San Francisco Green Festival

Fuel Sell Technologies

SolMan Generator/Sol Solutions

Kiara Solar

Living Mandala Permaculture, 2010

Betsy Rosenberg – Green Radio Talk Show Host on http://www.prn.com

Planetwork Conference, 2011

Forever Redwood

Kiara Solar

Earth Day Festival, San Francisco – 2012, 2013

On December 21, 2012, 20 million people worldwide turned in to watch a global simultaneous broadcast of every Solstice ceremony via WorldUnity2012, Unify.org, Shift Network and Birth2012. There’s a huge missed opportunity for sponsors and international brands to leverage this growing movement of global synchronized events for visibility. Photo: Jeff Eichen.

On December 21, 2012, I had the opportunity to help coordinate one of the largest global synchronized moments in history — millions of people participating in a candlelight ceremony at dawn (5:11 am UT) to celebrate the Winter Solstice and the end of the Mayan Calendar.

We succeeded in getting more than 20 million people to watch a live streaming video broadcast for 72 hours continuously for three days.

It’s quite possible that these global events, streamed over the Internet and self organized by volunteers will soon surpass those numbers. It’s an enormous, overlooked opportunity for global brands to capture the attention of the Millennials, a fickle group that doesn’t watch TV anymore.

When have we ever had the technology to simultaneously watch the sunrise at ever sacred site in the planet before? This was that moment when it shifted.

How significant is this?

- 7.4 million people watch Oprah.

- Only 8.5 million people watched NBC Nightly News and 21 million people watched 60 Minutes in 2010 — network news has been on a gradual decline for years and these numbers are sinking.

- 40.2 million watched the Academy Awards in 2011 — a number that is also in decline.

- 113 million people in the US watched the Superbowl in 2012 — which was most watched television event in American history.

3.1 viewers saw a television PR campaign I participated in for Hewlett  Packard in 1992 for the launch of their first wireless palmtop device — which was then thought to be an incredible number. This involved an astronomical budget, multiple PR agencies, a press conference at the Rainbow Room and professional b-roll.

It’s quite possible that these global events, streamed over the Internet and self organized by volunteers will soon surpass the SuperBowl. It’s an enormous, overlooked opportunity for global brands to capture the attention of the Millennials, a fickle group that doesn’t own a TV anymore–let alone watch one.

Synchronized Internet meditations and dance flash mobs  like this are becoming more and more common. Recently, a group called One Billion Rising had an impressive turnout for Dance flash mobs on Valentines Day 2013 — so we can expect this trend to continue to amplify.

The One Billion Rising Dance Flash Mob on Valentine’s Day, 2013.

FRIENDLY “FLASH MOBS” AND SYNCHRONIZED LIVE STREAMS: HUGE MISSED OPPORTUNITY FOR SPONSORS

While a few generous individuals contributed money to sponsor the December 21 broadcast, including a technology company that supplied some of the sattelite uplink equipment, the December 21 live stream was produced on a shoestring budget by global marketing campaign standards.

The outreach happened by word of mouth over the social networks and enthusiastic volunteers, including a group backed by Hollywood veteran Michael Short, called BeThePeace, which is composed of volunteer industry professionals who have experience with events like the Superbowl and the Academy Awards. It was also assisted by World Unity 2012, Synthesis, Birth2012 and Unify.org, a group of savvy young social marketing branding experts and web developers in San Francisco. who have been creating unified events such as MedMob.

Dozens of PR teams and social marketing teams from all of the festivals collaboratively promoted the December 21 event with their Fan pages and email lists encouraging viral sharing.

Celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, Beyonce, Russell Simmons used their huge Twitter and Facebook networks to Tweet about #Unify and the events taking place worldwide.

The next global event will be Earth Day on April 20, 2013.  The Earth Day festivals, which have been taking place globally for 40 years, now attract a global attendance of 1 billion people in 196 countries. That’s 1/7 of the planet! While not everyone at every EarthDay will be coaxed into dancing and doing yoga — the potential for large numbers are extraordinary.

It’s important for brands to recognized that dance, yoga or meditation flash mobs leveraged for advertising must be authentic — the Millennials can see right through hype and do not like to be “marketed” to.

Samsung got ridiculed by the media when they had a fake dance flash mob in New York’s Times Square to launch the new Samsung Galaxy phone.  Reporters called the fake flash mob “cheezy” and “embarrassing.”

Says Adil Kassim, who is one of the masterminds behind #Unify and the upcoming Earth Day yoga and dance flash mob: “Brands want to associate with stuff that matters.”

And Millennials want to associate themselves with brands that matter.

Please share the graphic below on your Fan pages and help get out the word:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/unify

20 MILLION PEOPLE WATCHED A CANDLE CEREMONY?

The success of the December 21, 2012 broadcast surprised us. I remember standing in Chichen Itza in the modest room where a team of about 10 extremely hard working volunteers (who barely slept during the weekend) running the show on a few monitors and laptops and struggling with the bandwidth issues in Mexico, managed the epicenter of the broadcast.

We were thinking, well, maybe 20 thousand people are watching. When we heard the numbers – 20 MILLION? We were astonished. 20 million people watching a candle ceremony?  This is proof that simple, genuine, spiritual and unifying events can draw more viewers than sports, news or Hollywood blockbuster films.

This broadcast was live streamed on multiple websites, including Barbara Marx Hubbard‘s Birth 2012, The Shift Network, Unify.org and WorldUnity2012.com, simultaneously.  Websites and social media outreach connected these ceremonies at festivals all over the world.

Viewers participated in a synchronized candle ceremony at sunrise — starting at The Uplift Festival at Ayers Rock in Australia, and moving across the planet in waves of synchronized meditation ceremonies, to events in Maui, HI, the Synthesis 2012 festival in Chichen Itza, Mexico, the Stonehenge festival in England, Newgrange monument for the Ireland 2012 festival in Ireland, the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt for a festival produced by the Do Lab of Los Angeles, then Jerusalem and Mt. Fuji in Japan.

