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Posts tagged: Business

Today is Good People Day – You’re One of ‘Em!

Posted on April 3, 2008

Yesterday, Gary Vaynerchuk decided that today is Good People Day. If you don’t know Gary, and I didn’t until a few weeks ago, you’ll soon his name somewhere – make that everywhere.

According to his blog: Gary Vaynerchuk has captured national attention as a businessman and Internet celebrity. Gary’s fame can be attributed to his pioneering, multi-faceted approach to personal branding and business building.

Now, here’s a guy you want to watch. And, because he makes so many videos, it’s easy.

In this Good People Day- Pass It On video, he mentions many people I follow on twitter. [Note that I attempted to embed the video, but got an error message saying it was unavailable due to heavy usage - almost 23,000 trackbacks will do that to you.]

Gary urges us to celebrate good peeps, his word for people, all day today. And so I’m celebrating you! Thanks for your readership, loyalty and support. Now go find some good people in your life and celebrate them!

You ROCK!!!

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PR Discovery: Does Love Make Money?

Posted on March 1, 2008

rockstar.jpg

I can count on it.

An invitation to at least two parties arrives in my email box every Thursday around 5:00.

They come from a girl I used to know. Every week she invites me, and her fans, to party with her. I wonder if her mother gets these emails.

All I know is I’m part of the reason they keep coming.

Two years ago, I got a call from this girl. She’s the trustworthy 10-year-old I hired to look after a 5-year-old, 2.5-year-old and a baby – all at once.

Tall, determined and confident, Evita [fictitious name] fell asleep most nights before we got home. Once she tried to use our son’s toy truck as her shoe because she was so sleepy.

We all adored her and it almost broke our hearts to leave her when we moved to our new home over 20 miles away. Our three year love affair was over.

Today, she’s a singer bad-girl wedding planner who acts out in a band. Swigging what I hope is tea from a Jack Daniels bottle and belting out ballads, there’s no trace of the trustworthy 10-year-old in this sexy siren.

When Evita called she said, “Remember you told me to do what I love and the money will follow? Well, I did.” Then, she told me about her gig.

Ah, the power of words. Did I really tell her about that “Do What You Love and Money Will Follow” book? How could she remember and follow it 10 years later? What does her mother think?

After I read Liz Strauss’ post: 25 ways to love what you do so that the money follows, Evita immediately sprang to mind.

Liz says, “We all define love and success differently. Yet is seems that success comes more easily when we full-out do what we love and love every part of what we do.”

I’d say that’s true with Evita. I won’t send you to Evita’s MySpace band site or her YouTube video –you’ll have to guess at that. But I will tell you that her fans adore her, maybe as much as we did when she baby-sat for us. She’s making her living entertaining people who want to party every weekend. That’s for now, I’m sure there will be more to her story later.

Being in love with who you are, who you relate to and what you do does make a difference. Two weeks ago, I wrote a post about love letters as testimonials encouraging you to express your feelings to anyone who you love to do business with. Now, this post is coming up in searches for love testimonials. Hopefully, they’ll get the message.

What’s it like to do what you love?

Steve Jobs tells three stories in his Stanford commencement address about why you’ve got to do what you love.  “You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”

That’s all familiar to Tony Hawk, a pro skateboarder who talks about his beliefs on NPR who says, “The only way to master something is to keep at it. Find the thing you love.”

Not sure what you love? Take a cue from Penelope Trunk. She says don’t do what you love, do what you are.

What Do You Think?

How do you know you’re in love with who you are and what you do? How does money factor in?

5 Comments - Posted in Marketing Blog Tagged with:

Inviting Innovation|Business News-Social Media-Community Mix

Posted on February 10, 2008

fastsocialnetwork

At this time in 2007, it’s safe to say most of us had no friends on Facebook. Now we do. But for how long?

What place in the crowded social networking space will emerge as the top contender in 2008? How many profiles, posts, uploads, updates, MySpace friend requests, LinkedIn invitations to connect can most people manage?

I don’t have the answer to that-yet. But, I do plan to watch the newest contender to enter the social media-networking-online community space.

