting-thoughts-about-facebook-messenger-bots-from-the-bot-boss/

The advice on what name to choose for your website address is changing as we users change our habits and what we accept. During the development of my upcoming online course "How to Build Your Own Website" course I came across this question and realized that I needed to touch base with an expert that is knowledgeable about domains and can help us figure out how to find the right answer.

Andy Mcilwain is working on the content marketing team at GoDaddy, primarily working on the GoDaddy blog. Before GoDaddy, Andy worked in-house and at agencies in roles covering front-end development and content production.
On the side he is a longtime organizer of a local WordPress meetup group, also does intro-level WordPress/web training for small businesses. Andy lives in Toronto, Canada.

A “Domain” is the part of your website address (URL) that has the name in it. For example, for my podcast address this is:

In this episode of the BlueBird Podcast Andy and I talk about the important considerations about picking the right name for your website or blog.

We talk about TLDs (Top Level Domains) and if they are worth considering. We discuss if you should always use the .com extension or what you should consider instead.

Did you know that there are currently 364 domain extensions available and 279 are coming up soon?

We talk about how to overcome the difficulty that all the good names seem to have already been taken.

Finally, Andy reveals one of his best-kept secrets.

I invite you to listen to this episode of the BlueBird Podcast, and I would be thrilled if you let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Find all the links and resources mentioned on my blog at: https://www.businessbluebird.com/how-to-pick-an-awesome-domain-name/

Ryan published an article on LinkedIn that described his expectations and experience with starting a subscription box business. His piece triggered a lot of interest because his idea seems to be very brave and the way he openly describes what he learned is very impressive.

I invite you to listen to episode 20 of the BlueBird Podcast and let me know what you think in the comments.

Ryan McKenzie is one of the partners of My Passion Media and the VP of Canada Wide Media. You might have seen the magazines these companies publish.

Explore Magazine Canadian Traveller BC Business BC Living Real Wedding

They have used their experience and network in the subscription space to add subscription boxes to the mix. These boxes contain "surprise" products that are sent out to subscribers usually every 90 days.

By offering a community and added value to the subscribers, the number of subscribers to each box keeps growing and very few people leave.

Learn more about subscription boxes by listening to the podcast.

Dawn started Stoney Creek Social Media 9 years ago and her big passion is helping small business owners to use social media for their business.

The reason we connected for this call was a post by Dawn warning people to stop using "like and share" as ways to qualify for winning a Facebook contest. Despite the fact that "everyone" is doing it, it is clearly against Facebook's own Terms of Service (TOS).

"Promotions may be administered on Pages or within apps on Facebook. Personal Timelines and friend connections must not be used to administer promotions (ex: “share on your Timeline to enter” or “share on your friend's Timeline to get additional entries”, and "tag your friends in this post to enter" are not permitted)." facebook.com/page_guidelines.php

Aside from violating Facebook's TOS you also can't really use the shares to determine a winner because, depending on your fan's privacy settings, you may not be able to even see their share.

There are very good reasons for these rules in the TOS - without them, Facebook would be a very spammy place and would lose users. In the end, the rules are there to protect all of us Facebook users.

One common misconception is that we can contact Facebook to rectify or explain individual cases and have decisions reviewed. Even social media professionals like Dawn and I don't have a way to "call up Facebook".

Facebook contests are a great way to engage and grow your audience. But you have to follow the rules to avoid losing the community you built over a long time.

Find all the links to Dawn in the show notes: https://bluebird.audio

In an attempt to protect us from getting too much spam, email and Internet Service providers are applying more advanced filters to eliminate those emails that seem to be low quality to the end user. Of course, there is no human that opens every email and decides if it is spam or not. But because an email is a digital file, it can be analyzed. The filters also look at what reputation the domain has and what server the email is sent from.

There are many elements that influence email deliverability and some of those are quite technical. A lot depends on the reputation of your domain and your email provider.

Email newsletters have been especially hard hit by the fight against spam. Sophisticated filters and things like the Gmail "Promotions" tab keep our readers from ever seeing our emails.

But there are ways and best practices we can apply that help get the emails delivered and opened.

I invite you to listen to my interview with Nicole St. Germain from the ConvertKit customer success team who has a lot of valuable advice about how to design and write your email.

Go to my blog at https://www.businessbluebird.com/keep-your-emails-out-of-the-spam-filter for more information!

A list of words to avoid in your email subject line.

A link to receive a 14-day trial of ConvertKit.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of the BlueBird Podcast and would be thrilled if you could leave a review on google podcasts or wherever you download your podcasts.

I invite you to listen to his tips on how to do it all. For technical reasons, this episode is divided into Part 1 and Part 2. The advantage of that is that I had more time to ask Colin questions :-)

From the Lonestar Sales Performance Website:

Colin Parker is the CEO of Lonestar Sales Performance. He has successfully led sales teams for over 20 years as President and Vice President of global organizations. As a coach and sales strategist, he helps companies to differentiate themselves from their competition. His understanding of how to identify and reach your target market enables you to grow your sales with industry-leading business strategies.

Like many of us, Colin has "Shiny Object Syndrome". This means that he gets easily distracted by new tools, gadgets, and ideas. The pull from more interesting tasks lets us put less pleasant ones on the back burner.

Treat your tasks like a client appointment

Form habits! Sales habits are important. As many of us know, cold calling isn't fun. In order to make a sufficient number of calls, we have to get into the habit of doing some prospecting every day. Colin suggests that it takes about 90 days to form a solid habit of doing these unpleasant tasks. He uses a tool called Habit Bull to keep track of his streak and when he has a day when he doesn't feel like doing something he does it so his "perfect streak" of doing the task x-number of days isn't broken.

For example, Colin got into the habit of writing every day. By now this habit is taking root and he is thinking about the next writing session during the day and (almost) doesn't need a reminder anymore.

I see the effects of this strategy with writing for my (almost) daily mailing list.

Set a goal and tell others about it. Colin uses the example of getting people to sign up to his first webinar. He had to follow through with the webinar if he didn't want to embarrass himself.

[clickToTweet tweet="#Productivity tip 3: Set a goal and tell others about it." quote="Productivity tip: Set a goal and tell others about it."]

Unfortunately, our interview broke off for technical reasons. Stay tuned for part 2 with more tips for how to be more productive and form habits.

Sign up to blog notifications Subscribe to the BlueBird Podcast
Android iTunes

Today's Podcast Episode was sponsored by ConvertKit. My favourite email application.

I realized that a lot of my clients are struggling because their blog, Facebook page, Instagram account….. wasn’t showing the amazing success they thought they should. So they wanted to give up.

What we learn from this is important. Many of us give up before even trying. I often hear objections like “I don’t have time” “I’m really a very private person,” “I’m not technical,” “I’m overwhelmed,” “My customers are not on social media”……

In this podcast, I want to talk to you about these objections.

I invite you to listen and let me know what you think.

You can find detailed show notes on my blog at: https://www.businessbluebird.com/10-obstacles-social-media-success

Sign up to my (almost) daily email list – find out more at http://businessbluebird.com/daily Book a coaching session with me – find the different options at https://bookme.name/Frithjof Check out the BlueBird Academy – my new membership site dedicated to teaching small business owners to be more successful on social media.

Needless to say, I am thrilled to have Kim on the BlueBird Podcast to talk about her new tool, LeadSurveys.

Kim Doyal, "The WordPress Chick", is an entrepreneur, coach, author, and speaker. She has built her lifestyle business using the platform of her choice, WordPress, through sheer determination and commitment.
Widowed in 2003 with two small children, she was determined to build a business that allowed her to be at home while doing something she loved.

Whether you're new to WordPress or consider yourself a more advanced user, Kim's brand building and online tips will make you more successful with your business. Kim is widely known for being authentic and connecting with her audience in a fun and informative way that will keep you coming back for more. Kim is totally self-taught when it comes to WordPress and has been making her living online for the past 9 years.

Kim works with entrepreneurs to build their online presence, connect with their ideal clients and 'show up' in a way that resonates with them. With a successful growing podcast and coaching program, she's able to work directly with entrepreneurs who believe in doing things their 'own way' and in a way that resonates with them. Her motto is "Just Show UP", and Kim will teach you her best tips on digital publishing, blogging, podcasting, WordPress and making a living online. It's not about making a living, it's about designing your life.

I asked Kim a little bit about the path that led her to where she is and what she is doing now.

Kim's current project is called LeadSurveys and she tells us the story of how this web-app was created and why. Leadsurveys lets you create a survey on any website that is designed to sort all the sign ups and collect a lot of information. This way you know exactly what information and offers to send to what customer. You will also be able to send a survey like this to your existing mailing list to find out the same information.

LeadSurveys will be a great tool to personalize the online experience of your customers. Kim and the LeadSurveys plan to open the tool to the public in October and you can sign up to get an invitation for early access.

I am looking forward to the tool and I would like to thank Kim for taking time out of her busy schedule to tell us about this.

The WPchick website

The WPchick Podcast

LeadSurveys

Content Creators Facebook Group

Episode 15 is sponsored by the BlueBird Academy. Sign up now and get the first month off!