A simple candle ceremony at sunrise on December 21, 2012 attracted more than 20 million Internet viewers and participants at dozens of festivals worldwide and captured by many International network news broadcasts.

People tell me they left their computers running for 72 continuous hours watching the live stream while they did their chores.  They had viewing parties, they were glued to it. They said it was transformational and deeply moving.

The event didn’t feature any big rock stars — but New Age speakers like Rev. Michael Beckwith of the Agape Church in Los Angeles, author Barbara Marx Hubbard and ceremonies with Mayan and Indigenous elders. The peak viewership moment came when the author of “The Four Agreements,” Don Miguel Ruiz, gave a humble speech while sitting on the edge of the stage in Chichen Itza and swinging his legs back and forth. (Ruiz’ book was on the New York Times bestseller list for more than 7 years.)

A synchronized moment of dance on the beach in Santa Cruz, CA, captured by photographer Marianne Grace:

Synchronized Internet meditations and friendly dance flash mobs   are becoming more and more common. We can expect this trend to continue to amplify and draw ever greater numbers, offering a tremendous potential for sustainable brands and global technology companies to sponsor these events for unprecedented global visibility at a fraction of the cost of traditional network television advertising.

If a sponsor would like to leverage the next global unified moment to get out the word about their brand at every Earth Day in the world — reaching up to 1 billion people — please contact: patrick@unify.org

“If you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your  own!” - “Scoop” Nisker

Everyone loves it when the newspaper writes a story about them — or their business.

Now, with Facebook, You Tube, Twitter and other online communities, or your blog, you’re making the news  and telling your own story.

And your fans and customers respond in a conversation.

I call it “Social PR.”

Instead of filtering your message through reporters and “experts” — you’re communicating directly to a community. It’s like PR in warp speed. Instead of a cycle of a days or weeks to — your news gets spread in seconds. It’s like sending out a press release five times a day, each one just 140 characters.

This massive, global, two-way conversation is called Social Media. And it’s turning the world upside down.

Facebook now reaches 1 billion of the most influential, affluent and connected people on Earth — in 70 languages. And 70% of Facebook users are outside the US. (Today it’s estimated that 2 billion people, more or less 1/3 of the planet, have access to the Internet.)

Now the numbers are so massive that social media can no longer be ignored.

Social media is the media.

Social media is also now the best way to reach and influence the mainstream media.

Social media now gives you unprecedented, direct and immediate access to celebrities, Venture Capitalists, investors, reporters, CEOs, politicians and influential people of all kinds.

If you’re not using Social Media to promote your business, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to find new customers, fans and relationships.

Social media is the most effective marketing and web traffic building tool – ever. It is increasingly the most important, customer facing marketing tool in your arsenal.

WHO READS THE NEWSPAPER?

Today, with the rapid disappearance and shrinking of “mainstream” media, (like newspapers and magazines) you can’t rely on press coverage and ad campaigns to announce your product or ideas anymore.

WHO WATCHES TV?

Nobody under 70 it seems to me–they watch social media, like YouTube.

WHO READS EMAIL NEWSLETTERS?

Most people are too overloaded and ignore them.

JUNK MAIL?

Paper is almost obsolete. The majority of our shopping and commerce now happens online.

In order to influence and seed consumers and “early adopters” who will be the first to sign on to a beta programs, try a new product or embrace revolutionary ideas, it’s critical to reach them through, and be seen and heard on the “emerging media” or “social media”.

This is where the trendsetters, hipsters, cutting edge early adopters and most technologically agile people hang out, talk about what’s new, and spread ideas to their friends and colleagues.

Social media is where the mainstream media get their story ideas and learn what’s new.

These social communities are now nearly as important as newspaper, TV or radio coverage and can be highly targeted.

“Social media” includes:

- Your website (hopefully a blog loaded with “Social Share” buttons, links and automated, syndicated feeds to Twitter and Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube — and not an old, 1990s-style, static website) is the hub of this integrated social media strategy.

- social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Pinterest, Google +.)

- social bookmarking sites (like Digg and StumbleUpon.)

- blogging  sites (Like Tumblr and Blogger.)

- e commerce – Etsy, Ebay, Amazon

- group buying/discount sites (like Groupon, LivingSocial, BuyWithMe.)

- customer review sites (like Yelp, TripAdvisor.)

- video sharing sites (You Tube,Vimeo, Twitter Vine and Viddy.)

- photo sharing sites (Flickr, Pinterest, Instagram.)

- radio talk show networks (“podcasts” like Personal Life Media, Progressive News Network, Visionary Culture Radio and Blogtalk Radio.)

- Internet music and radio (Pandora, Spotify, SOMA-FM.)

- event networks (Eventful, We Know, Daily Candy, Upcoming, Zvents, Eventbrite, Craigslist, Meetup, Going., Plancast, Socializr. Evite.)

- professional networks (LinkedIn, Ryze, Thumbtack, Labor Fair, TaskRabbit, MeetUp.)

- vertical, niche social networks for your market (ie for LOHAS they include: Architects of a New Dawn, Waccobb.net, Children of the Light, WiserEarth.)

- Yahoo Groups, Google Groups (these closed email lists can spread your product, workshop, event or idea to highly targeted niches. They are powerful for music festivals, conferences, events, yoga, dance and workshop promotion.)

- Facebook and LinkedIn groups – in high tech, these groups of early adopters and enthusiasts are critical to the success of a new product. For other businesses, such as Fashion, Design or Green, specific networking groups are highly influential, and often have their own social pages.

We then teach you how to drive traffic to your website or blog, increase your search ranking, get positive “buzz” in the social communities and get noticed.

Related articles

• With social media, you’re making the news, and telling your own story (visibilityshift.com)

Here are some ridiculous profiles and titles of people who did not make the cut and get to be one of my 2,200 connections on LinkedIn:

Anyone who still hasn’t paid me yet.

Your title and every word in your profile is written in lower case.

Passport photo or driver’s license photo used as your LinkedIn profile photo. (No kidding.)

