Be proactive and not reactionary.

Take decisions based upon where you want to be, not where you are at.

During times like these, most businesses and people tend to want to cut back, thus creating opportunities for proactive companies and people like us…

This is the time to step up while other cut back. Successful businesses don’t wait for the tough economic times to turn around. They go out and make the changes happen for themselves.

“More millionaires where created during the great depression than any other period.”

Are you going to take hold of the opportunities or are you going to sit, wait, worry, cut back and freeze-up?

While others cut back, increase your advertising spending and gain new customers and market shares.

While others sell off their stock holding out of fear, seek out bargains

As lending rates fall and foreclosures are on the upswing during though times, look at buying a home or a business.

And the list goes on….

Although our modern economic system is a very complex monster, think about this…. Is our panic a reactionary behavior to a real and current recession or do we freak out in reaction to the doom and gloom media speculation, thus creating a recession?

There’s a lot of money out there… You just need to find a way to attract it.

ShareThis

SoundCloud: The Tour from SoundCloud on Vimeo.

ShareThis

The MySpace homepage has a higher 18-34 composition than any other portal

25% of Americans are on MySpace

40% of all moms in the US are on MySpace.

MySpace is the most trafficked website in the US

12% of all online minutes are spent on MySpace

13.6% of all Internet users in the world are on MySpace

With 15 languages available, MySpace is the most translated social network

MySpace is the place where bands and artists hang out online…over 6 million world wide…to connect with fans and share their music

On average 350,000 new people sign up to MySpace every day

MySpace may be the place for ugly layouts, cripplingly-bad design, and trolls, but it’s also where a lot of people are.

If you are marketing online and you’re ignoring MySpace, you are missing the largest of the boats.

ShareThis

Think about it.

An economy slows down and heads towards a recession.

Why?

Because we stop spending due to a fear of losing our jobs and livelihood…  Jobs are lost because we stop spending. You see the cycle?

A recession is just an illusion that we create out of fear feed to us by media speculation and the doom and gloom they paint.

Maybe it’s time we stop taking all this garbage and start taking control of our lives.

Below is a short text that I recently came across written by Dr. Joe Vitale.  He was one of the teachers featured in the book/movie The Secret.

Stop paying attention to the media.

Stop paying attention to the doom and gloom of anyone and everyone around. Stop getting sucked into being a victim.

STOP IT.

You won’t go anywhere buying into the cultural trance that there isn’t enough and times are tough.

You won’t accomplish your big goals, or do anything of real greatness, as long as you give in to outer circumstances.

You have to take back your power.

You have to take back your control.

You have to “awaken.”

Recently I told a woman who was interviewing me that I was homeless and in poverty only as long as I stayed stuck in survival “thinking.”

As soon as I put my mind on what I “wanted” to have instead, I began to shift and get better results.

This can happen for you, too. It took me ten years. You can do it in one weekend.

But you have to stop listening to the media paint a picture of darkness.

The media paints it by finding something dark to report on, whether it’s true or not. You and others listen to it, believe it, and before you know it, you have “created” what the media painted.

They predict a recession before there actually is one.

But people believe the media, fall into fear, stop spending, and suddenly a recession is here.

This has to stop. And it can stop right now.

Break free from money worries.

Break free from job worries.

Break free from health worries.

Break free from love worries.

Break free — PERIOD.

ShareThis

Earlier this week, just like the week before and the week before and before…  a paper brochure came in the mail from the Bloc Québecois.  The latest brochure states that the Bloc is here for the protection of our precious environment.

“Here for the environment” and then mails out tens of thousands of PAPER brochure… This smells like hypocrisy to me.

I’ve sent emails to the Bloc, asking to stop this waste and I was very clear to a Bloc representative upon one of their campaign visits at my door, that they will not get my vote…  Nonetheless, the PAPER brochures still keep on coming…

Monsieur Duceppe, if you and your party are going to take on the environment as part of your platform, why not go completely digital, instead of the old fashion non eco-friendly paper mail-outs? Just look how Barack Obama took full advantage of social media networks during the US primaries… The 20 to 50 year old Quebecois demographic, which is your target audience, is all online and a strong digital strategy would far outweigh your current offline strategies.

Web2.0, Crowdsourcing, Social Media, Blogging, Facebook, MySpace, Youtube…

Going digital will still not make me vote for the Bloc Québecois, but it may bring more credibility to you, Monsieur Duceppe, and to your party.

