Businesses can’t talk down to customers any more. They need to genuinely form a two-way or multi-way flow of communication with the people who buy their products so that those people see that the brand is valuable and feel appreciated for their loyalty. In this Future of Publishing episode, host Murray Newlands interviews social marketing consultant Murray Newlands about this and gives tips at how you can produce great video content that’s more engaging with your audience:

Future of Publishing is sponsored by VigLink. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to Like Future of Publishing on Facebook!

People use their eyesight to do almost anything. This ranges from analyzing their environment to analyzing the text in a book. We even used our eyesight as our primary means of finding and catching prey back when we lived in the wild. Facebook took advantage of humans being visual animals and faster mobile download speeds and decided to make pictures and videos bigger in their mobile app. Murray Newlands examines this change and how people reacted to it on social media in this week’s Future of Engagement:

Alerti social media monitoring chart about negative and positive conversations surrounding Facebook’s iPhone app UI change:

This is a guest post by SEO, professional blogger and guest blogger Ann Smarty.  Ann (@seosmarty) owns MyBlogGuest.com and I just signed up for her new link monitoring tool.

With so many worthwhile causes vying for the limited dollars that businesses and individuals have available to donate, fundraising for even the most pressing of needs can be a daunting task. With success dependent on the tools and knowledge that you bring to your desk each morning, it’s very important that every possible source is explored thoroughly.

If you’re a fundraiser looking to up your game in the name of an important cause, network with the best of your colleagues and learn new tactics by visiting any one of these four U.S. fundraising conferences to be held in 2012:

1. AFP TechKnow Conference

This unique and highly interactive event is designed specifically to bring like-minded people from within the nonprofit and fundraising niches together, encouraging a feeling of sharing and mutual assistance in an effort to have all attendees leave with a renewed set of tools to achieve success for their cause.

Focusing on the use of websites and social media in particular, TechKnow will give you a better understanding of exactly how technology can help to make a difference for even the least technical of needs.

2. 7th Annual Bridge to Integrated Marketing and Fundraising Conference

The fundraising niche is one beset by constant change and the Bridge to Integrated Marketing and Fundraising Conference aims to help attendees deal with that change by keeping them informed about the most important of those changes over the past year. Focusing on the use of technology in fundraising, this event brings to its visitors more than 70 educational sessions and seminars, each with a unique view towards making the most of what the modern world has to offer to your most valued cause.

3. Fundraising Day in New York

A host of internationally acclaimed fundraising and marketing experts serve as the main draw to New York City’s upcoming Fundraising Day in New York conference! This year’s event adds seminars focused on small nonprofits and individuals in order to create value for fundraisers big and small with networking and educational opportunities presenting themselves at every turn.

The city along is worth going! While there, don’t miss the numerous New York attractions as well as take your time to simply walk along the city streets to feel the unique urban atmosphere.

Learn about emerging technologies and the utilization of the ever-expanding mobile market, all the while staying fresh on the basics of successful fundraising through this unique combination of workshops and meet-and-greets.

4. Money for Our Movements: A Social Justice Fundraising Conference

Despite the wealth and power accumulated by the large nations of the world, social injustice continues to be a plague that spans the globe, reducing the quality of life of some social groups while marginalizing the political power of others. With this fact in mind, consider joining social justice fundraisers and movement organizers from around the United States in Oakland, California this summer in order to learn more about what it means to be successful in the constant battle against social injustice.

Activists and marketers alike will find value in this event’s varied series of offerings, including workshops teaching about the benefits of social media, political development seminars and networking opportunities meant to link great minds and causes together for the betterment of all.

Fundraising Conferences Conclusion

No matter your particular cause, the fact that you choose to be a champion for those without a voice makes any fundraiser a very unique kind of marketer and what better way to increase your effectiveness than by learning from the best and brightest of your colleagues. In a world often fragmented by the different passions that grip individual hearts, the events listed above offer a means of bringing it all together in a touching effort at improving the lot in life of people from around the world.

Ethanol = Starvation. Click image to read The Ethanol Scam on Rolling Stone magazine.

In order to create a better world, we must clearly understand how the current world works.

When the major media can control what we all see, they charge brands for that access and only the wealthiest thrive because they have the resources and connections to take advantage of that access.

In yesterday’s Future of Publishing Episode, representatives for Disqus and LiveFyre discussed how they monetize communities. In that business model we are right back to only those who already have wealth or access to it have visibility.

I want to encourage bloggers and small businesses to see a different future
where those with the highest quality products, services, and ethical standards
lead and thrive instead of whoever has the most money, influence or power.

Blogs and forums led by the highly ethical make that possible because instead of supporting whoever pays us we can choose to support and recommend the best companies, products, services and solutions.

For this to work, though, when those we support achieve success because of our efforts, they must be willing to give back to the blogs and communities that gave them a leg up when they didn’t have the resources to buy visibility.

We can make life about what is best for all
instead of what makes the most money –
if we only will.

The reason the rich keep getting richer and the poor, poorer, is that there are so many who have bought into the fantasy – and it IS a fantasy for the vast majority – that if they will only work hard they, too, can become rich and successful.

Image Credit PigTailPals and PeggyO Button: Click to read about the NEW heavy influence of Cinderella

You have been conditioned throughout your life to believe in fairy tales that do NOT come true!

They are based on PR driven backstories that are beginning to all sound the same and that bear little resemblance to reality.

I challenge anyone to find and show proof of a rags to riches story that did not already have connections and whose wealth is really theirs to control and not a PR driven fantasy life.

There are far too many consummate liars leading people to believe they can be rich if only they work hard. That is totally untrue for most people around the world UNLESS they are willing to be ruthless users of other people.

Even then, they need connections or wealth to parlay into more wealth. I present as evidence the fairy tale about Bill Gates and Allen starting Microsoft in their garage – and how little that reveals of the TRUE LIFE of Bill Gates pre-Microsoft.

Stop right now and go read this article about Bill Gates on Four Hour Work Week (a huge lie in itself) and you’ll clearly see that even though he took the story to mean something entirely different than I present here, I am telling you THAT is where the truth lies.

Yes, you, too CAN be rich and famous IF you have connections and wealth to start with AND you are willing to be ruthless
in your dealings and take advantage of others.

Feel free to sell your soul to the devil and join those
who believe they deserve more than the rest of us.

If you are NOT willing to use people and ruin their lives to make yours full then you need to open your eyes and stop believing in fairy tales that can never come true for you.

Stop believing that owning more bling and living in a bigger house
or driving a newer car will make you happy because it won’t.

As evidence of that I present all the rich and famous meltdowns who clearly are not happy or they wouldn’t be under the influence all the time trying to convince themselves how wonderful their lives are.

In my lifetime I have known some of the wealthiest people on this planet. I have been in their homes and seen their lives first hand. The way they treat each other in their constant pursuit of money I would sooner live on the streets than like them.

Image Credit Kirsten Bole: Click image to read two posts on compassion for the homeless

Many of the homeless are in a better financial position than those spinning perpetually in their rat race wheels. They have decided to choose freedom over slavery even if it means being an outcast from “normal” life.

They don’t service the debt, the stress, constant clock watching, the keeping up with the Jones’ any more.  They don’t believe they “need” the next new thing, or a different wardrobe every season, or so much junk they have to rent storage to put it somewhere.

I am not advocating living on the streets as that is a very difficult life, but I am saying that our freedom is more important than the accumulation of things.

Things OWN YOU!
Everything you have has overhead.
It requires your time and money to maintain.

The larger your home and yard the more time and money you spend taking care of it instead of living. The more possessions you own the more you spend on them and the less freedom you have.

Each vehicle needs maintenance, fuel, insurance, most have payments. To drive means agreeing to be fingerprinted and who knows what else soon – or even now. How did we let life get to this point?

• Who decided we don’t have a right to travel freely without letting someone else demand “our papers”?  First you needed a license to drive – now law enforcement demands identification from everyone in a vehicle, on public transportation – even anyone walking down the street or in their own homes!
• What kind of people think what TSA is doing is acceptable and why do decent people tolerate that? They are conditioning us for total takeover of our countries and we can not allow that. We should all be refusing to travel until they stop molesting people in airports because accepting it there has caused it to already spread to bus and train stations. The military is even stopping people on highways in America. What third world fascist country have we become?
• Why do we pay for life’s necessities like water or allow the majority of U.S. water systems to be intentionally polluted with industrial waste fluoride, lead, and other heavy metals? No one has the right to deny others a healthy life in this way and we should have never allowed them to take control.

It is getting worse – just ask the people portrayed in these Five Human Right to Water Hot Spots in the United States. These same things are happening in nearly every country as corporations seek to take control of this necessity of life.

I am proud of the people in Ochabamba, Boliva, who realized that an American Corporation took over their water and were planning to charge them more for it than they could possibly earn.

They KNEW they would die without it and immediately took action. Those Bolivian citizens kept their water and ousted Bechtel.

People have lived too long in cities and conditioned by the media. They are too far removed from the realities of life. We are running out of time to understand some very basic concepts.

I urge you to pay close attention and share this specific information with everyone you know:

There are only THREE NECESSITIES of LIFE:

1. Water
2. Food
3. Shelter

In that order.

Everything else is a luxury – EVERYTHING ELSE!

People can only live three days without water. Every day people die from lack of clean water. People everywhere – even in America – are DYING because money is valued more than their lives are.

I just learned today that in some cold states in the U.S. homes are still heated with steam – so when the water is shut off because the people can’t pay the bill because the value of the dollar keeps dropping and so many are underemployed or unemployed – they freeze to death in their own homes.

This is affecting a growing number of elderly on fixed incomes. One elderly couple had no idea how to even go about getting water for themselves or were too ill or poor to obtain it and died from dehydration.

Is this who we choose to be as a people?
Are we really willing to ignore the plight of
everyone else as long as we have our own?

When are we going to stop buying more junk we don’t need and thinking it makes sense to work constantly to pay for things we never should have bought in the first place?

Image Credit BlogHer ~ Click Image to Read How to Prepare for Homelessness

When will we stop blaming the poor for not succeeding in a society that made success for most IMPOSSIBLE?

