Writing a New Book? Here Are the Tools

By: Michael Levin, eight time best selling author

Success leaves clues.  If you seek the tools for writing a New York Times self-help best seller, look no further than a new NYT best seller, called, appropriately enough, The Tools.

Phil Stutz and Barry Michels are Los Angeles therapists who have written an outstanding book encapsulating their approach to guiding their patients to successful living.  The book is a tutorial for people who want a better life.  It’s also a tutorial on how to organize and write a great book.  So let’s take a look at the tools Stutz and Michels use that you can put to work in your book.

1. Great title.  A title ought to be what the movie industry calls “high concept” – something you grasp and connect with immediately.  Who wouldn’t want tools?  And then it’s a great title because it makes the reader ask questions:  what tools?  Do I have these tools?  Do I need these tools?  What’s going on here?

2. Solid subtitle.  A subtitle must reveal the promise or “unique selling proposition” of the book clearly and powerfully.  Here, it’s “Transform Your Problems Into Courage, Confidence, and Creativity.”  Well, who wouldn’t want that?

3. Killer blurbs.  The title sells you on reading the subtitle.  The subtitle sells you on flipping the book over in your hands to read the blurbs.  And here you have Marianne Williamson and The New Yorker endorsing the coauthors, along with one other respected author and a top Hollywood client.  That’s the kind of third-party verification that sells books.

4. Chapter one asks a knockout question.  Why can’t therapists solve problems quickly…or at all?  Great question, right?  And then we get just enough of the authors’ backgrounds to know who they are.  They’re therapists profoundly dissatisfied with the limits of traditional therapy.  They tell of the pain they felt when their clients went away without solutions…and so they came up with a new approach.  The Tools.  So you have a problem that we can relate to…authors we can relate to…and the promise of a new solution.

5. Clear organizational plan.  One tool per chapter for the next five chapters, and then a couple of chapters to wrap things up.  Within each of the five chapters describing the tools, a vignette involving a patient, an explanation of the tool, a description of how to use the tool, and other uses for the tool.  Simple and clear.

6. Out-of-the-box “case studies.”  A foul-mouthed road comic.  A young, bitchy, sharply dressed fashion entrepreneur.  A gorgeous yet almost fatally insecure actress/model, afraid that her working class background keeps her from acceptance from the well-to-do West LA soccer moms.  They may be composites as opposed to real people, but they feel so real to the reader.  You get caught up in their stories.  You relate.  Stutz and Michels raise the bar in terms of how to craft case studies.  This is essential for anyone writing a self-help book, because these compelling stories keep us riveted to our seats so we’ll actually learn how the tools work.

Authors have it hard today.  Technology has shredded the average attention span.  Bookstores are a vanishing species.  Infinite entertainment options, or just simply playing with your iPhone, compete for leisure time.  So if you’re going to succeed as an author, put down the toys and pick up the tools…specifically the tools that Stutz and Michel provide in their excellent, and excellently planned and executed, book.

And if you aren’t planning on writing a self-help book, read it anyway.  The tools you’ll gain when you read The Tools will absolutely give you a better life.

New York Times best selling author and Shark Tank survivor Michael Levin runs www.BusinessGhost.com, and is a nationally acknowledged thought leader on the future of book publishing.

 

 

Advice for Producing Corporate Videos

The moment you have decided to create your video and selected a reliable company to work with, there are a number of factors that you need to consider when your video is being produced. You need to be aware of these tips on the small details during the production of your corporate videos together with the company that you have chosen.

Keep it simple and avoid distracting the audience

If you are watching good quality corporate videos, you will see confident individuals explaining all the information in a clear and interesting manner. Once there is a vibrant colored background, it only distracts the viewers. It is best to utilize the neutral colors on the corporate videos so that the focus of the viewers will be on the person speaking. You have to make sure that the focus is only on the person presenting the important details.

Beginning, middle and end

When creating corporate videos, it is also important to give importance to the overall style.  You need to consider the opening as well as the closing. Take note of the logos that will be used as well as keeping the film consistent to your brand. You have to make sure that all your corporate videos are identifiable and should also stand out from the competition. By sporting a creative and unique look, it can greatly help in creating a mark as well as attracting the viewers in an effective manner.

