Turn social into your own personal media empire

Your personal newsroom calls for authentic, purposeful engagement

If you read your local newspaper or a typical magazine, you’ll realize that most journalism is specialized. You have your columns, reporting, reviews, editorials, letters to the editor, and ombudsman. However, most companies don’t have the volume or diversity of news required to need such staffing.
That said, enough does go on each and every day in your office, among your staff, in your business, in your industry, with you and your very own personal brand that you need to cover the entire newsroom on your own, including the advertising and publicity (because like the news, everything comes down to driving revenue, and if you can’t prove that all the time, energy, and resources you’re spending online aren’t feeding sales, your one-man-social-media-band is not long for this world.)
Let me break it down.
I would start by saying tone down the shameless self-promotion that you’re incessantly dropping into your streams and onto your walls, but I have a feeling you’re not being aggressive enough. Why? Because I don’t think that most social media experts, consultants, and gurus recommend being aggressive enough.

Become your own personal newsroom

Ultimately, you need to become a reporter of your own facts. You need to lead your followers deep into who you are, what you do, what products and services you can, have, and do offer. You need to make sure you use your platform — your own personal newsroom, your own personal media empire.
It’s OK because that’s part of what makes you interesting: what you do, what you can do, and who you are.
The content on your website — about your company or brand, who you are, what you do, products, services, case studies, client lists — can be woven into what you discuss on a daily basis, interspersed with other news and content that come from other departments of your newsroom.
How would I write that stuff up so I don’t sound like a self-promotional, self-loving jerk? Be objective. What I would say is that you should report the facts, ma’am, only the facts, even if the facts reflect the work, experience, products, services, staff, and culture of you and your company.
It’s amazing how much time and energy is spent developing witty commentary and narrative outside of what you, your brand, and your company actually do. Too much time is spent being cute, coy, playful, and timely; riding the meme-wave, if you will, instead of getting down to business and giving the people what they want.

Consumers are hungry for engagement

People are tired of just playing peekaboo. People are a lot more earnest and hungry for real news, worthwhile content, and a spirited conversation — not just the razzle dazzle or the dance of the seven veils that you may think. Bombast and titilation have their place, but people grow tired of the same old tricks and eventually want something more, especially if you’re not actually TMZ or Rush.
In addition to wanting to know more about what you do, who you are, what you know, and how you can help, people follow you on social media in order to engage with you. They have questions, concerns, problems. People also come to you to find out what you think. They come by to see if you have an opinion or analysis of what’s going on in your space.
And it is your opportunity, every day, to offer your unique insight into what’s going on in the news. Sadly, most people spend more time sharing other peoples’ news, analysis, critiques, and insights hoping that the quality of news that they curate from others into their own social media stream says a lot about them. Sometimes that’s indeed true; however, the real value-add in this scenario is when the reshare, reblog, and retweet isn’t just a carbon copy but offers additional commentary, analysis, or personal color-commentary.

Analyze, teach and share

People come to you not for your curation and aggregation skills but for your take on things. Many people criticize newspapers circa 2013 because they’ve become news aggregators for nationally syndicated content, AP wire news, and barely doctored press releases. Spending a little time taking the news that’s coming across your news desk and putting your own personal spin on it is essential to your success and the value of your voice in a very noisy social mediasphere.

Listen to your followers, who will give you opportunities to expand upon your ideas, to refine your insights, and to learn more about your clients and brand fans

This is indeed less possible on Twitter where we’re only offered a paltry 140 characters but blogs, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, and even Pinterest allow hundreds of characters, plenty of room to go into quite a sophisticated analysis.
And finally, there’s the role of editor, teacher and ombudsman. After you’ve spent some serious time out there producing opinionated, brave, smart, and insightful content, you’re likely to get questions, queries, concerns, misunderstandings, and request for more, specific, content.
It’s time to listen, now — and listen carefully. Your followers will not only tell you what they need, want, and dislike, but they’ll also give you many opportunities to expand upon your ideas, to refine your thoughts and insights, and to learn more about your current clients and brand fans but you’ll have an opportunity to listen to what your natural business prospects are interested in and be able to sell towards that.
No matter how much social media experts and gurus talk about the traditional media as being broadcast-only, newsrooms have always depended upon their community to provide them news, traffic reports, leads, human interest stories, letters to the editors, and local community news.
In many case, at a macro scale, you’re now a publisher. You are your own personal newsroom and while you might want to keep the reins in and keep your own media empire relatively modest for now, you still need to think more in terms of engaging with your community in a real way instead if just entertaining and amusing them.
And that’s the way it is.

