Nancy Marmolejo: Transcript from Blogging and Beyond

Listen to the show with Nancy Marmolejo about using MySpace for your business.

Denise:  This is Denise Wakeman from the Blog Squad.

Patsi:  And this is Patsi Krakoff.

Denise:  And you're listening to Blogging and Beyond. This show is about how to leverage the internet to attract, sell, and profit. This is our second show on Blog Talk Radio and I had a little glitch getting into the dashboard here so I apologize for our rough start.

For the next 30 minutes, we are going to bring you the best expert information on how to leverage the internet for your business to attract, sell, and profit. During our show today, we're talking about using MySpace for your business and we're speaking with visibility expert Nancy Marmolejo of Comadre Coaching about how marketers can create incredible business strategies using MySpace as a lead generating tool.

Patsi:  That's right, Denise, and I am all ears. As you know, I usually wait for you to try things out and then I watch others, like Tom Antion and other internet marketers. So, I kind of wait to see if there are more than a couple of smart people on the net starting to use something before I start paying attention. I think the time has come to pay attention to MySpace.

Denise:  Absolutely and that's what we're talking about today. So why don't you introduce Nancy for our guests?

Patsi:  Great. We met Nancy Marmolejo at a couple of conferences. She was one of our guest bloggers at the ICF conference in San Jose in 2005 and she's an award winning business owner and recognized expert in business and creativity.

She has shared expert commentary with numerous media outlets, including Smartmoney.com, Latina Magazine, UniVision TV, Red Book, the Orange County Register, and many, many more. She's the recipient of the Anna Maria Arias Memorial Business Fund Award from Wells Fargo Bank, the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and Latina Style Magazine, and was named Small Business Entrepreneur of the Year by the National Hispanic Business Woman's Association.

She's also author of Make MySpace Your Space, a complete guide to getting started on MySpace. Welcome, Nancy.

Nancy:  Hello, and thank you for having me here. It's great to talk to you both.

Denise:  Sorry about that, Nancy. I was having a little computer issue there in the beginning, but now we're here.

Nancy:  It's good, I always think of you two wearing pink every time I see you, so I'm wearing pink in honor of the Blog Squad today.

Denise:  Oh good. I'm wearing a blouse with pink in it.

Patsi:  I've got pink shoes on.

Denise:  Unfortunately, we don't have the webcam, so people will just have to use their imaginations. So, Nancy, as we said in the promotional material for the show, MySpace is the second most visited site on the web. But before we address the issue of whether or not MySpace is the smart way to get found online and market your business, could you give our listeners a little bit of an overview about MySpace? If they're not sure what it is?

Nancy:  MySpace is a social networking site that started a few years ago originally as a place for Indy bands to promote themselves. So you know your little garage bands? It would give you a place to have a presence and you could post where your gigs were and your fans started connecting. And then, pretty soon, fans started creating their own sites and everybody followed suit. It became a big social place.

A couple of years ago, I remember seeing my nieces obsessively going to their MySpace pages every single day and talking to their friends. And I had thought, "Hmm, that looks interesting. I wonder if I could support my business on MySpace and help promote things." But I didn't really give it much more thought.

So, I've met other people who have had incredible success and when I started hearing these stories that they're telling, it prompted me to really take a second look at MySpace as more than a place for kids to connect and find where the party is.

Denise:  OK, so what made you finally decide to jump in?

Nancy:  What made me finally decide to jump in was my friend Cathy Cano Murillo. I have to give her total kudos for this. She goes by the name "Crafty Chica." She's a nationally syndicated craft columnist and an author, and she encouraged me to try MySpace out. I did and my mentor at the time discouraged me from using MySpace. She said that was just a place for kids, so I wrote it off.

Well, then Cathy started telling me how she was growing her friends list, she was selling books. And every time she posted a blog on MySpace or she posted a bulletin, at the bottom of it, she would always have a link back to her book on Amazon.

