Do people who know how  NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming)  or hypnosis works have an unfair advantage  on Twitter & Facebook, among other social networks?

I think they DO.  (Ummm…I KNOW they do. Some of my best friends are master NLP and persuasion artists and they have LOTS of Twitter followers who do what-ever-they-tell-them-to-do .

If there was anyone who would know for sure, it’s Richard Bandler.

You know, THAT Richard Bandler. The one considered the “Grandfather” of NLP. And a REALLY great hypnotist.

I was talking with a colleague and she happened to mention his new book, Richard Bandler’s Guide to Trance-Formation (she’s his publicist). I mentioned how fascinated I’ve always been with NLP and the ability to understand someone’s mental map and how they think. And how cool it would be to actually meet Richard Bandler.

What I told her I didn’t have was a simple explanation for what NLP actually is, and how it works.

I’ve read a lot of books that went into laborious details about it, gave all these long drawn out explanations on all of the terms, complete with illustrations of eyes looking up, looking down, looking left and down, looking right and up (reminding me of that rhyme we used to say in elementary school “Look UP, Look DOWN, Look at my THUMB, Gee You’re DUMB…LOL!).  I think they called them “accessing cues”…

All it did was make me dizzy and not want to think about it. So many unread pages….

So she sent me an email one day not long after and asked if I would be interested in interviewing him.  (umm..YES!!)

I got a copy of the book, and I must say that in the first 3 short chapters, I actually GOT what NLP is. Forever.

If you’re interested, it’s how we represent the world in our own mind – the map or model we create to make sense of and navigate around the world AND the distinct way we each process our experiences.

Does understanding how you process experience give someone an unfair advantage on Twitter when they want to persuade you to “click here” to “see”, or “listen” to or “download and read”?

Does knowing how to use certain words that are more hypnotic and trance-inducing than others make a difference in whether you actually take any action at all?

Good questions.  Listen to my interview on The Business of Online Thought Leadership Radio with Richard Bandler and hear what he has to say about social media, hypnosis, trance and NLP.

It’s right here:

Does Twitter Put You In A Trance? Dr. Richard Bandler tells you the truth

I discovered TWO more online thought leaders today, both women. Rhonda “Shelley” Ellis and The Technology Goddess or TTG (and funny enough, that is the name that stuck for her for me). Shelley is the leading thinker on how to cash in with Google Adwords using “content targeting” (which the boyz usually run screaming away from) and TTG is just the coolest female I’ve seen online yet – she’s got the latest thinking on “content placement” and it’s NOT the usual suspects – ie article distribution, it goes MUCH MUCH deeper. She’s teamed up with one really smart dude too. Her site is where I found this video and just had to share it on A Third Mind so you can see the latest thinking of where the web is going.

“Jonathan Harris wants to make sense of the emotional world of the Web. With deep compassion for the human condition, his projects troll the Internet to find out what we’re all feeling and looking for.” The site mentioned in this video is We Feel Fine

Enjoy this TED Talk, it’s fascinating! And I’ll share more about these cool women later…(I’m going to be inviting them for an interview on The Business of Online Thought Leadership in 2009.)

 

For some reason, I’ve always been fascinated with the topic of thought leadership. Maybe because I like to think a lot .  

In fact, in 2005 I was a partner in a start-up consulting firm with 5 other dynamic women – we named our company 9th Element Group, (the ninth element is Flourine, it’s the most powerful element in the known universe and has been tested as rocket fuel…literally).  and we decided our niche was going to be The Business of Thought Leadership.  We would position, package and propel thought leaders into their marketplace! 

Part of the business of thought leadership is that you publish thought-provoking information. And we knew we’d need to write a book to be taken seriously. Luckily, one of the partners was an award-winning author, Jan Phillips. Jan wrote the book over the summer of 2005 (literally).  The Art of Original Thinking: The Making of a Thought Leader was published in 2006 and won awards.

Unfortunately, the company ran out of funding before we could really get traction so we all went off to other things.   

My intrique with the topic has remained, and in particular, I’m finding that there are a lot of women who demonstrate thought leadership with blogging, podcasting, social networking, social media and other areas – PR, business, technology…but aren’t necessarily recognized for their leading-edge thinking.

So I’m starting an internet talk radio show “The Business of Online Thought Leadership” and it’s going to profile many of the brave new entrepreneurs leading the field who you may not necessarily know but probably should.  

