I’ve had some questions on Twitter about my weight loss so here’s the deal.

In December 2010, I weighed 95kg (209.4lbs) with bodyfat at 30%. At 5 ft 8ins tall that’s not a pretty sight, let me tell you, but it sure was fun and remarkably easy getting there! Today in late-February, my weight stands at 79kg with bodyfat at 20%. I’m just under half way to my goal of 8% bodyfat.

Don’t expect pictures just yet – the “before” is truly hideous, and I’m not quite ready for the “after” shots. My pectorals have a covering of fat and still look like man-boobs. Maybe once I reach my goal, I’ll post them. Anyway…

My diet

My diet plan is rigid. This makes it easy to plan, easy to buy and easy to cook, but truly dull (I never said anything about it being fun). Disclaimer – I am not paid by Maximuscle or anyone else, and do not endorse any products. Any products or supplements I use are due to personal preference (mainly on taste and convenience).

• 07:00 am – 1 pint water, A-Z multivitamin tablet, 1 Maximuscle Thermobol capsule
• 07:30 am Breakfast – 1 cup of porridge with 1 scoop of Maximuscle Promax (20g protein), mixed with water, cup of tea with skimmed milk
• 10:00 am Snack – 1 scoop of Maximuscle Promax (20g protein) mixed with water
• 12:00 pm Training – 1.5 pints water, 1 Maximuscle Thermobol capsule
• 13:15 pm post training – 1 scoop of Maximuscle Promax (20g protein) mixed with water
• 14:30 pm Lunch – 1 cup brown rice, 1 plain chicken breast, broccoli (25g protein)
• 17:00 pm Afternoon snack – Maximuscle Promax meal replacement bar (20g protein), 1 Maximuscle Thermobol capsule
• 19:30 pm Dinner – 2 lean, plain turkey breasts, 1 cup mixed veg or salad (50g protein)
• 21:00 pm Snack – 1 scoop of Maximuscle Promax (20g protein) mixed with water
• at least 3 litres of iced water throughout the day

That’s 175g of protein (just over the recommended 1.5g-2g of protein per kg of body weight) and yes it has side effects that make me less popular with colleagues and friends, especially those with a keen sense of smell!

It aint fun, and the supplements can be expensive, but it works when combined with proper training. I know because I’ve done it before.

Got any questions or similar success stories? Post ‘em below.

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As part of UBM’s Community Management 101 course, this post is a response to the Andrew McAfee’s blog post: Do’s and Don’ts for Your Work’s Social Platforms.

As the title suggests, McAfee offers a list of Do’s and Dont’s for engaging with social platforms at work, which is a fairly solid set of basic rules to follow. As other course participants have noted, there are many grey areas that aren’t covered, but its a very good starter for 10.

I found it hard to disagree with any of his points so instead have chosen to expand on them and add my own views on each.

The Do’s

Narrate your work: Self-reflection is a critical skill, and practising it in a semi-public forum can force a level of clarity of thought/focus that might not otherwise occur. After all, if you know others might read it, you’ll be more conscious of at least trying to make sense! Social tools allow your colleagues to add another perspective to this activity, adding value and providing more insights.

Point to others’ work: pointing to other people’s work both internally and externally helps people discover new information they might otherwise have missed, and can help increase your reputation as someone who has their finger on the pulse of a particular subject area. This might lead others to follow your updates in the hope that you might uncover some other gems, thus increasing your reach/influence if you ever need it.

Comment and discuss: This is a very easy and quick way to add value to a conversation and there are plenty of options: thanking the original poster for sharing their insights, empathising with people’s issues, or even answering questions.

Ask/answer questions: The key here is to give back to the community by answering the questions of others. It is up to all of us to foster a spirit of collaboration, so that people are more likely to answer our own questions when they arise.

Vote/give kudos: As well as showing who/where the experts are, its a nice way to thank people for taking the effort and time to share. Show your appreciation and encourage repeat behaviour – we all like a bit of recognition!

Talk about social stuff: This is a great idea, just be careful.

The Don’ts

There’s not much I can add here to add to the “don’ts” that McAfee listed. I find that a good general sense check is to ask yourself whether you would behave that way in front of a random selection of your colleagues (which is effectively what you are doing). The main thing I would add, is not to take too much without giving back.

