My fondest memories as a kid was not playing with my friends until exhaustion, but the part after were I had time to daydream by laying on the grass or in the hammock staring up at the leaves on the trees or the clouds in they sky transforming them into anything just by using my imagination. In my opinion it is something we have forgotten how to do as adults because we “don’t have the time.” In my opinion this directly correlates with productivity and quality versus quantity debate. I often do my best creative thinking and work when I’m not always rushed to be “productive.” Doing less with more is always great and helps achieve the bottom line, but the mistakes that are made along the way can be much more costly because of short term goals. My parents always encouraged me, at a very young age, to be involved in creative reading and writing. This lead them to help me submit entries as part of local library competitions. What I felt were nonsensical stories, they saw as teaching point and opportunity to present the bigger picture importance of storytelling in everything that we do as a human race to communicate to one another.

In life this translates from school into the business world. Sir Robinson echoes this statement by saying, “Kids will take a chance. They’re not frightened of being wrong and if you’re not prepared to be wrong you will never come up with anything original. We run our companies this way. We stigmatize mistakes.” In business school one of the first things they teach is the importance of being flexible, agile, and having the ability to adapt to an ever-changing landscape and yet you see news stories on a daily basis of companies everyday not doing that. The most recent victims of this in the headlines have been Yahoo and RIM (of Blackberry fame). There is been speculation in tech circles that Microsoft is headed that direction as well. Some of the greatest success stories come out of failure, and in the software and design industries this is referred to as, “fail early and fail often” so that investment money isn’t wasted by focusing on the wrong things.

Do you think as adults if we were allowed to explore the what ifs more often, than doing what our predecessors did, that we would change and evolve quicker as a individuals, small businesses, big businesses, or as a society? These days it is as if our educational leaders and politicians are going through the motions of fill a need for the workforce rather than investing in the next generation of innovative leaders. The problem with this is that paints a bleak picture for future generations. Arts and music programs are being cut in from school budgets at an ever increasing rate, and after school programs being switched to play to play. Research shows there is a direct corollary between this activity and increased crime rates. Call me a bleeding heart liberal if you want to, but it is a basic fundamental necessity that affects every single one of us in more ways than we can imagine. It only becomes our problem until it is already too late. If we don’t change our outdated educational system to include encouraging creativity in our daily lives, imagine what our future will look like in 10 to 20 years.

The thing I question the most in my life is the true value of going to college and the competitive advantage to getting a bachelor’s degree. My mom always said, “It will be the best four years of your life.” She was right to a certain extent, but as Sir Robinson points out it is a direct result of the Information Age as an answer to the industrial revolution. “We are educating people out of their creative capacities. Picasso once said that all children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. We don’t grow into creativity. We grow out of it. Or rather we get educated out of it.” What happens when the industrial revolution is over? When I first started taking classes for my major in communications at Ohio University I thought to myself what a joke. All the things that they my professors were teaching me I had already learned and had been practicing in junior high and high school.

My first job out of college working at a local TV station I instantly felt like I had wasted my time in school because of coworkers that were my age that didn’t go to school had moved up the ladder when I was paying my dues on the ground floor even though I had done the “real world” experience through summer internships and constant self education in my free time. Recently I watched a CBS segment of Sunday Morning addressing the increasing problem of internships going to students from families with greater economic status simply for the reason that the cost of living is just too projected debt for a middle income family to incur. If I had it to do all over again would I have done anything differently? Maybe and maybe not. Going back to graduate school motivated, or so I thought, beyond my wildest dreams and often to my wife’s dismay to start my fight against complacency.

It turned out it would be my biggest test of determination and will power to date. However it does beg the question, is it worth it? Sir Robinson refers to this as, “The process of academic inflation in that a job that required a BA now requires a MA, a Ph.d. and so on.” This is where I often ask myself if I had come from different economic circumstances growing up would I have been more motivated to succeed on my own, like so many of the entrepreneurs that I have come to know and admire, or follow the same path as so many had done before me and do what is expected.

These days it seems like there is so much motivation to go the “real world” route because the cost of education and the return on investment leaves you with a decent education, as much debt as the average 30 year home mortgage, and no guarantee of a job. Depending on how you look at whether or not the glass is half empty or half full this is an opportunity for this fundamental change in how we educate in schools around the world. Aside from the basics of primary education it is an opportunity to change an antiquated system to breed then next generation of entrepreneurs and small business owners. Mike Rowe, of Dirty Jobs fame, shares his perspective in saying, “There is a disconnect as kids we were full of wonderment on how things are made and why things work to now as adults, they just do. That there is a cyclical skills gap, and some argue structural gap, that needs to be addressed in order to recapture ingenuity. In high schools all vocational arts have all but vanished. We’ve elevated “higher education” to such a lofty perch that all other forms of knowledge are labeled as alternative. We’ve marginalized critical and creative thinking with books like, The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss.” When I heard him say this it instantly reminded me of publicly funded shows like Fred Rogers’, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and Jim Henson of Sesame Street and The Muppet Show fame. Walt Disney built an empire off of imagination we seem to forget about as adults and only partake in current productions as facilitators to our own kids. Sir Ken Robinson keys in on this notion that, “The whole purpose of public education, through out the world is to produce university professors.” Then you get into a whole other argument about economics, but you get the idea about how everything is interconnected and the biggest success stories come from innovation and creativity.

My question becomes, where are the next generation’s Walt Disneys, Fred Rogers, Jim Hensons, and Mike Rowes? Are they just hidden, I’m looking in the wrong places, or have we forgotten what some would consider national treasures in developing creative innovation that applies to everyday life? Are our priorities out of whack because we’ve been fed by marketers the disposable culture and are too shortsighted to see the long term damage it has caused? It has created this sense of entitlement, expectation, and complacency rather than the factors that this country was founded on or every republic now and in the future will be founded on. I say creative innovation because they didn’t talk about it or put a spin on someone else’s product or service. They just did it.

Part of Robinson’s speech reminds me of the story my dad told me about when he was at a White House dinner party during the Nixon administration and someone asked him what he did for a living. I will never forget what he said happened next. He said, “I answered honestly by telling them I was a high school social studies teacher and they engaged with me as if I was a second class citizen for the rest of the night.” My dad would go on to say that he turned down going to White House dinners with my mom, who was an Assistant Press Secretary for Mrs. Nixon and did a lot of the event planning, because he didn’t find he had much in common. Here you had a president who was known for being a champion of education and civil rights before his troubles with Watergate surrounded with people who thought the idea of education and creativity was beneath them.