This week starts with my good friend Rob Schultz of www.AudaciousAudio.com and the reason I started with him is that he’s done some really cool innovative things with online media, like creating flash movies for big name coaches, and created a Larry King-style split screen interview using Skype and a web-cam (who knew? Traditional media is probably about to lose their MIND because of innovations like this …they can’t compete!)

Why Rob first? Well, when we reconnected recently, he happens to have just created the Online Radio Challenge – a 50 day program to creating your online radio show using Blog Talk Radio (how about that for timing?? The Universe is always at work, right?)

You can watch the split-screen program below:

You can listen to our first show here: The Business of Online Thought Leadership

And, I’ll be on the air every Wednesday at http://www.BlogTalkRadio.com/onlinethoughtleadership at high noon to inspire and empower you to build your online presence using social media and social networking, build your platform and get up close and personal with some of today’s most innovative thought leaders in social media.

Hope you can join me!

I think I have a slight case of Facebook Fatigue… If I get one more group message inviting me to an event 4,000 miles away I don’t really want to say what I will do, it’s not polite for ladies to say such things (as my mother would say).

Please (she ducks) don’t throw rotten tomatoes at me just yet…I think Facebook is still the most “fun” social network for business I’ve ever seen.

It just also has the ability to quickly fritter away MEGA time (a nice way of saying “time-suck) if you don’t have what my friend Kevin Nations calls a “Profit Strategy”. In other words, a real business model, with a sales system that can turn all that socializing into bottom line dollars and cents – eventually, after you’ve established your social hierarchy, trust and likeability.

Because at the end of the day, we all know that people buy from people they know and people they like – and how can you not like someone who has the audacity to throw Paris Hilton at you? (umm, yep, I’m talking to you Rodney Rumford, FaceReviews Guru )

It’s been my observation over the past 4 years of working with mega-entrepreneurs (John Assaraf, Les Brown, Scott Martineau, most recently, Jerry Conti, my Purpose Posse over at HUB – Humanity Unites Brilliance) that the truly successful 7 & 8 figure + business owners create the sandbox and invite others to play with them, not the other way around.

In other words, they throw the party (or seminar) and collect 50% from the people they put on the platform in front of their audience.

Or better yet, they are the ONLY ones speaking on their platform, it’s their platform, and they aren’t afraid to use it. When you think of it, when have you ever seen Tony Robbins share his stage with someone else? VERY seldom. And if he does, they’re usually delivering his programs, not theirs.

There’s something to be said for continuity and a gated community.

I’ve been quietly playing over at Ning.com, where you can create your own social network with ease.

Now I’m “easing” several of my clients into developing their own private online communities where it’ll be all them, all the time. And, as Lady Fortune (or Law of Attraction would have it, my “Diamond Rolodex” delivered the ideal connection once again – a client introduced me to my new best friend, who is a “Ning Ninja”, and very good friends with Ning.com co-founders…if that isn’t attraction in action, I don’t know what is!

What’s really cool about Ning is the fact that you can private label it for your business – use your own domain name, display your own ads, and even remove their branding. The main consideration in setting it up is what your strategy will be to:

• Get people to come (for what will they come?)
• Get them to engage (why will they stay?)
• Get them to come back
• Get them to tell their friends
• Get them to buy your stuff

Another way to use the private label function is to use it as your own membership site – I know of at least one very well known spiritual teacher who is doing this with great success. She charges a monthly subscription that includes weekly audio, a monthly teleseminar and ongoing access and conversations.

And she gets their full attention, because they’re paying her for what she has that they want. Can we say “social network profit model”?

Works for me. What say you?

Update: I’ve since launched a consulting package called Instant Platform 2.0 to strategize and launch niche social networks/online communities for experts, and help them get their first “1000 True Online Fans”.

Here are a few of the ones under way…

http://www.SocialNetworkingSalon.com
Training wheels playground for my Social Networking Boot Camp for Women Entrepreneurs to learn how to play in the social networking scene in a supportive environment. Will start to conduct ongoing teleseminars with experts in social networking and social media, also business experts.

www.ContributionNetworkingParty.com
Virtual companion site for a live event that happens every three months)

www.TheSingerLink.com
Goal is to link hundreds of thousands of singers around the world, and meet at live Choirfest events that host up to 22,000 singers at a time!

www.WakeUpGirlCommunity.com
Author community built around the topic of getting over a bad-breakup: “Wake Up Girl! From Break-up to Wake-Up”

Launching Soon:

Business Black Belt Network – an online community for JIAN.com business planning software company with 180,000 existing customers.  This will allow customers to network and will have a nice Marketplace to list services/products.  If you are a consultant who works with small business owners, email me to find out how you can participate.