Believing their lives are EXACTLY like ours so if we made it they should have is WRONG!

How long will we hide the fact that we are collectively in debt up to our eyeballs or worse and that most people’s affluence is imaginary and bought by credit they will never be able to pay off?

We have no way of knowing how serious the problem already is because those who are unemployed hide it so well out of embarrassment – thinking it is their own fault they are drowning – when the economic decline was intentionally created by greedy multi-national corporations and banks?

How many are sitting in their huge homes in the dark because they can’t pay the mortgage and the light bill? Would you even notice if your neighbors’ homes were always dark or lit by candles, portable lamps, or they were using flashlights?

Have you ever done without running water? Thousands of Americans already have their water cut off.  You never realize how often you turn on the tap until you do and nothing comes out. You can’t rinse your glass or wash off a dish or wash your hands.

You suddenly realize you can’t flush the toilet. Do you know how bad the smell is within hours? Would you think to fill buckets and bottles and pots and the bathtub and sinks BEFORE they come to turn it off? (REMEMBER THIS!)

How many of your neighbors have no running water – even your neighbors in the upscale neighborhoods driving the new car they’re afraid is about to be repossessed because they can’t keep up with the payments?

First it strikes those who have been laid off. Then it creeps up on the people who still have the jobs they once did but don’t realize they are having more and more trouble paying the bills – not realizing the dollar just doesn’t stretch any more.

They are still believing the media stories about how the economy is recovering and inflation is low. They don’t realize that two critical needs aren’t included in those inflation rates: food and fuel.

Everyone buys food. Remember food is #2 on that NEEDS list of only three things. The price of food is escalating. First the packages got smaller. Gradually, how much was in them keeps shrinking. I bet few notice that what was once full is half empty today.  Consumer Price Inflation (CPI) for food is outpacing CPI for all other items.

CNBC did a survey of food prices around the nation and came up with the following list of food items and inflationary prices:

• Ground beef up 6.8 percent month over month, and 11.1 pct year over year.
• Butter, up 3.2 percent monthly and a stunning 27 percent over the past year.
• Coffee, up 6.5 percent and 16 percent.
• Potatoes, up 3.6 percent and 7.1 percent.

Fuel affects the price of EVERYTHING because almost everything you touch in life was transported, pumped, or planted and harvested using some kind of fuel.

Image Credit: GreenLaGirl ~ Click image to read Meat and Potatoes Diet Full of Fossil Fuels

Add to that the insane idea to burn corn as fuel – when Michael Pollan so aptly pointed out that corn is in everything someone who eats restaurant, packaged or fast food eats – drives food prices higher. Read this post on Inflation: Fuel, Food, and the Fed.

Corn is a perfect example of what is wrong with agriculture, our food supply, and our economies. The wise are finally realizing that the stuff in packages on shelves in grocery stores are NOT FOOD and they are KILLING US.

Just as we must take back our water, we need to protect our food. You can start by reading my post on Food Rights and the appalling legal efforts to make it illegal to grow and share food.

That post will make it even more evident why –
although many of us just want to live and let live –
we must become activists today.

We do not have the luxury of waiting because we do not know how long economies that should have already crashed can be artificially supported.

We do not know when it will strike us, too, so we must do what we can while we have the Internet – An Internet they keep they keep trying to take from us – and while more of us still have water, food, and shelter.

The solution is for ALL people to support small businesses who keep money in circulation, create jobs, and pay a living wage – and take as much of our spending away from the multi-national corporations responsible for intentionally causing poverty around the world so that they can get more and more and everyone else has less and less – but especially so they can control us.

Many will be tempted to just ignore what I have written – to go back to pretending that everything is fine and they need not change their ways. If you do this, those who predict economic meltdown will be right:

We CAN make a difference and be in better shape – whatever happens – if we open our eyes, change our ways and ACT NOW!

YOU can get started today by contacting me for how you can support your local business, how to make your small business stronger or how to use your blog and social media to raise awareness.

We CAN create a stable economy TOGETHER!

Join with me – ask questions in the comments here – don’t just do nothing!

“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies,
but the silence of our friends.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men
to do nothing.”  ~ Edmund Burke

Stand and be counted!

Image Credit: Inspired to Action ~ Click image to read How to Change the World with Your Children ~ Many of them are showing the way!

What you can do NOW:

• Write reviews for your favorite independent restaurant, small business, or service provider – Where to Write Reviews.
• Learn to Use CommentLuv to Support Small Businesses and keep more money in circulation.
• Learn from history and educate yourself on the truth about income inequality and why there are protests.
• Get involved in our Small Business Blog Outreach Contest

Brands have always been looking for ways to enter conversations with potential customers on third-party sites. Many publishers are reluctant to let them because they fear it will make them appear less objective. In this episode, VigLink’s Oliver Roup and Influence People’s Murray Newlands interview Dan Gill of Huddler, Jordan Kretchmer of Live Fyre, and Daniel Ha of Disqus about how publishers can charge brands to enter these conversations in a way that does not damage the publisher’s community. Watch the discussion below:

Future of Publishing is sponsored by VigLink. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to Like Future of Publishing on Facebook!