Disqus - Friends of bhapi1

Re: I Was Going To Give You An iPod Nano…

dougmcisaac — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 13:21:44 -0000

St. Vincent Children's Healthcare
http://www.svh-mt.org/body....

Great idea Jim, a very classy thing to do.
Doug

Re: Social Traffic Inc.

dougmcisaac — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 12:05:29 -0000

Hello everyone

I'm Doug McIsaac, I'm in charge of search marketing -- Keyword Research and link building. I'm chuckling because Barbara referred to me as the quiet one. I do tend to only say things when I feel it's important to say them, but I can assure you that my friends would not refer to me as quiet. :-)

My background is varied, I'm an entrepreneur who's owned businesses for almost twenty years. My first foray online was in 1997 when I started a consulting firm, RMTG and sourced jobs and contractors online for projects throughout the USA. As RMTG morphed into a software development company, my work online slowed down and I primarily used the web as a research tool.

In 2005, while RMTG was busy building ARx the Pharmacy Management System for Albertsons and ARVMS, a clinical management system for Anti Retroviral Clinics in Uganda I left the company due to health issues and retired with a ten year payment plan. That retirement ended when both projects went south and the company went out of business ten months later. I won't bore you with the details, but I can say that I have some great stories about doing business in a third world country.

Subsequently I reinvented myself as an online marketing consultant. In the last couple of years I've ran an integrated campaign for a local AlphaGraphics that had a 36% response rate, brought in over $100,000 in business and won an award at PODi last year, I've helped clients grow their sales by as much as 400% and I had a low five figure launch for a diet site last year that I sold to one of my partners because he was able to sign a celebrity to take it over.

I enjoy working with entrepreneurs and helping them build their businesses and have several coaching clients who I work with in addition to my consulting clients. My true passion is helping others succeed. I help offline businesses with their online marketing at http://www.Online4Offline.com and work with my local clients at http://www.McIsaacVentures.com and interview marketing experts at blogtalkradio.com/Online4Of....

I'm getting a little long winded here. I'm incredibly impressed with Simon and his vision and truly believe that we can make this happen through the quality of the people that I've met so far. If you haven't joined us yet, I strongly recommend it.

If you would like to follow me: http://www.Twitter.com/doug...

Thanks,
Doug McIsaac - DNM.EDBD

Re: Protected: Strategy

dougmcisaac — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 22:35:59 -0000

Simon,

I truly appreciate how you lay out the strategy behind using Twitter before you dive into how you use it. Too many of the training videos that I've simply tell us the what without explaining the why.

Doug

Re: I guess beating Google was too much. Are they cheating now?

dougmcisaac — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 10:10:23 -0000

I've heard about Google manually making changes, but this is the first time that I've seen it happen. I guess we got their attention!

Doug

Re: Becoming the trustee of our own contributions

dougmcisaac — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 12:10:56 -0000

It is a crazy time when we no longer trust the trustees. We all want to contribute, but we want to help do something that matters -- not make the Mercedes payment for the local NGO execs.

Having personally experienced the corruption that abounds withing the NGOs in the third world has made me hesitate to send money to any organization and has kept me contributing locally.

I look forward to contributing to a cause that is worthy of our trust.

Doug

Re: Social Traffic Subscriptions - Thank You Page

dougmcisaac — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 23:45:50 -0000

Harry thank you for the heartfelt video and for helping keep things on course while we plot the new course for Social Traffic. It's because of givers like you that STI needs to continue to move forward,

Doug

Re: Reg Saddler (Zaibatsu) – Interview

dougmcisaac — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 08:46:07 -0000

Thanks for the interesting interview. It's a great blend of personal and business.
I've played around on Mixx, but based on this interview I want to go take a deeper look at it.

Doug

PS SocialToo doesn't do the autofollow messages anymore.

Re: Networking On Facebook

dougmcisaac — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 12:20:08 -0000

Great advice for getting started on Facebook. Actually great advice for getting started with social media. It's all about creating relationships by giving value first.

Doug

Re: Susan Boyle Knows Something You Don't

dougmcisaac — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 19:22:28 -0000

Scott,

Very insightful, I agree with your list of lessons and believe that companies need to sit back and ask themselves and ask their customers what makes them unique. So often our customers have better stories about our products than a roomful of marketing professionals could ever think up.

Doug

Re: Biggest Mistakes Made by Social Media Gurus

dougmcisaac — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 23:05:39 -0000

I enjoyed your list, my biggest mistake/issue is over editing, I struggle with it and while I develop online and social marketing strategies for clients every day, I struggle sharing my ideas online. I find that commenting and using Twitter is helping me get over it.

Doug

Re: Selecting a cause to donate funds to

dougmcisaac — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:20:01 -0000

I like what Willie Smits is doing, but I think I'm going to donate to http://www.plantabillion.org
Here's to making an impact on Earthday.

