MarkTzk.com » Administrivia

Changes coming to this site

Mark Tosczak — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 10:14:31 +0000

Just a quick administrative note: There are changes coming to this site and my other main blog, thoughtsignals.com. You’ll know the changes have been made once this post disappears. Related posts:Why I Started MarkTzk.com T minus zero: Welcome, and a contest Related posts:

Changing my approach to Facebook

Mark Tosczak — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 23:22:31 +0000

Note: As I’ve mentioned previously, I challenged myself to write 30 posts in 30 days. I’ve not been as consistent with my blogging as I would have liked, so I’ve got to get a lot of blog posts published in the last couple of days. So, you’ll see several more posts than normal in the next couple of days. On Feb. 17, I’ll return to a normal schedule of three to five times per week. Please bear with me. Thanks!

Last year, I wrote a post called Why I’m becoming more promiscuous online, which explained my personal approach to social media and networking. Re-reading that, my philosophy and approach to social media hasn’t changed much, but I am making a tweak to it. I’m going to close off my personal Facebook account to people I don’t have some sort of real relationship with. Later this week, I’ll start unfriending people who I don’t know in real life or haven’t had some sort of interaction with. Here’s why.

Lately, I’ve started getting more and more friend invitations on Facebook from people I just don’t know. In some cases, they are friends with someone else I know, so there’s a chance I could run into them in my day-to-day life. In some cases, we don’t have any friends in common. I think some of them come from this blog. I’ve had my Facebook link posted prominently (the icon over on the right) for a while, in the last few weeks readership here has gone up dramatically. Some of those new readers have asked to connect on Facebook (and in some cases, I have).

But something else has happened in the last few months, also. My personal interactions and communications — information about my kids, my family and my connections to them — has increased. More relatives have connected with me online, and a lot of my Facebook activity has become more personal. I’m not feeling as comfortable about having that open to anyone who comes along. So with Facebook I’m altering my “promiscuous” approach and becoming more conservative.

The new MarkTzk.com fan page on Facebook

Still, I know a lot of people I might encounter online will still be interested in opportunities to interact on Facebook. So I’ve set up a Facebook fan page for that. The Facebook icon over in the right-hand column of this blog already points to it. I’m afraid there’s not much there yet, but I’ll start to gradually populate it with content over time, and I hope it becomes another place where we can talk about the topics and issues that this blog covers. I also plan to treat it as a kind of laboratory for experiments with Facebook marketing and Facebook fan page customization.

My LinkedIn and Twitter accounts will remain very open, so I’d still love to connect with you there. And if you know me from someplace other than this blog, there’s a pretty good chance we’ll remain friends on Facebook. See you at the fan page.

What do you think of the new site design?

Mark Tosczak — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 15:52:37 +0000

I’ve just completed phase 1 of the redesign of this blog. I’ve created a new header, messed around with the typography and colors a bit, added new social media icons and a Google custom search interface to make the blog searchable. I’ve got lots more work to do, including new posts to write, updating the ‘About Mark Tosczak’ page and other stuff. That will be coming soon. In the meantime, though, I’d appreciate any feedback and suggestions you might have on the redesign, or ideas about what to do next. Please leave a comment below if you’re so inclined.

Vote for your favorite web site, web app or web tool

Mark Tosczak — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 12:37:27 +0000

If you’re using sites like Twitter, or if you’ve got widgets on your blog or plug-ins in your browser, chances are you have some favorites in the Open Web Awards. I’ve added a widget, on the right side of the page, that allows you to vote in that contest. By scrolling through the list you can also find interesting new sites and tools that you may not have heard of yet.

I’m not going to tell you what to vote for. But I do encourage you to vote. (If you’re reading this post in email or an RSS reader, you’ll need to click through to the site to vote.)

I know the elections are over (at least for the United States – well, most of the states), but it’s still not too late to vote. Give your favorite site, web app or widget some love. By the way, you can even vote more than once – as often as once a day – if you really want to support your favorite site. So go for it.

Why I’ve added ads to the blog

Mark Tosczak — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 03:26:40 +0000

In the last week or so I’ve installed a new template on this blog, and I’ve also added advertising. This is the first time I’ve ever put ads on any blog I’ve run, so it’s a bit of an experiment. The only two ads, over there in the right column, that I’ve got at this point are for premium WordPress theme I’m using, Thesis, and for Dreamhost’s webhosting service.