Well, one day   this was about a year and half after her last book had come out   her publisher, Harper Collins, gave her a call and said, "What is going on? Your online book sales are incredible, and we're not even promoting you!" And she said, "Well, I'm using MySpace." And as soon as she told me that, I said, "I am right there. I don't care what anybody says, I'm on MySpace."

And so I started growing it and it doesn't take too long to grow a presence and I've seen some incredible results and have netted lots of clients from being there.

Denise:  OK, so you said that Crafty Chica's publisher called up and said, "What's going on, you're selling so many books online and we're not even promoting you."

Nancy:  Yeah.

Denise:  Who needs a publisher?

Nancy:  Yeah, exactly.

Denise:  So that kind of leads me into my next question then. It's about how you use MySpace for your business. Obviously, she's using it to sell books. You're a service professional, you're a coach, you have products and books. How are you using it?

Nancy:  Well, primarily, and this is what I always tell people, is to use MySpace as a relationship building tool. I don't have a hard core sales site on MySpace. Yes, there are people have those, but those turn me off online anywhere and they turn me off on MySpace. So I create something that I know my ideal client is going to appreciate and that is information and relationship building.

So what I do is I put a lot of effort into finding people to add to my friends list instead of people who are not familiar with MySpace. The whole thing is getting friends and connecting with them. And finding like minded people, people who are my peers, my competitors, my potential clients. We create this nice little network where we're able to share information just the way you would in any kind of offline networking mixer.

So I often use that analogy of an in person networking, use that same mindset and that same approach for going onto MySpace. I'm not about the big banner ads, get rich quick, buy now buy now. However, I do have links to my ebook and links to my services, but people get to know me a lot more through the MySpace page, so it's not just this big bam, buy from me right now kind of thing.

Denise:  OK, so you've talked a little bit about networking. How do you apply traditional networking to networking on MySpace?

Nancy:  That's a great question. It's the same thing; you just suit up and you show up. How you present yourself in person and how you present yourself online. If you go to a networking event, the things that you say, do, and share are going to be things that will support your good reputation, your friendliness, your reputation in your business. And use those same principals in your MySpace page. So unless you're a swimsuit model, I'd say leave the scantily clad pictures of yourself for some other place in your life.

Because sometimes I go to people's MySpace pages and I go, "Uh oh! Too much information." I really don't want to know that about you, or see that picture. So if you wouldn't say, do it or share it in a regular offline networking event, don't say, do or share it on your MySpace professional business page.

I always tell people if you have some freaky alter ego and you want to create a MySpace page for that, go for that. But that's not what we're talking about right now. We're talking about using MySpace for your business.

Denise:  Right, Right.

Pasti:  I have a question. Say you're on MySpace and you get a visitor. I think they introduce themselves as wanting to be your friend, is that correct?

Nancy:  Huh.

Patsi:  How does the conversation evolve? Do you say something first? What kind of thing do you say to them to open the conversation?

Nancy:  It's all automated. So you click a button that says "add friend." It will send a message to you that says, "Hey, this person wants to be your friend." It will show their picture, it will link to their profile and you have the options: approve, deny or send them a message. So usually what I do is I go to their page, I get a feel for them and if I feel this yuck factor, yuck feeling, I say 'no' that's it. I don't need tell them anything, I don't need to send them a message and apologize and explain why I don't want them. It's like click, I don't want you.

And if it's somebody who looks like they're a great match, I add them. And then I go back to their page and I leave them a little comment. I say, "Thanks for adding me, I look forward to learning more about you." And I visit them every now and then and leave them comments. You know, just like you would in any kind of networking event. You think about the person. Oh, here's something I thought of that reminded me of you. Maybe this is of good use for you.

Denise:  [agrees] So when you're networking with people, do you...I know that there's groups on MySpace. How do you use groups? Or do you use groups to meet other like minded people?