SOURCE:

 

 

 

You Don’t Have to Sacrifice Your Health
To Enjoy Dessert (As Often as You Like!
And what if these desserts were not only irresistibly delicious, but good for you too?

If you keep an eye on your health, but you still love to indulge in decadent desserts, you’ll be glad to know that… You have your cake and be well too!

You Don’t Have to Sacrifice Your Health

To Enjoy Dessert (As Often as You Like!)

Join Our Newsletter for Instant Access to Fat-Burning Baking: Your Guide to Baking Mouthwatering Desserts That Melt Fat - Absolutely FREE!

 

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A Vulnerable Age~Loans Borrowed Against Pensions Squeeze

Tami Chappell for The New York Times

Ronald E. Govan, a retired veteran in Snellville, Ga., filed a federal suit in February that raises concerns about the costs of a loan.

 

 

By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG

To retirees, the offers can sound like the answer to every money worry: convert tomorrow’s pension checks into today’s hard cash.

A Vulnerable Age

Articles in this series are examining financial challenges and pitfalls faced by older Americans in lean economic times.

But these offers, known as pension advances, are having devastating financial consequences for a growing number of older Americans, threatening their retirement savings and plunging them further into debt. The advances, federal and state authorities say, are not advances at all, but carefully disguised loans that require borrowers to sign over all or part of their monthly pension checks. They carry interest rates that are often many times higher than those on credit cards.

In lean economic times, people with public pensions — military veterans, teachers, firefighters, police officers and others — are being courted particularly aggressively by pension-advance companies, which operate largely outside of state and federal banking regulations, but are now drawing scrutiny from Congress and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The pitches come mostly via the Web or ads in local circulars.

“Convert your pension into CASH,” LumpSum Pension Advance, of Irvine, Calif., says on its Web site. “Banks are hiding,” says Pension Funding L.L.C., of Huntington Beach, Calif., on its Web site, signaling the paucity of credit. “But you do have your pension benefits.”

Another ad on that Web site is directed at military veterans: “You’ve put your life on the line for Americans to protect our way of life. You deserve to do something important for yourself.”

A review by The New York Times of more than two dozen contracts for pension-based loans found that after factoring in various fees, the effective interest rates ranged from 27 percent to 106 percent — information not disclosed in the ads or in the contracts themselves. Furthermore, to qualify for one of the loans, borrowers are sometimes required to take out a life insurance policy that names the lender as the sole beneficiary.

LumpSum Pension Advance and Pension Funding did not return calls and e-mails for comment.

While it is difficult to say precisely how many financially struggling people have taken out pension loans, legal aid offices in Arizona, California, Florida and New York say they have recently encountered a surge in complaints from retirees who have run into trouble with the loans.

Ronald E. Govan, a Marine Corps veteran in Snellville, Ga., paid an interest rate of more than 36 percent on a pension-based loan. He said he was enraged that veterans were being targeted by the firm, Pensions, Annuities & Settlements, which did not return calls for comment.

“I served for this country,” said Mr. Govan, a Vietnam veteran, “and this is what I get in return.”

The allure of borrowing against pensions underscores an abrupt reversal in the financial fortunes of many retirees in recent years, as well as the efforts by a number of financial firms, including payday lenders and debt collectors, to market directly to them.

The pension-advance firms geared up before the financial crisis to woo a vast and wealthy generation of Americans heading for retirement. Before the housing bust and recession forced many people to defer retirement and to run up debt, lenders marketed the pension-based loan largely to military members as a risk-free option for older Americans looking to take a dream vacation or even buy a yacht. “Splurge,” one advertisement in 2004 suggested.

Now, pension-advance firms are repositioning themselves to appeal to people in and out of the military who need cash to cover basic living expenses, according to interviews with borrowers, lawyers, regulators and advocates for the elderly.

“The cost of these pension transactions can be astronomically high,” said Stuart Rossman, a lawyer with the National Consumer Law Center, an advocacy group that works on issues of economic justice for low-income people.

“But there is profit to be made on older Americans’ financial pain.”

 

The oldest members of the baby boom generation became eligible for Social Security during the recent housing bust and recession, and many nearing retirement age watched their investments plummet in value. Some are now sliding deep into debt to make ends meet.