Antoine Airoldi is a freelance copywriter and author of Insights from Professionals. His first book comes out this fall with GenZ Publishing. He wrote his book during his final year of university when he noticed other students knew nothing about their future.  Students simply wanted to figure out when they would graduate.

First Antoine explains to us what a copywriter does. Then he tells us the surprising story of submitting his book proposal and the result.

For his book, Antoine interviewed authors, business leaders, and CEOs. The book consists of 10 interviews with these people.

The biggest names in the book include Eric Wahl, Gary Vaynerchuk, and others. His book proposal was accepted by the publisher right away and we can look forward to Antoine's book, Insights From Professionals, coming out in November.

I'll keep you posted!

www.antoineairoldi.com
www.instagram.com/antoine_airoldi
www.youtube.com/antoine4321
www.facebook.com/antoineairoldiwriter
www.twitter.com/antoineairoldi

Bryan Kramer is a renowned social business strategist, global keynote speaker, executive coach, and bestselling author. He’s one of the world’s foremost leaders in the art and science of sharing, and has been credited with instigating the #H2H human business movement in marketing and social.

With more than 350,000 social fans and followers, and an intimate understanding of the intricacies and interworking of both social technologies and social behaviors, Bryan is both a practitioner and authority on the subject.

Bryan’s first book There is No B2B or B2C: It’s Human to Human #H2H rose to the #1 top selling spot in Business Books on Amazon in its first week. In January 2015, #H2H was named as the number one buzzword for 2015 by The Writer.

His latest book, Shareology: How Sharing is Powering the Human Economy, published by Morgan James Publishing, made the USA Today’s Top 150 Book List the week of its release, as well as #1 on Amazon in four categories including Business & Planning. The book explores the history, art and science of sharing, and illustrates why sharing is what gives us a unique competitive advantage as individuals and brands.

A founding leader in the Human Business Movement, Bryan speaks all over the world to marketing and social audiences on the topic.

http://www.bryankramer.com

Since I wrote my post The Three Faces of Facebook in 2015 Facebook groups have come a long way. Today we can witness many successful groups that have thousands of members. Facebook groups are great for finding support and finding people that are interested in the same topics. Done right, a group can be an awesome "Alpha Audience" as Mark Schaefer calls it.

Facebook groups can also be a great way of adding a community to your membership website.

I am currently in over 80 Facebook groups and most of them are either dormant or have so little use to me that I turned off all notifications. There are others though that I visit and participate in every day. Two of them are by Bryan Kramer and his team.

I invite you to listen to the end when Bryan makes a very generous offer.

Bryan points out some keys to making a Facebook group successful.
It starts with the onboarding process. By vetting that you only get the right people into your group you can learn what is important to them and you can refuse to accept spammers and other characters you don't want.

The first six months of a new Facebook group are crucial because that's when you set the culture and the tone of the group. After that, you have a core group of people that participate and help to keep the culture of the group alive.

The rules don't have to be complicated. Bryan's groups have two simple rules:

Post content to educate others Ask for help

Here is the link to the Human Marketing Hub group: http://www.humanmarketinghub.com

The other group is part of the Human Marketing Club, a very useful membership site. Bryan has generously offered this free 10-day trial that includes access to the Facebook group: https://ownyourline.samcart.com/products/oyl-membership-10-day-trial-39month/ (From the time you click you have 3 days to make a decision as represented by the counter).

I hope you enjoyed Episode 13 of the BlueBird Podcast!

This week's podcast is "sponsored" by my own membership website (that also includes a Facebook Group).

I invite you to listen to this fascinating interview and let me know what you think either in the comments or by sending an email to podcast@bluebird.audio.  

We met Martin in Episode 11 as part of the Missinglettr team. Martin is the affiliate and community manager at Missinglettr. He also has a business centered around coaching ambitious entrepreneurs in order to grow their business.

Martin is a recovering monk and a professional creative. Find out more about him at martinstellar.com

I found a lot of parallels between Martin and myself. Not the recovering monk part :-) but the fact that we both use all of our life experience and everything we learned along the way to help our customers.

Martin sends a daily email to his list. His emails are inspirational and helpful; they are never spammy or boring. The focus of his emails is to serve his readers.

This is a challenge in itself because you have to earn your readers' trust every day. If you betray this trust they unsubscribe. 

I find this trend very interesting: On one hand, you have a growing number of tools to reduce the amount of email you get. On the other hand, more and more people sign up to daily emails. The key is to create email campaigns that don't focus on selling to your list but serve your audience instead.

As a bonus, Martin's emails feature his own unique illustrations. Sign up to Martin's list here: martinstellar.com Of course, this task seems very daunting but Martin shares very valuable tips on how to make this work.