ShareThis

Before you accept or schedule a meeting, ask yourself; is this meeting really necessary? If it gets canceled by any means, would that meeting fade away, or could it be taken care of with an e-mail, or, would it in fact prove to have genuine value?

“When you take care of your life, do you develop overcomplicated processes for getting things done? Do you spend your free time coming up with systems and programs for buying birthday presents or making dinner or feeding the dog? Do you have regular family meetings to discuss whether or not people are doing heir chores, what the status of those chores is, and what kind of outcomes those chores are expected to achieve?

Why do we spend so much of our business life talking about the business we need to take care of rather than simply taking care of it?”
-From Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It

Some believe, including myself, the solution is in a ROWE.

ROWE stands for Results-Only Work Environment. In a ROWE, each person is free to do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as the work gets done. The old rules that govern a traditional work environment—core hours, “face time,” pointless meetings, etc.—have been replaced by one rule: focus only on results.

In a traditional work environment, the coworker who gets in early, leaves late, attends every meeting possible and is an avid buzzword user looks like they’re a superstar. In a ROWE, they’re just making a choice about when, where and how they work.

For all you managers out there; praise the outcomes, not the behavior.
Stop praising/admiring people for their “dedication” and start
praising people for what they accomplish.

Stop and think about the following:

1) We rush to work everyday and then spend the first hour at our desk reading the paper and drinking coffee?

2) If you’re done with your work for the day at 4pm, why do you have to stay that extra hour and pretend to be busy?

3) Why do we assume that time = productivity instead of talking about the kind of results the person is actually getting?

ShareThis

Is it for everyone? Like anything else, no. But Twitter has a real use for media companies and social-media-savvy brands.

According to Jeremiah Owyang in his article on MarketingProfs, Twitter is a tool through which subscribers can further reach their audiences, real-time. Users can hear and express thought leadership, broadcast their messages, connect to the influencers both on their desktop and through their mobile units, among other things.

Like much of social media… it’s another ear to the ground, another touchpoint, another “opportunity to build relationships,” according to Jeremiah.

Here are a few points to consider before applying Twitter to your overall digital marketing strategy.

1. Don’t think about it like advertising. That’s a really quick way to get kicked out or just never have anyone follow you on Twitter.

2. Build a community with existing customers. Approach it as a community channel, rather than an ad channel, which will net larger groups of participants and help spread organically.

3. Like with all social media sites, posting regularly is critical. Stay in front of people and participate in the Twitter community at large.

Is Twitter for you and your company?

ShareThis

The 3 photos below where taking just outside my apartment, one month apart…

1) March 10, 2008: Winter’s fury with the biggest snow storm of the decade.
2) April 10, 2008: Spring is in the air with flowers and trees blooming.
3) May 10, 2008: Summer has arrived and will hopefully stick around for a while.

ShareThis

In today’s environment, you need to be everywhere. There is no excuse for not having your band and your songs on every Social Network there is. The reason, your fans, current and future, are on every site there is. If they look for you on Facebook and you are not there, you just lost a fan.

Social Media attracts more listeners, drives fans to buy your merchandise and keeps them coming back by offering fresh content from songs, pictures, blogs, videos, etc.

Lets say you played an awesome sow last night and you met some fans who were ecstatic about your band. They go home and log into Amazon, MySpace, Facebook or whatever and you’re not there, you lost a sale. You see how important the impact of being everywhere? It’s simple.

As the Social sphere becomes more open with API’s and OpenID, PlaxoPulse, OpenSocial and other Internet changing sites, it will become easier than ever to update your profiles all from one site. For example, with a Twitter update you can currently change your Facebook status, Pownce status, get updates sent from your blog, from video tools such as Blip.tv and create mash-ups to see where all of your Twitter friends are Twitting from.

As some of the music sites get around to opening up, there will be a one-stop process for uploading photos, changing profile pics, updating shows and even uploading your music. This said, keep in mind that that some music sites like PureVolume and Soundclick have been around long before OpenSocial was even a thought in the tech scene… Some might take a while.

Be everywhere! As the saying goes, “Play your heart out every night, you never know who will be there”. Well the same holds true online multiplies 10-folds.

ShareThis

These are the sites that are defining our current state of the Internet, the sites that are responsible for giving every single person in the entire world the opportunity to promote themselves online.

Start using them yourselves, as they are more than means to market and promote things. They will help you share and organize your information, your pictures, movies, and videos. They will help you manage the little things in life.

Once you start using these sites, you’ll learn how they can help you in your marketing and advertising efforts. If you don’t use them and help contribute to their communities, then those communities will never help you…

ShareThis