In both cases they are products/services that I have used, and paid money for, and am using now. So I feel safe in recommending them because I’ve had a good experience with them. They are both affiliate ads, which means if you click on them (or, for that matter, the links in this post above) and then make a purchase, I get a percentage of that purchase. But clicking on those ads and making a purchase doesn’t increase your cost, so there’s no downside to you.

There is, obviously, a little upside for me. I get a little bit of money that helps cover some of the costs, such as webhosting, that go into running this blog. I’m not fooling myself here. Quite frankly, I’ll consider this a success if I’m actually able to cover those costs with ads on this blog over the course of the year.

Lots of blogs have ads, so this is nothing new. It is something new for me, so I thought it was worth mentioning. If you have thoughts on this, or any comments on the new design, please leave a comment below.

Three lessons from first week of MarkTzk.com

Mark Tosczak — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 11:34:44 +0000

Successes and lessons learned from the first week of MarkTzk.com:

1. I chose the wrong contest at the wrong time

When I launched this blog this past Monday, I announced a contest. Write something about social media and marketing, I said, and you’ll have a chance to win a $50 Amazon gift card. Well, that was an abysmal failure. I haven’t gotten a single entry (the deadline was Friday at midnight).

I take two lessons from that: Asking people to write ‘no more than’ 500 words makes it sound like an essay assignment from school — no fun at all. And I don’t have enough readers at this young blog to support that kind of contest, given that only a percentage of people will enter any sort of contest at all.

However, I will try a contest again, when I have more readers. I have some ideas about how to make it easier and more fun, so stay tuned.

2. I need to make the blog stickier to convert readers to subscribers

I had what I would consider decent traffic for the first week — 164 visitors, 219 unique visits and 422 page views. However, my subscriber stats are a little lower than I’d like. I ended the week with a daily average of 6 subscribers (either to the RSS feed or via email). That is what the experts call a conversion problem, as I would like people to subscribe to this blog. (Have you subscribed? If not, add the RSS feed to your reader or type your email address into email subscribe box over there on the right side of the page.)

So I will be working on some features to make the blog “stickier” and offer more value to readers.

3. I need your help to promote your blog!

Are you reading this? Do I know you — are you a friend, relative, co-worker, former colleague or acquaintance of mine? If so, email me your blog’s address and I will add it to my “Bloggers I know” list on the right side. I asked people to do this in one of my first posts this week, and some did, but not everyone. If you don’t want your blog linked here because you don’t want all the traffic, that’s fine, I respect that. But if you do, please let me know.

Don’t be shy — I’m in marketing and public relations, after all, I’m sympathetic to promotions and publicity.

Why I Started MarkTzk.com

Mark Tosczak — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:00:00 +0000

I promised yesterday I would write a longer post about why I started this blog. This is that post.

So, why did you start this blog?

I have four main reasons for starting this blog:

To create value for others by creating content that’s useful, informative and entertaining.
To express myself creatively through writing, pictures and other forms of content.
To conduct experiments in online marketing and social media and further develop my expertise in those areas.
To build my brand as an expert communicator and a marketing and public relations strategist.You had a blog, thoughtsignals.com, for years. Why go to all the trouble of creating a new one?

I blogged at thoughtsignals off and on for almost eight years (and wiped it clean and restarted it several times, which is why you don’t see eight years of posts there). But thoughtsignals was originally intended to be an outlet for whatever I happened to be thinking about. As a result, it was rather unfocused.

I decided the best way to bring focus to my blogging was to start over. MarkTzk.com may evolve over time, but it will focus on the topics that are important in my professional life – marketing, management, productivity, writing and other stuff. Included in “other stuff” are things like what I think about the news media, tips on creativity, social media, business strategy and more.

What’s with the name, MarkTzk?

Well, the first part is my first name, Mark. My last name is Tosczak. (It’s pronounced with the ‘s’ and ‘c’ silent, and a long ‘o’ and short ‘a’. So think “toe,” as in your big toe, plus “Zach,” as in Zachary.)

After spelling my last name almost every day for more than three decades, I’ve learned that most people have trouble with it. And if you can’t spell it, it’s not going to a very good URL. And even if they can spell it, people often have trouble pronouncing. So Tzk is a very rough phonetic spelling of my last name.

MarkTzk is also my Gmail address and my Twitter ID, so it’s easy to remember.

