How success starts the day

I humbly ask him to guide me to helping others, contributing to my fellow humans some good. And ask him to work me harder, give me more responsibilities and challenges so that I may fail while struggling to achieve and in the process seek his mercy and blessings to eventually succeed at the highest of levels.

I pray to him to allow me to fall, to stumble, to slip to experience setbacks so that I may turn to him again at the end of everyday and connect with him deeper. I know in my heart that if The Lord wants me to live my dreams he will drag me through the struggles needed to purify and discipline and humble me into the person I have the potential to become.

Metals are purified and strengthened in the fire and against great pressure, diamonds are made under the same pressure, and all great men whoever wish to be great at something are made under that same pressure. So on this day friends I encourage you to ask not for relief from your struggles, but the patience and strength to endure and overcome them. Dreams are rarely given for free they are earned!!!

What success does before the day starts?  It asks God for help and does so with conviction.
‪#‎theartofdreamchasing‬ ‪#‎grateful‬ ‪#‎appreciation‬ ‪#‎realtalk‬ ‪#‎conversationswithgod‬ ‪#‎dreamchasingfamily‬

Social Media is a very important component of today’s business world. Large and Small corporations alike are scrambling to harness the Internet’s power via all the different sites and tools available to them to perform SEO and gain fans online. The use of smart phones and tablets is ever increasing as well, as they provide a way for employees to receive all this media from wherever they are.

One element that may be overlooked among all the bandwidth is how one can stay organized. With the world moving so fast, a healthy idea can take off quite quickly and should not be overlooked. Note taking and staying on top of your schedule has never been more important, nor has it ever been more expected.

Evernote is a simple program you download to your desktop or your smart phone. It allows you to keep various notes, which can be sorted, organized, and searched within the Evernote program. You can attach images, videos, and voice clips, all of which can be taken with screen shots, cameras, and microphones. It can also add geolocation tags to any notes saved.

The major advantage to Evernote, is that you can save all your notes to the online server, and sync it to your account. So basically, you can open Evernote from any computer or phone, and have all your data appear instantly however it was lasted synced.

The software comes free with 40MB/Month and a few ads within the program, or for $5/month with 500MB/Month. It runs on Windows, Android, Mac OS X, and WebOS, and recently broke the 3 million user mark.

I’m the kind of guy who gets a lot of random ideas, and who also forgets them quite easily. Having Evernote helps me a lot each day because I can keep all my ideas stored in one program that I can open up from anywhere.

www.evernote.com

There is currently a Social Media campaign being run to raise money for Cancer Research. It’s called BEAT CANCER, and is being run by LiveStrong.com. They did it last year, setting a record for most mentions of the same topic in one day with 209, 771 mentions across the Globe. They are hoping to beat that this year, and also beat the $70,000 they managed to raise.

The campaign only lasts for 24 hours, and started today at Noon EST. It ends tomorrow, October 16th, at Noon EST. Get on Twitter and/or Facebook immediately, and mention #BeatCancer. Everytime you mention it, PayPal and SWAGG will donate $0.05 to the cause (last year it was only $0.01). Hurry up! And spread the word!

Today, we would like to feature a very useful and somewhat unknown Social Media tool. We say unknown, because unless you have absolutely needed to use it or are heavily involved in Social Media, you likely have not heard of it. But with an increasing amount of people owning accounts on multiple platforms of Social Media, we thought we would share it with you.

It’s called Klout, and it’s a website that lets you easily track your online influence via Twitter (it’s in the process of integrating Facebook). Basically you enter all your account info, and then it tabulates your “true reach”, “amplification”, and “network”. The True Reach is the size of your engaged audience, hence it’s how many of your followers are truly paying attention, via retweets or lists. The Amplification measures how spread out and various those true followers are, as in where they live, how diverse they are (always the same people or different ones), and how much you are tweeting/how many @replies you are getting. And finally, the Network score measures how influential those you interact with are themselves, as in, what their Klout score is like. Basically, if important people are @replying you and retweeting you.

