marketing – Jerad Hill Blog

March 2018 Passive Income Report

Posted on April 20, 2018February 26, 2025 by Jerad Hill

March was an interesting month. We had a lot of Hill Media Group projects coming to a close so I focused on creating content. I put out a ton of videos in March and that shows in the numbers you see below. There are still a few passive income areas that finished correcting back to where they would normally be after the holidays and post-holiday sales.

I changed the name of this report from Side Income to Passive Income. The idea is that the income will grow into something that could become my main focus. Calling it side income makes it seem like something I don’t spend much time working on. The goal is to grow passive income streams that continue to pay me over time. As I continue to feed those passive income streams, that income will continue to grow and become an income source that will pay me even if I decide to take a month or two off on occasion.

With the large boost in content production, I am interested to see where Amazon Affiliate sales will go next month in April. Sometimes it can take some time before the increase in content and views result in more affiliate sales.

I still feel confident with how things are going so far in 2018. I have not had the motivation I had at the beginning of the year. I know that I need to get back to it and work on creating a new course. Hopefully, I can make more forward movement in April.

Make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel to follow along as I continue to explore new ways to grow my personal income.

March 2018 Side Income Total – $4,895.51 (-9.5%)

YouTube

StateOfTech – $1,119.39 (+27.31%) Subscribers: 29,771 (+4.57%) Watch Time: 1,169,902 Minutes (+5.31%)
This YouTube channel is part mobile technology review videos and part tech tutorial videos. I added a lot of video content in March which is represented in the growth see this month.
Ditch Auto – $440.79 (+32.12%) Subscribers: 24,785 (+5.31) Watch Time: 827,560 Minutes (+17.57%)
My photography channel continues to lack content. I have not had time to put anything together for Ditch Auto. I started the monthly photo challenge but have not had the time to work on additional content and have not focused on any other photography content. This needs to change.
Jerad Hill – $42.87 (+9.02%) Subscribers: 5214 (+0.12%) Watch Time: 37,249 Minutes (+10.65%)
This is my personal channel. I started uploading more content this month but am having trouble with it being found. This channel is so old and has been unused so many times. I think it is going to take a lot of content and consistency to get it to bounce back.
AltCast – $0 (0%) Subscribers: 1446 (+23.59%) Watch Time: 64,733 Minutes (+23.03%)
AltCast is a new channel started January 2018 with a focus on Cryptocurrency Mining. I have seen a lot of growth here due to a give-a-way that was pretty successful. I still need to reach 250,000 watch minutes in order to monetize this channel. I am currently at around 155,000.

Amazon Affiliate

Amazon Product Links – $972.33 (+13.69%)
The Cryptocurrency buzz has died down for sure but the new content produced for State of Tech has helped drive more affiliate sales this month. Ditch Auto is still going strong but I have not added new content. This month I also started posting videos on the website as well with a short write up and product affiliate links. I am hoping to see some growth in traffic to the websites as well.

Google Adsense

Google Adsense links/display – $27.61 (-44.39%)
Google made a pretty sizeable algorithm change in January which put the hurt on one of my sites. As I mentioned above, I have started posting video content to my websites with small articles to work toward growing traffic back up on these sites.
Sites with Adsense Integration: StateOfTech.Net, DitchAuto.Com

Jerad’s Courses

Paid courses on Jerad.Courses – $637.00 (-18.75%)
The Mining Rig course still continues to provide some income, though it is slowing down quite a bit. I need to produce a new course to help replace that income.

Udemy.Com

Paid courses on Udemy – $335.52 (-46.22%)
Just like with my personal course site, the revenue has dropped a bit on Udemy. I messed around with Udemy’s marketing a bit and allowed Udemy to set sale pricing on my course. This led to more sales, but less revenue overall.

Other Income

Other monthly revenue streams from side work – $1320.00 (-28.65%)
I am almost back to where things were before in this category. I am not selling mining hardware anymore. This category consists of passive income that comes in from various other past projects and content that I no longer work on growing.

