If you’re un-accustomed to my ramblings, the first part of this post may not seem relevant to you, but I get there eventually — I always do. You can skip to the point by clicking —> here, but all the fun bits and Easter Eggs are along the way.  Also? I didn’t write this for Geek Week.  That’s just a happy coincidence – a coincidence that I’ll take it as a sign of approval from the Net Gawds. Anyway, let’s get started, shall we?

A few weeks ago, I spotted this video:

It made me smile. A lot.  A WHOLE whole lot.  See, I’m all about encouraging people to boldly be themselves, and refusing to being put into (or kicked out of!) boxes. It’s sorta one of my things.

So I dutifully shared the link on both Twitter & GooglePlus. I started to tag a few especially geeky friends, to bring it to their attention, and then it hit me… If I tagged my “especially geeky friends”  I’d have to tag pretty much, well, EVERYBODY I KNOW!

Here’s what my social media following looks like:

Huh. That’s weird.

Dear Email Marketers,

I wanted to share my experience from the last few days
with you. It went something like this:

“Oh look,” sez me, “Gmail has changed it up again; there are tabs on my inbox! Let’s see, here’s my main inbox tab, and here’s a ‘social updates’ tab for notifications of new Social Media stalkers — I think I like that!

“And what’s this one… Promotions? Oh, here’s a coupon from the craft store, great. A sales flyer, a newsletter, and, wait, what’s this?”

That’s when I saw it: a baker’s dozen of emails from various Marketers. Combined, they looked something like this:

Seriously? I mean… SERIOUSLY?

For the love of MailChimp, take a deep breath and count to ten!  Remember who you are, remember the lessons you’ve been drilling into your audience for however long you’ve had an audience.

So. You bought into the hype about Pinterest (Um. Sorry about my part in that!) You got yourself all signed up, and you’ve pinned a cake recipe or two.  You’ve stared at endless wedding planner collections. You ‘ve declared that you WILL try the DIY lightbulb terrarium project, and maybe repaint your end tables a loverly shade of blue.

But you’ve got no clue how to make this work for your business.

Don’t worry!
I’m here to inspire you.
Or maybe confuse you.

But either way,  I’m here!
And I have a plan! Granted, it’s a mostly untested plan, because like almost everyone else I’m pretty new to Pinterest. But I have ideas, IDEAS I say!

Step one in the plan?

DON’T approach Pinterest as a “marketing tool”. Forget about the traffic you’ve been promised from Pinterest, and start a personal account. Use it as a tool for inspiration, for both work and personal projects. Use it for relationship building. Use it for research. Use it as the creative porn visual crack eye-candy curation tool it was meant to be.

Over the past a week or two, every Social Media guru, tech site and small business blog exploded with articles about using visual bookmarking site Pinterest to drive web traffic, each of them screaming “If your brand isn’t on Pinterest, you’re leaving money on the table, Baby! ”

And though I haven’t seen any stats, I’m pretty sure that there were more blog posts written about Pinterest than there are actual Pinterest users. Seriously. I can make up the statistics if you’d like…

Ok, fine. Since you asked:

(click to embiggen)

It’s the holiday season, and that means big, overwhelming things are afoot in the Internet Marketing world. Mostly, it means my email and social media streams are full of high-pressure messages, limited time discounts, big promises and offers from affiliates that pretty much pay you to sign up through them.

How can you compete with that, if you’re the newest Quirkipreneur on the block, trying to bring some attention to your quiet, reasonably priced little holiday offer?  Or as the loverly Michelle of Let’sRadiate put it yesterday,

“How do you promote your holiday special without slamming peoples’ inboxes and making them want to punch you in the nose?”

Damn good question.

Damn good question, with a lot of potentially damn good answers.

Somewhere in last week’s series on Gossip Drama Soup, I promised to explain how the whole internet marketing scandal relates to Circus Serene & the merry band loosely identified as Quirkipreneurs. Since both concepts are still evolving, I’ll start with how I currently define them:

>>> The Circus Serene (this site, yay!) is largely about process – the process of creating a fun, creative, successful business that reflects our identity and ideals.  So a lot of the content here follows thought processes, creative processes, productivity processes, or anything else that develops and evolves. (I just figured this out yesterday, so there’ll need to be a bit of tweaking done)

>>> Quirkipreneurs (still more an idea than a thing) is about business identity & community; an identity & community that supports people like me in our unique, sometimes difficult to define goals. A community that helps us find services geared to our needs, a community that inspires, instructs, troubleshoots, networks, and helps promote.

But this Gossip Drama Soup, everyone-is-a-scammer scandal thing? It’s made me second guess the whole idea of what I’m doing, and brought them up a whole lot of issues worth examining.  I’m going to tackle them one by one, over the next few days.  This first one I already ranted about, but it’s worth revisiting:

Issue #1:
Realistic Business Models & Expectations

Hopefully? None of us will find ourselves front and center in our own editions of Gossip Drama Soup, but it can happen to anyone,  even when the water isn’t ethically or morally murky.

All it takes is one determined, disgruntled customer,  a former employee or ex lover with an axe to grind, a crazy neighbor who doesn’t like the color you painted your house, or a frustrated family member, and voila!  The rumors start, then turn to smears, and pretty soon your reputation is being hammered.

So what do you do when someone takes aim at you and your business?  I thought some resources might come in handy, and give us something  productive to talk about.

Fleece me like you MEAN it, Baby!!

And that’s all that needs to be said, right?

Unless of course you’d like to leave a comment.
Which would be  just awesome-possum.

Among all of the dirty laundry and accusations that make up what I’m calling Gossip Drama Soup?

There’s an absurd claim being made that there is no such thing as a successful online micro-business.

It’s just a pipe dream, you see, and those of us building our own businesses? We’re chasing a mythical beast, like a unicorn.

And since there’s (supposedly) no such thing as a successful online business, anyone who sells anything to support the online small business market is clearly a scam artist, right? Their customers are defrauded victims and fools. We’ve been lied to. Oh woe iz us!

Or that’s the story that’s being told, anyway.

And that story?
It really, REALLY ticks me off.

Because the last thing most of us need is someone tearing apart our efforts in the name of “protecting” us.

So, the other day I wrote a post about the Dunford-Droid-NavarroFamily mess, henceforth known as Gossip Drama Soup.  The pot is coming to a boil, and honestly, I’m still not really not certain of all the ingredients that add to its… erm…  distinctive aroma.

Whew, that is one stinky soup.

But among the personal drama about mortal sins and mouthy broads and failed businesses? There’s a whole other topic that isn’t being discussed much yet, and it’s the one that might actually be sort of relevant  here on the Circus:

<cue over-dramatic music>

The Sins!
of Internet Marketing!