(***Disclaimer***
Please excuse the way the posts are all squished together – I upgraded to WordPress 2.6.2 AND added some really cool plugins, but now cannot figure out what is happening with the stylesheets – Bear with me til it’s fixed )

(***Update*** I deactivated all the plug-ins and sure enough one of them was causing that problem.  So you can peer into the mind of a Renaissance woman geek – the next step I am taking is to reactivate them one by one to see which one was the culprit…***;-)

So, now on to my post…

Getting more (and BETTER) business is fast becoming more and more dependent on your ability to connect deeper and faster with others, which is where social media has the potential to deliver.

Tune in as Melody Campbell, The Small Business Guru and I have a candid conversation about how small business owners can grow their “social capital”, create stronger relationships and get more loyal business using social networks the way they were meant to be used.

Show details:
Get More Business Show – http://www.blogtalkradio.com/getmorebusiness
October 3, 2008
Friday 9 am PST
30 minutes

I’m in Great Company…here are some previous and upcoming guests:

Joan Stewart of Publicity Hound
Tom Antion of Great Internet Marketing
David Frey of Marketing Best Practices (Author “Small Business Marketing Bible”)
Terry Dean – He is a legend in Internet Marketing!
And more…you can see the shows at www.GetMoreBusinessPodcast.com

Nancy Marmolejo – Viva Visibility
Wendy Weiss – Queen of Cold Calling
Mike of Briz.com
Jeff Herring – The Article Marketing Guy
Denise Michaels – Author of Testosterone Free Marketing

Waiting in the wings are a few surprise guests…one is an author and was a featured personality on The Secret.

(And, you already may know that I owe my escape from wage slave to the entrepreneur lifestyle I craved to John Assaraf, featured teacher in The Secret so I will tune in to see who this personality is!)

I saw this blog post titled “How do you turn your web ideas into experience?” and it’s very timely – it generated the title for this post. I’ve been meaning to get a post up for about a week now, and the reason I haven’t is because I’ve been deep into being a “social media practitioner”, helping 3 women entrepreneurs turn their expertise into web ideas then into social media experiences. (And into profits sooner rather than later). Yeah!

Key word here is “experience”.

In the new Network Economy and increasingly networked, always-on world we live in, it’s not enough to think that you can join a social network and take, take, take before you give. You really have to step up your game. In other words – Commodities are out, Dynamic Value is in. (ask Marshall Thurber – he rocks the DyVal concept in his Success Secrets for the 21st Century seminar)

I’m seeing the same old marketing tactics slapped on a “new” Face(book) page and it was getting really tiring. It’s what triggered my post here on Facebook Fatigue.

Examples are better than precepts, so here’s a few from my email inbox (it’s kinda like The Twilight Zone – same emails, different day, week…)

• A friend sent me a “Buy my social media marketing “system” link being sold by a person I’ve never heard of before, and as much as I read about this topic daily, researching what’s working and what’s not, that’s saying something. Gotta hand it to him though, he’s got one helluva sales letter, complete with “social proof” his “system” is the one to get (don’t get me started about the “S” word – first, I’m a systems-thinker, and second, systems, the real ones – the ones that good ol’ W. Edward Deming taught – are hard to come by. There are about 4 bonafide systems marketers I know online who actually know what a system is, maybe 5 if I count myself and I don’t market myself as a systems marketing person…yet)
• The ubiquitous free teleseminar offered by the latest person trying to catch up and jump on the social media bandwagon cuz they are on the “late freight” (oops, 70′s lingo slip – I’m dating myself again . And on the line are the same people over and over and over…(like The Neverending Story or Twilight Zone). Now, I love free teleseminars as much as the next life-long learner, and even paid ones. Just not ones that look like they might be the sames ones I just saw or maybe even listened in on the other day (week).
• You are cordially invited to my event in Australia or New Zealand…or Kansas or the U.K. Facebook makes you join a network geographically – I guess people don’t know that I’m in Sunny Southern California and not likely to fly 20 hours to get to your event. (even if it is the first, last, only time it’s happening). Or even better – attend your YTB Travel Business Opportunity Meeting– isn’t everyone on the planet a YTB Travel Agent by now?