A Vulnerable Age

Articles in this series are examining financial challenges and pitfalls faced by older Americans in lean economic times

The pitches for pension loans emphasize how difficult it can be for retirees with scant savings and checkered credit histories to borrow money, especially because banks typically do not count pension income when considering loan applications.

“The result often leaves retired pensioners viewed like other unqualified borrowers,” one of the lenders, DFR Pension Funding, says on its Web site. That, the firm says, “can make the ‘golden years’ not so golden.”

The combined debt of Americans from the ages of 65 to 74 is rising faster than that of any other age group, according to data from the Federal Reserve. For households led by people 65 and older, median debt levels have surged more than 50 percent, rising from $12,000 in 2000 to $26,000 in 2011, according to the latest data available from the Census Bureau.

While American adults of all ages ran up debt in good times, older Americans today are shouldering unusually heavy burdens. According to a 2012 study by Demos, a liberal-leaning public policy organization, households headed by people 50 and older have an average balance of more than $8,000 on their credit cards.

Meanwhile, households headed by people age 75 and older devoted 7.1 percent of their total income to debt payments in 2010, up from 4.5 percent in 2007, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

Financial products like pension advances, which promise quick cash, appear especially enticing because their long-term costs are largely hidden from the borrowers.

Federal and state regulators are spotting fresh examples of abuse, and both the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions are examining these loans, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Though the firms are not directly regulated by states, officials from the California Department of Corporations, the state’s top financial services regulator, filed a desist-and-refrain order against a pension-advance firm in 2011 for failing to disclose critical information to investors.

That firm has since filed for bankruptcy, but a department spokesman said it remained watchful of pension-advance products.

“As the state regulator charged with protecting investors, we are aware of this type of offer and are very concerned with the companies that abuse it to defraud people,” said the spokesman, Mark Leyes.

Borrowing against pensions can help some retirees, elder-care lawyers say. But, like payday loans, which are commonly aimed at lower-income borrowers, pension loans can turn ruinous for people who are already financially vulnerable, because of the loans’ high costs.

Some of the concern on abuse focuses on service members. Last year, more than 2.1 million military retirees received pensions, along with roughly 2.6 million federal employees, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Lawyers for service members argue that pension lending flouts federal laws that restrict how military pensions can be used.

Mr. Govan, the retired Marine, considered himself a credit “outcast” after his credit score was battered by a foreclosure in 2008 and a personal bankruptcy in 2010.

Unable to get a bank loan or credit card to supplement his pension income, Mr. Govan, now 59, applied for a payday loan online to pay for repairs to his truck.

Days later, he received a solicitation by e-mail from Pensions, Annuities & Settlements, based in Wilmington, Del.

Mr. Govan said the offer of quick, seemingly easy cash sounded too good to refuse. He said he agreed to sign over $353 a month of his $1,033 monthly disability pension for five years in exchange for $10,000 in cash up front. Those terms, including fees and finance charges, work out to an effective annual interest rate of more than 36 percent. After Mr. Govan belatedly did the math, he was shocked.

“It’s just wrong,” said Mr. Govan, who filed a federal lawsuit in February that raises questions about the costs of the loan.

Pitches to military members must sidestep a federal law that prevents veterans from automatically turning over pension payments to third parties. Pension-advance firms encourage veterans to establish separate bank accounts controlled by the firms where pension payments are deposited first and then sent to the lenders. Lawyers for retirees have challenged the pension-advance firms in courts across the United States, claiming that they illegally seize military members’ pensions and violate state limits on interest rates.

To circumvent state usury laws that cap loan rates, some pension advance firms insist their products are advances, not loans, according to the firms’ Web sites and federal and state lawsuits. On its Web site, Pension Funding asks, “Is this a loan against my pension?” The answer, it says, is no. “It is an advance, not a loan,” the site says.

The advance firms have evolved from a range of different lenders; some made loans against class-action settlements, while others were subprime lenders that made installment and other short-term loans.

The bankrupt firm in California, Structured Investments, has been dogged by legal challenges virtually from the start. The firm was founded in 1996 by Ronald P. Steinberg and Steven P. Covey, an Army veteran who had been convicted of felony bank fraud in 1994, according to court records.

