Category Archives: Blogging

Write your blog to be taken completely out of context

I am in the middle of guiding some new bloggers over at Marketing Conversation on how to blog most effectively. It is pretty exciting and instructive because there are many things I take for granted. One of the biggest trends I see is internal shorthand. What I mean is that my bloggers tend to write based on a lot of assumed context. When they write my company name, they might choose AH instead of Abraham Harrison; and, since that AH is on a corporate blog, they might forget to link it to the best page in the corporate Web site.

They simply assume that people who are reading content from Marketing Conversation or Because the Medium is the Message–or even an article on the corporate Website–are in on the joke. That they grok the context.

Not only is that not true but it is dangerous, because I am guilty of it myself. I would say north of 80% of the people I engage with on a daily basis online don’t know that I am president of a digital agency with over fifty staff and dozens of clients. See, I make the same assumptions.

I assume that I shouldn’t be so self-referential because “they” surely know who I am by now, I have been branding for years. Pretty darn shamelessly if you ask me — at least I thought so. Not so.

And I have not even gotten to the most important part: even if people know who you are, what you do, the company you own, and its products and services intimately, their brand perception hasn’t evolved at the speed of your business. What I did in 2006 is quite a bit different than what Abraham Harrison does now, as a company.

Even worse, after we spend all of this time, resources, hours, money, and brain trust on creating insightful analysis and share it for free on our blogs and via Twitter and Facebook, we’re living in a Derridian world: “there’s nothing outside the text.” Let me explain . . .

In a world of excerpting, reading, sharing, retweeting, and sharing shares, or decontextualized via RSS or auto spamblogs, simply all of the breadcrumbs required to bring a reader down the road back to you, your brand, and your sales channel needs to be contained not only in that blog post but also in that tweet, if possible.

Each post needs to be as self contained as a biosphere.

You need everything that you could possibly need to have your post make sense on the same page, within the same post–for three reasons:

If you’re quoting another post, excerpt as much of that content to make your point and make it unnecessary to need to link out to read that other article–they won’t make it back
If you don’t have everything sorted out, completely contextually-inclusive both with references as well as with your branding, your products and services, all on your article’s back, then something might get left behind
If everything’s not completely clear and tidy and tied with a bow–fully sorted–then you’ll lose them anyway because you need to grab them in short-order, every time.

Do not use acronyms unless your brand is that acronym. Abraham Harrison, LLC, is not yet AH or even AHLLC–we’re no IBM. Abraham Harrison should always be linked. Every name of every employee should be linked to their bio on the corporate website at best case or to a LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook profile at the very least. Every product or service should be linked to its exact corresponding sub-page on the corporate website if at all possible.

In blogging, we often do a much better job of linking to other people, companies, and blogs in the form of attribution than we do ourselves.

Even more essential to these constantly contextualizing linking strategies is that the keywords should be hyperlinked and not some worthless [link] or a pithy here or there or my work or any of that, if at all possible.

Search abhors a pronoun.

Finally, any and all posts should be wrapped in analysis, if at all possible. Don’t just excerpt a social media news article onto your blog or site, make it your own. While collecting news and propagating it through your blog with attribution links and excerpts and all that can result in your colleagues and neighbors and even prospects to learn of your existence, you’re not really adding value when you just propagate–it is essential to interpret, analyze, and synthesize, allowing all the marrow of your experience to be extracted in answer to, “well, that’s great content, but it is content from your competitor so maybe we should be using them instead of you if they’re so insightful.”

In a perfect world, with a corporate blog, people should be subscribing to and reading posts on Marketing Conversation in order to learn more about the products and services and quality of mind of Abraham Harrison and not just to get an aggregation of the latest social media marketing news.

Sometimes I forget that and it is something I would like to share with you in addition to sharing it with my new bloggers.

Via Biznology via Socialmedia.biz via Marketing Conversation

Write online to be taken completely out of context

I am in the middle of guiding some of my new bloggers over at Marketing Conversation on how to blog most effectively. It is pretty exciting and instructive because there are many things I take for granted. One of the biggest trends I see is internal shorthand. What I mean is that my bloggers tend to write based on a lot of assumed context. When they write my company name, they might choose AH instead of Abraham Harrison; and, since that AH is on a corporate blog, they might forget to link it to the best page in the corporate Web site.

Each post needs to be as self contained as a biosphere.

You need everything that you could possibly need to have your post make sense on the same page, within the same post–for three reasons:

If you’re quoting another post, excerpt as much of that content to make your point and make it unnecessary to need to link out to read that other article–they won’t make it back
If you don’t have everything sorted out, completely contextually-inclusive both with references as well as with your branding, your products and services, all on your article’s back, then something might get left behind
If everything’s not completely clear and tidy and tied with a bow–fully sorted–then you’ll lose them anyway because you need to grab them in short-order, every time.

