Just another normal day at the park spins wildly out of control for this unsuspecting 2 year old.

That's my little "outside the box" boy!

This morning, I was pleasantly surprised to find this amazing sculpture on the dining room table.   My three year old son has taken a circular stacking blocks toy and completely turned it upside down on itself making a completely different and unexpected, yet refined finished product.  He was so proud of himself, especially when I expressed my admiration for his creativity.

I’m taking this as inspiration today to do something new and unique with an everyday item or task.

Thanks Jimmy.

THE LIST: Companies Recruiting on Twitter
∙ Accenture: @Accenture_Jobs
∙ ACULIS, Inc.: @aculis
∙ ADP: @ADPCareers
∙ Allstate Insurance: @AllstateCareers
∙ American Express: @brandonpatton
∙ AOL: @theregoesdave
∙ APCO Worldwide: @Jessica_lee
∙ Apple: @timesse
∙ Assurant Solutions: @AssurantCareers
∙ AT&T: @ATTjobs and @therecruiterguy
∙ BAE Systems: @kellyviglione
∙ Blackbaud: @stephmcdonald
∙ Burger King: @BKCareers
∙ City of Kingston: @kingstoncareers
∙ Clearspring: @ihireu4cs
∙ Compuware: @scottboren
∙ comScore: @comScoreJobs
∙ Davita: @DavitaJobs
∙ Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu: @JoinDeloitteUS
∙ Disney/ABC: @DisneyABC
∙ Ecolab: @Ecolab_Jobs
∙ EDS: @tinahuckabay
∙ EMC Careers: @EMCCareers and @EMCCollege
∙ Ernst and Young: @Ernst_and_young
∙ Excellaco: @excellaco
∙ Follett Software: @FSCCareers
∙ Forrester Research: @forresterjobs
∙ Fullhouse Interactive: @fullhousecareer
∙ Hallmark: @hallmarkcareers
∙ HCA: @acareerathca
∙ Hershey Company: @HersheyCompany
∙ Hewitt: @HewittCareers
∙ HomEq Servicing: @dcastrodale
∙ Hitachi Consulting: @havrilla
∙ Hyatt: @hyattcareers
∙ Intel: @Jobsatintel
∙ Intercontinental Hotel Group: @IHGeCareers
∙ J.B. Hunt: @WeHaveFreight
∙ Kaiser Permanente: @JennStockton
∙ Kaplan Test Prep Services: @KTPA_Careers
∙ Keller Williams Realty: @KWCareers
∙ Kissito: @kissitocareers
∙ KPMG: @KPMGCareers and @recruitingtruth
∙ Kroger: @KrogerWorks
∙ LexisNexis: @LN_Recruiting
∙ Mattel: @MattelRecruiter and @mattelmba
∙ McCormick & Schmick @Careers_At_ MSSR
∙ McGladry: @lifeatmcgladrey
∙ Microsoft @JobsBlog
∙ MTV Networks @MTVnetworksjobs
∙ MTV Games @MTVGamesJobs
∙ New York Times: @NYTimesRecruit
∙ nGenera: @nGeneraCareers
∙ Odyssey Financial Technologies: @OdysseyCareers
∙ Raytheon: @Raytheon_Jobs
∙ Razorfish: @RazorfishJobs
∙ Region 10: @LisaatRegionTen
∙ RWRoundarch:@RWRoundarch
∙ Sodexo: @sodexocareers
∙ Southwest Airlines: @SWALesa
∙ Spotsylvania Medical Center: @CareersAtSRMC
∙ Starbucks: @Starbuckscareer
∙ Take Care Health Systems: @TakeCareJobs
∙ Thomson Reuters: @steffenson and @TRCareers
∙ Time Warner Cable: @TWC_Recruiter
∙ Twitter: @jobs
∙ United Parcel Service: @UPSjobs
∙ University of Pittsburgh Med Center: @UPMCCareers
∙ United States Department of State: @DOScareers
∙ Verizon: @VerizonCareers
∙ Warner Brothers Entertainment: @WBCareers
∙ Whistler Blackstone: @WhistlerJobs
∙ Wipro: @WiproCareers

Thanks to Walt Kasha for compiling the list and posting it to LinkedIn.
You can find Walt Kasha here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/waltkasha

I know Josh through Media Leaders and Social Media Club Los Angeles. I endorse him for his leadership and because I agree with his vision for the future of Hermosa Beach.

