A Few Hundred Ways To Become An Expert in Friendraising

Salebarn's new enterprise, AUCT.us was formed to increase those "US" things that auctioneers can be involved in, to be better citizens ... crowdfunding, social commerce,  social network analytics and friendraising.  Friendraising is such an new notion that the word is still not in most dictionaries.  If you type the word and you will probably see squiggly lines under it because your text editor doesn't recognize the word yet BUT friendraising already kind of a big deal.

The massively collaborative, crowd-written, crowd-edited Wikipedia, which has come to epitomize the notion of crowdsourcing and shared interest in knowledge, has an entry for friendraising. Of course, the notion of friendraising is still a brand new, still evolving, thinly understood concept.  The Wikipedia entry will change -- right now, it is still new and SMALL and quite likely to be somewhat incorrect, even though it is a good starting point.

So far, the Wikipedia "experts" on the friendraising entry have defined the term as just another "form of fundraising that involves befriending an organization or individual for the purpose of helping support the financial aspect of a charity, nonprofit group or other community benefit organization."

Is friendraising ONLY about money?  What about skills, creativity, enthusiasm and human capital?  

Besides just the current deal-based fundraising, what about relationship-based friendraising and the networking that shapes our organizations into the venue where we meet our FUTURE friends?

If we have friends involved in our organizations, won't those those friends likely to tip over their couches to get the change, maybe hit up some of their friends to get involved, to go to their employers for employer-sponsored matching contributions?  Won't genuine friends somehow, some way find the money if that money is REALLY needed to do something?  Is money really what really makes things happen?

Let's accept the impossible mission to become experts in friendraising.  Let's define what friendraising is about in terms of developing relationships with people who will become our FRIENDS because we share the same passion for the same cause ... since these people are going to be our friends, let's leave money out of it at first ... we can talk about money later ... at first, let's start raising a network of new friends in the same way that Amish people might thing about raising a new barn.

The following quote should guide us in how we think about friendraising, about how our commitments shape our friendships and how we make our lives more meaningful by sharing our commitments and our friendships ...

"We make a living by what we can get, we make a life by what we give."  Winston Churchill

It's not just about giving money. That's too easy. Friends give much more to friends than money. A lot of the networking, energy, creativity and other skills involved in friendraising might be dismissed as just common sense.  After all, almost all of us have been making new friends for longer than we've have been able to talk in coherent sentences, so we might already know how to make friends [even if we have forgotten it and prefer to only talk with people we already know].  If we are going to be any good at this, we have to think about structure or architecture ... in other words, in order to RAISE this network of new FRIENDS, we might have to  think about how we might engineer and accelerate the development of our expertise in this brand new topic of FRIENDRAISING.

Let's start by brainstorming 100 Ways To Become An Expert in Friendraising ... some of these will be WILD goofy ideas ... we won't be able to do all 100 right away ... but the first step is just brainstorming ... when you run out of ideas, start BlekkoStorming

