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The Future of Social Media: Being Everywhere (a Steve Rubel Interview) | Social Media Examiner

2010-08-28T12:32:00.001-05:00

The Future of Social Media: Being Everywhere (a Steve Rubel Interview)

By Michael Stelzner
Published January 13, 2010

In this video I interview Steve Rubel, Senior Vice President at Edelman Digital. Steve advises some of the biggest names in the world, such as Dannon, Hewlett Packard, Pepsi and Microsoft, on social media.

Watch this video to pick up some of the nuggets of social media advice he gives his clients. One valuable tip Steve gives is about “shared mutual gain” and what it means. Steve also explains why he quit blogging.

You will also learn why Steve believes digital is mandatory and not optional. And here are a few other takeaways:

Why you need to have a presence on all social networks where your customers are spending time.

How to use mixed messages to tailor your stories to different venues.

How to measure social media metrics.

Why the different vectors of reach, engagement and reputation lead to trust.

Why it’s important to understand people & understand business.

And Steve also shares some insights about why he stopped blogging on Micro Persuasion and started lifestreaming on Posterous.

What are your takeaways? Do you agree that blogging is old? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Tags: digerati, digital, edelman digital, engagement, evernote, hub and spoke, instapaper, interview, lifestreaming, measuring social media, micro persuasion, posterous, reach, reputation, shared mutual gain, social media, social media channels, social media metrics, social networks, steve rubel, trust, ubiquitous, video, youth

via socialmediaexaminer.com

I have been thinking about how to use this Posterous site and this video made it clear to me.

Posted via email from christopherjohnston's posterous

Wedding Photography Fail

2010-07-09T01:09:00.001-05:00

Check out this video on YouTube:

Posted via email from christopherjohnston's posterous

Stop Waiting For Things To Be Perfect

2010-07-03T18:13:00.011-05:00

Today I read a guest post at ProBlogger titled Blogging, Steel-Toes, And Kicking Perfections A$$. This was something I needed to see today.

You see for about the last two years I have been trying to launch an online business and I've always had an excuse for why I couldn't do it. I was focused on my other business (which never made much money), I didn't have the right equipment, I didn't have the right software, I didn't have the knowledge, blah, blah, blah.

Let me tell you what I have now and you see if I have any reason to complain:

MacBook Pro (mid 2009 model) - through school
FlipCam Ultra (not HD but pretty damn good) - won online
Adobe CS4 Master Collection (Acrobat, Photoshop, Bridge, InDesign, Illustrator, Premier Pro, Soundbooth, Flash, After Effects, Encore, Contribute, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, OnLocation, Device Central) - through school
iLife (iMovie and Garage Band) - school
iWork (Keynote, Pages, Numbers, etc) - school
Office 2008 for Mac - school
Logitech USB headset - school
Shure SE420 headset - won online
See that "school" after all those entries. I'm attending Full Sail University Online majoring in Internet Marketing
I stay home all-day long and take care of my two kids (2 and 6) while my wife works.

Now, I have an abundance of resources and time and yet I still have no workable product. Why?

In the article this quote stuck with me as a possible answer

As a perfectionist there is a tendency to be constantly looking for new and better ways of doing something. A bit like the “grass is always greener” syndrome. You’re never quite satisfied with anything “as-is”.

I'm always starting a project and thinking how much better another one would work because this one isn't just right. I wanted the circumstances and conditions to be perfect and when they aren't I think if I just search a little longer I can find the one that is perfect. Well, we all know how well that strategy is going to work.

Perfection is never going to happen and I've been cheating myself and my family in pursuit of it. Frankly, I'm tired of waiting for it too. Today is the start of a new beginning. I'm ready to get to work with the resources I have and work on creating a profitable business for myself and my family.

What are you going to do with the resources you have?

Product links are affiliate links and pay me a commission.