Originally posted as a comment by Geoff Brown on Support Josh Ochs For Hermosa Beach City Council using Disqus.

You might not expect someone so deeply entrenched in social media to find what Andrew Keen has to say to be very agreeable.  After all, he claims” that the democratization of media has led to the decline of culture”.  Instead of hating him for it, I actually find myself agreeing with much of what he has to say.  I do feel that too many amateurs are publishing too much sub-par content (myself included) and that it’s taking away from the experts who should be able to ply their trade in exchange for revenue.  In essence, the classics (and future classics) are being buried underneath a seemingly endless pile of mediocre content.

This is a book that I will read, re-read, highlight and then quote often as I observe how technology and our collective narcissistic desire to provide a constant flow of value-less content makes it harder and harder for me to connect with the content that deserves to rise above the flotsam and jetsam of literature, art, cinema and music.

I found the most poignant quote from the book to be:

Out of this anarchy, it suddenly became clear that what was governing the infinite monkeys now inputting on the Internet was the law of digital Darwinism, the survival of the loudest and most opinionated.  Under these rules, the only way to prevail is by infinite filibustering.

If he didn’t just describe what Twitter has become, I’m not sure I’ve seen a better description.   Just go ahead and follow the #IranElection hashtag to see what I’m talking about.  There’s so much noise, you don’t get much of anything out of it.  It’s only when you turn to the expert journalists who take the time to filter, fact check, validate and then deliver a high-quality report do we begin to see something.

If you have a blog, a Twitter account, a YouTube account or if you’ve ever published something on the Internet, I highly recommend this book.

]]> http://geoffabrown.com/2009/07/16/the-cult-of-the-amateur-by-andrew-keen/feed/ 0 http://geoffabrown.com/2009/06/10/the-e-myth-revisited-why-most-small-businesses-dont-work-and-what-to-do-about-it/ http://geoffabrown.com/2009/06/10/the-e-myth-revisited-why-most-small-businesses-dont-work-and-what-to-do-about-it/#comments Thu, 11 Jun 2009 05:02:08 +0000 admin http://geoffabrown.com/?p=95

E-Myth RevisitedI

I’m reading “The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It” which is about small businesses and those who create them.  Having caught the entrepreneurial “bug” at the last few start ups I’ve worked at, I’m always looking for more information about start ups, small businesses, and what it takes to turn a great idea into a successful business.   I highly recommend this book if you have similar interests.  Here are a few of the nuggets of wisdom that I’ve picked up from this great read:

• There are three types of business people:  technicians, managers, and entrepreneurs.  Most small businesses are actually started by the technicians who go into “business” for themselves.  These folks typically create a “job” rather than a “business”.  The difference is:  you can walk away from a business and let others continue to run it whereas you cannot walk away from the job where you are the thing that people want (ex: contractor, plumber, baker).
• Businesses can go through three phases:  infancy, adolescence, maturity.   Not all businesses make it beyond infancy.  Fewer make it past adolescence.  Infancy is the stage where the business owner does it all himself.  He gets things off the ground and manages every last nut and bolt.  Adolescence is when the business owner hires help because they realize they can’t do it all themselves.  Most startups wind up here.   The ones that progress to maturity were probably structured to do so from the beginning two phases.  The ones that don’t progress either regress into infancy or flame out like a supernova in an “all or nothing” bid.

More to come as I continue to read the book.  It came reccommended via the “Internet Marketing This Week” podcast which I also recommend you check out.

