OWN it when people search your name!

I have just added a not yet complete list of social networks that I belong to. I say not yet because I know there are many that I have not listed yet and many yet to come that I will join and list. If you are trying to get noticed then you need to be rockin it on every social network you can. You will never find your best fit if you do not do this. I know it is hard to keep up with everything, your Facebook is probably to much to manage. There are tools out there like Ping.fm and Friendfeed.com to help you with that.

Ping.fm:
Ping.fm is a service that allows you to post status updates, mini blogs or links to all of your social networks. They support many of the most popular services that allow for status updates. Update your Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and more all at once with Ping.fm.

FriendFeed:
Friendfeed pulls in all of your info from many of the popular social networks and creates a feed of that info. My favorite function of Friendfeed is it’s ability to grab your latest posts from your blog and post them to your Twitter account. I also have Friendfeed pull my latest updates to Flickr so my Twitter followers know when I have uploaded new images.

You may be asking yourself why anybody would want to spread themselves so far across the interweb? Well I want to build brand equity in my name as a wedding photographer and business person. I am doing that on a local level and also on a national level. The nice thing about all of the social possibilities on the web is that 99% of them are free to use. Go ahead, Google my name, type in Jerad Hill and click search. Notice how I OWN it when you Google my name. If you are serious about getting noticed then you need to OWN it as well. If you have a common name then you really need to step it up. Here are some suggestions that will help you OWN it when it comes to searching your name on the internet.

1. Buy yourname.com
You need to go out right now and purchase the domain name for your name. If you do not own the domain name for your name you need to get on it now! Click here for some coupon codes to save you money on registration. It only costs you $6.95. Do it now! I don’t care if it just sits there for now, buy it, so when you can do something with it, you have it.

2. Start blogging yesterday
You may think you don’t have something to say to the world but I know you do. Start out by blogging about your hobby or something. I used to blog about Bible Studies I did. I used to have a daily podcast where I discussed topics on Christian Life. I loved doing it and I may even start doing it again. What it did was get my feet wet and teach me about the world of blogging and podcasting.

3. Read the blogs of others and comment
Find blogs that interest you and comment on blog posts. You should spend at least 30 minutes a day reading blogs and then commenting your thoughts on those blog posts. You will learn something and then you will also be communicating with the author. Your response will be archived and available for others to see, plus you can link to your website. This will direct people to your website if they find what you said interesting.

4. Be Interesting
You may think that nothing about your life is exciting but you are wrong. You have something exciting to for somebody out there to read about. Blog about your life, business and whatever else excites you. Talk about your business conquests and failures. Be Real!!! I can not stress that enough, BE REAL! We are now in an age where authenticity is king. Be real everywhere, on your Facebook, Myspace… Everywhere. People will find you out if you are fake. It is much easier to be real then to be fake.

Share your thoughts. How do you OWN it online?

If your business is not growing, watch this video.

If your business is not growing like you expected you should do what I did, join a referral organization. Watch this video to learn what I did to achieve my definition of success.

If your business is not growing, watch this video.

Reading is the CORE to scaling your knowledge as a business person.

If you plan to keep ahead of the curve in your industry you need to be reading. Listen to my thoughts on reading and make it a part of your day.

Reading is the CORE to scaling your knowledge as a business person.

Things You Should Read: Love Is The Killer App

If you read any book this fall I suggest that it would be Love Is The Killer App by Tim Sanders.

Things You Should Read: Love Is The Killer App

You are the only person who can make you Inferior

It’s true, nobody can make you inferior except you. What you perceive yourself to be is what you will become. Change the way people see you by changing the way you value yourself.

You are the only person who can make you Inferior

Don’t Let Bad Emotions keep you from Rockin it!

Positive and Negative thoughts have a deep impact on us. Don’t let negative emotions keep you from Rockin it.

Don\'t Let Bad Emotions keep you from Rockin it!

