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Just in time for Halloween comes this frightening article from Nicholas Carlson on Silicon Alley Insider: Here Come The Pro Accounts. 

In this article Nicholas confirms something I have long feared.  The days of all free Social Media services are numbered. 

I am probably not alone in my fears that, like LinkedIn and Flickr (which both already charge for premium services), it wouldn't be long before my other favorite personal branding and social networking tools would come up with premium services to make it nearly impossible for someone as addicted as I am not to pay.  The article lists several services here, only a few of which do I currently utilize.  But, mark my words, the day is lurking not far out when all of our favorite Web 2.0 toys will cost us an arm... or a leg. 

On the bright side, it's probably good for the economy and web marketing in general.  Many users have said they would prefer paying for a Pro account vs. having ads all over their page.  I would love to know what you think. 

Personally I'm sure I will pay.  But I'm still scared.  Happy Halloween!  -CF

Excerpt below from Here Come The Pro Accounts:

"Here are companies that have launched, are rumored to be launching, or we expect to launch pro accounts:

Tumblr Plus is coming soon.
What you'll get: Back in April, Tumblr founder David Karp said there are more than 10 features in the queue, including a tool that allows readers to submit content, more customizable themes and special page layouts. We're betting Plus users will get unlimited music and photograph storage, too.
How much it'll cost: We hear something like $5 a month or $60 a year.

Web video tools provider TubeMogul's premium accounts are already here.
What you'll get: "tools like viewership demographics, keyword intelligence (which allows measurement of how many videos/views on YouTube mention a given keyword), a data feed, api, mrss upload and more," says exec David Burch.
How much it costs: "We typically charge $1,000/month," says Burch.

A pro option for live-streaming site Ustream is rumored to be under development.
What you'll get: We don't know, but probably something close to unlimited streaming and higher resolution.
How much it costs: We don't know, but probably close the $60 a year Vimeo charges.

File-sharing site Drop.io launched a premium option.
What you'll get: According to Drop.io, you get: "drop names under 7 characters; storage capacity (up to 25GB); duration (up to 3 years); multiple uses (up to 10)."
How much it costs: $10 per gigabyte per year.

Meetup has Organizers.
What you get: Each Meetup group needs to have an "organizer," who can collect member payments and generally… organize things. How much it costs: $12 to $19 per month.

Vimeo Plus debuted this month.
What you get: More bandwidth, 1,000 HD plays and a "white label" player with domain level privacy controls.
How much it costs: $60 per year.

Twitter cofounder Biz Stone told the Wall Street Journal on Monday that it might charge for premium features in the future. Surprise: He didn't offer any more details.

Tumblr's lead developer Marco Arment is also something of an entrepreneur on the side. His most useful creation is Instapaper, a simple bookmarking service hooked to an iPhone App which comes in free and pro versions.
What you get: Tilt scrolling, adjustable fonts "and more!" says the iTunes page.
How much it costs: $9.99

Metrics site Compete.com launched pro accounts in July.
What you get: According to the site,"Compete Pro unlocks exclusive reports and extends data on all compete.com tools!"
How much it costs: $199 to $499 per month.

Video site Veoh has Pro accounts
What you get: From a Veoh forum: "Veoh Pro is a new program, free to sign up for, that in addition to regular Veoh, users have the option of charging for the videos they upload, as well as being able to syndicate those videos to other sites and blogs such as Google Video, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Blogger, WordPress, etc., so that you just upload your video to Veoh and we'll automatically send it to those sites to upload. Additionally, we'll transcode your videos into iPod format. Also your video will be encoded into a higher quality than the users who aren't Pro."
What it costs: Veoh splits revenues with its pro members.

Document publishing platform Issuu announced new premium features yesterday.
What you get: Issuu keeps ads and Issuu branding off your publication.
How much it costs: Reports TechCrunch: $1.10 to $19 per 1,000 publication views.

Video-sharing tools site Magnify launched pro and enterprise offerings in April.
What you get: According to the site, "The Pro product is a customizable video solution for content enthusiasts, online communities and small businesses looking to add video to their websites."
How much it costs: Pro accounts range from $25 to $160 per month. Enterprise accounts are more.

Labels: branding, Flickr, LinkedIn, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter, web2.0

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The other night I was reading a bedtime dinosaur book to my two "older" boys (ages 7 and 3).  Looking at the vibrant illustrations in the book, my adroit 7 year old asked, "Dad, if Paleontologists learned about the dinosaurs through fossils, then how do they know what colors they were?"  "Good question!"  I replied proudly.  "Mostly they don't.  They can guess and estimate about the color of the creatures from what they know about their feeding habits and their environment.  But they don't really know for sure."

Modern historians learn about more recent human civilizations through written records.  Yet there is often still much debate and interpretation over what may have actually occurred.

An article on www.columbiatribune.com called Your online status: Looking for attention got me wondering what historians of the future will make of our generation.  The article quotes B.J. Fogg, the director of the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University, "This is huge. There has never been anything like this before.   We have never had the tools to capture and recover and share our lives like we have today."

