A “red herring” is an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. Convicts used the herring to help them throw dogs off the scent. Since the herring had a very strong smell, the police dogs followed the scent of the herring rather than that of the escaped convict! The original expression was “drag a red herring across the trail”, but now it’s been reduced to “red herring”.
“Red herring” first appeared in the literal “smoked fish” sense around 1420, but the figurative “phony issue or false clue” sense didn’t appear until around 1884. The first use of red herring as a misdirection appeared in the Liverpool Daily Post of 11 July 1884: ‘The talk of revolutionary dangers is a mere red-herring.’ (Liverpool Daily Post, July 11, 1884)
Presidents have used the technique endlessly from Roosevelt claiming the economy was on a sound footing to present day damage control under the guise of national security. The inital IPO offering a new security is circulated with red printing on the first page and is called a red herring. “Red-herring prospectus” means a prospectus that does not have complete particulars on the price of the securities offered and quantum of securities offered.
What If Social Media Actually Worked?
The purpose of social media is to connect and share with a community who know and trust you. Your business model is probably not all that much of interest as you leverage a community of people, who know you, who like you and who trust you. Selling your products and services may be your objective in using social media and these transactions may be the result. However more important is to build your brand employing this radical shift in the way we market our products and ourselves. But is it really working?
Frankly, most people don’t really care about what you are selling; they care about you and what you are doing, thinking and trying. . It has been proven that people connect with those they know, like and trust and there is nothing really new about these facts. Family settings, social clubs, church and the rotary have provided platform for social networking since people began to gather and interact with one another. Social media is now replacing face-to-face business meetings, industry conferences, athletic clubs, civic organizations, and social interaction.
The downside of social media is that what you post and what you share defines who and what you are. Killing your brand can be easier than building the brand you want people to know you by. Yes, you must share information with those with whom you connect but be sure that those who see and read your videos and posts want that information. You are not ‘running an ad’ but developing channels of trust and acceptance through engagement of your community.
Social media is sold as a cheap marketing method. The high cost of customer acquisition using mailing, advertising and other traditional marketing tools has been replaced by a much more sophisticated and more effective of customer relationship building concept.
What should you share? Links are good and represent your interest in your community as you share a resource or concept that others may be able to use and benefit from. Educational information of all kinds is of interest to those you know, and you will position yourself a person who ‘is in the know’ by sharing in this way. Your ideas can be a powerful was to connect, and again make you the ‘go-to guy’ in the mind of those who already trust what you have say.
Sharing a link or an idea with your community is exactly the opposite of what we receive all the time and what we call spam. Sharing that idea on a social media platform provides a sense of safety that cannot be duplicated with an unsolicited message that lands in your email box.
Linking back to your business page gives your connections a bridge that can be the first step in developing a transaction. But it all begins with trust which is not unlike the ‘‘small talk’ and other social interaction which is part of your face-to-face relationships.
What should you know if you plan to recycle computers and other electronics?
Enforcement of new laws will cost Illinois companies who plan to dispose of hard drives containing personal information. Now they must do so in a manner that renders the information undecipherable. Best to check your own state legislation and see how you are impacted.
Unless you are in Alabama, Kentucky, New Mexico, and South Dakota, legislation has been enacted requiring notification of security breaches involving personal information. In 2011, bills were enacted in California, Illinois, Nevada, and Texas expanding the scope of these laws, setting additional requirements related to notification, or changing penalties for those responsible for breaches.
California requires that any agency, person, or business that is required to issue a security breach notification pursuant to existing law to fulfill additional requirements pertaining to the security breach notification by electronically submitting a single sample copy of that security breach notification to the Attorney General. Hawaii requires a business or government agency responsible for the inadvertent, unauthorized disclosure of personal information to pay for the person’s access to credit reports for at least three years.
Covered entities and business associates have the burden of proof to demonstrate that all required notifications have been provided or that a use or disclosure of unsecured protected information did not constitute a breach. This section also requires covered entities to comply with several other provisions of the Privacy Rule with respect to breach notification. For example, covered entities must have in place written policies and procedures regarding breach notification, must train employees on these policies and procedures, and must develop and apply appropriate sanctions against workforce members who do not comply with these policies and procedures.
The notification process can cost millions of dollars and have many moving parts. Relevant state law, the kind of information that was breached, the medium in which the information was stored, and how the breach occurred all factor in, says Brian Lapidus, chief operating officer for fraud solutions at risk consulting company Kroll. The Obama administration says it wants to standardize how U.S. businesses notify people in the event of a data breach that inadvertently exposes sensitive personally identifiable information. We will see how that works now with 46 states signed up to enforce varying legislative regulations.
Facebook’s upgrade of your profile now available for those of you who have lots of time on your hands. You will have seven days to play with Timeline before it goes live or your can hit the publish button and jump right into the lake.