To attract investors, the firm promised an 8 percent return and “an opportunity to own a cash stream of payments generated from U.S. military service persons,” according to the California Department of Corporations. Mr. Covey, according to company registration records, is also associated with Pension Funding L.L.C. Neither Mr. Covey nor Mr. Steinberg returned calls for comment. In 2011, a California judge ordered Structured Investments to pay $2.9 million to 61 veterans who had filed a class action.

But the veterans, among them Daryl Henry, retired Navy disbursing clerk, first class, in Laurel, Md., who received a $42,13  pension loan at a rate of 26.8 percent, have not received any relief.

Robert Bramson, a lawyer who represented Mr. Henry in the class-action lawsuit, said that pensioners too often failed to contemplate the long-term costs of the advances.

“It’s simply a terrible deal,” he said.

SOURCE:

 

 

 

 

Be a Big Fish in the Blogger Outreach Pond

 

By Chris Abraham

Image via CrunchBase

It’s always a tough question: would you rather be the smallest fish in a big pond or the biggest fish in a small pond? Would you prefer to be the ugliest pretty person or the prettiest ugly person? Would you prefer to have the lowest IQ at MIT or the highest IQ at State?
This is all according to your preference, but when it comes to a blogger outreach campaign, the decision is never so zero-sum, not nearly so either/or. You can always do both, right? You can always secure hundreds of long-tail earned media mentions while you’re desperately working on securing coverage on Mashable and TechCrunch. You can lock in hundreds of posts short term while you’re wining and dining Pete Cashmore in Manhattan to make sure you become BFFs, so that you’ll have that inside track on getting column inches for your future newsworthy announcements.
However, in the meanwhile, getting those hundreds of posts on B-list-through-Z-list blogs insures that you start building your reputation as a player. Consider this your bush league experience. Like doing your time in the small clubs. Paying your dues. In fact, most journalists and A-list bloggers glean their story ideas from the blogs they reach, from their influencers, blogs and bloggers who may well be less popular but are still highly influential.
Do you have the sort of news, offerings, and quality of content that can compete with the big players? Do you have the kind of prior relationships with the top bloggers and journalists or do they not know you from Adam?
This is not only about blogger ego and their desire to be treated like demigods by multinational agencies and their billion dollar consumer electronics clients–though that doesn’t hurt–it also has to do with the prestige of the blog’s content as well as the aspiration of what the blog and the blogger wants to become.
Where do you fit on that? You need to be realistic. You need to judge fairly where you are in the competition. Do you have the time, the resources, the reputation, the newsworthiness, the novelty, or the prior relationship to make it into TechCrunch? If not, that’s OK. There is no reason to fight over the top 25 blogs of your industry or the top 100 blogs in general, because there may be over one billion blogs worldwide, which equates to one out of every six people in the world.
Realistically, unless you’re the quarterback of your high school football team, you’re being unrealistic if you limit your options for prom to just the captain of the cheerleaders. There are so many appealing dates for prom everywhere in school. If you’re only applying to Harvard and Yale, you had better also be not only at the top of your class but also a legacy, score a perfect score on your SAT, letter on a sport, and have a well-developed set of extra curricular activities.
Work toward Prom King and an incoming Freshman spot at Harvard College, but plan also on going to prom with someone and to college at all. Aim high but have a plan B and C. Remember, also, that being the best lover with the best prom date you get can always results in better dates in the future and being the best student in the college you are accepted to can always result in getting to Harvard as a transfer or in graduate school later.
Focus on being a big fish in a small pond. As you are working to succeed at that, you’ll naturally graduate to the A-list if you have the goods. But if you shoot for the A-list pond exclusively, and you don’t make the cut, you won’t have done anything to win with the B-list.
Start small and grow to make blogger outreach work for you.

SOURCE:

 