Investments

This was a rough month for my investment holdings in these two spaces. I didn’t put any money or even really pay much attention to my stocks in the Robinhood app so I lost a little bit there. Cryptocurrency continued to get hammered but I believe this is the bottom. My plan with Crypto was to hold on to what I had (HODL) and wait for it to recover. My investment strategy is a long game here.

Stocks (Robinhood) – Holdings: $7,455.90 (-2.22%)
In April I plan to start focusing on my stocks again. Hope to see some growth here and will also put more money in.
Cryptocurrency – Holdings: $3,482.12 (-36.66%)
Crypto has been hit hard this month and continues to take hits into April. I am still mining which contributes to growth in my holdings but I have lost a good portion of value from when it was at an all-time high in early January. I decided not to buy any Crypto in March. I will wait a bit longer to see what happens in April. If you want to get started investing in Cryptocurrency, I suggest joining Coinbase. You can buy and sell Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin currently.

March was a good month for YouTube growth. My main focus was producing videos and we put out a lot of videos during this month which is why there was so much growth in this space. I find that it is too easy to work on things that do not contribute to passive income growth. I have to remember what the goal is and continue to work on what will get me there.

Thanks for coming along. If you have any questions, please ask them in the comments section below.

Five Reasons You Should Start Making Videos

Posted on March 22, 2018February 26, 2025 by Jerad Hill

Did you know that over 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute? How about the fact that almost 5 billion videos are watched on Youtube every single day? Those are some crazy statistics and a very good reason why you should consider making videos. In today’s Thursday Thoughts video, I discuss five of the reasons why I think you should start making videos.

This article was originally created as a video. I have converted it to an article to share here.

Hey, what’s up? It’s Jerad and I have a Thursday thoughts video for you, and that is Five Reasons Why You Should Start Making Videos. Just like I am right now, I’m making a video. And making videos is easy. It can be scary and a lot of people don’t like the idea, and I totally get it. But making videos, here are five reasons why I think that it’s a good idea for you whether you are just starting out in maybe a new entrepreneurial venture.

You’re thinking about getting into freelancing. You’re working on trying to find an alternative income source, or you just have something interesting that’s a hobby and you want to share that with the world. Video is a great way to do that and I want to talk about five reasons why you should do that, and maybe even start today.

1. Making Videos Help Your Public Speaking Skills

The first is that it helps with your public speaking skills. Now, I may not be the most eloquent speaker ever, but definitely creating videos has helped with my public speaking skills. I tend to talk fast. Sometimes I even kind of stumble over my words and whatnot. But over the years in making videos, I’ve gotten so much better at speaking and when I have to get up in front of people and speak, I can do that so much easier because I’ve been practicing. I’m sitting here talking to a camera, which a lot of people don’t like doing. But it’s a lot easier to get used to that than it is speaking to people in person.

But now I’ve gotten to the point where I can go into any situation. And as long as I have the information that I need, I could speak to people about it and I don’t feel afraid to. So, it really helps with your public speaking skills. Especially because after you make the video, you can go back and watch it. You can learn some of the things that you do maybe that you don’t even really notice like a lot of times I say “uh” or “um”, or these little filler things that I put in place when really just stopping would be fine. But I put these words in place and it kind of makes for a poor listening experience. I just did it right there.

So, it helps with public speaking skills, and the more videos that I produce, the better I get at it. The more I watch my content, I get better at speaking and just come up with things that I can improve on overtime. And I get better at them the more that I do it. So, that’s one huge thing, I think, is that it helps you with public speaking. A lot of us have problems with that. It’s one of the number one things people are most afraid of and don’t want to do is speaking in public, so if you can even just get over that by making videos, it’s a huge win, I think.

