Getting from Newbie To Understanding

1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFZ0z5Fm-Ng

If you believe business is built on relationships, make building them your business. @Unmarketing

2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBGvHXDvZxg

In a world of too many options and too little time, our obvious choice is to just ignore the ordinary stuff. Seth Godin

3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBIVlM435Zg

the Internet has ended mass marketing and revived a human social unit from the distant past: tribes. Seth

4) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQGYr9bnktw

Twitter "The Opportunity Engine" @ChrisBrogan

5) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIRD5oosqIU

It is all about listening like a hunter.

Getting from here to OH MY GOSH!

Listen, Create, Engage,

We all understand that wheels roll, but how do you get rolling in Social Media?

And NOT LOOK LIKE A KOOK!

First, Stop and LISTEN for something that is RELEVANT RECENT & LOCAL to ME! (not you)

Find something neat? CREATE and SHARE.

Next you ENGAGE this is where serendipity comes in.

Conversations build Connections, Connections build Lives.

These are the three parts of the conversationl wheel.

If you miss any of these three parts, you are missing what will roll you along...

The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round...

From America

My country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims' pride,
From every mountainside
Let freedom ring!

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said,

"Life's most persistent and urgent question is:

'What are you doing for others?'"

From An Unknown Tribe Member

Before there was Seth Godin, there was Marshall McLuhan inviting us all to move into the Global Village & and become a member of the tribe...

Where do we go from here? Are you "With It"?

Let me buy you an ice cream...

1) Enable mail2blogger Settings > Email & Mobile > Email Posting Address

2) Take a picture or grab one from your camera roll

3) Email pict to your email posting address in the format above.

4) Edit as needed when home.

Sent from My iPhone

From Marshall McLuhan

All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered

From My Desktop

Remember no man is a failure who has friends.

From How To Bring Serendipitous Conversations Back To Twitter, A Rant

One of the recent changes @Twitter is that if you @AUser only the people that also follow that user will see the @. The solution from @Mashable is to place a . before the @ like .@Mashable

Let's turn it up a notch,

Never start your tweet with an @. Make your tweets talk. BAM!

Hey @Myfollower I think that you ROCK! & my reply to you should be seen for serendipitous reasons alone by my followers that may not know about YOU!

Heck! my @Reply to you may spark the creative juices in one of my followers who may write a post that could CHANGE the way we all do things!

The next time you @Someone in Twitter be sure to craft your tweet to begin with something other than the @UserName and share with a wider audience. (If you wanted no one to hear you, you would have sent a DM right?)

Let us know how that works for you and add your discoveries below in the comment section.

From How To Write A Mobile Optimized Blog Post @Blogger

1) In the title field craft something that would be searched for, something unique, 4 to 6 words long with no Boolean terms added.

2) Add a link to your homepage url in the link field.

3) Embed A Picture. (Here we used Picasa.)

4) Write a "Man bites Dog" intro, no more than 120 characters. Craft it as a tweet, to be shared easily. MAKE US WANT TO READ MORE!!!

5) Now write the Body. Feed Me Seymour! At LEAST 2 or more well thought out paragraphs of info matching #1 (your title).

6) Video & Other Non Mobile Friendly Media goes here.

7) Add a label for similar content. Direct your readers to other posts they may enjoy.

8) LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION! Can be set to your location or the location of your target audience.

9) Click Publish!

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Many of us have had a hard time wrapping our minds around internet marketing. To keep it as simple as possible I would like to offer the following parable.

Little Gordie wanted to have a lemonade stand and make enough money to buy a new bike. His family had a lemon tree and he had enough in his piggy bank for the sugar, paper cups, and sign material. He got everything together and he opened up shop on the small cul-de-sac in front of his house.

He yelled lemonade and waved his sign. Six neighbors heard him yell and one even wanted to buy lemonade. The rest wished he would be quiet. One neighbor was driving home and saw his sign and bought his lemonade while several others grumbled about how big the sign was.

Gordie had a problem two lemonades were not enough profit to pay for the sugar let alone buy the bike. The town he lived in was large and he was sure right at this minute there were a lot of people searching for a place to buy a cool drink. The problem how do you get them to drive on your cul-de-sac, see your sign or hear you yell at the very minute they want to buy lemonade.

This being a very modern town there was a system that supplied information to little sign machines in everyones home or office. Some people even had portable sign machines that they carried with them that were able to pull signs from the cellular phone system or from radios in coffee shops, hotels and bookstores.

In the early days you had to ask for a sign by it’s number like 128.1.1.5, later they had added a system to look up the number for you so you could ask for “gordielemonade” and be connected to the sign. As the number of little signs increased, and all the simple names were used, it became harder to get people to remember or figure out your sign machine name. This was making it harder to use the sign machine to find what you wanted.

About this time a couple of clever people made a sign that allowed someone to ask for something by description and they would respond with a list of all the signs that had something to do with the request. This was great until the lists started to get really long.

If you wanted to buy lemonade and put the request for lemonade in the search sign you would get hundreds of signs listed. The list was so long that it had to be broken up into several signs and many were not in your local, or they were not relevant ( a recipe or ad for frozen) or they were for a stand that went out of business last year. People often failed to go to the second or third set on a long list. If you were not on the first page you would be missed.

The search signs got better at there task and now are concentrating on the most relevant, recent and local. To be on the first page you must meet the search criteria. Gordie had no idea how to to make a his signs the most relevant, recent and appear as local to the search signs. How often do you need to update a sign to stay recent? What makes a sign relevant? Isn’t local a relative thing?

He hired his friend Darin, who was the most techie kid on the block. Darin spent his time following trends asking questions and checking sign stats. By adding a stream of content, by linking to additional signs, by using text strings that the search guys can find, by adding Gordie to the social networks that talk about where to get refreshments, by widening the area described on the signs to make a larger part of the town local, Gordie’s signs got better placement on the list.

Customer were driving on his cul-de-sac. They were seeing his sign and hearing him yell at the very minute they want to buy lemonade. People were friendly and loved the fresh lemonade they told their friends who became new customers. Traffic to his stand improved to a point that Gordie could afford to bike his bike and one for his little brother.

Lesson to be learned. Don’t spend a lot of money on signs and place them on your cul-de-sac wave your arms, yell and expect people to flock to your door...

The only problems that remain are :

• The criteria for the search guys is always in a state of flux
• Recent means recent - not last month.

From Happy Hanukkah & Mele Kalikimaka

Happy Hanukkah! & Mele Kalikimaka to you and your Ohana from @RTGit

From San Onofre Thanksgiving 2010

Form our Ohana to yours, many blessings.

Popularity has it's price, that price is $3 per gig over your quota, (YMMV) those words have brought fear and dread to more than one web user over my support career. Yes if you host a 1 meg file, and link to it from your home page, it will blow thru your quota if you become popular, so from this side of the help desk, here goes, "How to share your PDF's, have analytics, and spend $0 on hosting"

1) login to your gmail account, then click on documents top left,
2) click the Upload button, Select the files you want to upload, and click open
3) Navigate to the new file and click on Share > Sharing Settings > Change
4) Set to "Public on the web" and click Save.
5) Copy the link for IM or email and use that as the HREF for the link on your site.

Has many more uses than just sharing a paper airplane.

What is Not Measured, Is Not Managed,

Make sure to add your Google analytics info to docs so you can know when you go viral!

1) Google Docs > Settings > Editing > Document Tracking, add your UA# and click save.

2) Contact your web host and have them 301 redirect the old pdf to the new Google Docs link.

You are now free to spend your cash on other things.

Enjoy!

Click here for the Monarchs Of San Clemente Photoset.

Hello Butterfly Friends,

We have exciting news… it appears the Monarchs are returning to SC State Beach! On Nov. 5th we spotted about 100 Monarchs nectaring in about 10 different Eucalyptus trees (mostly the silver dollar gum species) and today we went back, mid-morning to early afternoon to observe and photograph probably 200 or so at the park, some were in the trees nearest the location of the milkweed we planted, mostly nectaring; others were spread in a fewer number of trees, both the gum variety and the other narrow leaf standard.

We found many small groups (6-11 butterflies) clustering in the shadier branches by early afternoon, clearly conserving energy! Interestingly, they were inhabiting a large grove of Euc trees near the park road and the exact location of the Monarch Trail/Migration sign. Someone must have known what they were doing there, as the Monarchs knew to return primarily to the central spot! Once a large RV drove by quickly and I watched them all flutter from that grouping, revealing just how many there were that I could not see or photograph! There was also a great number in a (huge) Silver Dollar Euc. tree that is further south in the park, closer to state park administration on a meadow/field. These were nectaring too. Some of the sky pictures are of the Monarchs nectaring at the highest points of this tree.

Here is the link to my public web album from today: http://picasaweb.google.com/spookington/SCStateBeachMonarchsNov112010

As you see from the pictures, I also witnessed egg laying in the front bed by the guard station that we just recently amended and re-seeded. I saw 4 mated pairs of Monarchs flying too. Clearly some are still not ready for diapause and Concordia (next door) has milkweed still so we may not be looking at the 4th generation of Monarchs just yet, or at least the locals may not feel they are the last, but there are definitely some who are ready for their winter rest. We saw an amazing number of male Monarchs in the groupings, and they were not aggressive with each other as they can be in our gardens. Very interesting!

I am sure I speak for everyone involved in helping to restore this area as a pollinator habitat and overwintering site, it has been well worth all the effort. I look forward to more excitement to come!

Would anyone have experience with doing a butterfly count as they do for NABA? I haven’t been on one but bet we could set a date for Thanksgiving Week to have one at the park. Whether it is an official count or unofficial, doesn’t so much matter. Is anyone interested? It’s been just my family doing the observations, but it would be great to do something in teams and spread out to assess the numbers by the end of November.

Mahalos!

Kris Ethington
kethington AT cox Dot net>
Junior Gardener Program Chair
San Clemente Garden Club
Learning Through Nature Program
Concordia Elementary School
949-388-1107
www.sanclementegardenclub.com

Aloha Surf Legend Phillip "Flippy" Hoffman 1930-2010 The D-Side Interview with Flippy's brother Walter Hoffman.

To Marines past and present, stateside and around the world, Happy 235th Birthday. Semper Fidelis.