1. Read everything you can find on relationships and networking. List ways that your network can do more to advance each of the following positive attributes of genuine friendship:
   • Knowing and liking one another ... beyond the easy, non-committal "slacktivism" of being a social network  follower or recipient of the [LIKE] button
   • Open, positive communication, interaction, debate and notification
   • Demonstrated compassion, care, concern, empathy; being present
   • Depth of understanding especially on differences in opinion
   • FUN ... collaborative, creative, entertaining effort toward mutual success
   • Reciprocal participation and appropriate cross-involvement in other causes
   • Open-mindedness, fairness and adaptability without loss of integrity
   • Honoring commitments, being dependable, especially in times of need
   • Honesty, dignified disagreement and respect for different views
   • Everything that friendliness and being a true friend involves
   Get out of your cocoon, and put your knowledge of networking into practice, test different ways of meet NEW people ... but get out there and see what works!
2. Develop an systematic adaptation of the Edward D Jones process for relationship-based marketing, setting aggressive goals to make personal, physical belly-to-belly contact with 25 people per day.  Find ways, e.g. seminars, tradeshows, events and auctions, to meet larger numbers of people who share your interests to ensure that you make contact with more people who will join your cause, become your friends.
3. If you think about the process of networking very long, you start to realize that it is going to be even more necessary in the future to spend [at least] an hour a day on social media marketing and, in particular, you may want to get especially serious about Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
4. Master web analytics and related topics [include mobile] to understand how people USE web pages and the internet
5. Get serious about social network analytics
6. Become a better, more focused, more intuitive listener ... read between the lines as you listen to what someone is saying, as you read their blog posts or comments.  It's a lot like making friends when you're two or three years old; you cannot just depend on logical or rational argument ... you have to develop your intuition to really HEAR what someone is saying.  
7. Beyond just listening to one or two people -- you must find ways to listen to the smartest person in the millions of jabbering voices out there.  That means that you must develop ways to use technology to automate your content selection process and transcend the process of reading ... the fundamental notion is there's always a LOT of someones out there who are smarter than you.  Even among the people who aren't that bright, there are more than enough good ideas.  If you can be a more effective and efficient LISTENER and if you can sift the wheat from the mountains of chaff, there will always someone out there who will give you an idea that will work well [even if they have a wild idea that will never work].  You already know what kind of stuff is just a distraction and completely unworthy of your time.
8. Using vertical search engines like Blekko and curating a slashtag is one way to improve and refine your approach to search.
9. Become proficient at use a CMS like Drupal to aggregate RSS feeds and manage content from different sources
10. Develop curated lists on Twitter; use those currated lists as the basis for daily "newspapers" with services like Paper.LI (@SmallRivers) and TweetedTimes.com (@TwtTimes) come under the newspaper format. 
11. Develop slightly deeper content, such as curated magazines or course syllabi, with Postano.com (@ilpostano), Twylah.com (@Twylah), Scoop.it (@scoopit) or Learni.st (@LearnistTweets)
12. Consider developing content using so-called "summarizers" include Summify.com (@summify), Strawberryj.am(@strawberryapp), Knowabout.it (@knwbt), News.me (@newsdotme), andTopicmarks.com (@topicmarks)
13. Investigate the more advanced "text synthesis" robojournalism includeAutomatedInsights.com (@AInsights), formerly StatSheet, andNarrativeScience.com (@narrativesci). 
14. Master the use of Pinterest in fundraising, especially if much of of your content is image-based, for example, Van Gogh Museum or philanthropies that involve nature [photography]. Everyone should remember that "a picture is worth a 1000 words"and more image-based social networks.  It's not just Pinterest, don't ignore Google+ Photos Instant Upload and Picasa OR even FlickR, especially since Yahoo is trying to make FlickR relevant again.
15. Real experts assiduously cultivate real person-to-person relationships [beyond just Facebook, Twitter, blogs] with real people who do real things.  Finding the rising stars in any industry or important pursuit is matter of digesting and reading a fair amount of deep content every single day.  It not about name-dropping or knowing the keywords, it's about really GETTING the ideas -- it's never hurts to be well-read.  
16. Every commercial niche has one or more trade magazines.  That's true also  of the fundraising industry.  The editors and writers know what is the conventional wisdom for their industry ... seek to know more than they do. 
17. Examine the advertisements [in industry publications.]  Look at WHO is advertising aggressively and who does not need to advertise.  Examine why and how they are advertising -- what are they selling, how are they trying to change opinions, what reputation are they trying to build or sustain.  Pay close attention to success and, more importantly, the DISRUPTION of success.  
18. Write an article and submit it for publication in an industry magazine or peer-review journal. Become a published author in the industry. If you have trouble getting an article published, write a letter to the editor or respond to one.  Write something, start the process going. People will see your name, read your material and comment ... respond to the comments, interact with your audience ... develop a following. 
19. Develop an authentic web presence; develop a process for re-inventing it and keeping it fresh ...  then develop another one.
20. Develop a SERIOUS professional blog or family of blogs. 
21. Speak regularly.  Get comfortable in front of crowds.  Practice at Toastmasters or form your own club of speakers.  Offer to speak at a local college, club, association, or service organization programming chair the opportunity to have you speak on a relevant subject both at no charge. 
22. Becoming knowledgable about audio recording and podcasting and then develop a podcast that will attract friends.  
23. Become a talk radio personality and use the power of personality to build influence, to reach out to like-minded people and, in general to attract friends.  While you are "on the air" think about also posting videos and photos, liveblogging, tweeting and doing other things to add depth, to make your show multi-dimensional. 
24. Run your own seminars. Tie in your seminar with other companies and organizations to build your credentials. Become a technical specialist speaking to businesses, business organizations, banks.  Charging for your speech at leading businesses and corporations will add to your credentials. 
25. Develop an alliance of friends who are using New Media.
26. Join a national trade organization for your industry; write a monthly column on interesting aspects of the industry for the organization’s newsletter or magazine. Give a seminar or have a booth at your industry's national or international trade show. Get on boards or committees for the organization that fit your expertise. 
27. Send out press releases. Mention your credentials, promote your speaking and seminars, share examples of your writing and content.  Be sure to mention that are a nationally recognized and published author, a lecturer at universities and colleges, and a nationally renowned expert on your area of interest.  In the end, marketing you as the expert leads to more opportunities to develop expertise as a Friendraising [and fundraising consultant].
28. Investigate ways for organizations to develop develop networks of friends and networks of networks of friends for developing a large list of guests for event.  Make the event virtual so that "expats" and people on the road, away from home can participate. 
29. Investigate training clinics for benefit auction staff; host/sponsor these training clinics at your site and invite similar organizations from the area.  
30. Develop a network of professional event planning and benefit management professionals.  USE these professionals to make your friendraising and fundraising more successful.  Work with several and negotiate the best deal for your organization.  Competition matters.
31. Use graphic design professionals to develop memorable logos [with your website] for apparel or other items that are tied to your benefit auction, fundraiser, campaign. 
32. Develop a list of suppliers of key materials and services
33. Develop a list of donors and people who will give [promotional] items for being associated with auction.
34. Work with benefit/fundraising professionals to develop gamified ideas for unique raffles, silent auctions
35. Work with budding app developers to develop an app that showcases their talent AND serves your organization's friendraising/fundraising needs.
36. Get the very best beef or pork and have it prepared professionally ... OR better yet, allow people to grill their own steak on their own pitchfork... provide attendees with a education about what they are buying from a beef producer, a locker owner or a chef. 
37. After hors d'oeuvres and a happy hour ... trying auctioning off LOCAL wine or beer early at your benefit auction [along with corkscrews/openers/glasses. Provide attendees with a education about what they are buying from a sommelier or brewmeister.  
38. Investigate auctioneer bid calling and ring man training services and host a mini-clinic at your location for organizations in the area.  
39. Develop a network of different printers to handle your catalogs, placemats, brochures, business cards ... get competitive quotes, "steal" the best ideas.  
40. If you [and your friends in other related organizations] are going to spend money on supplies for events and fundraisers, then get GOOD at it.  Become the "supplier development manager" and procurement HUB for organizations like yours.  Get competitive quotes and design suggestions from different vendors; negotiate volume purchases.
41. Think about these thirty-two recommendations for philanthropic organizations  ... ONE.BY.ONE. ... in this 2011 report on philanthropic giving. In 2010, in the United States alone, there were 1,280,739 registered 501(c)(3) organizations garnering total financial support of $291 billion from American citizens. That's 2% of disposable income; it is highly doubtful that the level of financial support will increase all that much.  Even in relatively good times, people tend NOT to give MONEY for a variety of good reasons, but they might be convinced to give more of themselves ... their time, their enthusiasm, their energy, their skills ... partly as advertisements for what they can do or for networking opportunities and partly to connect with their FRIENDS.
42. Here are eighty-nine (89) friendraising ideas to adopt as your own from  an e-book sold by Help4NonProfits.com.
43. Skim the Table of Contents from these 475 books that discuss the importance of relationships in fundraising ... pick the best one out of five to read or skim more thoroughly ... by the time you are done with that you should have a couple hundred good ideas for friendraising.
44. As you brainstorm more ideas, do not just adapt neat fundraising tricks and games ... understand the crucial distinction between deal-based fundraising (i.e. checkbook-based one-time transactional fundraising) and relationship-based friendraising which involves reaching something of  an agreement that involves long-term cooperation, collaboration and friendship. There are HUGE critical differences between deal-based approach and the relationship-based approach:
    • In a deal, the goal is confined to just getting an agreement ... or a check. In a relationship, the goal is cooperating, collaborating, enjoying each other's company, networking on future opportunities, establishing a foundation for working together profitably over the long term, starting from the first agreement, then building far beyond it.
    • In a deal, the party you are negotiating with is, to a large extent, is not all that close to you now and won't be in the future.  Right now, they support your cause; right now, you are just raising money. In a relationship, the people who are involved are your FRIENDS, you preferred partners in working together, you all share a true belief in the cause [and probably in other things as well].
    • Deals are about raising as much money as you can ... in that event, in that evening, in that campaign. Relationships are based on more than just money, they involve "dividing and conquering" the work that has to be done and joint burden-sharing and joint celebration.
    • In a deal, you basically hold yourself aloof from the others ... perhaps playing games, hiding information, guarding the responses [to get more money], pressing positions or relying on "ego contests" to get more money. A relationship is for the truly long pull, you need to more relaxed, open, and natural because you can't keep up the "push" for that long.  Relationships are about really involving people, so they have ALL of information and there are no secrets so that they understand the needs.
    • In a deal, you may exaggerate the urgency of the need or use different tricks to just to get others write the check. Successful friendraising relationships are based on honesty, reliability, and continual, long-term follow-through.
    • Deals are static [focused on how much is contribute right now, today], inflexible, with demands for booking the contributions, getting the event totals, just as soon as possible when transaction is completed. Relationships are also based on fundamental agreements and COMMITMENTS, but they are more accommodating, less rigidly detailed and probably far more valuable than just quickie deals. Because relationships take place over time, change needs to be anticipated and managed constructively and creatively rather than ignored or given short shrift because the relationship falls outside of the scope of the initial agreement. Relationships are dynamic and EXPAND as we go through life.
    • Not all organizations require relationships in order to succeed; organizations that don't do much are only worthy of quick-and-dirty simple deals.  And sometimes, everybody wants a quick-and-dirty simple deal with no strings and no relationship.  For example: when someone donates their old car or junk in their basement, they are basically just disposing of stuff and they'd like to maybe try to do a bit of good.  Any extra value that they might get from a relationship with an organization would be a bonus but mostly they just want to unload their stuff, support an okay cause and be left alone.
45. Ok, that's still not enough ideas yet ... KEEP BRAINSTORMING and get your friends involved in the brainstorming.  After all, that's what friendraising is all about!

100 Keys to Success in Selling Advertising for Publishers

There is so much to learn about the world of advertising for publishers of content ... ALL content either is supported by advertisement or is implicitly an advertisement for the ideas embedded in the content OR and advertisement for the author of that content.  All content is basically "selling" something or asking the reader to think about something ... even if the idea being sold is essentially one that asks the reader to be a more critical thinker, to be more skeptical even of the article itself.  All content is basically selling something ... the concepts of advertising applies to all content.

The world is changing rapidly in the world of advertisement ... it might be that advertisement along with recommendation engines are becoming even more powerful and necessary.  As a result, I thought it would be a worthwhile exercise to attempt to curate this list.