My thoughts on DSLR Cameras with Video

First of all, there is so much talk going on about this and I have no idea why people would see this as a bad thing. Why would you not want video on your DSLR? I know all of you have point and shoot cameras and use the video feature on that. I think it is a great idea and I will explain why I believe it will add a ton of value to a photographer for having this feature.

Slideshows
Having something in my hand that can capture video is going to add a whole new element to the slideshows I produce for my clients. I have been desiring for the last year to have someone there to shoot some video or get a decent video camera myself so I could shoot some video to incorporate into my slideshows for my clients. With quick internet connections and software getting more advanced it is easy to place video and photos in a slideshow. I will no longer be calling my slideshows slideshows, I will be calling them a wedding video because they will include video clips. It is easy to capture 3-5 minutes of usable footage to place in between image sets. I am truly excited about this.

Capturing more then moments
At weddings I love capturing moments that can be remembered for a lifetime. It is often that I am able to capture a facial expression that transforms that bride back to her wedding day every time she looks at it. But it is often that something is going on at a wedding that would be better captured as video. Everybody knows how Tech-Crazed I am and how much I love my iPhone. Well at my own wedding it was suggested last minute to me by my Best Man that I read my vows from my iPhone. I already had them on my iPhone because I was working on memorizing them. I have a few pictures of me reading from my iPhone but it was a priceless moment because my wife thought I was actually answering a phone call until I started reading. I would have loved to have a decent quality video of that moment. I plan to take advantage of the video feature on my DSLR and capture more then moments and place those priceless video clips into slideshows for my clients. I do not want to get to the point where I am producing actual video. I have been down that road before. I love photography more then I love shooting video.

Manual Focus
I was about a week shy of purchasing a Canon HV30 and a lens conversion kit so I could attach my Canon lenses to the HV30 (See HV20.com). I was going to do this because I would be able to manual focus via the lens and produce some great video transitions for my slideshows. Now I am just going to wait for my Canon 5D MKII that I pre-ordered to come in. It shoots in higher quality then the HV30 and I already have a ton of lenses. I can’t wait to play with this. Being a video guy from back in the day I always dreamed of having a camera with good focus control on the lens.

Video Cameras have been able to do it
For years, and by years I mean since the early days of DV (digital video), the cameras have been able to capture photos. I have been at weddings where guests have been using their video cameras to take pictures (totally lame). The images captured usually are not that good of quality as the sensors in video cameras are not as good as digital cameras, focus sucks, zoom gets even worse. I think taking a truly amazing camera and adding video capability to it is a great thing.

Endless lens options.
Video cameras that are designed for removable lenses are expensive. There are very few pro-sumer level cameras that do it. Beyond that a camera and a few lenses could cost you about $10k, unless you hack one like I spoke about with the HV30. I already have several Canon lenses and now they are about to become video lenses as well.

Plan on seeing amazing slideshows from me as soon as I get my Canon 5D MKII in.

Update: I just had to post a link to this video. Here is a behind the scene video of the use of the Canon 5D MKII in a full on production.

Office 1.0

I am getting an office. After working from a home office for the last 4 years an opportunity has finally opened up for me that I am quite happy about. Below you will see an image of the empty office. I will be painting it and decorating the office with stuff from Ikea so I can be styling but keep it on the cheap. The office has 4 private offices. I plan to use one of them for myself and then lease out the other 3 to other small companies like me. The location is great. It is right across the street from Memorial Hospital in Modesto which is on the corner of one of the busiest intersections in Modesto.

My office is 1400 sp.ft. total including the private offices. I plan to purchase a few couches, tables, book cases, chairs and wall decor to set a good mood in the main portion of the office. We will see what happens. I also want to make a conference room if I can get a wall put up.

I am working on a deal right now for the paint and I hope to also work on some deals that will dress up the outside of the building a bit. I would like to put in a new sign in front which will add value to the building and the other tenants as well. There is a Chiropractor next door that will be moving soon to a new location and next to that office is a Medical Equipment office. I would like to see a small cafe go in across the way from my office. They would do well being across the street from Memorial Hospital.