Make sure you have the right cast and presenters

Since corporate videos require a cast for the presentation, it is important to have experienced and skilled cast members as well as making sure everything works in a smooth manner. The majority of video production companies have a wide range of presenters and voice over artists on hand. It is recommended to listen to all the options before choosing one that will fit your brand. You should continue using the same presenters for future corporate videos. In doing so, it can provide all your corporate videos with a distinctive look and can be easily recognized by the viewers.

Find your winning forumula!

Your corporate videos must have the potential to be unique and easily identifiable. The moment you take these important factors into consideration, you will have a successful and effective corporate video that has all the elements that you need. Once you have created a successful corporate video, all you have to do is to utilize the same elements for future corporate videos. Simply add a new twist in order to make it unique and stand out from the rest.

This Guest Post has been written on behalf of Dragonfly Productions a leading corporate video production company in London.

 

 

SeeMail iPhone App Revolutionizes Photo Sharing and Social Media

 

Author’s note: this is something I’m not sure I would use all that often, but I did check it out and it works pretty well. Might be fun for parties, weddings, family reunion type things. I guess if you want a still photograph, instead of just an iPhone movie this would be the app.  I look forward to their adding a few more social media platforms.

LOS ANGELES, CA (August 23, 2012) — A revolutionary new iPhone app for photo sharing called SeeMail allows users to add voice notes to photographs and is now nominated for the prestigious iMedia Next Wave Start-Up Challenge competition. No other app has ever blended photos, captions, locations, and audio like SeeMail. SeeMail is not another endless stream of photo sharing. SeeMail is personal, intimate, beautiful, fun and easy and brings storytelling to social media. iMedia’s Next Wave’s competition focus is on highlighting early-stage technology companies redefining the mobile marketing industry. SeeMail was chosen from a pool of hundreds, as determined by iMedia’s Next Wave Advisory Board to participate in Phase III, (community voting) of the Challenge and voting can be completed online at http://www.imediaconnection.com/iMediaLists/2012/breakthrough-next-wave/mobile-entertainment/SeeMail/.

How it works: SeeMail creates a unique style of mobile message inspired by the idea of sharing the story behind the photo

1) Choose a new photo, or select from your library or Facebook albums
2) Record a SeeMail AudioT.ag™ – just tap the record button and record your voice or anything going on around you
3) Add a caption to your photo
4) Postmark your current location – powered by FourSquare
5) Share privately with your SeeMail friends

6) Share publicly with Facebook and Twitter

7) Play and share SeeMail on the web

 

SeeMail 1.4 is now poised as the next social media powerhouse. New features include:

Facebook Sharing: Some moments need to be shared quickly.  So now you can share a SeeMail to Facebook, even if you do not share directly to another SeeMail user.  So, you can public post a SeeMail without sending it directly to another person.

Twitter Sharing: By popular demand, you can now share your SeeMail’s to your Twitter account. If you have multiple twitter accounts set up on your iPhone, you can share it to multiple twitter accounts at the same time from inside the app.

Full Web Experience: Every SeeMail that you share to Facebook or Twitter will automatically populate to your personal SeeMail Web page.

Try It Out Feature:It’s a great way for new users to experience the app without logging into Facebook.  View a welcome message and compose your own SeeMail to be sure it’s right for you.

SeeMail can be downloaded for free at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/seemail/id429509393 and additional information can be found at www.seemail.com.

 

How to integrate Moodle and WordPress

 

This article will discuss, individually, the essential characteristics of Moodle and WordPress; it will then describe how the two may be integrated with one another. Both are very new, having been released only within the past ten years.

What is Moodle?

Moodle is a free source e- learning platform (other terms include Course Management System, learning management system, and virtual learning environment) that saw its stable release less than a month ago; though its first version came out some ten years earlier. The name stands for Modular Object- Oriented Design Learning Environment; the original object of its inventor, Martin Dougiamas, was to find our ways in which open source software can be uaed to support a “social constructionist epistemology of teaching and learning in an Internet community of reflective inquiry.” Computer educators throughout the world have been using Moodle to teach their students how to creafe dynamic websites, that is sites that change according to their users. Educational hobbyists and primary educators can use it as well.
Features that form a part of Moodle include online quizes, calendars, news, and announcements; instant messages; file downloads; and a discussion forum. All of these modules are very poplular as a way of setting up an online learning community around a subject of one’s likeness. An unlimited number of Moodle servers can be added, as no license fees need to be paid.