#the5 – Top 5 Post From My Morning Reading

2010-07-01T10:33:00.001-05:00

I'm a big fan of Christopher Penn who blogs at Christopher S. Penn's Awaken Your Superhero and co-host the awesome Marketing Over Coffee podcast. A while back he started something called #the5 and I'm going to copy it here. Every morning I'm going to tweet #the5 best things I find in my Google Reader. They will most likely be marketing related tweets because I'm a marketing geek and because I follow many of the same blogs Chris does because I used the Marketing Over Coffee OPML file.

Doing this causes me to do a couple of things.

it makes me check Google reader every morning, which keeps me on top of what is happening in the marketing world
it makes it more likely I will blog on a regular basis

Here are my 5 from this morning:

Remembering Shea Penland

2010-05-25T09:35:00.003-05:00

As I sit watching the oil spill coverage I'm remembering Dr. Shea Penland. Ph.d at the University of New Orleans. When I was a student there, and in my geology phase, I went on a field trip with Dr. Penland to the barrier islands. He was so passionate about protecting Louisiana's wetlands. He had some brilliant ideas about how to rebuild them but there was no money or the political will to make it happen.

He would have been a great resource today as the politicians finally have the will and desire to rebuild the barrier islands off the Louisiana coast. Governor Jindal has plans to build 80 miles of barrier islands to protect Louisiana from the spreading oil spill. I doubt they could be built fast enough to do any good, and I think Shea would have agreed, but I'll take any effort to protect our coast that is offered, however misguided it may be.

Shea spent several years working in Alaska and saw first-hand the devastation caused by the Exxon Valdez oil spill. He also stayed behind during Hurricane Katrina to witness the damage caused by a Category 5 hurricane hitting a coastal city that had lost most of the protection provided those barrier islands he had been promoting for years.

I think he would have been on the phone with Governor Jindal and Parish President Billy Nungesser to offer his assistance with this barrier island plan.

I miss Shea personally, but more importantly I think Louisiana needs a person like him to step up right now. Someone with the mind of scientist and the heart of a warrior. I hope we find that person because Louisiana's future may depend on them.

The iPad Will Change Television

2010-05-24T09:47:00.001-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

At the Disrupt conference this morning John Doerr of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers told Charlie Rose that he takes his iPad to concerts and uses it in church. This is huge statement. If a nerd said this like Mark Zuckerburg or Chris Pirillo I wouldn't give it a 2nd thought. Thesee guys probably took laptops to concerts and church. When regular people start doing it you have a monumental shift going on.

I sit in front of the television with a laptop but I know that is not normal. The average American does not have a 2nd(laptop) or 3rd(smartphone) screen in front of them while watching TV. Television programs have been trying to get viewers to this for a few years now by asking you to text a message to a short code to get show updates or play along with some aspect of the show(Fox's 24 and American Idol voting come to mind). The iPad now opens up options for true interactivity during a show.

Think of all the possibilities:

Imagine an online live chat or Twitter list that you can follow during a show. Viewers can comment on what is happening and see others comments. If it was a live show like American Idol they could vote on the performance while it was happening.
Game show watchers could answer the questions and play along.
Live shows like Saturday Night Live would know immediately how well a skit did.
Political debates could take live questions and political analyst would get a sense of how well their candidates were doing.

All of this is now becoming possible because of the iPad. I think it will change computing in the same way the iPod changed music and the iPhone changed mobile phones. What do you think, leave your ideas in the comments.

Tired of Political Spin

2010-05-15T13:09:00.001-05:00

I have been seriously considering what I want to do after graduation from Full Sail University. One of the things I have been considering is going into political consulting. I'm not necessarily qualified to be a political consultant but I am more than qualified to run the social media aspects of a political campaign. This brings me to my point today.

I'm tired of people relying on the ignorance of the public at large to spread rumor, spin the truth, and outright lie. I saw the tweet below and then went to watch the video it referenced.

To me it is very clear what is supposed to be in the video. The dictionary defines confess as:

admit or acknowledge something reluctantly, typically because one feels slightly ashamed or embarrassed

Furthermore, holocaust is a very strong word to use. Watch the video and see if that is what was actually said.