About the author

• 
• Chris Abraham
• Chris Abraham is a leading expert in digital: social media marketing, Internet privacy, online reputation management (ORM), and digital PR with a focus on blogger outreach, blogger engagement, and Internet crisis response.
  A pioneer in online social networks and publishing, with a natural facility for anticipating the next big thing, Chris is an Internet analyst, web strategy consultant and advisor to the industries' leading firms. He specializes in Web 2.0 technologies, including content syndication, online collaboration, blogging, and consumer generated media. Chris Abraham was named a Top 50 Social Media Power Influencer by Forbes, #1 PR2.0 Influencer by Traackr, and top-10 social media influencers by Marketwire; and, for what it’s worth, Chris has a Klout of 77 the last time he looked.
  Chris is currently Director of Social Media at Unison agency, where he is expanding their social media offerings by starting a social media practice. Unison is an integrated brand agency combining strategic, creative, and technology services to help their clients build and strengthen their brands.
  Chris recently completed a five-month contract with Reputation.com as Team Lead, Special Projects, in sales for their "Whale Hunting" team. Chris was one of two whale hunters tasked with closing clients for their high-end Picasso Online Reputation Management (ORM) and Executive Privacy products, from $10,000-$100,000/month campaigns for high-net-worth and high-profile individuals and Fortune 500 companies.
  Prior to Reputation.com, Chris ran his own digital PR and marketing company, Abraham Harrison, LLC, from Washington, DC, Portland, Oregon, and Berlin, Germany, with clients including: Kimberly Clark, The Daily, Habitat for Humanity, Greenpeace, The Fresh Air Fund, International Medical Corps, Sharp, Pew, Alzheimer’s Association, and others. Previous to starting AH, Chris worked on the Interactive Team at Edelman Public Affairs in Washington, DC, consulting with clients such as Wal-Mart, Shell, and GE on blogger and social media strategy. Before Edelman, Chris was Technology Strategist for New Media Strategies, a pioneer in online brand promotion and protection with clients including Sci-Fi Channel, Buena Vista, TomTom, Paramount Pictures, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Disney, Reebok, EA, RCA, and NBC.
  In the early nineties, Chris joined The Meta Network, a seminal online virtual community based in Washington, and so began his career as an expert in online community development, social media, social networking, and online collaboration. Chris has had a web presence since 1993 and started blogging in 1999, focusing on community, connection, innovation, and brand extension. As a technologist, Chris has consulted T. Rowe Price, the US Department of Treasury CIO, Friendster, Deutsche Telekom, and others.
  Chris has taught blogging courses for the Writer's Center of Bethesda, has been a guest lecturer on public affairs blogging at Columbia University's SIPA school and the American University in Washington, DC, the Emergent Technologies Advisor to the Urban Institute's Communications Advisory Board, and a Renaissance Weekend participant since 2001. Additionally, he is the go-to expert on social media, citizen journalism, technology, and the Internet for BBC World Service, CNN Radio, and CNet's BNet.Chris received his BA in American Literature from The George Washington University, studied American Literature at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, studied French at the University of Hawaii, and studied German at both the Washington and Berlin Goethe-Instituts. In addition to the Huffington Post, Chris blogs for his own blog, ChrisAbraham.com, for Biznology.com, for Socialmedia.biz, and for MarketingConversation.com. Chris has written for AdAge’s DigitalNext and Global Idea Network blogs.Chris is indulging his mid-life crisis by buying a motorcycle and taking up the shooting sports including trap and target shooting with both rifle and pistol. Until he gets the novelty of gun ownership out of his system, you’ll find Chris in South Arlington, Virginia, right across the river from his beloved Washington, DC.

Welcome to Tony's Sea of Life

Celebrating  "Earth Day"

Welcome to Tony's Sea of Life

 

ABOUT TONY

Tony Ludovico, as a teenager, was introduced to the world of water and fishing by his Uncle. As his first kingfish was hooked to his line, likewise, Tony was hooked to the sea. He fell in love with the water and all it had to offer. Later on, in 1979, Tony embarked on another ocean sport, scuba diving. He jumped right in and quickly learned the art of scuba diving, spear fishing, and free diving. Tony took his diving skills to the next level and introduced videography into the underwater world. He had a desire to capture and reveal the natural beauty of the underwater world, which few people had the opportunity to experience. This aspiration compelled him to fully develop and perfect his videography skills.
Tony spent the next couple of years traveling to different parts of the globe in an effort to hone his videography skills. As a result, Tony compiled and sold his first video, “Spear Fishing the Palm Beaches”, in 2001. It quickly became the number one spear fishing video in the marketplace. Over the next several years Tony gained a reputation for his incredible video footage, the likes the film industry had not seen before. His videos are seen on numerous fishing shows, the National Geographic channel, the Discovery channel, and countless local and regional television shows.
The next challenge for Tony was capturing the same quality imagery in still photography. When he defeated the challenge, his photography was immediately received with the highest of accolades. For the past five years, Tony has created a series of fine art limited editions portraying his greatest images. These fine art limited edition Giclees have been made available on his web site, in several fine art galleries, and at numerous major boat shows.
Tony has received several national awards and honors celebrating his beautiful work. They also celebrate his strong commitment to the education, preservation, and the ongoing exploration for information pertaining to the vast community of life under the seas.
Tony possesses a great passion, love, and respect for the ocean, and he wants to share this with others through his work. With every click of his camera he is changing and impacting the world of photography. He is always looking through the lens to capture the next breath-taking shot!