Will future philosophers be led to believe that every one of us was famous?  Or just that we all wanted to be?  Certainly they won't have any trouble discovering what important things were happening in our age as long as silicon (computer chips, not breast implants) survives any forthcoming apocalypse. 

It may just be so easy to look back at our age and see what happened here that there won't be any need for such a  job as historian.   And it may also be that all of our blog posts and Twitter Tweets just won't be very interesting compared to issues and technology of tomorrow.   -CF

Labels: branding, Social Networking

  Joe President (not his real name) sits stiffly across from me at a Starbucks sipping a latte.  He hasn't been in this position very often.  "Craig, I don't think my current company has my best interests in mind and I want to look for a new job.  I don't really know where to start.  I would look at any executive level position, even a step down.  But I can't let my current company find out that I am looking!"  This is paraphrased from a conversation I had with the President of a privately held software firm this summer.

It's a fairly common thing these days.  I run across business leaders often who tell me they would like to quietly look for a new job.  The kind of jobs they want are rarely advertised and are not as numerous as a worker-bee job.  Many executives haven't been in a job interview in years and really don't know how to market themselves to get one without announcing to their network that they are looking.  They have never thought about personal branding.  It wasn't taught in MBA school back in their day. 

So I advise them to start building their personal brand and that this will have a dual effect.  It will increase the marketability of their current company if properly done (perhaps elevating the satisfaction of their current job).  And it will increase their personal marketability and recruiter calls without overtly searching for a new position. 

In an article from London-based Brand Republic, Brian Oliver says that "many business schools now teach personal branding and reputation management to their MBA students."

It also highlights the fact that many companies are now bolstering their marketing programs via the personal branding of their top people.  This, of course, has the side effect of these people getting a much higher number of recruiting calls.

Marketers build brand 'me' to promote their careers - Brand Republic News - Brand Republic

Labels: branding, careers

There is a nice article posted last week by Eric Brantner on DigitalLabz.com entitled 10 Secrets of the Best Social Media Users .  It is a terrific list for businesses wanting to use the

(less and less) alternative marketing conduit of Social Media.  Most of it applies to individuals for promoting your personal brand as well.  Here is the list:

1.    Do Your Research- Every successful marketing strategy is based on good research. You can’t just blindly go to a social media site to submit your content and expect immediate success. You need to find social media sites that fit your niche. For example, if you’re trying to promote your medical business, you should find sites where health related articles tend to be popular.

2.    Interact with the Community- The biggest rookie mistake in social media marketing is to completely ignore the community. It’s called social media for a reason. Take advantage of the social platform by interacting with the community. The closer you become with community members, the more likely it is that they’ll help promote your content.

3.    Write for Your Audience- This is Writing 101, but many people tend to ignore it. If you want your content to go hot, it has to be tailored toward the audience on the social media site. When you’re interacting with the community, get to know their likes and dislikes. Also, take note of what type of stories tend to get the most attention. You’ll see patterns develop in the types of themes and content that consistently go hot.

4.    Be Relevant- Relevance is the key to social media marketing. Don’t believe me? Just go to the front page of Digg or any other social site. The vast majority of the top content is related to late-breaking news. Be the first to break a story in your industry; or, give your unique insight on a hot news item.

5.    Keep it Short- Internet users don’t like reading long passages of text. They tend to scan online content rather than taking the time to fully read it. For this reason, you need to accommodate their reading habits by keeping your content short and easy to scan. Brief paragraphs and bold, descriptive headings are great ways to make your content more scanner-friendly.

6.    Focus on Design- When users come to your page to read your content, are they greeted with a clean, welcoming design? If not, they might just turn around and leave your site. Remember, it’s not just enough to have great content; how you present it is important as well. Use a design scheme that’s easy on the eyes and that assists the reader in scanning the content.

7.    Stop Trying to Sell- Another social media marketing rookie mistake is to constantly try to sell your products. Sure, the ultimate goal of marketing is to promote your brand, but you’ll never gain any respect on these networks if you’re constantly pimping out your products. Instead, contribute useful content that the community can learn from.

8.    Create Great Headlines- I don’t care if your article is good enough to be the cover story in Time Magazine. If it doesn’t have a great title, it won’t get any attention on these sites. Think about it- thousands of users are submitting content to these sites all day long. What makes someone click on a post to read more? An eye-catching title.

9.    Help Out Others- This goes back to #2 and #7. If you want to become a top user on a certain social media site, you have to help others out. Don’t just submit and promote your own content. Find useful articles from different sources that your audience will enjoy. By promoting content that’s not yours, the community will begin to see you as a great resource for relevant information.

10.    Convert Hot Content- One mistake many social media marketers make is to not capitalize on hot content. If you’re fortunate enough to have a piece rise to the top, you need to make that attention last. How can you do this? By creating another great post to follow the hot one. That way, when visitors come to your site to read the popular post, they’ll see you have new content. Ride that wave as long as you can!