In blogging, we often do a much better job of linking to other people, companies, and blogs in the form of attribution than we do ourselves.

Search abhors a pronoun.

Sometimes I forget that and it is something I would like to share with you in addition to sharing it with my new bloggers.

Via Biznology via Socialmedia.biz

The Intimidating Realm of Social Media

Social media continues to have a large effect on how companies operate.

While this new age is exciting, it is leading companies into uncharted territory. For many reasons, companies are treading lightly in an effort to take innovative steps, but cushion themselves in the case a campaign goes awry. But isn’t it time companies dive into the social media realm instead of dipping their toes in it?

Corporations such as Starbucks have experimented with new forms of customer engagement, utilizing social media Websites. Starbucks gauges customer reaction to its product by creating business pages devoted to listening and monitoring to what its customers have to say. This benefits all parties as customers feel they are being heard, and the company has a chance to improve something that needs improving. Starbucks can bounce ideas off customers by posting new trends and analyzing audience reactions. With positive feedback, the company can move ahead with their plan. With apprehension or negative feedback, the company can prevent a disaster before it even occurs.

A recent study by the Economist Intelligence Unit has shown that companies “old” methods of measuring customer worth don’t work. Many companies believe that measuring how much customers spend is an accurate portrayal of the only way a customer relates to a company. While at some point that may have been true, customers now engage in brands far more than just buying the product.

The study also states companies need to distinguish between the unwanted noise of customers, and the important business information provided by customers. New ideas and strategies can be drawn from customers reactions through social media outlets, which ultimately could benefit the company. Furthermore, companies need to utilize social media as a tool for gaging customer reaction.

But social media must be used wisely. Take Skittles for example. Marketing managers tried to make customers feel like a part of company using Twitter, but users ended up posting indecent and inappropriate tweets, forcing Skittles to remove the feed from their Website. While the company had good intentions, it just goes to show that social media can be a company’s best and worst friend. The best way to solve this is to author a protocol with consistent practices for all situations. Crisis management always needs to be present in an ever-changing medium like the internet.

Bottom line? Companies need to just do it– sorry Nike. With customer engagement, AND CONVERSATION, proper listening and monitoring services, and protocols for consistent use, companies will find a happy medium in which their company can grow in a new and exciting way.

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Turning Haters into Social Media Lemonade

In participating to social media, it is to be expected that not all people would be pleased with your existence. As stated on a previous post, it is only normal because you are exposing yourself, your contents or your brand to people — all kinds of people. The larger the audience is, the higher the probability that you’ll start attracting ‘Haters’.

These are the folks who would take time to talk about you behind your back, slander you online, and not give you any credit or the benefit of te doubt. They aspire to bring dirt to your name. They lurk around your comment boxes or wherever they can put their negative two-cents in.

Truth is, we can always turn the bad into good good, but how? Here are some ideas to try to reverse the intended effect of these negative comments or words :

Don’t look for the negative. We have the tendency to be sensitive in various things, we don’t want anybody throwing dirt to our face, we are becoming too conscious about matters like that which leads us to really looking for negativity in every situation. Try to understand what the words are telling you first before concluding that it really is a negative input — as Howard Rheingold recommends: “assume good intent.” We tend to go negative when the problem is more probably a mis-communication
Do not take it personally. If you looked at the comment, for instance, with very objective sight and still you categorized it as a negative one, do not take it personally, it might be directed to what you posted, what you wrote, what you said, what you did, but not you, yourself. It will really mean so much more if you take it as a personal jab at you. Be professional as much as possible. As we say at Abraham Harrison: always give them hugs and not the horns. Or, to quote Philo of Alexandria, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle” — we live by these words.
Understand the inner sentiment. Be a psychologist for a moment, and try to feel what the commenter is feeling when he said what he said to you. Try to answer the question “why,” why did he say that? For example, someone will say “You already posted this elsewhere, this is nothing new — it’s redundant!”, you may think that the inner sentiment of the statement goes like this “I have read your works, I am following your every post because I am expecting something new”. Basically try to be in the person’s shoes and act as you would.
Disassemble the words and extract the message. After answering the question why, answer the question “what does this person want me to do?” Surely, the person wants something out of you by delivering those words for you. He may say “This post has so many points, it is so vague.” it might not be directly said but he wants you to organize the idea of the post thoroughly. He might wants you to focus on something instead. You can actually learn from the criticism — turn the hater’s message into constructive criticism. Also, since there are a thousand lurkers for every hater, his frustration and hating might be representative of a much larger issue. Try to dig to the meat of the message.
Have a unique, witty and immediate response. This is one way to prevent people stress out the same points again. You don’t want negative comments to be posted again and again, so stop it with a great counter immediately but make it a positive one. However, that said, stay a hundred miles way from being snide, ironic, snarky, sarcastic, or dismissive. Remember, hugs not horns!
Finally, Learn something. You should learn something from the encounter, a criticism wont appear if there were no mistake, even a single one. The mistake may be yours or the commenter, either way you should learn from that mistake and be smart enough to study how to avoid it next time. Again, you can actually learn from the criticism — turn the hater’s message into constructive criticism. Also, since there are a thousand lurkers for every hater, his frustration and hating might be representative of a much larger issue. Try to dig to the meat of the message.