1. In order to understand any topic, it is up to you to put together your own program of study to do what is necessary to become a bit of an expert ... it might seem like a paradox, but it's more like the chicken-and-egg thing ... you have to start where you are and RAPIDLY evolve and grow ... you have become a bit of an expert FIRST, so that you can find better ways to educate yourself [and so that you can seek even better training] ... this is the same in the world of advertising ... develop expertise by seeking out and listening to experts; don't waste experts time -- do your homework first so you can ask good questions but never show off, especially when you might know more about a niche topic than an expert!
2. Develop better content and media for your advertising.  Work at improving your advertising expertise as you develop your content expertise.  Develop a daily practice to "sharpen the saw" as you build skills that reinforce your ability to successfully improve your media and content publishing at the same time that you improve your success in selling your advertisement for a higher return.
3. As a rule, the Google AdSense advertising for publishers will generally be the standard.  But as you will also want to consider other programs such as Microsoft Ad PubCenter or the Chikita Online Ad Network or BuySellAds or the Amazon Associates Affiliate Program or any other advertising network o affiliate program for content creators and publishers.  If you are a content creator and publisher, you probably should use Facebook only about as much as you absolutely need to, to bring people back to your website, your blog, your content.  Many would say that Facebook's business model is basically about killing the revenue possibilities in publisher advertisement and programs like Google AdSense or the Amazon Associates Affiliate Program [in order to drive all social commerce to the insular Facebook universe].  Before you investigate the other alternatives, it will be worth your while to focus on just one and that best is probably AdSense; watch the AdSense videos and also the DoubleClick videos; read the AdSense forum; participate in the AdSense Academy; understand how you earn money with the whole AdSense Family ... AdSense for content (AFC), AdSense for search (AFS) AdSense for video (AFV), AdSense for games (AFG), AdSense for mobile (AFM).   Two products that you might have heard about before, AdSense for feeds (AFF) and AdSense for domains (AFD) have gone away and are not really necessary for content creators and publishers.

100 Ways to Become a Successful in Media and Content

In many ways, media and content have replaced bricks and mortar in terms of importance of building a business ... a bricks and mortar facility confirms your physical existence, but the key to having an successful business is less and less about a physical presence and more and more about CONTENT.  Bricks and mortar might are still important -- but bricks and mortar are only important to customers to the extent that your content depends upon the customer interacting with your bricks and mortar physical presence as the content of where there mind is at.

Some things, like hard work and persistence, will always matter but the keys to success in starting and growing businesses has been changing over the last decade or two.  Frankly, it seems like the pace of change is accelerating; people seem to be becoming more engaged in the world of their smartphones and the relationships and content that those smartphones afford.  As a result, I thought it would be a worthwhile exercise to attempt curating this list.

1. Start with the basics -- look at what successful probloggers like Darren Rowse does on his own blog, ProBlogger.NET; look at the recommended resources from ProBlogger.net.  Make those ideas your own ... re-imagine ideas ... move beyond just re-cycling and re-using, but imitate and understand concepts first.  Be diligent.  Keep at it.  Pick up at least one new idea each day. Build upon your set of ideas.  When you run out of ideas to improve, go back to basics ... don't be afraid to go back an look at old material or the foundations of what you learned when you were getting started; the good stuff that worked well a couple years ago will always work but those ideas might need to be freshened or re-tuned a little.  Always work on your OWN set of tools to "re-sharpen your own saw" ...  a good way to re-furbish and refresh your "tool-sharpening toolkit for blogging" is to work your way through something Darren's list of 98 blog tips for a lazy Sunday.
2. It is good to read material on writing good copy or using web words that work, but it's even more important to develop your own voice through daily practice.   Aim to produce genuine, always useful, always helpful content that will be useful in the future.  Describe reality as you see it, as it really is, in your terms.  Explore the details of your business, your genre, your niche and write articles that supply basic definitions, describe processes and show the history and rationale behind why things are the way they are.  This is the kind of content that attracts visitors from search engines and others who will come back.  The content will still be valuable one, two or five years from now. It provides the foundation from which the rest of your content is built as you audience grows. 
3. Help others. In order to understand any topic, it is necessary to work at becoming an expert ... this is the same in the world of media ... it's particularly true in your special unique niche in the giant world of media.  You don't necessarily have to understand the world of fashion or automotive photography or on-demand horror video ... unless you choose to be an expert in one of those niches ... if your business is alive and has very many customers at all, it is now a media business ... you need to be an expert in your media.  That media might revolve around booths at trade shows or it might involve live events/auctions or it might be entirely digital.
4. Write out strategic plan for your content strategy, but feel free to modify and adapt that plan. Every post should be part of a larger series of instructional articles, and each fits into the overall strategies he teaches on his site.  Develop pages or photos or videos or vines that gather and summarize and reflect upon the series of posting [and the comments received].  Focus instruction to provide a landing place to send visitors looking for background on subjects. 
5. Become a power Twitter user ... follow hashtags like #MediaChat.   Understand what becoming a power Twitter user fully entails in terms engaging user input in content creation process.  Power Twitter user are influential because they usually are the creators of the best content online, tweeting reinforces and tightens their connection with their audience and the tight connection with their audience makes power Twitter users that much more influential.  The most influential power Twitter users: a) Use third-person writing; b) Eschew personal opinions and pithy comments, half-witty inside jokes; c) stick to the basics of the AP Stylebook; d) Always include the key info, e.g. who, when, where, what, why, how; e) Provide attribution/sources; f) conduct interviews with photos participant and organizer; g) Include captions for photos.  Working at tweeting better generally produces a virtuous circle in all of your content. 
6. Cultivate community. Search for ways in which you can foster interaction ... above and beyond becoming a power Twitter user.  Make an honest commitment to continuing to help readers at the point where they are at.  Make the time and go to the effort to answer comments.    Tutor them.  Build an email list, use Facebook and reach out in other ways to bring people to the blog ... bring along subscribers, go to them, reach out to them in the inbox that they use.  Invite readers to follow along in a series as you learn your way in a new field. 
7. Add guest bloggers, or better yet, look for ways to partner with another blogger. Appear as a guest author on other blogs.  Comment on other blogs.  Respond to tweets [with short URLs linking back to RELEVANT content from your blog.]  Build a blog roll.  Then build another one.  Then another.  Find ways to interact with people.   Do NOT argue for the sake of arguing.  Do NOT pick fights with idiots who are looking for fights. There are more than enough ways to interact with people who are legitimately interested in an intelligent discussion. 
8. Provide practical down-to-earth help to people AND seek the same for yourself.  As you build expertise, go back and work on the basics.  Routinely go back and review practical, nuts-and-bolts basics for blogging.   Use those examples as you explain the what, the why, and the how of everything that you do in your business in your blogs, to help your blog's subscribers.
9. You might want to pay some attention to what the large Advertising Age Media 100 companies are doing.  In the big companies, it might be more interesting to look at major trends in an annual year-in-review report ... but, for small business angle, it's probably best to pay attention to what is working [and why] in the top 100 media companies of the Inc 5000 
10. Stop wasting time with distractions and kidding yourself that flying by the seat of your pants is the best strategy.  Get serious about measuring your traction in social media!  Nothing is manageable until you measure it.  Until you are working at becoming measurably better at engaging people in social media, you are just fooling around.  If you want to improve your production in anything, you really need to measure progress, set goals and then find even better ways to measure and track progress in ways that are meaningful to your business.  That means that you need to work at developing a mastery of the 100 ways to measure social media as those ways apply to how you can use social media to develop leads, convert leads into sales and satisfy the customers of your business.
11. Drupal ... web application framework
12. Move beyond blogging to content curation ... Blekko slashtags
13. Participate in reputation-ranked forums like StackExchange / Stackoverflow
14. Pay attention to where the crowd is going ... follow Alexa traffic rankings  ... it is worthwhile investigating the changes in Alexa rankings [particularly for sites ranked #1500 to #500] to understand what is working ... if you are investing time in Blekko slashtags, be sure to follow Alexa's blekko.com traffic stats
    
    
     

100 Ways to Become an Expert

The good news is that there has never been more information and analytical tools available for people to develop expertise, but becoming an expert is not only hard work, you have to work smarter and develop your own technology to grok all of the information that is being blasted from a million firehoses.