Another story my father told me about how as an employee of the public school system to take a civil rights course and the guy teaching it was so misinformed that my dad became the teacher. He later admitted to having a nervous breakdown due to self-realization that everything he had been taught growing up in the small town of Marion, OH had been wrong and that he was living through a cultural revolution on the steps of the Lincoln Monument being witness to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech to correct the history of civil rights in classrooms everywhere.

The rub, as it were, in the whole speech is the creativity of his delivery. He applies humor to a very serious issue facing our educational system. I was never very good at taking tests, but when I had teachers that comprehended I did better through comprehension exercises that is when I had the freedom to develop my passion for creativity. This might explain my impatience with the routine, thirst for new challenges, and the feeling of accomplishment when starting from scratch. A recent Chinese proverb I found recently, in my opinion hits the nail on the head, states; “Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I’ll remember. Involve me and I will understand.” I might be biased and feel that my dad is one of the few exceptions to the rule, but I only hope I can be the kind of teacher to my two girls the way he was a teacher to my sister, me, and so many other young adults that he encouraged to use creativity as their driving force for their life endeavors as future leaders.

The quick and simple answer is: Circles. Google+ changes the way we share information with each other. Unlike Facebook where both parties have to be connected in order to share information or re-share information Google+ allows the end user to decidewhat information they want to shareand with whom. While you can do this with Facebook the simplicity for doing so through the Graphic User Interface (GUI) is just not intuitive. As a close comparison think about it in terms of the simplicity of navigation on Apple products versus Microsoft products or oddly enough Google as Apple and Facebook as Microsoft. These days everything is about speed, convenience and accomplishing tasks without being bogged down by bulky software that is feature rich. The problem with this is it takes too many clicks that even the most advanced user gets frustrated quickly.

The truth is there will probably never be that one piece of software that does everything you want it to do. It is a myth and rather than strive for that Utopian technology. Google, as well as others, realize the competition is about focusing on the “best-in-class” offerings. Having the feature rich mindset is a common and often overlooked issue that was a contributing factor to the failure of Google Wave.  The evolution of clean back-end coding, cloud computing, and HTML 5 has re-energized and propelled technology to the next level when addressing end user wants and needs.

The long answer is: Over the years Google has evolved from just being known as a search engine company into a software as a service (SaaS) company with an a la carte ecosystem.

Google made:

• Gmail to compete with Yahoo and Microsoft’s Hotmail
• Chrome to compete with Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox
• Maps has given us an alternative to Mapquest
• Places to compete with Yellow Pages
• Youtube to compete with television, radio, Netflix, and Hulu
• Docs was made to compete with Microsoft Office and Open Office
• Translate for communicating to your global team or customer base
• Checkout as an alternative to Paypal and other merchant services
• Reader to compete with traditional news services
• Voice and Talk to compete with Skype.

Google+ adds:

• Hangouts to compete with Skype
• Huddle to compete with GroupMe and Beluga

Google has made Google+ the hubspot for tying this ecosystem together in being the “one stop shop” for your social commerce, business collaboration, and entertainment needs. The overlapping of these traditionally separate business functions and online consumer behaviors has led to hybrid and hyper real-time engagement/interaction. This includes getting back to Google’s bread and butter. Answering questions. Remember Quora?

In the near future this will lead to the ever growing mobile market with Android and better communications systems:

• Google Wallet to decrease the amount of plastic in our pocket.
• Google Offers to compete with Groupon and Living Social.
• Google+ Hangouts expand to compete with WebEx and GoToMeeting.
• Google Docs will expand to compete with 37 Signals and ZoHo offerings.

Are you starting to see a pattern forming? You should. In reality Google is looking at Google+ as the missing piece of the puzzle and part of bigger picture for taking Google, the business, to the next level. Google+ is changing the way we do business – period. The ultimate dream of any business comes down to extending a customer’s or potential customer’s attention span for more than average time, which according to studies is currently seven seconds. Aside from that the statistics for Google+ growth will only strengthen the staggering statistics of the brand and its products as a whole. This is a perfect example of Wired’s, Chris Anderson’s freemium model. Most of Google’s products are free. Google’s revenue model comes from having the most having the most eyeballs for the longest amount of time and return visitors. You could even say they “have an app for that” in yet another useful product with Google Analytics. Ok. It really isn’t that simple, but time spent on site or decreasing the bounce rate drives decision makers in the advertising industry on where they spend their money. Google+ creates the ultimate demographic tracking grid for marketers and advertisers to pull from a readymade Management Information System (MIS) to drill down their target audience without the necessity of a focus group. Creator of MySpace and big Google brand advocate, Tom Anderson reinforces this sentiment on why Google+ will succeed whether you use it or not.

Sure you have Twitter and LinkedIn, but they have continued to coexist because of unique offerings to the niche consumer market place. However, Google+ is a big news because it directly competes with Facebook for the most active users and eyeballs for marketers to influence. All the industry experts that follow technology trends closely started to ask, “Who will be the next Facebook?” as they tend to do in an innovation type environment like tech. Guess what? It was right under our nose and we should have seen the warning signs, especially Mark Zuckerburg, when Google made a subtle announcement that it would start to include social engagement from the aforementioned social networks in its search results. Now much like the “Like” button Google+ has the “+1” button and is helping populate organic search results when an end user types a query into the most popular search engine in the world. We are already starting to see these results show up in the search engine results page (SERP).

Actually, the truth is while it maybe a shiny object currently that has room for improvement. Two major hurdles is that they haven’t made business pages yet (coming soon) and they are seeing a little feedback with users wanting to use pseudonyms in place of their real names because real names can put political dissidents, domestic violence victims and others in danger. Google chairman, Eric Schmidt puts it best, “G+ is completely optional. No one is forcing you to use it. It’s obvious for people at risk if they use their real names, they shouldn’t use G+. It is meant as an identity service for reputation management.” This is actually a sentiment that has long been popularized by personal brand advocates like, Dan Schwabel in his book, Me 2.0 Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success. Currently other the only other network that has a way of verifying profiles for authenticity is Twitter. Google is slowly rolling out its own verified profiles. In my opinion, the pseudonym issue is a moot point, but I agree with Silicon Valley writer Mike Elgan who writes, “Google’s window of opportunity for Google+ to succeed is very small and closing if not made a free sign-up service for everyone, very soon.” The good thing about Google+ is that the project team lead by Vic Gundotra and Bradley Horowitz is very responsive to user feedback and rolling out changes to current features and implementing new ones. They are doing a great job considering that the name on the door is Google, but people need to keep in mind it is a massive undertaking. I would even go so far as to be cliche and say, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” …and neither was Facebook lest we forget.