2 page article lead in on Pg. 24

Table of Contents: Pg. 2 (next to Twitter founders @ev and @biz)

How funny that the table of contents picture is located directly next to Twitter’s @ev and @biz.  Look out gentlemen, I may be sneaking in as a male model, but it would appear that we’ve got equal billing this week!

Wait, WHAT???

This isn’t something I’m trying to pursue.  It came up pretty randomly, in fact.  Kate’s best friend, Coral Von Zumwalt, is a photographer and used to work with Art as an assistant.  Through this connection, I was asked to fill the role of “American Guy” for a healthcare article.  The other two men considered for the shoot were also 6’3″ 225+.  I’m thinking the casting call went something like:  “Big fleshy white dude….preferably corn fed and slightly sick-looking”.  Well, fit the bill I did and four hours of bright lights and “look here”, “look there”, “look back there” later and the rest is history.

SEO Cat Wants Yer Link Juiz

My 5 SEO Key Takeaways:

1. On-site Optimization includes:

• Page Title
• Meta Description
• Use of header tag h1, h2, h3 with relevant content (keywords) inside
• Alt text on images
• Freshness of content, relevance of content to keywords you’re ranking for
• Robots.txt
• Sitemap.xml
• Canonical URL w/target keyword in the URL (ex: http://www.geoffabrown.com/seo-what-i-learned-from-smcla instead of http://www.geoffabrown.com/post.php?id=32)

2. Off-site Optimization includes:

• Inbound Links, the more the better
• Inbound Links from .GOV and .EDU (even better)
• Domain Age is considered
• DMOZ Directory Listing
• Social Bookmarking counts as inbound link “votes” (Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon)

3.  The rules are constantly changing as people find ways to trick the system.  You need to keep up on the latest via some of the following sources:

• Search Engine Land: Search Engine Land is the industry’s leading online publication for the latest search news, research and anaylsis, commentary and expert advice. Led by search authorities Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman, an experienced editorial staff and wide range of contributors produce the most comprehensive coverage in the industry.
• SEOMoz: SEOmoz serves as a hub for search marketers worldwide, providing education, tools, resources and paid services to help every SEO to be the best they can be.
• Alltop’s SEO Page: Alltop aggregates RSS headlines from all of the top search engine optimization news and headlines from across the web.
• Matt Cutts (Google Engineer) Blog: Matt is the head of Google Webspam and provides an inside view on Google’s search engine. This is his personal page, and isn’t primarily focused on SEO, but if you dig a bit you’ll get some good info.
• Google’s YouTube Videos for Webmasters: This is the official YouTube channel for Google Webmaster Central, your one-stop shop for webmaster resources that will help you with your crawling and indexing questions, introduce you to offerings that can enhance and increase traffic to your site, and connect you with your visitors.
• SEOChat: Search Engine Optimization, Google Optimization – SEO Chat
• SEOBook: SEO Book.com is a leading SEO blog by Aaron Wall covering the search space. It offers marketing tips, search analysis, and whatever random rants come to mind.
• Sphinn: Sphinn is a social site for search and interactive marketers. It’s designed to allow you to share and discover news stories, read and take part in discussions, discover events of interest and network with others.
• Brent Csutoras
• 10e20: 10e20, LLC is THE Global Internet Marketing & Web Solutions Company® dedicated to helping small and mid-size companies meet and exceed their Internet marketing goals. Each day we strive to deliver a strong return on your investment.