WordPress is a Blogging Platform

WordPress is a blogging tool and content management system (for managing the content of several web pages from a single, central one). It was released in 2003. With it, multiple users can share the stored data and even contribute to it; and data storage and retrieval are themselves much easier, as is page content management. Duplicated inputs are vastly reduced; report writing is simplified; and data can be defined as a movie, a picture, a text file, or almost anything else.

As you can see, both Moodle and WordPress simplify many online activities. Now to the question of how to integrate the two.

An example of such integration may be seen in “Esthetics of the Moving Image,” a project done by Louisa Stein, assistant professor of Film & Media Culture at Middlebury College, as part of a course on that subject. She used WordPress for general course information, the public “face” of the site. Moodle she used as her learning management system, for behind- the- scenes file distribution and for her weekly outline. Both programs came together when Professor Stern set up the formats of assignments such as her television credit sequence close analysis, where in this case a link to those credits is provided. Students can go from there to the place where they are to upload the files outlining their assignments. Students type the texts of their assignments “inline” on the Moodle site, and the professor can give in- text comments.
The WordPress site is also where students can exchange information on their projects via blog and share videos, while the Moodle site is where Professor Stern holds online course discussions, collects her student’s final submissions, and distributes her reading homework. The Professor has also set up “blog collectives” in which students are required to comment on those of other students in the same collective. By doing so, she hopes, she will encourage her students to read one another’s work and thus benefit from mutual learning. And some of the blogs are “dual purpose”—one part in which the student writes a response that integrates the screenings and the readings of the question, and a second part in which “anything goes”—that is, as long as the student makes one post a week by Sunday at midnight (and he also has to have determined at the beginning what he is going to post about).

Imagine what the above courses would be like if only one platform or the other were used. With just Moodle, no site content can be viewed publicly at all; with just WordPress, prospective students and others cannot view the contents of the site, and no elements are protected, except for readings that are hosted on Orca.

To perform the integration, the user first creates the WordPress site and gets it listed by the Academic Computing Liaison. He then creates links from one to the other in both directions.
Moodle and WordPress are one of the pairs of technology systems that work the best when used together. And as each platform evolves on its own, it will add to what the duo can be used for.

VPS Hosting Advice

Juliana is an Online Community Manager businesses based in Los Angeles and is known on Twitter @JulianaPayson and google plus  for her community engagement and Web Hosting advice for people’s website needs. She Promotes InMotion Hosting, well known for their inexpensive web hosting offering the best VPS for moodle communities.

 

 

How To Become A Successful Affiliate

As an affiliate manager for (InMotion Hosting), I see hundreds of sites a week and also review just as many applications for our in-house affiliate program. There are many sites that don’t have a grasp of what needs to be done to become a successful affiliate, but maybe it’s just a learning process they need to go through before reaching their goals. Because many of these tactics have actually been implemented by our affiliates, I can tell you first hand that they do make a difference. Of course, every site is different, but these are some general rules of thumb when starting out. Especially if you are new to the affiliate scene, these few pointers below should help you reach the top of the curve quicker so that you can start making some money.

Banners Don’t Work Anymore - Traditional banners really don’t get the audiences’ attention anymore. Contextual links and recommendations work a lot better than an animated banner. A recent study showed that anywhere from 31-91% of online display ads are not even seen. (http://marketingland.com/comscore-study-finds-31-of-display-ads-never-seen-3695) People will be less likely to click on a banner because they know it’s an advertisement. Would you rather buy something because you saw a commercial on TV or if someone told you that it was a good product? The same rule applies to sites. People go on the web as a resource to see what would work for them. Recommendations work. I’m not saying don’t put up banners, but realize that the banners should be used more as a supplement to your contextual links. Don’t just try to fill up the page with advertisements. That is the equivalent of a shop with neon signs everywhere.

Content is King – This is a rule that’s been in place forever, but very few people follow it because it takes time. You want as much content as possible on your site. A site with 100 pages is more likely to climb up the search rankings and offer an in depth look at a product that they are trying to sell. Quality of content is also important, so it’s not always wise to outsource unless you have a good QC (quality control) process in place.

Keep it Relevant – Make sure the affiliate products you are offering are in line with your site’s theme. If your site is about makeup, putting up affiliate products for golf balls is probably not going to do well. If you are offering web hosting, you will do best on tech, CMS or review sites. Seek out products or services that your audience will gravitate towards.

Try Different Marketing Techniques – Email marketing is a necessity, but if you can break free from your usual routine in reaching out, your response may be better. Try things that other affiliates are not doing. Direct mailings, social media and in person meetings will all help with your affiliate efforts. The more work you put in, the greater the payoff.