More pictures will come soon as I begin working on my space.

Is this the new Macbook?

Apple is expected to unveil the new MacBook Pro at the October 14th event, but could this leaked spy shot be the actual laptop?

We’ve got Air-inspired curves, a touchscreen trackpad, aluminum and glass in the style of Apple’s latest iMacs, and what appear to be separated keys, which have been slow in coming to the MacBook Pro holdout.

I know this has been posted many times but this is exciting to me being that I have thought many times about purchasing the Air but have not because of it’s lack of USB outputs. I’m excited to see what Apple launches.

Top 10 things I have learned from years of reading marketing blogs

Besides reading as many books as I can get my hands on about marketing I read several blogs, 14 to be exact, on marketing. I also subscribe to other blogs that fall under other categories. I believe I subscribe to about 65 blogs total. There are some real gems out there in the blog world. When a blog article grabs me, I will save it so I can reference to it later. If there are any fellow Google Reader users out there here is my shared feeds.

So over the last year I have came across some true words of wisdom online through blogs. Many times blogs tend to repeat themselves as people copy other people or ideas from other blogs. You have to take the information that is presented and find the best way to get through it fast. Before I get into what I learned over the last year let me touch on how I do this.

First, I look for compelling titles and well written subheaders. It has to grab me. My subconscious mind has to stop me as I am grazing through blogs in my feed reader. Usually well written blogs use good graphics that match the emotion of the blog. These things combined have to grab me in order to get me to stop and read the first paragraph.

So, well over a year of reading marketing blogs and here is what I have comprised from most of the bloggers out there that seem to be doing well for themselves.

#1 Community is everything:
One trend that I have noticed on all blogs that seem to do well is that the writer engages with his/her readers. As I reach the end of the article I see collaboration happening in the comment boxes as people discuss what the writer has touched on. The writer revisits his blog and posts comments below and will even post a new blog should some of the readers request a more in depth look at the topic. I believe that a good marketing campaign should do the same. In today’s market we all want to feel reached out to and spoken to on an individual level. Adverting is just going to become more and more customized to fit our individual needs as time goes on. Community is happening on every level of online communication right now from blogs to niche social networks. Myspace is old news to many because they have moved on to something less general and more specific to their individual lifestyles. I can honestly say that I spend a fraction of the time on Myspace that I used to and if it were not for the fact that many of my Photography clients are my friends on Myspace I would never get on Myspace.

#2 You have a personal brand and you don’t even know it.
You may say that a brand is something that only applies to companies but I beg to differ in the world we live in today. Anyone who is online and has a profile somewhere is taking part in personal branding. All of us are differentiating ourselves in so many unique ways and sharing that information with the world. Before this online movement to social media you would only know an individuals interests, beliefs and morals is you asked them. Now it is all on display on the Myspace, Facebook and Twitter accounts. Every move we make online is added to our public time line and it allows people to understand us almost completely with out even knowing us personally. We attach ourselves to other brands, images and ideas which are exactly what brands are made up from in the first place.

My question to you is, what is your brand made up of?

#3 If They can do it, I can do it.
The blog movement has made writers and journalists out of all of us. We all know there is a lot of garbage out there and one of the reasons I started this blog over from scratch is due to the fact that I had reblogged many things that were already out there. If somebody was to look at my old blog and try to understand me as a person, they would have a hard time. The problem with many websites out there is that they end up looking like the junk drawer in the kitchen, many items buried under each other. Often times you can’t find what you are looking for. When I started the iPhone App Podcast website it became more clear to me. All of these bloggers and book writers I read started to make sense. They have been telling me to find something I am interested in and not only share it with the world but share it well. Be the best at it. I finally decided to do that and the Podcast is very successful. I have had a few blog article success moments on my old blog where an article got Stumbled and saw 1000’s of hits in a 24 hour period. It’s easy to get off topic because we think the world may want to see something we came across.

