Swine Flu, #swineflu, & H1N1 a social experiment

More interesting than Swine Flu or H1N1 sweeping across continents, is the fear about  Swine Flue or H1N1 sweeping across continents. What is it that we as Americans have for this kind of story. We freakin’ love it. Are people actually scared of Swine Flu, I doubt it, but we love talking about people freaking out about Swine Flu.

Currently on Twitter Swine Flu, #swineflu and H1N1 are the 3 most trending topics right now…which is kind of funny I think especially since one of America’s most symbolic national institutions, Chrysler announced bankrupcy today.

2 interesting facts:

-Swine Flu has killed 1 person in the United States.

-The ‘normal’ flu that we have all had before kills 100 people a day

So why are we so enamored by this swine flu? Well, in my opinion it is because we love sensationalism very very much here in the US and it is every news organizations bread and better.

There…I said my piece…swine flu, #swineflu, #H1N1

Get this little piggy away...ahhhh....swine flu

p.s. This entire post was an experiment with using trending Keywords…duhhh…swine flu

photo cred  be_khe

Google Mapping Swine Flu Outbreak

The intelligence behind Google never seems to fail. At first word of the Swine Flu in Mexico, Google began to monitor all searches pertinent to the illness, terms such as “flu symptoms” “body aches” “thermometers”, along with others. Their findings were quite compelling, plotting the geographic locations of the search inquiries and showing a densely populated region in Mexico City where later an outbreak had been announced. Google has continued tracking the relevant searches throughout the U.S. Many other sites as well  provide valuable information in the forms of traveling alerts, breaking news headlines, outbreak mapping, and prevention methods. If you’re interested in seeing these other sites and learning how to react to disease outbreaks using the tools provided online take a look at this post on Mashable: http://mashable.com/2009/04/25/track-swine-flu/

Lunch Break with Sam Zell

Today Silicon Flatirons presented the entrepreneurs and aspiring business folks of Boulder with a treat, Entrepreneurs Unplugged with Sam Zell. Ranking in the low 50’s on Forbe’s wealthiest Americans in years past, Zell has a surely done more than one thing right despite what others may think.

Here is the brief bio on Zell as said in the brochure: “Sam Zell is a U.S. born, self-made billionaire and real estate entrepreneur. He is co-founder and Chairman of Equity Group Investments, a private investment firm. A consummate deal-maker, Zell is invested in or controls a diverse array of companies, including the most successful builder of low-cost housing in Mexico (Homex), the largest U.S. waste-to-energy company (Covanta), and the world’s largest distributor of telecommunications and cabling products (Anixter). In early 2007 Zell orchestrated what was the time the largest leveraged buy-out in history — the sale of his flagship Equity Office Properties REIT to the Blackstone private equity group for $39 Billion. Also in 2007, Zell purchased the Tribune Company — publisher of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Time and the owner of the Chicago Cubs — in another leveraged deal.”

While the biography was a bit brief, it didn’t take long to learn a lot about Mr. Zell. He got started on his entrepreneurial lifestyle at a young age as he was purchasing copies of Playboy in the city of Chicago and selling them in his suburb for a wealthy margin where the magazine wasn’t available. Zell continued the lecture with an emphasis on what it takes o be a successful entrepreneur. Many elements where brought up. What really hit home with me is the necessity of confidence in your success and the importance of selling. You could have an amazing product, offering or what have you and never achieve success without the ability to: a. remove the idea of “failing” from your vocab & b. have the ability to sell your product along with the brand that comes with. If you can’t pitch it in three sentences go back to the drawing boards, because in accordance with Zell’s opinion, if you have to give someone the runaround in explaining whats on the plate in front of them they probably aren’t going to eat it. Same goes for selling, whether it be product, service, or yourself.

Along with the importance of selling and the necessity of faith, Zell addressed questions about the power of networking and building relationships. This isn’t anything new to anyone, if you want to be successful you have to put yourself out there and build relationships; nobody’s ever gotten laid by spending each day in their dimly-lite computer room watching internet porn, same goes for the guy with an innovative concept that lacks the skills to build business relationships. There’s a stressed importance in being able to understand people and build relationships that help you network yourself, and now in this age of digital progression its easier than ever to connect with people.

Something mentioned that I really feel rings true to this online setting of marketing interactions is the reality that the longevity of a concept or idea really coincides with success. Too many people on the internet are taking advantage of the social tools at hand to make a quick buck. Sam Zell can be used as an example of what it truely means to be successful seeing that he’s never been employed by anyone other than himself, besides the four-day stent at a law firm in Chicago where he told his executive that last four days were a waste of his time and talent. In the lecture he stated something along the lines of “do you think it was by chance that I oriented my success around real estate?” And the reason being is that real estate is an industry with longevity and foreseen success. You may make money selling gimmick products to overly trusting consumers online, but the idea of becoming a successful entrepreneur entails much more than marketing ploys and monetary figures, its prestige, innovative thought, notable transactions, and a passion to elevate industry.