Nancy:  There are groups on MySpace. I, personally, am not doing a lot of groups because I have enough on my plate as it is. I think my husband will kill me if I join one more group. I know people who are using them. Affinity groups for marketing, home based businesses, work at home moms. There are a lot of different groups and also a lot of non profit organizations have created groups around their causes and things like that. That's just another function and feature. I've joined a few groups, but I'm not really sure how they're impacting me yet. So that's a new one. I'm not saying it's not useful, but I just haven't explored that area yet. I'd love to hear from people that have though.

Denise:  I have been on MySpace for a while, but I haven't really leveraged it like one could. I've been learning from you, and from your great book "Make MySpace Your Space" and that's been really helpful. But, like anything else, it takes time.

Patsi:  Yeah. That's my other question, Nancy. How much time to you spend on it, in order to be productive?

Nancy:  This is something that everyone is talking about. Please don't add more to my busy schedule, I just can't deal with it. I will give some time saving tips.

Number one: look at the time you devote to a regular offline networking event. Once again, I'm going to come back to this analogy of in person networking. If you go to a one hour luncheon once a month, or once a week, or every two weeks, then give yourself that time. Maybe a half hour, or an hour, once a week to really go into your MySpace page and look around and add friends.

I remember when I first got on MySpace I spent the first 30 days really taking massive action. I'd sit on the couch with my laptop and start furiously inviting people to be my friends. That was something that I did in the first 30 days and it really got the ball rolling.

You can also delegate things out. If you have a trusted assistant, or what most people are doing, is they're getting their teenagers to do this because they seem to know how to do everything on MySpace.

If this is a person who understands who is a good match for you. And in the ebook that I wrote, I have a whole chapter on different ways that you can find friends. There are ways of looking for friends, there are just all these different ways that you can find friends. But if somebody understands what a good match is, you can delegate that task out of having them do some of your friend invites.

You can also delegate the tasks out of cross posting things from your blog, media releases, your podcast. Any of that stuff. That's just sort of technical follow up. So let's say you were at a regular offline networking event and you had some follow up that you could delegate to your assistant, it's the same thing. You'd be delegating out some follow up for somebody to help you with your MySpace.

Denise:  OK, now you brought up something here. I know you have three more points, but can you mention the issue about the blog?

Well, MySpace has a blog function. What I always do is I cross post my blogs back onto my MySpace page. Maybe I'll put "originally posted on my blog such and such." So what's interesting about MySpace is that it's this all in one website. It's like walking into Target. You can buy underwear and you can buy a hammer and paper clips and a shower curtain, all under the same roof.

And that's what MySpace is. You go in there and it's for the short attention span generation, everything is right there, so there's your blog. And people don't miss it. They don't have to scroll through a website or click around to find it. It's all right there. So it drives more traffic to your regular blog if you have a link that say's 'originally posted on my other blog' and your subscription boxes and all of the little html codes that you throw on your regular blog, you can put those on your MySpace page too, and get people to subscribe to it and they can also subscribe to your blog via MySpace.

Denise:  OK, OK good. Before we get into the remaining three time saving tips, Patsi, do you want to give our listeners a quick note here?

Patsi:  Absolutely. This is show business folks, so we have a station break. We want to remind you that you're listening to "Blogging and Beyond" with the Blog Squad: Denise Wakeman and I'm Patsi Krakoff. And on today's show we're talking with Nancy Marmolejo of www.ComadreCoaching.com about using MySpace for business networking. You can find out more about Nancy at www.comadrecoaching.com. And you can access info about the Blog Squad at www.blogsquad.biz. And read our popular blogs at www.buildabetterblog.com, www.biztipsblog.com and www.coachezines.com. Now back to our show, Blogging and Beyond.

Denise:  OK, before that little break we were discussing MySpace and networking with Nancy. So let's go back   you gave two timesaving tips for using MySpace: You want to devote as much time as you do to regular, offline networking, and delegate some of the jobs like finding friends and posting on your blog to an assistant or a teenager. What else?