If done correctly, this list of tips may turn bad comments into a good input for you.

Now's the Best Time Ever to Start Blogging!

2011 might be the best year to start a blog with one caveat. Ed Lee agrees in Blogging – Alive and Kicking. I actually have more to add to this:

There is less competition for any particular topic
While there may be a number of professional blogs out there blogging on your topic, the relative number of blog-curious and casual bloggers has decreased. It is impossible to be a successful casual blogger and blogging is hard, so the blogging “middle class” has thinned out.

Therefore, most of the people who are saying that blogging is dead or who have given up their blog for Twitter or a Facebook Page actually just don’t have the heart, passion, talent, or commitment. They’re the same people who tell you to forget about writing a book because books are dead. No, books are not dead and neither are blogs — they’re just hard!

Most of the remaining blogs out there are ghost towns on life support
Now there are just aggregation blogs and spam blogs in the ghetto and there are the professional and advanced amateur blogs in the elite. Since blogging is so hard and requires so much commitment and talent resources, all you need to do is commit time, talent, and long-term budget and you should be dominating your space in no time — well, as long as you consider “no time” to be between 6-18 months.

What that means is a minimum of four short posts and one long post a week, each and every week until forever. Yes, forever. Until your company closes or you sell it — and even then, you might want to keep the blog as it will help you leverage yourself into you next thing.

A blog is like an African Gray Parrot in that it is a long-term investment requiring that you build it into your estate planning. In the past, businesses really didn’t think long-term about their social media and blogging strategy and their plan often didn’t outlive their Summer Intern.

If you plan to honor your employer, your company, or yourself, you need to be willing to not just maintain your blog on life-support just by paying for hosting and renewing your domain name but you really need to invest.

Success begets success in blogging and with your blog
Case in point is Marketing Conversation, Abraham Harrison‘s corporate blog. Until 6 months ago, I was really the only person writing for it. Then Phillip Rhoades got the passion, and now we have made it a priority to hire bloggers to fill out the daily posting requirement. In just a couple months, our ranking on AdAge Power 150 went from almost 300 to 130.

While I had never let Marketing Conversation become a ghost town, it wasn’t a priority of the company as a while. I didn’t have enough buy-in from the 34 other members of the team. Now, everyone’s committed. And success begets success — and success makes it much easier to assure that I will have the budget of talent and money I need to make sure MC keeps improving and growing, including budget for a design and template make-over.

I hate to say it but people really so love a winner.

Blogging technology and blogging platforms have gotten easier, simpler, and more convenient
With Tumblr and Posterous as well as Twitter, Facebook Pages, and old reliables such as Blogger and WordPress.com, it couldn’t be cheaper, simpler or more convenient.

Even Moveable Type, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and other blogging and content platforms have gotten less complex — and even hosting companies have started to meet their clients half or all the way to installing blogs.

One click and your software is updates, one click and you’ve installed a new plugin, one click and you have installed WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla from your Web Hosting administration control panel dashboad like cPanel, Webmin, SirectAdmin, Fantastico, etc.

Plus, it is easier to get a pretty nice template for free or for just a little bit of money. I am not proud but I use the Thesis WordPress Theme from DIYthemes for both Marketing Conversation and for Chris Abraham — Because the Medium is the Message. I plan to upgrade them both, but for now it is essential that I just make everything as simple, easy-to-read, and SEO-friendly as possible as Thesis meets all of those needs for me for now.

Blogging courses, blog platform developers, and blog template designers are easier-to-find and afford
Back when I started blogging back in 1999, it was all me. Even 5-years ago, it was tough to find s Drupal guy or a WordPress guy — it was even tougher finding a quality (and also affordable) designer who did more than create a design in Photoship, slice it up, and dump it on me to shoehorn and hack it into a proper Drupal or WordPress template.