Scary, mug shot-style LinkedIn photo. (Against a wall, all black and white.)

Anyone not wearing a shirt.  One woman PR consultant in my network is wearing a bikini top in her LinkedIn photo Seriously. Bikini top? Unless you’re a character on Baywatch, swimwear is not appropriate for business.

Someone who says she is an “orgasmic liaison”.

No photo. No description of what you do. (Who is this mysterious character with no shared connections? Why are you on LinkedIn?  Why do you want to be my connection? How did you find me? Why? I’m scared. Help…)

Someone who calls themselves a “bliss expert.”  (Maybe they’re connected to the “orgasmic liaison” but not me.)

Real estate agents. (Unless they sold my house.)

Executive recruiters who are going to pelt me with requests for access to software developers. (Go away.)

Substitute teachers.  (I don’t think in a million years a substitute teacher is ever going to hire me.)

A guy in a Scottish tam o’ shanter and ruffled shirt.

Insurance agents. (Yikes. Go away. I already have insurance.)

Anyone who is a “Career and Life Coach.” Unless you teach football, you’re not a coach.

Anyone who is an “Executive Coach.” Unless you coached Bill Gates, you’re not an executive coach in Silicon Valley.

Anyone with both the words “coach” and “cannabis” in their title.

People who sell anything multi-level. Especially multipure water filter distributors. (Oh, that’s impressive.)

Anything pyramid schemey.

Anyone who is a “meditator” in their profile title. (Unemployed meditator?)

Your NAME IS IN ALL CAPS you run a “HEALING MASSAGE SERVICE” and you live in another country.

Anyone with a creepy dark photo with a crooked smile.

Men who are not wearing shirts.

Men wearing Hawaiian shirts and a baseball hat that obscures their eyes. (This isn’t a virtual barbecue — it’s a virtual business cocktail party.)

Spells CEOs “ceo’s.” (Yeah, right. I’ll bet you are an “executive coach” too.)

Anyone who claims to be “shamanic.”

Your LinkedIn photo is kind of dusty and it was taken at Burning Man.  (Ok if you are Larry Harvey, a founder of Burning Man or a major installation artist. All others, “delete.”)

People who call themselves a “CEO” but run a home-based MLM business and have nobody reporting to them but their cat.

Related articles

• It’s Spring – Time to Clean Up Your LinkedIn Profile (visibilityshift.com)
• Model Tracks Down Pervert Via His LinkedIn Profile (ubergizmo.com)
• Your LinkedIn Profile Photo Is Scaring People (business2community.com)
• Job Tips: What To Leave Off Your LinkedIn Profile (business2community.com)
• 8 Mistakes You Should Never Make On LinkedIn (brave-new-web.com)

Is your LinkedIn photo and profile stuck in the Nineties?

It’s time for some Spring Cleaning. I started this week by giving my dusty LinkedIn profile an extreme makeover.

Before the makeover I noticed that 44 people were viewing my profile every week — but nobody was responding. I looked at the LinkedIn profiles of other professionals and analyzed what works — and what doesn’t.

Now after my LinkedIn makeover I am already getting 70 views per DAY — and I have pulled in more than a dozen requests for meetings.  More than 50 new, high level people have asked to connect too. That’s in less than a week!

Why?

I stopped being boring so I can stand out in a sea of people who do what I do. I also brought my profile into the keyword and search engine optimized world of 2013.

The last time I updated my LinkedIn profile, I made the critical mistake in thinking that by toning it down, playing it “safe” and bland, I would be more “corporate” and “professional.”  “Corporate” is “out” in 2013. You’re a needle in the haystack of the Internet. You need to stand out, not paste yourself to the wall.

Keep in mind that recruiters and clients find you by typing keywords into Google or LinkedIn. Loading up your profile with key words is crucial. Your photo, public profile (first paragraph) and should stand out in search and let people know what you do and what makes you different in a quick glance.

Here are eight ways to tidy up your profile and make it more searchable and interesting:

1. Throw out that old film camera photo from the 90s.

If your business “look” resembles a character from “Seinfeld” it’s time for an update. That old, scanned non-digital photo from the 1990s with chunky thick plastic eyeglass frames and moussed hair and a boxy, baggy suit with sharp shoulder pads and white shirt is not fooling anyone into thinking you’re still in your twenties.

Fresh, natural, editorial-style photos taken in business casual attire, outside in natural lighting are more popular right now than business suit portraits shot in a studio or at a desk. Make sure your hairstyle, eyeglasses and clothing are current, and that the photo is digital–not a blurry digitized film photo.

If you want to look younger, remember, Photoshop is a girl’s best friend. Hire someone to touch up your new photo — don’t use an old one that just screams: “Digital cameras weren’t invented yet when I had this taken.”

If you have dark hair in your photo and you’re gray now, or worse yet, you have hair in your photo and you’re bald now, you’re going to scare people when they do meet you face to face. I am surprised how many prominent professionals and CEOs have horrible LinkedIn photos. Hire a professional, invest in a great portrait photo–and use it on all your social media profiles for a consistent, personal brand. (Drop me a line for recommendations for great photographers here on the West Coast.)

Whatever your career — wear what’s appropriate. Musician? You’re on stage, singing. Hoop girl? You’re hooping. Green business? Wear green. Talk show host? You’re behind a mic. If you’re photo is great, more people will want to be connected to you and have you on their connection list. (Sorry, bikinis and Hawaiian shirts belong on Facebook, not LinkedIn.)

Make sure you’re clearly communicating with your style that you’re as on top of the latest trends. (But no dorky self portraits with your arm visibly extended as you snap yourself the iPhone or worse yet, the distorted fish eye of a web cam!)

2. Clean up your focus with keywords.

You’re a needle in the haystack of 1 billion people — how do people find you? Keywords. Your LinkedIn page needs SEO and keywords, just like any other webpage.

Your LinkedIn profile is the first thing people see when they Google you. In fact, if you load great keywords into your LinkedIn profile, it will even show up when people do keyword searches in Google to find people who do what you do. It’s your digital business card.

