Watch Mari Smith’s FREE webinar replay Facebook 2012 and then decide . . .

1.  sign up for Mari Smith’s FB2012 Free Webinar replay! 
2.  consider investing in the Extreme Fanbase Growth Course!
3.  do the home work!!!

Mari’s takeaways in the Extreme Fanbase course equals more value than the cost of the course – and we’re only going into module 3 next week! You’ll find yourself understanding Facebook and genuine ways to increase your income. Great free webinar replay and extremely good course.https://marismith.infusionsoft.com/go/fb2012/a2722/

Facebook 2012 – Instant access webinar with Mari Smith.

www.marismith.com

Would you like your Facebook fans, subscribers and friends to become your BEST customers and clients? Learn from Facebook marketing specialist, Mari Smith, and discover how to dramatically increase your visibility, engagement and GROWTH!

[Originally posted on Joe Spake's Weblog]

According to Wikipedia,  the Luddites were a group of 19th-century English textile artisans who protested against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt were leaving them without work and changing their way of life.  They could get wild at times, sabotaging  and destroying the looms and machinery that displaced them.  The movement was named after General Ned Ludd or King Ludd, a mythical figure who, like Robin Hood, was reputed to live in Sherwood Forest.

The Luddite movement has continued in various forms right into the present.  And some lots of days I can really relate.  Like when I wake to 541 items in my Google Reader, scores of important Tweets from close friends, 2 or 3 screens of emails,  and scores of irresistible updates on my Facebook home screen.  And then the phone starts ringing.  We love our electronic toys.  Toddlers can manipulate iPads;  Baby Boomers, challenged for years with programming their VCRs, are texting before breakfast.  Grandma is Skyping with her grand children.  Everyone is a geek and/or a social media guru.  Millions of us have become homemade journalists, posting our wittiness and brilliance to our blogs for all the world to see.  We’ve got to keep up with all, because if we don’t,  we shall perish.  …Or not.  

If you are like my friend Bill Wendel and me, you have observed and maybe yearned for  the blissfulness of modern Luddites: reading the newspaper in the morning, printing out their emails, taking notes  with a pen and paper instead of Evernote, and being totally perplexed at why anyone would want to report what they had for lunch on that Twitter thing, or why they would get on the computer to make friends on the Facebook.

I am thinking about declaring a monthly personal Luddite day; leaving the laptop closed, and turning off my mobile phone, finding a newspaper to read – totally off the grid.  Kind of scary.  Maybe I’ll start with a Luddite hour.

The Free Facebook 2012 webinar held January 31, 2012 had OVER 12,000 registrations, at last count, and more than 5,000 people attended the Live event.  Mari Smith did a beautiful job with a new format and outstanding information.  The big announcement during the webinar was her LiveStream webinar beginning February 14th offered twice a week for four weeks -EXTREME FANBASE GROWTH.

There is no doubt that Facebook has changed the landscape of business and further changes happening at the speed of light means you have to use every available opportunity to stay up to date on all changes.  There is no one better to help you do just that than Mari Smith!

I registered for EXTREME FANBASE GROWTH before the January 31st webinar was over.  As one of the first to register, I have a chance to win a 1-1 session with Mari to evaluate my Facebook profile and pages.  Fingers crossed.  3 of the first few people registering for EXTREME FANBASE GROWTH will be randomly chosen for the 1-1 session with Mari Smith – a value I could not afford if not chosen.  Again, fingers crossed.

I’m sharing this with my readers because I think the value of $197 is an EXTREME value.  Please consider elevating your business using Facebook techniques from the respected Facebook Ninja, Mari Smith!

Leave a comment or question below if you need more information.  Thanks!

As I consider backing up my aging computer to avoid the inevitable – losing all my stuff – with an online service, I’m looking at the different offerings, advantages and disadvantages.  A Mashable Google + post referencing this post got my attention.  Megaupload Data Could Be Erased This Week  by Stan Schroeder which led me to Christina Warren’s, Mashable post of January 20, 2012:

What Megaupload Teaches Us About the Cloud SOPA and Backups.

Topics covered: “Could a Service Like Dropbox get TKO’ed Megaupload Style?” and “The Cloud isn’t always forever.”  A must read if you are working in the cloud or are thinking of backing up your valuable data online.  If you do, be sure to have other sources as advised.

I’m off to update my backup system that stays with me and I’ll have another copy at a different location.  Just makes sense if you are in business.  It makes sense if you value your family photos, financials and history as well.

Security issues and the “where’s my data if I need it and who has control of it” feeling is keeping me out of the Cloud.  How about you?