Find your passion and when you do share it with others. Whether it be in business or blog writing, be one of those people that others look at in envy of your passion.

#5 Get Educated
I don’t necessarily mean go back to school, I mean do some reading. You have already made it this far through this blog so that is a good start. When I got into business which is now 8 years ago, I knew I did not know anything, so I bought books. I read books, whatever business books I could get my hands on. When blogs started to get popular, I started reading those too. I would get so enthused about business and growing my network after finishing a book. There were times when I did not read for several months and I would notice a decrease in desire to be the best I could in my industry. Over the last year or so there seems to have been an increase in people telling us to read more. Not just reading for the sake of reading but reading to grow in your area of interest. No fiction reading, simply business related books. That is all I read. I can’t get into fiction books. I love reading marketing books, I get into them and can’t wait to share the info I just read with someone else. Reading blogs is great also because they are direct and to the point. Many good gems are waiting for you to uncover them inside of blogs. Do yourself a favor and read for an hour a day in the morning and see what it does to your day at work.

#6 You can be the next big thing, right now.
Your passion, idea, art, concept or anything for that matter can be the next big thing in today’s market. Websites like StumbleUpon and Digg.Com are known for taking an average Joe with a good idea and blowing them up over night. So much that there is a term called the Digg Effect, which happens when a website reaches top placement on Digg.Com which results in so many visits to the destination’s website that the server crashes. You could have your 15 minutes of fame or launch a great marketing campaign with little or no money up front, simply let the world do it for you.

#7 How not to do things
Just as the old adage says that good customer experiences never get talked about but bad ones can kill a business such is the same with marketing. If a bad marketing campaign reaches the right person, it will get bashed. Even books are written about marketing failures. We are consumed with desire to see what we should not be doing. I can only see this as a good thing. The world wide web in it’s vastness provides us with enough information and “fail” articles to make us want to think twice before launching our campaign.

#8 Listen and Relate
If there is one thing going through our heads when we see a national ad campaign it’s the thought that they have no idea what we really want to hear. Sorry Burger King but your Diddy commercial did not make me want to come get some late night snacks at Burger King. I’m sure I had already lost respect for him before the Pepsi Truck Commercial but the only thing these commercials says to me is that Diddy is way beyond selling out. Advertisers need to listen to their target audience and provide content that they can relate to. You may think that you know your target audience but from what the world has shown us, changes are you don’t.

#9 Outsourcing is a good thing.
I used to hang on to every aspect of my job because I believed that if I know how to do it I should not be paying someone else to do it. That resulted in me never leaving the office until I had completed a job. Then once that job was completed I would get out again and network because I had nothing on my plate. How unproductive is that? I now outsource items that I know could be done better by a specialist and focus on what I do best. This frees up more time which allows me to work on my personal brand and to network with others much more frequently. I may be paying someone else to handle certain aspects of my work but I am out reaching new clients and coming back to the office with more signed contracts because I am out networking more often.

#10 Be careful what you apply to your life, research everything. Be yourself because that is what differentiates you from everybody else.
There is so much junk out there that there are websites that do nothing but report on the junk. How crazy is that? Because of this you must be careful not to read something and then apply it to your life or business with our carefully thinking about what the possible outcomes could be. Just because something worked for somebody else does not mean it will work for you. Just as fast as you could become the next viral thing to reach all corners of the web you could also spoke of in a negative light as well. Be smart about what you share with the world online. The internet is a deep pit of archival hell that is very hard to get out of once you fall into it. As I mentioned above in my second point, watch how you brand yourself. Do what you can to protect your name because you can ruin it online in a minute. Be unique, you are already unique because nobody else was created like you, so don’t try to be like others.

Do you read a lot of blogs online? What are some general observations you have made? Share them with me.

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