Put some time into it–or hire a professional SEO-savvy copywriter to help. This is your most important business presence. Invest in yourself.

I rewrote my profile and packed it with keywords like “San Francisco PR professional” and “Silicon Valley social media consultant” that people might be searching for. I completely shifted the focus from print media PR to online social media, and I put an emphasis on the skills that clients are looking for right now in 2013 — not what I did in the nineties.  (The “now” keywords for my field are: “B2B, cloud, iPad apps, mobile apps, blogger review programs and Pinterest.”)

What is your geographic market?  I focus on San Francisco and Silicon Valley, but I actually live on the outskirts of the metro area. If you name the small town you live in rather than the big city 80 miles away, you might miss out on opportunities when people search for the big city. Let customers know how far you’ll travel to serve them.

Who is your target customer?  Put the key words in your headline and first paragraph, and break them up with a slash or comma (ie: Consumer Tech | B2B Tech | Mobile | Green Tech | Sustainable.)

What product market do you serve? Example keywords:  “High tech, solar energy, clean tech, green tech, consumer technology, entertainment.”

What do you want to do in 2012? Not what you did ten or twenty years ago, but what are you looking for now? Write a catchy statement that defines you in the here and now. (“I shape your brand, 140 characters at a time.”)

What are your customers looking for? Be very specific. My customers want results–rave reviews, viral recognition. Describe yourself in terms of the results you get, not the tasks you do. (“I help you launch paradigm-shifting new ideas, drive traffic to your website (SEO), and spread your news virally. I’ve built 80+ Fan and event pages on Facebook — many with more than 5,000 fans. As an PR manager, I’ve launched more than 30 best-selling technology products–including many award-winning #1 bestsellers.”)

3. Unclutter your headline.

Your headline is the only thing most people see — so make sure you use every character and pack it with key words that say who you are, what you do and what you want and what geographical market or customer you serve.

Write, rewrite and write again until the keywords describing your market, geographic region and target customer fit in your headline and you’ve used every precious character.

Here’s a weak headline that says nothing and wastes valuable headline real estate: “marketing consultant.” Almost every headline I see on LinkedIn is unspecific and poorly keyword optimized like this one.

Here’s an effective headline for a Chiropractor serving a local neighborhood: “Kara Waltz, D.C. Chiropractor in Rockridge (510) 379-9322.” She even puts her phone number in the headline and we know right away what region she serves.

Here’s a great headline for Howard Perlmutter, who has an exceptional LinkedIn profile: “Comprehensive Systems Architect: Applications & Integration, HighTech & CleanTech, Dev & Ops, Enterprise & Web.” The first sentence: “Strategic and hand on Architecture roles with 2012-2013 clients, applying creative technology to healthy ecology.”

Fascinating, I want to read that profile.

4. Clean up your first paragraph so it grabs people and uses every possible search term or key word. Use space and break things up so your copy can be scanned quickly.

Here’s Howard’s outstanding first paragraph:

“Active for decades as both business professional and software geek, frequently serving as integrative Systems Architect in a world where many participants are siloed into narrow specialties, it’s natural that I’ve become an inter-silo diplomat.

I bring separate technologies together.

I bring separate fields of knowledge together.

I bring separate communities of people together.

I started bridging the gap between the potential of digital technology and the practical needs of my clients decades ago when my career was in its infancy, and I’ve been expanding and generalizing that theme ever since.”

That profile begs to be read. Nice use of white space too.  He doesn’t sound old and stodgy — he sounds wise and experienced — and like someone who is on the cutting edge of a new trend or technology.

4. Dust off your laurels and update your skills.

Yeah, you did blah blah blah for “big brands” in the nineties or the eighties — when the economy was on a roll and the Internet didn’t exist yet.  Go do the 2013 version of what you did, and prove you can do it with modern technology. Saying I worked for a Fortune 500 company in 1986 back when we used fax machines and social media didn’t exist yet is not going to impress an HR manager who was born in that year.

Swallow your pride, admit the world is changing and evolve with it. If you’re a software coder, write an iPad app. If you’re a webmaster, learn WordPress. If you’re a graphic designer, design some web branding, viral “memes” or Infographics and some gorgeous Facebook banners. If you’re a photographer, get on Instagram. If you’re a filmmaker, make some videos that go viral on You Tube and prove you can do it for a client. If you’re a copywriter, learn to write keyword-targeted search engine optimized copy.  If you’re a teacher or trainer, learn how to lead online seminars.

Make sure you focus on what you can do now — don’t rest on dusty laurels.

If your profile is weak, offer your services to a prominent non profit organization to get some current experience using new technology or new techniques on the top of your profile. Donate your time to a non profit organization or charity or trade your services for workshops, retreats, event tickets, shares of stock in pre-IPO tech companies, cosmetic dentistry — you name it. Just get some recent 2013 experience that utilizes your skill set.

5. Clean out your hard drive and find those presentations and videos to add to your online portfolio.

Convert your slides to YouTube or SlideShare and they can be easily added to your LinkedIn profile to add credibility and color. I removed old presentations in early 2000s-style type fonts and moved them down lower in my profile (a new LinkedIn feature.) Old articles, publications or websites are fine as long as they are placed in historical context — but don’t put them at the front of your profile like I did before my spring cleaning. It just makes you look like a Seinfeld re-run.

6. Streamline your social media by linking Linked in to all of your social media profiles. Link it to Twitter so your Tweets update your LinkedIn status. Link it to WordPress so your blog posts go to your LinkedIn followers.

I think of WordPress as the center of my social media universe now, with posts to Facebook and Twitter radiating out from LinkedIn, and videos on YouTube or slides on SlideShare supporting it.

7. Prune your contact list — and update your connections.  If you’re like me, it’s been five years or more since you joined LinkedIn. (I  was one of the first 100,000 members.) Clearly you have some new connections on your email list by now, so invite them in. Gather up your business cards from the networking events you went to this year and invite the most interesting contacts.  Prune the deadwood (I’m dumping people I don’t really know, people who do not have photos, interesting titles or roles that are relevant to my career.)