Leave me a comment if you have a strong feeling either way.  I’d love to read your opinions.

For a while last year it looked like we might lose  Delicious, the King of online bookmarking and my favorite curation tool, as owner Yahoo did some strategic re-arranging.  Delicious was bought by the founders of Youtube and is now rocking on as good as ever.

So what is Delicious?

Think about how you arrange files on your computer:  perhaps that MS Word document is filed in a sub-sub directory of my documents like  C:\….\MyDocuments\business\correspondence\john_smith_ltr.doc.  Delicious allows you to organize Internet content in the same way.   If you find a blog post you want to save, you simply paste the link into delicious, assign one or more keywords and the article is saved to a specific URL – for example:  http://delicious.com/joespake/socialmedia/  will take you to the articles I think are interesting enough to save.  There are lots of possibilities for sharing with this simple format, and as a bonus, Delicious lets you generate an RSS feed for the sub-directory.  Wanna subscribe to my social media saves? just go to http://www.delicious.com/v2/rss/joespake/socialmedia.   Watch this screencast to see how easy Delicious is to use.

And what does curation do for me?

Having significant information at your fingertips is important if you blog, speak, or are in any situation where you would want to share information.  You can use your curated items to archive your great work or the great work of others, and you can use the keywords to drill down to the most specific levels.  If you are selling Xwidgets as part of your inventory, you might have a keyword for Xwidgets where you curate the latest and greatest articles from the Web on that topic.  You could just forward the link (like my link above) to get your customer up to date and establish yourself as an expert.

 <— I don’t know why I can’t bring myself to push that button

I’ve ignored my friends who have told me that Facebook has an absolute, drop dead date for Facebook users to cut over to Timeline.  I think for a Baby Boomer, I have done pretty well rolling with all the changes that FB has put me through over the relatively short time they have allowed the public to play on their little site.  And I have adopted social media across the board too, much to the puzzlement of my age peers.  Part of the reason for any success I have had in social media is  an attitude of looking forward and not looking back.  The timeline in my brain starts now and goes forward.  Sure I have some great memories, but those memories are to be relished and shared with those who are close – not with the whole world.

I know FB is free; and I know how to tweak security settings.  It just seems that there are parts of all of our pasts that we just don’t want dredged up.  It looks like I can’t hide much longer. Today Mashable reported that Facebook will be forcing everyone to get on the Timeline within the next few weeks.  As promised back in December, 2011, users will be notified at the top of their home screen that they have 7 days to get their Timeline tuned up and turned on.

I really fear Timeline because as we dig into the past, something like this could surface:

So now the question is, do I push the button and start working on my Timeline, or wait until I am under the 7 day gun?  Are you already on Timeline?  How’s it working for you?  Have you been hiding like me, or have you just never heard of Timeline at all? Your comments, whining, and rants are welcome.

According to eMarketer, US spending on online advertising will exceed spending on print advertising for the first time in 2012, and the trend will continue as advertisers find more value online.  Online advertising  spending in 2012 is predicted at $39.5 Billion, compared to $33.8 Billion for all print advertising.  By 2016, the projection is  $62B for online vs. $32.3B for print.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, more and more of us are getting news and information online.  Think of how much time you spend online – work, research, news gathering, social media, compared to the amount of time you spend with print media – newspapers, magazines.  I think it’s obvious that print advertising will not be making a comeback.

What’s your opinion?

Related Articles:
US Online Ad Spend to Close in on $40 Billion – emarketer.com
US advertisers to spend more on digital than print: study – breitbart.com
Online Ad Spending to Surpass Print for First Time in 2012 [STUDY] - mashable.com

Ever see this symbol before?  This post is not about RSS (Real Simple Syndication) or how it works.  It’s about the the computer literate folks I encounter every day who are not utilizing the power of RSS feeds to simplify their lives.

Unless owners of sites block their feeds, any website with dynamic (frequently updated content) has a feed.   The feed updates and syndicates changes, i.e., new blog posts, updates, news articles, for anyone to grab.

So when I am discussing a particular blog or site with someone who just surfs to it occasionally, I always ask if they “subscribe”.  I am often met with a blank look when I tell them they can automatically receive updates  every time their favorite blogger posts, or their favorite news outlet adds a new story.  You can subscribe to the feeds for sites you enjoy through a piece of aggregation software like Google Reader, and like magic, receive all the latest updates for everything you like on the web.

