Description:
Obiter Dicta from Rake Morgan
Contents:
Don’t feel helpless! Hillary is still in this to win but she needs our help.
We are again being pounded by the Obama-clones to give up faith in Hillary and walk away from her campaign.
Do you remember New Hampshire? They got that wrong!
Do you remember Texas and Ohio? They got that wrong!
Do you remember Pennsylvania? They got that wrong!
Do you remember Indiana? They got that wrong, too.
Again and again the media plays into Obama’s empty promises and Hillary keeps fighting back.
We are the ones who can keep her working to win the nomination. Between now and Denver there are literally thousands of ways big and small that Obama can slip up (how many more Rev. Wrights are out there?) or Hillary can score a victory. Don’t let those opportunities slip away.
With all the media negativity, there is something you can do to feel better about this campaign, about yourself, and about Hillary’s chances of being our nominee. . .
Contribute. She needs money to compete in West Virginia. She needs you to tell her to keep working for us.
Here’s her web site: hillaryclinton.com. Please visit and give what you can. . .
– Rake
       
Disconnected.
I manage five web sites, four blogs, one MySpace profile, two Twitter profiles, teach three online college classes, send out three email newsletters, run one Yahoo group and one Flickr site for fellow alumni, get about 1,000 emails, mostly junk, and 10,000 total visitors at these various sites each week.
With so many digital networks running in and out of my life, why do I feel out of touch? I am one big social network and yet I feel entirely antisocial.
The other night two MySpace friends said they were bored. Is that all this is? Boredom? I think it’s more than that, at least for me.
Remember when being connected meant having the family over for Sunday dinner, or going to the beach with your kids? Or playing cards in the kitchen til late at night with another couple, having a laugh and losing maybe 2 bucks?
When did I stop going out for dinner with normal, healthy grown-ups who could talk about politics or sports and not throw food at each other?
When did the women in my life all end up 20 years younger than me and have social histories that would make Britany Spears look like Mother Teresa?
When did I suddenly stop drinking good Cabernet and honest Chianti and instead decide that vodka on the rocks was a suitable dinner drink?
When did I start thinking that every TV news anchor, commentator, blogger, and political pundit was a whore, 20 IQ points dumber than me, and pathologically narcissistic?
When did I start defining my life by my favorite scenes in movies or a dozen old songs that I can’t remember the words to anymore?
When did I stop using language to reveal the hidden life of my soul and the lives of others, and instead start scribbling 200 word monologues about nothing on blogs that most people don’t bother to read, or if they do it’s just to tell me I’m full of shit.
I must be breaking some social networking rule because I haven’t read too many rants here about people feeling disconnected, out of touch, and totally baffled by the way things have turned out in this totally wired world.
It must be me. Old Rake. The Teddy Bear waking up from his long winter nap a little groggy and cranky.
Beckett said, “I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”
Rake says, “I can go on, but I won’t.”
Instead, I’ll go checking my blogs and web sites and email accounts like a tired lobster fisherman, slowly cruising over the dark waters, wondering what I’ve caught at this hour of the night.
Most likely, it’s just dead fish and an old pair of sneakers.
       
How social networking can kill a business.
My co-editor at the Quarterly, Frank Marafiote, also publishes Coaching News and Events, a marketing blog for executive, career, and life coaches. Yesterday he published a comment about the damaged business reputations that can result from misuse of social networking tools. For those of us in the political realm, we know full well that our “enemies” will find ways to inflict harm whenever and wherever they can. We’re used to it, expect it, and actively deal with it.
Not so with smaller businesses and professional practices. They tend to be less aware of the angry voices that might use social networking as a way to ruin their reputations and businesses.
Here’s Frank’s comment, a reminder to smaller companies to be alert for negative comments and some common sense ideas on how to deal with it.
How Social Networking Can Kill a Business.
Most of us take for granted the power of social networking to expand our contacts and gently promote our businesses. We need to remember, however, that there is also a downside to this “empowerment.” The same tools that can be used in a positive way can also be used to damage our reputations and destroy our businesses.
The comment below about a restaurant was posted to a widely read forum in the community where I live. Most people are guessing that a disgruntled employee made the comment. Nevertheless, reading it certainly gives me some reservations (pun intended) about wanting to eat there.
The same types of things certainly were said by unhappy customers or employees years ago, but the number of people who heard it was very limited. Now, in almost an instant, the same comments have a worldwide audience. Because this restaurant operates in a tourist area, visitors doing informational searches about where to eat will very likely run into this “review.”
So what does this mean for coaching businesses and other reputation-based enterprises like ours?