VIDEO:

Go Hug a ‘Comfort Dog’ And Make Yourself Feel Better About Everything

The comfort canines from Newtown, Connecticut are here in Boston to help with the healing process.

By Steve Annear 

Marathon Acts of Kindness

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Photo via Lutheran Church Charities K-9 Comfort Dogs.

 

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When it comes to coping with trauma and anxiety, hugging a dog is the best medicine, experts say.
This week, several canines from the Lutheran Church Charities K-9 Comfort Dogs program will be at the First Lutheran Church of Boston, which is just blocks away from the finish line of the Boston Marathon race, to let residents and those trying to cope with Monday’s tragedy hug and pet them.

 

The dogs were deployed to Boston on April 15, the same day as the bombs detonated along the marathon route, injuring hundreds of people and killing three others. They will be at the church through Sunday, April 21, for people to spend time with during the healing process. Two of the dogs from the LCC K-9 Comfort Dogs program, Addie and Maggie, who were recently in Newtown, Connecticut and at Sandy Hook Elementary School helping victims and families there, will also be present in Boston.
The arrival of the dogs was organized by Reverend Ingo Dutzmann, pastor of the First Lutheran Church, so they could “be there for those in the community who are shaken up from the bombings.” Dutzmann is a close associate of a pastor in Connecticut, and the two connected immediately after the marathon attack to arrange for the animals to ship up to Boston. At the start of the week there were two dogs, but as of Wednesday, Dutzmann says three more have arrived to meet the high demand to pet the animals. The dogs have also spent time at local hospitals, visiting victims of the marathon tragedy.
Dutzmann says the church has been crowded with people since Monday, all wanting to spend time with the volunteer pets. “A lot of people are showing up. [The dogs] produce their own advertising, really. It’s kind of like a pretty girl in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. I think those girls are great, of course, but I think these dogs are better. These dogs are 100-percent geared toward how they can make someone feel better,” he says. “The animals have that sixth sense—they know what you’re feeling and somehow they know how to respond.”
Those feelings of comfort people experience when petting the dogs come from chemicals being released in the brain, according to Marjorie Jacobs, a training associate at Boston University’s Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation. “When we are hyper vigilant and alert the body is releasing [many different chemicals]. And when in the company of a calm animal, it elicits a relaxation response. You settle in, you’re not hyper vigilant,” she says. “Also there is that unconditional love and attention and support that the animals give.”
Jacobs says that repeatedly petting the animals and holding them releases oxytocin, the bonding hormone and chemical that is released when babies are being breast fed, which brings people “back into the present moment” and gives them “a break to forget about the past, and from thinking about the anxiety in the future.”
The powerful hormone is said to increase “pair bonding.”
Not to mention, dogs don’t have much to say when someone pours their heart out to them, seeking comfort. “Of course, dogs don’t talk back,” says Jacobs. “It turns off the thinking mind, because you know you can’t [have a conversation] with the animals…you suspend your thinking and then the physical touch and gazing into the eyes calms down the body.”
Because the services are free, the group that owns the dogs has started a fundraiser to help keep the animals in Boston through the weekend.
If you would like to spend time with the dogs, visit the Lutheran Church at 299 Berkeley St. Their services will be available, free, and open to the public at the following times:
Wednesday: 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Thursday: 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Friday & Saturday: Call ahead at 617-536-8851
Sunday: Starting at 7 a.m.

Photo via Lutheran Church Charities K-9 Comfort Dogs.

 

The 5 Golden Rules to HARO Success, as Shared by Real Users

  by Mihaela Lica Butler

HARO, short for Help a Reporter Out, is an amazing tool, if you know how to use it. For business owners with no budgets for PR, it’s a godsend. For PR professionals, it’s the promised land: direct opportunities to pitch journalists who are actually interested in their stories. But of course, things aren’t as simple as they appear at the first sight: using HARO requires a bit of common sense, self discipline, and pitching skills.
There are no real secret recipes to using HARO, however, to learn how to maximize your chances of being selected as a source by a journalist, you need information from those who actually experienced success. What did they do to be selected? Are they willing to share the wisdom? Are there tips and tricks that helped them score great media mentions?
Everything PR ran a query with HARO, asking sources to share their success stories, and the amount of feedback received was mind-blowing. In less than 24 hours, there were over 50 pitches in my mailbox, from business owners and PR professionals alike. These responses provided tremendous insider intelligence value – concrete real life examples of successful pitches, tips and advice from real HARO users.