My Takeaways

For me, the key thing to remember is that the wiki is a work tool, and that almost everything you add to it will be visible to all of your colleagues, including (UBM CEO) David Levin! We are all in this together, striving for a common goal, and we are all responsible for making the wiki a place where people feel comfortable in discussing various issues amongst themselves, collaborating and solving problems together, and sometimes having fun discussing which movie franchise had the best sequels.

What do you think?

Some really good advice for aspiring digital marketers:

http://mashable.com/2010/10/02/digital-marketers-job-tips/

Sent from my iPhone

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For those of you interested in Social Media, Jeremy Owyang has produced a great post about the range of vendors emerging within the space. The social software space has ballooned into a disparate set of technologies, data types, and over 1000 vendors confusing buyers. Despite the explosion of innovation, expect a ‘Social Business Suite’ to appear that consolidate many of these features for enterprise buyers:

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2010/10/03/the-stack-the-social-business-software-suite-q4-2010

Sent from my iPhone

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London, innit?!

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I passed the Google Analytics Individual Qualification today. The qualification shows thorough understanding of using Google Analytics, especially of the set up and configuration of the software, and alterations to JavaScript tags. Amongst the topics covered were:

• Managing accounts and profiles
• Standard metrics and dimensions
• Adwords integration and reporting
• Goals and funnels
• Filters
• Ecommerce tracking and revenue metrics
• Regular Expressions
• Domains and Subdomains
• Event tracking and virtual page views
• Custom reporting and advanced segmentation

My Google Analytics Qualification Certificate

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THIS IS A COMPETITION ENTRY

Ok, so it looks like every man and his dog is in on the act.

Following my recent post about Kieran’s competition, it seems like everyone in the online marketing blog is offering a competition. Most of them revolve around the principle of “you write a review of my site and link to me, and i’ll link to you plus you might win prizes.”

This is a great idea, so I’m joining in again

This time, Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim fame is asking people to write a post about why they read his blog.

Well, the answer is quite simple and has been alluded to by many others already. Basically Andy does an excellent job of keeping his ear to the ground with regards to a large range of marketing stories, and subsequently writing about them including his own original thoughts.

Andy covers a wide range of niche topics within the overall marketing arena in over 20 categories. the info ranges from the latest scoop to beginners guides and anything in between.

I’m a particular fan of his regular (weekly, i think) summary post “Pilgrim’s Picks” in which he blasts out a number of useful or interesting stories, posts, snippets etc from around the world. I usually find at least one brand new blog worth subscribing to every time Pilgrim’s Picks are published.

Why do I read Andy Beal’s blog. because its full of good stuff and updated all the time.

Disclaimer: I’ll admit, that i might not have been motivated to write this review without the incentive of a link back (well, not just yet anyway), but this is another example of the many things you can learn from Andy. I’m sure he’ll also be keeping us up to date regarding this competition, the results, what worked, what didn’t etc.

I’ve already covered the many reasons why Andy might want to run this competition in this post, so i wont go over them again. However, with andy’s unique take on it he’s going to get some fantastic information about what his active audience likes/dislikes. all for $500. the extra link love that he’ll get from competition participants is well worth $500 all on its own.

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THIS IS A COMPETITION ENTRY

Its pretty hard to find a decent Affiliate Marketing Blog in the UK. In fact as Kieron has previously pointed out on his blog at www.here.org.uk, its pretty hard to find them full-stop (or ‘period’ for our cousins across the pond). In my travels across the wastelands of cyberspace, I managed to stumble across Kieron’s blog, and boy am I glad I did!

Maybe its because the best affiliates and Internet marketers are too busy raking in the commissions to spend time blogging about it. Or maybe they don’t want to give away their secrets for fear of other people copying their strategies and muscling in on their niches.

Luckily, Kieron is an experienced and successful Internet marketer (here is the proof) who is not too busy or afraid of the competition. In fact, he is active in some of the most competitive online markets including Credit Cards, Bingo, Poker, and Online Discount Codes. On his blog he reveals many of the tips and tactics that have helped him achieve the levels of success that he has.