Now, awesome programmers, developers, plugin developers, Drupal and WordPress programmers, and designers and shops that are able to go from initial branding brainstorming through blog and site design, through to user experience and content, through designing and approval, all the way to a final product: an easy to install, widget and plug-in compatible, theme template. What’s more, they’re able to add all the bells and whistles, too, as well as develop and program any particular bespoke plugin that can really make your blog or social media web 2.0 website hum.

These folks were almost impossible to find and when you did, back in 2006, 2007, 2008, even 2009, they were not what they purported to be or they were over-booked, too expensive, or unresponsive. In 2010 and 2011, with the economy as it is and since most of the deepest pockets already are wired for sound, these coder rockstars are willing to work with you to make sure that everyone comes out feeling like they’re a winner.

Bloggers, community managers, content curators, and comment moderators are well-trained and plentiful
If you decide that you want a blog but can’t really commit to more than one post a week or one post a month; or if you’re considering turning off the comments on your blog; or, if you’re keeping away from committing to Twitter or Facebook Pages; or your current blog, Twitter profile, or Facebook Page is a ghost town, then you really need to hire a dedicated blogger, a blogger who understands that writing is only 1/4 of the job.

Another 1/4 needs to be spent on engaging with the social mediasphere and blogosphere, moderating comments, responding to questions and comments, and the like.

The third quart needs to be spent monitoring what people are saying online to make sure you remain on top of what people are saying as well as searching for opportunities to engage in questions and conversations online, on Twitter, on Facebook, on blogs, and on message boards.

Finally, the last quarter needs to be spent on marketing and promoting the blog and your brand online. Making sure you remain part of the conversation. Reading other peoples’ blogs, keeping on top of your industry and the other blogs in your space, and seeing if you can connect to them and become part of their community.

In the past, finding someone like this was almost impossible. It is still tough but easier. And there are so many people looking to get into this sort of work that the fees are reasonable.

Don’t expect your community management to be found all in one person, however. Your social media team requirements might require several people. Be sure to try out Odesk and Elance as we have found some excellent staff there. Also, be sure to check out Craigslist, though I highly recommend not making “must be in the same city as the company” a requirement as the best people are often not in your city or even in your country.

The real-time web is alive and blog content is hotter than ever before, just ask Google
In the past, Google treated every page on the Internet with just about as much attention. Since the resources allocated to Google was finite, it did tend to give more attention to online content that was updated regularly, but blogs were no different than newspapers or any other active content. However, in recent years, Google has felt the heat from the real-time web, its biggest dog being Twitter. Search.twitter.com as well as Facebook search have replaced Google in many situations in the past when Google wasn’t able to keep up with tasks such as monitoring. In response, however, Google has caught up. Now, any blog that is not a spam blog is considered to be just about holy.

Google now has a dedicated blog index, Blog Search, and makes a point of indexing blog content immediately. If you sign up for Google Alerts, you will see your blog content come into your inbox just seconds after you commit to Publish or Post — if you’re blogging on a daily basis, Google will allocate more than your fair share of Robots to indexing your blog.

Blogs are inherently better at search engine optimization because search engines still prize text above all things
A blog is written in text and search engines are expert at indexing and finding content online based on literal strings of search text. While the future does hold fuzzy-logic searches that use synonymic and logical search results, for now, literal text is still king. If that string isn’t on your corporate website, your site won’t come up.

Blogs, on the other hand, are a culmination of hundreds or thousands of articles written by and commented on by lots of different people in different situations and a sundry of contexts, therefore, there is a prodigious amount of messy copy — lots and lots of similar string of content that mean something close to what your company does and offers and sells but not exactly what you would say or how you you say it.

That’s a good thing.

It is called keyword diversity and keyword diversity is good because unlike your behavior when your do a vanity search on your company or your company keywords, you can never be sure how your prospective clients will find you.

For example, when I started in 2003, what I did was new media and I was an expert in new media strategies and new media marketing. Then it was emarketing and ePR, then digital PR, social media marketing, and all these other things. Blogging allows me to keep up every day as opposed to the once or twice a year when I edit and update the Abraham Harrison corporate website — if that.

So, there is lots and lots of keyword diversity, lots and lots of natural keyword density — not stilted like is often found on a professionally search optimized website — and there are links, hyperlinked keyword phrases, and lots and lots of pages with copy and text by the barrel-full.

What’s more, each page of a WordPress or Drupal blog has a user-readable URL, such as http://ahpr.us/case-studies instead of http://ahpr.us/node/196 — which is something you see all the time and not very pretty.

Finally, while your corporate website probably had dozens of pages updated periodically, blogs have thousands of pages, each of which can be seen any number of ways: via post, category, tag, year, month, week, day, etc. This means that, in aggregate, you can have 5x-10x the number of “pages” for search that you actually have posts for.

