Creating Content About Creating Content
Well played YouTube…April Fool’s indeed!
I came across this promotion for “The YouTube Collection” tonight. For fun, I ordered the “Sports Genre” on Betamax video tape. It came to over 25,000 videos that cost over $127,00. Shipping and Handling was over $59,000 for a total of $187,100. Then I hit order and it said:
“Your order has been placed. Due to heavy demand, your anticipated delivery date is: JUNE 16, 2045
Also, April Fools.”
Hilarious!”
See the video below…
My phone bill was a bit more than I expected so I went down to the AT&T store for clarification since it was a new plan this month compared to my previous AT & T plan.
They pointed out a $9.99 charge for this month on a “Flycell club pack” subscription that had also been applied in my previous months’ bill. I asked if this was an AT & T service to which I was told “no?” The rep encouraged me to call AT & T customer service about it and could not tell me what the Flycell Club pack even was.
So I called customer service. The phone rep said that third party companies will send out texts asking for your subscription and if you don’t text “no” they “think” you want the subscription and notify AT & T to bill you on it. He also added that these “subscriptions” work the same way for all carriers (i.e. Verizon, Sprint, etc)
I replied, “How can I billed from a 3rd party on my AT & T account on a subscription I never authorized?” At first, the rep tried to “let me down gently” with the “bad news” that what they were doing was within the text messaging regulations of the SEC (Really? Which politicians got paid off to legalize this scam???)
I then responded by saying “It may be legal, but you guys apparently have a serious hole in your ability to protect your customer when a 3rd party can add a charge to my AT & T account without any authorization on my part. Since when does a “non-answer” to an “unsolicited sales pitch” equal a “yes?” That’s not how the real world works.”
(Apparently there is a “parallel text messaging universe” being created as we speak where businesses can volunteer you to sign you up for their service via your cell phone carrier)
His tune quickly changed and he credited me back my $20 and put a “blocker” on my phone and my wife’s for these type of subscriptions (Why isn’t this a standard feature again?).
I also commented I didn’t even know what service I was paying $10 a month for. The rep looked into it and couldn’t figure it out himself either… Flycell must be really proud of their services that nobody can recognize, notice or articulate.
After getting off the phone I looked thru my text messages for the day the charge was applied including the previous days. Didn’t find a thing. All the texts were from friends. Still don’t know how they got to me (possibly Facebook who also has my number).
After some Internet searching I’ve learned what a Flycell Club Pack is, Flycell’s 800 number takes you to Delhi, Flycell has an online reputation for scamming people (some people up to $19.95 a month for more than a year before realizing it), and Flycell has a multitude of complaints with Consumer Affairs ( http://www.consumeraffairs.com/cell_phones/flycell.html ).
I’m glad I really didn’t lose anything (it’s the principle that has me all fired up), but I’m posting this rant to vent a little and to encourage all of my friends to do two things:
1. Check your phone bill for any misc charges from 3rd party subscriptions including (but not limited to) “Flycell.”
2. No matter what, call up your carrier and add a “blocker” to your phone accounts for these types of ridiculous subscriptions.
Although AT & T eventually provided satisfactory customer service, I find something fishy about the fact that carriers enable this type of transaction. I can only speculate if the carriers make a little money too from this whole setup???
Thanks for letting me vent. God bless America : )
In my opinion, URL’s are digital real estate because once they have been reserved, they’re gone! To keep your websites/blogs as streamlined as possible it’s no longer enough to see if your URL is available only for your website. I recommend to my clients to check their URL with LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook as well BEFORE they purchase their domain.
For example, lets say your new website idea is “MyBusiness.com” and let’s pretend that specific URL was available for purchase. Before you purchase it, make sure you go to Twitter first and see if “Twitter.com/MyBusiness” is available too. Then, go to Facebook and see if Facebook.com/MyBusiness is taken and so on. If you can find the right wording or phrasing that is not only available for your main website, but also available on various social media networks, it will create a clean, simple and familiar brand online across your various networks. It will also make it easy for people to find you on those networks.
If the URL you’re desiring doesn’t bring anything up on Facebook and Twitter, it doesn’t guarantee that the URL is not reserved, but the odds are definitely good if nothing loads up on the page. I would check in this order: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube then LinkedIn. If it looks like the URL is available, create it on Twitter and YouTube first. Once you see that it’s available, then go ahead and purchase your main domain URL. Facebook is tougher, because even if the URL doesn’t show up initially, it doesn’t mean that someone hasn’t reserved it necessarily. You will have to wait until you have launched your page and attained 25+ Fans before you can confirm the availability.
May I make another suggestion in regards to your choice of URL? I recommend doing your best to find a URL with .COM (as opposed to .ORG, .NET, etc). People are more familiar with .COM and usually assume that’s where your website is at. I have been involved with a .ORG website, and many people typed in our URL after hearing about the website from us, but then ended it with .COM and had trouble finding us.