This is why conversational content marketing is so important to an online strategy because no matter the tools end users are looking for value-added information to consume and or convert. At the end of the day this blog post will probably be out of date and irrelevant in a couple of months from now because the tools and platforms will have changed, but the content publication cycles will stay the same. As a consumer or business owner it is important to understand human behavior and adapt to proven technology trends rather than put too much focus on the tools themselves or any one channel of engagement opportunity. Angela Hausman, an Associate Professor of Marketing at Howard University, gives her take on popular blogger and author, Jay Baer’s commentary on whether or not technology is ruining the online community. There are literally new tools and open API driven plugins, using the freemium model, being released everyday to compete with Google and for your attention. If you keep this in mindset and not skill set in your box of ammo you will undoubtedly reach and grow your business and or personal brand goals. Let the cream rise to the top.

So I have one question for you… Where do you go when you’re not sure of the answer to a question?

If you’re not on G+ already – click this link and grab one of my limited invites or just let me know you want an invite and I’ll send you one. I have a bunch to give out and I want you there with me.
 

I don’t write many reviews on Social Media books because they often read the same and site the same well-known case studies. I really like Geoff’s practical approach to writing the book in that it references a great amount of best practices, other respected/well-known authors, and reiterates through successful case studies. While most books mention some of the same, Geoff quickly is to point out public relations nightmares when a brand tries to control the messaging. While Geoff cites a couple of them, there are more off the beaten path instances that serve as a great foundation for any organization wanting to do more than the status quo and achieve more than mediocre results. As an added bonus, and something I wish more writers would do, is that the book is a quick read because Geoff gets to the point with actionable items that can be implemented in the same day. What it isn’t is heavy on the filler. He wants you to understand that, “understanding behavior and not technology” and that “measurement has to be within context” are major keys to success for having a sustainable Social Media strategy.

I guarantee you will want to keep a copy close to your desk because it is an excellent reference in case you get stuck on a external or more importantly an internal communications issue. You will find yourself highlighting or earmarking several passages in each chapter. If you are looking to take your business or organization to build an online presence, build lasting relationships, and really take your Social Media Strategy to the next level, Geoff’s book is a must read.

Ok. Here goes. I was fired in 2009 when the economy was going down hill and I had been looking for new opportunities to work closer to Columbus. At the time I was working for a subcontractor to the National Highway Traffic Highway Administration in Marysville on Honda property.

Background
When I started in 2001 I had left a great gig and my first job after graduating from Ohio University as a production assistant for WSYX ABC 6 & WTTE FOX 28. The only reason I say great gig was because I loved what I did and was passionate about. I was doing what I loved which included working with an Emmy Award winning lighting director to completely redo the lighting design for the nightly news studio, spending long hours on pre-production for remote shoots like the Jerry Lewis Marathon and the rest of the day behind a camera, running through a foot of water during a thunderstorm with an ENG camera to setup a live shot of the 18th hole fearing of electrocution a split second before it was on air. The job also taught me how not to be start stuck because when celebrities and sports I realized they were just people who worked hard and as my dad put it, “put their pants on one leg at a time like everybody else.” My dad coming from a blue collar family in Marion, Ohio where his dad had dropped out of school with a 7th grade education to work in construction to help his sick mother and provide for his future son, taught me about the importance of work ethic. The only celebrity I might have been excited to see was John Glenn. One because I had seen him in the hallways of a congressional building when interning at CSPAN and two because he was that rare breed of national hero for risking his life in the space flight program to answer JFK’s challenge to be the first nation to put a man on the moon.

At the time money wasn’t the motivating factor because I was single with no kids. However, not soon after I was engaged to my college sweetheart and we moved from my cousins bedroom in Obetz to a two bedroom apartment off of Brice Road. Then things started getting real. We were getting married soon and as natural progression goes were on track for doing the whole nine yards with getting a house with white picket fence 2.5 plus kids. Money started to become more important to the long term necessity to fulfill this plan to create a happy home and a nuclear family. I was working 35 hours a week and still being considered part-time making $7.50 an hour with no health insurance. I had to start looking because there wasn’t a lot of room for upward mobility at the station with old timers content in their positions in the control room. This was even after showing my superiors I wanted to move up the ladder by learning new things like becoming a technical director or running the audio board. However, things became routine and weren’t moving fast enough.

You’re Hired
When I first started the job search for a full time job that paid more and offer health insurance I sent out a bunch of resumes, but found out not too many people were hiring because there wasn’t much need for video production help in Columbus as it is a fairly small community of productions houses doing a majority of the work. It had been months and while I was starting to give up hope I got a call from a company I had forgotten about and mentally moved on from. After going through the interview process, being offered the job, and considering the pros and cons I accepted the job. The first year I was adapting to my new surroundings, learning the ropes and idiosyncrasies of my job responsibilities. It was a fulfilling job at first knowing the high speed video work I was doing was helping save lives when it was presented in reports to congressional lawmakers for making decisions relating to safety regulations for automakers to adhere too.

After awhile thought it became routine and I was trying to find ways to improve production quality because a lot of my counterparts in Washington, D.C. were behind the times with fundamentals like what the best video compression was. One of the biggest frustrations that started to develop was when the director in charge of operations for NHTSA in Marysville came into our office an asked if we could update the organizational charts for the building my coworker gave the simple answer of, “I don’t know” and left it at that. Raised in the DC Metro area and being taught by my progressive parents, it was this kind of complacency and small town manufacturing mentality that drove me nuts. Being the person I am of always wanting to do more, be challenged more, expand my skill set and show I was a valuable employee I seized the opportunity by catching up with him outside of our office where told him that we don’t currently have the tools or the skill set, but that I would be willing to learn and give it a shot. He was appreciative of that and said go for it. The only problem was the original photos or files for the organizational charts were nowhere to be found and I had to start from scratch. I organized a building wide photo shoot, edited the pictures, designed the layout which gave me an opportunity to learn Adobe InDesign and get the prints ordered from a local printer. Aside from the photo shoot I had never used InDesign before except for a tri-fold brochure mockup. It was a great learning experience and something I could add to the portfolio. It was after this experience that I decided to write a proposal to update our version of Avid Video Editing software and in the process get training for it through the Wexner Center for The Arts. Unfortunately the proposal was denied because it was par for the course for federal employees to wait until the end of the fiscal year to “use it or lose it” which often caused hoarding rather that having a productive operation throughout it.