2. Videos Are More Personal

Number two is videos are more personal. I mean, sitting here and watching me, we’re not interacting like we would be if we were face to face, but I’m looking at you. I’m trying to engage you in this conversation that we’re having. What that does is it becomes much more personal than if I just wrote out a blog or something and you’re reading my text, or you’re looking at something that I posted on social media. A video is much more personal and much more engaging.

There’s nothing wrong with blogging, writing articles and stuff. There’s definitely a place for that and for sharing information in that way, but a video is very personal and we connect with videos on a more personal level. It’s one of the reasons why TV is so popular, why it made radio … I mean, radio is still a thing, but it definitely made radio a thing of the past.

We don’t sit around listening to our radio these days, we watch TV. We typically only listen to the radio when we want to listen to music, or when we want something on in the background that we can listen to. Definitely, video changed things big time when that became something that we all had in our homes. And smartphones have smartphones, we all have video right in our hands. It definitely has even made video even more personal and more accessible.

3. It Builds Your Personal Brand

So, number three is that it brands you. Branding, or personal branding, or whatever regardless of what you are doing for a job professionally or even just in your leisure, if you want to be branded in a sense where you want people to recognize you around a certain topic, video definitely helps. It really does separate you. And I’m getting ahead of myself because one of my last topics is on how it separates you apart from others, but it really does help brand you.

I like talking about these things, because these are things that I talk about to clients of mine when I’m trying to get them into using video on their website, or more photography, or trying to get them into blogging, or whatever for content purposes, or social media. All these things, these different topics that I talk about, in one way or another I end up talking about to clients. And if I’m talking about them to my clients, and trying to get them to do them because I feel that they’re valuable because they’ve been valuable to me, why wouldn’t I just want to share that to the world? And that’s one of the reasons that I use YouTube for that, to share that information. Not only just with what I’m doing here, but with the technology that I use and enjoy. We like to review those things. We like to share that information with others, teach people how to use them, and video is just a fantastic way to do that.

For me, it’s so much easier to sit down here and talk into the camera and put a video together than it is to sit and write it out because if I write things out, I can delete and go back and do it again and delete. And oh, I want to say it in a different way and blah-blah-blah-blah. Video, I could just get it out. It’s my personality and it’s easier than me wanting to be super meticulous over my grammar and everything when I’m writing.

Video, it does brand me. It’s much faster and easier for me to get content out but it does brand me and what I’m trying to accomplish here because you’re seeing me, and that’s what I want. There are a lot of different ways to brand yourself or to get your information out there, but I think the best way to do it is to be visual about it and that’s what I’m doing here.

4. It Adds Value

Number four is that it puts value-added on steroids like I’ve always felt that there needs to be value in what I’m putting out there. If I do put stuff out there and maybe it starts out being valuable and then I start to kind of run out of ways to make it valuable, I end up stopping whatever I’m doing. And that’s why I tend to have gaps from time to time. I get busy. I don’t have the time to research and make sure that there’s enough value there and so I stop doing it.

With video, it puts value on steroids because you have an easier way to connect with people. If this was an article, it could easily be thousands of words and somebody would have to have time to sit and read that. And while it would be valuable, it’s something that would consume a lot more of a person’s time. Not that that makes the information less valuable, it’s just that it makes it less likely that they’re going to have time to get through all the content.

Instead, I could put out a video that takes 10 minutes or less. It adds all the same value and so it kind of amplifies that. You’re also getting the excitement that I have about what it is that I’m talking about and then you can also go and see all those additional resources. Being more visual about things sometimes helps especially when talking about the technical stuff that I do, the reviews and all that stuff.

I could upload photos and type-type-type, but actually showing people what it is that this product does or how to use this or whatnot in a video form adds more value. A lot of times, video puts that value on steroids because it makes it much more visual. It makes it easier for people to connect with and it makes it more personal.

5. It Differentiates You From Others

The fifth thing is that it does separate you apart from others. A lot of people can sit down and write or come up with content or even hire somebody else to write. But for you to get in front of a camera and talk about something or to share something or teach something or whatever on video, it separates you because not everybody wants to do that. Not everybody can do that.