4.  Do your research.  Use tools to analyze keywords, competitors, your own site’s analytics and your rankings.  Lots of data analysis is a constant method of measuring your methods and learning which ones work.  Here are some of the best tools discussed:

• Trellian SEO Toolkit: includes everything you need to optimize and promote your web pages, to increase your web site traffic and search engine visibility.
• StumbleUpon Toolbar”>StumbleUpon Toolbar (Firefox): discovers web sites based on your interests, learns what you like and brings you more.
• Instant Messaging: To communicate to people that it’s time to spread the link love and get busy with the social bookmarking, tweeting and re-tweeting.
• Majestic SEO is a company that offers a service for SEO that Barbara recommends for competitive link intelligence.
• SEO Toolbar by SEOBook.com: The SEO Toolbar pulls in many useful marketing data points to make it easy get a holistic view of the competitive landscape of a market directly in the search results.
• Yahoo Site Explorer: Use this tool to see who is linking to you. Or, better yet, use it to see who is linking to your competitors! Pages here are listed by rank, so pay close attention to those that show up first and learn from them.
• Del.icio.us Toolbar (Firefox): Quick and easy access to save sites into your del.icio.us social bookmarking stream.
• Digg.com/tools/firefox”>Digg Toolbar (Firefox)
• Google Keyword Tool: type in a keyword and get back tons of information about volume of searches, trends related to that term, local and global data about that keyword and synonymous words.
• Google Keyword Search-Related Keyword Tool: similar to the keyword tool, but adds what Google thinks is related based on search patterns
• SEO Quake (Firefox or IE): allows user to obtain and investigate many important SEO parameters of the internet project under study on the fly.
• Google Webmaster Tools: a one-stop shop for webmaster resources that will help you with your crawling and indexing questions, introduce you to offerings that can enhance and increase traffic to your site, and connect you with your visitors.
• WordTracker: a must have resource for any search engine marketing professional. It combines both a respectable search term database with tools that make mining the information easy.
• Google AdWords: Once you have an account, you have access to key information about keywords, the cost of keywords, related keywords and more…
• Google Trends: understanding trends and predicting user behavior is more than half the battle when it comes to creating compelling content that gets picked up.

5.  Social Media can play a big role in getting you the inbound links you need to rank higher.

• Socialize your content.  Have others vote it up.  Randomize the Diggs, Stumbles, Tweets, Facebook links, etc… to make the traffic to your page as organic looking as possible.  A thousand Diggs from your office isn’t going to help your cause.
• Be generous with your support of others and they will reciprocate.  Duh.
• It’s a bit of a fraternity.  The top Diggers might be a tough group to crack into, but that isn’t saying it’s impossible.  See what they like and what they vote up and tailor your content to entice them to vote you up.  Also, ping them on their social networks and see if you can get a good ground swell going for your post.
• Be everywhere.  Google isn’t the only search engine.  YouTube, iTunes, Facebook, Flickr and Twitter are just a few of the many places people search for things.  You owe it to yourself and your conent to be in and rank in as many of those places as possible.
• Tailor your site to make it easy for people to bookmark, submit, share, and comment on your content.  It’s an impulse to bookmark or Digg something, make the barrier to entry as easy as possible.

Thanks again to the great panelists who made it all possible:

• Sean Percival (PR5): Sean Percival is an online content producer from Los Angeles, California. For work Sean is the Director of Content for Tsavo, for play the founder of lalawag.
• Jeffrey Henderson (PR4): Jeff is an Internet entrepreneur and founder/CEO of Adept Marketing Concepts, a firm offering SEO, reputation management, website design, domaining and sales outsourcing.
• Tony Adam (PR3): works for Yahoo! as an SEO Manager for it’s Audience Marketing group. His “About Tony Adam” page is worth visiting.
• Barbara Boser (PR3):Barbara Boser is a “Social media consultant, wife, mom, marketer.”

Editor’s note: This is first guest post from Max Gladwell.

Our children will inherit a world profoundly changed by the combination of technology and humanity that is social media. They’ll take for granted that their voices can be heard and that a social movement can be launched from their laptop. They’ll take for granted that they are connected and interconnected with hundreds of millions of people at any given moment. And they’ll take for granted that a black man is or was President of the United States.

What’s most profound is that these represent parts of a greater whole. They represent a shift in power from centralized institutions and organizations to the People they represent. It is the evolution of democracy by way of technology, and we are all better for it.