Doug

Re: Google Friend Connect – A game changer

dougmcisaac — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 23:13:21 -0000

GFC is levelling the playing field for everyone who has wanted to add social features to their websites but didn't have the deep pockets required to build the tools. But I'm probably most excited about the ability for people to find your site by following their friends. Getting a core group of evangelists will crucial to building your traffic in the future.

Doug

Re: Credit where credit is due…

dougmcisaac — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 16:13:02 -0000

Great insight,
I too agree that the spammers are going to find it harder and harder to take advantage of social media and that the conversations are going to be more important and relationships more powerful because of the controls.

I've also enjoyed the Social Traffic experience and watching the lessons unfold as they developed we are all smarter because of what we've learned and how we've adapted. I'm looking forward to the future and to watching how things evolve in the future,

Doug

Re: Google Friend Connect – A game changer

dougmcisaac — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 16:21:00 -0000

GFC is one of the most exciting new tools I've seen in the decade I've been online. The potential to build a community without having to pay for the programming plus the potential traffic generation easily makes this a tools that stands by itself.

Thanks for keeping us on the bleeding edge of this new technology,

Doug

Re: Protected: 01 - Strategy

dougmcisaac — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:05:41 -0000

It all starts with a good strategy. Great job explaining this so that everyone can understand it.

Doug

Re: 02 - Squidoo

dougmcisaac — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:13:11 -0000

Great guide to getting started with Squidoo. I've found that Squidoo can be very powerful for quite a few niches, both for searche negine rankings and for internal traffic.
It's definitely in my top 4-5 sites that I use for myslef and for clients.
Doug

Re: Google Me Takes On a New Meaning

dougmcisaac — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:37:21 -0000

I was reading the Google information and it said it's only available in the US.

Doug

Re: Google Me Takes On a New Meaning

dougmcisaac — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:38:49 -0000

John,

This is very interesting. Thanks for sharing this with us.
I've been building my profile because of Google lFriend Connect, now with this addition it's only getting more powerful.

Thanks,
Doug

Re: Never Ending Conversation

dougmcisaac — Sat, 02 May 2009 10:40:43 -0000

I agree that trust is under-rated in marketing. With the advent of social networking and the inherent transparency that comes with that we are entering a new era of marketing that Corporate America is struggling to understand. The businesses that grasp that transparency and become involved in the conversation will prosper.

Doug

Re: Tribalism - Speaking the lingo

dougmcisaac — Sat, 02 May 2009 10:48:33 -0000

When building relationships within online communities or tribes I agree that is is imperative that we speak the same language.

One of the easiest ways to develop initial rapport is to speak the same language, and no one will listen to someone that don't have some level of rapport with, but I would go one step further and state that people identify, follow and listen to someone that they want to become or that they want to emulate in some way.

Doug

Re: cluetrainplus10 – Links Subvert Hierarchies

dougmcisaac — Sat, 02 May 2009 19:52:10 -0000

You are right that "We're already doing this" BUT very few organizations have figured it out. Especially larger corporations. The thought of letting loose of hierarchies and fiefdoms is scary to many managers. They still do not understand the power of the network and I believe many will go down fighting before they hand over their control-based management.

It is going to be interesting to see which companies adapt first and how that effects market share going forward,

Doug

Re: Why listen to me?

dougmcisaac — Fri, 08 May 2009 09:44:36 -0000

Simon,

Thank you for sharing an amazing story. The more I learn about your background, the more I believe that we are on the path to building a great organization that will make an impact far greater than its size in the years ahead.

You teach more in this post about the art of leadership than you can learn in most MBA programs. Having the foresight and ability to identify the natural leaders or "goats" is the biggest part of building a great organization.

The model you built at SWTE transfers online, far more strongly than I believed that it would and I now firmly believe that it will continue to impact the way we create mutual value for everyone involved.

Doug

Re: 01 - Why Events Listed

dougmcisaac — Sat, 09 May 2009 11:42:02 -0000

Eventslisted has the potential to change event marketing internationally by providing a one stop shop for event marketers to go for all of their online marketing needs. It's really going to be a powerful tool. I'm looking forward to helping promote it.

Doug

Re: 02 - Getting Started

dougmcisaac — Sat, 09 May 2009 11:49:04 -0000

I'm really impressed with the "back door" policy it's a great concept to grow the site virally. I remember when I heard about linkedIn and that you had be invited by someone. I was emailing friends of mine to see who was already in. It was very powerful. I believe that this will cause the same type of rush.

Doug

Re: 10 - Payment Processing

dougmcisaac — Sun, 10 May 2009 15:37:52 -0000

Charging only $.50-1.50 makes it extremely affordable for someone selling tickets through your site.

Do you send people through to a PayPal page? If so how do you handle people who don't finalize the transaction once they are there? I've had launches where people couldn't get past that they didn't need to have a PayPal account to pay us through PayPal so they didn;t finalize the transaction.

Doug