The simpler you can keep your various URL’s, the stronger your association between your brand and your social media sites you will have.
If you own or run your own business or blog and don’t send out email newsletters what are you waiting for? It’s so easy, a cavemen with dial-up could do it!
One of the most basic marketing concepts is staying in front of your past and potential customers. A regular email newsletter to your contacts is a user-friendly tool in your marketing arsenal.
Don’t know how to design and send out mass professional looking emails? There are ESP (Email Service Providers) that will do it for you.
Don’t have a lot of money? Most packages start at $15-$20 a month.
Don’t have a lot of time? Once you nail down your template, it’s a matter of quickly changing the info and sending out the new email.
Don’t want to spam people? Send it out once-a-month or quarterly.
I recommend Constant Contact or AWeber. This is not a paid advertisement nor am I a spokesmen for them. I actually use them both and am happy with their service. There are other quality ESP’s as well.
Before a business looks into social media, I ask them if they have an email newsletter. If they don’t, I encourage them to start with that first. Some customers do it themselves, others have me do it for them.
What if you only have a blog that you do for fun? An email newsletter is one more resource to drive traffic to your website. Blogging and email reminds me of another dynamic duo… “Holy Increased Traffic From Repeat Visitors Batman!”
So what are you excuses as to why you haven’t started yet?
Waiting to revamp your website.
Waiting until you have an employe to do it.
Waiting to figure out Twitter.
Waiting to feel inspired to do it.
Waiting to get your groove back.
Waiting to find the love of your life.
Waiting until you get all of your debt paid off.
Waiting until you move into your dream house.
Waiting to finish your degree.
Waiting to lose weight.
Waiting to get a handle on your kids.
Waiting for that magical season of your life where you have more time.
Waiting for that magical season of your life where you have more money.
Waiting for Jesus to come back.
Waiting to understand Lady Gaga.
Waiting for Trump to shave his head or get a wig.
Waiting for the Cubs to win the World Series.
Waiting for the Knicks to win the NBA Finals.
Waiting for the Browns to PLAY in the Super Bowl : )
Waiting for the NFL to overturn the officials’ rulings on “The Hail Mary” and “The Tuck Rule.”
Waiting for peace in the Middle East.
Waiting to be voted “Most Popular” at your High School Reunion.
Seriously! What is your excuse?
Remember that LinkedIn profile you created and never went back to??? Well, last week I showed you a simple way to get connected to new targeted LinkedIn members. Today I want to show you how to spruce up your profile. You can make your profile stand out from the crowd by adding a YouTube video to your profile. Most LinkedIn profiles do not have videos (most LinkedIn users don’t even know you can have videos on your profile). Even if you do not have your own self-produced video on YouTube, you can find a video that relates to your industry to give people more information regarding what you’re all about.If you do have your own video on YouTube, LinkedIn will become one more avenue to bring exposure to your video, get your information out there, and grow your number of views.
Step 1: If you do not have your own YouTube account or gmail account sign-up for a new gmail account (it’s free, you can have all mail forwarded to your main email address, plus google is always coming out with interesting apps that you’ll be able to take advantage of). To sign up go here: https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount
Step 2: Once you’re signed in to your YouTube or gmail address go to: https://docs.google.com/
Step 3: From there go to “create a new presentation”:
Step 4: Under the “Insert” menu click on the “Video” option:
Step 5: Search for the the YouTube video you want and select it. Do a little re-sizing and save your document:
Step 6: Stay signed-in to your google account, open a new window, and sign-in to your LinkedIn account. Under the “More” drop-down menu go to “Get More Applications.” In the Applications menu select “Google Presentation” and add it to your profile. Now go back to the “More” drop-down menu and select “Google Presentation.”
Step 7: Your presentation should appear in the presentation list for you to select. Select your presentation and your done!
Your video will only appear to LinkedIn members who are sign-in to LinkedIn. I hope you found this post helpful. If you run into any snags or have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below…
On May 1st, 2011 at 10:25pm EST, while President Barack Obama was writing his speech to America announcing the death and capture of UBL, a tweet was first posted on Twitter announcing that very news almost an hour before it became common public knowledge.
According to The New York Times, credit for the leak went to Keith Urbahn, the chief of staff for Donald Rumsfeld and a former Navy intelligence officer. His tweet, “So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn,” was credited by The Times as the first to report the news. Keith Urbahn was the chief of staff for the former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Urbahn later tweeted, “Don’t know if its true, but let’s pray it is.”