1. If you want to become an expert, you must FIRST become a better listener ... regardless of how good of a listener you already are.  Becoming an expert is fundamentally about LISTENING.  Nobody cares how much you know until you have proven how much you care -- so be quiet, prove that you are genuinely interested in really understanding the different facets of a problem and try to LISTEN.  
2. Beyond just listening to one or two people -- you must find ways to listen to millions.  That means that you must develop ways to use technology to automate your content selection process and transcend the process of reading ... the fundamental notion is there's always a LOT of someones out there who are smarter than you.  Even among the people who aren't that bright, there are more than enough good ideas.  If you can be a more effective and efficient LISTENER and if you can sift the wheat from the mountains of chaff, there will always someone out there who will give you an idea that will work well [even if they have a wild idea that will never work].  You already know what kind of stuff is just a distraction and completely unworthy of your time. 
3. Real experts are humble enough to understand there's never any such thing as a real experts ... it's all a matter of perception and influence.  The best approach to developing expertise is to network or develop relationships and connections with genuine leaders.  The true leaders in any niche are active "doers," voracious readers and deep thinkers ... they are not the people who step on others ... they assiduously cultivate relationships with leaders who make it clear that they do real things; they should also digest and read A LOT of deep content every single day.
4. There are lots of people who are trying to be experts who are worth following, because they are perceived as experts and in some cases their ideas and observations actually are valuable -- in many cases, they are good at repetitively asserting ideas until those ideas resonate and become accepted as truth.  Every commercial niche has one or more trade magazines. The editors and writers know what is the conventional wisdom for their industry. 
5. Pay close attention to success and the disruption of success.  Examine the advertisements [in industry publications.]  Look at WHO is advertising aggressively and who does not need to advertise.  Examine why and how they are advertising -- what are they selling, how are they trying to change opinions, what reputation are they trying to build or sustain.  
6. Write an article and submit it for publication in an industry magazine or peer-review journal. Become a published author in the industry. If you have trouble getting an article published, write a letter to the editor or respond to one.  Write something, start the process going. People will see your name, read your material and comment ... respond to the comments, interact with your audience ... develop a following. 
7. Develop your own authentic web presence ... develop a blog, create podcasts, post videos and photos, use social media.
8. Speak regularly.  Practice at Toastmasters or form your own club of speakers.  Offer to speak at a local college, club, association, or service organization programming chair the opportunity to have you speak on a relevant subject both at no charge. 
9. Run your own seminar. Tie in your seminar with other companies and organizations to build your credentials. Become a technical specialist speaking to businesses, business organizations, banks.  Charging for your speech at leading businesses and corporations will add to your credentials. 
10. Join a national trade organization for your industry; write a monthly column on interesting aspects of the industry for the organization’s newsletter or magazine. Give a seminar or have a booth at your industry's national or international trade show. Get on boards or committees for the organization that fit your expertise. 
11. Send out press releases. Mention your credentials, promote your speaking and seminars, share examples of your writing and content.  Be sure to mention that are a nationally recognized and published author, a lecturer at universities and colleges, and a nationally renowned expert on your area of interest.  In the end, marketing you as the expert leads to more opportunities to develop expertise.
12. I don't have 100 ways yet, but the GOAL of any expert is to develop a deeper level of expertise while maintaining a humble attitude ... but one needs to start somewhere and this is still only a START ... I must humbly submit that I am far from being an expert at this expert thing, perhaps a real expert can suggest a few items for me to add.  

Can markets achieve more optimal public social choice outcomes?

Obviously, I believe that the answer is, "OF COURSE!"

In fact, it is quite likely that we would be better LOT better off if we used a continuously-updated MARKET [like the Intrade prediction markets] to elect the body of people who we select to make our laws, administer our policies ... I suppose we might be stuck with party politics, but political parties really should find a way as quickly as possible to start using something like one fo the Crowdliness social choice mechanisms that function like the Intrade markets [with opportunities to bring in more information via blogs, videos, debates and all kinds of information] for members of those parties to discuss, debate, collaborate and select the most fit nominees and best policy positions -- a MARKET would furnish the candidates best able to take on the opponent and the platform that would conform to the will of the party members ... apart from political parties, markets would work a lot better than a winner-take-all election to select the incumbent dictators who hold power for the next term.  Two hundred and some years ago, we didn't have electronic markets -- so democratically-elected rulers were basically a better deal than a monarchs ... but now we have a lot better mechanisms.

I would not suggest an immediate overthrow of the government ... but we should start thinking about more market-driven mechanisms to drive more of the things that currently believe should come from government ... after all, democracy is more subject to manipulation of media, hysteria of the masses and tyranny of the majority than markets are ... a lynch mob, for example, is an effective, expedient democratic process ... all democratically-elected governments basically "hang the opposition" until the next election cycle ... election cycles drive bureaucracy and bad policy.  Disastrously-bad housing policy [resulting in a terrible misallocation of resources/people] and the lack of regulatory oversight that was supposed to have prevented the crisis was the result of influence-peddling by [formerly] democratically-elected officials who manipulated government policy and enforcement.

All in all, I am generally a much bigger fan of the outcomes provided by markets than I am of the distortions that we get from democratically-elected governments.  We should be exploring many more market mechanisms -- there simply is no other social choice process that we have yet developed that works better at revealing information and discovering preferences than a continuously-traded, highly-liquid (i.e. unfettered participation) ubiquitously-transparent market.  Every significant market failure that we have ever experienced is the result of a distortion introduced by a bureaucratic [democratically-elected] governing body.

Crowdliness is sort of next to godliness, but not really

Game theory is extremely useful for analyzing all kinds of cooperative and non-cooperative behavior ... it is also useful for explaining the growth of groups into institutions and political parties that control government and history.

Social networks and social commerce are still at the MOST early form of organizational evolution ... basically there are few forms that have advanced past comparison-based groups, forums and discussions ... competition is the next step; auction is a competitive game that is well-established but there are plenty of ways to improve auction ... cooperation is the next step; early forms of cooperative networks are fundraising organizations like Kiva or Kickstarter -- these are still relatively expensive networks to maintain and build ... moving beyond cooperation takes us to collaboration; it's a difficult to achieve much in the way of collaborative networks -- open source collaboration is probably the most advanced with Apache Software Foundation and GitHub ... adhoc groups coalescing into rudimentary institutions ... much like traders meeting on a street corner in Manhattan and then Wall Street and then ... become the central financial trading hub in the world.

More cowbell ... the world has shifted in to a digital realm ... this creates brand new social commerce opportunities in commercial real estate

A major secular shift is underway; it's not cyclical.

If you have not already shifted your business to have more of a digital personality, occupying digital real estate ... you really need to investigate a shift.  You do it soon.  Realize that is not sufficient to a geek who handles your website -- if you want to be in business, you need to fundamentally shift your worldview to exist in a world of data and information technology.  You need to think strategically in this realm OR you can live in the world of buggy whips and stone tools.  You cannot and should not be at the bleeding edge of technology ... but a network-based information-intensive data-driven existence is not bleeding edge thinking ... it is current thinking that is at least five years old [after blogs were commonplace and cloud-based web services started to gain their foothold] maybe ten [after the dot com boom, when the web-based apps had become commonplace] or twenty five years old [after PCs were common and networked client-server software began to control the workplace and factory floor].

So the world has shifted ... a networked world is one that minimizes the importance of an automobile ... it's no longer typically necessary to drive around with an unfolded map or road atlas and ask directions in order to find a location, i.e. location, location, location is less of a truism in real estate that it once was -- although convenience and proximity will always matter.  It's also no longer typically a great idea to restrict your employees or contractors to the subset of the worldwide population that can drive in to work ... telecomputing, teleconferences and webinars are commonplace -- most moderately-adept people can navigate in the world of email, Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn, webcams and cloud-based services ... if you are uncomfortable in this realm, you need to get moving ... or contemplate retirement.

