text: Mark Hillary 2015-07-04T09:41:14-04:00 Mark Hillary http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=mark-hillary Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Mark Hillary Good old fashioned elbow grease. Fifa: Shame on the Brands Making Corruption Possible tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.7462446 2015-05-28T13:55:45-04:00 2015-05-29T07:59:01-04:00 Mark Hillary http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-hillary/ The American FBI swooped down and arrested seven top officials of the world football body Fifa in Switzerland yesterday. Even though it is a story from the world of sport, enormous sums of money and corruption are involved, so football (or soccer in the USA) is dominating the global news agenda. But in an emergency meeting today, Fifa president Sepp Blatter said that he couldn't be held responsible for every action that takes place inside the organisation and that he still intends to stand again in the presidential election tomorrow. Fifa elects a president in the year after every World Cup competition and Blatter has been president since 1998, although he has worked at Fifa since 1975. Figures from across the football world have called for Blatter to stand down. If this level of corruption were uncovered inside a government department then the minister responsible would be expected to step aside - likewise the CEO of a private sector firm undergoing this much turmoil - but Blatter defies all expectation of how an executive should behave. But the real scandal lies outside Fifa in the private sector. Fifa's main product is the World Cup and this enormous competition requires big sponsors. It is brands such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Budweiser, Adidas, and Visa that bankroll Fifa and their World Cup competition. These sponsors could demand change. They could kick Blatter so far from the presidency that he doesn't land in Russia until the next World Cup is complete - but none of them have. The closest any of the sponsors appear to have come to stepping away from Fifa is a warning from Visa suggesting that they might need to "reassess" their sponsorship. Overall the message from the brands is that they are disappointed, but they will all continue to support Fifa. Why? Because they all know that an air of corruption has hovered over Fifa for decades. Blatter has been accused of buying votes for his presidency position going right back to his first election. There is nothing new in generally suggesting that Fifa is an organisation that needs to be reformed, but the public ignore this whiff of corruption when the World Cup comes around every four years. The former head of branding at Visa even blogged about this yesterday saying: "ARE YOU MAD? The FIFA World Cup is the most popular sporting event in the world. People love it. They don't care about the corruption. Yes, really. They know it has been going on for decades." If the public ignore the way that Fifa is managed then the brands are happy to ignore it too. Visa says they are disappointed in Fifa, but they will not just pull their sponsorship because then Mastercard will take it. Likewise Coca-Cola is scared that the official beverage of the next World Cup will be Pepsi - and Budweiser knows that the fans would be just as happy to drink Heineken. In fact, most would prefer it. The real scandal of this Fifa affair is that every business school in the world spends time and effort teaching business students that ethical decision-making is central to doing business today - particularly cross-border global marketing and branding. However, the reality is that every major brand supporting Fifa is prepared to hold their nose so they can ignore the stench of corruption, because they are terrified that a competitor will snatch their place at the World Cup. Shame on all the CEOs of the Fifa sponsors. If they joined together and included their major rivals in a group that publically declared they would not sponsor Fifa until after the next World Cup then perhaps world football would have time to clean up its act. But the reality is that money talks. The message from companies such as Adidas, Visa, and Coca-Cola to MBA students the world over is to just ignore business ethics 101 - it means nothing once you leave the classroom.]]> The Blockheads: Beyond the Call of Dury tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.7420428 2015-05-22T08:11:20-04:00 2015-05-22T10:59:01-04:00 Mark Hillary http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-hillary/ The Blockheads should be legends - fully paid-up members of British music royalty. Many people will know them better as Ian Dury and the Blockheads, but their history, both before and after working with Dury, features collaborations with some of the biggest names in the music business. Artists including Paul McCartney, The Clash, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Madness, The Animals, John Legend, Nick Cave, and Robbie Williams have all worked with various Blockheads over the years. Put simply, these guys may be best known as Ian Dury's band, but for the past six decades they have played on hundreds of albums with some of the most famous and well-respected musicians in the world. But how many people know their story - beyond the band members themselves? Not enough. Which is why The Blockheads have teamed up with Free Seed Films to try crowdfunding a documentary on Kickstarter that they are calling Beyond the Call of Dury. The film is intended to document how the band formed, how they ended up working with Ian Dury at Stiff Records, and what they did in the years since those incredible hits. The Blockheads keyboard player Mick Gallagher has an incredible CV spanning from his work with The Animals in the 60s to The Clash on their London Calling and Sandinista! albums. I talked to Mick about the documentary idea, and in particular why they wanted to create this film now? "We wanted to encompass all the work we did before Ian and after him too. Of course Ian will be mentioned in dispatches, but we are really concentrating on the things that brought the band together as Ian Dury and the Blockheads and all the things that happened after," he said. "We are all a bit long in the tooth, so younger friends have showed us how to do this. Free Seed Films got behind us and helped to run the earlier campaign where we funded the cost of our 'Same Horse Different Jockey' album [in 2013] by crowdsourcing on Kickstarter. We got about £10,000 and used it to make the album and some promotional videos. That worked, so we are now in the midst of a mammoth effort to make this new documentary," he added. I asked Mick how difficult it is to launch a fundraising campaign without the support of a record company