Nancy:  Other than having a timer next to your computer and saying, "OK, I'm just going to do ten minutes, once a day. If that's all you're going to do, that's all you have to do. The important part is to be consistent.

I would say to check it once a day. There are people who are always on; they're always online. And when you're online that little icon pops up that says, "Online Now." You can see it next to the picture and for some people it's like, "Wow, don't you have a life? Is that all you do is go on MySpace?"

Really, what I do   just like I do my email: I check it in the morning, and I might check it late in the day. Sometimes I get so busy with other things, I might not even check it one day. But then there might be a day where I'll say, You know what? I want to be on here for an hour or so and really aggressively go out there and find some new friends, do some invites, post some bulletins and post some blogs.

So it really depends on you and your schedule, but I would encourage people to check it at least once a day, just to stay on top of things. You never know, you might get an important messages; that million dollar message might be sitting in your inbox.

Denise:  Yes, I just noticed that first of all, you can get email sent to you when somebody posts something about you or requests to be a friend, right?

Nancy:  Yes, you can do that.

Denise:  And you can also turn that off if it gets to be too much.

Nancy:  What I suggest is that in the very beginning, you keep that function on, because it will remind you to go over there. But then once your friends start getting into the hundreds, and your comments and all the little posts start coming up, you're like: OK, I don't want those in my inbox. You just trust yourself to go on there once a day and check things.

Denise:  Right. I recently turned my email notifications off, because I felt like: No! Go away!

Nancy:  Another one!

Another thing people might want to do is   this is getting into the technicalities of having a MySpace page, but people can leave comments on your page. You have the ability to approve those comments before they're actually posted online, or you can just leave it be. I think it's a good idea to approve the comments before they go online, because you never know. Somebody might want to put something weird or some crazy banner add that you don't necessarily want, and it protects you.

Denise:  Right, yeah. OK, so you recommend moderating the comments.

Nancy:  I do, I do. That's what I do, because there are some people I feel like: Oh, no thank you!

Denise:  Yeah, right. OK, well let's get back to business. You talked about using MySpace as a lead generation tool. So what kind of tactics do you specifically use to convert those relationships you are building by MySpace into clients?

Nancy:  Well one thing is, on my home page I have all of my information there. I tell you about myself, I tell you about my business, and I put links back to my web site. I put the opt in box for my ezine; I have links to my blog, links to my podcast, links to buy my book. So that's the first way I get people.

The next way is by befriending them, and sending them messages every now and then, or posting bulletins with helpful information. Usually when I post a blog entry, I might post it again as a bulletin and send it out to people, so it keeps me visible. My whole thing is staying visible. The more visible you are, you're in people's minds.

I had a teleseminar recently about establishing yourself as a recognized expert and increasing your visibility, and the MySpace community that showed up on that all was incredible. I got more people from MySpace then I did from sending it out to just my regular list; it was pretty amazing!

Denise:  Wow!

Nancy:  It's a very close and dedicated group, and you seriously form these relationships with people. Like I said, for me it has resulted in consulting clients, in coaching clients, and lots of ebook sales as well.

Denise:  OK, wow! You're a professional selling your services, and you're basically running people back to your sales page for your ebooks or your coaching services, right?

Nancy:  Yes. I'll give another little tip, and this is once again for people have already established a MySpace presence: Make sure when you sign your name that you have a link that goes back to where you want them to go. Your services page, your sales page, your product page; and put that under your name when you leave a comment, when you send a message   anything! It's just a matter of reinforcing the presence online that you already have in other places.

Denise:  Mm hmm. Now, how easy is it to set up a profile and to comment and all that on MySpace? Because I have discovered that you do need to know a little bit of HTML.

Nancy:  If you get my book, I walk you through it!

Denise:  OK!

