While chatting with my friend Jason this week he said “…by the way I’m launching a Twitter Game Show site tomorrow called “Find That Tweet“. I think you’ll like it.” Just wish I thought of it! How clever. We were talking about how he used to hide cash for twitter users, like Tony Hawk ended up doing with skate decks. The official launch day was yesterday and I was hooked!!! All I needed to do was find a tweet after watching video clues and I win money. The coolest part is he set it up so when I tweet it out a link is created in my tweet via his system and if someone clicks and starts playing and they win I get some money from them winning too! Crazy sick and so super smart plus a ton of fun.
My new friend @Ribeezie direct messaged me, (also known as “DM”), on Twitter this morning and told me to “Now bring back some of that good stuff and share ” about Zappos Insights inaugural conference. Zappos, a billion dollar online commerce destination, is known for their leadership in customer service. Insights was created as an educational forum to guide entrepreneurs to successfully attain milestones. It was a privilege to be a part of their LIVE event, a revolution in leadership and corporate happiness. One of the speakers at the event, social media maven Brian Solis, said it perfectly, “In the end we’re measured by our actions, not our words.”
Three huge takes aways from the event that will transform the productivity and efficiency in our organizations.
Share….Stop self promoting and start listening. Share information that you know delivers value because you have been listening. Whether it be employees, personal relationships, twitter followers or facebook friends. The way to effectively intrigue people to take action is fueled by being inspired.
Discover your foundation before you start building.… The most crucial component in determining success in a company and in your personal development is first discovering what matters to you most.; Your core values. It starts with you, outside of your professional life. The business owner behind closed doors. When you look in the mirror what do you see? Integrity, Transparency, Adventure… Deceit…? In order to grow we must be honest with ourselves. It is so clear to me now that if I had taken the time to discover, write down, and share my core values with my team it would have reduced management, increased productivity and complimented my company vision. But instead I found ego was something in my company that created road blocks for our success. What’s interesting is ego is so far from my personal values. If I had taken the time to write down what’s important to me, I would have quickly discovered my team mate strayed from our core values and that situation could have been remedied with eloquence and efficiency.
3. Half of the world is searching for the other half of the world, but don’t know how to find them. Brian Solis emphasizes that before even planning an online marketing strategy establish your identity. Most brands don’t even strategize, they just jump on a band wagon. But lets say you are developing a strategy, before that DISCOVER your identity that you plan to communicate in this strategy. I LOVE that Brian reinforced this. I hadn’t even thought of charting out my brand identity before planning. I figured my identity is obvious. Surf brand means you’re a surfer right? No, not necessarily. You must establish your brand to stand for something. A Cause. Something bigger and selflLESS than selling a pair of board shorts.
My Mom always says half of the world is looking for the other half of the world, but don’t know where to find them. I guess that is the “interwebs” definition of finding one another – SEO. I just installed this simple wordtracker plug in I found via Jeremy Morgan from Hash Marketing who has made in his goal to find the most quality SEO tweets.
Here’s an article written by Chris Garret, a professional blogger (whom I don’t know) demonstrating how to best utilize the plug in tool. He wrote the popular book “Pro Blogger” which was recommended to me by my someone I do know and adore, Blog World founder Rick Calvert.
I have stumbled upon WordPress heaven. Blog oh Blog and Best Word Press Themes . I recently switched from wordpress.COM to wordpress.ORG… A lot of you don’t get what the difference is. Basically WordPress.ORG allows way more customization and flexibility.
You do need to know a wee little bit of coding, so for that I found this free 7 day blogging course done by an amazing 20 year old entrepreneur from England. I’ve been raving about this guys blog like crazy called Income Diary. In the first day of the course it shows you step by step how to easily set up a wordpress.ORG blog.
And its absolutley crazy how far we have come on this foreign powerhouse called the internet where a website for your business is the same must as having a business card. So for business presence check out the top 20 wordpress theme for small businesses. So cool! I just can’t believe all these tools and designs are absolutley free. But its all about knowing they exist right. Right now I am on the hunt for a more social theme myself. Keep on the look out for my soon to be blog make over.
A lot of you ask me to quickly teach you social media. It’s not as quick as its perceived to be. Gary Vaynerchuk himself says if you dedicate an hour then you get an hour’s worth of results. If you dedicate 11 hours then you receive 11 hours worth of results. But its not just being on these social networks. It’s knowing how to use them so that fans, members, consumers, engage with you in order to in end create stronger ROI than your current marketing and advertising efforts. Which social platforms are right for you and your brand. Do you jump on Twitter because everyone seems to be on it… Not necessarily.
and now Dave Days who I stumbled across today. 14 Million hits and counting!
What made me want to blog about him though, his quote under his photo, “F college, make a YouTube account.” LOVE IT. It’s not that I don’t support education. I have a college degree. But what I encourage is NOT WAITING to pursue what you are passionate about. Going to college, not going to college. You shouldn’t wait to go after your dreams. I only wish I had more friends like Dave and Dave in high school so we could have conquered the world together.
This post is dedicated to Panda for taking the risk and going after your dreams. Just remember to appreciate the people who help you along the way.
This week was tech mania. Woodstock watch out because LA was transformed. Tech Paintball, Tech Zulu anniversary, Twiist Up 5 and Twestival. Nuts! Gave me plenty of excuses to get out of the house and shmooze with my newfound besties. I ran into Richard from PR Newswire and made the comment that Twitter is the new press release. It is. Consumers, you and me, want to purchase based on our friends’ feedback rather than what we read in an “official” review. And twitter is just that. We follow those we want to hear from, both friends and associates. We trust their opinions. It’s cool. And now the business and friend world has merged with such fluidity that instead of once saying “MySpace me” it’s now “Follow Me”. The transformations in today’s PR world are fantastic. Filled with more truth and opportunity for discovery.
It's time to believe. I'm sick and tired of people making excuses for not going after their dreams. I'm going after mine and doing just fine. Crazy, sure. Manic, of course. Exhilarated, all the time. If you don't try then well... I am just sorry you missed out.
I’ve been working with virtual assistants for years. There are a ton of business tasks I can’t stand doing because they take an immense amount of time and aren’t the things I need to be doing to push my company forward. Some of the tasks are data entry, scanning business cards, internet research, product comparison [...]
Tonight I skipped a Friday night on the town in Los Angeles with Silverlake hipsters, Hollywood socialites and Venice Beach Dogtown skater boys to watch a video case study on how a company called AppSumo grew to 500,000 customers in only 18 months. The information in the videos was AWESOME. AppSumo is like [...]
Have you ever searched for a local business or service and seen google search results that look like this: These are called Google Places and if you are a local business or service provider with a real address you can grab one of these for free, courtesy of Google. In fact Google wants you [...]
About Gary: Im a life enthusiast with an insatiable hunger for more. I dream of what I want, go for it then analyze it after. This process is called dreamlining. Dreamlining has helped me through my whole life from skateboarding, language learning to transforming my body. I’m a serial investor that analyzes every opportunity presented. [...]
Zappos, a billion dollar online commerce destination, is known for their leadership in customer service. Insights was created as an educational forum to guide entrepreneurs to successfully attain milestones. It was a privilege to be a part of their LIVE event, a revolution in leadership and corporate happiness. One of the speakers at the event, social media maven Brian Solis, said it perfectly, “In the end we’re measured by our actions, not our words.”
” about 