8. Go outside and socialize. Now that your profile shines, join some groups in your field and post in them and get involved in some discussions. You’ll be inundated with headhunters and new clients — in a matter of hours.

Related articles

• Four Tips for a Powerful LinkedIn Profile (everydayfamily.com)
• Model Tracks Down Pervert Via His LinkedIn Profile (ubergizmo.com)
• How Complete Is Your LinkedIn Profile? (lipsticking.com)
• Social Branding: How To Create The Perfect LinkedIn Profile Blueprint (business2community.com)
• 6 Things You’ll Need to Start Working From Home (everydayfamily.com)
• Social Branding: How To Create The Perfect LinkedIn Profile Blueprint (marketingthink.com)
• Job Tips: What To Leave Off Your LinkedIn Profile (business2community.com)
• How to add or edit your website(s) to your LinkedIn profile (snfornewbies.com)
• Who’s viewed your LinkedIn profile? (customerthink.com)
• Being Found on LinkedIn for Your Ideal Search Terms – Demonstration (deswalsh.com)

Please focus your brand.

I know, changing markets challenge all of us. We’re all wearing many hats now.  Multiple revenue streams are one way people cope with the challenge of today’s economy. We’re afraid to turn down business so we try to be everything to everybody.

But people don’t hire generalists, they hire experts.

You need to focus and specialize now more than ever.

Each business or revenue stream you take on in your life must be focused with it’s own, separate social media presence or you’re going to confuse your customer and they’ll run away.

The Solution: The Umbrella Brand

“Umbrella branding” is a strategy that huge multinational businesses use — it’s the umbrella that covers all of their smaller brands. For example, GE is really a defense contractor when you get down to it, but their brand focuses on light bulbs: “We bring good things to light.” GE’s umbrella branding tags include: “GE: Brilliant Machines,” for their hospital equipment and “GE: Imagination at Work” for industrial equipment.

Or consider Hewlett-Packard, (HP). Did you know HP makes LED light bulbs for cars, components and about 10,000 other products?

I know, because I worked for HP for several years and sat in meetings where we wrestled with this problem. Every one of those 10,000 product managers with a product at HP wants a press release and a press tour for their product, but only a few, select, “front runners” and stars get chosen to represent the overall brand. In other words, the products that are most interesting get the PR. When we think of HP, we usually think of the front runner products like: “Ink Jet Printers.” Or: “Innovation in the historic HP garage.” This was condensed ino one word, the HP brand: “Invent.” This is the HP umbrella brand.

Image via CrunchBase

Now if HP and GE can’t afford to be all things to all people in their branding, you, Joe Schumuckatelli from Pocatello, Idaho sure as heck can’t afford multiple brands.

But small businesses and start-ups almost always try to have multiple product lines, spin off new stores, create new catchy taglines for all of their offerings, address multiple markets and even have multiple websites and logos. What a mess.

If you can’t remember all of your brands, products and taglines — do you think the customer can?

In my personal experience, any business brand (or personal brand) trying to be too many things is doomed to failure. I have see this in the high tech industry where start-ups with less than $1 million in funding will attempt to brand multiple products and serve both the B2B market and the consumer right out of the gate–confusing the investors, press and customers alike.

Do one thing and do it well — then launch more products once you’re Google or Yahoo. (Even Yahoo is  hacking away at “deadwood” product lines that clutter up the brand and aren’t producing revenue.)

Robert Scoble Leads the Way into the HP Garage. This mythical place still leads the umbrella brand for HP. (Photo credit: bragadocchio)

Create your personal umbrella brand.

To create a personal umbrella brand, the first step is to ask yourself:

What makes me tick? What is at the core of every major step I’ve ever taken in my life?

It will help to get feedback from friends, clients and family and step outside yourself to ask this question. Tap deeply in to your core life purpose.

When you clarify your life purpose and articulate it in a mission statement,  you are on the way to creating a Personal Umbrella Brand that will work for your focus for years to come, even when it changes.

“Who is My Dream Client or Perfect Customer – and What Makes Them Excited?”

Case Study: A corporate organizational management consultant who now also does personal organizing and “downsizing” for individuals and small businesses.

Her business mission: “I create organizational strategies from Fortune 500 to the home office.”

Or, in a personal branding mission statement, “I simplify your business. I simplify your life.”

Focus your brand strategy on your website for better SEO:

In your website, build your overall brand that ties it all together as your summary statement, making sure to use key words that people will search for in Google when they want to find you. This “elevator statement” is the most important thing you’ll do so give it time and bounce it off friends and clients. These key words create Search Engine Optimization or “SEO,” so use them often in articles on your website.

Use pull down menus on your website to create sub-categories for specific lines of business.

Jane Fonda at a book signing, 2005. If you’re already abundant and famous you can afford to create multiple brands and hire people to build all those websites and fan pages for your books, movies, exercise videos, non-profit philanthropic projects and political endeavors. Otherwise, focus your brand.

If your businesses are wildly disparate, you should build a separate brand, website and Fan page community for each business — but trust me, this will seriously tax your time and focus unless you are Richard Branson or Jane Fonda and can afford teams of people to manage all of this for you.

(I got to visit Jane Fonda’s office once many years ago, and asked: “Jane, you’re incredible. You have exercise videos, produce films, run non profit organizations, raise a family — how do you do it all? And she said something so honest I’ll remember it for the rest of my life: “Are you kidding? I’m rich! I can hire people to do all these things for me.”)

So if you have the fame and resources of Jane Fonda, go ahead and build multiple brands. Otherwise, focus your personal brand.

Focus your bio on LinkedIn:

For many of us, especially if we’ve been working for two decades, our LinkedIn profile is all over the map. What do all these jobs add to? What is the ultimate focus that ties all this life experience together into your life purpose?  Find the key words that clients or employers are searching for, and build those key words into your personal brand.