1. Off topic pitches will fail

Don’t pitch off topic – there seems to be a general consensus among 57 people who answered Everything PRs call for success stories. Pitching off topic is a waste of time for you, and might impact your image negatively with journalists:

Stay on topic and get to the point quickly. Reporters are busy and they get tons of
queries through HARO — respect their time,” told us Julianne Coyne, PR specialist at Fahrenheit Marketing. Her company was recently selected as a source for an article on Secret Entourage, How to Do Keyword Research for SEO.

Christina Daves of CastMedic Designs told us the same thing:

Don’t pitch off topic to a reporter. They get inundated with responses. Don’t waste their time.

And Daves knows a thing or two about success with HARO. Aside several mentions or national media (like Blog Talk Radio, NerdWallet, Examiner and others), Daves appeared on the Steve Harvey Show, after answering the query, Do you want to take your product to the next level? (National Television). The show ended up being a contest:

“I competed against 5 other inventors and was selected by two branding expert judges and won $20,000 in seed money. As a result, sales have boomed and I also have had celebrity customers.”

2. Keep it short, smarty

Brief pitches work best – it appears that users who send out brief pitches experience a better success rate than those who rant.

“My best advice to new HARO users would be to send very brief pitches that are highly personalized. Nobody wants a form letter,” told us Alexandra Chauran, a fortune teller who recently got a mention in the Colorado Springs Gazette after answering a journalist query on HARO.

The same advice comes from Jason Fitzgerald of Strength Running who used HARO to get press mentions and quotes in Yahoo, Health Magazine, Shape, and many others:

“Beginners to HARO should keep their tips short, to the point, and offer to help the writer with additional information or quotes.”

3. Stick to the topic, without the fluff

Keep to the point – even if you want to give additional details you believe relevant, keep them to yourself:

“Respond to queries where you can truly offer the expertise and information that the reporter is seeking,” explains Michelle Sullivan, Director of Marketing at Privia. “Do not waste their time as that certainly won’t endear you to them. Answer the questions that they are asking and do not offer tons of additional data that doesn’t really benefit their article. Understand that they are on a deadline and that if they need additional details, they will certainly ask.”

And Sullivan should know. Her CEO was recently featured in the SmartCEO Magazine after answering the query Seeking DC area C-level executives for interviews on corporate team building.
Keeping to the point works even when you are not in the business field the journalist is interested in, but only if you know what you are talking about. Liran Hirschkorn, who is an Independent Insurance Agent was quoted at SheKnows.Com about fathers who work from home, a mention that brings traffic to his website:

“My advice would be to look at the HARO emails every day and any request that might be a good fit – submit to. It doesn’t matter if it relates directly to your business or not – for example I was quoted at SheKnows.Com about fathers who work from home, and that mention gets traffic to my website. Write through, useful responses that add value and you have a good shot at a reporter emailing or calling you back.”

Joseph Shrand, MD, Medical Director at Castle, High Point Treatment Center in Marshfield, experienced the downsides of too long, fluffy pitches first hand:

“My first attempts were dismally unsuccessful: I put way too much information in the response. I am now much more likely to get what I call a HARO hit by writing perhaps three or four pithy sentences that get right to the heart of the query.”

4. Credentials matter

Your credentials may sell you as an expert. As reporters are more often than not looking for experts, you should showcase your credentials as early in your response as possible. Conor Keenan, SEO Analyst & Lead Email Marketer at Perfect Search Media explains:

“Give your information immediately, and any other credentials you may possess to build your klout with the reporter in question. Any credentials you can give early on in the email will help to ensure that your email gets read by that reporter, and that will increase your likelihood that you will be mentioned.”

Tangela Walker-Craft, the mom inventor of www.TheGoPillow.com, believes in credentials too, especially because complete contact information ensures that you can receive a reply if you’re selected. But also because her credentials are what scored a mention in the 8 Must-Have Gadgets for Your Next Road Trip segment on the Today Show.