I do not condone what the girl was saying, in fact I think it is despicable and she should be deported for it, but I think it is quite a jump to infer from what was said that she wants a 2nd holocaust. It is impossbile to say that she confessed that she wants one.

This tweet is designed to get people to retweet it without actually watching it and thus spread this outright lie all over the internet.

Do you feel that too many people in politics rely on the fact that people only read headlines and forward links without checking them out? Leave your response in the comments.

Choosing A Different Path

2010-04-01T09:53:00.003-05:00

The Miller family in Stuttgart, Germany

Over the Mardi Gras holiday I had the great fortune to meet the Miller family. Jennifer is a gifted writer and has an article that recently went up that explains why they chose to live nomadically. When reading this it reminded me why I chose to pursue a degree at an online university and in Internet Marketing.

I think it all started when I discovered Tim Ferris and his smash hit The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich. Later I read X Marks the Spot (1st edition) and I knew that this was something I needed to do.

I have always liked to travel. As a kid I went on road trips with my grandparents. Later in college I went to Canada twice and even spent 6 weeks camping at a dinosaur excavation site near Newcastle, WY. My wife grew up involved in Girl Scouts and camping. She spent 2 weeks in high school canoeing the Boundary Waters. She told me that she thinks it would be cool to do what the Millers do but she doesn't think she could do it.

Here is a link to their blog post New Orleans – Crawfish and Mardi Gras which has a video of some of their adventures here.

Isn't it interesting how we give up on our dreams and passions to pursue what "society" thinks we should do. Send our kids to schools that teach in a model that no longer works. We work in jobs that we hate, to buy stuff we don't need, to impress people we don't like. Why? So we can fit in. So we can live the same boring existence that everyone else does.

There are families all across America that would love to do what the Millers do. I think the number one thing that keeps them from doing it is embarrassment. What would their friends think? What would their relatives think? People would think they were crazy. Well, while they were worrying about the rest of the world the Millers are showing their kids the world and giving them experiences they will remember for the rest of their lives.

Disclosure: Some of the links here to products contain affiliate links and I might actually make a little money if you click on them and buy something.

Waiting To Be Called

2010-03-17T17:01:00.008-05:00

As I sit here at the DMV waiting for my number to be called I think about Abraham being called by God in Genesis 12:1.

Now the LORD had said to Abram:
   “Get out of your country,
   From your family
   And from your father’s house,
   To a land that I will show you.”

Just like Abraham, in life we are often waiting for our number to be called and sometimes we are so busy engaged in other things that we don’t hear the call when it is made, or worse we mistake it for something else when we do hear it.

I have been searching for my calling for the past few years and in many cases I have heard God making that call and I have convinced myself that it was something else. In one specific case, he spoke directly to me(while riding in the car on the way to church no less) and asked me to tell my wife what he was telling me. I told myself that it was just my mind convincing me of something I was thinking. I now realize I was wrong. Why? Because he gave me specific consequences of what would happen if I did not listen. It was not until today at this very moment I write this that I made that connection.

He promised difficulty and hardship if I did not listen but at the time things were getting better and I was convinced that this could not be. I was certain this was in my head. I’m sure that I am not the only person that has internal conversations with himself. I do think that I may be more aware of them than most but I‘m certain I am not the only one having them.

Even as I right this I’m still afraid to voice what he is asking me to do because I worry about the ridicule and puzzled looks I may get from friends and family when I make this known. Psalms 3: 3-6 is no comfort to me at this point.

3 But You, O LORD, are a shield for me,
   My glory and the One who lifts up my head.
4 I cried to the LORD with my voice,
   And He heard me from His holy hill. Selah

5 I lay down and slept;
   I awoke, for the LORD sustained me.
6 I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people
   Who have set themselves against me all around.

I guess that it is up to me to step out in true faith and trust Him and what he has asked me to do.