What do you get? That answer is all over the map. FB has been working on this upgrade for over a year and released it in September to insiders who are just now sharing what they know. Google ‘Timeline’ for all the hits you could ever want explaining what others think.
Not much information actually from FB, but that’s par for the course. Your life story from inception to whenever will be out there for all of your friends, enemies and employers. Nuff said?
http://www.facebook.com/about/timeline
If you are using social media and not adding value, you will not see the results you are hoping to achieve. When you post on LinkedIn or other social media sites, are you just looking to get something from others?
Think about your goals for using LinkedIn or any other social media site. You should be interested in learning from your contacts and growing relationships with others in your interest area. To make that work really well, you will be willing to share with others from your knowledge base or from your wealth of outside contacts.
Groups become cumbersome when the majority of posts by others are trying to get you to signup for their online seminar or buy their new book. HR people who endlessly post all of their positions are destroying their credibility by this heavy handed way of presenting their opportunities.
Making yourself human and revealing who you are is one of the best ways to establish a connection with others who happen to see your post. This also applies to your profile…cut out the fluff and the high tone…let others know who you really are.
More connections are not really better…what you should be trying to do is to make connections with people who can make a difference in your world and are trying to do just that. Turn that around and your results will improve almost overnight if you try to make a difference in the experience of other well selected connections.
Spam is the worst…it has been said the spam is hard to describe but I know when I see it every time.
Many not-for-profit jobs are threatened by changes coming from a shift in thinking about funding a bloated government and paying the bill. Boards of directors, which have been coasting for years, are shocked by losses in their stock and bond portfolios and by the lowest returns we have experienced for decades. Changes in rules for making charitable donations could be devastating.
Changes to the tax code by a deficit-ridden administration looking for ways to transfer the wealth of individuals to the congressional social agenda are coming in one form or another. Congress must pass $1.5-trillion in cuts by December 23 of this year. One study found that 67% of donors would cut back their giving if proposed changes become law.
The major hit will effect colleges, foundations, and hospitals without as much impact on smaller organizations. Gifts with strategic tax benefits are likely to impacted most by these changes which could be cut by as much as 3-billion per year.
What must not-for-profit board members do in response to these new trends? None of us are very likely to come out of our comfort zone, and we are hoping that ‘what has worked in the past’ will continue to ‘work in the future’ if we just focus on doing our job.
Professionals have been crippled by the slowdown in the economy and now face even more challenging problems if donors pull back. Staff has probably suggested attending one of the many conferences on the funding crisis for today’s not-for-profits, and they will likely pick up some tips for their time and expense.
Board members must understand their unique role in the process of raising the funding needed for the charity for which they serve. Many have come to these boards with an incomplete understanding of what they must do to accomplish the goals and objectives of funding an annual campaign or a special capital drive.
Radical thinking will be required of those who have passion for their communities and want to see effective fund raising in the face of falling donations. The same-ole, same-ole ideas are entrenched in techniques, which are not working, and old ways of fund raising. Can we begin to think outside of the box?
Social Media Breakdown: How Kred Can Make Your Business Smarter
In today’s social-media obsessed world, there are many analytical tools and companies to help you measure your online influence. Klout.com was one of the first on the scene in September 2009, measuring — on a scale of 1 to 100 — your online influence on sites like Twitter and Facebook. Since launching, the company added LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare and most recently Google + to its algorithm. A company’s “klout scores” have been used to target influencers and provide perks ranging from Hollywood studio film premiere tickets to Spotify invites.
While Klout has pretty much owned the social-media influence market, some are questioning the reliability of the company’s data and “score.”
Enter, Kred, which is a social-media scoring system that seeks to measure a person’s online influence. But Kred, which was created by the San Francisco-based social analytics firm PeopleBrowsr, attempts to also measure a person or company’s engagement, or as they call it, outreach. PeopleBrowsr hopes that that combination can offer a more informed metric for non-celebrities like entrepreneurs and those whom they follow and look to for advice.
At the Kred launch party last Thursday, I spoke with PeopleBrowsr CEO Jodee Rich about how Kred is upping the ante from data mining to organizing and deconstructing that into influence.
How does Kred measure online influence?
Kred has a dual scoring system with separate metrics for “influence” and “outreach.” Influence measures your trust and respect among your peers on a 1,000 point scale. Outreach increases by levels and reflects generosity in the form of helping others spread their messages. We think this — the Kred scoring system — is strong because it’s reflective of the foundations of strong relationships everywhere: trust and generosity.
How can someone translate online influence into monetization?
It’s really the same benefit as networking in real life: You get an opportunity to meet more people who can help you achieve your business goals, accept that through Kred, you have the advantage of knowing exactly who may be most receptive to you before you engage with them. Increasing opportunities to get a message out to a prequalified crowd is fantastic for both you and your potential customer.
What advice do you have for entrepreneurs who want to build online influence?