5. The early bird catches the worm

Respond quickly – this is one of the most important rules, often ignored by HARO users. But Jennifer Stagner, search engine optimization, analysis, and technical support manager at Tops Products, knows it well:

“Respond QUICKLY – many reporters stop reading their pitches after they have found the ones that will work. They are meeting deadlines, so respond accordingly.”

Take Stagner’s word for it: she has already experienced tremendous success with HARO, with mentions on MarketingSherpa, CEOBlogNation, Secret Entourage, and many others.
Casey Halloran of Costa Rican Vacations, who got a couple of mentions in Forbes, agrees:

“I cannot imagine how many replies they have to sort through, so I think it’s worth bearing in mind that you need to somehow stand apart….and fast.”

Instead of conclusion: we will follow up

There’s so much more to share from the responses we received: enough material to write 10 HARO articles, not just one. We will follow up with more in the near future. In the meanwhile, the 5 golden rules should help you get started.

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How a few photo tweaks can improve your click-through rate.

Guest post by Cyrus ShepardPlacefull Inc.
Over the years, SEOs have employed many techniques to control how their site appears in search results. These included:

• Writing compelling title tags 65-75 characters long
• Descriptive meta descriptions
• Use of NOODP and NOYDIR meta tags
• Keyword rich URLs

By controlling how our snippets appear in search results, we could greatly improve our click-through rates and the amount of free traffic we saw.
But times are changing. For better or worse, Google has now stepped up its title tag rewriting algorithm so that webmasters can no longer predict how their title tags will display. This major bummer is only compensated by the fact that Google has given us something much better in the form of rich snippets.
In particular, Google+ gave us author profile photos.

This was a huge win. Or so we thought.

A Setback for Resellers of Digital Products

By BEN SISARIO

Published: April 1, 2013  

A federal judge in New York has dealt a blow to the nascent business of reselling digital goods like music and e-books, ruling that a small company’s secondary market for digital music infringes on the copyrights controlled by record companies.       

 

Jodi Hilton for The New York Times

John Ossenmacher of the music reseller ReDigi, which was disappointed by the ruling.

The company, ReDigi, opened an online platform in late 2011 that allowed people to upload and resell songs they had bought from online retailers like Apple’s iTunes. ReDigi said its technology deleted the original file once a copy was put up for sale, but the major record labels were skeptical, and Capitol Records sued in early 2012.

The case has been closely watched as a test of whether the first sale doctrine — the legal principle that someone who owns a copy of a copyrighted work, like a book or album, is free to resell it — can be applied to digital goods.

In an order dated Saturday, Judge Richard J. Sullivan of United States District Court in Manhattan ruled that ReDigi was liable for copyright infringement, and seemed entirely unmoved by ReDigi’s arguments.

“The first sale defense does not cover this any more than it covered the sale of cassette recordings of vinyl records in a bygone era,” he wrote.

In sometimes wry language — one footnote mentions that ReDigi compared its system to the “Star Trek” transporter and “Willy Wonka’s teleportation device, Wonkavision” — Judge Sullivan ruled that ReDigi’s system infringed on Capitol’s reproduction rights because it transmitted an unauthorized copy of the file over the Internet.

In a statement, ReDigi said it was “disappointed” by the ruling and would appeal it, but noted that the decision applied to its original technology, not its updated version, ReDigi 2.0.

“While ReDigi 2.0, 3.0, or 4.0 may ultimately be deemed to comply with copyright law,” the judge wrote, “it is clear that ReDigi 1.0 does not.”

Damages for the infringement will be considered at a later date.

Capitol Records did not respond to a request for comment.

Although ReDigi is a small player in the world of digital media, the case has been watched for the effect it may have on two giants, Apple and Amazon, which have applied for patents for secondary digital markets but have not put them in place.

In addition to record companies, book authors have spoken out against the idea of a digital secondary market, saying that the presence of a “used” but perfect digital copy of a book would cause prices to crash.

Among those supporting reselling digital goods are libraries, because it could make more material publicly available.

The decision came less than two weeks after the Supreme Court upheld the first sale doctrine in the case of Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, about a student who was importing and selling textbooks that he had bought at a lower price overseas.

That case concerned different aspects of the rule, and legal experts said it did not apply strictly in the ReDigi case. But digital rights advocates worried the decision effectively banned an online secondary market.

“The decision was very one-sided,” said Jason M. Schultz, an assistant clinical professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley. “There needs to be some way to resell if we believe the Supreme Court that first sale is important.”

 

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