With so much going on in the world today, on what seems like a weekly basis, with countries under intense violence and revolutions, social media has definitely left it’s fingerprint on this period of world history. Today, when a person experiences something significant, they seemed very inclined to share it with their friends and followers on their social networks. When someone is seeing dramatic visuals, a cell phone is pulled out to record video footage that is immediately uploaded to YouTube. Social media has become the world’s forum for everyone to join in the public dialogue on important events that matter to everyone.
Since this news has broke, Twitter, Facebook, and blogs have lit up with comments, stories, and celebration. It’s a great day to be an American and I’m glad to share with everybody via our electronic community.
Well, if you read my post from Tuesday, you would know that my LinkedIn Ads promo code that I received via email was a big fail! LinkedIn was launching it’s “LinkedIn Ads” and offered a introductory $50 credit to get started. I spent a precious 5 minutes of my time setting up an ad campaign only to find out, at the end of it, that my promo code was no good. That day I sent an email to LinkedIn letting them know my promo code didn’t work and two days later guess who sent me an email? Here’s what it looked like:
So, I copied my code and clicked on the link. When the page came up I was glad to see my original ad campaign that I spent 5 minutes on the first time was still saved and ready to launch. This time around the promo code worked when I pasted it in and I got my free $50 credit. Kudos to LinkedIn for being a big website with a massive amount of users and still being agile and responsive enough to deal with issues on an individual level!
A “thank you” email is on it’s way.
I received an email from LinkedIn that they are launching LinkedIn Ads. This looks like a similar module that Facebook uses to monetize their site as well. It will interesting to see how this does for LinkedIn.
Like Facebook, LinkedIn gives you many demographic options to choose from when you setup your ad so you can strategically hit your target audience.
In the announcement email, they send you a coupon code for $50 in free advertising (unfortunately when I set mine up, the site did not recognize the coupon code). Below is the image I received in my email:
4.1.11 Update: Click Here To See LinkedIn’s Response To My Email
I am constantly sending out DM’s to Twitterville offering to answer any questions someone might have about social media. I received one question that was interesting and I thought I’d share it with you on my blog.
@Setnakt asked me, “How do you get someone famous to respond to you?” I told him that I honestly didn’t know since I have neither been contacted by someone famous on social media nor I have I attempted to be contacted by someone famous on social media. Since I didn’t know I posted the question on Mason Media’s Facebook page and Twitter account.
Neste Event Marketing replied to the question and shared the following:
“This is a great question. Neste is a company that does entertainment buying and festivals and concert events all around the country. We do a lot of interaction with artists based on our scope. My best advice for anyone inside the entertainment industry or out of it would be to start with the artists that have a smaller fanbase and work your way up. This also raises your Klout score! Retweeting videos and photos is always exciting for your users as well 
Hope that helps!”
Thank you NesteEventMarketing for taking the time to share your thoughts with us! I also want to thank @RodMBryan who retweeted this question to his followers as well. He is now on our Retweeters List.
I also tracked down an article entitled, “How To Get Celebrities To Tweet You.” It recommended some helpful tips such as “timing your tweets and waiting until you seem them tweeting RIGHT NOW before you send them a message.” There were some other helpful hints in the entire article which you can read by clicking here.
Early on, many people started using Twitter so they could “follow” favorite celebrities. They’re presence and interaction on Twitter has really added to it’s popularity. Getting a tweet from a favorite famous person would definitely add to the tweeting experience, not to mention, get some exposure for your profile and content.
Hope you found this interesting. What are you thoughts?
Now that SocialOomph is charging for Twitter Automation services, such as “Auto-Follow”, I want to offer another alternative that is free. Tweeter Karma (known as Twitter Karma before Twitter slapped their wrist) provides some helpful functions for your Twitter account for free.
Tweeter Karma allows you to organize your Twitter account for simple maintenance. As you can see in the pictures below, you can look at one segment of your account and then make decisions appropriately. What do I use it for? I’m glad you asked : )
I use Tweeter Karma to practice good Twitter etiquette, which is to follow those who are following you. I can easily bring up people who are following me but, for whatever reason, I haven’t followed them back. Then I can scroll down, select all accounts, and do a bulk follow to show some Twitter love.
(right click and “view image” for full-size view)
I also use Tweeter Karma to see who I am following that isn’t following me (if I have recently followed people within the last 24-48 hours I don’t do this because I want to give people a reasonable amount of time to return the favor). Once Tweeter Karma shows this cluster of accounts, I can go through them and unfollow them. This helps me keep a healthy balance between my following and followers which is good for your Twitter ranking and influence. It’s also helpful when starting out a new account since you can’t follow more than 2,000 people without having 2,000 followers.
Tweeter Karma isn’t as automated as SocialOomph’s auto-follow service, but it is a free and efficient alternative to those who are looking for one.
Related Articles:
SocialOomph Begins Charging For Key Services
SocialOomph Alternative: True Twit
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