Send a daily email to your list for 30 days and see what happens.

I am starting a list that I call my "Almost Daily Email" list. Almost because I will only send it on weekdays.  My own challenge will start on my birthday on August 15th and run for thirty days. At that point, I will all decide if I want to continue. 

Sign up here: https://www.businessbluebird.com/daily

What would make a daily email valuable to you?

Today I am excited to interview the gentlemen behind Missinglettr* A tool that I have discovered recently that automagically creates and schedules Social Media posts, complete with images based on my text.

I invite you to listen to this interesting interview and let me know what you think either in the comments or by sending an email to podcast@bluebird.audio.

Benjamin Dell is the founder and CEO at Missinglettr. He previously owned a web agency for over 10 years and during this time launched a number of startups (one of which was acquired last year).

Martin Stellar is a recovering monk who became a business coach for ambitious entrepreneurs. As such he serves as Missinglettr's marketing and business advisor. In his free time he listens to podcasts, draws illustrations, and likes to go sailing (on occasion, all at the same time).

When Ben worked in his agency he learned that a lot of work goes into promoting a piece of content after it is written. With so many articles created online every day it is important to share your content in the most efficient way. 

Missinglettr scans your blog and when the tool finds a new post, it creates a campaign from the text it finds. It even creates shareable text images like this:

You can edit and approve each post and when everything is done, you hit a button and nine unique pieces of content are shared on the social media platforms you choose. With time you create a library of posts that will fill your social media broadcasting queue so you can concentrate on answering questions and creating fresh content.

Missinglettr is pretty slick already but Ben and Martin have a lot of plans. Very soon it will be possible to edit the share images to give them your own branding and edit the text used. The users also requested the ability to control the schedule better, so that will be coming soon.

I was very impressed by the drive and dedication of Ben and Martin and look forward to working with Missinglettr in the future!

Missinglettr.com *

* I like this tool so much that I became an affiliate for it. Learn more about what that means in my post: "What is an Affiliate"

Janet is a best-selling author, having written 6 books on social media marketing, the most recent of which, “Mindful Social Marketing- How authenticity and generosity are transforming marketing” is available on Amazon. Janet also blogs at http://mindfulsocialmarketing.com and http://janetfouts.com and you can reach her on Twitter @JFouts

Welcome to Episode 10 of the BlueBird Podcast

Today I talk with Janet Fouts about "conscious capitalism". Businesses that are really conscious about how they affect the world around them practice conscious capitalism. 

In her article The Conscious Company Leaders Forum Janet goes into more detail about the companies that have realized that profitability doesn't automatically mean forgetting about everything else. As a Social Media professional I found this approach especially interesting because as we humanize marketing by adding a social element, the human connection becomes the key to success.

Janet introduces us to the term "triple bottom line": People, Planet and Profit. But conscious capitalism adds more factors to the equation:

The purpose of the business The good that it's going to do in the world

I really think that this trend for companies to become more than money making machines fits well into our times where technologies and Social Media enable us to easily connect between companies and customers.

I invite you to listen to this interesting interview with Janet Fouts and let me know what you think either in the comments or by sending an email to podcast@bluebird.audio.

Tatu Digital Media

Blog and Podcast http://mindfulsocialmarketing.com

Janetfouts.com

Janet's Book Mindful Social Marketing- How authenticity and generosity are transforming marketing

Twitter @JFouts

Blog Post: Conscious Company Leaders

ConsciousCapitalism.org

Find more episodes and subscription links at www.bluebird.audio

Lumen5 is a brand new tool that creates short videos from any link. It uses artificial intelligence to analyze the text content and matches it up with images and video clips from royalty free sites to provide a draft slideshow video with text overlays that you can edit or publish directly.

In the interview, Michael and I talk about what prompted the 5 people behind the tool to create it, what it does and what the next features might be. We talk about the fact that Lumen5 is free right now and Michael is very convincing when he says that there will always be a free version. At the end, we discuss the very interesting principle that customer support is an important part of product development. Michael Cheng strongly believes that customer support should not be outsourced and sees it as a core responsibility of the development team. In my experience with Lumen5 this has proven to be true in the speed and efficiency of the support I received. Unfortunately, sections of the interview were scrambled by the recording software. I have tried to summarize what was said in the sections that were unusable.

At the end, we discuss the very interesting principle that customer support is an important part of product development. Michael Cheng strongly believes that customer support should not be outsourced and sees it as a core responsibility of the development team. In my experience with Lumen5 this has proven to be true in the speed and efficiency of the support I received. Unfortunately, sections of the interview were scrambled by the recording software. I have tried to summarize what was said in the sections that were unusable.