As mentioned above, Facebook has now been included, as of just this morning, which will likely help the service blow up. With Facebook integration, users can now track the number of unique ‘Likers’, commenters, and comments they have. As the site continues to expand, it can’t be long before they add a Foursquare, YouTube, and LinkedIn option as well.

To demonstrate, I included a screenshot of my Klout score (which is 21…I don’t know what that means yet). Follow me @lgdoucet to help my score!
To join, check out www.klout.com

Just last week, The Gap revealed a brand new logo (top, left), one that was supposed to give the massive store chain a much more Post Modern and sleek look. The logo contained the signature three letter name of the store, but in a new font, and with a random blue half faded box slightly behind the letter P.

The image went viral, understandably so, seeing as how there are several million Gap customers out there who are online. But it didn’t spread the way the retail had intended. Within days, a website popped up where users were invited to protest the new logo by typing in whatever word they wished instead of G-A-P (check it out here). A fake Twitter account showed up too (it has almost 5,000 followers already), protesting the new logo. And in classic new age Social Media fashion, the tactics worked!

The Gap has announced that it is pulling the new logo, and reverting back to the same classic navy blue with white letters that it has sported for the past two decades. They broadcast the news on their Facebook page, stating “We only want what’s best for the brand and our customers. So instead of crowdsourcing, we’re bringing back the Blue Box tonight.”

So pat yourself on the back, Social Media users. This is just another small victory on the long road to taking power back from large corporations using tools everyone has access to.

Last Friday, The Social Network opened to an International audience. It made $23 million in North America alone, and has received very good reviews from pro and amateur critics (97% on Rotten Tomatoes). Many people were likely expecting a flop, but the film is written by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, Charlie Wilson’s War) and directed by David Fincher (Fight Club, Se7en, Panic Room) and turned out surprisingly good.

One of the reasons every one expected so little out of the movie is that its based on something that is currently taking place (Facebook is still on the rise and the story is nowhere near complete). Another reason, is that people roll their eyes most of the time when Facebook is mentioned.

The general public is still in a state of sub-conscious disbelief at how much Facebook has taken our lives. Most of us check Facebook first thing in the morning (and last before we go to sleep), but we would never admit that out loud. Whenever someone offers up interesting information about an event or a friend, and they are asked how they know that and the answer is Facebook, they will say it in a mocking funny kind of way. As if it’s so hilarious/embarrassing to admit you found valuable information on Facebook. As if it’s not a credible source. And with that in mind, why would you go out of your way to see a film about something that is so silly?! But you will go see it. Because Facebook is a much larger part of your life than you want to let yourself believe.

And Hollywood has finally caught on. Starved for ideas, The Social Network made it seem that Hollywood had finally reached the bottom of the barrel, and were now grabbing at anything to make a film out of. Saying that you need Facebook to live was so taboo, that making a film about it’s origin just seemed pathetic. Yet here’s the film, #1 in the world in it’s first week. So I ask, is this just the tip of the Iceberg?

Yes. There are now talks of a Google film, and I would not be surprised if most other major websites followed. After all, we don’t mind reading the incredible life stories of their creators online, do we? Everyone loves to marvel at how Google was “just 3 guys with an idea” or Napster was “just an easy way to share files”. These are success stories. Something that Hollywood (and the general population) thrives on.

So embrace it, dear members of the public. No longer do you need to be afraid to admit that a website is essential to your existence. After all, Hollywood was able to.

The word blog has a long and storied history that parallels the rise of social media and the internet. We have come a long way from the original blogs on Geocities and other proto-giants of the world wide web. Some may even argue that blogs were the original form of social media, the networks of posters and commentators predating social networks like myspace.

But are they still relevant? With flashier options for social media coming out every day, and with constantly hyped standbys like twitter and facebook all over the news, those seeking for a fully stocked social media campaign will often overlook the significance of the humble blog.

eMarketer released a report on blogging last week about the future of the practice as it stands today. The report contained several interesting findings putting hard numbers to the blogging trend.

