The Power of YouTube

English: YouTube-like logo for userboxes. This...

Imagine a place where people go to actually watch ads and where marketers can take all the time they want to unfold a story. That magical place is called YouTube and UPS shows us how it’s done:

If you can count on anything during the holidays, it’s advertisements that take aim at your heart — and this one hits the bullseye.

The spot from UPS highlights the bond between a 4-year-old boy named Carson and UPS driver Ernest Lagasca, who Carson calls “Mr. Ernie.”

“When Carson was born he couldn’t drink milk or anything with a milk protein in it, so they sent formula,” the boy’s mom, Karen Kight, told KRDO. “Mr. Ernie would deliver quite a few times to our house.”

Carson loves Mr. Ernie and his truck so much that he has a UPS uniform of his own and dreams of being a UPS driver. And when Mr. Ernie comes to the door in the ad, Carson practically leaps into his arms.

“I could come here three times in week and I’d get the same reaction every single time, all that excitement,” Lagasca says in the spot.

But in the commercial, Lagasca isn’t bringing an ordinary package. As part of the UPS Your Wishes Delivered campaign, he’s delivering a child-sized UPS truck to help make Carson’s dream come true.

When I drove up, that moment was just amazing,” Lagasca told Fox21 News.

Armed with a crayon map, Carson proceeds to drive around the neighborhood, delivering boxes of cookies and such.

Source: UPS Makes A Little Boy’s Wish Come True In Heartwarming Holiday Ad

Heartbleed: A Teachable Moment About Passwords

English: Logo of The Huffington Post

The Huffington Post writes:

According to experts, it’s wise to see if the Heartbleed bug has affected the websites you visit most. CNET has compiled a list of the top 100 sites across the web that shows which sites are vulnerable to this bug. When you look at CNET’s list you’ll notice that a password change is recommended for most sites including Google, Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo and more.

Before you join the collective groan being heard around the Internet at the prospect of changing your passwords, look at the bright side. This security glitch actually offers parents and their kids an opportunity to share an important and timely “teachable” moment. Why not use Heartbleed as reason to talk to your kids [and adults!] about how and why to make safe and secure passwords in the first place?

via Heartbleed: A Teachable Moment About Passwords | Diana Graber.

Here’s a tip that most of my clients and students love for creating relatively secure passwords that you won’t forget:

  • Pick 3 numbers
  • Pick 3 letters
  • Pick a special character like !

Now, for each website where you need a password, use the 3 numbers followed by the name of the website or service you are using and use a capital letter. Follow that with the 3 letters and the special character so that your WordPress password would be something like this:

123WordpressABC!

Like I said — relatively secure and you’ll never forget it — just be sure that your number and letter combinations are relatively random!

Update: April 11…

It doesn’t do any good to change your password in a service that has not been updated to protect itself against Heartbleed because your new password will be subject to the same concerns. Check this list of services that has already been updated and in which you can safely change your password. Other than that, be on the lookout for emails from service providers who are telling you it’s now ok to update your password in their service. Questions? Feedback?

Medicine…

Media Reacts: A Christmas Present Or Two Or Ten Edition

via IFTTT

What is the power of YouTube?

Español: Logo Vectorial de YouTube

One of the powers of YouTube is to create commercials that people actually WANT to watch and distribute while avoiding the constraints of television advertising which most people ignore anyway!

6 Vintage Commercials that Will Make You Smile…

My favorite:

This commercial puts things in perspective as only 18 years ago the internet was still a new and growing tool. 5th graders outline the prospective possibilities of the internet, which back then were only dreams, yet today make up a very present reality.

via 6 Vintage Commercials that Will Make You Smile – Goodnet.

Stop It!

Back by popular demand…

Recommended Reading: Breaking Out: How to Build Influence in a World of Competing Ideas

Amazon.com: Breaking Out: How to Build Influence in a World of Competing Ideas eBook: John Butman: Kindle Store

Thanks to Tim Kastelle for recommending this awesome book for thought leaders or “idea entrepreneurs” as the author calls them:

In Breaking Out, idea developer and adviser John Butman shows how the methods of today’s most popular “idea entrepreneurs”—including dog psychologist Cesar Millan, French lifestyle guru Mireille Guiliano French Women Don’t Get Fat, TOMS founder Blake Mycoskie, and many others—can help you take an idea public and build influence for it.It isn’t easy. Butman argues that the rise of the “ideaplex” TED, Twitter, NPR, YouTube, online learning, and all the rest has caused such an explosion in the creation and sharing of ideas that it has become much easier to go public—yet much harder to gain influence. But it can be done.Based on his own experience in advising content experts worldwide, Butman shows how the idea entrepreneur breaks out—by combining personal narrative with rich content, creating many forms of expression from books to live events, developing real-world practices, and creating “respiration” around the idea such that other people can breathe it in and make it their own. The resulting idea platform can reach many different audience groups and continue to build influence for many years and even decades.If you have an idea and want to make a difference in your organization, build a change movement in your community, or improve the world in some way—this book will get you started on the journey to idea entrepreneurship.

via Amazon.com: Breaking Out: How to Build Influence in a World of Competing Ideas eBook: John Butman: Kindle Store.

Of course, with any book I recommend like this, I always recommend purchasing the Kindle version for the following reasons:

  • Usually less expensive
  • Searchable
  • Quotable
  • Highlightable
  • Portable
  • Syncable with other devices using Kindle software
  • You can download a sample and ‘test drive’ the book…

Don’t have a Kindle you say? Silly goose! There’s free Kindle software for every device under the sun…

Tools for Tuesday; Hootsuite

Why settle for being a rockstar on one social network when you can amp multiple platforms all at once? Please give me 5 minutes of your life…

Here’s what posts added via the autoschedule feature look like in the publishing queue. You can click the image to enlarge…

5-8-2013 4-14-00 PM

Dove Experiment Aims to Change the Way You See Yourself

Mashable writes:

Dove posted on Monday a three-minute ad on YouTube that teaches a vital lesson about how we view ourselves compared to how others see us. Trust us, it’s worth your time.

A former forensic artist for the San Jose police department met a series of women and asked each to describe the way they look. He had no way of seeing them behind a curtain. He prompted them to detail everything: hair length, facial structure, their most prominent features. He then sketched each participant from their self-description.

Each woman was asked before the study to get to know one of the other participants. The forensic artist then prompted each woman to describe the other’s face.

via Dove Experiment Aims to Change the Way You See Yourself.

Continue reading “Dove Experiment Aims to Change the Way You See Yourself”

Top 10 ways to build your willpower (and why you should care!)

20 Videos That Went Viral in 2012

See on Scoop.itWhat I see, what I feel, what I’d like to see…

Since the advent of YouTube, short, homemade videos have skyrocketed to Internet fame in just a few days time. We’ve got some of the best videos in health and fitness to go viral over the past year.

See on greatist.com

 

Caroline Casey: Looking past limits

Activist Caroline Casey tells the story of her extraordinary life, starting with a revelation (no spoilers). In a talk that challenges perceptions, Casey asks us all to move beyond the limits we may think we have.

via Caroline Casey: Looking past limits – YouTube.

10 Times TIME’s Person of the Year Wasn’t Really a Person

mentalflossr:

Here are 10 winners who were generic people, groups of people, or things.

via Tumblr

Sometimes, I think I post more about how much I love Twylah than the folks at Twylah do. Whether that’s true or not, I’m a huge fan and the main reason why is Twylah is the only social networking tool I know of that actually adds Search Engine Optimization [SEO] to your domain simply by tweeting. Still, if the DNS manager of your domain host is unfamiliar territory you may not be getting the maximum value out of Twylah and Twitter. I talk you through it here…

So, in summary, the three things you must do are:

  • Use Twylah
  • Add the Twylah widget to your WordPress sidebar
  • Host Twylah on your domain

Questions? Feedback? Comment below or connect with me so we can talk about how this applies to you and your situation…

Going back to our Getting Things Done [GTD] decision diagram for a minute…

The in basket I’m using more often than not is Google Reader. When I see ‘actionable’ content, I decide where is the best place to share that content using the following diagram:

I focused in an earlier post about sharing via Twylah and other tools — today the focus is on curation and blogging as a means of Getting Things Done [GTD]…

How do I decide that something is bloggable? Well here are some guidelines that I use…

  • When I come across content that is so brilliant that I could have written it myself if I would only take the time. Seriously, when I come across really good content that I want to expound upon and call out to my clients and readers…
  • When I find a great illustration or infographic
  • When I find a great YouTube video
  • When commenting on this content gives me a change to share something about my brand by agreeing, disagreeing, adding or subtracting…

You get the idea, right? Anything I find on the Internet is fair game as long as I remember to do three things:

  • Block quote and indent the content I am curating
  • Provide a link back to the original source
  • Be ready to move the content if requested by the owner