The networked world has revolutionized retail ... increasingly [even older] consumers now search for and scrutinize purchases via web and mobile [including iPad] interfaces; they discuss those purchases with their friends and associates; they decide what they want and either have it delivered or dash into an outlet to pick it up ... so the commercial real estate vacancy rate is now at the highest rate in history and it has continued to increase even as the economy stabilized or moderately improves.  In all likelihood, we probably have two square feet of commercial real estate space for every one square foot that we really need ... although retail outlets might occupy 85% ~ 90% of the commercial real estate in various cities, they occupy more than they want because of past decision -- if they had their druthers, they would only occupy [and pay to operate/maintain] half of the space they currently occupy.  Most large retailers, like Walmart and BestBuy, are now investigating radically smaller footprints for new locations -- the existing smaller retailers that owned and managed by business owners who are now 45-70 years old will not be occupied at all by the next generation of retailers who are now 20-45.

The majority of the inventory of commercial real estate is not going to be used for the purpose it was intended -- the real estate will need to be re-purposed ... and that radical shift creates an enormous opportunity for social commerce and event-driven social marketing.  It is a brave and exciting new world for the next generation of auctioneers ... auctioneering is not necessarily about bid-calling [although entertainment and leadership of the audience is terribly important] as much as it is about creative development, planning, organization, coordination, execution and leadership of social commerce.

Thoughts on developing a mobile app integrated with a cloud-based intelligent analytic system (wireless sensor data+equipment data+user data+?) for optimal asset management, leasing and resale

Developing this app is basically a matter of understanding the asset owner's use case ... as a general rule, optimizing return on investment in major capital assets is basically a matter of always having that asset performing at its highest and best use ... if we look at the following list, we can see that optimizing return on investment is a matter of keeping the asset occupied by tasks toward the top of the list.

• performing the principal task that its owner purchased it for at peak throughput or optimal performance
• performing the principal task that its owner purchased it for at sub-optimal, non-quantitatively managed performance
• leased / rented to a qualified lessor / renter who needs it for its principal task, but a smaller project 
• being evaluated by a future buyer of the asset
• undergoing routine preventative maintenance 
• being set-up or changed over for the next production task
• undergoing corrective maintenance (e.g. replacement of sickle sections or wear parts)
• setting idle, in storage, in a controlled situation that preserves the asset's condition
• being transported or moved to its next highest / best use ... hopefully, without being damaged in-route
• under major repair or overhaul; being refurbished or brought into condition for higher/better use

A significant thing to consider, of course, is whether leasing or renting the asset to qualified lessors / renters is worth the hassle ... it probably isn't, unless the owner already has some form of established processes or a system for doing this UNLESS this particular app would actually facilitate the owner's ability to lease or rent spare capacity.  

Another thing to consider is how the asset owner wishes to sell the asset ... through eBay, through Ritchie Bros, through a preferred auctioneer, through a broker-dealer on commission, through a classified advertisment, to a lessor/renter on a lease-to/rent-to-buy arrangement, through another means ... the app should accommodate different sales strategies.

Another consideration is what kind of user, sensor, engineering and other data are necessary to support the asset owner's need to quantitatively optimize the asset's performance ... for example, quoted speeds and feeds from a machinist's handbook are always conservative -- with different tools, different materials, cutting fluids, etc it is generally possible to do significantly better than the quoted speeds and feeds to optimize throughput on a machine tool ... there is no need to take stupid risks, but being lazy and just playing it safe or sticking well within the factors of safety almost always entails giving away a significant portion of theoretical production capacity ... a typical factor of safety is 2X -- or potentially a sacrifice of 50% of throughput! ... the same thing applies to almost every kind of machinery and equipment, i.e. past production data [with sufficient data from comprehensive condition monitoring systems] from similar conditions allows one to safely push the envelope in an evolutionary fashion to find the optimal production performance frontier.   Obviously, an asset owner will not want to frequently push things until they break -- but if that owner NEVER pushes anything until it breaks, we know that the asset was never used at its actual capacity ... the ability to drive optimization by sensing the effects on the machine from pushing the machine [up to, and just a wee bit past its limits] are is why intelligent, predictive systems based on networks of condition monitoring sensors are potentially so valuable.  

Toward a Theory of Social Commerce

The world of marketing has changed more in the last five years than it has in the previous 100 years.  The change boils down to increasing importance of REPUTATION, more intelligent recommendation engines, more responsive feedback in relationships, increased collaboration with less travel and waste, radically more frugal R&D and product launch... the big driver in all of this is that customer is no longer a passive couch-potato, no longer patiently waiting for products to come out.  Prosumers and early adopters matter more.  The conversations matter more because they happens online, they persist and are searchable AND lurkers who don't even know about the conversation will [at some point in the future, search for information and] pay attention.  Markets truly are a conversation; everyone listens.  As big as it is already, social commerce is going to be an even much bigger thing ... social commerce doesn't necessarily mean that people will socialize and then buy more junk [although some will still make foolish, herd-driven purchases]; mostly, it means that people and businesses will become MORE conscientious about their purchases, what their purchases say about them, their history of purchases and how they take care of those purchases.

More Mindful Consumption

Some might worry that it might kick off a wave of stupid consumer "joke-purchases" like a bunch of college drunks on buying spree ... of course, foolish purchases will always happen, but in general, product design will largely become more sustainable -- with reusability, upgradability and recyclability being ubiquitous, expected, taken for granted ... disposable junk that's not intended to last past warranty will stick out like shoddy, low-quality merchandise that we used to tolerate, but now find unacceptable  ... commerce will HAVE to be more mindful because more minds are involved, reputations are involved ... how you select and take care of your stuff will matter more; it will be typical for people to buy things and re-sell them. (see "Re-selling, Recommending, Refurbishing").

Finding treasures, curating and creating content through interaction

The future will be more radically interactive.  The availability and affordability of cloud-based information systems and radically-scalable computing power to propel increasing competition in search engines, the continuing quest for better recommendation engines and even ways to harness computing power create independent film or music. These technologies will continue to improve as more developers interact with other develops to newer, braver technologies that rely upon harnessing the power of social community interactions, systems of smart sensors and Big Data.   People who think about the internet as an extension of their life [rather than some place to post content to] such generation Z are already interested in "curating" purchases that can be prospected, found, tried, shared, discussed, debated ... the result is that hype without value will not really work any more when even better search and recommendation engines already provide the opportunities for more people to discover information about a product or company's reputation with a few seconds of "online prospecting."

Sharing, Borrowing, Leasing, Renting

If people have great stuff (e.g. a neighbor with a Bobcat, good tools), there will be people who want to borrow or rent it.  This will become acceptable IF reputations for being a mindful, careful user are tracked ... in other words, people will purchase assets (e.g. tools, equipment) that they may consider lending to a small circle of  borrowers or leasors who can treat those assets with respect.

Asset Optimization, Re-Selling, Refurbishing

Design for sustainability, durability and reuse will matter more.  How you take care of your stuff will matter ... this will be especially true for businesses and contractors that use tools.   People who buy equipment will expect to see that it has been cared for, i.e. they will want to look a the data from the machine's condition monitoring system.  The condition monitoring and tracking systems will also make it possible for companies to lease or rent equipment and charge based upon the time AND conditions of usage [in the same way that cloud service providers like Amazon AWS charge for data storage, data transfer and computation cycles].   People will continue buy high quality durable things that can be repaired/refurbished/upgraded ... use them and then sell them eBay-style -- this activity will not decline -- in fact, it will increase ... good stuff that can be resold will earn value for its brand; the junk that must be recycled, given to GoodWill or [worse] disposed of will be treated as junk when it is new ... re-gifting [of valuable items] will out in the open, but in a world of increased transparency everything will be just a bit more honest.  Transparency means that there is a cost for not behaving as you know you should behave.