But keeping hope alive…(note: as a general rule hope is NOT a strategy for business) I revived my own interest when I inspired myself – I turned my dis-interest into a question…

“What IS a better way? How can you turn what you know, your expertise, that special thing that people pay you for – into an experience that creates curiosity, attracts interest, and generates desire to engage and connect?” which then has the opportunity to turn into profit for your business, provided you aren’t a one trick pony.

As luck would have it…when opportunity meets preparedness – I am fortunate to have a live “social media” lab – my expert colleagues and clients. (“Hahaha!” she rubs hands together and cackles diabolically as the palm trees wave outside her window in Sunny Southern California)

So without furthur suspense, I’ll introduce you.

Here is the first of the three expert women entrepreneurs I’m working with to turn her expertise into ideas for social media experiences that lead to business…I’ll blog the others later this week. This turned into a really long post…sorry, you’ll probably thank me for it soon.

Michelle Price’s Social Media Lab Experiment #1: Face Reading for Facebook

Lynn Scheurell is arguably one of the most *interesting* women entrepreneurs I know (inside joke, Lynn and I both share the same meaning for *interesting*).

She has “the gift” of intuition that she has chosen to use to help entrepreneurs who are more creative and soul-driven vs. the other kind we won’t talk about here (you know, greedy, mercenary and soooo last millenium). And we don’t call her the “Woo-Woo Guru” for nothing. Seriously, she has some really cool tools to help get you unstuck and moving your energy for business. Even if you don’t believe there is a Secret Behind The Secret. Behind THAT Secret is Lynn.

Take the ancient art of face reading. The first time I ever met her, we sat in a Starbucks for hours and she read my face, eyes, ears, nose, read my Tarot, read my energy and it was just so much fun. And had real value because the information she gave me was all right on target. I used it to launch a new direction for my business and it’s paid off, literally.

She even told me that this little notch/bump I have had on the top of my right ear ever since I can remember, came from a traumatic event that happened when I was TWO. Funnily enough, I immediately thought about the fact that my baby brother was born at that time and I stopped getting to be the youngest…(I have a brother who is 6 years older). It put me in the middle instead and you know what that means – the peacemaker and fairly invisible – except, I was still the only girl so that helped a bit .

So remembering that experience, when we were chatting on the phone about how she could be leveraging social networking (she was resisting to say the least) to find more soul-driven entrepreneurs to join her tribe, when conversation turned to Facebook, this huge light went off in my head… “Lynn, FACEbook, FACE reading – get it???”

Nowhere on earth will you find more faces to read than on social networks, and Facebook being the popular kid on the block right now…hmmm.

Plus, I’ve seen some faces only a mother could love on there, and it’s amazing how many sane business people will put up ridiculously cheesy pics and think they pass muster. For a minute we laughed at what she could do with that.

Still, how to execute and make the experience real for people? That’s where I come in with MY web 2.0 social media toolbox – there are so many delicious ways you can combine and layer web 2.0 in combination with your social networking to transform your expertise into an experience. YouTube, Facebook Pages, Facebook Groups, YouTube Box for Facebook (is your head spinning yet? ).

In this case, video is the obvious choice! Plus, video is really hot online now too…

Yes. Facebook and YouTube + online video distribution to increase Googleability – our 1-2-3 knockout combo for this idea.

Anyway, we quickly came up with a 10 step plan for how someone could vicariously experience Lynn’s face reading and what it can tell you, that can help you accelerate your business, the first 3 are below:

1. Lynn finds 3 friendly faces to read – clients who already say “yes”.
2. Also pick out some high-profile faces to read
3. Fire up her web-cam and get to reading those faces. Short 3-5 minute clips.
(4-10 not included – made the post way too long – maybe I’ll share in another post later after results are in)

11. THEN, perhaps you might want to get a longer more in-depth face reading of your own – 60 minutes of pure focus on your beautiful unique mug, instead of only 3-5.

Will it work? I don’t know, you’ll have to be the judge and tell us. It’s working already to get curiosity and attract interest from some pretty good influencers.