If your signature line or title says you have six careers, which one do I hire you for today in 2013?  Which one is your primary revenue stream? Nobody is an expert in 6 things. Focus your personal brand.

Focus Your Email Signature Line:

When I see 5 careers in a LinkedIn profile, email signature line or Twitter bio I think: “She is less than 20% at each of these things.” I want to hire the person who is 100%, don’t you? Focus your personal brand.

I don’t want a floor wax that’s also a dessert topping — I want an eco non toxic wax for hardwood floors.

I don’t want a dentist who is also an auto mechanic — I want a cosmetic dentist with an office within walking distance from my house.

Use a clear mission statement in your signature line, and if you have multiple lines of business, add a separate URL for each one.  Build a separate email address for each business–it’s free in Gmail.

Focus your personal pages on Facebook and Pinterest for hobbies that build your personal brand:

Most of us want more meaning in our life, and turning a passion or hobby into a business is everyone’s dream. Before you pour your time into building brands for all of your passions, though, ask yourself:

What is my business — and what are my passions?

Yes, like most people with a life outside of work, I’ve done a lot of things that I’ve been paid to do — this includes being a backup singer on some CDs, art curator, remodeling and flipping houses, stage manager and emcee for the Green Festival, art model, on stage storytelling performer, vegetarian caterer, producing events and yoga conferences, journalist, aromatherapist, writing a book about my “Eat, Pray, Love” journey in the south of France, etc. etc.

I took a stab at starting businesses in all of these areas but generally, I ended up investing more than I earned …therefore they are hobbies. My business is promoting things. I have found a happy medium that feeds my soul by promoting things that are my passions — technology that helps people collaborate, events that teach healthy lifestyles, solar energy and green ideas.

My passions, aka hobbies, however, don’t belong on my LinkedIn profile, my professional website or my email signature line unless I want to look like a flaky new age dilettante.

(Here’s an actual Flaky New Age Dilettante Twitter Profile: “Shamanic journeyer+travel.art.yoga junkie+wellness warrior+DJ+social alchemist. Some say l am an expert in Marketing, & Campaign Management.” Uh, yeah, not for personal branding I hope.)

I do get a lot of clients from the people I met while doing my hobbies, and they feed my soul, so I indulge in my hobbies on my personal Facebook page and Pinterest or by taking on volunteer roles or “pro bono” clients in these niches and highlighting them on LinkedIn in the volunteer section at the end of my profile.

Focus your thought leadership niche:

Examine your market niche and do research on the competition. For example, for one of my clients, a green talk radio host, she has discovered that there are no competitors at all for women representing the ecological and green movement. The door is wide open for her to take a thought leadership position and own that category as an author and media personality and we’re working on that together. For my business, I did a search in Twitter and noticed there are 181,000 social media gurus. But very few focus on the LOHAS, green or sustainable market — that niche is wide open for thought leadership.

Focus your photo and banner.

Choose your best portrait photo and use it consistently everywhere — it’s your brand. Same hairstyle, same eyeglasses, same hat or hair color. Think of celebrities that stand out eternally – Marilin Monroe and her platinum hair, Elvis and his sideburns, John Lennon and his round glasses, Groucho Marx with his big nose, moustache and glasses, Larry King and his suspenders — each has a style so distinctive that they are easily parodied. Find a unique look that defines your personal brand. One easy way to do this is to choose a consistent background for your photos — such as a redwood forest, ocean or city skyline or to wear a consistent color.  Hire a designer to create a banner for every social and web page or use a cover maker – and make sure it is one in a million unique. (No cheesy stock photos.)

Focus your regional market.

Even though the Internet is “global,” few businesses really are. If your clients are from a specific geographical region, put that in your mission statement and build listings on Yelp, Yahoo, Google, and other local listing services to ensure you show up in local searches.

It’s easier to be a big fish in a small pond — so consider focusing your brand to a region with the least number of competitors, or even moving to a region you can own and dominate.  That region is a keyword that is crucial to your SEO for your website, LinkedIn and your Twitter bio–be specific so customers can find you.

Focus and build thought leadership with content — and real world examples.

Thought leadership is a commitment to leading a category and curating content in that category until you are synonymous with that category. (Tim Ferris owns the “4 Day Work Week.” Don Miguel Ruiz owns “The Four Agreements.” What do you own?) Yes, it’s tedious. Yes, it’s not as much fun as being a dilettante — but it helps you stand out and build authoritiy, page rank and SEO.

“The 4-Hour Workweek” author Tim Ferris is now the 4 Hour Anything Personal Umbrella Brand and he owns it. What do you own that is unique to you and you alone?

Brand focus builds authority and trust

Another client is a river rafting guide and also a massage therapist. I convinced her to drop the massage therapy from her river rafting website and build a new site for that sideline.  It’s distracting to think of the relaxation of a massage and the adrenaline rush experience of river rafting under the same brand.

Her new brand tagline is: “Life is a river — dance with it!” This reflects her personal passion in dance, and the fact that every river trip has live or DJ dance music, making them very different than mainstream river rafting trips. Other tag lines that spin off this theme will include: “Life is a river, flow with it!” and “Life is a river, dive in!”)  The new card and website emphasize “flow” with curving fonts. There are hundreds of Esctatic Dance events and hundreds of river rafting trips — but she owns “Dance with the River”.

When you focus your brand, you will find that not only will your credibility with clients improve, but your SEO, website traffic, Klout and Peer Index scores will soar because these scores reflect the consistency of posting on a single topic area and building thought leadership in that category.

As your Klout improves, clients and customers will call, and you will be getting inquiries from the news media looking for authorities to quote in their stories, and speaking engagements.

When you focus your brand, you won’t have to search for clients — they’ll finally be able to find you!

Related articles

• It’s Spring – Time to Clean Up Your LinkedIn Profile (visibilityshift.com)
• Will you please focus your personal brand? (visibilityshift.com)

While this is a wonderful surprise, I am also kicking myself.

I could be making money, and my blog is just sitting there.

Are you sitting on an Internet gold mine?