Placement of The Link – Where you put your links on the site is as important as the products you are promoting. Most clicks will come from above the fold (the top half of the site that people will see when they come to your site), so your cash cow should go there. But also try changing the type of links based on the content of the site. If you have a review site with multiple categories, you probably want to associate a different product or service to each category/page.

Attend Shows – Unlike many other industry conventions and events, affiliate shows are meant for one thing, to meet people and extend your affiliate reach. Don’t think it’s a waste of time in attending these type of events. Merchants and other affiliates love to share their success and give you tips. It’s a great way to learn about new affiliate programs, products and services.

Conversion Rate is More Important Than CPA (CPL) – Affiliates‘ eyes will open up when you mention a high payout. But it doesn’t matter if a referral pays you out $1000. If it doesn’t convert, you make $0. If the CPA is only $50, but you get a sale out of every 30-60 clicks, you’ve got a winner. Now it’s a matter of finding out the ideal place for the link. This goes back to trying different ways to advertise on your site. If a regular banner or link does this type of conversion for you, imagine what a contextual link in a review or a recommendation box might do.

Give It Some Time – Don’t be too impatient if you don’t convert right off the bat. Many affiliates will try out a product on a site, and after a couple hundred hits, pull it because it didn’t convert. Affiliate sites take time to grow, and the conversions are no exception. Remember there is usually a 30-365 day cookie that stays with the audience, so there will definitely be a period of growth. Many customers may not purchase right away, so give it at least a couple of weeks to a month before making drastic changes.

Contact the Affiliate Manager – If the business that offers the products/services that you are promoting cares about their affiliates, they will have a dedicated affiliate manager. Email, call, Skype or chat with them. They are usually happy to give you tips on how to make your site better. I have many affiliates contact me and ask why one of our products isn’t converting well. Many times, it’s the way the product is displayed, so I will give them advice on how to present it to the audience and what they can do to increase conversions. I’ll even help out with some content creation and custom landing pages. It doesn’t hurt to ask if they can do something to help you out. Affiliate managers want to see you succeed, so they will do what they can to help you out and give pointers.

Jason Hong is the Affiliate Manager at InMotion Hosting, a provider of virtual private servers provider based in Los Angeles, CA.  If you’re interested in becoming an affiliate for InMotion Hosting, visit our Web Hosting Affilate Program page for more details.

 

Megacities and the Scale of the Future

  by Mike Macartney

Demographic trends in society are pointing towardsmegacities, defined as populations of 10 million or more, as the future for how most people on the planet will live. There are 21 such cities today and they include Cairo, Mexico City, Lagos, Los Angeles, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Manila, Moscow, Tehran, London, Paris, and others, growing every day. Tokyo was at 34 million in 2011. These cities and what supports them are at the core issues of scale and sustainability.

• How large will these cities grow?
• How will people in the future supply them with energy, food, water, transportation, jobs, housing, education, health care, and not least of all, entertainment?
• How will these cities fit into national models – will they become city-states like earlier times in human history?

Scientific groups like the Santa Fe Institute are studying that very sustainability. Other, informal web based groups of people like New Geography are also thinking about what cities and human society will become.

The issue of scale may be the defining issue of the 21^st century. The solutions are not simple or even invented yet. For example, it is well known in investment circles that alternative energy does not scale like the Information Age cornerstones of semiconductors, telecommunications, and software. Because of the laws of physics in the universe we live in alternative energy requires large investments in land, labor, and raw materials. These are needed to provide grid energy systems like the current fossil fuel and nuclear powered electrical grids. Innovation in alternative energy is not information or knowledge based. It is execution and implementation based. Even if we think we know how to do it, we still have to get it done. Very large physical scale collection and distribution systems are required to implement alternative energy solutions. Presently, the profit for investment in large-scale energy systems ties to large-scale tax systems. These are linked to government subsidies and government funded infrastructure build-out to solve the scale problem. Will the same go for alternative energy?

The scale needed for alternative energy competes directly with the scale needed for agriculture, housing, environmental preservation, and transportation. One example is the Three Gorges Dam project in China that displaced over 1-million people. Hydroelectric power systems are solar energy systems. The water behind a dam is stored solar energy. Very large amounts of land are required for hydroelectric systems just like for proposed solar, wind, and biomass systems. All the systems require very large solar collectors to operate in a grid power model. Efficiency can never be greater than one. There is no Moore’s Law of exponential growth hidden in the current efficiencies of a few tens-of-a-percent and 100-percent in alternative energy collection components. Are grid power systems the future of alternative energy?

The solutions to the scale problems of megacities with high consumption rates of food, energy, and living space are complex and competing. Complexity is one of the areas of study by scientific think tanks like the Santa Fe Institute and government funded institutions like Harvard University and MIT. How do you think scale will be achieved to support megacities in the future?

About the Author

Mike Macartney

Mike holds a BS and MS in mechanical engineering with emphasis in heat transfer and computational fluid dynamics. As a staff system engineer he developed advanced cooling systems for more than 15 different spacecraft and missiles, ranging from cryogenically cooled sensors and pre-amplifiers to on-orbit problem resolution of failing spacecraft. Mike has managed over 200 proposals for advanced aerospace systems, and terrestrial IT systems and custom code development for corporate customers.

Mike has advised start-up companies and high-tech incubators wishing to “spin-in” technologies from NASA and the National Laboratories as well as helped Russian enterprises do business in Silicon Valley. Mike has been a founder in three start-up companies for enterprise SW and publishing as well as a trade show manager for NASA technology transfer activities, and an executive liaison manager to facilitate business cooperation between aggressive Fortune 500 competitors. Mike has developed reengineered business processes for quality control, proposal development, and lean manufacturing.

He currently operates a small publishing company, Shoot Your Eye Out Publishing

Tags: Science, environment, megacities, alternative energy, technology, society, urban planning, demography,sustainability, New Geography, Santa Fe Institute, Blade Runner

 

Are you making something?

the wisdom of Seth Godin

Making something is work. Let’s define work, for a moment, as something you create that has a lasting value in the market.

Twenty years ago, my friend Jill discovered Tetris. Unfortunately, she was working on her Ph.D. thesis at the time. On any given day the attention she spent on the game felt right to her. It was a choice, and she made it. It was more fun to move blocks than it was to write her thesis. Day by day this adds up… she wasted so much time that she had to stay in school and pay for another six months to finish her doctorate.

Two weeks ago, I took a five-hour plane ride. That’s enough time for me to get a huge amount of productive writing done. Instead, I turned on the wifi connection and accomplished precisely no new measurable work between New York and Los Angeles.

More and more, we’re finding it easy to get engaged with activities that feel like work, but aren’t. I can appear just as engaged (and probably enjoy some of the same endorphins) when I beat someone in Words With Friends as I do when I’m writing the chapter for a new book. The challenge is that the pleasure from winning a game fades fast, but writing a book contributes to readers (and to me) for years to come.

One reason for this confusion is that we’re often using precisely the same device to do our work as we are to distract ourselves from our work. The distractions come along with the productivity. The boss (and even our honest selves) would probably freak out if we took hours of ping pong breaks while at the office, but spending the same amount of time engaged with others online is easier to rationalize. Hence this proposal:

The two-device solution

Simple but bold: Only use your computer for work. Real work. The work of making something.

Have a second device, perhaps an iPad, and use it for games, web commenting, online shopping, networking… anything that doesn’t directly create valued output (no need to have an argument here about which is which, which is work and which is not… draw a line, any line, and separate the two of them. If you don’t like the results from that line, draw a new line).

Now, when you pick up the iPad, you can say to yourself, “break time.” And if you find yourself taking a lot of that break time, you’ve just learned something important.

Go, make something. We need it!

 

You will not BELIEVE I carried this on an airplane – 10 times!

I tend to be a creature of habit.  When I travel, lots of little items end up in my shaving kit.  I noticed last night that one of them had leaked, and resolved to empty the thing out and wash it thoroughly.  What I found in there was scary:  one  5” nail file, two pairs of razor pointed scissors, a box of matches, a flashlight, and 3 oversized  tubes that could have held enough plastic explosives to … well you get the idea.

This by itself is not so scary.  What is scary is that I always have this shaving kit in my carry-on in case they “misplace” my checked-in luggage.   This same shave kit has made it through security at the following airports at least once in the last year:  San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Denver, Chicago, Houston, Los Cabos, San Jose and Ft. Meyers Florida.

I have no editorial comment to share on this one; it kind of speaks for itself.  The last time I got on a plane from SFO to Denver there was a gun in my backpack, but that’s a story for Friday’s blog.  You don’t want to miss that one.  

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