And a lot of it is mental block. We get afraid to get up in front of a camera. We’re self-conscious. We have a lot of fears and whatnot and those go back to the first thing which is being better at public speaking and even being able to articulate thoughts into a camera. But it separates you apart and after you get a little better at it, it definitely makes you stick out from everybody else that they’re allowing the fears to keep them from doing something cool like this.

I have a couple of bonus tips that will help you get started and potentially grow faster. The first one is not to worry about your first videos being maybe lacking in quality or content. The simple fact of getting started is what matters. You definitely want to have some value to add in the videos that you put out there but when early on, don’t worry about them being topnotch production quality videos.

To me, the audio quality is most important in a video than it is the video quality. I don’t necessarily care if a video is a little dark. I can’t really see the best as to what’s going on in the video so long as the audio is good. If you’ve ever watched a video where the audio was poor quality, maybe it sounded like they were talking through an old Taco Bell drive-through menu thing or whatnot. There’re ways that audio just, it becomes … I can’t handle the audio, so I bounce and I go listen or watch something else.

As long as you can get the audio sounding good which even with smartphones these days, if you’re in a nice quiet room that has some furniture and some carpet to deaden the sound a little bit, you’re going to get decent audio quality even if you don’t have nice big lights or anything like that to make the video quality really good. Don’t worry about all of that stuff. Just focus on getting good audio. The quality of your video can improve over time.

As you get some traction, maybe you decide, okay, it’s time to get a couple of lights to make the lighting a little better and then maybe it’s time to get a microphone to get even better audio quality and then maybe it’s time to move on and get a better camera so that the overall quality of your video improves. You can improve over time. You don’t have to start out being in this perfect place where everything is right and you have all the proper equipment. If you wait for that, you’re never going to get started and other people are going to jump in and start doing what you wanted to do and that’s a bummer. You need to get started now.

That’s five reasons why I think you should start making videos. There are many reasons why even beyond this, I want to talk about live streaming and some other things like that in future articles. Consider subscribing to my newsletter to get updates when I publish new content.

Create Quality Content, the rest will follow

Posted on January 12, 2015February 26, 2025 by Jerad Hill

One of the things that I’ve noticed over the years is that you can’t just start creating things and expect people to pay you money for them. I have worked for myself since I was a teenager and the only time that I could ever get money instantaneously out of somebody is if I had a physical product that they were interested in buying. When it comes to selling services or information you can’t just put it out there for sale and expect people to pay for it, especially if you’re wanting to charge a premium.

One of the great things about the Internet is that if you provide valuable information, people will find it. That is been what I have found over the years. Every time I attempt to launch something ahead of providing value through producing information and making it available free, that product fails. This is why I produce so much content and give it away for free. I’m a firm believer in giving away 80% of what you know in order to charge a premium for that 20%.

This past weekend I surpassed 100,000 students on Udemy.com a platform for online education. My photography and social media courses, most of which are free, have been pretty popular. When I share statistics about how many students I have achieved on that platform, the first question I get is how much money have you made. Most people don’t understand because they are led by a different mindset than I am. My goal is to share information first and foremost. The money will always come. If revenue generation is the first thought when deciding to create content, you have already lost. There is no way that you can sell somebody on something if you are number one driver is to make money off of them.

Those who are making a lot of money from their content most likely had a sizable following from the beginning. Perhaps a small percentage of them were just in the right place at the right time. However, for most of us it is a long road of creating content, building trust and making friends along the way. After you have created enough value it makes it much easier to ask people to pay you for further instruction.

Though you can create on a minimalistic budget by opening up your laptop and using your WebCam, I didn’t feel that taking that approach would result in the type of following I was looking for. My courses are reviewed highly because of the production value put into them. My content is not groundbreaking, it is all stuff you could easily figure out on your own with enough time and patience. I do believe that there is value in getting instruction from a professional who understands what he’s talking about but if the quality of that production is low, that professionalism gets lost in the lack of production value.