For most of us, social media has changed our lives in some meaningful way. Collectively it is changing the world for good. Given the pace of innovation and adoption, change has become a constant. Every so often we find the need to stop and reflect on its most recent and noteworthy developments, hence the following list.

Please note this is not a top-10 list, nor are these listed in any particular order. It’s also incomplete. So we ask that you add to this conversation in the comments. If you’d like to Retweet this post or take the conversation to Twitter or FriendFeed, please use the hashtag #10Ways.

1. Take Social Actions: The nonprofit organization Social Actions aggregates “opportunities to make a difference from over 50 online platforms” through its unique API. It recently held the Change the Web Challenge contest in order to inspire the most innovative applications for that API. The Social Actions Interactive Map won the $5,000 first prize. The result is a virtual tour of the world through the lens of social action. “People are volunteering, donating, signing petitions, making loans and doing other social actions as we speak — all over the world. To capture the context of the where, this project uses sophisticated techniques to extract location information from full text paragraphs.” You can also join the Social Actions Community, which is powered by Ning…which now boasts more than one million individual social networks.

2. Twitter with a Purpose: This list could be exclusive to Twitter. The micro-blogging sensation was featured on our first two lists (a three-tweet), and it’s certain to be a fixture. From Tweetsgiving, the virtual Thanksgiving feast, to the Twestival, which organized 202 off-line events around the world to benefit charity: water, it’s become the de facto tool for organizing and taking action. Tweet Congress won the SXSW activism award, and celebrity Tweeps Ashton Kutcher and Kevin Rose Tweeted their two million followers about ending malaria. Max Gladwell recently initiated the #EcoMonday follow meme as a way to connect and organize the Green Twittersphere.

3. Visit White House 2.0: Inside of its first 100 days, the Obama administration has managed to set the historic benchmark for government transparency and accountability. The President’s virtual town hall meeting used WhiteHouse.gov to crowdsource questions from his 300 million constituents, complete with voting to determine the ones he’d have to answer. All told, 97,937 people submitted 103,978 questions and cast 1,782,650 votes. The White House continues to raise the bar with its official Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter channels. In so doing President Obama is not just setting the standard for state and local government in the U.S. He’s establishing the world standard. The Obama administration is spreading democracy not by force but through example. Because you don’t have to be an American citizen to be a friend or follower of White House 2.0.

4. Claim your Zumbox: What happens when all mail can be sent and delivered online to any street address in a paperless form? That’s the big question for Zumbox, which has created an online mail system with a digital mailbox for every U.S. street address. And while the answer to that question remains to be seen, it promises to be as liberating as it is disruptive. A key quality for Zumbox is that it’s closed system much like that of Facebook, only instead of true identity it’s true address. This will enable people to better connect with their communities including their neighbors, local businesses, and the mayor’s office. The primary agent of change, though, might not be that this uses street addresses but that it enables direct and potentially viral feedback, which is a virtue that e-mail and the USPS do not offer. The first methods are to request exclusive paperless delivery and to block a sender, but others are certain to evolve such as real-time commenting and ways to share mail with friends, family, and colleagues. Welcome to Mail 2.0. (Disclosure: Zumbox is a client of Rob Reed, the founder of Max Gladwell.)

5. Host a Social Media Event: This is the year of the social media event. No meaningful gathering of people is complete without an interactive online audience, especially when it’s so easy and cost effective to pull off. Essential tools include a broadband connection, laptop, video camera, projector, and screen. Add people and a purpose, such as entrepreneurship. Promote it through social media channels, and you have a social media event. A recent example in the green world is the Evolution of Green, which was hosted by Creative Citizen, a green wiki community. It celebrated the launch of a new Web property, EcoMatters, while also establishing a new Twitter tag. By posing the question, “How can we go from green hype to green habit?” and including the #GreenQ hashtag, it sparked a conversation between attendees and the Twittersphere in real time. Thus was born a new mechanism for getting answers to green questions via Twitter.