Here’s the Intro to Face Reading she recorded, to explain what it is and why it’s invaluable:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3UbIiTLcFA[/youtube]

Here’s my Face Reading on Facebook, watch it, then go befriend Lynn on Facebook, tell her I sent you, and see if she picks your face next!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe_zOW6XKKc[/youtube]

Update: At the time of this posting, it’s only been 3 days and she’s already been profiled over on Entrepreneur.com by someone in the network – our mutual colleague Michelle Anton (who just got active on Facebook and saw what Lynn was up to without either of us saying anything to her at all!) was intrigued enough to want to interview her about it – you can read that here:

Face Reading Is Busting Loose on Facebook

I saw this blog post titled “How do you turn your web ideas into experience?” and it’s very timely – it generated the title for this post. I’ve been meaning to get a post up for about a week now, and the reason I haven’t is because I’ve been deep into being a “social media practitioner”, helping 3 women entrepreneurs turn their expertise into web ideas then into social media experiences. (And into profits sooner rather than later). Yeah!

Key word here is “experience”.

In the new Network Economy and increasingly networked, always-on world we live in, it’s not enough to think that you can join a social network and take, take, take before you give. You really have to step up your game. In other words – Commodities are out, Dynamic Value is in. (ask Marshall Thurber – he rocks the DyVal concept in his Success Secrets for the 21st Century seminar)

I’m seeing the same old marketing tactics slapped on a “new” Face(book) page and it was getting really tiring. It’s what triggered my post here on Facebook Fatigue.

Examples are better than precepts, so here’s a few from my email inbox (it’s kinda like The Twilight Zone – same emails, different day, week…)

• A friend sent me a “Buy my social media marketing “system” link being sold by a person I’ve never heard of before, and as much as I read about this topic daily, researching what’s working and what’s not, that’s saying something. Gotta hand it to him though, he’s got one helluva sales letter, complete with “social proof” his “system” is the one to get (don’t get me started about the “S” word – first, I’m a systems-thinker, and second, systems, the real ones – the ones that good ol’ W. Edward Deming taught – are hard to come by. There are about 4 bonafide systems marketers I know online who actually know what a system is, maybe 5 if I count myself and I don’t market myself as a systems marketing person…yet)
• The ubiquitous free teleseminar offered by the latest person trying to catch up and jump on the social media bandwagon cuz they are on the “late freight” (oops, 70′s lingo slip – I’m dating myself again . And on the line are the same people over and over and over…(like The Neverending Story or Twilight Zone). Now, I love free teleseminars as much as the next life-long learner, and even paid ones. Just not ones that look like they might be the sames ones I just saw or maybe even listened in on the other day (week).
• You are cordially invited to my event in Australia or New Zealand…or Kansas or the U.K. Facebook makes you join a network geographically – I guess people don’t know that I’m in Sunny Southern California and not likely to fly 20 hours to get to your event. (even if it is the first, last, only time it’s happening). Or even better – attend your YTB Travel Business Opportunity Meeting– isn’t everyone on the planet a YTB Travel Agent by now?

But keeping hope alive…(note: as a general rule hope is NOT a strategy for business) I revived my own interest when I inspired myself – I turned my dis-interest into a question…

“What IS a better way? How can you turn what you know, your expertise, that special thing that people pay you for – into an experience that creates curiosity, attracts interest, and generates desire to engage and connect?” which then has the opportunity to turn into profit for your business, provided you aren’t a one trick pony.

As luck would have it…when opportunity meets preparedness – I am fortunate to have a live “social media” lab – my expert colleagues and clients. (“Hahaha!” she rubs hands together and cackles diabolically as the palm trees wave outside her window in Sunny Southern California)

So without furthur suspense, I’ll introduce you.

Here is the first of the three expert women entrepreneurs I’m working with to turn her expertise into ideas for social media experiences that lead to business…I’ll blog the others later this week. This turned into a really long post…sorry, you’ll probably thank me for it soon.

Michelle Price’s Social Media Lab Experiment #1: Face Reading for Facebook

Lynn Scheurell is arguably one of the most *interesting* women entrepreneurs I know (inside joke, Lynn and I both share the same meaning for *interesting*).

She has “the gift” of intuition that she has chosen to use to help entrepreneurs who are more creative and soul-driven vs. the other kind we won’t talk about here (you know, greedy, mercenary and soooo last millenium). And we don’t call her the “Woo-Woo Guru” for nothing. Seriously, she has some really cool tools to help get you unstuck and moving your energy for business. Even if you don’t believe there is a Secret Behind The Secret. Behind THAT Secret is Lynn.