I firmly believe that when you curate effectively everybody wins. The original author gives exposure to my readers. My readers get a different perspective. Finally, my post is easier to write and I get the Search Engine Optimization [SEO] benefits from the content I curate…

Here are some thoughts from Suzanne Bird-Harris and a few others on the rationale for curation and some ideas on how to structure a curative post along with a screencast on how I do it using Windows Live Writer, a free blog editor from Microsoft…

Personally? I think curation is one of the best ways to supplement the original thinking on my blog. Here are some thoughts on curation in the blogging process…

Personally? I think curation is one of the best ways to supplement the original thinking on my blog. Here are some thoughts on curation in the blogging process…

Personally? I think curation is one of the best ways to supplement the original thinking on my blog. Here are some thoughts on curation in the blogging process…

http://storify.com/e1evation/thoughts-on-getting-things-done-gtd-in-curation

Here’s the diagram from the video…

Heidi Cohen shares this valuable tidbit today:

About nine out of ten B2B marketers use social media to distribute their content marketing according to recent research by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs. On average these marketers use five social media sites to spread their content marketing more broadly through social sharing.

For B2B marketers, this requires that your content marketing be formatted to work well on the social media platforms where you place it and that you encourage readers to share it. (Here’s a chart showing how to leverage different types of content marketing across social media.)

Respondents cited fourteen different social media platforms that they used to distribute content. (Here’s additional research and analysis from the content marketing survey.) Half of the social media venues were used by over 20% of respondents.

Source: Social Media: Where to Distribute B2B Content Marketing [Research/Chart] | Heidi Cohen

Go to the source if you’d like to have the rest of Heidi’s insights – come back here if you’re not sure how to put them into practice!

Open-mouthed smile

7 Ways to Blog Without Writing

Stanford Smith has some great ideas on produce blog content:

WordPress rocks because it makes it point-and-click easy to share your content – any content. The default content type is text-based but you can do much more.

You can:

  1. Record yourself talking about a subject and upload the audio.
  2. Video record yourself discussing your topic and upload the video
  3. Publish illustrations, graphics, and captioned photos. Use a photo gallery template to show off your work.
  4. Use Google Hangouts to record an interview and link to it from your blog.
  5. Use Storify to create curated stories taken from blog posts, tweets and links
  6. Record your screen with Screenflow (Mac) or Camtasia (PC)  while you demonstrate software, teach a skill, or walk through a presentation. Upload your content to your blog, Slideshare,Scribd, and YouTube.
  7. Have someone interview you and upload the recording. This technique works well if you get tongue-tied talking to a camera.

The point is that there are many ways to create interesting content without writing. Find what you feel the most comfortable with and go with it. Focus on your preferred content creation method until you master it.

Get the rest here: Blog Mastery #16: 7 Ways to Blog Without Writing – Pushing Social

These are all tools that I use liberally on this blog. Comment below or connect with me so we can talk about how this applies to you and your situation…

If you’re using YouTube to promote your business, you want to watch this!

The ever brilliant Heidi Cohen shares this:

Pinterest is the fourth largest source of traffic in the world according to data from Shareaholic. Pinterest’s traffic has doubled since May making it an important entryway to your business.

Since the beginning of 2012, Pinterest has passed other social media platforms including LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, Twitter and StubbleUpon, in terms of the amount of traffic it refers to other sites. Additionally, Pinterest refers more traffic than Bing and Yahoo. (Here are nineteen other reasons to use Pinterest with charts.)” Get the rest here: Pinterest: The Best New Source of Traffic [Research] | Heidi Cohen.

Here’s my approach to blogging and social media in a nutshell…

“You’ve got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In-Between

You’ve got to spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
Have faith or pandemonium
Liable to walk upon the scene”

Whether you’re a solopreneur or the ‘Director, Corporate Marketing and Brand Communications Worldwide’ for a large farm implement manufacturer you can use good, fast and cheap social media tools to implement the ‘Perry Como’ approach to publicizing your business. Did you find some great news about your company on the web? “Accentuate the positive” by posting it to your corporate blog. Is someone harassing you online? “Eliminate the negative” by posting positive content and feeding your fans. Get the picture? Old Perry had it right, even if social media didn’t exist in 1958 when he recorded that song…

So, you latch on to the Perry Como method when you think about promoting your own personal brand

PS Originally posted 02/24/2010, updated 9/21/2012; still true over two years later…

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