6. Travel the World: More than anyone else, Tim O’Reilly knows the potential for social media to change the world. In his opening keynote at this year’s Web 2.0 Expo, he called for a new ethic in which we do more with less and create more value than we capture. This provided the context for SalaamGarage founder Amanda Koster, whose presentation followed O’Reilly’s. The idea is that social media has enabled each of us to have an audience. Whether through Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, or a personal blog, each of us can have influence and reach. What’s more, it can be used for good. SalaamGarage coordinates trips for citizen journalists (that means you) to places like India and Vietnam in conjunction with non-government organizations like Seattle-based Peace Trees. The destination is the story, as these humanitarian journalists report on the people they meet and discoveries they make. Their words, images, and video are posted to the social web to gain exposure and because these stories just need to be told.

7. Build It on Drupal: You may not have noticed, but the open-source Drupal content management system (CMS) has quickly become the dominant player on the social web. While we still prefer WordPress as a strict blogging application, Drupal has emerged as the go-to platform for building scalable, community-driven Web sites. It powers Recovery.gov, a key part of President Obama’s commitment to transparency and accountability. PopRule uses it as a social news platform for politics. And Drupal will soon become the platform for Causecast, a site where “media, philanthropy, social networking, entertainment and education converge to serve a greater purpose.” This is especially significant because Causecast CEO Ryan Scott is transitioning the site off of Ruby on Rails because Drupal has proved more efficient, user friendly, and cost effective. (Disclosure: Max Gladwell founder Rob Reed is co-founder of PopRule.)

8. Green Your iPhone: Looking for an organic diner within biking distance that has a three-star green rating? There’s a app for that. It’s called 3rd Whale, and you can download it for free. (Except that the star rating is actually a whale rating.) Complete with Facebook Connect, this iPhone app locates green products and businesses in 30 major North American cities. It uses the iPhone’s dial function to select a category (food), sub-category (restaurants), and distance (walking, biking, or driving). In Santa Monica, this might give you Swingers diner for its selection of veggie and vegan fare. You could then get directions from your current location using the iPhone’s built-in Google map, rate your experience on the three-whale scale, and write up a quick review. 3rd Whale recently released a new feature that integrates green-living tips, which can show how much energy or waste you’ll save by taking a given action.

9. Unite the World Through Video: Matt’s dancing around the world video inspired many to tears. Today, more than 20 million people have viewed his YouTube masterpiece, where he performs a kooky dance with the citizens of planet earth. The most recent example of this approach is Playing for Change, which connects the world through song. The project started in Santa Monica with a street performance of the classic Stand By Me and expanded to New Orleans, New Mexico, France, Brazil, Italy, Venezuela, South Africa, Spain, and The Netherlands. The project was superbly executed via social media, complete with a YouTube channel, MySpace, Facebook, and Blog. It’s received tremendous mainstream media exposure and also benefits a foundation of the same name.

10. Rate a Company: The conversation about corporate social responsibility (CSR) takes place across the social web on blogs, Twitter, and YouTube, but a central hub for this information and opinion is still to be determined. SocialYell seeks to address this by building an online community around the CSR conversation, where users can submit reviews of companies together with nonprofit organizations and even public figures like Michelle Obama. The major topics are the Environment, Health, Social Equity, Consumer Advocacy, and Charity. The reviews are voted and commented on by the community in a Reddit-like fashion with both up (Yell) and down (shhh) voting. The site is relatively new and still gaining traction, but there’s no question that a resource like this is needed to shine a bright light on CSR and and other related issues.

11. Publish a collective, simultaneous blog post on a universal topic: As Nigel Tufnel might say, this list goes to eleven. Let the #10Ways conversation begin…

Final note: This is Max Gladwell’s third list of “10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media.” The first was posted a year ago today on Sustainablog.org, and the sequel followed five months later. If a single headline can capture the Max Gladwell raison d’etre, this is it.

Well Suzy…consider yourself BLOGGED!