First, we need to stay alert to what is being written about us. Just as you might check your credit report on a regular basis, you need to do a “reputation report” on your name and your business. You can purchase services that will monitor your business name and alert you whenever it is mentioned on the Web. You should also do your own frequent searches using the major search engines. By “frequent,” I mean at least twice a month.
Second, be proactive. That means staying in touch with your market and providing positive and helpful information via your blogs, press releases, Web forums, trade and business Web sites, etc. Stinging negative comments are less credible when they are read in the context of a positive news environment.
Third, react. In the case of this restaurant “review,” there’s a chance that by complaining to the webmaster the comment might be removed. If that is not possible, get third party endorsements — and your own — on the site as soon as possible. Don’t let the mud hang there on the wall with no counter-response. Otherwise, readers will assume it is true.
So here’s how one person damaged the reputation of a local business –
Top Ten Reasons Not to Go to XYZ Restaurant
10.) Drink are priced way to high even if they are doubles
9.) Lyn and Bob no longer own the place
8.) They have the same 12 specials on rotation all the time
7.) That peppercorn encrusted tenderloin special they sell for $25 is select grade beef not prime or even choice meat.
6.) The owners treat their long term employees as if they worthless
5.) Seafood that comes in on Friday will be either frozen and used the next weekend or packed in ice in hopes that they use it, they never throw anything away!
4.) I’ve seen rotting lamb chops that are green and smell like a horses a** be cooked and served to customers
3.) If you send something back there and it needs to be cooked it def. gets cooked in the microwave. The owner insists on it
2.) The walk-in cooler in the kitchen looks like the inside of a dumpster, its disgusting and should not be a place where food is stored
1.) The new ownership is clearly out to take advantage of the consumer and its employees. The food at best is mediocre, the management is rude, and it is just not the what the XYZ was or ever will be again. Lyn made that place her baby and these people are ruining a great local tradition!
Still hungry?
       
Where does your business want to go? “The Marketing Taxi” will take you.
Although he spends more time that he should writing about politics and correcting graduate advertising papers for his students, my co-editor for the Hillary Clinton Quarterly, Frank Marafiote, also manages a thriving marketing and public relations consulting practice.
Along with other types of solo practitioners and small businesses, Frank is also deeply focused on helping mediators, counselors and coaches — people who help others — do a better job of winning new clients. As he explains it to me, helping the coach who helps the client helps the world become a better place — a more “Level Five World” as it calls it, where self-actualization and personal transcendence are more realized.
Well, here’s his “shameless” plus on Coaching News and Events, his blog for executive, career, and life coaches. What’s he selling? Nothing more innocuous than a free subscription to his marketing newsletter, The Marketing Taxi. The difference, Frank says, is that the newsletter sells a very potent and engaging connection between self-growth and business growth.
Here’s his news story:
I suppose a shameless plus once or twice a year wouldn’t test the loyalty of my readers too much. After all, my purpose is to help myself by doing something amazingly helpful to you.
The Marketing Taxi is a new marketing ezine targeted directly towards the people I work with every day — coaches, consultants, practicing professionals of all stripes (CPAs, attorneys, health care providers, mediators). Its goal is to help them achieve their unique vision of success as professionals and community leaders.
There are four aspects of The Marketing Taxi that make it unique among newsletters.
The articles we publish and the advice we give are geared towards small businesses with limited resources. While we often talk about retoolling successful approaches used in larger companies, we are also committed to giving you advice that must work in the small office, sometimes the one person office.
Second, from our perspective YOU ARE THE BUSINESS. Marketing the business means marketing you the business owner. So we will talk about you — your role, your dos and dont’s, the little things you can do to attract new customers using the power of your passion for your business and the primary draw. In the process you will become a more confident, more focused, better manager and leader.
Third, we understand that your relationships with your clients are very different from say, a replacement window business or cable company, or even your auto repair mechanic. The level of trust, honesty, and openness required for success far exceeds the typical business-customer relationship. We will delve into this more in The Marketing Taxi, but we believe it is the crucial perhaps the most important consideration in your business.
Finally, we believe that the work you have choosen do is a path towards your personal fulfillment and self-actualization. Not everything we do takes us to that special place of personal transcendence, what Thomas Moore calls the “life work” or “work of the soul.” But that’s where we strive to belong.
So, as marketing ezines go, The Marketing Taxi has a very special task and mission. For sure, you will read plenty of useful marketing tips and how-tows. But it’s all laid out for you for a very specific purpose, to turn you into “The Transcendent Marketer” if that’s were you want to go.