UPDATE: Ok, so since this post I have continued to not do exactly what He asked me to and in that time the bank has charged me a fee that it can't reverse, my transmission has broken, and I got a flat in the one tire I didn't replace on my car.

30 Days of No Foursquare

2010-03-04T11:15:00.002-06:00

I decided for the month of March to not use Foursquare and only use Whrrl. Partly it is because I've attained most of the badges I can get in New Orleans and partly it is because I like this little underdog app. It is only Day 4 and I must admit that the urge to check-in to Foursquare this morning has been strong. I wanted to maintain my mayorships and status on the weekly leaderboard.

Whrrl was always an interesting location-based application. It is centered around creating a story and then supplementing that story using your location(or multiple locations) with photos and notes. If you have friends with you, you can add them to the story whether they are Whrrl users or not. If they are not a Whrrl user they can be added via Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, or SMS message. You can then publish your story to the web and notify your friends via Whrrl, Twitter, and Facebook. You friends can then click on the link and view it in the Whrrl application, via the web interface, or on a mobile browser. (I have only tested the mobile site via my iPhone but imagine you could view it from a smartphone with a decent browser)
In an effort to compete with services like Foursquare and Gowalla, Whrrl has added "Societies". You become a member of different societies by frequenting locations. If you visit a location 3 times (I think) you become a regular and then join a society based on that location. There also appear to be some pre-made societies. Here are a few:

Weekend Brunch Society
Supersized
What the Pho
Pie in the Sky
Mamma Mia
Wasabi
Bar Fly
Supermarket Sweep
Gym Rat

This is an interesting spin and many people can be members and it most closely resembles Foursquare's "Badges". I have found adding new location to be very easy and the GPS on my iPhone will give an approximate location if I don't know the exact address. If you haven't used Whrrl I would urge you to give it a try.

Posted via web from christopherjohnston's posterous

Pick your battles because you can't win them all....

2010-03-04T10:05:00.002-06:00

Pick your battles because you can't win them all and some you may never win.

My wife and I went together to drop our daughter off at school. Let me first preface this by saying our daughter is in first grade and we rarely ever go together to drop her off.

The school has a series of annex building that are long and skinny. The ends of 3 of these buildings are along the driveway that parents must take when dropping their children off by car. The driveway is a portion of the school yard with an entrance and exit to the street that is parallel to the driveway. My daughter's class is in the 2nd building.

Image below:

When I have dropped my daughter off I have just let her out of the car as soon as a teacher approached. As it happens this is usually when I am in front of her building. My wife on the other hand routinely ignores the teachers that advance the car and doesn't let her out until the 2nd building. This is what happend this morning.

The problem is that the teacher was knocking on my window and I had my hand on the door handle to open the door. Problem was my wife was demanding "DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR!". Of course when we got to the second building the teacher now approached the car, visibly agitated, and ask us what the problem was. My response was, "It's my wife" (probably not the smartest thing to say at that moment). At which time the teacher then started to lecture her on the school rules and how she was going to get a letter from the principal (honestly, not the smartest thing for the teacher to do at this point either).

The problem is that my wife is mad that I didn't back her up and she reasons that there is no reason to drop her off early and so far away from her building. I have no problem letting her out of the car when there is a teacher present to direct her to her classroom. Should I have backed up my wife even if I disagreed with her decision? Or should I have just let my child out when I thought it was appropriate (This probably would have lead to an ugly situation in the line too) and then dealt with my wife being pissed off about it all day?

Preparing for the Google slap

2010-02-27T14:02:00.000-06:00

Well I finally got around to going to GoDaddy and having it forward and mask my DNS so you actually see TechChris.com up in the address bar. I mean I've only taken 5 years to do it, right. The problem is now Google sees http://christopherjohnston.blogpsot.com and http://techchris.com with duplicate content and didn't see a setting in GoDaddy for a permanent 301 redirect to prevent that. I guess the 1445 backlinks I've developed over time might be able to counteract the effects.