Nancy:  I was a teacher for 15 years. I am very, very comfortable taking complicated information and simplifying it, and I will take your hand and walk your through it. Basically what I do in the book is just give people a very simple, "Here's how you get it up." We don't go for the bling, we don't go for all the bells and whistles; I get you up there very simply and basically.

When you purchase the book I follow it up with some coaching tips that tell you: OK, now that you've got this... all right, now I'm going to show you how to add music. And now I'll tell you a little bit about adding some glitz and some bling. But the very beginning   it's a really simple process, but yes, there are some mistakes people make.

They don't tell you on the MySpace setup that you do need to know a little bit of HTML. But you do know how to make a paragraph and things like that. Otherwise people put these beautiful 500 word bios in there, and all it is, is this endless stream of eight point font and you're like, "Oh my goodness, help! I can't read it. Give me a paragraph, please!"

Denise:  Right.

Nancy:  I found that out and decided that's something important I need to know, because I've seen too many people lose a lot of opportunities by not having their page formatted well.

Denise:  Right, right. So you help with that in your ebook?

Nancy:  Yes.

Denise:  You have a beautiful MySpace profile. Did you design that yourself? It doesn't look like a template from MySpace.

Nancy:  I originally had just the blah, boring vanilla MySpace...you know, white background, little blue borders; that's the one that everybody gets.

Denise:  That's the one I have.

Nancy:  OK. Not that you're boring or blah. You're going to bling yours out pretty soon.

Denise:  Oh yeah.

Nancy:  There are a couple of things that you can do. There are these different places   and just to teach our listeners the correct terminology, it's called pimping your site.

Nancy:  There's all sorts of potty language associated with MySpace, but that's just the way it is. You have to get over any aversion!

So, you can go online and you can just do a search for "free MySpace templates." There are so many people out there who have free MySpace templates, and there are pros and cons to that.

The pro is that it will give you some nice color and design. The con is that you might get something funky  some of the backgrounds are a little too busy, a little too swirly; and there is going to be graphic embedded. Like, I had one of those, and it was a happy face with a fedora hat with a feather, and it said "MySpacePimper.com."

Denise:  Oh my gosh.

Nancy:  And it was right in my "about me." [laughs] I didn't know how to get it out.

So actually what I did was I hired a designer, who for a very reasonable price, she made a custom design MySpace page for me that has the same colors as my website, so it was complementary to my branding. I just love the way she did it. For me it was very simple, I didn't want it to be complicated.

You know, there are designers out there who can create your same color scheme that you have in your web presence and get it on your MySpace page.

Patsi:  Nancy, I have a question for you. I just MySpaced your name, I did a search for Nancy Marmolejo on MySpace and it comes up, first of all your space is first, but then there are a whole bunch of others, including ours. Is that because we talk about you, that you are a friend of ours?

Nancy:  Yeah, anywhere where it mentions the name in the text or in the name itself it will pop up just like a search engine. Isn't that cool?

Patsi:  It is great. Because it means that by accepting friends you can actually come up in searches for other people.

Nancy:  And I have had, on my Google Alerts, I put my name in there and different search terms, and I have had MySpace pages pop up where my name has been mentioned, or where it was in a comment.

Denise:  Really?

Nancy:  So it does help you in the search engines.

Denise:  Absolutely.

Patsi:  Interesting.

Denise:  Well, MySpace is indexed by all the search engines just like any other blog or other website is.

Patsi:  True. Well, this is making more sense to me. It is just one more way you can get found in the search engines.

Nancy:  Oh, Patsi is going to make a MySpace page, I can just feel it!

Patsi:  I have already got one, but I just looked at it and I haven't been on there since January.

Denise:  She made one, but I think I am her only friend right now.

Nancy:  Patsi, you just made a very important point. You said you haven't been on there since January. Here is one of the things on MySpace: It will say the last time that you logged in on your profile page. So if somebody sees that you haven't logged in for three or four weeks, they are going to think, "Well, why should I be that person's friend? What is it going to do for me?" So, that is one of the other reasons why it is good to login at least once a day; because it lets people know that you are actively using this tool.