Beyond simply producing high quality content you must find a way to connect with those that have consumed your content. Most platforms have this type of functionality but it is usually limited because their goal is get your students to buy more content. I have no problem with this, it is their platform we are using, but you must encourage people to keep in contact with you in some way if that platform limits you. Find a way to be able to communicate with your students or viewers outside of that platform that does not break the rules that platform has put in place.

You must also know what you are talking about. I don’t post or publish anything that I can’t back up. If somebody wants to know if I am actually a decent photographer, they can easily find that information out online. The same goes with my social media and online marketing courses. I have found that many educators who create these paid courses can’t even be found online. They then wonder why their course does not sell.

One of the reasons for adding production value to your content is that it makes your content look like it is a brand. When you position yourself as a brand, it makes people want to look for you outside of that platform to see if there is any other information out there. Take my Ditch Auto Photography course for example: The brand is “Ditch Auto.” I own and operate DitchAuto.Com. I also have a popular podcast I started a few months ago in iTunes with the same name. To top it all off, I admin a Facebook group for Ditch Auto, which has over 1300 members. During my course videos, I also encourage people to engage with me on the platform and on social media. People search for me by name and follow me.

The spelling of my name is pretty unique. Though not all of these search results are for content I have created, a large percent of them are.

Why do all of this, and do it for free?

I am in this for the long haul. Back when Myspace was the popular social network, I told everybody that they were nuts for posting all of their content in one platform. Your website should be the hub in which all of your efforts pour into. My online courses are no different. I use a couple of different online platforms for education and monetize 10% or less of the content I post to those platforms because I believe in giving first. Education is not all that I do. I own a professional photography business and an online marketing agency that keep me pretty busy. I would love to teach full time, but I only get about 4-5 hours each week to generate video content. I am lucky to have a studio that I have built from the ground up that can stay setup and ready to go whenever I am ready to film.

I never stop refining and making my content better. Even though my Introduction to Facebook Pages course is a free course, I re-filmed the entire course a few months ago because they content is out of date. That course has resulted in multiple consulting clients over the past few years. Should I have a paid followup course on Facebook Pages? Yes, totally. However, I have not yet created one.

What platforms like Udemy has done is made it way too easy for people to publish content. Everybody is a content creator, and while that is fantastic that it is that simple, not everybody should be a content creator until they get themselves into the right mindset. The best teachers do not decide to teach so they can make a ton of money. All of the teachers that have had the biggest impact in my life have not made much money in their lifetime. The most valuable knowledge I have obtained over the years, has came from books that I have read that were written by people who’s success came before they wrote the book, not the other way around. Am I doing Udemy and platforms like it any justice by putting up paid content that nobody ends up buying? I don’t believe that I would be. Though Udemy has not made much money from my courses, their numbers have increased a lot due to the people I have driven to their platform. Once I do begin releasing more paid courses, those numbers will start to level out and it will happen much faster than it would have had I started out with only paid courses.

All of my free courses are nothing groundbreaking. You could easily teach yourself what I taught in those courses if you spent some time bouncing around on Youtube. In teaching these courses, I am also getting better myself. When you teach something, you have to know enough about it to explain it well. This has helped me be a better photographer and provide better services to my clients. Beyond that, it also helps solidify the fact that I am a professional in my chosen fields. There is a lot of competition out there and you need to do whatever you can to market yourself well.

I see every student who signs up for one of my courses as a person who is interested in a subject and is eager to learn about it. Whether they are trying to learn something for business related purposes or simply for enjoyment, I am touching their lives and helping them achieve something. I spent countless hours making mistakes, so they don’t have to. The countless emails and reviews that have been written tell amazing stories of how my courses have allowed someone to start a business and allow their spouse to stay at home with their children. If I had put a pay wall in front of everything I produce, I may not have been able to have that affect on as many people as I have had. Once you generate that much change in the lives of others, you can ask them to pay for future content because they are now fans.