These Chips Are Stale
However, not too soon after I started to see the writing on the wall. There were two photographers on the payroll and not enough work to go around. As time went on, routine became the norm and once again I started to think about my future and wanted to back to grad school. I did the research and found that Franklin University had a satellite campus in Dublin where I could get a Degree in Marketing. After writing the proposal my employer said they wouldn’t help pay for a marketing degree, but they would help pay for my Master of Business Administration degree. I jumped at the chance because in my eyes it was just as good if not better. It was also perfect timing because my wife and I had a one year old baby and were thinking about having another one when our first one was three.

I was nervous after they said yes because I wasn’t sure what I had gotten myself into. Franklin has the reputation for being one of the top business schools in the state aside from Ohio State. I thought all of the students were going to be smarter and more prepared than I was being that I had been out of school for awhile and other crazy “what ifs” going through my head. So started the 4:30 am wakeup in order to be at work by 6 am to work my four ten hour shifts and then once a week be in Dublin for three hours before making it home to Delaware by 10 pm to get back up again at 4:30. I quickly found that I was as smart as the other students in my cohort and started learning like the rest of them. A lot of the stress and anxiety was for nothing. Here I was sitting in a class with VPs of some well-known local businesses.

Then came the tough news. My wife was pregnant with our second child when I was three quarters way through the MBA program. I knew I was going to have to take a quarter off to be their for the birth of our second child. When I was on my break the company I worked for had an internal posting for a marketing assistant position. Without thinking about it I applied and had an interview with the VP of Marketing. We talked about where he wanted to go with the position and I thought the interview went well because I had previous experience and skill set for the position with an opportunity to grow. After a couple weeks of not hearing anything he let me know that he had decided to work with an outside company for creating marketing collateral and would not be filling the position. I was a little torn up about it because it was something that I was passionate about and they were paying for my continuing education and as far as I was concerned it was a no brainer. Later, I found out that they spent $4000 on a website I could have done for them for half the cost.

The Perfect Storm
While on break from finishing my graduate degree my wife gave birth to our second child. It was a new addition and an exciting time in our lives and everything seemed to being going right and as planned. Then as I was finishing up my degree my supervisor and another supervisor scheduled a meeting with me in the conference room, but didn’t say what it was regarding. When I sit down my supervisor tells me in so many words that if I don’t accept a new position with the company that they are going to have to “let me go.” I had no words. I was stunned to say the least. Here I thought I was doing everything I was supposed to be doing and asked to do and more comparatively to my coworker who had been written up for the “appearance of sleeping” and in my opinion was getting paid to do very little as I was always the first one to work on projects. I think I went through all the emotions one can go through and it seemed that I landed on the rational one by thinking to myself well I have two kids and a wife to provide for and I can add the experience to my resume. I was young and thought, “what other choice do I have?” Turns out I had lots of choices.

I tried to make it work for almost two years after that day, but it wasn’t the same. I was supposed to be trained on specialized software by fellow employees who had their own responsibilities and agendas rather than any formal training that should’ve have been offered. I even tried to find tutorials online as I had taught myself graphic design and web development in much the same way. The only thing that made me know realize I had done a good job previously was that a lot of my coworkers were still coming to me for my work as a photographer instead of my coworker that apparently was saved by the tenure based mentality versus performance based one. In any event I had basically been reduced to a data cruncher and secretary. It wasn’t exactly what I had pictured my life to be when I had spent years as a young teenager doing what I loved and was passionate about especially since I had just graduated from Franklin University with a Masters in Business Administration and a 3.9 GPA.

At the same time this was going on my parents were going through a separation calling my sister and I to complain and pit us against each other whether they realized they were doing it or not. The news was a shock in its own right. No matter how old you are it is still a painful experience to go through with two people you look up to and love. I became deeply depressed and stressed to the point where it started affect my physical health. I was in good shape and had been exercising regularly so I was having trouble putting two and two together. The combination of all of the above brought me to my breaking point were subconsciously I didn’t care about coming to work on time or take pride in my work like I once had.

I just knew I needed help when it all seemed to be crashing down and it was just a matter of time when my immediate supervisor called me into his office with the VP of Marketing rather than HR. They talked to me about coming into work late. I told them I had no excuses mostly because I was to the point where I didn’t care anymore. I should have known something was up earlier when I was required to take a “random” drug test a couple weeks earlier. I’m sure they were a little shocked when they didn’t find anything, but then again this was their thought process. At the end of the meeting I was put on indefinite suspension. Then exactly two weeks after my indefinite suspension my immediate boss who help create the situation to begin with called my to say I was fired. While I knew it was a probability like most people in the back of your head you can never prepare yourself. Here I was trying to do all the right things by working hard and applying myself the way my parents and others had taught me throughout my life to this point. What hurt the most is that I had let my wife, two children down, and my parents. My pride was hurt because I took so much pride in the work that I did do and was passionate about I felt that my reputation had been permanently ruined. I got to the point of hysterics that I thought nobody would ever wat to hire me again as I was damaged goods. Part of this was a continuation of the depression and self-doubt/self-worth.

The question then became how long would it take to get past this experience and move on? How would I explain the situation to potential employers? How long would it be before I got an interview? How long should I wait before giving up career ambitions to provide for my family? … and so on and so on.

Get Over Yourself and Prove Them Wrong
At some point, probably after I had gone through all the cycle of emotions one could go through I landed on the last one. Determination to prove everybody wrong. After all there was nowhere to go, but up and like I had done many times before in the past, using my favorite quality about myself, I used determination and will power to prove everybody wrong and that they had made a big mistake. Armed with a new attitude and feeling better than I had in a few years I started building my portfolio for Sigma Creative. In hindsight it made perfect sense because when I was finishing up my classes at Franklin I sought the advice of my professor on what to do my thesis project on and he said, “Work on something you are passionate about.” I already had a ready to go business plan all I had to do was start implementing it. When I thought about it is I should have done it earlier. The only question then becomes, “What is your exit strategy?”