While the majority of the lecture was focused around what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur, there were a couple questions in reference to the economy and the new administration. I can say one thing for sure, despite the fact that probably 90% of the people in the room voted for Obama nobody was about to say anything. Mr. Zell didn’t come across as reserved one bit while on the topic of politics. In a nutshell, Zell explained his stance on the approach of the new administration as trying to tackle too many things at once and doing so with a risk of increasing debt to overwhelming proportions. In response to questions about the future of the market Zell speculated that we would see a significance decrease in volatility by the end of summer, but not necessarily increases. He supplied good reason, which I failed to write down and choose not to attempt to reiterate.

All in all this was a great presentation. I know there are mixed feelings about Sam Zell and the happenings at the Tribune Co., but like I mentioned earlier he has certainly done more right than wrong. One lesson talked about in the lecture was the risk all entrepreneurs take and while things may not always work out you never fail. Mr. Zell was a great speaker and entertaining. I really plan to take some of the ideals talked about today and apply them to our business venture.

10.5 Ways To Explode Your Blog Traffic

1. Submit Your Blog – Submit your blog to Google Here

Use Feed Burner to submit your blog Here

2. RSS Feeds – Make sure you have an RSS feed that is easy to subscribe to. But instead of saying something boring like “subscribe here”, say something that people will understand more easily like “get up to the minute news via your email or RSS here”. (Don’t know what an RSS feed is? Figure it out. Search for it on Google. It is central to blogging)

3. Create Irresistible Headlines – One of the great things about starting a blog is that it teaches you how to write good copy. And all good copywriters know the most important thing is a great headline. Look at sites like Digg and see what the popular headlines look like.

Ex. Shoot the ball like Michael Jordan

How NOT to make a left turn

Why what you are doing is not good enough

4. Lists – People on the internet go crazy for lists. Create a top ten list and you will see a surge in traffic. If a third of your posts are lists you will do well.

Ex. Top 10 Ways To Explode Your Blog Traffic

Top 5 Reasons Why I Could Steal Your Girlfriend

Top 7 Reasons Why Mindy’s Class Doesn’t Suck

5. Go Beyond Text in your Posts. – Every post should have a picture incorporated with it. To find pictures that you can use freely without copyright stuff attached go to Flickr.com. Then click on explore near the bottom. Then up top on the explore drag down box go to creative commons. The top result says attribution license only, click where it says see more. Then you can do a search within this category. All of these pictures you can use on your blog and you just have to put a little thing under the picture that says who the photographer is. This is what big time bloggers do.

OR

5.5 Have posts with video in them –  Use the camera on your computer to do a blog post. People pay way more attention to video. Or feel like being lazy. Search for a relevant Youtube video. It is super easy to put a Youtube video into your blog.

6. Core Posts – It is important to have at least two or three really well thought out researched articles in your blog. While most blog posts don’t have to be long at all, these posts should be at least 4-5 paragraphs. They should contain unique content that you can’t find other places.

7. Comment on Other Blogs – One great and easy way to drive traffic to your blog is to comment on other blogs. Say something insightful on ten blogs a week. Your name will link to your blog and the readers will click on it and check out your blog.

8. Submit Your Articles to Social Media Sites – Become familiar with Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Delicious. It will drive lots of traffic for you.

9. Linking to Past Posts – In your new blog posts, link to some previous posts that you have written, especially your core posts.

10. Be Patient & Relentless – Unless you are the owner of Ford, thousands of people are not going to instantly come to your blog. Develop a voice, create some great content and continue at it. It will take time and dedication to build up a following of thousands of people. But once you do it, it will be well worth it. Not only can you make money off of it, but you can become an influencer in your field.

photo cred: Tony George

Friday is for Followers: Why and How to #followfriday

There are many ways people go about gaining new followers on twitter, but Follow Friday is one that stands out from the rest in my opinion. There’s no app. or bot involved that compiles a list of people to follow based upon your characteristics, posts, interests or otherwise. Follow Friday is a method that is driven by real, sincere human activity in a Twitter landscape that is lead by development through links, apps., and  bots. Despite the fact that it sounds like an elementary game played amongst the same kids playing Duck-Duck-GOOSE at recess, Follow Friday has brought a valuable human aspect to the means by which people find valuable additions to their stream. Essentially, I look at the elements at play here when you @ somebody and realize that its an incredibly valuable networking tool. You could compare it to taking someone’s business card and dispersing it across the most densely populated, CEO ridden regions of the globe. OK, maybe that’s a bit of an extreme comparison, but Follow Friday definitely gets your work recognized, if you stand out from the crowd, and builds an awareness you wouldn’t otherwise get. So, we should all thank @micah for pioneering the people driven concept.

Certainly some of you have heard of Follow Friday or been using it for a bit now, but if you haven’t, here you go. Pretty simple. #followfriday is the Hashtag that is used to search for suggestions on who to follow (http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23followfriday). If you are unfamiliar with Hashtags they are simply identifiers for topics being discussed or tweeted, add a # in front of a word to make it a topic. #followfriday is a way to introduce people to one another and provide suggestions of tweeps you think add value to your stream. When you want to participate in Follow Friday all you do is find the people you’d like to recommend to others and add the hashtag #followfriday so that others can see the suggestions in the search stream: EX: Want to follow some real G’s from Movement: #followfriday @movements @znerold @Dieter13