Add Value Through Ownership

Celebrities and knowledgeable collectors [of art, antiques and similar items] will add value to merchandise through their ownership ... like Roy Roger's old boots! sold in an auction of the celebrity's "toys" -- as this example illustrates, this has always been possible for major celebrities (e.g. an aging football player who sells his jerseys or Heisman Trophy to raise cash), now it be possible for minor celebrities, like amateur athletes (e.g. who might sell shoes, jerseys, autographed balls from special games), semi-professional musicians (e.g. autographed guitars from big shows), other artists and authors (e.g. Etsy-esque, craftsy items, notes/sketches/papers)

Short URLs for tracking clinks, analytics

URL shortening is one of those ideas that is finally beginning to come of age.  It isn't just for getting a longer post to fit into a tweet or mobile SMS txt or other places where a short URL just makes things work smoother (e.g. broken link in a wrapped, long URL in an email) and look professional and associated with your brand, i.e. short URLs are the modern equivalent of 1-800-MyBrand.   Another couple reasons why short URLs matter for marketing/advertisements can be found in the following blog posting  http://www.clixmarketing.com/blog/2010/09/21/warning-variable-adwords-line-lengths-can-render-ads-meaningless/ ... Use a Short URL in your Google ads!!!

URL shortening is not exactly new -- TinyURL.com or bit.ly, for example,are older, more familiar URL shorteners that you probably recognize.  Many of the early businesses that were created as free services to make posting long URLs easier for anyone were driven out of business by spammers -- obviously, the ones who are still in that business aggressively defend against spammers.

What is beginning to be more widely recognized is the value of using branded, custom shortened URLs (e.g. NYT.ms for NY Times) as a key part of a marketing campaign to establish and build a brand.   The REALLY BIG use for shortened URLs is all about tracking clicks as the content of those shortened URLs gets spread across the web.  You will want to check into several different services:

• bit.ly PRO ... still in BETA, but launched December, 2009; now arguably the benchmark for branded, custom URL tracking [this does not mean there are not others that might not be trying harder ...]; it is worth checking out the bit.ly API and even the bit.ly hackabit
• awe.sm A custom URL shortener with API. detailed analytics, uptime guarantee and SLAs. 
• Peashoot allows you to manage social media campaigns with your own short URLs.
• Tinyarro.ws  use a custom domain with Tinyarro.ws' tiny links service  The tinyarro service uses the ➡.ws domain; you should also be able to use Internationalized Domain Names(IDNs).  IDNs can contain one or more characters from non-Latin alphabets such as Arabic, Chinese, Korean or Japanese, an advantage in setting up an online presence in a non-English speaking market.
• Google Short Links  ... beyond goo.gl, Google also offers a URL shortener as part of Google Apps for a domain that you might host on Google Apps ... for example go.1bd.bz/blog or go.1bd.bz/Facebook ... hopefully, the shortened 1bd.bz domain is somewhat memorable, reminding people to go to "#1 bid biz"  or the #1 auction service for businesses ... it could also be used for other shortened URLs a.1bd.bz, i.1bd.bz or q.1bd.bz
• YOURLS is a small set of PHP scripts that will allow you to run your own URL shortening service (a la TinyURL). You can make it private or public, you can pick custom keyword URLs, it comes with its own API. 
• Argyle Social is a software-as-a-service platform that helps marketers link social media efforts to business outcomes; part of its service includes branded, custom short URLs
• cli.gs was one of the earlier, more broadly used URL shorteners that now has added analytics, social media monitoring and geotargeting; cli.gs was written in PHP hosted on Amazon's EC2 and SimpleDB, demonstrating the scalability of this sort of tool. Although cli.gs had tens of thousands of registered user accounts, and did tens of millions of forwards a month, but it was a one-man show and produced no revenue, making it impossible to turn cli.gs into more than a one man show and was shut down on 10/9/2009 -- it was acquired by Mister Wong on 12/1/2009
• Finally, you will definitely want to take a look at BudURL Pro and the BudURL Pro API.

There are other URL shorteners services out there that are especially worth looking into if you are interested in marketing and analytics ...but if you want to grow your audience, generate leads and understand your customers better, you really should be looking into developing a strategy for your own brand's custom short URL service.

Building Web Reputation Or Content-Filtering Systems

Perhaps you looking into are building a social media site with user-generated content (UGC) to generate leads and drive revenue, if so you may also be looking into how you might build web reputation or content-filtering system [if only from a technical/web development standpoint].  After all, in order to really enable social commerce (to build upon what Blippy.com or Yelp.com or ePinions.com have done)  it is necessary to deepen the level of interaction among users, to make it possible to go beyond a circle of friends, to refer to reputable users for recommendations ... not all users opinions are equal; also, the value of users recommendation may vary with the subject material.

If you are serious about adding a reptuation dimension to your site, you really should look into the work of Eric Goldman [a lawyer w/ePinions.com] who has been a solid background in the research surrounding how reputation systems are regulated.  Eric's view  is that the word "reputation" is a complex and nuanced word AND, that treating both objects and people as having "reputations" does not work.  Eric's website and blogs are rich source of discussion of the deep academic literature on content filtering and user incentive systems far beyond beyond Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational's descriptions of human psychology and quirks.

I am one of those people who follows what Loic Le Meur and his crew are up to ... mostly this means that I follow the seesmic blog  ...which includes updates to Seesmic.com, the Seesmic plug-in marketplace, ping.fm, the ping developers group and  twhirl

Everyday it makes me think about the new "cultural geography" that is being built ... it's a geography that does not depend as much on roads or buildings ... it doesn't even depend upon one form of internet or wireless infrastructure or another [internet/wireless access is important to get there now; there will better ways in 25 or 50 years] ... the cultural geography is built around new communities that are being built -- these communities are not built on ports, on rivers on railroads or roadways ... these communities are getting built according to interests.  As with our physical cities and towns, many on the ones that were important early will fade; some will become much more popular and powerful, new ones will be built.  The big thing about the cultural geography is that physical geography does not matter nearly as much as it did ten years ago -- in another ten years, physical geography will matter less ... in 50 years, physical geography may not matter at all.

Another thing about the cultural geography, you get to pick which communities matter to you -- you can choose NONE, you can  build your own ... you can choose communities that are primarily populated by people from Russia or Brazil or China [who still think differently than you do ... although this is less true than it was 10, 25, 100 years ago and will continue to change].  Right the list of the worlds most important communities [to me] looks something like the following:

Twitter
Facebook
Facebook Pages
Google Buzz
MySpace
Ning
GTalk Status
AIM Status
LinkedIn
Tumblr
Identi.ca
Brightkite
FriendFeed
Plurk
Jaiku
Blogger
Plaxo Pulse
Bebo
WordPress.com
Custom URL
Delicious
Koornk
YouAre
Multiply
Yammer
Flickr
StatusNet
TypePad
StreetMavens
myYearbook
Posterous
Photobucket
Yahoo Profiles
Tagged
5Y4.me
5s4.me
BestSteakInTheUniverse.com
Bidm.at
Biermonger
BreakNeck Cider
Clichesaurus
CloudKernel
DOYNK.me
Drup.bz
FRJ.me
Finance Genome Project
Funnier.Be
GRN.AM
Inner Dufus
LIB.fm
NRG.ag
PR4.bz
PWR.fm
Pyrolytic Edge
SKTCH
SQL.ag
Seeds of Action
StopPD.us
THK.fm
TRZ.me
Venture Genome Project
YMD.me
frix.in
r8r.bz
recyclecamp

Planning marketing success -- stick with your budget, diversify your investments in order to learn, add your business vision -- then execute and measure, track performance, adjust and re-load

Sometimes it's tough to read the subtlies in the tea leaves -- at other times, the object lesson is drop dead obvious: consider the comparison between [comfy bricks and mortar] Barnes & Noble and [online visionary] Amazon in the last three years, i.e. the frugality and comparability of online commerce are things that are here to stay.  If you are not already part of the stampede, you should consider aggressively moving the majority of your marketing, lead generation, lead conversion, client fulfillment activities,.customer service and customer support activities online.  Beyond simply moving activities online, these services should move in the direction of being accessible from smartphones using apps and wireless internet, i.e. consider the object lesson provided by Apple/Google  [who've been more aggressive in wireless] vs Microsoft [who is dependent upon desktop customers].