Christopher Johnston

Where I've been lately

2010-02-15T13:57:00.003-06:00

Image via Wikipedia

Ok, so I have been a bad blogger and had really sparse inconsistent content. Well I blame Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, Buzz, and all the other microblogging platforms.

My blogging was really consistent until those services came along. I also started and closed a few other blogs on a variety of interest.

In the last 4+ years I have had this blog I've learned a lot, realized I liked this, and started a degree program related to it. I recently got a consulting gig that allows me to manage social media for real estate agents. I've always liked Realtors (NAR I know I'm using the term wrong but you need to stop the mass media from using the term because THEY are damaging your trademark), hell I even attempted to be one for about a year.

I'm also starting to diversify my income through niche blogging. Through the generosity of Amy Bass I have a free 3-month subscription to The Niche Blogger - Make Money Blogging* and I'm slowly applying the principles to create some income from some very specific niche blogs. I know these techniques work because they are some of the same ones used by Lynn Terry and Ed Dale of Thirty Day Challenge fame.

Well, there is my update. I hope to post more frequently but I can't promise anything.

Christopher Johnston

*affiliate link

Google's experimental fiber network

2010-02-11T12:48:00.001-06:00

We had a Net2NO meeting recently where we talked about how cool it would be to get fiber in NOLA. This our chance to get fiber at speeds no one besides universities and corporations have access to. I hope we can get local officials to at least lobby to get us considered.

What I Am Thankful For And A Hint At What The New Year Will Bring

2009-12-10T00:38:00.001-06:00

As we end the year and start reflecting on the year that has passed and the new one on the horizon I want to take some time to acknowledge the things I am thankful for. Some of these may seems small and inconsequential to some but they are things I give thanks for everyday.

1. My wife - who works two jobs so that I can go to school and pursue an online business.
2. My kids - who remind me every day how lucky I am to be a father
3. My health - sure I had back surgery 2 years ago and it still hurts to this day but some people can't walk at all or have cancer and would give everything they have to be in my condition.
4. The roof over my head - it is not a mansion and many people I know live in bigger homes but it is better than 90% of people in the world. I have A/C, heat, and clean water and billions of people don't even have that.
5. My friends - the real ones and the online ones
6. My Macbook Pro - It may seems small to you but access to this one tool has opened up a world of content creation that I didn't even know was possible with my PC.
7. Being able to attend Full Sail Online - I have them to thank for #6 and for helping me line up the resources to finance my education.
8. The internet - the sheer amount of information that is available online today is staggering and having access to it has changed my life forever.
9. Our car - it is 10 years old but it's paid for and it is far better than walking
10. My online contacts - ok this is a lot like #5 but LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook have given me access to some awesome people that I feel privileged to have known.
11. My gift for writing and learning - Over the past year many have commented on my writing. This is amazing to me, since I never really thought of myself as particularly good at writing. I also have a knack for learning new things and actually enjoy the process of learning something new.
12. Being selected as a blogging intern at Sparkplugging.com - This was an enjoyable experience and the access to some awesome materials that came along with it have been instrumental in the new project that I am launching.
13. Internet Marketing This Week - an excellent podcast that has taught me so much about the internet marketing space.
14. The 30 Day Challenge - Ed Dale's annual challenge to make $1 online has helped me learn how to actually make money online.
15. Marketing Over Coffee - another podcast giving away so much marketing knowledge they should charge tuition.

A few days ago I sat down and watched the movie "The Secret". I had seen it many times and know most of the concepts taught in it. Knowing the concepts is very different from putting them into action. I decided to actually put them into action and starting reflecting on what I have that I am grateful for. This list above is what a came up with in less than a minute. You see once you see all that you have been given and reflect on how lucky you are to have those things it puts you into a better mental state. This will attract more things to you, if you believe in what the movie teaches. It also helped me realize how to tap into a niche that has been right in front of me for months that I have completely overlooked. I'm not going to tell you what it is yet, but it will be launching soon.

Take a look around you an figure out what you have to be thankful for. You may be surprised.

Christopher Johnston

Personalized Search

2009-12-05T07:52:00.001-06:00

This makes shady SEO practices even less effective and I'm all for it. It has never been more important to produce good quality content for your target audience.

How To Get Back Overdraft Fees From Your Bank

2009-12-04T15:05:00.002-06:00

After experiencing some of these outrageous overdraft fees myself, in one case the charges were 3,240% of the amount charged, I look on YouTube for more information. Here is a video I found.

New Orleans Is Great, It's Just Not For Me

2009-12-02T08:37:00.092-06:00

I have been wanting to write this post for a while but I have not for fear that I was going to offend a few people. I'm going to write it anyway.

A few days ago I applied for a job in Columbus, Ohio at Ohio State University. It is a very interesting looking job and will be great for my career if I get it. The interesting thing is the reaction I get from some people when I tell them about it.

No one has given me a positive reaction. I've gotten amazement and puzzled looks and people asking "Ohio, really?". I did a couple of hours research on Columbus before I even applied just to see if it somewhere I would like to live. It has its high points but this post isn't about Columbus.

I was born and raised in New Orleans, LA and I've lived in the area for all my 37 years. I love the food and Mardi Gras is great but I would rather leave town than hang around for it. The traffic gets unreal and I really hate dealing with belligerent drunks which always seem to accompany Mardi Gras.

I currently live in Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans in neighboring Jefferson parish (the Louisiana equivalent of a county). I belong to several groups like Social Media Club New Orleans, Net Squared New Orleans, and in the past was a member of NOLA Yurp and Young Leadership Council. These organizations have all their meetings in downtown New Orleans. Honestly, I don't like going downtown. I hate driving around for 10-20 minutes to find a parking place on the street and then having to feed a meter or pay some huge amount to park in a lot. I always wonder if the car is still going to still be there when I come back with all of its contents still inside of it.

I meet people at every meeting that extol the virtues of New Orleans and make claims that the cost of living is lower here citing housing as an example. As a former real estate agent, I can tell you that aside from a few major cities like L.A., San Francisco, New York, Miami, Las Vegas, etc (you get the point, BIG cities) New Orleans is not that cheap. Houston, TX approximately 350 miles to our west has much cheaper homes and rental prices for an equal sized placed in New Orleans. Then when you add in much higher auto insurance, flood insurance, and school tuition of 4K to 10K a school year (because the public schools in NOLA have improved but they still have along way to go) it doesn't seem like such a bargain.

Look I'm not saying it isn't a great place to live if you like Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest and can afford to live in the affluent areas near Audubon Park or in the Garden District (which also has the best public school in NOLA). I guess I'm saying that it has never felt like home to me. In college I spent a little bit of time in places with names like Sheridan, Missoula, and Bozeman. Places where traffic was non-existent and you were greeted with incredible mountain views in every direction.

I guess I'm saying I prefer the mountains of Missoula to the Mississippi delta and Frontiers Days to Mardi Gras. A log cabin on 40 acres is more appealing than a mansion on St. Charles Ave and spending the weekends backpacking in the Grand Tetons is way better than strolling through the antique shops on Magazine St.

Photo Grand Tetons Barns courtesy Jon Sullivan, PD Photo

Dove - Evolution Commercial

2009-11-09T13:46:00.001-06:00

Kinda makes you wonder what else you see is altered.

Impending doom

2009-11-08T20:43:00.001-06:00

As we sit here in New Orleans trying to determine if Hurricane Ida will continue on her current track or wander a little further west, it gives us time to ponder our options. To be honest before Hurricane Katrina I didn't even sweat Cat 3 hurricanes and now I'm worried about a small Cat 2 in November! I'm actually considering where we might need to evacuate to.