OK, is there anything I can do?

Three things:

First, please subscribe, either by putting your email address in the subscribe form over there on the right hand side to get a once-a-day email with the latest blog posts in it, or by subscribing to the RSS feed in your feed reader.

Second, please comment. Leave a comment in the comments below this post, or below other posts that interest you. Or email me a comment privately if you prefer. My email address is over there on the left side of the page. Any feedback you provide can help make this a better site for everyone.

Third, if you’re on Facebook or LinkedIn and we’re not connected, please Friend me or Link to me. And if you’re on Twitter, you can find me there at http://www.twitter.com/marktzk.

P.S.

By the way if you blog, and I know you, and I haven’t put you under my list of bloggers I know, please email me and I will correct that oversight.

T minus zero: Welcome, and a contest

Mark Tosczak — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 10:00:06 +0000

So this is it, this is what I’ve been counting down to: The public launch of my new blog, MarkTzk.com.

I’ve been blogging, a little irregularly, and have had my own domain (www.thoughtsignals.com) for nearly eight years, but I felt it was time to try something a little more focused. I’m going to give thoughtsignals, which has always suffered from a lack of focus, a rest. I’ll write more about why I launched this blog, and what I hope to accomplish here, later. And if you’re reading this on thoughtsignals.com, where this has been cross-posted, I encourage you to go over to marktzk.com and subscribe to the RSS feed or to the daily email update.

Now, on to the contest. In the last couple of weeks as I’ve been counting down on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and thoughtsignals.com, I’ve been surprised by how much attention I’ve gotten. Coworkers, friends and acquaintances have all been guessing what I might be counting down to. (For the record, only Cameron Tew figured it out before today.) People guessed that maybe RLF was going to have a big announcement, or I was going to have a new child, or start my own business, or go skydiving (!), or more. Let me just say that all of you have much more creative, interesting ideas about my life than I do. Thank you. I’m honored.

But I also hope that no one feels let down by the fact that I’m launching a blog. I mean, c’mon, everybody and their mother has a blog.

So, to make this a little more interesting, I’m going to have a contest. You can participate. You could win. And if you do win, you’ll get a $50 Amazon gift card.

One of the topics this blog will focus on is the use of social media in marketing. So I’m looking for a short piece on that. Give me no more than 500 words (remember, longer is not necessarily better) in response to this:

“Social media (including blogging, wikis, social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) is better than, worse than or just different than traditional marketing and public relations techniques. Please provide examples, anecdotes, links, etc. to support your point.”

Here are the rules:

1. The total length (excluding the headline) must be 500 words or less. The title/headline doesn’t count toward the total word count.

2. The entry must be posted someplace online that’s publicly accessible — a blog, Facebook page, whatever — and must include a hyperlink back to this post: http://marktzk.com/launch-contest. (If you don’t have a place to post this, one option might be to create a Squidoo page.)

3. Please email the link to your entry to me at marktzk at gmail dot com, and put “MarkTzk.com contest” in the subject line. Your email must reach me by midnight this Friday, July 18.

4. Multiple submissions are fine, but each individual submission must follow these rules. If your entry is a blog posting, each one must be a separate post.

5. As I receive entries I will post the links to them here. So if you have a blog you should get some traffic out of this, too.

6. I reserve the right to disqualify entries that are pornographic, contain hate speech or are otherwise objectionable. (Hey, I believe in free speech, but it’s my contest.)

7. The winner will be announced in one week, next Monday morning, July 25.

Got it? If you have questions, leave them in the comments or shoot me an email. Otherwise, gentle readers, start your keyboards.

And even if you don’t want to enter the contest, I hope you’ll point your feedreader at that big orange RSS icon in the upper right hand corner and subscribe to the feed, or put your email address into the little subscribe box over to the right to receive the blog posts via email (just one email a day).

T minus 2 days

Mark Tosczak — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 11:12:30 +0000

Anybody arrived here and figured it out yet? Leave a comment if you want to be the first. Related posts:T minus 3 days Related posts:

T minus 3 days

T minus 3 days

Mark Tosczak — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:02:07 +0000

T minus 3 days until the public launch of this blog. Might as well countdown here, since I’m counting down everywhere else in my little social media world. If you’ve arrived here, congratulations, you figured it out. A new blog … more details on why to come. Related posts:T minus 2 days T minus zero: [...] Related posts: