I really love twitter. Actually, I can’t stand it.  What a wonderful tool - and what a waste. I am so conflicted - I am the @chazbono of Twitter users.

I’m not going to take the time to explain to you what Twitter is, because you already know what it is.  It’s easy to spot someone (particularly news reporters) who doesn’t know Twitter because he/she will call it “The Twitter” or “Twittercom” or “Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) said on something called Twitter today….”

So, everybody’s HEARD of Twitter at this point, but according to recent studies, only 8% of you actively use Twitter.  Moreover, Twitter has something like an 83% dormant account rate.  That’s a TON of people who sign up, play with it, and then quit.  You know why?

Because Twitters’ interface is AWFUL.  Twitter is a gigantic river of 140 character bursts of information and you don’t have a boat or a paddle.  You are a blind man stumbling around in a vast rain forest of data - sure, you can find what you want if you feel around long enough, but 83% of you just give up after a while.

The problem is that the data is BEAUTIFUL.  There are tons of great and interesting people on Twitter who want to share what they know with you.  Celebrities can give you a peek into their worlds like never before. Organizations can inform you about their products or services. News travels at light speed on Twitter - you can literally be on the ground with someone during an attack, or an uprising, or an earthquake the instant it’s happening.  I love Twitter for that…

…and I hate Twitter because it’s just too simple of an interface and too damn hard to figure out.  Who do I Follow?  How do I find Twitternames? Why do we type a # sign before a word when search finds it anyway? Why am I only shown the last 500 people I’ve followed when I try to send an @ message to someone?  How am I supposed to whittle down my thought to 140 characters? (Seriously, how much time is spent writing the thought vs editing the thought? 50/50% thought so.) How do I search my follower or following list? What do you mean I can’t send DM’s unless they follow me too?  Does anybody even use the DM’s anyway? Which URL shortener do I use? Pictures?  Is anybody even listening to me? VALIDATE ME DAMMIT! Waiter, check please.

EVERY marketing person you talk to about Twitter, after you explain your difficulty using it, will reply “Well that’s because you’re not using Twitter correctly.  Twitter is for starting conversations”.  If you don’t believe me, go ask anyone you know in marketing about using Twitter and see what they say.  In fact, “Twitter is for conversations” is the Free Space in Twitter Bingo. I mean, that’s awesome and all, but if I can’t figure out how to use it, guess what - I’M NOT GOING TO USE IT.

It all just makes me want to kick Twitters’ ass right in the face.

There are several other gigantic streams of information out there, you know.  One is called Google. Another is called Facebook. A third is called Wikipedia.  Then, of course, there’s the largest information stream out there, which is called The Real World.  None of them are perfect - all of them have their own unique problems.  Twitter is a treasure trove of valuable information, but let’s face it, folks:

Twitter needs a better way to find and share information, or it’s a Kardashian.

Kevin Harmon

CEO Red Shorts Media

Twitter: Imadness

Facebook: YesTHATKevinHarmon

LinkedIn:  thekevinharmon

kevin@redshortsmedia.com

I’ve been working with the creators of StartUpNation since 2001 when I was hired to shoot Rich Sloan doing yoga on the conference room table in the Birmingham Michigan office of the up and coming StartUpNation.  I was recently offered the opportunity to blog about photography if I thought I could contribute to entrepreneurs and start ups. I think I can so I’ll give it a shot.  I’ll be talking about all things photography, from how to do a shoot in the office, to what’s the best stock agency for what your needs are, to rights and usage contracts.  I’ll be answering questions about any thing relating to the business of photography and photography in your business. If I don’t know the answers I’ll look to the vast knowledge base of my peers and will share what I learn with you, so post your questions and comments about you’re photographic quandaries here, and I’ll help you along the image driven super highway of successful businesses.

I should tell you a bit about me.
I began my career as a photographer early in life.  My brother had a darkroom in a closet at our house when I was a sixth grader.  It didn’t take long for my teachers at school to see an opportunity to recruit the next news paper and yearbook photographer.  That’s when I learned that you can have fun and provide a needed service at the same time.  I could get credits for graduation if I work on the year book and news paper staff!  Life was good.  Then one day I was handed a press pass to cover the cheerleaders for a story for the news paper, that was all the motivation I ever needed to pursue my career.  When I was a senior in High School I was introduced to an advertising photographer in my home town of Detroit named Ameen Howrani.  He let me watch him work one day, he was shooting a news crew for the local ABC affiliate.  It was very glamorous, they had food there!  I was face to face with the local anchor man!  That’s when I decided that advertising was where it’s at.  Fast forward 25 years.  I have photographed some really great people, some incredibly beautiful places, and some of the most interesting stuff you’ll ever see.  I picked up a few professional sports teams along the way as well.  Namely the Detroit Red Wings, Detroit Tigers, Detroit Lions, and currently Tampa Bay Ray’s as well as the NHL, NFL, MLB and other editorial venues related to sports. I’ve had unprecedented access to closed door behind the scenes events in the NFL, NHL, and MLB to name just a few. I was given the opportunity to shoot a book for the Detroit Red Wings called “48 Hours with the Detroit Red Wings”. Its a chronological documentation of what happens in forty eight hours in the world of the Red Wings Hockey team.  I was able to travel with the team to photograph players, coaches, and staff. We took two days to shoot the book so we could show the travel aspect of how the team lives on the road (and above the clouds).  During that shoot I was given access to coaches meetings that had never been photographed before.  One of the best experiences I had with the Red  Wings was Flying on the team jet to Washington DC to the White House to meet President George W Bush.   I was given an assignment by the Detroit Tigers Baseball team to shoot an eighteen page photo essay of Tiger Stadium during the final home stand ever to be played there.  The parting shot was Al Kaline in his nineteen sixty eight world series uniform (it still fit), pondering his days playing in that historic stadium.  The cover shot was of the stadium from the corner of Michigan and Trumble on a Friday night with fireworks lighting the sky.  I was able to get images never before captured, such as the neon Tiger Stadium sign from the roof of the press elevator.  I’m currently team photographer for the Tampa Bay Ray’s Baseball team, and have a nice client list of local and national companies and agencies as well.  I live in the St Petersburg area of Florida where I’ve lived for the past six years.  Before that I lived mostly in the suburbs of Detroit with a few years in New York city.  Please feel free to see some of the photographs I mention here at www.kovich.com

I had just finished reading through Josh Linkner’s brand new book, Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity.

Linkner’s big idea: Breakthrough creativity doesn’t need to be random or something that happens only at the inception stage of your business. Creativity can be–and must be–cultivated systematically on an ongoing basis.

Linkner provides five simple steps to help you become a creative, innovative, dynamic powerhouse - both individually and as a company.

As a long-time friend of mine, I’ve had the privilege of watching Josh perfect this systematic approach to creativity as a successful entrepreneur who rapidly grew a business to over $70 million in sales and as a legit jazz musician where improvisation has been a constant.

He deduced from his experiences that rather than waiting for a-ha! moments to wander through the door, it was possible to establish an environment where breakthrough ideas are farmed and harvested predictably, like crops.

It’s one thing to develop a system that works for yourself, but in Disciplined Dreaming, Linkner successfully packages his ideas into appealing, usable insights in a step-wise process that even at 33,000 feet, are simple and obvious to follow. Totally doable.

His five steps (paraphrased by me) are:

1. Ask - Define your creativity challenge and foster curiosity and awareness of your business opportunity.
2. Prepare - Get into the proverbial “zone” to be creatively productive.
3. Discover - Explore and reveal every avenue to generate ideas and think innovativaly.
4. Ignite - Explode your creative thinking up to the next level to create extraordinary ideas.
5. Launch - Establish a specific framework for transforming ideas into action plans.

And Josh provides specific instructions for each step.

I am so psyched to put these steps to work with my team, and I know they’ll be equally into the process. It will not only bring fresh ideas to light and game-changing strategy, but it will also be A BLAST!

With its creative prescription at just the right moment in my life’s work, I know that this weekend read will have a sweeping, positive impact on what I crank out as a visionary entrepreneur. 

If you want to take your business and personal achievements to the next level, and if you’re wondering what you should be disciplined about today, I’d say, get yourself a copy of Disciplined Dreaming and start creating your future systematically.

Amazon link for Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity

Rieva Lesonsky was Editor of that magazine at that time, and so, it’s an incredible thrill and honor when StartupNation collaborates today with Rieva on new and helpful advice for entrepreneurs.

I’m writing today to share with you that Rieva–now running her own business–and StartupNation have just released a new eBook for 2011.

26 Hot Businesses To Start Right Now! is the second annual kick-start, jump-start, fire-you-up, open-your-mind, take-action-now, whip-crackin’, break-on-through, fertilize-your-mind, start-it-up, breeze-to-read downloadable eBook that will leave you rich with ideas and inspiration for a business that fits you perfectly and equips you with the specifics to get started.

By reading this eBook, [click the image to see it] you will learn 11 hot trends and 26 hot businesses that you can start today. For example, you’ll gain insights like:

• Make it personal. Millennials (60% of all weddings by 2012) are demanding their wedding experience be more distinctive, opening opportunities for personalized wedding décor & accessories businesses.
• Make the world come together. Open a translation services business, and capitalize on a market that has experienced average annual growth of 22% since 2004.
• Sell plus-sizes. Sixty-eight percent (68%) of all U.S. adults (age 20+) are overweight and about half of those are obese. Make their lives easier by selling plus-sized products and apparel.

The download is jam-packed with a simple, easy-to-understand analysis of the market landscape and specific recommendations for businesses you can start now that have the highest probability of success in 2011.

The great thing about 26 Hot Businesses to Start Right Now! is that it can be read in a day, immediately empowering you to select a new business to start and to take the first steps in building your future as a business owner.

The eBook is a launching pad for your business with links to more than 20 additional resources.

By reading this eBook, you’ll tap into the insights necessary to create a small business blockbuster.

About Rieva, the author: Rieva Lesonsky, CEO and president of GrowBiz Media (www.growbizmedia.com), a content and consulting company specializing in small businesses and entrepreneurship, and SmallBizDaily.com, her daily blog. Lesonsky has been covering America’s entrepreneurs for nearly 30 years. She has appeared on hundreds of TV programs and radio shows, including the Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, The Martha Stewart Show and Oprah, and can be seen regularly on MSNBC’s Your Business.

LEARN MORE HERE

… and START IT UP!!!

Sorry, that institution got among the lowest ratings in a Pew Research Center study that was recently released. The Pew Center polled Americans to determine who they trusted least and who they trusted most.

Small business owners - you should be proud. America trusts YOU most.

More than churches, our President, labor unions, the Federal Government, small businesses reign supreme in the eyes of the American public.

Here’s a ratings chart that shows the results:

	Positive	Negative	Other/ Don’t know
Small business	71	19	10
Technology companies	68	18	14
Churches & religious orgs	63	22	15
Colleges & universities	61	26	13
Obama administration	45	45	10
Entertainment industry	33	51	16
Labor unions	32	49	18
Federal agencies and depts	31	54	16
National news media	31	57	12
Large corporations	25	64	12
Federal government	25	65	9
Congress	24	65	12
Banks & financial inst	22	69	10
Pew Research Center March 11-21. Figures may not add to 100% because of rounding

Just edging out Congress as the least trusted institution are banks and financial institutions. I figure it’s the mortgage crisis and recent bail-out ballyhoo that has so terribly tarnished the perception of banks, coupled with the lack of lending at this critical juncture for Americans.

It’s good to be SOLID when it comes to reputation and perception on the street. It’s a big help when us little guys and gals go toe to toe with the behemoth corporations and compete with our service and product offerings.

Be proud to carry the small business torch, folks - not only do you live it, but America “gets it.”

Employees want to do a good job. And what the boss often needs to do is get out of the way and let them perform. Of course, when I became a business owner, I fell prey to the kind of thinking that trips up so many entrepreneurs: You have to work endless hours, you have to micromanage every aspect of the business, you have to make every decision. Ack!

I don’t know if my businesses would have survived if I hadn’t come up with what I call Go Theory. (”Go” as in “just go away”.) Go Theory is not about where you go or what you do while you go away from the office. Go Theory is all about what you don’t do:

• Don’t send your employees lots of little reminders by email.
• Don’t keep checking your smart phone.
• Don’t miss the spectacular view or the interesting presentation or the quality time with friends because you were stressing out about what might be going on back at the office.

Instead, enjoy your time away. Because you’ve got great people taking care of the business while you’re gone. If that last sentence just sent a chill up your spine (“But…no one can possibly take care of my business except me!”), read on.

The first element of Go theory, its absolute essence, is hiring great people to work in your business:

• Fire quick and hire slow. Invest the time and money required to make the best choices. I don’t rely on just myself to spot the right person — I make sure that at least two other people whose opinions I respect interview the candidates.
• Hire smart. I hire people who are smarter than me.
• Pick people with a track record for doing their tasks and accomplishing their goals. You don’t want to deal with excuses.

The second element of Go theory involves what you do with those great employees once you have them:

• Give people a great place to work, including real benefits.
• Trust them to handle problems and give them room to succeed or fail.
• Get in the habit of throwing issues back to employees — otherwise, you’ll be chained to your business 24/7.
• Make your business a vibrant and healthy system and you’ll find that employees work better when you’re gone.

The third element of Go theory is at once the easiest — and the hardest:

• Give employees clear directions or goals, and leave them alone to do their jobs. A quick check-in early in the project to make sure they are on track is OK, but then…go away!

The idea is for you to work on your business instead of in your business. This forces you and your staff to create good systems that can run without you. As the CEO, you want to be useless in the day-to-day business activities so you can be proactive and reactive to markets and opportunities. Keep in mind that what puts your business ahead of the competition is not logging lots of hours at the office — it’s creativity. Ask yourself: How can you be creative if you’re spending all your time making sales calls?

Go Theory provides a lot of rewards, including a “real life” for the CEO and a stronger, healthier bottom line for the company. I find that in my absence my business thrives. Projects move forward, problems get solved, and new ideas emerge. All this — just because I learned to get out of the way and work from a beachside cafe two hours a day.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen an increase in small-business marketing budgets in the last few weeks.

More small businesses are realizing that they need to market and promote their services more than ever to get their piece of the consumer’s shrinking budget.

After all, if you don’t get your name in front of potential customers, you’ll be swallowed up by the competition who is actively marketing their products and services.

As Robert Kiyosaki (author of the “Rich Dad” book series) states in the November 2008 issue of Entrepreneur Magazine, “When times get tough, your job is to promote more, not less.”

Look at Long-Term Benefits

Sure, you’ll save time and money if you stop promotional efforts. But months from now, when you don’t have any media clippings or potential clients lined up from lack of activity, you’ll feel the pain of playing “catch up.”

Competitors who have been consistently promoting their marketing messages will be far ahead of you. Plus, it will take another four to six months to get published in print venues that have advanced editorial deadlines. And you’ll need to start from scratch to build media momentum so you’ll be way behind in many ways.

With this in mind, try to keep your marketing and public-relations activities going. This can mean hiring a boutique PR agency or doing the work yourself if your money is really tight.

After all, it doesn’t cost anything but time and effort to call up a media member and pitch a unique story angle or write and post a press release on the free sites out there (see my list at www.rembrandtwrites.com).

Now is not the time to be quiet. Get the word out about your business any way you can now. You’ll build buzz and sales and be that much farther ahead of the competition when the economy turns around.

Do you need help building buzz for your business with PR, SEO copywriting and social media? Please let me know here or at www.rembrandtwrites.com. I’m here to help!

Click here or on the image below to view that advice.

Let me know if you have a cool story you’d like to share with ABC News Now or if you have a burning question to ask. Just send me a personal message at my profile.

Well, if you have a blog, or are wondering if you need one, you may have these questions:

• What’s the point?

Before you start writing, figure out why you want to have a blog. If you are just trying to jump on the social-media bandwagon, that’s not a good reason to start a blog.

However, if you are trying to share information, build communications with your customers or build buzz, a blog may help you. If this is the case, figure out what you want to accomplish with your blog, and create an action plan, or editorial calendar of pertinent content, to fulfill that purpose. Then, monitor results and make changes as necessary.

• Why aren’t people reading my blog?

Well, there may be several reasons for this.

First, do people know about it?

If not, send out regular e-mail announcements telling people about new entries. Check out www.aweber.com, www.webmarketingmagic.com, www.myemma.com, and others for help with automating this process.

Second, does your blog contain valuable content? Do you help your target audience get answers, information or current news?

If not, it may be time to revise your copy and focus on the benefits you have to offer.

Third, are you optimizing your blog for the search engines?

By including keywords your target audience is searching for online within your blog’s headline and body, you’ll attract a lot more readers. Also, list your blog with www.technorati.com and other sites that search for new blog entries.

• Is your site user friendly?

If you are using a content service, your blog may just be a bunch of sentences running together – making it very difficult to read.

People have a lot to review during the day, and if your competitor’s blog is more reader-friendly, guess who is going to get the site visits?

Try to write short sentences and paragraphs. Help readers get the information they need quickly and easily.

Now, these are just a few quick tips to help make your blog activities more worthwhile. After all, a few simple changes may be the difference between building customer relationships and wasting time and effort on content no one reads.

Do you need help with your public relations and SEO copywriting to boost sales, awareness and credibility? Please let me know here or at www.rembrandtwrites.com. I’m here to help!

We are women. Watch us Manage!

I have people ask me, usually men, how do you do it all? How do you take care of the family, and your business, and be so management oriented?  Did you study business management in college, get an MBA? No sir, I did not even finish high school. I even worked at McDonalds as the French fry girl 10 years ago, now I run a multi-million dollar company.

Shhh, my Secret!  I had to work really hard, re-train myself, be willing to admit failure, be willing to change what was not working,  and develop skills that I never knew I had.

 It is not easy! Let me tell you, however, once you have the skill set, anything is possible. Here are my 5 tips and secrets that I use EVERYDAY, to do it!

 1) Make sure you have a very clear to do list. I cannot function without it jotted down, even on a scrap paper.

2) Enlist people to can help you do these items, or that can do them for you.

3) Do not overload your schedule. I know that after I drop my kids at school, I have from 9 AM to 3:30 PM to get my things done. Because as you know, once the kids get home there is a host of activities going down i.e. dinner, homework, chores, and don’t forget you and daddy time! That is a whole other blog to write about. I have been successfully married for 20+ years, so I guess I can claim to be an authority on how to make it all work.

4) Keep your office, or home office clutter free. GET organized!

5) Set a daily schedule of the 1-2-3 + things you need to do every day. Example, take calls from 12-2PM. Make your calls form 4-5 PM, answer e-mails first thing in the morning etc…and stick to it daily. Training and conditioning ourselves is probably the hardest things to do.

I have 4 very, very busy boys, and I am a single parent during the week (hubby commutes M-F), and a life that I must maintain, outside of my business. If I cannot do that, my business will suffer. If I do not bring in money, my family will suffer! So, it is a tedious balance act between the two. You have to simplify things, do what works for you and roll with it.

If you cannot seem to get organized, hire someone to help you. Be careful who you hire however. Make sure they are credible and can really help you. You want to make sure they can listen to your wants, and needs, and can help develop a system that works for you. I once hired a gal who wanted to bring in her trademark system and make me adjust to it. It was stringent and non-flexible. Not going to happen!  Work with someone who will devise a plan and system for you, not them…

Just remember, you can do whatever you organize yourself to do!

Always Dream BIG!

Kim Babjak