You can use Kred to find people with high influence in the communities where you want to make your mark. Follow them and help them grow their Influence by re-tweeting them and engaging in conversations. If they have a high level of outreach, that demonstrates a propensity to help those who are helping them.
Kred also recommends to anyone — be they brands or individuals — recommendations on fresh content to introduce to the community. Tweeting the new content will increase your Influence score and create opportunities to reach the most respected people in the community. If the people following you have strong outreach scores, they will probably help you too by passing along your content. In turn, that builds your own influence.
Where do you see the future of this industry and how it affects entrepreneurs/brands?
Kred is a step towards helping everyone identify influencers, become one themselves and get their message amplified among groups of like-minded people. In a world where people are buffeted by the 10,000 or so tweets posted every second, it’s incredibly difficult to reach the right person at the right time without effective, simple analytical tools to guide them. We think that Kred is just the start for developing a toolset for entrepreneurs and other small firms to compete with their bigger counterparts on an equal footing.
http://kred.ly/
Thanks to SHIRA LAZAR
Your Small Business Has No Digital Presence? Time to Get Help
Thanks to:
Author:-Michele Rempel
http://www.linkedin.com/news?viewArticle=&articleID=781723001&gid=1935939&type=member&item=72440346&articleURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Emediavinemarketing%2Ecom%2Fsimplify-social-media%2Fyour-small-business-has-no-digital-presence-time-to-get-help%2F&urlhash=4_Rj&goback=%2Egde_1935939_member_72440346
A recent survey by Hiscox, the online insurance company (which I’ve noticed has been advertising heavily on LinkedIn), asked small business owners and leaders about their usage of social media. They found that almost half of small businesses were not using any social media channels to promote their products and services.
Hiscox’s survey highlights:
- 47% of respondents indicated they did not use social media for business purposes at all
Of those small businesses that were using social media for their business:
-19% use Facebook
-15% use LinkedIn
-4% use Twitter
When all respondents were asked about how they felt about using social media for their business:
-12% described it as a must and they use it all the time
-24% use it when they have the time
-14% indicated they don’t know enough about it
The numbers show, in this survey at least, that many small businesses haven’t made the leap to building a digital presence.
But here’s the thing…
-70% of Americans now say they look at product reviews before making a purchase
-79% of consumers say they use a smartphone to help with shopping
-83% of moms say they do online research after seeing TV commercials for products that interest them
(according to Google in their recent ebook Winning at the Zero Moment of Truth by Jim Lecinski)
And according to a recent Nielsen report, the time that Americans spend on social networks and blogs now represents about one-quarter of the total time spent on the Internet. (Where was the most rapid growth? Mobile Internet users over the age of 55. Fancy that.)
If you’re reading this post, you may be a small business owner who is hunting for information on the best way to use the internet and social media to promote your products and services. You know that most of your potential customers are on their computers and smart phones chatting with others, reading reviews and seeking advice about products or services. But half of you aren’t actively building a digital presence for your business. So why the disconnect? In our own informal company surveys, we have found that it’s usually a combination of 1) not having enough time and 2) not knowing what to do.
The good news is that seeking help on social media and and other forms of internet marketing can remedy the (lack of) time and knowledge problems. Just as many of you benefit from using a bookkeeper, tax accountant, graphic designer, printer and other specialists, you can also save time and experience better results by seeking assistance (training, consulting and/or management) from a social media specialist. It’s time to start building a strong digital presence; save time by getting help.
Sharing content with others who can respond and rate what you post is the allure of a social media site such as Facebook and now, Google+. I confess I am not a fan of these sites and wonder why POEM (that’s plain old e-mail) needs to be replaced by the community bulletin board.
POEM can be managed with greater efficiency than an advertising-based platform which is much like
printing you phone number on tags at the bottom of an ad for household furniture or your garage sale and posting it with a push pin at the supermarket.
Google+ pro-ports to offer greater privacy than what is afforded by Facebook; at least you can limit those who will see your content to people you have placed in ‘circles’ on this new social media darling. And you have somewhat greater control of post editing such as changes to the posting and deleting the post entirely.
Care should be taken with the 1+ button which is the way you ‘like’ a Google+ post, and the beginning of a process of adding to your profile for targeted marketing by the ‘king of search.’
Databases have become king in the world of search results as algorithms gather information which will be used to market products and political positions in the world of sales and voter profiles.
Every word you type and every keystroke becomes a gold mine of information for the Googles and other higher level mathematicians who are gobbling up this information non stop.
A statistical Model Can Predict Human Behavior and decide which ad should appear on the website you are opening which just might entice you to click on the link.
Studies are being conducted to remotely track and understand where we go, what we weight, how we walk and shift our weight. Medical conclusions can be made from this data and lives extended with selected medications and treatments.
Do you need professional help with your search requirements? Only if you expect to compete in the marketplace of the future, that is to say this decade, this year, and even today.