The next part got really exciting and fun, but was also hard work. I began networking with people I met on Twitter in person. Facebook at the time wasn’t as big a player as it is now. I started following people locally. One of the first people I met in person offline was Alexandra Copley. She wanted to meet with me to discuss possibly redesigning her website after I designed her Twitter background for free. A perfect example of why I am so passionate about the power of social media today and Chris Anderson‘s implementation of the freemium business model that was emerging alongside the explosive popularity of social media. Then as quickly as she had connected with me she quickly connected me with people in her network. She said she had a friend who was looking to have his website redone. I gave her my contact information and he emailed me a couple days later. Initially I told him I didn’t have the time because I had was still dealing with administrative work due to the life changing event.

A month or two past and I emailed the potential lead to see if he still wanted to have work done. He said yes and we met at his place of business which at the time was called Sandbox Columbus run by now good friend and serial entrepreneur David Hunegnaw, savvy real estate agent, Tina Goodman, and silent, in name only, partner, Ryan Bauer. Alexandra’s friend turned out to be Lewis Howes. At the time he was just starting to build his empire as it is known today. He had just written a book, LinkedWorking and needed to update the look and functionality of his current site. Not soon after Lewis became Sigma Creative’s first paying client. In the process I got to meet his business partner and incredibly smart businessman in his own right, Barry Chandler. I was really starting to like meeting new people and new business development. It was unavoidable at a place like Sandbox. You could feel the electricity in the air between the ideas on the whiteboard or the entrepreneurial collaboration that was taking place on a daily basis.

As weeks went on I finished up Lewis’ site and he was referring big name clients to me like Brian Cuban and other well established book authors who he had networked with. Locally I started meeting other people that had either been in a similar situation or left on their own accord. One of my earliest network connections, up and coming star in his own right was, Nate Riggs. He had just left a marketing firm in Columbus because they didn’t see the potential in Social Media that he did and that I already experienced. It was great to get to talk about Nate about our bright future. He talked about the decentralized digital agency in a Web 2.0 and API rich world. When I was first out of college and working at the TV station I knew that is what I wanted Sigma Creative to be I just didn’t know it at the time, but technology has come a long way since then to make it more of a reality.

Now in telling my story I want to tell you that it is a happy ending, but the truth of the matter is having kids and a house payment I had to go back to work. I was starting to gain traction with Sigma Creative, but the credit card bills had been mounting and if I was to ever have a real chance at making Sigma Creative work in the long run I was going to have look at the long term goals. Life is hard, but the one thing I can say is I will never have the fear of being fired or leaving a job that I no longer cared about again, because I had already been there, done that, and made it out to the other side. People get fired or quit their job more than one would think, but they live to tell their stories of overcoming adversity. Two people I look up to a lot recently posted of their personal experiences with similar stories (Jacob Stoops and Dr. Erika Pryor) I still have side projects that I work on for Sigma Creative and am always adding more hats to the coat rack with new ventures and collaborations. While it is a lot of work and I don’t get much sleep these days I am doing what I love and love what I am doing. As long as you have a great support system in your immediate family and network there is nothing keeping you from bouncing back and achieving more than you dreamed possible. You are not alone.

Many successful people fail early, fail often, and learn to adapt. Thomas Edison is quoted as saying, “I failed my way to success.” There is a great movie called Art & Copy. While it is geared towards creativity fans the subject matter and theories are applicable to anybody in any industry regarding failure and moving on. My favorite part of the documentary is when David Kennedy of Wieden + Kennedy (famous ad agency that created the extremely viral and extremely successful Old Spice marketing campaign as well as other well-known campaigns) talks about failure and how he has a wall dedicated to the idea. When I started taking formal photography classes in Junior High School I never thought it would progress to online interactive development and marketing. I always thought I was going to be in video production in one way or another. I am thankful that I decided to adapt because a lot of my former coworkers at the TV station found themselves out of jobs due to the shift from traditional media to new media. There is never a straight path to where you see yourself in life when it comes to achieving your goals. While I am not a fan of organized religion I do believe that God/Buddha/Mohammed has a plan for all of us. That is why I only live by one rule and that is to treat others as you would like to be treated aka The Golden Rule. I let karma do the rest. This is the beauty of life lessons. Do I make mistakes now and will I in the future? Undoubtedly, yes. They are called cliches for a reason and that is that they have stood the test of time. “What doesn’t kill you..” It makes you are smarter, stronger, more well rounded person that will do just fine. You will look back at this years later and laugh. I promise.

Update: Tyler is now a Marketing Manager for GSW Worldwide’s Innovation Lab IQ.

Failure is all around us. It is those who get back up, dust themselves off, and learn from past mistakes to beat insurmountable odds stacked against their favor and ultimately succeed. If you want to learn more about how to change your current situation I highly recommend a book that was just published and aptly named, Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance by Jonathan Fields

All in One SEO Pack
There are a lot of ways for your website to get seen and while WordPress has become the most popular platform for small business owners to create great content they need all the help they can get. The All in One SEO Pack is a way to help level the playing field a little. In combination with keyword suggestion tools this plugin helps create site wide and post specific keywords that help search engines zero in on content that can lead to networking opportunities and potential leads/sales conversions. With more than 7,331,902 downloads and counting this plugin is a absolute must in any online marketing effort no matter what size your business.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack

cformsII
Cforms is a great plugin for creating all kinds of different forms for potential customers looking to get more information about a product or service you are selling. It comes with some generic templates that are easily adaptable to any WordPress theme or the option to experiment with the built in Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) wizard to manipulate the look of the form for the site. Some of my favorite features is that you can clone your forms without having to start from scratch, start and stop dates if you are running a marketing campaign, built-in CAPTCHA security questions to keep the bots at bay, and much more. I would say that this plugin is just as feature rich as any of the popular commercial email opt-in/newsletters out there.
http://www.deliciousdays.com/cforms-plugin

Digg Digg
If you want your content to be seen by members of your tribe another great tool is Digg Digg. Digg Digg makes it easy for your viewers to share your content via popular social media networks like Twitter and Facebook with others in their tribe. This is one of the reasons the leading internet marketing magazine, Mashable, became so popular at the beginning of the new media revolution. They realized the power of shareability and combined with great content, how to make it go viral. I recommend Digg Digg for anybody looking to extend the reach of people seeing of their content.
http://www.mkyong.com/blog/digg-digg-wordpress-plugin