As of 2010, just over half the internet population goes on blogs regularly, a number which is expected to hit 60% in the next few years. In addition, 11.9% of internet users in the United States currently own a blog. In terms of interactivity, a brand cannot ask for much more. How much stronger is a thought out response to a blog post compared to a tweetback?

Think about ways that your company could harness blogging to show a more human side to your business. Let us know what you think in the comments and stay tuned for more updates on the art of blogging.

The word blog has a long and storied history that parallels the rise of social media and the internet. We have come a long way from the original blogs on Geocities and other proto-giants of the world wide web. Some may even argue that blogs were the original form of social media, the networks of posters and commentators predating social networks like myspace.

But are they still relevant? With flashier options for social media coming out every day, and with constantly hyped standbys like twitter and facebook all over the news, those seeking for a fully stocked social media campaign will often overlook the significance of the humble blog.

eMarketer released a report on blogging last week about the future of the practice as it stands today. The report contained several interesting findings putting hard numbers to the blogging trend.

As of 2010, just over half the internet population goes on blogs regularly, a number which is expected to hit 60% in the next few years. In addition, 11.9% of internet users in the United States currently own a blog. In terms of interactivity, a brand cannot ask for much more. How much stronger is a thought out response to a blog post compared to a tweetback?

Think about ways that your company could harness blogging to show a more human side to your business. Let us know what you think in the comments and stay tuned for more updates on the art of blogging.

How much would you pay for a 500% increase in website referral if you were a major online publisher? 20% of your budget? 50%?

How about 0%? According to a recent presentation by Facebook Director of Media Partnerships, Justin Osofsky, merely integrating the Like button into a website has increased web traffic by outrageous proportions for some very high profile websites. Sites like TypePad, Gawker, NBA.com and Global News have all seen traffic referral increase by a factor of at least two by integrating like buttons into their profiles.

How does this work? We’ll start with a look into the mind of your typical user who uses the like button. These users are the perfect candidates for social media, in addition to visiting 5.3 times more sites from facebook, they also possess an average of 310 friends, 2.4 times more than the average of 130. So in addition to driving traffic more, they possess more influence to drive traffic themselves. The users themselves tend to be younger, with an average age of 34 versus a population average of 51.

So, in order to maximize the proliferation of content of your company page, blog or any other social media object, the like button should be taken into consideration. And in order to maximize results, there are a number of things which can be done to optimize your “like”ability, which we will cover in a later post.

In late summer 2009, a girl who lived above me was telling me about her Twitter account and how much fun she was having with it. She told Twitter was here to stay, and that once everyone settled into the mass updating service, they would increase their social media with a nifty geo-based website called Foursquare. She said it would be the hottest thing of 2010. I balked, saying people could never be convinced to reveal their location. And now, thanks to Mcdonald’s latest successful campaign, I’m finally admitting that I may have been wrong.

Mcdonald’s road to Social Media success first caught some attention in 2007, when they launched a campaign online to have users create their own ads for a Honey Mustard Snack Wrap. Then, in 2009, they purchased Wayport, a prolific wifi company, to provide wireless free internet at all its locations (something I didn’t even know until the other day), which almost coincided with the fast food giant trying to break into the coffee industry by offering specialized caffeine drinks.

And then just a few weeks ago, Mcdonald’s increased their Foursquare Check-ins by 33% in just one day. And although check-ins don’t necessarily mean purchases, it definitely means foot traffic to their various locations. They accomplished this by announcing they would be offering a limited amount of $5 and $10 coupons to their customers who checked-in using foursquare, and the tactic may have set a standard for big chains using geo-location media. Heck, it could set a precedent for the whole advertising industry, which spends countless Billions every year on attracting customers.

The cost of such a potential industry crushing experiment? A measly $1,000 (the cost of the coupons).

And with that, Mcdonald’s has successfully integrated the latest Social Media software into new (or returning customers). I guess my former neighbor wasn’t so crazy after all. You could almost say she was Lovin’ It before I even knew about it.

Be sure to check out Mashable’s reaction.