Thanks to the BlogWorld Twitter feed, I found a well-researched post about FastCompany’s neo blend of journalism, social networking, media, blogging and personal branding. I found it easy to set up my FastCompany profile. I suggest you set up yours, too. Feel free to invite me to be a connection.

Over the next few months I’m betting that FastCompany’s innovative mix will become a preferred all-in-one center to network, question, discover, postulate, think and grow.

A few of FastCompany’s online community innovations . . .

- built on Drupal, in place of a traditional web or familiar blog platform

- invites you to pay attention to ideas, not resumes or credentials

- content is opened up to FastCompany’s one million plus monthly visitors

- allows you to import contacts – even from LinkedIn

- blog option makes it possible to have a continuing influence

- provides ways to ask/answer questions

Topics covered:

Check it out and let me know what you think . . .

Contact Barbara about advertising, a creative project or a speaking opportunity.

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Restyling Blog Themes | Free Resources

Posted on February 4, 2008

blogroadsign

If you have a self-hosted WordPress blog [affiliate link], you know how easy it is to change themes. Download, save, upload, extract and click. And, if you’ve checked in here lately, you know I’ve been doing lots of that.

Changing looks runs in my family. If we have an outfit for everything, why shouldn’t our blogs be as expressive?

What I look for in a theme:

- clean and simple backdrop to the content

- room for widgets

- three columns, 2 look nice, but don’t hold everything

- a plain header with room for a banner ad

- quick loads directly from the theme; one I recently purchased loads with all the categories scattered on top lending a refrigerator poetry magnet feel, which is artsy, but cluttered and not the way the template is supposed to look

- colors I like – I like most colors so this is a pretty simple test to pass

- an obvious comment link – my last theme’s comment link was buried in the post footer, making it almost impossible to find out how to respond

- a designer I like, the current theme [probably different by the time you read this] is from a company in India, while I like international design, I would prefer to imagine that someday I would meet the blog designer at a conference

Update: above is now false because the theme is different

- user guide, which is missing from most of the free themes

Some places to find free themes:

Osskins – free WordPress, Joomla and Drupal themes

Free WordPress themes

SkinPress

Design Disease

WordPress Theme Viewer

I must confess I’m on the edge of updating to a more professional, staid presence. What’s holding me back? I’d have to look the same everyday. Maybe I could just change accessories. . .

From a marketing-PR perspective, changing your look may be fun, but it’s also confusing [I know, I should listen to my own advice.] People feel comfortable when they see things that look the same.

Your turn – how often do you change themes?

Contact Barbara about advertising, a creative project or a speaking opportunity.

0 Comments - Posted in Branding, Marketing, Marketing Blog Tagged with: ,

Spiky Book Sales Publicity: Do Email Marketing Leads Stick?

Posted on February 1, 2008

Novel

It’s easy to tell when there’s a push to propel a book to a number one spot on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Your email in box floods with free offers from any marketer who’s participating.

To spike high rise sales, the formula calls for participation from dozens of marketers who agree to promote the book to their email list or blog audience on a certain day.

In order to be featured as one of the promotion partners each marketer submits an image, a link to the product and a description. This in itself is a great way to get free visibility.

After you buy the book, you can collect all of the “freebies.” But, in exchange for the free item – usually a .pdf or mp3 download -  you often have to enter your name and email address. That puts you on the giver’s emailing marketing list. Seems fair, doesn’t it? An email for a report or how-to audio.

As a marketer, the prospect of being on a list that goes out to 2 million or more people is alluring. When I had the chance to participate in one of these book promos, I jumped on it. Dreaming about adding hundreds of names to a list overnight is heady.

But, it’s just that – a dream. Almost every “lead” that came in unsubscribed. Immediately. These people have no interest in a relationship, only collecting products. And that’s okay. Why send out emails to people who will never, ever open them?

Today I updated a page from one of these offers. Noticing that I’d “attracted” a few more grab and runners, I changed the offer page to redirect them to my site and my blog. Now, if they’re really interested they can still reach me and isn’t the prospect of 300 free articles better than one report? I think so.

What do you think?

Contact Barbara about advertising, a creative project or a speaking opportunity.

6 Comments - Posted in Book Publicity, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Online PR Tagged with: