Social Media and Mobile Marketing

GoMo: Why You Must Set Up A Free Mobile Website

pierre@bizbuzzmedia.net (Biz Buzz Media - Pierre Rattini) — Tue, 29 May 2012 01:00:00 +0000

The graphic explain just three huge reasons you need to go mobile. It is too late for the webinar but learn how to set up a free mobile site using Google at the link below where you will find a link teaching you how to do this.

Inside AdWords: GoMo: Mark your calendar to ‘Hangout on Air’ and l...: Did you know that 40% of mobile web users reported that they’ve turned to a competitor’s site after a bad mobile experience 1 ? With about ...

Myrtle Beach Marketing Scorecard for Myrtle Beach Businesses

pierre@bizbuzzmedia.net (Biz Buzz Media - Pierre Rattini) — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 14:50:00 +0000

Myrtle Beach Marketing Scorecard for Myrtle Beach Businesses (by bizbuzzmediavideo)

What is your businesses online reputation score. Do you know how well or poorly you compare to your competitor(s)

Want to find out where you stand? Or are you just waiting to see what happens?

If you want to get ahead of your competitor go to our website at http://bizbuzzmedia.net and get your complimentary scorecard analysis of your business.

Handyman Myrtle Beach Tips - Painting - Clogged Drains

pierre@bizbuzzmedia.net (Biz Buzz Media - Pierre Rattini) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 21:44:00 +0000

Handyman Myrtle Beach Tips

[important]Painting, Cleaning Drains. Handyman Myrtle Beach Tips[/important]

Do you want to freshen up the look of your home by painting inside or outside your Myrtle Beach area home. Handyman Myrtle Beach has some tips. Interior/exterior home painting is a simple way for you to change your home into something special using proper prep plus some coats of fresh paint. Handyman Myrtle Beach home painting is one of those home improvement projects that a homeowner can do if they are willing to do the work. Myrtle Beach Handyman guide team definitely recommends you consider the work required and if ladders are required.

Preparation tips | Exterior Painting Myrtle Beach | Interior Painting

Interior Preparation: A handy-man hint to your typical home owner might be, to move all the furniture and your valuables into the center of the room (or out of the room) and cover it with plastic. Use a drop cloth every where you will be working. Next wash the walls using a moist wash rag or sponge and let it dry. Sometimes for kitchen or other walls that have grease or dirt you may want to use a mild cleaner like TSP to make the cleaning easier and more effective. Check the walls and areas for holes cracks and dents and fill these level with plaster/ drywall mud to create a smooth even surface. Finally we recommend a light sand to the surface.

Exterior Preparation: Use a power washer if you are confident that you won't damage the surface or get water into areas that must stay dry. It is also hard work. Another option is to use elbow grease, scrub brush, cloth and a garden hose to rinse away the area. This means washing the surface of any mildew and mold using bleach, scraping all loose paint away, feather sand the paint edges and fixing every crack around the windows. Myrtle Beach Handyman tip: Hire someone if in doubt. To do this fix, utilize either caulk or another sealing compound. Finally prime any bare areas. Doing this kind of standard prep will guarantee that this fresh paint has a even sticky surface to bond to plus the paint job will last through a number of years. If you don't, the paint will certainly peel off since the area wasn't well prepared.

[important]Applying Coats of Paint - Key handyman Myrtle Beach Tip.[/important]

Apply one or two coats of quality paint (we recommend two coats) and you should adhere to the manufacturer's guidelines pertaining to the length of time the actual fresh paint will need to dry before you apply another layer of fresh paint.

Bonus Handyman Tip – Cleaning Household Drains

Take out the drain plus clear every solid substances and / or unwanted hair using your hands and fingers. Even though this is a filthy task, it'll usually repair the issue then and there. Suppose the particular drain is your kitchen drain, which happens to be blocked with food items and other messy stuff, then you definitely need to try a plunger several times to find out if you are able to unblock your drain. Regarding shower and bathtub blockages, a good handmade "drain snake" can be made from a hanger. Basically untwist a coat-hanger into a stretched out wire, along with twisting the end to a really short hook using a set of pliers. Plunge your handmade hanger into your drain till all of the unwanted hair is taken away. That should do it.

Home Maintenance and house repairs are often a lot of work and can also be rewarding personally for those that want to do the work themselves. If you decide you want help be careful when hiring a Myrtle Beach handyman. See Article of Interest below titles "Handyman Myrtle Beach | How to Hire a Handyman to find a solution to hiring a handyman Myrtle Beach.

Social Media, Mobile and Video Marketing. Local Marketing Optimization. Biz Buzz Media

pierre@bizbuzzmedia.net (Biz Buzz Media - Pierre Rattini) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 16:05:00 +0000

Social Media, Mobile and Video Marketing. Local Marketing Optimization. Biz Buzz Media
Originally uploaded by bizbuzzmedia

New and Final Logo Design.

What do you think?

Local Business Marketing | Google Places

pierre@bizbuzzmedia.net (Biz Buzz Media - Pierre Rattini) — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 17:09:00 +0000

5.2 Billion vs 1.8 Billion Users?

Targeted to your local business.

What is it?

The combination of Local and mobile marketing. Paces like Google Places, Foursquare and Mobile and Text marketing.

Below is an ad I created to show you an example. Here is the direct link so you can see it either on your computer or on your mobile phone.
http://budurl.com/FreeLocalMktgReview

Let me see the local mobile marketing ad

If you have any questions please send them to theteam@bizbuzzmedia.net or text them to 704-350-5226

Pierre Rattini, Biz Buzz Media

http://bizbuzzmedia.net
"Get Me The Info"

Amplify’d from maps.google.com

Biz Buzz Media

1551 Spinnaker Drive, Unit #5922, North Myrtle Beach, SC 29582, USA

(704) 350-5226

bizbuzzmedia.net

Print
Directions

Biz Buzz Media

Local Marketing Analysis Free!

Google Places | Mobile Marketing. Your business serves local clients or vacationers.
Search is now local and mobile.
Will customers find you or your competitors?
For your complimentary local, mobile review!
Text "FreeLocal" to 704-350-5226 (or call)

Code - Local0430
Expires - Apr 30, 2011

Search for offers near you with the Offers iGoogle gadget

^New!

See more at maps.google.com

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/bt0f5

3 Reasons Nonprofits need a facebook page not a profile

pierre@bizbuzzmedia.net (Biz Buzz Media - Pierre Rattini) — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 18:27:00 +0000

I have been asked this question a lot. Here is an article that answers the question of Facebook Page or Facebook Profile very simply, in my opinion.

If you have further questions please ask we want to give back where we can.

Pierre Rattini, Biz Buzz Media, CMO, CCO
Social Media Marketing Consultant, Myrtle Beach SC
http://www.bizbuzzmedia.net

Amplify’d from www.socialbrite.org

Why you want to create a Facebook Page, not a Profile, for your nonprofit

I’ve been chatting with Will Coley lately about nonprofits that violate Facebook’s Terms of Service, sometimes knowingly, by using a Profile to market their cause rather than a Page.

Using a Facebook Profile to market your nonprofit on Facebook is not smart, for at least three reasons:

You have no way of knowing what people want

1Facebook gives marketers a powerful tool called Insights that allows you to see – on a post level – how your fans engage with your content. Profiles don’t have this tool, only Pages do.

Facebook users don’t analyze how their friends react to their status updates. But marketers care very much about this – and so should you.

People don’t want to be your friend

2A friend request is very different from asking someone to like your Page. If you’re sending friend requests as a Profile, you’re asking the user to allow you to see their photos, their friends list, their address, their phone number and perhaps their relationship status.

Gross.

Facebook users don’t want to share this info with your organization. Asking a user to like your Page, on the other hand, doesn’t cross any personal boundary.

Facebook could delete your profile

3Using a Facebook profile to market your organization is a violation of Facebook’s rules.

What this means is that after spending a lot of resources of building up a large amount of friends – say, up to 5,000 – Facebook can simply delete the profile.

A visual map of your Facebook options

It’s likely that most nonprofits that go this route do so simply out of ignorance. The difference between a Profile and a Page is a topic covered in the Facebook Foundations webinar I conduct with CharityHowTo. Above is a map of all properties available on Facebook — Pages, Profiles, Places and Groups — on one slide. You can also download the PDF.

Why else is using a Profile bad business for nonprofits?
Read more at www.socialbrite.org

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/fGU9QO

How Non-Profits can take charge of Facebook news feeds

pierre@bizbuzzmedia.net (Biz Buzz Media - Pierre Rattini) — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 17:17:00 +0000

A must read if you are a non profit. Just Saying!

If you find this helpful or you have other tips to help other non profits please share them.

Pierre Rattini, CMO, CCO
BizBuzzMedia.net
Social Media Marketing Consultant

Amplify’d from www.socialbrite.org

How nonprofits can take charge of Facebook’s news feeds

New tool: The EdgeRank Checker app shows how well your Facebook Page is performing.

It’s the heart & soul of Facebook — and few people understand it

Over the years, Facebook has become a central part of our online social presence — for nonprofits, organizations and our personal brands.

So why do so many nonprofits and organizations know so little about how the heart and soul of Facebook actually works? I’m referring to the Facebook News Feed, featured in a Chevy Cruze commercial in the second quarter of yesterday’s Super Bowl.

In this series, we’ll offer tips on how to use Facebook much more effectively as a professional by taking charge of your News Feed. We’ll dissect Facebook’s secret sauce, called EdgeRank, to help you build authority with the right touch, tools and tactics. And we’ll give you tips on how to expand your organization’s reach and influence on Facebook.

How Facebook’s news feeds work

Facebook is far more than a social network: It’s also a personalized news network powered by a highly dynamic engine that’s personalized, relevant and timely. The crown jewel of this dynamic landscape is the News Feed. The News Feed consists of the content continually fed into the center column of your home page from people and Pages you follow on Facebook. You’ll see status updates, photos, photo tags, videos, friend requests, event RSVPs and group memberships.

Facebook’s news feeds have evolved significantly since the first one was introduced in 2006. With close to 600 million members, Facebook handles billions of individualized feeds — an impressive feat of engineering, if you to stop to think about it. Some members may not realize it, but the news stream you typically see on your page displays only a small portion of the updates posted by your Facebook friends.

A few weeks ago Facebook tweaked the Most Recent feed. Now you have the option to display photos, Page updates & posts on Friend Lists.

Your News Feed comes in two flavors:

• Top News contains what Facebook calls “the most interesting content that your friends are posting.” This filtered feed is the default view on Facebook (until you change it), and Facebook said in late 2010 that more than 95 percent of its nearly 600 million members using the Web interface see the site through this prism. (This figure doesn’t count members using mobile apps and third-party apps.)

• Most Recent shows you “all the actions your friends are making in real-time,” Facebook says (though that’s not literally true, as we’ll see below). On Dec. 22, with little fanfare, Facebook updated the Most Recent feed, giving you more filter options, including just photos, just updates from Pages, and posts from the Friend Lists you create. Pretty cool! Behold:

If you’d prefer to see Most Recent as your default, you can scroll down to the very bottom of your Top News or Most Recent page, click Edit Options, and select: Show posts from: All of your friends and pages. (See this Help page for more details.)

You can also choose to hide certain kinds of applications — if you hate quizzes, you can banish quiz apps from your feed — or you can hide posts from selected individuals or Pages. This can come in handy if you have a garrulous buddy you don’t want to defriend or a brand that you’ve changed your mind about. Roll over the X at the right of any post and you’ll see options, which are different for Pages and friends:

A few things to note about the Most Recent feed:

• If you use the Facebook for iPhone or Facebook for Android app, this is the feed you see — the Live Feed gusher, not the filtered Top News feed.

• Does your Most Recent feed contain absolutely all of your friends’ updates? Well, it probably contains 98 percent of them. At the Daily Beast, Tom Weber conducted an experiment and found that updates, links, photos and videos posted by a Facebook newcomer did not appear in some of his friends’ Most Recent feeds. And others have noticed that the Most Recent feed doesn’t contain a few of the updates you see in the unfiltered Live Feed on your mobile device or a third-party app using an API like TweetDeck or Hootsuite. Try it — it’s an interesting experiment!

• I should also mention that an update by a Facebook Group — as opposed to a Facebook Page or personal Profile — does not appear in either anyone’s Most Recent or Top News feeds. Groups may contact their members via in-box messaging up to a maximum of 5,000 members, which Pages cannot do. But today it’s almost always better for a brand to create a Page, rather than a Group, to maximize visibility within the News Feed.

You may also want to check the settings found by clicking on the “Edit Options” button of your Most Recent feed at the top or bottom of the page.

Fine-tuning your Top News feed

Now, here’s where it gets interesting. We don’t recommend turning your Top News into a Most Recent firehose. The idea behind Top News is this: You want to see news from the Facebook members, brands or causes that matter most to you. And we agree: You want to be selective about who to devote your attention to, especially if you have hundreds or thousands of friends and follow scores of Pages. Your time is valuable, right?

So you need to teach Facebook’s Top News feed how to behave. And you want to set up lists for more targeted updates, which we’ll cover in part 2.

What makes it into your Top News stream? Facebook uses a formula called EdgeRank, which takes into account just three factors:

Affinity: The more often you engage with content by a person or Page over time, the higher your affinity will be for that content creator.

Weight: As posts are commented on, liked and shared by other Facebook users and their networks, their overall weight increases, even if you’re not connected with those users. A posting with 10 comments and 15 Likes carries a greater weight than one with no comments or Likes. Not all interactions are equal. A comment probably counts more than a Like does.

Timeliness: The more recent the post, the higher it ranks. As time goes by, its value decreases.

Top News will show you hours-old updates from some friends while ignoring newer posts from others. You probably wonder which of your friends see which of your posts. It comes down to this: A high EdgeRank leads to visibility while a low EdgeRank leads to obscurity.

New tool: The EdgeRank Checker app

Last week social media strategist Mari Smith wrote about a new tool that measures your Facebook Page’s EdgeRank score. If you have a Facebook Page, EdgeRank Checker — pictured at top — steps you through the process of determining how effective your Page is in reaching your followers. No download necessary.

Here’s how it works. Just log in as an administrator, go to your Insights page and select the Page you want to check (image above). Choose a date range, click the Export button and be sure to tab over to select CSV (not Excel). Then upload the CSV file to EdgeRank Checker and it spits out your score in a few seconds. The resulting page will show what your score means. Facebook expert Chad Wittman, founder of social media management firm SBN, created the tool. There’s also a fan engagement checker at Fangager.com – enter your Page username to get a full summary (hat tip to Brian Solis).

The exact way EdgeRank works is part of Facebook’s secret sauce, but we’ll explore how to increase affinity and weight — that is, how to enhance your influence and visibility — in part 2 of this series.
Read more at www.socialbrite.org

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/gyP7en

REPORT: Facebook Branding Beats Twitter

pierre@bizbuzzmedia.net (Biz Buzz Media - Pierre Rattini) — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 17:08:00 +0000

Did you see the other article on this subject http://ow.ly/3ThiQ

Why Facebook Matters to your business.

Pierre Rattini

CCO,CMO Biz Buzz Media

Social Media Marketing Consultant

Mobile Marketing, Lead Generation and Automated Follow up

Amplify’d from www.allfacebook.com

REPORT: Facebook Branding Beats Twitter

Facebook’s brand effectiveness outranks all other social media’s branding efforts, according Brand Keys’ Customer Loyalty Index.

The index measures customer engagement and loyalty among brands in 79 different categories, one of which is social networking sites. This category has enough surprises to make us wonder whether Brand Keys’ assessment used sufficiently sized survey samples.

Brand Keys ranks MySpace second, LinkedIn third, Flickr fourth and Twitter fifth. We’d expect to see Twitter and the old News Corp. site in each other’s places. Or maybe MySpace shouldn’t even be in the top five, as many other sites have stronger brands, including FourSquare, Quora, Tumblr, YouTube and Yelp, not neccessarily in that order.

The consultancy declares that its index can help a brand forecast customer loyalty and purchase patterns over a 12- to 18-month horizon; this confuses us further if it means that MySpace will continue to rank second for another year-and-a-half. We suppose that’s mitigated by the notion that Facebook would continue to rank first over this time.

Readers, what do you make of the Brand Keys assessment of branding in social media?
Read more at www.allfacebook.com

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/fIhare

Consumers Like Facebook's Brand | Twitter Not So Much

pierre@bizbuzzmedia.net (Biz Buzz Media - Pierre Rattini) — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 22:25:00 +0000

From the 15th edition of the consultant Brand Keys' annual Customer Loyalty Index.

What it important is coming up with a plan that best matches your Brand with the social media platforms that best match your audience.

Would like your help and feedback...

What business are you in and what social platform best matches it?

Amplify’d from www.mediapost.com

Consumers Like Facebook's Brand, Twitter Not So Much

Despite the concerns surrounding user privacy, Facebook has the most loyal and engaged consumers of any major online social media platform, according results of some highly regarded brand research being released today. The research, the 15th edition of consultant Brand Keys' annual Customer Loyalty Index, shows that on the basis of all consumer brand attributes, including "privacy and security," Facebook ranks a dominant No. 1, followed by MySpace, LinkedIn, and Flickr with micro blogging network Twitter a distant fifth.

"When you look at the diagnostics, Facebook does rank very low in terms of security and control," but when you put all the drivers together they have a very loyal base," says Robert Passikoff, founder and president of Brand Keys, which is releasing its 2011 findings exclusively through MediaPost publications this week.

Because the research, including the "drivers" Brand Keys uses to rank brands, are induced directly from the consumers of brands, Passikoff says the data represents exactly how consumers feel about those brands relative to other brands in their categories. Among social networks, Passikoff says Facebook is a dominant No 1, because it fulfills its users expectations about their own "self-image," which is the No. 1 brand driver among online social networks, followed by "ease of connection," "security and control" and overall "brand value."

With the exception of LinkedIn, Passikoff says all of the major social networks rank relatively low on security and control, but he notes that user concerns over privacy are not enough to offset the strong loyalty and engagement consumer derive from other aspects of social network brands.

Interestingly, the Brand Keys data indicates that while security and control are important issues among social media users, they contribute less than 20% of consumers' overall perceptions about social network brands in the index, and are far outweighed by a network's ability to reinforce a user's own self-image, and to give them easy connections, two things Facebook excels at.

Interestingly, Twitter, which has become the rage among celebrity users and is making lots of noise on Madison Avenue, fares worst in the Brand Keys index, by a wide margin.

"It's very low on security and control and it's the lowest on brand value and content," Passikoff says of the perception consumers have about Twitter's brand.

The findings could be significant for the long-term success of social networks, because branding experts believe consumer perceptions about brands can affect long-term performance and financial realities. Wall Street analysts typically treat brand value as part of the "goodwill" assets of a company, which depending on the industry and category, can be a significant portion of a company's overall valuation.

Top Social Networking Sites Ranked By Brand Loyalty

1 Facebook

2 MySpace

3 LinkedIn

4 Flickr

5 Twitter
Read more at www.mediapost.com

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/f9XWYg

How to Measure Social Media Marketing | Analytics

pierre@bizbuzzmedia.net (Biz Buzz Media - Pierre Rattini) — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 22:14:00 +0000

Do you have a way to measure results from your social media marketing and activities?

Do you have something you like using or can recommend? Here is another tool from Social Report and you can try it free for 30 days.

Pierre Rattini, Social Media Marketing Consultant
Mobile Text Marketing
Local Directory Listings

Amplify’d from socialmediatoday.com

Measuring your Social Message Impact

As we all tweet, tag, post, connect, follow and like - we all wonder if our message is reaching anyone out there. There are all sorts of metrics that people are using - from virality to engagement, from influence to chatter. Closed nature of the data behind all social networks isn't helping much either. They are probably saving all of their data till they can resell it to us in one form or another :) Good for them. In the meantime, we need to figure this stuff out.

Most marketers share a very similar goal - for people to take action. Action can be purchasing of a product, voting in a poll, commenting on a topic, etc. In most general terms - actions are typically hosted on a website (a checkout page, a poll). Good old link and website tracking to the rescue!

One of the shortcomings of all link shortneners is that they stop short of telling us what happened after someone clicks the link and offer little capability to define "campaigns", a set of links related to a marketing initiative. Closing this gap is easy though.

Here is an example of what an ideal social campaign should be able to do (let's face it, every tweet, every post is a campaign, this is what it is all about):

Post your message to your networks. Let's say a twitter feed, facebook page, and a linkedin. For example a typical Social Report message:

Step by step social campaign management with Social Report http://qoo.ly/399

This message will appear on all 3 targeted networks (extra features such as more precise scheduling, reoccurrence and timing are also quite valuable)

As folks click on the link from each network we are now able to precisely tell you where your clicks are coming from:
Twitter: 25 clicks
Facebook page: 130 clicks
LinkedIn: 5 clicks

First conclusion - it appears that fans of our Facebook page tend to be more receptive to our message. This is a great first step! It would be even more useful however to find out how many of these people subscribe to our service once they read about our campaign management.

We will go ahead and place a small conversion script on our check out page

<script src="http://qoo.ly/js/qooly.js"></script><script>client.init('1');</script>
<noscript><img src="http://qoo.ly/u1.png" /></noscript><script src="http://qoo.ly/js/qooly.js"></script>
<script>client.init('1');</script>
<noscript><img src="http://qoo.ly/u1.png" /></noscript>

Now we are able to correlated the response with the action (subscription) and improve our marketing data as follows:

Twitter: 25 clicks and 20 conversions.
Facebook page: 130 clicks and 1 conversion.
LinkedIn: 5 clicks and 0 conversions.

Wow! This is intriguing! Even though we got 130 clicks (responses) from our Facebook fan page - it is the twitter that brought us the most customers!

Second conclusion: Twitter - a lot of substance, Facebook - a lot of noise.

Seems like we have done it all at this point. Yet, one more step can make this process more complete. How can we put a dollar value on what we've just done. Let's define few parameters:

COST PER DAY (how much is our marketing initiative costing us per day?) = $1,000
COST PER CONVERSION (perhaps merchant processing fees) - $5
VALUE OF CONVERSION (in our case an average subscription is about $20/mo) = $200

Using the numbers from the example below (we ran this campaign for just one day):

21 conversion * ($200 - $5) - 1 day * $1,000 (cost per day) = $3,095

Woohoo! Things are looking good!

Third conclusion: through our 1 day of marketing we have increased our revenue by $3,095 per year.

Find out more about campaign management with Social Report here http://support.socialreport.com/entries/369653-campaigns-tracking-social-roi
Read more at socialmediatoday.com

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/h3vMMf

Super Bowl Ads 2011| What the heck did they get for $3,000,000

pierre@bizbuzzmedia.net (Biz Buzz Media - Pierre Rattini) — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 21:30:00 +0000

Was it just me or did the ads as a whole suck. There were a few bright notes in the Volkswagen and Pepsi Max ads. The majority were a waste of $3,000,000.

What did you like or dislike about the ads?

Amplify’d from socialmediatoday.com

Super Bowl Ads 2011: Missed Opportunity to Connect & Inspire

Good thing for DVR as I now need to go back and watch the Super Bowl. I was too busy watching the commercials and of course tweeting the night away with all of the other marketing and advertising addicted twitter geeks!

I know the social media audience is a tough audience to please. However, from what I could see there was definitely not a lot of excitement over this year’s ads.

What was missing? In my opinion the #1 most important aspect that was missing in the majority of ads was an emotional brand connection. It seemed that many of the ads were developed by their special effects internal team or agency without a real strategy.

Yes, I know it is a bonus and goal for most to take their commercial viral. I actually had a tweeter respond to one of my tweets lastnight telling me that Super Bowl advertising is not about brand but about going viral. Hello… since when is going viral not about connecting with an audience??

I disagree 100%. Yes, going viral is great, awesome for that matter. However, if you aren’t doing such by increasing brand equity, brand awareness or sales then why the heck would you do such in the current economy. Going viral usually requires a connection of sort be it humor, sadness, anger etc.

Bottom line, connection is the key to successful marketing. Inspire your audiences to connect with you. Spending exorbious amounts of money on an over rated, over complicated commercial is going to do nothing more to inspire connection than the right message said in the right way. Often times the best ads are those that are the most simple, most easy to understand and remember.

We all have our opinions and favorites regarding the ads. The ones I remember are of course Chrysler, CarMax, NFL, Tiny Dancer and even Kia. I entered the second half with lots of cars to drive but little cravings for Doritos, soda or beer. Hmmm..maybe that is a good thing. Although I really liked the Chrysler ad, I still struggle with Eminem combined with a church choir. Something about that just rubbed me “awkward” as my 10 yr old would say.

Why was there such a focus on war, border patrol and old cowboys? What happened to the good ol’ boys sitting and watching the football game? What happened with making us forget for a few hours the wars, the drowning 401ks? What happened to making me glad I live in this country and have the freedom to buy the products I want, live where I want to live and enjoy my life regardless of if I do it in an Audi, Kia or BMW?

GoDaddy, I guess I am no longer in your target market? Hmmm… maybe that is why I own 150+ domains with your competitors? Definitely didn’t inspire me to come back with the ads you ran lastnight!?

Why base a campaign on purchasing a new home, landscaping a yard when half of America just finished foreclosure, is in foreclosure or hoping they can make it thru 2011 without such. I don’t think purchasing a new home is what most Super Bowl viewers had on their mind Super Bowl Sunday afternoon. Instead they wanted to enjoy time with family and friends, eat too much food and enjoy a few brewskis made in America.

What would I have liked to see? More of what Chrysler did. Make me feel good about my country, the brands, my life and myself. Give me hope. Help me connect to you as the advertiser. Help me connect to my neighbors, my friends, my colleagues, my family via your brand. Help me connect via the common platform we have by drinking a cold Bud Light or PepsiMax together with a fresh open bag of Doritos. Don’t show some guy licking his colleagues finger. I’d have more to say than “stop that” if one of my colleagues did that to me!?

My understanding is there was more than $200 million spent on Super Bowl advertisements this year to reach an audience of approximately $110 million plus. How many of our own homeless people could we take off the streets or how many people could we put in a car to get to work if we took even 50% of that money out and put it to good use.

Next time let’s save the 50%. We can then spend the other 50% on actually getting in a room and being creative like the old days. Spend time working on a campaign that sparks a tear, makes someone laugh out loud. An ad that brings out emotion and helps us connect with the brands we love!? Then I might be inspired to go visit their YouTube channel, comment and tell them thank you for making me feel good!

I saw very few inspirational invitations to join social networks. What a missed opportunity and social proof some of the big brands are yet to successfully leverage social media. It’s also proof they are even further away from integrating social media into the DNA of how they also leverage traditional media. The ads of this Super Bowl almost make me believe they are caught somewhere in limbo as they forgot how to do traditional advertising too?

Next time invite me into your social network. Invite me to help you with your cause. Don’t slap a cause on to your commercial and then tweet about it like you were authentic. We’re smarter than that and can see you hadn’t tweeted about the mentioned charity the past week. Funny how it happened right after the commercial went live and the negative tweets started blasting.

As a marketer I get most frustrated when I see missed opportunity. In my opinion the ads of the Super Bowl were filled with missed opportunity. From social networking, accurate representation of the charities they support, to emotionally connecting with an audience. These in my humble opinion are big misses. Intentional or not, they were missed.

Your Turn?
What was your favorite? Did you feel let down by the quality of ads? What do you feel could have made them better?
Read more at socialmediatoday.com

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/hy93pD

6 Pros and Cons of Finishing what you start

pierre@bizbuzzmedia.net (Biz Buzz Media - Pierre Rattini) — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 22:49:00 +0000

I have been on both sides of this and the finishing has always been worth it. For some reason it juts is harder then other times to finish. Has this happened to you? I find when I focus on why I am doing it helps. If I don't get motivated by my why, I rarely finish. If I must finish I find a why that matters or a bribe myself with a reward that gets me excited to finish.

Do you have any tips you can share that have worked for you?

Amplify’d from lifehacker.com

The Pros and Cons of Finishing

Why do we bother finishing anything we start if it's not worth our time? And why would we leave ever waste our time working on something we won't finish? Here's why you should and shouldn't finish what you started.

Photo by Toshimasa Ishibashi

PRO: We All Want a Sense of Accomplishment

Finishing what you started gives you a great sense of accomplishment. Even if it's not something most of us consider fun—like cleaning your house—it's incredibly rewarding to know you accomplished the task anyway. You may not like every project, but if you get started you ought to finish. The sense of accomplishment gives you the self-esteem to know that you can get through anything you set your mind to, even if it's not always your favorite thing to do. You're not going to be able to always do the things you want to do, so it's best to build up a tolerance and the ability to handle the bad along with the good. In the end, you'll be a stronger and better worker.

CON: You Have to Start to Know if Something is Worth Finishing

If you come up with an idea that you think is fantastic, you may start working and find out it's a complete waste of your time. Why should you bother moving forward with that idea if it turns out to be a dud? Sometimes you have to start a project to really know if it's worth large amounts of your time. Finishing a crappy project isn't going to do anyone much good. At best you've wasted your time. At worst you'll be afraid to start new projects with the fear that you'll have to finish them even if they suck. Allow yourself to abandon things when they ought to be abandoned.

Comic by Nataliedee

PRO: You Don't Know The Future

Your life is guaranteed to be boring if you never allow yourself to be surprised. The world has a capricious nature and, if you're open to it, you might discover incredible things you wouldn't if you closed yourself off. Let's say you started watching a movie and, 30 minutes into it, you hate it. You decide to leave. Perhaps the rest of the movie will be terrible, but perhaps you'll learn something incredible or gain something more valuable from the experience that you'd be abandoning if you didn't stick around. You never know what's going to happen, and if you act like you do you'll miss out on a lot. When you commit to finishing what you started you gain new possibilities that you wouldn't otherwise have.

CON: You Know What's Important

Your time is valuable and you generally know the things that matter. If you hate something, don't waste time on it. There is not enough time in the world to remain open to everything you encounter. You can't read and answer every email. You can't finish everything on your to-do list. You can't see every movie you want to and you shouldn't. Some of them are going to suck. If you encounter a crappy movie, walk out. You have better things to do. There's a reason we prioritize our lives: if we didn't, we'd never sleep. Without priorities, choosing A over B, and cutting our losses, we'd never get anything done. Remaining open to every possibility in the world is romantic and idealistic, but it's hardly realistic. Be smart and don't bother finishing anything that doesn't seem to offer any real benefit.

PRO: You Made a Commitment, and You Should Keep It

It's one thing you abandon something on your own, but if you've made a commitment to somebody you've made a promise. When you agree to help somebody with something, they've put their trust in you. They believe you're going to help them. If it's something you might not be able to do or, perhaps, don't actually want to do but just want to help, don't commit in the first place. It's better to be unable to help in the first place than abandon someone after you've made a promise, so if you've made the commitment you better stick to it.

CON: Keeping Commitments That Make You Miserable Doesn't Help Anybody

There's no question that making a commitment to help somebody is an important promise, and it definitely sucks if you have to bail, but who hasn't been in a situation where you promise to help somebody but something unforeseen happens? Or you didn't accurately predict how you'd feel? Or you simply made a mistake? Continuing to work on a project you hate out of obligation is just going to make you miserable, and that's going to make the people you're working with miserable. Additionally, you're probably going to produce a bunch of miserable work. This doesn't help anybody. Keeping the commitment is honorable, but it's not necessarily what's best. Besides, you can always do the right thing and find someone to replace you. That's how it works when you leave a traditional job. Why shouldn't it be the same with one-off commitments as well?

What do you think? Should you always finish what you started or feel free to abandon anything you feel isn't worthwhile? Or are you somewhere in the middle. Share your thoughts in the comments.
Read more at lifehacker.com

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6 Key Steps to Make any Change.

pierre@bizbuzzmedia.net (Biz Buzz Media - Pierre Rattini) — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 04:02:00 +0000

This is the perfect addition just after we have all made our New years resolutions. Have you kept any of your resolutions? Are you struggling to keep them.

This will help you recommit or to keep your promise to change.

Any other suggestion or tips you can add that would help others?

Pierre Rattini, CCO, BiZ BuZZ MeDia
http://bizbuzzmedia.net

Amplify’d from blogs.hbr.org

Six Keys to Changing Almost Anything

Change is hard. New Year's resolutions almost always fail. But at The Energy Project, we have developed a way of making changes that has proved remarkably powerful and enduring, both in my own life and for the corporate clients to whom we teach it.

Our method is grounded in the recognition that human being are creatures of habit. Fully 95 percent of our behaviors are habitual, or occur in response to a strong external stimulus. Only 5 percent of our choices are consciously self-selected.

In 1911, the mathematician Alfred North Whitehead intuited what researchers would confirm nearly a century later. "It is a profoundly erroneous truism," he wrote, "that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them."

Most of us wildly overvalue our will and discipline. Ingenious research by Roy Baumeister and others has demonstrated that our self-control is a severely limited resource that gets progressively depleted by every act of conscious self-regulation.

In order to make change that lasts, we must rely less on our prefrontal cortex, and more on co-opting the primitive parts of our brain in which habits are formed.

Put simply, the more behaviors are ritualized and routinized — in the form of a deliberate practice — the less energy they require to launch, and the more they recur automatically

What follows are our six key steps to making change that lasts:

1. Be Highly Precise and Specific. Imagine a typical New Year's resolution to "exercise regularly." It's a prescription for failure. You have a vastly higher chance for success if you decide in advance the days and times, and precisely what you're going to do on each of them.

Say instead that you commit to do a cardiovascular work out Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m., for 30 minutes. If something beyond your control forces you to miss one of those days, you automatically default to doing that workout instead on Saturday at 9 a.m.

Researchers call those "implementation intentions" and they dramatically increase your odds of success.

2. Take on one new challenge at a time. Over the years, I've established a broad range of routines and practices, ranging from ones for weight training and running, to doing the most important thing first every morning without interruption for 90 minutes and then taking a break to spending 90 minutes talking with my wife about the previous week on Saturday mornings.

In each case, I gave the new practice I was launching my sole focus. Even then, in some cases, it's taken several tries before I was able to stay at the behavior long enough for it to become essentially automatic.

Computers can run several programs simultaneously. Human beings operate best when we take on one thing at a time, sequentially.

3. Not too much, not too little. The most obvious mistake we make when we try to change something in our lives is that we bite off more than it turns out we can chew. Imagine that after doing no exercise at all for the past year, for example, you get inspired and launch a regimen of jogging for 30 minutes, five days a week. Chances are high that you'll find exercising that much so painful you'll quit after a few sessions.

It's also easy to go to the other extreme, and take on too little. So you launch a 10-minute walk at lunchtime three days a week and stay at it. The problem is that you don't feel any better for it after several weeks, and your motivation fades.

The only way to truly grow is to challenge your current comfort zone. The trick is finding a middle ground — pushing yourself hard enough that you get some real gain, but not too much that you find yourself unwilling to stay at it.

4. What we resist persists.

Think about sitting in front of a plate of fragrant chocolate chip cookies over an extended period of time. Diets fail the vast majority of time because they're typically built around regularly resisting food we enjoy eating. Eventually, we run up against our limited reservoir of self control.

The same is true of trying to ignore the Pavlovian ping of incoming emails while you're working on an important project that deserves your full attention.

The only reasonable answer is to avoid the temptation. With email, the more effective practice is turn it off entirely at designated times, and then answer it in chunks at others. For dieters, it's to keep food you don't want to eat out of sight, and focus your diet instead on what you are going to eat, at which times, and in what portion sizes. The less you have to think about what to do, the more successful you're likely to be.

5. Competing Commitments.

We all derive a sense of comfort and safety from doing what we've always done, even if it isn't ultimately serving us well. Researchers Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey call this "immunity to change." Even the most passionate commitment to change, they've shown, is invariably counterbalanced by an equally powerful but often unseen "competing" commitment not to change.

Here's a very simple way to surface your competing commitment. Think about a change you really want to make. Now ask yourself what you're currently doing or not doing to undermine that primary commitment. If you are trying to get more focused on important priorities, for example, your competing commitment might be the desire to be highly responsive and available to those emailing you.

For any change effort you launch, it's key to surface your competing commitment and then ask yourself "How can I design this practice so I get the desired benefits but also minimize the costs I fear it will prompt?"

6. Keep the faith.

Change is hard. It is painful. And you will experience failure at times. The average person launches a change effort six separate times before it finally takes. But follow the steps above, and I can tell you from my own experience and that of thousands of clients that you will succeed, and probably without multiple failures.
Read more at blogs.hbr.org

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Keyword and 4 more ways to get your video played

pierre@bizbuzzmedia.net (Biz Buzz Media - Pierre Rattini) — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 02:14:00 +0000

This article will help you get your video found, especially helpful if you are a YouTube fan.

Find out what the keywords are that your niche clients are using to search and use these keywords to create content so they can find you.

Pierre Rattini, CCO, BiZ BuZZ MeDia
http://bizbuzzmedia.net

Amplify’d from www.ducttapemarketing.com

5 Ways to Get More From Online Video

The use of video to tell your story, put a real live face on the company and showcase your products, services and customer testimonials is a very foundational online tactic these days.

As cameras become more sophisticated and cheaper to buy and services such as Vimeo and YouTube provide free and low cost hosting and streaming, small business owners are embedding video in blog posts and web pages with increasing ease.

There is one aspect of this tactic that is often overlooked however, and that’s taking proper care of how you place your videos on the hosting site, in particular YouTube.

While many businesses seek to draw attention to the video placed on a page on their site, millions turn to YouTube to find information and getting your videos to rank well there may be an extremely important way to get visitors to your site.

Here are a couple facts that you should consider when it comes to your YouTube video strategy:

YouTube is the world’s 2^nd largest search engine – that’s right more people turn to YouTube to find information than Yahoo and Bing.

According to Compete.com over 25% of YouTube’s traffic comes from Google – people are turning up lots of video in Google searches.

Google is committed to something they called Universal Search – this is the act of returning more than textual information for many searches. This includes video, blog posts, images and even near real-time Twitter streams. In some cases getting your videos to rank well can be easier than getting your pages to do so.

Below are five things to consider as you begin to optimize your video assets on YouTube.

Do your research – Use the YouTube Keyword Tool – Most people are familiar with Google’s keyword research and related search tools, but did you know that YouTube has the same tools?

By visiting and using these tools you can find some great insights about video topics that are hot and ways to optimize your video content to take advantage of what people are searching for on YouTube.

Describe and Tag Well – One of the first things you can do is make certain that you do all you can to help YouTube know what your video is about. (Of course you’ve got to make it public first) This includes the file name (don’t use newmovie.m4v use importantkeyword.m4v), description, tags and categories.

Make sure you pick the right category – there is no business category, but I’ve found HowTo and Style to be the best for my videos.

Use your description to describe what is going on in the video. You’ve got lots of room here, but don’t cram keywords in, make it a thorough description and include a link back to you site. Use all of tags that work and include a few variations. (Get your keywords in the description within the first 20 or so words too.)

Annotations and Transcripts are Key – YouTube allows you to annotate or add notes to your video that show when people watch. This is a great way to emphasize content, show links that you mention, or point out other related videos you’ve made. It also adds content that Google may index in some cases.

You can also create and entire transcript that is used by hearing impaired viewers using Closed Captioning. CaptionTube makes it easy to do and the transcript can go a very long way towards helping your video rank well.

Call to Action – One of the things I notice quite often is that people spend a great deal of effort creating videos that simply end. I think this is because the videos are created to go on a web page that has lots of information and a call to action.

If your video is to stand alone and ranks well on YouTube, the video itself must contain a verbal and visual call to action. End your videos telling and showing what people should do next.

Spread the Love – Once you’ve done your work on YouTube it’s time to spread your video to other places. Here’s a list of video sites beyond YouTube for starters, but many people find that using a tool like TubeMogul to automatically submit to video sites and track traffic is the best way to go.

fredcamino via flickr
Read more at www.ducttapemarketing.com

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Facebook Statistics and Facts for 2011 that businesses should know.

pierre@bizbuzzmedia.net (Biz Buzz Media - Pierre Rattini) — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 18:09:00 +0000

After reading this I am reassured that if any business is not on Facebook they will be forgotten, or at minimum lose a tremendous amount of business and brand development.

What is your take?

Want to see some interesting comparisons, click on the link at the bottom of this article from 6 months ago. "The Ultimate List: 100+ Facebook Statistics...

Pierre Rattini, CCO, Biz Buzz Media
http://bizbuzzmedia.net

Amplify’d from www.digitalbuzzblog.com

Facebook Statistics, Stats & Facts For 2011

Read more at www.digitalbuzzblog.com

Facebook Statistics, Stats and Facts for 2011 are starting to roll out, and here is the first infographic to wrap them all up thanks to Online Schools. With over 500 million users, Facebook is now used by 1 in every 13 people on earth, with over 250 million of them (over 50%) who log in every day. The average user still has about 130 friends, but that should expand in 2011.

48% of 18-34 year olds check Facebook when they wake up, with 28% doing so before even getting out of bed. The 35+ demographic is growing rapidly, now with over 30% of the entire Facebook user base. The core 18-24 year old segment is now growing the fastest at 74% year on year. Almost 72% of all US internet users are on now Facebook, while 70% of the entire user base is located outside of the US.

Over 700 Billion minutes a month are spent on Facebook, 20 million applications are installed per day and over 250 million people interact with Facebook from outside the official website on a monthly basis, across 2 million websites. Over 200 million people access Facebook via their mobile phone. 48% of young people said they now get their news through Facebook. Meanwhile, in just 20 minutes on Facebook over 1 million links are shared, 2 million friend requests are accepted and almost 3 million messages are sent.

Read more at www.digitalbuzzblog.com

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WARNING: Your Facebook Security is at Risk

pierre@bizbuzzmedia.net (Biz Buzz Media - Pierre Rattini) — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 17:07:00 +0000

I hope I have your attention. The important thing is that we understand what we risk by providing specific information. Business and personal information and data is a key component of our facebook profiles. This article provides valuable insight so you can be as safe as possible and aware of what information you are sharing with developers.

Pierre Rattini, CCO, BiZ BuZZ MeDia
http://bizbuzzmedia.net

Amplify’d from www.insidefacebook.com

The Rewards and Risks of Facebook Developer Access to User Phone Numbers and Addresses
January 17th, 2011

Facebook has begun allowing developers to ask users for their mobile phone number and home addresses in a move that will show the best and worst of the Facebook Platform. Most critics have immediately focused on how greedy developers will request the data in order to spam users, which is a valid concern. But the access will also enable the creation of apps that keep friends connected via SMS and facilitate ecommerce by pre-populating delivery details.

Though the risks are high, Facebook should not impede innovation for fear of spammers, but instead push forward while minimizing negative outcomes by helping users make more informed decision.

Reduce Risk through Clarity

The biggest problem with access to contact information is that the permission requests for these highly sensitive data fields are not distinguished from requests for more benign data like a user’s Event RSVPs or privileges like publishing to their stream. Some apps ask for a stack of a half dozen permissions, so users have learned to blindly click “Allow” to speed through to the desired application rather than read through them, assuming they aren’t giving away anything too valuable, or can revoke access later.

Facebook should slow users down and make the dangers of permitting access to contact info clearer by making this request a separate step with a bold warning, rather than a quiet, uniform addition to the list of permissions users are familiar with, as we suggested upon seeing the announcement. This would reduce the threat without forcing Facebook to adopt an unscalable system such as approving developers’ access to this part of the Graph API on a one-by-one basis.

Meanwhile, the change could prompt unscrupulous developers to build app that intentionally ask for a lot of permissions, that pull the contact information from unsuspecting users. If they succeed, users will become inundated with spam, blame Facebook for this negative experience, and trust and quality in the Platform will drop.

It’s important to remember that Facebook has long prohibited developers from sharing any user data with third-parties. Users have been granting permission to some kinds of valuable data, including their current location and email address, without widespread problems.

When there have been issues, such as when data broker Rapleaf and developers were caught buying and selling User IDs that did not even contain private data, Facebook has policed accordingly. Data privacy is an inherent problem with developer platforms, but the issues are balanced by the benefits generated by the fun and useful apps that live on them.

One troubling fact is how Facebook announced this major change. Instead of in a dedicated post with mention of the potential risks, it was merely part of a weekly dispatch about bug fixes and migration deadline extensions — with no commentary on its impact. It was published on Friday evening of a three-day weekend, at 8:16pm PST, diffusing immediate feedback, and later the post’s timestamp was changed to 6:00pm. If people are going to trust that the site has their well-being in mind, Facebook needs to concentrate on mitigating risks for users, not minimizing backlash to itself.

The Rewards of Mobile Phone and Address-Aware Apps

There are many benefits to allowing developers to ask users for their contact information. Mobile phone number access could power apps that act as up-to-the-minute communication hubs between groups friends, allowing members to be notified by SMS when friends are nearby, want to plan an event, or upload new content. Home address access could let ecommerce sites pre-populate delivery details during checkout, leveling the playing field so smaller merchants can compete with established giants like Amazon that have already forced users to type in their address manually.

Other potential apps could allow you to share an electronic business card with others; get text message updates about group deals, news, or game activity; discover businesses that are close to home, or instantly sign up to receive physical catalogs or coupons via snail mail. While Facebook’s hasty development might challenge the beliefs of some, it doesn’t make sense to delay these useful additions users might somehow be harmed.

Many technologies come with associated risks. Airplanes crash and medicines have side effects, but these advances as well as platforms like Facebook’s, are the future. The user base will need education so they understand how to recognize and assess risks for themselves, and this first incarnation of mobile phone number and home address extended permissions doesn’t provide it. However, Facebook is doing the right thing by giving users the choice of what to share, even if its currently doing it in the wrong way.
Read more at www.insidefacebook.com

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/ejsnRV

ROI and Social Media Marketing is possible

pierre@bizbuzzmedia.net (Biz Buzz Media - Pierre Rattini) — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 19:04:00 +0000

Tracking your return on investment (ROI) is definetly possible today. This is a great start to explaining what is involved.

Have you found a tracking method you would recommend?

Pierre Rattini, CCO, BiZ BuZZ MeDia

http://bizbuzzmedia.net

Amplify’d from www.socialtimes.com

The Business of Optimizing Social Media… for Business

In just a few short years, the widespread belief that social media was either not a viable advertising/marketing platform or an inferior one has been turned on its ear (and the experts who stated such are praying that nobody checks their blog archives). However, while tracking web traffic has been nearly perfected (along with the practice of optimizing said traffic through keywords), the same cannot be said when considering viral traffic through networks like Twitter and Facebook. However, a few savvy companies have swooped in to fill the void.

One of the premier names in the tracking and optimizing of social media content is the cheekily titled awe.sm. Originally the flagship product of Snowball Factory, its success (and catchy name ) have seen it become a brand in its own right. The awe.sm website describes its service as ROI (Return on Investment) measurement for social media marketing. Co-founder and technical lead Laurie Voss expands:

“In a general sense we are a “social media” company, and that’s quite a crowded space. But more specifically we are a social media publishing and analytics service, and that’s a much smaller field. We are often compared to bit.ly, because of our use of shortened URLs as one method of tracking content, but they are really aiming for the consumer market while we are focussed more on helping people whose job it is to publish content on social media do it better, by better understanding which of their users are sharing, where to, and what kind of traffic that sharing is driving back to them.”

When asked how one might simplify things even further for a layman, Voss stated:

“…Usually the way I describe it is “Do you share things on Twitter and Facebook and wonder how many people are actually seeing those things? What if you could know not just how many people, but which people? What if you could use that information so you could better decide what content to share in future?” That’s what we do. We make you better at sharing, which is better for you and more interesting for your customers.”

The genesis of awe.sm was back in 2008 when co-founder Jonathan Strauss approached Voss with the idea for an early incarnation of the product. While Voss (who was a co-worker of Strauss’ during the later’s tenure at Yahoo) was intrigued, his still existing contract with Yahoo prohibited him from joining Strauss at the time. After leaving Yahoo, however, Strauss invited Voss to join the company not just as technical lead; but due to what Strauss considered formative input, co-founder. As with most any dedicated internet startup, the company is a streamlined one: Strauss serves as CEO, and assisting Voss are a Front-End Engineer and Back-End Engineer. Awe.sm recently performed their first non-technical hire in the form of a Product Marketing Manager, whose duties are described as “to communicate our message more effectively to new and existing customers, and incorporate their feedback into the product.”

Awe.sm has managed to build up quite a client list and now serves tens of millions of redirections a day. While often compared to companies directed at the consumer market such as bit.ly (due to the use of shortened urls as one method of tracking content), Awe.sm is “focussed more on helping people whose job it is to publish content on social media do it better, by better understanding which of their users are sharing, where to, and what kind of traffic that sharing is driving back to them.”

Although their client focus and technical levels may differ, social media analytics companies and products all rely on one ever evolving entity: earned media. While continuing to use ‘free media’ as a synonym may not always be literally correct, it largely refers to unpaid promotion and publicity (as opposed to conventional advertising.) Before the internet this would often refer to promotion through news reports, reviews or editorial influence. The latest and greatest earned media battleground, however, is social media. And according to Voss, it’s quite a lucrative one.

…It’s a relatively new development that traffic from earned media has become as big or bigger than paid. That’s really the opportunity we’re seeing and the problem we’re trying to solve. People have got quite good over the years at tracking web traffic and optimizing it through keyword-based ads, but viral traffic from Twitter and Facebook has remained an unpredictable gamble — but there’s no reason it should remain that way.
Read more at www.socialtimes.com

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/hQvbNY

Foursquare.com now has Foursquare Business Pages

pierre@bizbuzzmedia.net (Biz Buzz Media - Pierre Rattini) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 07:46:00 +0000

Foursquare located at Foursquare.com now has Foursquare Business accounts.

The location based company just announced this for both Merchant location and others that don't serve clients at a location. These new options I believe will help Foursquare compete in the competitive location based marketing platforms.

To see more go to Http://foursquare.com/business

Pierre Rattini, CCO, BiZ BuZZ MeDia
http://bizbuzzmedia.net

Amplify’d from blog.hubspot.com

Foursquare Launches Business Pages for Small Businesses and Brands

Today, location-based social network Foursquare launched business pages for brick-and-mortar small businesses as well as for large brands who may not have a store-front but want to engage Foursquare's userbase. This launch is a big step forward for Foursquare, which previously had little in place to help businesses market to users of its platform.

Let's take a quick look at what is available to small business owners and larger brands.

Foursquare Business Pages for Venue Owners

For a business that has a physical location, Foursquare has opened up new marketing opportunities on its platform and compiled a three-step quick-start guide. Venue owners should first claim a business location, then create a special for users who check in, and finally analyze data from their Foursquare campaigns to generate maximum foot traffic. A Foursquare special is traditionally some type of discount at a specific location. For example, a retail store may offer a 10 percent discount on one item if a person checks into their location on Foursquare. The idea behind specials on Foursquare is to create an other that makes people want to check-in, so that your business will be exposed to that person's Foursquare friends.

In addition to allowing businesses with retail locations to run campaigns, Foursquare is also providing eduction on their platform to business as seen in the image above. However, the analytics provided to venue owners might be the most interesting piece of the entire offering. Among some of the data provided you can find total daily check-ins over time, repeat and unique customers and time of day of check-ins.

The bottom line is that if you are a venue owner, you should at least claim your venue, and consider offering a special.

Foursquare Business Pages for Brands

From the early days of its service Foursquare worked with major brands that did not have a physical location to create customer badges and other campaigns. Today, brands have specific opportunities to leverage the Foursquare community for marketing. Foursquare is going to continue to do what they call Partner Badges, a paid sponsorship that results in a custom badge related to a brand that Foursquare members can unlock after checking-in at specific location.

Additionally, with this launch, Foursquare is allowing businesses without retail locations to create a page on Foursquare. The page contains the business logo, tips that the business as left at Foursquare venues, the option to follow that business on Foursquare. The page also includes links to that businesses profile on other social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Unfortunately, Foursquare has not yet launched a web-based tool for creating your page, so currently businesses must complete a form and submit it to Foursquare. On its website, Foursquare notes that it could take as long as 2 weeks for a page to be completed, once a form is submitted.

Marketing Takeaway

Location-based social networks are still developing, but have gained a critical mass in some markets. Examine the Foursquare community in the geography of your target market and determine if your business should leverage one of Foursquare's new features for businesses. However, if your are a retail business, you should claim your venue now to protect your brand, even if you are not planning on using Foursquare for marketing at this time.
Read more at blog.hubspot.com

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/hIHGXW

Amber Alerts Via Facebook. A Business marketing strategy we can copy.

pierre@bizbuzzmedia.net (Biz Buzz Media - Pierre Rattini) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 05:26:00 +0000

No question this is great news and powerful addition to the amber alert system. From a social media marketing standpoint i believe it brilliant. It ties together something we all would say is a good thing and Facebook benefits.

What can your business do on facebook or another social media marketing platform that can tie your audience to a positive message and your companies brand? Brainstorm ideas and when you figure it out leverage this to benefit your niche audience and your brand.
Pierre Rattini, CC), BiZ BuZZ MeDia
http://facebook.com/bizbuzzmedia

Amplify’d from www.insidefacebook.com

Facebook to Distribute AMBER Alerts, Perhaps Other Emergency Info

January 11th, 2011

In an interesting tie between government and Facebook, users will soon be able to receive AMBER (America’s Missing Broadcast Emergency Response) Alerts on the site about children abducted in their area. The deal is made possible through a partnership between the company and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. It’s another sign that web services like Facebook and Twitter are becoming the fastest ways to disseminate information to the largest number of people.

The partnership could pave the way for Facebook becoming a medium for disseminating other types of emergency information, such as warnings about natural disasters, product recalls, violent crime, and national security.

Facebook will reveal more details about the program at a press conference being held tomorrow in Virginia on the fifteenth anniversary of the death of Amber Hagerman, whose abduction was the impetus for the AMBER Alert. The bulletins, which are traditionally distributed via television, radio, and through roadside signs, started being sent to AOL users who requested them in 2002. AMBER Alerts are available via SMS, and the Ontario, Canada Provincial Police set up a Facebook app last year to help inform locals about abductions.

The bulletins have reportedly helped save 525 children to date. Facebook previously worked with the U.K.’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center to offer an allowing people to report child predators and other inappropriate behavior on Facebook

Notifications of nearby abductions could potentially be shown as Facebook home page prompts or inserted into the news feeds of users, and could be opt-in or op-out. The news feed would be a particularly effective medium because the bulletins would be visible across different interfaces, such as mobile phones. Since AMBER Alerts often include details about the appearance and vehicles of suspected abductors, getting this information to users outside of their homes is important.

Since so many people are connected to the site, check it frequently, and it can be used to widely forward information, Facebook could become an important way of distributing emergency bulletins. There are some reports that students in lock down across the University of Texas at Austin campus used Facebook to pass along up-to-date safety information during a September 2010 shooting. In the future, it’s possible that governments and other institutions might call on Facebook to help warn people of impending tsunamis or tornados, tainted food products, fleeing suspects in violent crimes, or even terrorist attacks. If news of celebrity deaths can spread so fast, its reasonable to hope Facebook’s viral nature could also serve the public good.

Facebook recently reached an agreement with state and local agencies regarding how the government would interact with the site. The deal facilitates the creation of Pages for these agencies that could distribute community information, and also demonstrates Facebook’s willingness to cooperate with officials. The press conference with implementation details for the Facebook AMBER Alerts will be streamed at 10:30am EST on the Facebook Washington DC Page’s Livesteam app.
Read more at www.insidefacebook.com

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6 ways to evaluate your email marketing programs strengths

pierre@bizbuzzmedia.net (Biz Buzz Media - Pierre Rattini) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 05:09:00 +0000

If you have an interest in email marketing I believe you will get a lot of benefit from this article. Thanks Georgia Christian for one of the best articles I have read.
What email program would you recommend for small to mid sized businesses?

Pierre Rattini, CCO, BiZ BuZZ MeDia

http://bizbuzzmedia.net

Amplify’d from memeburn.com

6 quick ways to evaluate the strength of your email campaign

There are a number of metrics available for you to use in order to critically evaluate the effectiveness of your email campaign. To some people they seem intimidating, but in fact they are relatively easy to understand, and will enable you to successfully track the most important aspects of your campaign.

We’ve looked at 6 of the most popular metrics, which if you follow carefully and use the data gathered effectively, will take your campaigns from strength to strength.

1. Delivery Rates

It has been estimated that nearly 20% of all permission-based email messages are mistakenly blocked by ISP’s. Having your subscribers consent doesn’t guarantee that your email is going straight to their inbox. If the email isn’t getting delivered, it’s either being sent to/from an invalid email address or it doesn’t adhere to anti-spam laws. Take the time to test your campaign before it gets sent out.

Most good email services have spam filters so you can automatically check each campaign for “spammy” words and amend them if the spam score is too high. You can also increase the chances of your email being delivered by asking your subscriber to “add this email to your address book”.

Interesting stat: Canada has the highest non-delivered rate, blocking almost 14% of permission-based email. The United Kingdom boasts the lowest non-delivered rate, blocking only 10% of opt-in email. (Source – Emailstatcenter)

2. Open Rates

Assuming your message reached the inbox (good job!), your subscribers still have to open it. If your subject line isn’t compelling enough then it’s simply going to get ignored or deleted. You need to follow every best practice available here. Make sure your subscriber knows exactly who is sending the message – your ‘From’ line needs to have your name or that of your company. Sender recognition has a high influence on open rates. If your name is recognised chances are your email will be opened, if not it will continue to be ignored or deleted.

Interesting stat: General business products and services see an average open rate of 23.9%. The industry that has the highest open rates is agriculture, with an average of 25.3%. (Source – EmailStatCenter)

3. Click-through rates

CTR’s are almost entirely dependent on their relevant and personalised content – get this right and you are on your way to achieving the email results you desire. Ensure that you segment and target your audience correctly, so that each recipient who opens your message feels as though it is directed exclusively at them.

Demographics, geography, purchase history and frequency of purchase can all be used to make sure the right email is reaching the right target. Keep your campaigns simple. Stick to one or two offers and links, if subscribers are overloaded with choices, chances are they won’t take anything. A little bit of urgency goes a long way at this stage. If subscribers see that your offer is going to expire today/tomorrow/within 24hrs they are more likely to act NOW, which is exactly what you want.

Interesting stat: General products and services see average CTR’s of 3.7%. The industry with the highest CTR is Religious, with an average of 10.5% (Source – EmailStatCenter)

4. Unsubscribe Rates

Start by splitting new email addresses from old ones and evaluating each list separately. If there is a pattern of new subscribers opting out, then you need to see if what you are delivering is exactly what you promised them and what they asked for. If you don’t do this from the outset, your subscriber probably won’t look at anything else you send in the future. If old customers begin to drop off, your campaign may need refreshing. You should look at re-wording and updating any specials, offers or sales you have in place. Your aim here is to make your subscribers remember why they signed up in the first place (hint: your newsletters are interesting and different).

You can improve your unsubscribe rate by offering the option of reducing the frequency of emails your subscribers receive. They might prefer to happily read an email from you once a month as opposed to an irritating email sent every day. By taking this step you are letting them know that you are listening to them and they in turn feel they have some control over what lands in their inbox. It’s a win-win situation, really.

Interesting stat: In 2009, 35% of retailers allow subscribers to reduce the number of emails they receive, up from 16% in 2008 (Source – EmailStatCenter)

5. Conversion Rates

As with CTR’s, your conversion rates are a measure of relevancy. Whether your campaign goal is to encourage a purchase, sign-up to a newsletter, download a white paper, take a survey or make a phone call, you need to make it simple, clear and fast for your subscriber to do it. If the process to convert is timely and complicated you run the risk of your subscriber abandoning the action before they complete it. Your call to action and how you present it is also important here so it needs to be strong and visible.

Interesting stat: As a direct result of receiving an email, 67% of subscribers say they’ve purchased products offline, 71% of respondents researched a specific offer online and 63% of respondents clicked a link in the email to learn more. (source – EmailStatCenter):

6. Subscriber retention rate

According to a 2008 survey by Forrester Research, acquiring new customers can cost five times more than satisfying and retaining existing customers, so your metrics here can literally make or break you. Keep subscribers happy and coming back for more and you are guaranteed frequent sales. Many marketers consider this to be the most important metric to follow; after all, email marketing is about developing and nurturing relationships with customers, so take note of your stats.

Interesting stats (source – Strategic Client Retention):

A 5% reduction in customer defection rate can increase profits by 25-125%, depending on the industry.

A 2% increase in customer retention has the same effect on profits as cutting costs by 10%

The average company loses 10% of its customers each year

So there you have it. Ideally, you want to be measuring your success on all of these metrics to get a true reflection of the success of your email campaign. If you are new to the game though, focus on just a couple of metrics to begin with and use the data you receive to improve on each new campaign you send. You take other metrics into consideration as you go.
Read more at memeburn.com

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Top Story - Groupon Raises $950 Million

pierre@bizbuzzmedia.net (Biz Buzz Media - Pierre Rattini) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 15:07:00 +0000

My god that is a huge amount of money and it may put to rest why they turned down Google's offer.

I am super curious about your thoughts on Groupon. Do you know or have a success story to share?
Pierre Rattini, CCO, BiZ BuZZ MeDia
http://bizbuzzmedia.net

Amplify’d from gigaom.com

Groupon Raises $950 Million — Now Comes the Hard Part

“You know what’s cooler than a million dollars? A billion dollars.” Fans of the movie The Social Network — especially those who live in Silicon Valley — like to recite that line a lot, and now Groupon gets to feel how cool that really is, thanks to a new round of funding. As expected, the group-buying startup announced today that it has completed a gigantic financing of $950-million from a group of high-profile funds, including Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins and Russia’s Mail.ru. In the company’s typical whimsical fashion, its press release was headlined: “Groupon Raises, Like, A Billion Dollars.” As light-hearted as its founder and copywriters may be, however, the company now has some serious work to do in order to justify its funding.

It’s not just that Groupon has to show why it is worth an investment of close to $1 billion from such a prestigious group of backers (less than a year ago the entire company was only worth $1 billion). The two-year-old startup also has to show why it was right to turn down a $6-billion acquisition offer from Google, which it did last month to the surprise of many. Not only was such a combination seen by some (including us) as a natural fit for both companies — since it would have married Google’s algorithmic expertise and reach with Groupon’s appeal to local merchants and advertisers — but the valuation it gave Groupon was also more than $1 billion higher than the $4.7-billion value the company reportedly has as a result of its latest financing round.

In its news release, Groupon notes that it has been called “the fastest growing company ever” by Forbes, and that it is now doing business in 500 individual markets (up from just 30 markets in 2009) in 35 countries. It also has more than 50 million subscribers, an increase of 2,500 percent from where it was a year ago, and revenues that are said to be in the $2-billion range annually — although the company doesn’t keep all of that money, since it shares revenue with the retailers whose offers it sends to subscribers.

Another thing that Groupon has, however, is competition — and potentially lots of it. Google, for example, is likely to be focusing its energies on building its own Groupon-style connections with local merchants in the wake of the company’s rejection of its takeover bid. Long-time Google executive Marissa Mayer has taken over responsibility for the company’s local efforts, among other things, and while the search giant may try build its own local powerhouse from Google Place Pages and Hotpot and so on, there is also a chance that it might acquire one of Groupon’s competitors as well.

On top of Google presenting a competitive threat, there is also Facebook, which has experimented with Groupon-style discounts via Facebook Places, and could quite easily leverage its 600-million-user reach to compete with the company if it wanted to. And then there are competitors such as LivingSocial, the second-largest group-buying player, which recently got a $175-million investment from Amazon — another company that has the deep pockets and the reach to compete with Groupon — and Tippr, which has a white-label platform that allows merchants and website publishers to run their own Groupon offers, with Tippr handling all of the back-end and support.

The money the company has raised definitely elevates co-founders Andrew Mason and Eric Lefkofsky into the startup stratosphere (a chunk of the funding was used to compensate executives and investors who got in earlier, according to a securities filing a little over a week ago, including the two founders and a board of directors that includes ex-AOL executive Ted Leonsis and 37signals founder Jason Fried). But it also increases the pressure on Groupon to prove that it can carve out a long-term business amid escalating competition, and that it isn’t just the flavor of the month.
Read more at gigaom.com

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Does Social media marketing really work with B2B?

pierre@bizbuzzmedia.net (Biz Buzz Media - Pierre Rattini) — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 16:14:00 +0000

The question below was posted by Jennifer j on LinkedIn. I was not surprised that the two answers were positive based on the industries they are in.

I would like to know how effective it has been for you in your industry?

Pierre Rattini, CCO, BiZ BuZz MeDia
http://bizbuzzmedia.net

Amplify’d from www.linkedin.com

Marketing Assistant at Backup Direct

Is Social Media a valuable Business Tool for you with regards to building B2B relationships?
What do you consider to be a business relationship? Regular exchanges?
Is it enough to chat or should it amount to a sale?
...How would you measure your ROI?

Location specific: United Kingdom

posted 1 hour ago in Customer Relationship Management

In my industry social media sites such as linkedin are invaluable tools in building relationships and networking. I would estimate that 60% of my revenue comes from an introduction or search from a social media site.

Not all contacts result in revenue or as you put it a sale - however the network and connections gained often result in referrals which do generate alpha. In terms of the return on investment majority of the social media sites are free and allow you access to thousands of users where you can advertise, inform and survey numerous people at the click of a button from your office or home. In short social media sites are pivotal in modern business relationships.

Search and Selection Consultant

Jennifer J.

Director, B2B Marketing at SnagAJob.com

Yes social media is certainly valuable in the B2B market, but only as a part of an integrated program.

Despite the hype, is it's the variety of connections that ultimately make a sale. Think more about the customer and how you can help them along the buying cycle, and less about an individual marketing execution.

Your buyer will go through stages before making a purchase decision like:

Identify Need

Research Solutions

Develop Provider Short List

Evaluation of alternatives

Social media is great at the beginning with Needs Development and Research, but other traditional methods including close integration with your sales team can handle the balance

Ultimately the goal of social, and other content marketing should be to start them on the process and get them to include your company on the consideration list.
Read more at www.linkedin.com

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/gS89Ep

Is this you? Show me a tool to brand my business using Social Media marketing?

pierre@bizbuzzmedia.net (Biz Buzz Media - Pierre Rattini) — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 00:57:00 +0000

Are you confused about Social Media Marketing?

Is this you?

Branding my business via Social media marketing is a goal of mine.
Finding prospects and starting a conversation using social media is a goal of mine
I want a tool that is easy to use and effective.
I want to do this myself.

If so check out the Social Media Dashboard video below and here is some of what it can do.

Social Media Marketing Dashboard

Link Branding
Geo Targeting and Reply Campaigning
Tweet and Update Scheduling
Plus more

Check out the new MarketMeSuite Version 3!

I have been using Version 2 and am very excited to get the updated features in version 3. See you on the MarketMeSuite Side.

Pierre Rattini
BiZ BuZZ MeDia
http://bizbuzzmedia.net

Sex sells but apparently not to advertisers. Does sex sell in Social media Marketing?

pierre@bizbuzzmedia.net (Biz Buzz Media - Pierre Rattini) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 21:24:00 +0000

Did you know?

Sex Sells? No matter your view on the subject, sex sells. Why then did Cosmo clean up there ad headlines for advertisers? What say You?
PS. What I am even more curious about is how this fits into social media? Does the same hold true. What industries use this and which do not and why?
Pierre Rattini, CCO, BiZ BuZZ MeDia
Website

Amplify’d from www.huffingtonpost.com

Cosmopolitan Cleans Up Its Headlines For Advertisers (PHOTOS)

Sex sells -- but it apparently isn't what advertisers want to read about (or so Cosmopolitan thinks). Jezebel compared the January newsstand cover of the glossy with a version that was sent to advertisers and it turns out the latter is missing the salacious headlines "60 Sex Tips" and "Orgasm Virgins."

Here's the two covers from Jezebel:

Jezebel asked the lady mag what was up and a spokesperson said, "It is common for magazines to have different versions of the cover." But:Caroline Nuckolls at Teen Vogue told us the magazine usually has just one version of the cover -- but of course, Teen Vogue has a cleaner image to start out with, and less to hide. So we called Maxim, known for its lad-mag raunch-- a source there told us they too produce just one cover, which goes out to newsstands, subscribers, and advertisers alike.Pretty, pretty interesting. And for an entirely different magazine cover mistake, head over to Jezebel.
Read more at www.huffingtonpost.com

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At least 15 reasons why you can not call yourself an Entrepreneur

pierre@bizbuzzmedia.net (Biz Buzz Media - Pierre Rattini) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 18:46:00 +0000

This was a great read and boy did it it home. If you are an entrepreneur what can you add to the list?
If you are not an entrepreneur, do not let this scare you. If it does don't be an entrepreneur?

Pierre Rattini, CCO, BiZ BuZZ MeDia,
Social Media Marketing and Mobile Marketing
http://bizbuzzmedia.net

Amplify’d from www.businessinsider.com

You Can Call Yourself An Entrepreneur When...

Its not really such a great thing to be an entrepreneur. There’s no real “freedom” in it.

People think that starting your own business gives you freedom. It doesn’t.

When you work a corporate job where you only, realistically, work for 1-2 hours a day and you can leave your work at the office, then you have freedom.

Entrepreneurship == slavery. You are a slave to employees, partners, investors, a board, clients, potential buyers, reporters, landlords, random people off the street who try to come into your office and rob you, etc

On quora recently someone asked “When can I call myself an entrepreneur”. I’m happy to share some general guidelines:

If someone hasn’t had this experience, they shouldn’t call themselves an entrepreneur:

Lying awake at 3 in the morning wondering about:

A) I think I have to kiss a lot of ass tomorrow. Note to self: bring up with therapist that I never really feel like “the real me” anymore.

B) how am I going to make payroll next week

C) how do i solve the fact that Wade (employee #6) now has a bad attitude that is spreading to the others (i.e. they smoke cigarettes in stairwell discussing reasons they hate me. I know this because I tape-recorded it).

D) How do I deal with the complaints from client #1 about employee #3?

E) How quickly can I package this company up to sell the damn thing so I can sleep again

F) The site is too slow. How can i find a programmer who knows what he’s doing.

G) I have 8 new features in my head. Can I get them up on the site within 24 hours

H) I missed the insurance payment. I hope to god none of my employees get hit by a car this month.

I) Why won’t Client #2 pay his bills on time. Should I hire someone to break his legs?

J) Is it me? Do I need to improve my sales technique? Do I need to donate to someone’s charity again?

K) Why do I feel every pulse of my blood running through my whole body right now?

L) Is it 6am yet? Oh shoot, its only 3:05am. I’ve been thinking about all this stuff for only 5 minutes. Should I get up and work or try to sleep. I’ll try to sleep. I’ll count sheep. But only after I figure out how to make payroll.

M) My competitors are all better than me. And they all go to parties where they meet clients and make money.

N) Can I introduce my potential client to a potential girlfriend?

O) How come we didn’t get enough publicity for our launch? Is it because I’m not cool enough?

Oh, and if you have never used these phrases you shouldn’t call yourself an entrepreneur:

- “I don’t like to say anything bad about my competitors. They are all good guys and I respect their work. After all, this is a big enough field that we’ve all become friends. But perhaps the one difference we have with them is…” (to potential client)

- “The pay is not a lot right now but this is only temporary while we look at putting you into more of a management position.” (to potential employee)

- “This particular job is not fun but we have some fun stuff coming up that we can put you on.” (potential employee again. He is about to get screwed).

- “I can get that done by end of the week, no problem” (thinking: by end of month or two, no problem)

- “of course you have insurance” (to employee. Please dont get sick that week)

- “we have plans to open offices in various parts of the world” (to potential buyer, in front of map with pins in China, Paris, London, NYC, LA).

- “just come inside and sit at a desk” – to random people walking in street right before potential buyer of company visits

- “we want to work with you. Just tell us what you can pay and we’ll be happy.” (to get client to say ‘yes’ before you start telling him about add-ons)

- “of course its legal”

- (to secretary when taking prospective client out to lunch, in front of prospective client) “HOLD ALL CALLS. I don’t want to be bothered at all for the next two to four hours. This is a very important lunch!”

- “We can do that” (to anyone who asks you about anything)

- “I’m going to be personally involved in this project.” (me, to anyone)

- “your sales should triple to this” (to client who hires us)

- “I agree with you completely. I’m going to improve that.” (to client who tells you why he doesn’t like you)

- “chances are electricity in NYC will keep running on Jan 1, 2000 if you hire us” (I said to Con Ed, when hiring us for a Y2K project)

Oh, and you can’t call yourself an entrepreneur until:

-You’ve logged at least 60,000+ useless air miles (in a 3 month period)

-You cry with hands over your head thinking, ‘what the hell did I just do’ (remind me to tell you about the time I met Tupac’s mom)

-You get a crush on at least one employee

-You’ve gotten a 4 page email from an ex-employee listing all of the reasons they don’t like you anymore (now friends with that ex-employee)

-You realize you’ve suddenly been defriended on facebook by a reasonable chunk of ex employees)

-You think of four new businesses you’d rather be starting than this stupid one.

Howard Lindzon called me while I was writing this to see how I was liking the new blog design his guys did for me. I figured I’d add to the 53 things I’ve learned from Howard Lindzon so I asked him, “Howard, how do you know when you can call yourself an entrepreneur?”

I was sort of disappointed in his answer:

“You can call yourself an entrepreneur when you wake up at 3am and you are super excited to get to the office and begin the day.”

Related posts:

-       How to exploit your employer

-       What to do after you make a ZILLION dollars?

-       My best corporate job ever

-       How to turn your 12 year old into an entrepreneur

- How to succeed in LA without really trying

James Altucher

James Altucher is managing partner at Formula Capital.
Read more at www.businessinsider.com

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