Unfortunately, sections of the interview were scrambled by the recording software. I have tried to summarize what was said in the sections that were unusable.

I invite you to listen to the podcast and tell me what you think in the comments or by email: podcast@bluebird.audio .

Lumen5: https://lumen5.com/ Problogger Podcast episode 197: https://problogger.com/podcast/facebook-viral-videos-tool/

Did you know that at any given night over 6000 young Canadians have no place to sleep?

Earlier this year we observed first hand how easily young people can slip into homelessness and how little the Ministry of Children & Families can do to prevent this. We also had the opportunity to witness the wonderful work our local Boys and Girls Club does to fill this gap.

The Boys & Girls Clubs of Canada rely on donations from the public to finance all the work they do. For the month of June, The Home Depot is organizing the “Orange Door Project” where customers can make a donation at the checkout and 100% of these donations go to local Boys & Girls Clubs.

I have decided to support this initiative by donating $10 of any consulting hour booked in June to our local Orange Door Project.

To launch this program I have created new service packages I call  “pick my brain” sessions designed to help you improve your social media and content marketing efforts.

Over the last seven years, I have helped many small business owners, organizations, and individuals to be more effective with their social media and content marketing efforts.

I help create social media strategies, provide outsourced community management services and coach groups and individuals to use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, their blog and other tools effectively.

Often I get asked to meet people for coffee or to set up a one-off session to discuss the overall strategy or help a business improve a particular area of their online marketing.

To make it easier to do this I have set up a simple booking tool that you can find on my website.

You can simply pick a time that works for you and I will send you a link. We then meet face to face using our computers and I will send you a recording of our call afterward.

Topics we could discuss are for example:

Strategies on how to connect with your customers online Facebook pages Facebook Ads Instagram Twitter Email Marketing Using WordPress Blogging Search Engine Optimization Creating videos or effective images

I’m looking forward to helping you!

Oh hey, one more thing – if you are signed up to my email list you can get one of my short sessions for free!

I invite you to listen to the podcast and tell me what you think in the comments or by email: podcast@bluebird.audio .

Hugh is the author of Give me a Break-the art of making time work for you.

His insights and writings on personal leadership are sought after
by leading organizations, including Imperial Oil, Shoppers Drug
Mart, Royal Bank of Canada, Investors Group, Western Union,
Suncor, Telus, United Way, and the Red Cross.

In this podcast episode, Hugh Introduces "Get SOS" to us. The SOS team reads your blog posts and creates a series of social media updates to promote your blog. It doesn't replace the need to be active in your social media efforts (otherwise I wouldn't post this :-) ) but it takes care of a lot of the work involved in the content promotion.

Because Hugh and his team are so involved in the blogging world, he also shares helpful blogging tips in general.

I invite you to listen to the podcast and tell me what you think in the comments or by email: podcast@bluebird.audio .

Hugh's personal website: hughculver.com

Get SOS: getsos.net

Earlier this year we observed first hand how easily young people can slip into homelessness and how little the Ministry of Children & Families can do to prevent this. We also had the opportunity to witness the wonderful work our local Boys and Girls Club does to fill this gap.

A friend of our teenage son had been kicked out at home and after a few weeks of couch-surfing, we agreed to offer her our spare room as a temporary home to prevent her from having to sleep on the streets. The only alternative the ministry offered her was to spend nights in a shelter. This is a great alternative in some cases, but not in this one. Other than what we could do, there seemed to be no help available and the case was stuck in a bureaucratic jungle for weeks.

The only help came from the local Boys and Girls Club that provided the service of their own social worker that who helped the 16-year-old girl to deal with the situation and stay in school.

We were very impressed by how this organization helps fill the gap between struggling families and government services.

The Boys & Girls Clubs of Canada rely on donations from the public to finance all the work they do. For the month of June The Home Depot is organizing the "Orange Door Project" where customers can make a donation at the checkout and 100% of these donations go to local Boys & Girls Clubs.

I have decided to support this initiative by donating $10 of any consulting hour booked in June to our local Orange Door Project.

To launch this program I have created new service packages from social media training sessions to "pick my brain" sessions designed to help you improve your social media and content marketing efforts.

There are three ways for you to get involved:

Book a consulting or training session with me. Simply go to the "Pick My Brain" page on my website and find a time that works with your schedule. I will donate $10 from every hour booked to the Orange Door Project Donate directly to the campaign at Canada Helps https://www.canadahelps.org/dn/30658 (please select the Kelowna store) Go to your local Home Depot and buy an Orange Door at the checkout

Thank you for helping me to give young people a safe place!

Frithjof