He Just ‘Gets’ It

Kieron just ‘gets’ Internet Marketing. He understands the many factors that make up marketing on the web. That may sound obvious, especially in the light of his success but hey, anyone could print out a fake bank statement, tipp-ex out a few things to make it look like he’s trying to hide personal details etc, and then post it on the web. Subscribe to his blog though, and you’ll soon see why its much more likely that he actually does make a damn good living from the Internet.

Take this post, for example. I wrote it in partly in response to a competition that he is running on his blog. In return for the chance to win a free custom design for their own blogs, he has asked his readers to write a review of one of his sites and provide a link to whichever site they review, and he has even provided the text to use for the links too. Brilliant, just brilliant!

What’s So Great About That, Then?

Well, first and foremost lets explore the main reason in a bit of depth (sorry!). Note, I talk about Google here but I could just as easily be talking about any of the other Search Engines.

I know that Kieron used to rely heavily on PPC* to drive traffic to his web sites. This is not a problem in itself if the average revenue per visitor is higher than the average cost per click, but its even better if you can get those people to visit your web site without paying for them, especially as increased click prices and Google’s Quality Score algorithm begin to erode your margins. That, and the fact that Google have banned PPC on gambling ads as far as I am aware.

One of several very important factors in improving your ranking in Google’s free listings is to get other people to link to your web site/blog. Search Engines count these links as votes for your site, and if you get links from well-established trusted sites, those links carry more weight and have a bigger impact on your rankings. It should go without saying that the higher you rank in Google, the more visitors your site will get. More visitors means more people clicking on your ads/affiliate links, which equals more revenue.

Its often very difficult to get other people to link to affiliate sites such as those that Kieron operates. Maybe because of the perceived value of those sites, i don’t really know (I chose to link to the main site because none of the others are likely to be immediately relevant to you guys). A great way around this problem is to create your own site or blog that can attract links, then link to your other ‘money’ sites from there. Google then sees this big, popular, authority site linking to (or ‘voting’) for other sites and says “Hey, those sites must be good too. I think i’ll list them a bit higher up”. Thats an over-simplification of the issue of links into your site, but in a nutshell thats how it works.

What’s really clever is he is now running a competition asking people to review his sites and link to them using keywords that he has chosen (obviously after careful research into which keywords to use). Using keywords in your links improves the target site’s rankings for those particular keywords (and has a tiny effect on your own site, but its so small you wont really notice). Anyone linking to his blog will effectively be helping all of his sites, and he can also make money from ads on his blog if people don’t click through and visit his other sites.

As if that isn’t enough, the competition has given Kieron another way to connect with his blog readers and encourage their participation, which is what blogging is really about. He gets more content for his blog as he can post about the results of the competition (Search Engines love fresh content, and he also ends up with more pages to put ads on)
The competition also reinforces his relationship with his blog designer as they get more exposure from his original post and possibly from the new blog they design for the winner.

He also gets the chance to establish new relationships with people in the industry with the possibility of making new friends, business partners, or even just fellow bloggers to trade links with.

In Summary

Its brilliant tactics because it works on so many levels. Technically, it improves his rankings. Financially, the rankings should improve or at least protect his bottom line over time. Socially, it helps reinforce his reputation and build new relationships. His readers get extra content for their blogs and maybe even a new design to boot (I’m sure the winner will get a link from him too). The blog designers get more exposure to their target audience and get a list of qualified potential customers. Everyone wins. Shouldn’t it all be like that?

There you go. He ‘gets’ it, and you can ‘get it’ too if you pay attention to Kieron and follow what he does. Check out his Blogroll too for links to other good affiliate marketing bloggers.

Wow, that’s a heck of a lot of brown-nosing! In all seriousness however, I have learned a lot from Kieron’s blog and by checking out his affiliate sites. Not only from the tips he publishes but by observing how his sites operate. OK, so I haven’t really put much of it into practice at the moment as I’m just getting started, and I’ll never become a great Internet Marketer just by reading his blog, but I would consider Kieron’s Internet Marketing Blog to be essential reading.

*Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising involves bidding a set amount of money for your adverts to be shown on the right-hand side of Google’s (and Yahoo etc) search results. When someone clicks on that ad, you pay Google the amount you have bid regardless of whether that person buys from you or not.

*Edit: Kieron was kind enough to link back to this post, awarding me an honourable mention for my entry in his competition.

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