Beyond making your business mobile-ready, you need to develop a strategy that allows you to USE and OPTIMIZE the management of your data [which does NOT mean hiding, protecting, refusing to share and just sitting on your data hoping that noboby else uses it].  This means moving assets the cloud, thinking about providing data APIs to developers and exploiting the technologies available now for BIG DATA.  Of course, the most robust strategy is always infrastructure independent, so it's best to evaluate cloud service providers with an eye toward retaining flexibility and control (i.e. don't be seduced by "private cloud" arguments; be ready to move if a better opportunity comes along).  If we want to look in more detail how to prepare to market online, do some studying and take your own "Web Marketing 101" set of classes ... the basic outline looks something like the bullet points in this blog posting, but you should do your own reading and, of course, look to the experts for more guidance.

Before you get too excited, go back and look at your MBA texts on marketing fundamentals again.  You'll hear about the new rules or PR and how marketing has changed more in the last five years than it has in the previous 100, the FUNDAMENTALS have NOT changed.  If you look at the fundamentals will make you focus on what gotten better with new web marketing alternatives, rather than being distracted by hype or extra features.  It will always be best to think like a customer; now it is particularly essential to think how your customers will be using web-based, mobile-based marketing -- there is no substitute for being familiar with how customers accesses the channel ... the pioneers have already started to settle this territory, you should try to learn lessons from their successes.  A web and online marketing should include various channels:

• an Web 2.0 website, content management framework with community forums or similarly active form of online presence ... make sure it's current, updated frequently ... keep it simple, spare and FAST [for impatient users, for mobile users, for users with old computers or slow connections] ... unless you are in some form of the "artistic" business, resist your "inner artist" ... be extremely wary of technology especially animations or similar gadgety things that require a long time to load and are the likely first point of failure -- do not imagine that you are building anticipation in your audience with some form of grand intro, save the drum rolls for live performances
• reinforce your web presence in ways that drive people to the site ... use a continuously updated blog (better yet a vlog since blogs are going by the wayside, especially without an accompanying vlog), daily RSS news feed, Twitter updates and updates to various communities through Ping.fm ... actively participate in a real, genuine, authentic way in social communities -- comment on postings, follow blogs, use the "Like" button WHEN YOU LIKE SOMETHING on Facebook, become familiar with tools and apps on the keys sites you use [beyond just Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ning]
• try to incorporate a social commerce utility with special draws, promotions, reasons for people visit ... this can start with a simple web storefront with a shopping cart OR maybe an electronic online auction  ... the next phase is incorporates some form of collaborative/interactive activity such as online designer (e.g. CafePress custom t-shirts for events/special occasions) ... you will want to tie it in with "inside" special limited-time deals from either Twitter or your email campaign -- the important thing is to find a way to "interact" with your customers, provoke their interest ... finally, you will want to explore ways to involve them in discussion, perhaps with a user forum, perhaps support the storefront with online chat, seek product ratings or reactions from your customers, give them tool to "shop together" to communicate and sustain their relationships with their friends AND with you.
• public relations campaigns / community events / live auctions / "real world" entertainment ... you have to have a "real world" presence, you have to prove that you are GENUINE, you have find ways to help people enjoy life and have fun, find ways for them to make news [with you], to generate enjoyable, memorable activity OFFLINE ... the reason to LEAD volunteer efforts and PR campaigns in your communities [in campaigns that mesh with your expertise, business mission] is people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care ... the REASON that companies like Goldman Sachs became as successful and as powerful as they are, is that their leadership recognized the importance of being entirely altruistic and providing helpful leadership in the short-term without charge, so that they could establish the good will and relationships necessary to capture long-term opportunities.  You must be careful, because if you act in a way that shows you aren't really interested in helping, but just doing the PR campaign for immediate returns (i.e. a way that shows you are greedy in the short-term), you will not get either the immediate returns or the long-term good will. 
• videos / photos / podcasts and other forms of multimedia data appropriate to your business ... a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth more IF THEY ARE DONE WELL -- save the shaky, unedited videos and out-of-focus, poorly composed images for your friends and family [to joke about your lack of skils] ... much of the content on YouTube or Flickr is substandard -- not all of it is, some of it is really well done by professionals -- before you embark on a multimedia campaign that embarrasses you, you really should look at a professional workflow for video and photo -- if you watch this video and maybe some of the others posted on Chase Jarvis's blog, I think you'll agree that Chase and his crew have a lot of fun AND they have a really solid workflow with a lot of elements that you can adapt
• search engine optimization with website analytics for understanding usage ... it is not only important for you to understand how search engines work and how to optimize your site (e.g. HTML tags, keywords, inbound links, sitemaps, SEO tools, vs. competitors, etc), it also important for you to understand how to get information from the data you pull from analytics tools.  You need to know how all of your visitors [including searching engine spiders/bots/scrapers] to your websites,  your social commerce tools, your blogs, your videos and every element in your web strategy navigate and use the things that you provide them ... if don't understand how to track performance, you're GUESSING about what your guessing about, i.e. you're screwed, you just don't know it yet.    
• Google AdWords/AdSense, similar online advertising, affiliate programs ... it's important to spend time understanding how these programs ... maybe more important than any of the other bullet points ... you should also understand how you are going to use a CRM tool like Salesforce, Zoho CRM, SugarCRM, Microsoft Dynamics or Oracle OnDemand to convert leads from these ads into opportunities/proposals/closed sales.
• tracked opt-in email marketing  ... send ONLY to people who have opt-ed in ... NEVER,EVER do anything perceived as unsolicited spam ...NEVER,EVER, EVER do anything perceived as unsolicited spam ...  realize, also, that email is dying ... younger generation users already find email passe and do not use it ... tracked email might still work for an older audience -- but be very careful
• mobile apps, data APIs and other ways to share continuously updated data with developers of mobile and social community apps ...beyond just developing your own apps, look for ways to get developers involved in building tools that will make them successful (a la the communities of developers for Facebook apps, Twitter apps or Android phones) ... everything you do on this front will ensure your long-term web marketing success ... you will need to develop a different sort of metrics to measure your progress on this front, i.e. it is necessary to realize the strategic, long-term nature of this sort of effort ... you should also try to envision that what the population of 5 billion mobile web users will look like, try to envision where your segment of this market is going.

The bottom line in marketing is will always be about developing a budget and using a quantifiable, but diversified plan, measuring effectiveness, tracking performance and adjusting the plan.  Realize your plans will always be out-of-date artifacts and largely incorrect -- it is tempting to conclude that plans are useless, but the continual cyclical process of planning, doing, checking, acting, revising and repeating is vital and essential.  The plan is the script that you are working from ... but you will always be tracking, revising, improving the script.  Tracking performance, looking at the analytics, discerning patterns and measuring effectiveness of all of the elements in your entire mix of all marketing activities will allow to do two things: 1) executed in a more coordinated fashion, and 2) budget more wisely to target your investment in those activities with a clearly positive ROI.  Without measurements, analytics and tracking, you are completely guessing at where you should invest more heavily and which activities to eliminate -- a quantitative data-driven approach will not eliminate all uncertainty, but it should improve your ability to guess correctly when it is coupled with a qualitative approach.

Yext CLAIMS to Bring the Power of Internet Advertising to Every Local Business ... ok, but what about doing no evil ... is that what's next ... Yext?

Yext works to manage reputations ... using internet ads for local business ... and today launched Yext Rep, online real-time reputation management service for local businesses ...