Take the ancient art of face reading. The first time I ever met her, we sat in a Starbucks for hours and she read my face, eyes, ears, nose, read my Tarot, read my energy and it was just so much fun. And had real value because the information she gave me was all right on target. I used it to launch a new direction for my business and it’s paid off, literally.

She even told me that this little notch/bump I have had on the top of my right ear ever since I can remember, came from a traumatic event that happened when I was TWO. Funnily enough, I immediately thought about the fact that my baby brother was born at that time and I stopped getting to be the youngest…(I have a brother who is 6 years older). It put me in the middle instead and you know what that means – the peacemaker and fairly invisible – except, I was still the only girl so that helped a bit .

So remembering that experience, when we were chatting on the phone about how she could be leveraging social networking (she was resisting to say the least) to find more soul-driven entrepreneurs to join her tribe, when conversation turned to Facebook, this huge light went off in my head… “Lynn, FACEbook, FACE reading – get it???”

Nowhere on earth will you find more faces to read than on social networks, and Facebook being the popular kid on the block right now…hmmm.

Plus, I’ve seen some faces only a mother could love on there, and it’s amazing how many sane business people will put up ridiculously cheesy pics and think they pass muster. For a minute we laughed at what she could do with that.

Still, how to execute and make the experience real for people? That’s where I come in with MY web 2.0 social media toolbox – there are so many delicious ways you can combine and layer web 2.0 in combination with your social networking to transform your expertise into an experience. YouTube, Facebook Pages, Facebook Groups, YouTube Box for Facebook (is your head spinning yet? ).

In this case, video is the obvious choice! Plus, video is really hot online now too…

Yes. Facebook and YouTube + online video distribution to increase Googleability – our 1-2-3 knockout combo for this idea.

Anyway, we quickly came up with a 10 step plan for how someone could vicariously experience Lynn’s face reading and what it can tell you, that can help you accelerate your business, the first 3 are below:

1. Lynn finds 3 friendly faces to read – clients who already say “yes”.
2. Also pick out some high-profile faces to read
3. Fire up her web-cam and get to reading those faces. Short 3-5 minute clips.
(4-10 not included – made the post way too long – maybe I’ll share in another post later after results are in)

11. THEN, perhaps you might want to get a longer more in-depth face reading of your own – 60 minutes of pure focus on your beautiful unique mug, instead of only 3-5.

Will it work? I don’t know, you’ll have to be the judge and tell us. It’s working already to get curiosity and attract interest from some pretty good influencers.

Here’s the Intro to Face Reading she recorded, to explain what it is and why it’s invaluable:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3UbIiTLcFA[/youtube]

Here’s my Face Reading on Facebook, watch it, then go befriend Lynn on Facebook, tell her I sent you, and see if she picks your face next!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe_zOW6XKKc[/youtube]

Update: At the time of this posting, it’s only been 3 days and she’s already been profiled over on Entrepreneur.com by someone in the network – our mutual colleague Michelle Anton (who just got active on Facebook and saw what Lynn was up to without either of us saying anything to her at all!) was intrigued enough to want to interview her about it – you can read that here:

Face Reading Is Busting Loose on Facebook

Talk about moving the free line!

Peter Shankman didn’t start out thinking that he’d be giving the well-known PR service ProfNet a run for their money when he decided to post emails he was already getting from reporters asking if he had sources for their stories to his Facebook Page. He decided to call this free service “Help a Reporter” – it helps hungry reporters looking for sources connect with hungry sources looking for publicity.

What is interesting is that he was already getting reporters emailing him to help them find sources, so he has some credibility and influence with this audience. They have recognized that he is skilled using a new resource – social media – which makes him attractive to say the least. (Let’s face it, besides us information marketers and life-long learners, most people would rather not learn something new, they just want the answers.)

So he decided to take action to help them by exposing them to his existing network, using his already existing Facebook profile. Free to use, simple to execute – reporters emailed him their queries, and he posted them on his profile. A lot easier than answering them all one on one.

Then word hit the street – freelancers (who obviously must have been a part of his network) started telling friends, then publicists (also probably already in his network) realized these were prime opps for additional ways to spread the word about their clients. He created some buzz by buzzing it on his own blog, shankman.com. An A-list NY Times blogger wrote a nice post (notice, at this point he still hasn’t asked anyone to actually help him promote this service)

The free service got so popular he had to move it off of his Facebook Page and onto it’s own site at www.HelpAReporter.com.