Now that I have reached this milestone, I plan to post more about my process of educating. I waited to do this because I felt that I needed to be at a professional level before weighing in on how to educate others. I am still far from a professional but I have had many people contact me asking how I was able to achieve 100,000 students on a single platform. More to come. Please follow me on Twitter or follow this blog to keep in touch.

Facebook Video Ads – 15 Days In

Posted on January 2, 2015February 26, 2025 by Jerad Hill

Facebook recently added the ability to upload a video and turn it into an ad. This is cool because Facebook videos start to play in the newsfeed as people scroll. As a photographer and videographer, I have visually appealing content that when actually seen in the newsfeed, gets a lot of views and likes. Some of the top liked items on Facebook are cat pics/vids and wedding photos.

As I have with all other Facebook ad tools, I gave it a try. I had a video reel that I had put together from a previous wedding season which I thought would be a good video to try out Facebook Video Ads with. It was a simple process, just as easy as starting a text based ad using an image. I uploaded the image, set my target demographic and hit start.

The video started off a bit slow as far as views and interactions went, but as time moved forward, that view count grew and is now receiving about 900 views per day. I am running this campaign from December 19th through the end of January. Today marks day 15 of that campaign.

Here is what that ad looks like”

Here is what the view count looks like over the past 15 days:

And the most important data about the Facebook Video Ad Performance:

So far I am enjoying the result. Of course it comes down to whether or not I end up booking any of the brides who contact me, but so far I have received a lot of inquiries. In the first 15 days, the video received 9,000 views, 100 likes, 4 comments, and 1 share using the share button. Beyond that, there have been a lot of clicks to my website as well as inquiries that have came in stating the Facebook video was what led them to contact me.

Metrics that stand out to me the most:

3.489% Clickthrough rate – That is pretty good even though it sounds like a small number.
62 Website Clicks – This means that 62 people clicked the learn more link and visited my website.
39 Other Actions – This is the conversion pixel I placed on my website to track conversions. That means that 63% of the clicks that come to my website are resulting in inquiries. You do the math.

It will be interesting to see how many of these inquiries turn into booked weddings. Time will tell. Perhaps after all this is over I will post a followup article.

How Well Do People Really Know You?

Posted on October 31, 2012February 26, 2025 by Jerad Hill

How well do people really know you? I have worked in a couple of different industries over the years but nothing very confusing. I’ve been doing website design for a long time and for the last six years I have also been a wedding photographer. Online I have marketed myself as a wedding photographer. In face-to-face and at networking events I market myself as a website designer. I feel that as a website designer I have more of a tangible offering to the general public than I do as a wedding photographer. There are not too many people wandering around networking events looking for a wedding photographer. What surprises me is that I get asked the question, “what do you actually do,” very often, as if I only focus on one and pretend to do the others. If somebody follows me on Facebook or twitter than they probably know that I am a photographer. This is because I post a lot of photos and talk about my camera often. Most of the people that I network with locally who are my friends on Facebook or twitter know that I am a web designer and also a photographer. But what about the people that don’t know me on a personal level, the people that have never met or heard of me before? What information will they find when they search for me? This is a good question to ask yourself. The reason that I decided to write on this topic is because I was using a new iPhone app called Evi which is a competitor to iPhones Siri. This app allows you to speak in search terms, and ask it questions. So obviously the first thing I wanted to do was ask it “who is Jerad Hill.” The first thing he responded with was “Jerad Hill the technology journalist.” This threw me off because I’ve never had anyone referred to me as a technology journalist. However it does make sense because of my websites DailyAppShow.Com, iCopilot.Net and StateofTech.Net. Both of those websites get a lot more traffic than my photography and web design websites combined. I am not sure what search components drive the results that Evi gave me but what it did tell me is that the computer, which is the most linear thinker there is, thinks I’m a technology journalist. This added yet another job description into the mix.