Let me invite you to suscribe. Just click on the link at the top of this page. Along with some other additional info, you’ll see you can get right away a copy of your free report: Creating Effective Press Releases in a Web 2.0 World. We also have an iron-clad Privacy Policy: your info is safe with us, and if you are not happy for any reason or just have too much to read, the unsubscribe process is simple.
So, where do you want YOUR business to go?
I hope you will join us for a unique experience that combines both marketing and personal achievement into one fascinating journey
Sincerely,
Frank Marafiote, President
Emerge Communications
Editor: Coaching New and Events
Editor: The Marketing Taxi
       
The Media Gets Revenge on the Clintons.
Not long ago, someone asked me if the media was out to “get” Hillary Clinton. The short answer is, “Yes.”
It’s payback time for the media. In a nutshell, even the most liberal in the press hated the Clintons: hated them because they played favorites, hated them because they were so successful, hated them because the Clinton staff treated the press like shit, hated them because they were no different with the media than their GOP predecessors.
Many in the mainstream media who had to climb over the Berlin Wall protecting Hillary and Bill fifteen years ago are still out there writing. Even those who were still learning how to write a lead got the message passed down to them: the Clintons eat shit because they treated us like shit. Pass it on!
After I was asked about this, I researched some of the media stories we did about First Lady Hillary Clinton for the Hillary Clinton Quarterly. This one I am especially proud of. I was just a researcher but we got great quotes from top of the line reporters like Margaret Carlson from Time, Bill Zwecker from the Chicago Sun -Times, Suzanne Fields from the Washington Times, and Susan Milligan, who now writes for the Boston Globe.
All these reporters spoke candidly to us about what it was like covering the Clintons. Their candor was both surprising and unsettling. And it was clear it was not an easy job: many reporters came away with sour feelings. As one of them told us, back then the Clinton press briefings were like “food fights.”
Candidate Hillary Clinton has suffered the backlash from events that took place ages ago. Given the cheap egos of so many journalists, I am not surprised. Most of them feel like second class citizens and are usually treated that way. As they say, “revenge is a dish best served cold.”
Here’s our story about Hillary and the media, and we’re sticking to it!
“She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not: Hillary Clinton and the Media”
The on-again, off-again love affair between the media and the First Lady is back on again, thanks in large measure to White House counselor David Gergen, whose public relations finesse has not only helped President Clinton, but has sweetened coverage of the First Lady as well.
For many observers, the First Couple’s recent trip to Japan for the G-7 economic summit clearly demonstrated the power of the White House to reshape public perceptions of a First Lady whose image had been teetering between that of an artificially-sweetened “Hostess With The Mostest” and a leathery “Hillary the Policy Wonk.” At last, some say, we’re finally seeing Mrs. Clinton as the multi-dimensional woman she really is.
Not coincidentally, relations with the media have never been better. And whether or not David Gergen truly deserves all the credit, some in the media believe it is his handiwork that has given both Mr. and Mrs. Clinton a second chance with the public.
Even those not normally inclined to think kindly of the Clintons seem impressed — at least for now. According to Suzanne Fields, a conservative columnist with the Washington Times, “There has been a decided change in public relations since David Gergen has been there, and he is serving both Hillary and the President well. Gergen gets an A+ for orchestrating the entire image of both Hillary and the President.”
Bill Zwecker, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, agrees: “I think it’s a total package and Gergen has improved her coverage as well.”
Whether it’s David Gergen or a learning curve that would have taken affect anyway, the First Lady’s press office has also been getting better grades from the media. Says Margaret Carlson, White House correspondent for Time magazine: “In the beginning, the press office in general was less accessible. As time has gone by, the White House is more open because not being open didn’t work for them.”
Adds Zwecker: “The First Lady’s White House staff has settled in now and are seemingly much more comfortable with what is obviously a huge job. They’re more confident, not as overwhelmed with the whole situation. The response now is excellent — they call you right back. All that translates into better coverage in the media, which means she’s going to be perceived better by the public, because we’re the vehicle by which it’s all distilled.”
Relations between the press and the First Lady have been on a roller-coaster ride from day one. Once the euphoria of the Inauguration wore off, positive stories with titles like “The Cult of Hillary” gave way to less flattering pieces, such as Michael Kelly’s coy dissection of Mrs. Clinton’s “politics of meaning” in New York Times Magazine.
According to Carlson, the problems started with the high expectations of the media. “We thought things might be different (with Hillary) than they were with Barbara Bush, who would never take a question and really answer it. She was totally scripted: it was ‘the lovely school,’ ‘the lovely hospital,’ ‘the lovely day care center,’ ‘the lovely literacy.’ We expected more from Mrs. Clinton.”
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