Denise:  That's right. And this is like every other social networking or social media tool. You know, a blog being a social media tool as well. And that is if you are not actually using it and being active, then people go away. As Patsi says, a blog that you haven't posted on for a month or two looks like a broken down storefront.

You know, all of these tools, and this is why we wanted to talk to you about using MySpace as a business tool, because all of these tools help attract more people. You probably have clients now through MySpace you would never have had any connection to before.

Nancy:  Exactly, and I have also gotten known by some people who are pretty cool and pretty high up there. So your lesson  six degrees of separation from some pretty big names. And I am getting notes from them and they said "Oh, I got your book and I really like it," and it is pretty amazing. It definitely is a lot easier to reach people through MySpace if they are actively using MySpace than trying to find them on email or going through their assistant.

Denise:  Right, right. Well this is great. I was going to ask you to give us some examples of some authors that were using MySpace to build their platform, and you mentioned the Crafty Chica at the beginning. Can you just, before we wrap up, give us a quick rundown on how she has strategically used MySpace, just to give people an idea how they can do it?

Nancy:  Well, you know, she is actively on there, she blogs on there, she cross posts all of the blogs that she puts on her website on there. And once again, she sends out bulletins with tips and ideas, and at the end of each one she has a link back to her Amazon site, to her book on Amazon.

So, I mean, just don't forget to put that little sales bit in there. The big thing is don't clobber people over the head with your sales message. Give them something good, give them some good content; and that way they will get to know, like, and trust you so they will make that purchase.

Denise:  Right, right. Well I was posting  you know, because the bulletins go by so fast; if you have a lot of friends and they are all posting, the bulletins scroll through pretty fast   so I was posting about this program every two hours, yesterday and today. And several people contacted me and said, "I am looking forward to your show" and that sort of thing. You know, I don't know who they were.

Nancy:  Yeah, it works.

Denise:  They are new friends!

Patsi:  OK, well I am really encouraged now to get more active on MySpace.

Nancy:  Thanks.

Patsi:  Listen, this has been really informative, Nancy. But before we say goodbye, I just want to let our listeners know that next week on Blog Talk Radio we are interviewing a woman who has had spectacular success with niche blogs, and that is Shirley Frazier of www.SweetSurvival.com. If you have questions for Shirley go to www.bloggingandbeyond.com and use the comment link to ask her questions. And then tune in, of course, at 3:00 pm Pacific Time for the show next Thursday.

Remember, you can find Nancy Marmolejo at her website comadrecoaching.com, and you can find a link to her book about MySpace on our blog at www.bloggingandbeyond.com. And Nancy, what is your MySpace profile link?

Nancy:  Oh, thank you, I wanted to give people that. It is www.myspace.com/2comadre.

Denise:  OK, and my MySpace profile, which represents the Blog Squad, is www.myspace.com/blogsquad. It can't get any simpler than that.

Patsi:  Or just MySpace search for us.

Denise:  Blog Squad, you will find us.

Nancy:  You are one of my top friends, so people can also go to your site by visiting mine and clicking on your picture when they go to my "friends" thing. That is the other great thing, is you can show your top friends and help promote the people whose work you really love. And I love your work, so...

Denise:  Oh, thank you. Well, it is a mutual admiration society because you are a top friend on my site too.

Patsi:  Well listen, just before we sign off I also want to give an announcement. We want to invite listeners to go to www.theblogsquad.net/mentor and join our mentor program. We have just opened it to the public today. And for a special introductory investment of only 10 bucks you can start learning the foundations for what you need to know for marketing your business online.

Denise:  You have been listening to "Blogging and Beyond" on Blog Talk Radio  remember, the time is now.

Patsi:  The time is now to attract, sell, and profit. So, blog on!