We cannot allow our connections with the social networks to be the only place that people can go to figure out what it is that we do for work. Even friends of mine that I have had on social networks for years get confused about what it is that I do when I start talking to them. I have found that social network friends, meaning friends that I have on social networks but are not friends in person, have less of an idea what I do because I often focus on my personal life on my social networks. I made a decision along time ago not to be a business touting robot on social networks. I want people to see me as a person, a husband, a father and Christian before they see other things. Of course if anyone is paying any attention they will notice that I do talk about what I do for a living and often post about related subjects. I want to make it easy for people to know what it is that I do for a living but at the same time I don’t want them to associate me only with my job title. The reason that I want to make it easy is that I have a different job titles in different industries which is confusing for some people to to comprehend. Even though it is the 21st century and people often wear multiple hats throughout their lives and even at the same time, people still associate you with one job. Here are some of things that I have found out when it comes to using social networks and websites to promote yourself as a business person.

The first thing is that regardless of how interesting you think you are, people are only going to remember a set amount of things about you. I will even say that they will most likely only remember things about you that they can associate with themselves. There may be other things that they remember, but only if they can associate with them in one way or another. Women usually remember that I’m a photographer because I post pictures of weddings and my kids. Most of the women I know have no idea that I have been doing website design for over 12 years unless I tell them or unless they went out of their way to find out on their own. Guys are even quicker to make associations which probably has to do with our linear way of thinking. Because of this you want to be careful how many things you throw out there at once. People only remember a set amount of things so don’t leave it to chance, make sure they remember the important ones which are your main focus.

On Facebook I decided that I wanted people to associate me with being a husband and a father to my kids. Most of the things that I post about have to do with my family. I decided this because I want to try my best to set an example in a world where husbands and fathers are not that interested in their titles. Don’t get me wrong, I am no where near perfect, my wife can attest to that. I rarely, very rarely post anything about website design. Because of that, the majority of my Facebook friends probably have no idea that I am a website designer. It is much easier for people to associate me with photography because I’m always posting photos of my kids, and they are pretty darn good photos at that 😉 That is okay with me because at this period in my life I would prefer to grow my photography business over my website design business. I get enough website design clients from my website and referrals from my lovely past clients. This is not to say that I couldn’t always use new business. New business is always good.

On twitter when I’m not trying to be funny I’m usually trying to add value some way. I feel that that is a good use of twitter, adding value. I don’t know all of my twitter followers, I actually know a very small fraction of them personally however because of the short form post length I feel it is best used for sharing short bits of good information, or short puns, because I like making jokes. I don’t do this nearly often enough. I feel that if I provide enough value people will wonder what it is that I do and look deeper into what I offer. The link I provide in my twitter profile is a link to a special page on my website that shares information I think would be relevant to people who find me on twitter. Even on twitter I post very little about website design even though Twitter is a much better demographic for sharing web related information then Facebook is due to the fact that more tech-centric people are on Twitter.

The point of why I am writing this is that you need to have some sort of a focus if you want or expect people in your general sphere of influence to refer business your way. If you expect people to think about you when someone mentions that they need to find a new insurance agent, then you need to talk about work from time to time. It is actually quite easy. I often post short posts on Facebook and Twitter about a wedding as I am shooting it. Sometimes I even take a few Instagram photos at the wedding or have someone take one of me with my iPhone.

When Myspace started to take off I saw that social network as a way to bullhorn my message to a large group of people with out having to leave the comfort of my own home. Over the years my message has changed but I am still using Social Networks to share what I stand for in this world and occasionally, what I do for a living. I suggest you find a way to do this yourself and see what happens. People will start to see what you are passionate about and associate you with those passions.

Facebook vs The United States

Posted on April 6, 2010February 26, 2025 by Jerad Hill

Info-graphics have definitely been the trend this year, and I have yet another one to share with you. Muhammad Saleem broke down Facebook’s user base and compared it to the population of the US. Demographic information is important when deciding how you are going to market to Facebook users. I have been focusing my marketing efforts toward Facebook as opposed to spending all day watching Twitter or dumping money into Google Adwords. My Facebook fan page has been a great source of referrals for my wedding photography business.

