I was talking with a client the other day who was lamenting the fact that her friends, likers and followers continued to grow each week but that she wasn't seeing any direct connection between that and an influx of business. She felt that it was her face-to-face networking that was paying off the most -- a fact that I wholeheartedly agree with.
There are times when I feel that social media is like shouting into a crowded room. Your voice gets carried away in the crowd of people that are also shouting. Yes, we know that social media is a "necessity" because the competition is doing it. With the proliferation of social media sites: Facebook, Google+, BranchOut, LinkedIn, Klout, Tout, YouTube, industry specific social media sites, etc. You get the picture. Whew, how can you keep up? And more importantly how do you get your voice heard? Truthfully? Who knows.
When I received a note from a really good friend some weeks ago, I was thrilled to be reconnected. We hadn't spoken in quite awhile.
"I thought I should connect the two of you," the note said. And proceeded to share information on a possible new connection for me - to a woman with an interesting business.
"Thanks," I wrote back within 24 hours - I try to respond to referrals quickly. It seems polite, if nothing else. "I'll connect with <name withheld to protect... well, not the innocent!> as soon as I get out from under a few pressing projects."
And, so... in between the time I received the email and my getting out from under, the person in question wrote to ask when I might be available to chat.
Yes, you can stand out in a crowd - in a creative and fun way... by artifying your event!
I talk art a good bit on this blog. I'm an artivist, as evidenced over at Art as Action where I do what I can to help support them, and as such, I live to help promote creativity and innovation. There isn't a lot of that around these days. We're drowning in mediocrity in the U.S.
While I am obviously not the audience for this book (I have a child that is the age the author was when she penned the book so I am a touch older than the audience, I imagine) I enjoyed the author's recollections and recounting of her sexual exploits. I'd never been quite as adventurous as the author in her dates, flings and finding of love I had many friends that were and those friends love to share stories of love found, lost and found again.
I will admit that there were parts of the book that could have benefitted from tighter edits and deletion of some of the exclamation points, I also admit that some of the stories were laugh out loud funny. I will also admit that during the reading I wondered, "when my daughter moves out and starts dating, how many of these type of dates and flings will she have to go through before she finds love?"
I liked that the book was broken into short chapters each detailing the date of the day and I also enjoyed the updates at the end of the book -- a kind of "where are they now" wrap up. If you're looking for a quick, light beach read this book might be one to slip into your beach bag!
Well, well, a lot has been going on around the community. That being this big world of ours. It's one big community, yes? Some thoughts...
The shooting in Aurora. This is close to where I live. I might have been in that theater - certainly the movie is on my list of Must-Sees. But, I'll stick closer to home; Longmont or Westminster.
I don't want to add to the crowded knot of conversations. I'll share just a smidgen - this tragedy was unavoidable - or was it? Today, the news reports finding a letter|notebook written by the gunman, sent before he killed all those people without a second thought. Could the incident have been avoided, had someone known about the letter|notebook beforehand? (it was held up in processing - what does that mean?) I'll keep watching the news to see what the people handling the aftermath of the shooting say, but from where I sit, it's likely the gunman would have been at least questioned, had those writings been read beforehand.
The horror of what happened is overwhelming. The heroes are outstanding. Those who died will never be forgotten. Those who lived, still need our help.
At the start of this post this morning the official countdown app on Facebook says it's now 1 day, 16 hours nd 0 minutes exactly to the Opening Ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London. I was watching the Today Show earlier this week and Meredith Viera is back to help Matt Lauer out in covering the Games for NBC, the Official Broadcaster. The new Today Show co-host, Savannah Guthrie, will also be joining them. Since this is Savannah's first Olympics they had recorded a bunch of video clips from a variety of Olympic athletes giving her advice of how she should enjoy the Games. If we could all be so lucky!
As I mentioned in last week's post I wrote about the upcoming games, I just finally purchased an iPad so that I could fully partake in the two-screen viewing of the Games. After I wrote the post I read this MediaPost article about a survey conducted by Harris Interactive that found that 35% of U.S tablet owners will use their devices to get Olympics coverage, while 27% of smartphone users will do the same. A total of 4 in 10 of those who plan to follow the Olympic will do so on two or more devices.
When I opened up the Apple Store on my iPad the first app recommendation was the NBC's Olympics Live Extra app which I have now downloaded and ready to begin using (they also have a Driod version). This app allows you to watch the Games Live for free along with a bunch of "extras". So I'm set for now. This year is the first time all 302 Olympic events in 32 sports will be streamed live.
A group of American graduates from MIT and a British professor, Mike Thelwall, have been tracking all UK-based Olympic-related tweets for the last couple of months. They were commissioned to develop an algorithm to track the sentiment of British tweeters about the Olympics by EDF Energy, the official electricity supplier to London 2012, in order to create the ‘world’s first social media driven light show’, called ‘Energy of the Nation’ on the London Eye. Every evening at 9pm London time leading up to and during the Olympics there is a 30 minute light show projected onto the London Eye, a giant Ferris wheel on the banks of the River Thames. The colors of the lights will be dictated in real time by the mood of the people tweeting about the Olympics. You can see how it works and track it here on EDF Energy's site.
I'm excited to watch the games. How about you? Only 1 day, 14 hours left now!
During recent months I have been dealing with some health issues which have given me the wake-up call of, "You're not in control of your life!" As an individual who schedules almost every part of my day and who even has events and to-dos planned as far out as a year, this was a rude awakening.
What do you mean, "I'm not in control?!" I still wake up in the middle of the night bathed in a cold sweat realizing that no longer can I make specific plans. No longer can I smugly live secure in the knowledge that things will always be the way they always were -- pretty gosh darn good.
I have worked for several years to build up my clientele for my own business, have networked until my throat hurts, attend online and in person seminars, follow up, and follow up again with potential clients. I was the Mistress of my Destiny, right? I thought so.
Well done TED talk on women and accomplishment by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. It's an age-old question - why aren't there more women CEOs or leaders in politics?
Who's fault is it? Is it our fault - those of us who are ambitious and aggressive, but still not willing to bring those skills to the boardroom because... we're pretty sure we'll be shot down by the men in the room? Is it our fault because as women, we are the child-bearing gender and it's still our responsibility to care for that child until the age of majority? Or, is it society's fault because it refuses to give us the same chances it gives men?
The Opening Ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London is now only 8 days, 15 hours and 25 minutes away. I know this exact time as of 8:35 EDT today because there's an app for that! In fact, there are many apps for the this year's Summer Olympic games which some are calling the "Socialympics".
I am getting excited and there will be many opportunities to view the events and get engaged with a two-screen viewing method. So I thought the Olympics were a good enough reason to finally go out and purchase an iPad, which I did this past weekend. I've been talking about it for months, so now I am fully ready to experience the games as socially as possible. Still working on downloading all the apps though!
As you probably know NBC (NBCOlympics.com) is the official broadcast partner of the Olympic Committee and has committed to be up to 2020. NBC announced recently that they were partnering up with Facebook. Starting on July 27 the plan is that NBC will feature data from Facebook and Facebook will feature exclusive content on NBC’s Olympic pages. Supposedly their was no money exchanged in this, but since NBC has to pay an enormous about to cover the games, sounds like Facebook got the better deal here.
So I started out on Facebook which they have their own Olympic Games Page with 2.9 million Likes. I then found the Countdown to London app on the NBC Olympics Facebook Page. This photo is featured there today which provides a link to NBC's Olympics Tumbler page which invites people to upload their own photos that "show your Olympic pride". The Facebook page promoted a sweepstakes back in June that was sponsored by BMWUSA, to win a trip to the Closing Ceremonies. There are many great photos of athletes here as well as trivia games and interesting stories about them. I saw this photo and just couldn't resist sharing it.
There are over 1,000 athletes participating in the Olympic Athletes’ Hub this year where you can connect with them in real-time chats, get updates about them and participate in the Hub community to earn points and badges. Users can sign-in using their Facebook or Twitter log-ins to make it easy.
I wrote this post earlier about Visa, one of the Games worldwide sponsors, and their Global Cheer Olympic promotion. One of the other Worldwide sponsors, Coca-Cola, has also launched a major promotion to tie-in with the Games. Coca-Cola has combined its music and Olympics history and created the Move to the Beat App is which invites fans to create their own ‘Olympic beat’. It is accessible from the Coca-Cola Facebook page and analyses a person's social activity to create the ‘sound of you.’ It analyzed mine which is shown in the graph below which ended up creating "My Beat" which I invite you to check out.
Some of the other sponsors are doing some pretty cool campaigns this year as well. So check in next week as I continue my coverage of this year's Socialympics. As of the end of my post we now have 8 days, 13 hours, 33 minutes and counting!
As seen on Facebook. Thank you Maria's Farm Country Kitchen. Especially like, "Help a lost dog." And, "Fix it, even if you didn't break it."
Also have to share a great post from her blog, titled, "Can a woman have it all?" Thoughtful. (love that she calls herself a MOM in the evenings: Mean Old Mom. LOL - we need more of that!)
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