Google XML Sitemaps
This is probably the least visible of the plugins on my list, but probably one of the most important when getting your website indexed properly by Google or other search engines. Once you have gotten your WordPress website setup the way you like it an can focus on creating good content signup for a Google webmaster tools account and submit the link of your XML sitemap and it will help Google and other search engines you submit to correctly crawl your website thus increasing page ranking in combination with your organic SEO efforts and social network sharing. When you add this to your Google Webmasters tools it takes a couple days for the site to get indexed, but once it does it spits our a lot of helpful information on improving your page rankings with other analytic dashboard reporting like Google Analytics.
http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator

LinkWithin
I am horrible with figuring out how to set up a related posts with another WordPress plugin called, Yet Another Related Post Plugin and someday I may revisit it, but for now LinkWithin is a great plugin for bloggers to give the reader thumbnailed pictures and post titles at the top or bottom of a blog post. This plugin helps combat the a content producer’s biggest challenge and that is to keep the attention of the viewer because these days eyeballs have a lot of different choices and if you can get past the average 7 sec. attention span with quality copy and video then you lower the bounce rate from a unique visitors first visit to your website.
http://www.linkwithin.com/learn

Quick Cache
In the words of Keanu Reeves in his countless action movies, “Waoooh.” Speed was good, but when they took it on the water and jumped the shark it was over. Good thing Quick Cache hasn’t gone down that same path. Viewers like fast websites because we have become a society of instant satisfaction and shouldn’t have to wait for a website to load. What most people don’t know is that while it maybe seen as a single issue there are a lot of factors that go into making a website slow or fast. Besides internet connections, speed of the web and database servers, shared, virtual, or cloud, etc. Quick Cache takes a real-time snapshot ( building a cache ) of every Page, Post, Category, Link, etc. These snapshots are then stored ( cached ) intuitively, so they can be referenced later, in order to save all of that processing time that has been dragging your site down which ultimately leads to lost revenue.
http://www.primothemes.com/post/product/quick-cache-plugin-for-wordpress/

SEO Slugs
SEO Slugs is a simple plugin, but it helps get rid of common words like “what”, “you” or “can” out of your post slug to make it more search engine friendly. It is a simple yet effective plugin, but a must have for any SEO arsenal.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/seo-slugs

WPtouch
If a blog needed at least 25 pieces of flair this plugin would probably be #1 on the list. For me it is a guilty please because I am a fan of making things mobile from a graphic usability perspective. WPtouch essentially turns your WordPress blog into a mobile application so it is easier to navigate your website from a smartphone or tablet device. Once again this like the other plugins I have mentioned above WPtouch literally touches on efficiency from the end users point of view. This extends viewership, time spent on the website, and sharebility.
https://www.bravenewcode.com/store/plugins/wptouch-pro

WordPress.com Stats
While Google Analytics is probably the best analytics tool for evaluating the traffic to your website the plugins for WordPress are a little lacking when it comes to integrating the results in the WordPress dashboard. WordPress.com Stats does a great job of having an integrated reporting heads up display (HUD) of top referrers, pages visited, and my favorite, search engine terms that people used to find your website. This helps give you some insight on what you are doing right and areas of content creation and SEO and Social Media Marketing you can do better.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats

Updraft – Backup/Restore
Working at a web hosting company every once and awhile I will get a customer upset that we only provide a 2 copies of their websites on a two week cycle. My response to them is that on current hardware their is limitations with regards to space and that we are moving to an environment where we can take daily snapshots. However, even with that being said in any hosting companies terms of service it is not their responsibility to make backups of your website. I would call it more of a courtesy service. No matter how much we love technology it is never perfect and it never will be. That is why it is important to be the Boy Scout and “Be Prepared.” I am guilty of the same sacrilege when it comes to not backing up my local computer let alone my website server and like most people it is due to time. Updraft – WP Backup/Restore helps eliminate some of that headache no matter what hosting company you are with. It runs a backup of your WordPress web content (uploads, themes, plugins) and WordPress database of all your entries and custom configurations. The really cool thing is you can backup to an Amazon S3 account if you have one, another offsite FTP account, emailed to you, or the traditional method of a directory within your webserver structure. *Note- The only downside to this plugin is that it currently doesn’t have an automatic scheduler for deleting older backups and with limitations on a shared hosting service you can reach your file size limit quickly. You can either FTP in and manually delete them or create a cron job to do that. Hopefully, the developers of this great plugin are working on something to make this a feature in the future.
http://langui.sh/updraft-wp-backup-restore

In any event, I run a lot of different websites using WordPress and no matter who the target audience is or what the format of the website these plugins are the ones that I find I use the most often. Don’t feel that you have to use these because it comes down to personal preference and I find myself mixing and matching as each website requires different functionality. The best thing you can do is try them out for yourself on a subdomain development version of your current or soon to be WordPress website so you can experiment and then later port your customizations to your live site. I hope this helps and as always, Happy Developing.

Hootsuite (http://hootsuite.com):

I like Hootsuite for several reasons. The biggest reason is because unlike its main competitor, Tweetdeck, (I’m a former Tweetdeck user) there is no need to install the Adobe Air application software to any computer you need to use in order access your Twitter account(s). It also doesn’t take up processing resources like applications using Adobe Air would. However, if you use Google Chrome as your browser there is a web only version of Tweetdeck. One can only guess this is an attempt to answer Hootsuite’s computability across all popular web browsers on the market today.

Hootsuite feature advantages:

• ability to schedule tweets
• updates faster
• provides robust statistics from clickthroughs
• advanced filter streaming
• allows for the incorporation of additional social networks
• Hootsuite also offers many more features in its for power users who are serious about their SMM efforts.

*Note – Hootsuite is very competitive when it comes using it as a team interface for businesses that require 24/7 customer service, however a popular team software that doesn’t require premium pricing is called CoTweet. I don’t like CoTweet as much because of the graphic user interface “GUI” takes a little getting use too, but then again it is a personal preference.

Snippetweet (http://snippetweet.com/)

This is another web based API driven app that I love from some good friends of mine at Egolabel here in Columbus, OH. As a busy working professional I have certain tweets that I use to increase followers on my other social media networks like LinkedIn or Facebook. I also have regular followers who are strategic business partners or just great people I think my followers should know. Snippetweet is the best way to bookmark and tweet information to your followers whether it is informing them of promotional ads, events, other social networks, or other Twitter users you want to promote using the FollowFriday hashtag #FF. I highly recommend this simple, but effective Twitter tool.