Now, here’s where the story takes a counterintuitive twist…because it’s STILL FREE!

He clearly could have monetized it, because it’s clearly meeting a huge want in the market – which he says doesn’t surprise him that reporters are seeking an alternative to ProfNet. He says they get tons of queries from their posts there, but so many of them are “misguided”. (and he firmly says he will dump list members who don’t send a response that is on target in his welcome email)

Reporters report that they get a lot more on-target answers from Shankman’s list. Another plus is they get fresh faces from many of the smaller PR folks and even entrepreneurs themselves who can’t necessarily afford the pricey ProfNet service.

Maybe at some point in the future he will start to charge. However, my guess is that he’s getting a lot more visibility and more business doing what he really loves to do anyway this way.

There’s a lot more meat to this story here:
Tired of ProfNet? Start Your Own PR-Journalist Service

What could you do that would provide a similar effect to your target audience? I’ve got some ideas now myself that would help my expert authors…stay tuned!

Okay, I’m borrowing a phrase from my good friend and colleague Mitch Axelrod. Caveat Vendidor is one of the tenets that underpin his philosophy “The New Game of Business”. He says that instead of the old game, where it was “caveat emptor” or “Let the buyer beware”, it’s now “caveat vendidor” or “let the SELLER beware”.

Case in point. Walmart.

The interesting thing about this David vs. Goliath WalMart story is that this is a case that Walmart won, and then an appeal actually went to the Supreme Court, who refused to hear it.

The Short Version: Walmart continued to proceed in it’s attempt to recoup $470k in medical costs for a now-brain damaged former employee because it’s policy allows for that if the person gets a settlement of any worth. However, in this case, the settlement ended up funding a trust to take care of this former employee who will never be able to work again.

So…somehow this came to light and one blog post, begat another post (you know the old shampoo commercial “she told one, and then she told one”?) begat a call for a boycott against and before you know it, Walmart bows down to the power of the citizen journalist.

To repeat: Walmart won this case. They let the family appeal it all the way to the Supreme Court and then bowed down to the bloggers! (See http://walmartwatch.com/)

And to think, I found this story on CNN, through following a Reuters Oddly Enough text ad link in my Gmail inbox “Children Find Woman’s Head on Beach” story (You know, I just can’t resist the power of a good headline sometimes- no pun intended!).

And now, for the rest of the story…

Wal-Mart: Brain-damaged former employee can keep money – CNN.com

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I personally believe there is no richer place to activate the Law of Attraction than the Internet, hands down. I mean, where else can you go and have real live people searching for what you have 24/7/365? I’ve been online since ’96, and my friends and family call me their human Google.  I admit it, I am an information junkie.

If it can be found online, I will find it.  I’ve got lots of strategies and tools I use to locate niche markets and information no one else knows or uses.

The trick to using this in your favor is to get into the mind of your ideal client.  Figure out what painful situation she’s in, or what ambition she has and the words she would use to describe it if she were looking for a solution and you are on your way to learning how to activate the Internet Law of Attraction.

Here are 4 tips to help you get into the right frame of mind.  *Disclaimer: they aren’t rocket science, but I’ve used these exact steps to find what I wanted for the past 11 years online -  so in a way it’s really reverse engineering and giving you a peek into the mind of a true Internet Empowered Consumer:

1. Brainstorm the main words or phrases that your ideal customer or client might use to find your service or product.
2. Plug the words into Google and see what results show up on the first page. Notice the page titles and also notice if there are ads using your words displaying next to the results.
3. Keep narrowing and refining your search terms using what you find that catches your eye until you start finding services similar to yours (of course, no one else has YOUR unique DNA – Distinct Niche Advantage ) and that are showing up on the first page of Google. ( I rarely look past the first two pages anymore and I suspect not many others do either – they just start over with more or different words)
4. Make note of the keywords you find and then figure out how to use them somewhere in your blog post title and in the body of your posts without sounding too weird. If you can , also use them  as your blog sidebar categories & topics. I added my name to the main title of this blog and landed on the first page of results in Google almost overnight (and I share a name with someone who is a writer and/or musician so that is quite a feat!)

If you’d like to know more about what I’m calling the Internet Law of Attraction, let me know.  I’ll be writing a lot more about it in future posts.