I suppose I will be following Yext ... because I'm very interested in the reputation management industry ... I won't be the only one -- Yext is in one cutthroat industry; it's cutthroat because it reputation management / advertising / analytics is a really HUGE thing (after all, that's what Google's business is built on) ... I wonder when I see a company like Yext [one that aims right at Google's core business] if their starting objective was to develop an enterprise that Google [or maybe Microsoft] would acquire?  I am SUPER happy that someone is giving Google competition ... I  guess I'd like to know if the best startup exit strategy has become sometihing like, "Punch the big guy in the yard in the nose -- then hope that the big guy notices enough, so that he offers you a few million to own you?"

{NOTE:  Google grossly oversimplifies when they says that they just focus on one thing; they say that they "just do search."   Yeah, sort of.  Of course, just search is not what fuels the business ... their BUSINESS is based on their PageRank reputation mgmt algorithm which makes their search engine results worthy of ad revenue AND drives websites to provide better content.  Google's website Analytics helps content providers improve their content [an improve what the Google webcrawling spiders see] so that the content providers can earn money for themselves and Google through AdSense.  That's what "just doing search" means.}

What is notable to me is that Yext lacks the Google "do no evil" principle, which is perhaps understandable since, at first blush, the Google principle might sound overly idealistic -- EXCEPT both Google and Yext are messing around with peoples' reputations and the reputation of their content ... ethics matter more in terms of danger to your business ... well, we'll see how Yext does -- their three core principles are:

1. Measure and Monitor Numerical Details ...  measure everything.
2. Fanatically Focus on Customer ROI and Publisher Yield ... Yext knows that they are only as good as the amount of business they send to their customers and yield they deliver to their our partners.
3. There is no such thing as luck...continuous innovation, iteration, and perspiration.

For contrast, Google's ten core principles are worth reviewing ... again and again [since they aren't bad principles to adopt] ... I've cut-and-pasted them here from Google's page on corporate philosophy.

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.
   Since the beginning, we’ve focused on providing the best user experience possible. Whether we’re designing a new Internet browser or a new tweak to the look of the homepage, we take great care to ensure that they will ultimately serve you, rather than our own internal goal or bottom line. Our homepage interface is clear and simple, and pages load instantly. Placement in search results is never sold to anyone, and advertising is not only clearly marked as such, it offers relevant content and is not distracting. And when we build new tools and applications, we believe they should work so well you don't have to consider how they might have been designed differently.
2. It’s best to do one thing really, really well.
   We do search. With one of the world's largest research groups focused exclusively on solving search problems, we know what we do well, and how we could do it better. Through continued iteration on difficult problems, we’ve been able to solve complex issues and provide continuous improvements to a service that already makes finding information a fast and seamless experience for millions of people. Our dedication to improving search helps us apply what we've learned to new products, like Gmail and Google Maps. Our hope is to bring the power of search to previously unexplored areas, and to help people access and use even more of the ever-expanding information in their lives.
3. Fast is better than slow.
   We know your time is valuable, so when you’re seeking an answer on the web you want it right away – and we aim to please. We may be the only people in the world who can say our goal is to have people leave our homepage as quickly as possible. By shaving excess bits and bytes from our pages and increasing the efficiency of our serving environment, we’ve broken our own speed records many times over, so that the average response time on a search result is a fraction of a second. We keep speed in mind with each new product we release, whether it’s a mobile application or Google Chrome, a browser designed to be fast enough for the modern web. And we continue to work on making it all go even faster.
4. Democracy on the web works.
   Google search works because it relies on the millions of individuals posting links on websites to help determine which other sites offer content of value. We assess the importance of every web page using more than 200 signals and a variety of techniques, including our patented PageRank™ algorithm, which analyzes which sites have been “voted” to be the best sources of information by other pages across the web. As the web gets bigger, this approach actually improves, as each new site is another point of information and another vote to be counted. In the same vein, we are active in open source software development, where innovation takes place through the collective effort of many programmers.
5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.
   The world is increasingly mobile: people want access to information wherever they are, whenever they need it. We’re pioneering new technologies and offering new solutions for mobile services that help people all over the globe to do any number of tasks on their phone, from checking email and calendar events to watching videos, not to mention the several different ways to access Google search on a phone. In addition, we’re hoping to fuel greater innovation for mobile users everywhere with Android, a free, open source mobile platform. Android brings the openness that shaped the Internet to the mobile world. Not only does Android benefit consumers, who have more choice and innovative new mobile experiences, but it opens up revenue opportunities for carriers, manufacturers and developers.
6. You can make money without doing evil.
   Google is a business. The revenue we generate is derived from offering search technology to companies and from the sale of advertising displayed on our site and on other sites across the web. Hundreds of thousands of advertisers worldwide use AdWords to promote their products; hundreds of thousands of publishers take advantage of our AdSense program to deliver ads relevant to their site content. To ensure that we’re ultimately serving all our users (whether they are advertisers or not), we have a set of guiding principles for our advertising programs and practices:
   • We don’t allow ads to be displayed on our results pages unless they are relevant where they are shown. And we firmly believe that ads can provide useful information if, and only if, they are relevant to what you wish to find – so it's possible that certain searches won’t lead to any ads at all.
   • We believe that advertising can be effective without being flashy. We don't accept pop–up advertising, which interferes with your ability to see the content you’ve requested. We’ve found that text ads that are relevant to the person reading them draw much higher clickthrough rates than ads appearing randomly. Any advertiser, whether small or large, can take advantage of this highly targeted medium.
   • Advertising on Google is always clearly identified as a “Sponsored Link,” so it does not compromise the integrity of our search results. We never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search results and no one can buy better PageRank. Our users trust our objectivity and no short-term gain could ever justify breaching that trust.
7. There’s always more information out there.
   Once we’d indexed more of the HTML pages on the Internet than any other search service, our engineers turned their attention to information that was not as readily accessible. Sometimes it was just a matter of integrating new databases into search, such as adding a phone number and address lookup and a business directory. Other efforts required a bit more creativity, like adding the ability to search news archives, patents, academic journals, billions of images and millions of books. And our researchers continue looking into ways to bring all the world's information to people seeking answers.
8. The need for information crosses all borders.
   Our company was founded in California, but our mission is to facilitate access to information for the entire world, and in every language. To that end, we have offices in dozens of countries, maintain more than 150 Internet domains, and serve more than half of our results to people living outside the United States. We offer Google's search interface in more than 110 languages, offer people the ability to restrict results to content written in their own language, and aim to provide the rest of our applications and products in as many languages and accessible formats as possible. Using our translation tools, people can discover content written on the other side of the world in languages they don't speak. With these tools and the help of volunteer translators, we have been able to greatly improve both the variety and quality of services we can offer in even the most far–flung corners of the globe.
9. You can be serious without a suit.
   Our founders built Google around the idea that work should be challenging, and the challenge should be fun. We believe that great, creative things are more likely to happen with the right company culture – and that doesn't just mean lava lamps and rubber balls. There is an emphasis on team achievements and pride in individual accomplishments that contribute to our overall success. We put great stock in our employees – energetic, passionate people from diverse backgrounds with creative approaches to work, play and life. Our atmosphere may be casual, but as new ideas emerge in a café line, at a team meeting or at the gym, they are traded, tested and put into practice with dizzying speed – and they may be the launch pad for a new project destined for worldwide use.
10. Great just isn’t good enough.
    We see being great at something as a starting point, not an endpoint. We set ourselves goals we know we can’t reach yet, because we know that by stretching to meet them we can get further than we expected. Through innovation and iteration, we aim to take things that work well and improve upon them in unexpected ways. For example, when one of our engineers saw that search worked well for properly spelled words, he wondered about how it handled typos. That led him to create an intuitive and more helpful spell checker.
    Even if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, finding an answer on the web is our problem, not yours. We try to anticipate needs not yet articulated by our global audience, and meet them with products and services that set new standards. When we launched Gmail, it had more storage space than any email service available. In retrospect offering that seems obvious – but that’s because now we have new standards for email storage. Those are the kinds of changes we seek to make, and we’re always looking for new places where we can make a difference. Ultimately, our constant dissatisfaction with the way things are becomes the driving force behind everything we do.