Timely (http://timely.flowtown.com)

While Hootsuite does a great job of scheduling tweets in the free version and even more extensively in the pro version as mentioned in this tutorial by my friend Nate Riggs, Timely is a great alternative that I learned about only recently from friend and 80′s metal afficiando, Shawn Morton who is the Director of Emerging Media with Nationwide Insurance. Along with Hootsuite and Snippetweet I have this bookmarked in my Social Media folder under SMM Tools. Unlike Hootsuite’s built in scheduler, Timely predicts the best time to schedule your tweet for optimal viewing and tracks the clickthroughs or “reach” as it is referred too.

Paper.li (http://paper.li)

Paper.li organizes links shared on Twitter and Facebook into an easy to read newspaper-style format. I like it because I don’t always have time to read the articles that people I follow on Twitter. Paper.li aggregates those tweeps I follow into the most popular clickthroughs from the day prior and allows you to give them kudos in a RT of the links they posted the day before. Major karma points in terms of online relationship building and engagement.

Twtvite (http://twtvite.com)

Twtvite is great from taking the conversation offline which ultimately is what you want to do and make those online network connections a reality and where still a majority of business deals are done. Twtvite is great for event planners looking to market and promote organizations and even more importantly retail space. Again, my friends at Egolabel are great at getting small business owners to understand how the power of hype and social media gets people in the doors. Group think is a double edged sword and in this case it has a positive tribal snowball effect.

Twitterfeed (http://twitterfeed.com)

Twitterfeed is good in small doses. I like Twitterfeed because you can attach RSS feeds of bloggers that you like and produce good content, but don’t always have time to read. Be very careful when using this though. Don’t use RSS feeds from blogs that update many times in one day. Your followers will unfollow you and the ones that stick around will accuse you of being a “bot” which defeats the purpose of using Twitter as it is intended.

ManageFlitter (http://manageflitter.com)

ManageFlitter is a great tool for keeping your Twitter account streamlined. There are a lot of other Twitter unfollow web apps, but they usually break Twitter’s Terms of Service. However, the developer of ManageFlitter keeps up with Twitter’s rules and regulations. ManageFlitter is a great tool for:

• Cleaning up and manage who you follow.
• Find out who isn’t following you back.
• Find out which inactive accounts you follow.
• Easily search inside your Twitter stream.
• Twitter Directories

Twellow (http://twellow.com)

Twellow is the original Twitter directory. You can drill down people who you want to follow by industry and location. The only problem is that the industry categories are a little too specific and you can miss some potential connections.

WeFollow (http://wefollow.com)

WeFollow is probably my favorite of the Twitter directories. It breaks down tweeps by industry and then breaks down by most influential in each category and by most followers so you can judge for yourself which ones produce the most valuable content.

NearbyTweets (http://nearbytweets.com)

NearbyTweets was developed by another friend from Columbus, OH, Brian Cray who is an incredibly smart guy and knows code like the back of his hand. It is great because it is a livestreaming geo-location web app that displays tweeps usernames and what they have listed as their hometown. It is great for finding active tweeps that are local.

At the end of the day there are a ton of different tools you can use, but it really comes down to personal preference. These are the tools that find myself using most often and feel that I’ve had some above average success with especially when used in combination with each other. I have no affiliation with any of the developers of the previously mentioned tools I mentioned above and have found them to be the best tools in terms of productivity with respect to SMM efforts. Hopefully you will find them as useful as I do.

Benjamin Franklin said it best, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Here is a list of action items and why:

1. Do your own site-backups regularly!

This doesn’t prevent your site from actually being compromised, but it does prevent that hack from causing massive damage. If you can simply re-upload your site pre-hack, with all of your current files, then you probably will not experience the downtime and annoyance associated with restoring a compromised site.

Of course, most hosting companies already perform courtesy site back-ups and provide free site-restoration if your site has indeed been “hacked” or compromised in any way. However, their back-ups may not include recent updates, and may also be a back-up of a compromised version of your site, so it is always safest to also have your own.

2. Change and strengthen your passwords.

You will want to scan all local machines that have access to upload to your sites for virus’. The reason for doing this is that your FTP account info can be compromised through something hackers practice called keylogging: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystroke_logging If you do not currently have an anti-virus program I would suggest Avast. You can download it here: http://www.avast.com Also, keep in mind one software package doesn’t completely protect your computer. You also might want to look into: http://www.malwarebytes.org

Worried about keylogging? Even if you have chosen an extremely secure password, keylogging can track it. Here are some things that may prevent malicious keylogging efforts from impacting you:

• A good, updated anti-virus program will be able to detect many keyloggers and prevent them from collecting sensitive information
• Automatic form-filler programs can prevent some keylogging attempts by bypassing the use of your keyboard altogether. That being said, make sure your auto-fill program (whether you use a browser-based one or a separate “password safe” such as KeePass) is password protected.
• Use anti-keylogging software
• Enabling and properly configuring your firewall may prevent transmission of your passwords/sensitive material over the internet to those with malicious intent

After scanning your computer and taking care of any issues that are found you will want to change your FTP passwords. Please make them as secure as possible by using both letters (upper and lower case) and numbers (in non-sequential order). This is an early step in both preventing site hacks in the first place and keeping your restored site safe. Your FTP password should be changed immediately.

Some things to consider when choosing a password:

• Combine letters and numbers, lowercase and uppercase letters
• The longer your password is, the more difficult your password will be to “crack”
• Use a password generator

Check your password strength:

• http://www.microsoft.com/protect/yourself/password/checker.mspx

*You should also strongly consider changing your password for the control panel… …and yes people on Macs can have viruses on their computers.  I am on a Mac and use iAntivirus.  Another program friends on Macs have suggested and like ClamXav.

3. Make sure your software and scripts are up-to-date.

You should evaluate any code or script you put onto your website that you did not write yourself before uploading it to your site. Free scripts are sometimes made without security in mind. Free themes and templates can be coded in such a way that compromise the security of your site and make it an easy target for exploitation by hackers.

You will also want to make sure that you are using the latest versions of any 3rd party applications (eg – WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, OSCommerce, ZenCart, VBulletin, etc.) that you have installed. The script-provider will usually keep their latest version on the homepage of their website for download and easy upgrade. If you have an application installed that you are not using, please remove it or at least set permissions so that is it only accessible by owner and not by group or other.