Over time, blogs and websites can become ”properties” with high virtual value on the Internet.  If you have an old blog or even a business website, do yourself a favor and learn your Google Page Rank and your Alexa rank. You might be very surprised.

A surprising number of my clients also have no idea how potentially lucrative their websites are, and I’m usually the one who breaks the good news to them.

For example, one day, I typed a client’s url into Alexa and discovered his website was ranked in the top 1 million sites on the entire internet! He had absolutely no idea.

Another client just shut down a website because their event had ended — despite that fact that it was getting 1,000,000 hits a month from the aggressive promotion and PR we were doing. That site is now very connected on the Internet and it could be making money, or even flipped for a profit.

I checked the Alexa rank for a new client I just started this week and discovered she has 250 inbound links on her blog, and a very respectable rank in the top 2 million of all websites in the US. No, she had no idea at all she was sitting on a possible Internet fixer upper.

Even this site, Visibility Shift, has a surprisingly high search rank and great SEO. The main reason is because my name and URL go out on press releases on PR Web every time I send out a release for a client. This builds tons of links back to their page — and to my own page.

1. Sell Links

This is controversial, but I see no reason why not, as long as the links are for sites you feel ok about promoting and not just some skanky “enlargement” product.  The advantage to links is they are small and unobtrusive and won’t clutter your margins like a virtual Times Square.

You can contact websites with products in your niche directly, and offer to sell them links, or you can use a firm like Magenet that will broker this for you.

2. Google Ad Words or other pay per click ad services

The trick to using Ad Words is to have lots of relevant key words in your content, and highly focused content relevant to an ad category that has a high cost per click. There are sites like About.com that generate the majority of their revenue this way.

3. Amazon.com Affiliate Programs

Personally, this has not been a big money maker for me, but I do know people who successfully promote books, supplements or other merchandise that is very closely aligned with the content on their page.

4. Niche Affiliate Programs

I like the idea of targeted niche affiliate programs better — for example, I have a spirituality and yoga blog and joined an affiliate program for an online store that sells buddah statues.

5. Banner ads

Create an “Advertise” tab on your blog, and offer an invitation to advertise. Include all the statistics that advertisers want to see, such as your Google page rank, Alexa rank, traffic, social media statistics, links to your social pages, press coverage you’ve received, and any other work you’re doing to build traffic, credibility and brand awareness. Include a phone number and email address so you can be reached. Then visit five blogs that are written by competitors, find out who their advertisers are, and contact those advertisers directly.  A client of mine did this and got a banner advertiser the first day he tried.

6. Flip your website. 

Yes, just like the flip and remodel craze that hit housing in the 1990s, you can flip and remodel a URL. A bare URL is not worth nearly as much as one with inbound links, a Google page rank and lots of keyword-rich content. Upgrade it with fresh content, paint it with a nicer interface and a new template, and do some social media promotion to spruce up your Page Rank, traffic and SEO and you might have a blog that’s worth more than your car. A friend sold one of his urls for $18,000. Go Daddy auctioned off two of my expired URLs for thousands of dollars — which is what tipped me off that I could be doing this myself.

Never let an URL expire until you check it out to see if it’s accumulated some traffic and a Page Rank. Even a page rank of 1 could pull in ads. There are many brokers that specialize in auctioning off websites, or you can even sell it on Ebay or Craigslist.

More about remodeling your blog or website for better Search Optimization and using press releases, press coverage and Social Media to drive traffic to it in a future post.

Related articles

• Paid blogging options for making money online (tipstomakemoney.typepad.com)
• Do Alexa Ratings Matter? (futurestarr.com)
• What is Google PageRank? (mayura4ever.com)
• How to Perform the World’s Greatest SEO Audit (seomoz.org)
• Passive Income Ideas 2013 Has in Store Reviewed By Empowered Ezine In A New Blog Post (prweb.com)
• Set It and Forget It SEO: Chasing the Elusive Passive SEO Dream (seomoz.org)
• How to Earn a Passive Income (aptusinsurance.com)
• Why Page Rank Goes Down And How to Get Back Lost PR? (shoutmeloud.com)
• ProLead Media, Reveals Google’s Top Nine SEO Management Factors (prweb.com)
• Free Ranking Reports on Google! (beanstalk-inc.com)

You can shoot and edit surprisingly decent video now on an iPhone or iPad with free or almost free apps.

We all want more traffic and engagement on our social media pages. Video is the way. But how can an amateur videographer create engaging content?

Yesterday I spent a Sunday afternoon producing my first ever video shot, edited and distributed entirely from free apps on an iPad.  Once I had the photos, it took about 15 minutes to edit a 30 second clip, all by touching the screen.

This my first attempt at a video shot and edited entirely on an iPad and it at least looks and sounds professional. The iPad has an excellent HD camera and it is so easy to take great photos, which is the first step to creating a great video.

I used the free apps Instagram and Camera Awesome to shoot and edit the photos, and a free iPad app called Videolicious to add the soundtrack and narration.

The app sent it directly to You Tube and all of my social media pages. It took about 15 minutes, total. It’s amazing how simple it is to do these things with a touch screen — I’m excited about learning more. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AUqq0jMGBQ

The iPad, iPhone and Android and a new generation of free or very inexpensive video apps are going to revolutionize video on You Tube and make it much easier for amateurs and social marketers to produce more engaging short stories they distribute on social media.

This is going to shift social media more and more into a storytelling medium and it will lessen the lag time between an event and when you see the video (usually it takes a few weeks for everyone to edit photos and video and send it out–now that can happen nearly instantaneously).

I’ve been exploring different apps for a while now and like these the best:

- Camera Awesome:  This app shoots both video and still photos and while the results are not immediately as cool as what you get in Instagram, there are sophisticated filters than can really enhance the photos and create professional results — antique, funky, psychedelic, frames. Unlike the basic Apple camera and Instagram it lets you zoom in and make adjustments for the lighting as you shoot.  The UI is clunky but this is is such a fun app and it’s growing on me.

- Videolicious: The free version of this app lets you splice together 10 clips or photos into a short video, add narration and a soundtrack and upload to social media sites by simply tapping your screen.  I’m going to upgrade to the full version and see what it can do. Already impressed.

- Adobe Photoshop Express: The free version is polished and it can do basic edits. The full version at $9.99 is a bargain compared to what Photoshop used to cost on a PC–like hundreds of dollars and took months to learn how to use?

- Instagram: By far the best way to shoot gorgeous photos on an iPad or iPhone, use filters, do basic edits and publish them. You can then use these photos in a video editing app and weave them into a story. Yes, a million users jumped ship last month due to privacy and copyright fears, but I wasn’t one of them.

- Viddy - This the Instagram of video. Viddy lets you capture, enhance and share very short videos with subscribers in your photo stream, exactly like Instagram, and quickly upload them to your social pages or YouTube. The problem is–they’re really short. But celebrities and marketers are already finding ways to use Viddy to virally promote.  If they create a version that can shoot and edit longer or more sophisticated videos, this will be a killer app.

- Animoto - I love this application, which turns your still photos into a very sophisticated video with transitions. If they don’t hurry up and move to the iPad they will be eclipsed by the features in Videolicious and other emerging apps nipping at their heels.

What I’d like to see: 

- An application that makes it easy to create tasteful, non-cheezy titles and intros. So far the title apps are all oriented towards birthdays, weddings, etc. Please, consider something for the aspiring Indie filmmakers, businesses and documentarians, not just the cliche home user.

Related articles

• Six addictive free apps for shooting and editing social video on an iPad or mobile phone (visibilityshift.com)

Facebook is now requiring outrageous fees in order to ensure your posts are seen by your entire fan base. There are tricks and tips to help work around this — for the time being.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was fabulous back in the good old days before Facebook went public. But bit by bit, Facebook is becoming an increasingly less effective organizing tool. And this is very bad news for people like me who rely on it to promote events for a living.

It seems that every time I log in, Facebook has ratcheted down its effectiveness, removed a feature or is now charging a fee for something they used to offer freely.

First they made it impossible to invite all of your friends at once into an event invitation — requiring you to tediously click on each friend’s photo in order to invite them into a new event.

Then, Facebook changed it’s algorithms so that our friend’s posts would not appear on our feeds unless it deems them our “best friends.” This has made newsfeeds shorter and seemingly with the same ten friends posting all the time.

Then in September 2012, Facebook, without fanfare, suddenly reduced the exposure of your posts to only 15% of your fan base unless you pay them to promote the post to fans. For food journalist Dianne Jacob, that means just to ensure her regular posts get read by all of her fans will now cost her $11,000 a year!

Recently, Facebook administrators were horrified when their reach statistics suddenly dropped off a cliff. This of course, stimulated many of us to crank up the Facebook ad campaigns so we could show our clients the same statistics they were used to seeing.

Related articles

• 10 Steps to Create a Facebook Page that Gets “Likes” (forbes.com)
• Graph Search: You might just ‘like’ Facebook’s new search tool – Detroit Free Press (freep.com)

Google knows when you’ve been sleeping, knows when you’re awake and even knows what you’ve been eating. Isn’t that a little TMI?（Photo credit: Aray Chen)

You’ve probably noticed this message on Gmail, Google, You Tube and all of the other Google-owned services you use lately. And like most of us, you probably clicked and ignored it.

“On March 1st, Google will implement its new, unified privacy policy, which will affect data Google has collected on you prior to March 1st as well as data it collects on you in the future. Until now, your Google Web History (your Google searches and sites visited) was cordoned off from Google’s other products.

If you want to keep Google from combining your Web History with the data they have gathered about you in their other products, such as YouTube or Google Plus, you may want to remove all items from your Web History and stop your Web History from being recorded in the future.”

For example, when you play certain video clips on You Tube, Google places a long term cookie on your computer. What this cookie could be used for in the future is anyone’s guess, but you might be better off not getting it in the first place.

According to the civil rights organization, ACLU this week:

“…Keep in mind the fact that any data Google collects and stores is available not only to other corporations who buy it from the data giant, but also to the government. The laws governing our digital privacy are woefully inadequate and in some cases incredibly invasive, allowing for police access to our data even if they have no evidence that we’ve done anything wrong.“

I always recommend using a private P.O. box and a voicemail number when entering personal data into online forms and shopping sites protect yourself from potential identity theft. You may particularly want to protect your identity if you are a public figure, musician, performer, CEO or celebrity.

It all depends on how much you value your personal privacy and if you can foresee any time in the future when your search history, email or other Internet data could be supoenaed and used as evidence.

Whether you are large business or a solopreneur, that could have huge implications sometime in the future that you just can’t predict today.

• Google’s New Privacy Policy: How to Stay Off the Grid (pcworld.com)
• How to Remove Your Google Search History Before Google’s New Privacy Policy Takes Effect (eff.org)
• How to Remove Your Google Web History Before The New Privacy Policy Change [Google] (lifehacker.com)
• IMPORTANT: Flush your Google Internet Search History before March 1 (hypernets.wordpress.com)
• How to clear your Google history before it’s too late (sciencetext.com)
• Google privacy changes – what you need to do today (simplybusiness.co.uk)
• What in the Heck Is Going on With Privacy at Google (hubspot.com)
• Bing beats Google in partnership with Facebook’s Graph Search (wpcentral.com)
• Instagram Loses 25% of its Daily Active Users, and Other Marketing Stories of the Week (hubspot.com)
• How Much Does The Web Know About You? (makeuseof.com)

Related articles

• Google privacy changes – what you need to do today (simplybusiness.co.uk)
• What in the Heck Is Going on With Privacy at Google (hubspot.com)
• Bing beats Google in partnership with Facebook’s Graph Search (wpcentral.com)
• Instagram Loses 25% of its Daily Active Users, and Other Marketing Stories of the Week (hubspot.com)
• How Much Does The Web Know About You? (makeuseof.com)