A big piece of my connection with the world comes through my 211 feed subscriptions, which include Google and Twitter alerts, specified feeds for local and national news, social media, technology, and real estate posts from industry leaders, and some fun stuff too.    I don’t spend much time surfing and Googling, because I have the content I want served up to me.  If  I find a great blog or site, I just add it to the list.  Sometimes when I open the reader, I there are 300-500 articles in queue; I can easily whittle the list by headlines, to efficiently get through a lot of fresh news quickly, while bookmarking the best.  I don’t touch newspapers, or much other print media, because by the time something gets to print, it’s old news.

There is a lot of power in RSS for syndicating content across the wide spectrum of media, and many tools to spread the word via RSS.   In future posts I will discuss leveraging feeds, but for now it would make me happy if you started getting at least some of your favorite online content served up to you like a big bowl of grits  in the morning.  Play around with the Google Reader and see how easy it is to subscribe to any site that sports the orange symbol above- start by subscribing to this one!

If you use your Google Reader as a major information source, let me know in the comments along with how many subscriptions you have.  Also, if RSS is foreign to you, don’t be embarrased to comment.  I would love to discuss.

Generation Flux (full title below), is a series of interviews and profiles written by Robert Safian, editor at Fast Company which offers the reader a glimpse of our next generation of influential business leaders.

I read profile after profile; so interested in how they got where they are and fascinated by their process.  You’ll find their stories shocking while at the same time refreshing.  You may even be left with a feeling of confidence that the business world is actually in pretty good hands.

Many who are excited about the massive change technology brings to personal and business lives are also overwhelmed.  Trust me, these men and women are not overwhelmed!  They are locked in overdrive and focused. They embrace change as their sustenance.

Read each profile to get the full experience and on the right side of each profile, notice the list of people each person profiled added to the group as Generation Flux pioneers.

This Is Generation Flux: Meet The Pioneers Of The New (And Chaotic) Frontier Of Business is the full article – long but very important that you endure to the end.  But if you just read the profiles of each in this group, you’ll get the feeling I described before.

danah boyd         D J Patil         Baratunde Thurston        Beth Comstock

Pete Cashmore             Raina Kumra             Bob Greenberg

I’d like to know how reading these profiles affected your feelings about the future of business as it changes.  The 41 comments on the original article were for or totally against the representation but most seemed to be written by advanced and knowledgeable participants in the conversation .

Good comments make the article so please leave me your thoughts.  I particular want to hear from people working in their businesses day to day, just trying to stay in business.

Now this is just a bit too big brother for me.  Although why we didn’t see it coming, I can’t say.  The security issues we have are enough to think about.  Now we have a lab that will define us as “entities”  and based on our social interactions “relationships”,  they will  notify us of what we want to purchase!!  They really don’t know me that well.  Do they?  I know Amazon.com does it based on our purchases but we’ve opt-ed for that when we purchased.

On Facebook, Mandy Jenkins,  Social News Editor at The Huffington Post opined, ” Uh-oh, should we ‘little guys’ in social media be worried that Walmart’s moving into our business?”, which got my attention.  I was not expecting what I read.  I think this goes further than just invading the social media space.

From WalmartLabs - who knew they had Labs, I know we should have guessed – we are introduced to Social Gemone.  @WalmartLabs defines the Social Genome as

” . . . a giant knowledge base that captures interesting entities and relationships of the social world.”

“. . . the Social Genome is indeed a crown jewel at WalmartLabs. It is a giant entity-relationship knowledge base built using a wide range of cutting-edge data management, semantic analysis, and human computation techniques. It is used to perform deep semantic analysis of social media, the result in turn is leveraged to power a broad array of social commerce applications.”

Don’t know if you’ve ever experienced a “Deep semantic analysis” but it sounds painful.

Additionally they list other offerings on the site labeled

• Social Commerce – using Social Genome to improve shopping experience ( no live link to this for further explanation)
• Social Analytics - Gaining customer insights from social data  (ditto on the link and further explanation)

Granted, they may not care that I need further explanation.  They don’t have to care.  Not their job, really.

You decide what you think after you read the explanation page.   Even if you decide you don’t want them to have your preferences it doesn’t matter.  They deal in entities and relationships in social media and then sell to those entities with those particular relationships.  You won’t even see it coming.

Reminds me of the CBS  TV series Person of Interest where the “machine” kicks out numbers to identify which “irrelevant” will die if they are not helped by the characters in the series.  I’ll watch it with a different point of view now.   After reading about @WalmartLabs  Social Genome the TV series doesn’t seem so futuristic does it?

Leave me a comment if you have a strong feeling about this issue and/or if  you think we should back away from giving so much of ourselves over to social media.

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