If you’ll notice, though, that I put all these SEO incentives at the end of this post. If you write a blog based only on its SEO prowess, then your blog is going to really suck. You will write your blog into that ghetto I talk about.

All modern blogging platforms have RSS built in, making sharing with Facebook and Twitter effortless
Each and every blog post has its own unique page and each of those pages has a unique URL. That URL represents not a static page but a record in your blogging platform’s relational database. While that URL represents a page, your blog can render that content in other way. For example, as an RSS feed. Blog posts with their unique, user-readable links and their RSS feeds are super-easy to share as well as index as well as reference as well as link to — much easier than a lot of companies make it with their Adobe Flash-based sites that don’t have “permalinks” or “anchor links” built in.

Twitter and Facebook thrives on content links. If you run a blog and install “digg this,” “share this,” “tweet this,” “like this,” “reddit this,” and “Facebook this”to make sure sharing your content is as convenient as humanely possible — and write compelling, timely, and popular content — then you too can be part of feeding the giant maw of the 24/7/365 Twitter, Facebook, and social media monster that lives and thrives on content like yours.

That’s it for now — and sorry to hit you with this firehose! Happy new year !

Continue reading →

8 Reasons Why Now is the Best Time to Start Blogging

2011 might be the best year to start a blog for your personal brand or for your company. Ed Lee agrees in Blogging – Alive and Kicking. Here are the 8 reasons why I believe that 2011 is the the perfect time to convince your CMO or boss or to decide that blogging and the blogosphere has finally matured enough to demand serious reconsideration and here’s why:

1) There is less competition for any particular topic
While there may be a number of professional blogs out there blogging on your topic, the relative number of blog-curious and casual bloggers has decreased. It is impossible to be a successful casual blogger and blogging is hard, so the blogging “middle class” has thinned out.

2) Success begets success in blogging and with your blog
Case in point is Marketing Conversation, Abraham Harrison‘s corporate blog. Until 6 months ago, I was really the only person writing for it. Then Phillip Rhoades got the passion, and now we have made it a priority to hire bloggers to fill out the daily posting requirement. In just a couple months, our ranking on AdAge Power 150 went from almost 300 to 130.

I hate to say it but people really so love a winner.

3) Blogging technology and blogging platforms have gotten easier, simpler, and more convenient
With Tumblr and Posterous as well as Twitter, Facebook Pages, and old reliables such as Blogger and WordPress.com, it couldn’t be cheaper, simpler or more convenient.

4) Blogging courses, blog platform developers, and blog template designers are easier-to-find and afford
Back when I started blogging back in 1999, it was all me. Even 5-years ago, it was tough to find s Drupal guy or a WordPress guy — it was even tougher finding a quality (and also affordable) designer who did more than create a design in Photoship, slice it up, and dump it on me to shoehorn and hack it into a proper Drupal or WordPress template.

5) Bloggers, community managers, content curators, and comment moderators are well-trained and plentiful
If you decide that you want a blog but can’t really commit to more than one post a week or one post a month; or if you’re considering turning off the comments on your blog; or, if you’re keeping away from committing to Twitter or Facebook Pages; or your current blog, Twitter profile, or Facebook Page is a ghost town, then you really need to hire a dedicated blogger, a blogger who understands that writing is only 1/4 of the job.

Another 1/4 needs to be spent on engaging with the social mediasphere and blogosphere, moderating comments, responding to questions and comments, and the like.

In the past, finding someone like this was almost impossible. It is still tough but easier. And there are so many people looking to get into this sort of work that the fees are reasonable.

6) The real-time web is alive and blog content is hotter than ever before, just ask Google
In the past, Google treated every page on the Internet with just about as much attention. Since the resources allocated to Google was finite, it did tend to give more attention to online content that was updated regularly, but blogs were no different than newspapers or any other active content. However, in recent years, Google has felt the heat from the real-time web, its biggest dog being Twitter. Search.twitter.com as well as Facebook search have replaced Google in many situations in the past when Google wasn’t able to keep up with tasks such as monitoring. In response, however, Google has caught up. Now, any blog that is not a spam blog is considered to be just about holy.

7) Blogs are inherently better at search engine optimization because search engines still prize text above all things
A blog is written in text and search engines are expert at indexing and finding content online based on literal strings of search text. While the future does hold fuzzy-logic searches that use synonymic and logical search results, for now, literal text is still king. If that string isn’t on your corporate website, your site won’t come up.

That’s a good thing.