And yesterday www.businessblogconsulting.com posted an article by Krishna De of BizGrowthNews called Why Blogger Is No Good For Business Blogging.  What Krishna means by this is that companies should host their own blogs so that the links to their blog are also the links to their corporate web site and thus driving the traffic to their own domain.

She also sites WordPress.com as being a "no no" for business blogging.  She makes a good point about driving traffic to your corporate domain, but fails to mention that companies can use both Blogger and WordPress.org to host their own blog on their own site.  And both have advantages. 

Graham Jones of http://www.grahamjones.co.uk points this out in his comment on Krishna's article.  At the same time, Graham illustrates "secret" #2 above, which is the importance of being an active participant in social media beyond just posting your own material.  In his comment he not only made a good point, but also  plugged his own business site thus generating a hit and a mention by me. 

He also somewhat violates "secret" #7.  But it's a passive plug and it was effective as mentioned above.   I say that is not only allowed, but smart.  And since I do it all the time, we'll let Graham get away with it too. 

-CF

Labels: blogging, branding, marketing, Social Networking, web2.0

Do you remember the Atari game, Pitfall?  Great game.  The main character, Pitfall Harry, was constantly having to grab jungle vines, cling and swing for dear life to avoid quicksand, crocodiles, and tar pits. 

As anyone who does much of their work from home can attest, telecommuting can have plenty of it's own pitfalls.  From family interruptions to poor time management, the modern remote worker has to be wary of the quicksand and tar pits at their own home.

The current economy, combined with advancing technology and increased respect for balance in work and home life, have led to vast increases in remote workers.  According to a survey recently released by WorldatWork, a global HR association, 42 percent of U.S. companies now say they have a telework program, up from 30 percent in 2007. In Canada, the percentage jumped from 25 percent to 40 percent.

Author Susan Aston recently posted Four Golden Rules of Success with Telecommuting and Online Jobs:

Rule # 1: Set Out Your Schedule and Stick To It
Don't pay any attention to those lame television commercials professing that you can sleep until noon, work for an hour or two in the afternoon and still make mega bucks. Working from home is not about working at your leisure. It is about working without travel and overhead expenses. Haphazard, lazy schedules are extremely self-defeating. You cannot regard a telecommuting job as a "goofing off" opportunity. It does give you the flexibility though to work in the evening if you are not at your best in the morning. But whether you are a night lark or a morning bird, draw up your schedule and stick to it. Success will soon follow.

Rule # 2: Designate a Specific Work Area
Don't try to do your telecommuting work lying in bed with your laptop on your chest. This is a big "no-no" because it really cuts into your ability to be efficient. Instead, you should designate a room or a part of your home as an office. This will provide the cohesion and organization needed to make the workday effective.

Rule # 3: Dress for Success
As with having your workspace properly set up, it is also important not to dress too casually when working form home. Remember, anytime you are too leisurely in your approach , your ability to be efficient will be limited. You don't have to wear a suit and tie or a power outfit, but you should wear something conducive to a professional approach to your work - you do feel more business like if you are dressed accordingly.

Rule # 4: Make The Most of Tax Deductions
If you are employed on contract as opposed as an employee, be sure to take those special deductions related to working from home. For example, you can deduct a percentage of your rent or mortgage based on the amount of space your work area takes up. Other expense deductions can also add up so be sure to keep detailed records on what you spend related to your work.

Here are a few additional resources to help you recognize and avoid becoming a telecommuting Pitfall Harry. 

The Five Most Common Pitfalls of Telecommuting article on The Telecommuter Forum

Pitfalls of Telecommuting article from CareerBuilder on CNN.com

Telecommuting 101 by Kate Lorenz, CareerBuilder.com Editor

Labels: branding, careers, jobs, telecommuting

After reading a great article by Patrick de Laive on the Next web called the ultimate personal branding wordpress theme, I started thinking about something that I wrote in response to his main question which was: 

"if blogging is a must in personal branding, how come there is no ultimate personal branding blogging theme for Wordpress?

I was looking for a new design of my personal blog. I wanted an upgrade, something that would

1. look neat.
2. would make it easy for me to update on a regular basis.
3. a blog that keeps track of what I’m doing all over the web, so my parents, less web savvy friends and people who are interested in me (for business purposes) get a one stop shop blog with all (interesting) info."

I know how Patrick feels.  Anyone trying to get a quick handle on personal branding does too.  What I wrote in response got me thinking that maybe I should come up with the answer myself...

"What we need is a branding service that will automatically generate a web site for you with all of your preferred social networks and blog spaces integrated and formatted with a cohesive, easily changeable theme. Is that too much to ask? Or would that take all the fun out of it?

If it’s not already out there I’m sure it’s not far off."

So if there are any ingenious developers out there who are not at this moment stealing my idea for themselves, and who would care to partner with me on the next big thing, let me hear from ya!! 

Until then I guess I will try to keep posting tips to make this branding thing easier on us all. 

But seriously, you ingenious developers?  www.fishdogs.com/contact   -CF

Labels: blogging, branding, Social Networking