Facebook’s official company statistics outline the breakdown of the sites over 400 million active users. While the site points out about 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States, it doesn’t dive deeper into the U.S. numbers. Muhammad dug deeper and designed this nice info-graphic outlining details about the users of Facebook in the US.

Also check out another Facebook demographic post I shared a few weeks ago here.

Original link to this info-graphic

Just How Powerful is Facebook You Ask?

Posted on March 30, 2010February 26, 2025 by Jerad Hill

Facebook has became what those who were here before it couldn’t have dreamed of becoming. With 400 Million users spending an average of 55 minutes logged in every day it’s apparent why there is so much hype surrounding this website. Almost every day I get asked the question, “What can I do to use Facebook to promote my business?” A blog I posted last week titled “Everything You Need to Know About the Value Social Media Sites” has the quick answer. Now that Facebook has grown so large and receives the bulk of social media related press, there are a lot of stats available. I found this stat sheet and timeline of Facebook’s growth and thought I would share it with you. See the image below.

What does 400 Million users look like? Well the population of the United States of America is about 100 Million shy of Facebook’s user base. What I really find powerful is how much communication happens each day on Facebook. There is probably no way of knowing the ratio of face to face communication to online communication but my guess is that more is being shared online then offline. Think about the interactions you have day to day with people. They are short and to the point. You make sure they are over fast so you have time to get back to Facebook and see what the people you actually care about are sharing. I know that there are people in the world who do not have Facebook or refuse to take part in it but the fact is that most of our nation and modern world is logged in to Facebook. I would be interested to know what the statistics are for my local area. If Facebook was to make that information available I guarantee you businesses would finally see the light and hire someone to evangelize for them. I think Facebook will be the topic of the next episode on Jerad Hill’s Secret Public Network Marketing Podcast.

How Does A 70 Year Old Company Stay Relevant?

Posted on October 14, 2009February 26, 2025 by Jerad Hill

They create great, short, compelling media that is relevant to their brand and inject it into the social web where us users can see it. I’m talking about Old Spice, which when I was young had a bad wrap for being the after shave and cologne that your Grandfather wears. They embrace this by saying: “If your grandfather hadn’t worn it, you wouldn’t exist.” This is the tagline on their Facebook page.

They are embracing the idea that Men wear Old Spice. This feeds off of the preconceived thought that I and many like me had about Old Spice. Remember some of the other cheap colognes that we used to dowse ourselves with in junior high school? This of course being well before the age of Axe body spray which is the Stetson of the 21st century. This commercial spot, though entirely ridiculous, says exactly what it needs to say. Men wear Old Spice.

Around the web they understand that you have to stick out. In order to stick out you have to catch people off guard.

This Facebook ad alone was the tipping point that led me to write this blog post.

Old Spice knows that they are “OLD” and that they are/were known as Grandpa’s brand. What do guys under the age of 30 struggle with most? Being considered a “Man.” Who is a man in most people’s lives? Their Grandpa. Now these ads are not going to compel a guy to run down to Target and get himself some Old Spice deodorant but the next time one finds himself out of deodorant, Old Spice will stick out much more then the other brands. Phrases like “Because I’m a Man” and “Don’t smell like a turtle cage” will run through his head as he makes his decision to buy. I already use Old Spice deodorant so these ads just make me smile, however I still have a preconceived thought that their aftershave and cologne are for Grandpa. Maybe I should pick up a bottle next time and try it?

The purpose for posting this was to show that sometimes the best way to gain exposure is to play off what is already preconceived. Maybe your business has not been around for 70 years and has a Grandpa complex but in almost every industry there is a fun spin you could apply to what you do. Have fun with your advertising, if you don’t, people will see it and ignore it.

You can see more of their great content on their website: http://www.oldspice.com/videos/