8) All modern blogging platforms have RSS built in, making sharing with Facebook and Twitter effortless
Each and every blog post has its own unique page and each of those pages has a unique URL. That URL represents not a static page but a record in your blogging platform’s relational database. While that URL represents a page, your blog can render that content in other way. For example, as an RSS feed. Blog posts with their unique, user-readable links and their RSS feeds are super-easy to share as well as index as well as reference as well as link to — much easier than a lot of companies make it with their Adobe Flash-based sites that don’t have “permalinks” or “anchor links” built in.

That’s it for now — and sorry to hit you with this firehose! Merry Christmas!

8 Reasons Why Now is the Best Time to Start Blogging

The Blog is Dead — Now’s the Best Time to Start Blogging!

2011 might be the best year to start a blog with one caveat. Ed Lee agrees in Blogging – Alive and Kicking:

I’ve seen a few posts from the Pew survey talking about the decline of blogging and the rise of Twitter. Boyd has the best link here but my first thought was:

Isn’t Twitter a form of blogging? RSS feed? Reverse chronological order? Comments? Blog roll (of sorts)?

Last I saw there were 200m blogs being tracked by Technorati – of which 10m or so are probably legitimate (not spam) and active. There are 160m Twitter microblogs and about 6m tumblr accounts – also blogs.

So like RSS, where the act of subscribing to a feed may be on the decline but the use of RSS is still alive and kicking as the backbone of the Internet, blogging as an expression of longform content may be waning – but blogs as a technology and trend is very much alive and kicking.

I actually have more to add to this:

Success begets success in blogging and with your blog
Case in point is Marketing Conversation, Abraham Harrison’s corporate blog. Until 6 months ago, I was really the only person writing for it. Then Phillip Rhoades got the passion, and now we have made it a priority to hire bloggers to fill out the daily posting requirement. In just a couple months, our ranking on AdAge Power 150 went from almost 300 to 130.

I hate to say it but people really so love a winner.

Another 1/4 needs to be spent on engaging with the social mediasphere and blogosphere, moderating comments, responding to questions and comments, and the like.

In the past, finding someone like this was almost impossible. It is still tough but easier. And there are so many people looking to get into this sort of work that the fees are reasonable.

That’s a good thing.

That’s it for now — and sorry to hit you with this firehose! Merry Christmas!

The Blog is Dead Nows the Best Time to Start Blogging!

Reinvention Summit Wants You!

Reinvention Summit invites you to be a part of the first ever Virtual Summit for the Future of Storytelling as we all try to reinvent the whole world through the creative process of storytelling – blogging.
reinvention summit Reinvention Summit Wants You!

The starting date is November 11 and you can still join up to the 22nd, Reinvention Summit encourages you to participate through the following ways :

Write a Blog post with your POV on reinvention/storytelling
Record a YouTube video with your POV on reinvention/storytelling
Reveal your personal reinvention story in blog or video post
Share the LINK to free download of Storytelling Manifesto
Share the LINK to Reinvention Summit (access starts at just $11.11)
Share the Coupon Code to Reinvention Summit (REINVENTION)

The sessions of the summit will be recorded for playback and that’s why you can still blog and promote through the 22nd. This innovation in the world of storytelling is a road to further understanding the power of narrative. As you contribute to this summit there will also be a bonus for your efforts and talent that you will share, they offer contributors a discount coupon that you can share with your audience, a complimentary download of their Storytelling Manifesto and a FREE PASS for you :

Coupon for $25 OFF an Activators or Explorers Pass. Use code: REINVENTION

“Believe Me: a Storytelling Manifesto for Change-makers and Innovators”. Our 88-page gift to you! Complimentary download is available at http://www.believemethebook.com

To Redeem your FREE Press Pass send an email to Jodi with the words Blogger Outreach in the subject. Include the following information: Name, Email, Twitter ID, Blog URL. You will receive an email Monday, 11/8 with summit details and access information.

It sounds really awesome to be a part of this world changing event. You express how you feel while telling your own stories, collaborating with fellow storytellers, and painting a bigger picture for the future of narratives and blogging itself.

This is not just for bloggers and storytellers, entrepreneurs and marketers will also benefit through this summit, you can learn how others can communicate and spread their stories with lots of people, applying the same philosophy,you would also like to spread words about your products and services to people. This is quite an investment to storytellers and marketers, they will enhance the connection to the world with new tools, vocabulary and frameworks of storytelling.

The summit is a convergence of excellence and expertise as reflected to its selected speakers which includes John Gerzema, Tiffany Shlain, John Elkington, Nancy Duarte, Julien Smith, Annette Simmons, Johnny B. Truant, Katya Andresen, and many others that are crafted with artistry of narrative.

Being produced by Get Storied, this summit is also made possible by a lot of their friends and partners.