Christopher Johnston
cmjrvp on Skype
@chrisjohnston on Twitter

Posted via email from christopherjohnston's posterous

How Do We Go From Ideas To Action

2009-10-23T08:35:00.002-05:00

At the last Net2NO meeting we were in a new venue and it seems that along with new venue we took on a new focus. Where earlier we were about bringing together technologist in the city it seems that now we want to use the minds and skills of these brilliant individuals to enact social change in the city.
We had a few 5 minute brainstorming sessions and I copied down some of the ideas that emerged from them.
Get City Council to support local small businesses
Volunteer in schools to teach the teachers to use the technology available to them
Get community organizations to collaborate and share information or at least aggregate everything they know and publish it in one place on the web.

My contribution was to turn vacant lots all over the city into vegetable and herb gardens. The harvest from those gardens could be sold in community farmer's markets. (Turns out that Hollygrove is already doing this)
While all these ideas are great, the one thing we need before we can make any of them work, is buy-in from the people that live in the community. The ideas are useless if the people in those communities don't want them.
Ok, so we know that we need great ideas and we need buy in from the community to implement those ideas, but there are two critical steps missing.
How do we, or more correctly stated, who do we get to bring these ideas to the community? Then, once the buy-in happens, how do we organize and get people to show up to implement the ideas.
The first one is the biggest problem. Unless we have a framework for moving from ideas to action we just had great evening engaging in intellectual masturbation but didn't accomplish anything for the people and communities we claim to care about.
I'm not saying that the concept is not noble I just see flaws in the execution. I want this to succeed. I want us to accomplish real results. Do you, the three people reading this, have any ideas you would like to offer? I'll give you the credit and I'll do the work just help me make it happen.

Christopher M. Johnston
Social Media Consultant
@chrisjohnston on Twitter
504.208.1766 Google Voice
Facebook.com/chris.johnston
http://socialmediaforrealestateagents.com

Posted via email from christopherjohnston's posterous

Untitled

2009-10-22T16:23:00.001-05:00

Edited with Photogene

Chris Johnston

Social Media Consultant

(504)208-1766 Google Voice

http://twitter.com/chrisjohnston

http://socialmediaforrealestateagents.com

Sent from my iPhone, but I'd rather be on Android. I apologize ahead of time for spelling, brevity, and/or grammatical errors :-)

Posted via email from christopherjohnston's posterous

This will make me leave the iPhone

2009-10-20T15:04:00.001-05:00

Posted via email from christopherjohnston's posterous

My new books for next month's classes

2009-10-20T11:52:00.001-05:00

Chris Johnston
Social Media Consultant
(504)208-1766 Google Voice
http://twitter.com/chrisjohnston
http://socialmediaforrealestateagents.com

Posted via email from christopherjohnston's posterous

Why I Think You Need An Attorney

2009-10-15T13:30:00.005-05:00

Some of you who have been reading my blog for a while know that I wanted to go to law school. I may never get to pursue that dream due to my personal finances but I learned a lot about the legal system over the last few years. I was recently involved in a civil case related to an auto accident I was in. We never went to court and settled the case in arbitration.

Due to injuries I sustained in the accident I had to have back surgery and shoulder surgery. The other party paid to fix my vehicle, for both of my surgeries, a small amount of pain and suffering, and no lost future earnings. I live with back pain that exist every hour of every day of my life. I also have intermittent shoulder pain that is sometimes severe.

I tell you this to understand where I am coming from. I have witnessed first hand how this system works and why the services of an attorney are vital. Our legal system has huge flaws. I also know that with its flaws compared to what people have in other countries it is the best in the world.

It sucks that you need a $200/hr attorney when you have a problem that needs to be rectified in the court system. I also know that without one I would have not been able to afford the over $250,000 of medical care that gave me the somewhat limited mobility I enjoy now.

If you know me, you probably think "he looks fine to me" but if you have known me a long time you notice the difference. Those closest to me know it more than anyone else.

This video show that when you are involved in a criminal matter your very freedom is at stake and the services of an attorney are vital. What surprised me most is that anything you say to the police can be used AGAINST you but it CANNOT be used FOR you.

This video is long and I urge you to watch Part 1 AND Part 2. Part 1 is from the perspective of a law professor and former defense attorney and Part 2 is from the perspective of a police officer and 3L law student.