The two things you want to when first installing any of 3rd party application; 1) As a good rule of thumb is never use the default database table prefix (eg – WordPress uses a default database table prefix of wp_ . This in not going to effect how the script writers intended the application to function. 2) Never use the default username “admin”. It gives the person(s) wanting to cause harm to your website(s) half of the answer to the puzzle to the backend of your website. When you are done with the installation create a new user other than admin that has administrator rights and delete the default user. It should also be common sense to follow the included documentation for specific security settings because some 3rd party software (eg- Joomla) require the installation folder to be removed/deleted.

If you are unsure about the code or script you are inserting into your site, it may be beneficial to only use high-quality (this often means paid-for) software, hiring a security-minded coder/developer or by using an automated method like Firewall Script.

4. Check site permissions.

No file or folder should have read, write and execute access for Other. The most common permissions are set up as read, write and execute for Owner and Read and execute for group and other. You may also not need the execute permission on files for other. Please make sure of this. To see permissions settings click the folder to the left of a folder name and on the right hand side it will come up with the permissions.

5. Protect your administration folder with .htaccess.

Cyber security agencies report that the statistics show the more security measures a website owner has in place the quicker the hacker will move on to a website that has less measures in place. They are looking for the low hanging fruit and anything that takes more than 15 minutes is time spent not making money elsewhere. By protecting your a 3rd party script administration folder you are putting a second lock on the door. All hosting providers have .htaccess protection wizards that you can use to protect the administrator folder or a specific folder of your choosing.

6. Perform a traffic inspection.

It is important that you analyze the kind of traffic you are receiving. If all of a sudden your site receives far more traffic than normal (and you havent implemented any marketing campaigns), check the incoming IPs: their location and their visiting frequency.
You should also check your own page rankings. If your site starts ranking for sex-terms, pharmaceuticals and gambling, your site has likely been compromised and you should contact us for further assistance.

7. Create FTP Allow/Deny Rules.

If all else fails you can create rules to prevent anybody from accessing your website(s) by limiting the IP address or Dynamic IP range that can connect via your hosting account’s FTP  connection.  The only caveat is that if you on your website(s) from multiple locations or have a webmaster at a different location is that the IP address or dynamic range does not match the rules it will not let you in.  The good thing is it won’t let the people trying to attack your website(s) do any damage either.  Click here to see how to create FTP Allow/Deny rules.

8. More Information.

Your best weapon against malware and hacking is information! Here are some links to get you started learning more:

If your website has been compromised and you have contacted your hosting company to investigate the issue and they have deemed your website(s) clean you can resubmit your website to Google for website reconsideration (if Google has flagged your site(s) by clicking on this link: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35843

If you are interested in finding the most comprehensive article on preventing and repairing a compromised website please feel free to check out this link: http://25yearsofprogramming.com/blog/20070705.htm

If you are interesting in learning more feel free to contact us to see how we can help your business.

Here is a quick list (courtesy of good friend Cheryl Harrison that I have expanded on) of things you can do to promote foursquare checkins:

+ Loyalty card. “Free x for every x number of checkins.” (printing, business cards, brochures, etc.) Daily, Weekly, Monthly Be unique and get people’s attention by offering more than 10% or 20% for a “one time” offer. Brand loyalty comes when the customer service experience turns into word of mouth marketing not spending more money on traditional marketing techniques. Make them feel special and unique.

+ As a bonus or upgrade. “Free x everytime you checkin on Foursquare.” These can be throwaways that don’t cost the company a lot of money, but attract people to come in.
+ As a way to boost foot traffic on slow days. “40% off on Wednesdays when you check in on Foursquare!”

+ Make it a group thing. As an incentive for bringing friends. “Free x if you checkin with more than 3 people.”

+ As a vehicle to give out something unique. “Limited edition x if you checkin on Foursquare!”
+ As an added value for your sponsors. Having a conference? Offer attendees the ability to check in at each of your sponsor’s businesses to get half off their admission fee. In media? Offer swag if people check-in at the place of your live remote, your #1 advertiser, etc.

+ If you have event you are trying to promote you can spike interest in the swarm badge party.

A lot of these promotional ideas are based on Chris Anderson’s Freemium business model. When creating Foursquare promotions think like a radio station would. It doesn’t necessarily have to be related to the businesses product or service. Promote tickets to a local sporting event or concert, etc. However, make sure not to get gimicky or your efforts will lose value quickly. Be careful though people can do “drive-bys” and cheat. Make them come into the business and take a twitpic for proof. Much like what WeReward is doing.

Here are a couple case studies from a fraternity brother and well known social media marketer and events coordinator extrordinaire , Jason Keath:

Pros:

Why Foursquare Drives Business What You Need To Know
How To Drive More Customers To Your Local Business

Cons:

How the biggest coffee company in the world got it wrong (aka what not to do by offering too small incentives for such a big brand – size DOES matter):

Starbucks Fails to Deliver on Foursquare

For your business you should be able to click on the “Are you the manager of this business?” to setup promotions and track statistics, etc. All this is only half the puzzle. The other half is promoting it on Facebook and Twitter.

If you are interesting in learning more feel free to contact us to see how we can help your business.

However, I believe it is always important to self educate by reading a couple of books from leading authors on any given subject for supplemental and continuing education.

Tribes by Seth Godin: It is a quick read and is intentionally not an in depth book in that it gives you the broader scope/bigger picture as the why network marketing is so important for long term goals and building relationships

Trust Agents by Chris Brogan: Chris builds off of Seth Godin’s book, but then starts to scratch the surface as to why. He points out that while we are still riding this wave of “social media” network marketing buzz, human interaction is still king for several reasons.

The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott: In this book David talks about how to get away or at least add on new media to traditional methods of marketing whether it is for a company brand or personal band (which in a lot of cases the line is blurred).

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie: This is the book you should start with first. It is at the top of any list for a reason. It has stood the test of time and a great foundation to build off of with regards to network marketing.

The Referral Engine by John Janstch: John is hot right now when it comes to online and offline network marketing and sales. The is the how-to book on getting people in your network to refer to your business otherwise known as the cheapest and most trusted kind of marketing (aka – word-of-mouth marketing).

Engage by Brian Solis: Brian is one of the smartest young talents in the network marketing industry right now. This book essentially combines all the books above and breaks down the how-to’s of social media and social networking sites for company and personal branding as a starting point for building traffic to your website, sales leads, and sales conversions.

I think the economy still recovering and the value of personal brand gaining ground or being almost as important or level with company brand adds fuel to the fire. We have talked about it to death, but you know as well as I do that the cream rises to the top due to being a Trust Agent in being genuine and transparent while leading through innovation and reinvention to be a sustainable brand or business.