So even if you are a professional or self proclaimed blogger, you can join this innovative summit to have some new insights or techniques on storytelling or just wanted your story to be heard of many who are in the same industry.

Here is the whole invitation for the summit : Bloggers are the Ultimate Storytellers!

Malware Can Take Down Your Personal PC, But What Could Happen to Business Computers?

Recently I have had a lot of emails, tweets, phone calls and texts from friends who remember me as part of the McAfee Fake Anti-Virus Scareware Initiative.

What’s the impact of this Fake Anti-Virus or Scareware?
- “Scareware,” or fake anti-virus software, could cause the most monetary damages to consumers and their computers in 2010.
- “One company, known as ‘Integrated Marketing’ made $180 million through these scams, and more than two million consumers contacted the company regarding its software.”
- According to McAfee, there has been a 400% increase in reported incidents in the last 12 months. It’s been the number one call-driver to McAfee’s Virus Removal Service team for the past six months, with more than 19,000 calls logged in January 2010 alone.

Fake anti-virus threats are rampant and growing. There’s been a 400% increase in reported incidents in the last 12 months alone, and it’s the number one call driver to McAfee’s Virus Removal Service team for the past six months running. There were more than 19,000 calls to McAfee’s Virus Removal Service team in January 2010.

There are more than 3,000 known fake AV products, with more being developed every day by cybercriminals around the world. (McAfee Labs)

One in five online consumers was a victim of cybercrime in the past two years. (Consumer Reports, 2009)

Almost a half-million households had to replace PCs due to malware in the past six months (source: Consumer Reports, June 2009.)

When this initiative launched on March 9, 2010, I would never have guessed the kind of reception it would get. It ran in tech sites and journals. I was interviewed for Readers Digest (August 2010) and also for KCBS-LA TV who had a segment up there for several months till reporter Dave Malkoff (the author of the piece) moved from KCBS to KTLA 5 in LA. Poof! The piece vanished from the KCBS archives despite it being a great public service piece and that his presentation provided a clearer explanation than what goes on with the video above. The numbers listed above have skyrocketed and these malware attacks come in a variety of presentations and are equal-opportunity when it comes to platform. In other words, MACS are not immune. I already know a few people personally who have had to deal with this problem.

What’s even weirder is the proliferation of credit card thefts through this malware and given that a credit card was fraudulently obtained in that little episode, one has to watch one’s back in terms of those details. Just as you should and would scan credit card bills for unusual purchases, you need to be aware of what’s going on when these sorts of events happen– because how you react (or don’t react) will determine the outcome that costs you thousands of dollars and lots of valuable time of yours. That’s on the your end– of credit cards being used.

While I have told friends, acquaintances, relatives and random people who have contacted me how to get their computers functioning and providing a bit of tech education on what’s out there in the “big bad tech world” for them to be concerned about, I myself became concerned when I saw security breaches within large corporations that should have had their security nailed down. It was enough for me to seek to close accounts or obtain more information from the business in question (financial, education, health-care institutions) to allay my fears or make sure I tightened up my personal security blanket.

Let’s take this a step further because as consumers we need to be better educated about what could happen in the world. As employees, business owners or even senior officers in larger businesses, we all need to be aware that our livelihoods, i.e., the companies for which we work, are also at risk. Those security breaches at places like Chase weren’t random or careless. They might actually be careless but never random. The careless part isn’t necessarily due to the lack of diligence on the part of in-house IT staff or external IT consultants. Just as the personal computers malware attacks are well-coordinated, deeply researched and highly planned events, so are the breaches of business security at any level (corporate, medium or small– no one is immune)

What really got me thinking was a recent episode of the USA Network series Covert Affairs (odd how that plays into this) about how the internet computer grid was taken down for a short period of time and what would happen to a business, neighborhood, city, state or even nation if our computer or utlities grid was taken off-line. What would you do if you worked in a hospital, a bank or a school where computers were essential? What about street-lights, traffic signals, and the basics of daily living on which we rely? That might seem far-fetched to you, but I can tell you that the US government does not think it’s a fairytale but google United States Cyber Command and see what that brings up.

Breaches happen often because someone is exploiting a vulnerability within programs used for work within the company computers on a daily basis. How is this possible? I happened to run across this site in my search for more documention on the McAfee Iniitiative and ran across something on a Rapid7 Security Blog

Don’t let the beginning of this blog get you bogged down in details you don’t understand. Here’s the short — or rather shorter –version of what the Rapid7 blog is stating.

In the course of the discussion about the vulnerabilities (read patches and fixes by Microsoft) in August, HD Moore, an employee for Rapid7 blogged about the other Microsoft flaws/patches/”exploits” that had been found, there was further discussion of other programs that were affected by certain “vulnerabilities” (bear with me, I had to talk to a couple tech people to get this clear in my head). While updates come from your software providers, it’s important to keep the software up-to-date.

The point that I am making is that the necessity of having an IT professional– whether on staff daily or consulting on a monthly, bi-weekly or weekly basis– is also a necessity particularly when setting up your network. In the business arena (as well as at home), a network router provides another firewall between you and the “wild wild west ” of the internet. Given the proliferation of scareware, malware, viruses, you need to have not only anti-virus protection but a very real firewall between you and the web to prevent your computers and their valuable data being breached. While the likelihood of that is small, there is no guarantee unless you have your computers locked down tight and updated with the latest patches from various software brands. Your IT pro would make sure your computers and their valuable data are protected because that data could be client lists, financials on your company and other companies, contact lists, and more depending on your industry.

On the other end is PCI compliance: if you are in the business of taking credit cards for payment of goods or services you have to have a PCI compliant firewall or subject your business to PCI inspections which can take a lot of time. Whether it’s your firewall, your host or you are self-hosting your site, you need to be PCI compliant to protect the credit card information of all those clients. Don’t give any potential hacker or across the world cyber-criminal a reason to make a pit-stop at your company website. Again, it’s a matter of having a knowledgeable computer tech who can provide you with the latest updates, the most efficient and cost-effective equipment and software to protect your company. Can you afford not to be protective of other people’s personal and professional financial status?

For the big corporation, they have IT staff on the floor on a daily basis to take care of internal network issues and for those familiar with the term, inside the corporate firewall through which all computer traffic goes (not the Windows, Macintosh or computer firewall). For those with meduim to small business, IT guys might not be on the list of everyday employees. The crucial point I am making is that hardware can be replaced, software can be reinstalled, but the data or work you have produced that generates the money that runs your business can’t be replaced. It’s the heart and soul of your business. That’s the crucial element in all this.

You need to back up your data based on what you cannot afford to lose– meaning that if something crashed and you lost all the data since the last backup ( a week, a day, 2 hours…) would you be “SOL” if you lost that data? If that’s the case, you need to have a IT consultant give you advice on security backups and protection. Do not forget about off-site master copies in case a local gas main should explode; a plane fall out of the sky; or a flood or tornado might happen. The point being that it should be significantlly off-site to not be damaged (the trunk of your car might not be sufficient). Just as you should and would scan credit card bills for unusual purchases, you need to be aware of what’s going on when these sorts of events happen– because how you react (or don’t react) will determine the outcome that costs you thousands of dollars and lots of valuable time of yours in repairing damage and that time is lost from making the money that keeps your business running.

Whatever you can think of in terms of disasters — both physical and virtual– you need a back-up plan, hence the suggestion of an IT consultant and one with the knowledge of software to secure your data– much like what Rapid7′s products are (Nexpose and Metasploit are their claims to fame — and they seem to be doing a bang-up job of it) and their equally skilled competitors’ products. Rapid7 is not the only player in the marketplace. However I have gone through their site and learned something about their products. The referenced Rapid7 Security blog was highly instructional– while it did require some “education” from my tech friends, it totally brought me up to speed on why I need to back up again (and probably weekly and then provide another layer of back-up in terms of external hard drives.

While this security is slightly applicable to the consumer, the level of products from Rapid7 and that class of IT security is not for the consumer. It’s primarily being driven by for small, medium and large business clients . Given today’s world, it’s nice to know that there are products readily available for a small or medium size business because in this kind of economy, even failure of one computer can cost you a week’s work of pay and you can’t survive that way. No one can.

While I have mentioned Rapid7, I have not been paid by them; I do not work for them or any other person for placement in this post. They had other blogs where I understood about 1-2 out of every 8 words– and while I am not an IT engineer– I am not entirely clueless either. The blogs were something that I happened to hunt down i search of information on internet security and business. Try googling that sometime and see what you come up with.

. Hope that helps you out on both the consumer and business levels.

Stevie Wilson

It's a true fact, the carrot and stick don't work

Daniel Pink makes a very compelling argument for a change in the way we should look at motivation. Studies show that offering more money, gifts, and other extrinsic rewards can’t compare to offering the intrinsic rewards of autonomy and a sense of purpose when it comes to cognitive tasks.

This is precisely why people put so much work into their blogs, twitter accounts, podcasts, and other social media. It’s also why reaching out to bloggers with information about products, services, and news they’re interested in works so very well. Bloggers are already motivated by that intrinsic interest, sense of purpose, and autonomy. You’re bringing them something that they are ready to write about.

To quote Daniel Pink, “This is a true fact.”

What do you think?