or any marketing budget. He said: "If you don't have a core following it is very difficult. We don't have a big international following, but we do have fantastic fans in the UK. The best thing about it all is the direct contact with fans that come through for us every time. It takes a lot of coordination though. For a month after a successful crowdfunding campaign you are mailing merchandise to fans. It's a lovely feeling, but it's a lot of work." Mick believes that social networks are the only way for bands like The Blockheads - who no longer have a major record company promoting their work - and new artists to get noticed: "Record companies are not interested in artists today unless you have a large social following and if you have already built that following then why would you give it to a record company? You can just go straight to the fans." Back when Stiff Records was formed in 1976 they attempted to shake up the music industry of the day with a different approach to tours, artist promotion, and distribution. I asked Mick if he saw any parallels between the rise of the independent labels and the use of social media by independent artists today: "Back in the day, Stiff Records challenged the status quo of the record business, but with Ian it was easy. He was a bit of a loose cannon and things just happened around him all the time. He once fitted a tooth with a Union Jack on it just before an American tour and the press lapped it up." Of course, getting a picture of your singer on the front page of The Sun was how to get noticed in the Seventies, but even the larger-than-life Ian Dury required the help of the Stiff marketing team to get noticed. It wasn't easy then and it's not easy now. I asked Mick how they originally found their partner, Free Seed Films. The company has been instrumental in this recent revival of The Blockheads, not just managing their Kickstarter campaigns, but also making videos and planning how to make the documentary: "We were looking for a way to get more profile without it costing too much and I found François Téchené on Vimeo. He was just setting up Free Seed Films and they offered to help us run the album Kickstarter campaign and things have grown from there." The Blockheads are one of those hidden gems of the music business. They no longer get the attention they deserve, but if this documentary is funded then at least more music fans of all ages will have an opportunity to understand just how influential one band has been in shaping the past half century of pop and rock history. The Blockheads Kickstarter campaign to fund the Beyond the Call of Dury documentary ends on June the 5th. Click here if you are interested in contributing or just want to learn more about the campaign.]]> Why Are Politicians More Worried About Migration Than Education? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.7317282 2015-05-19T13:04:10-04:00 2015-05-20T05:59:02-04:00 Mark Hillary http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-hillary/ Africa is close enough to Europe for people smugglers to make a fat living from selling places on boats destined for Malta or Italy. In Asia, Muslims from Myanmar and Bangladesh are marooned at sea hoping that somewhere in South East Asia will offer them refuge. The Philippines recently offered to take some of the Asian migrants just as Europe has proposed building a new Naval force designed to seal off the European Union. Very few countries are open to this kind of migration despite signing up to UN treaties guaranteeing rights to refugees and asylum seekers. This antipathy to migrants is becoming a major issue. One could easily argue that the collapse of the Labour party in the UK general election just over a week ago is related to the party no longer connecting to the hopes and fears of the working class citizen. What do these 'normal' working people fear? One of their key fears is people migrating from overseas and 'stealing' their jobs. For too long many traditional political parties have dismissed these fears, but the UK Independence Party (UKIP) notched up 3.8 million votes in the recent election showing that for many citizens this is their primary concern. It cannot be denied that large numbers of migrants settling in the same place causes a squeeze on public services such as schools and hospitals, but is the fear justified? UKIP want to leave the European Union entirely, therefore avoiding the need to honour the right to free labour movement. The Conservative party offered the public a referendum on whether the UK should stay inside the EU and the pressure is on Prime Minister Cameron to now name when this referendum will take place. It's only natural for people from poorer countries to attempt to migrate to wealthier countries seeking a better life. This has taken place since people could afford to migrate and my own family moved from Ireland to the UK in search of work, but migration is not the only work-related issue facing politicians and society in general today. Consider these three additional problems: Globalisation; the Internet has created a robust global network that is used as the basic infrastructure for businesses of all sizes all over the world. I have met software developers in Bangladesh who have clients all over the world. I have worked with graphic designers in Vietnam. I personally work for many corporate clients spread over several continents. People can migrate to find jobs, but jobs can also migrate to find the people with the right skills. The delivery of services is now entirely global. Automation; cars can already drive themselves, it won't be long before taxis and delivery trucks are self-managing. 3D printing is getting cheap enough to use from home or on the High Street so the customer can assemble their own products. Robots have already transformed manufacturing in industries such as automobiles, now they are set to transform every industry, automating basic services such as picking items in a warehouse or cleaning an office. Nationalism; As the hard-working citizen continues to punch the clock, they will find that these challenges affect their job prospects. Highly-skilled jobs requiring expertise and problem-solving creativity have proliferated in the past few years along with low-level jobs where it is cheaper to employ a minimum-wage human to push a mop than to automate the process. But this means the middle-ground for jobs is hollowing out... competition at the lower end of the job spectrum is intensified with migration, automation, and globalisation all leading to a change in which jobs are available - and at what rate. The result is likely to be a desire to step away from the global system and to manage alone, free of global pressures. This more complex story is what the politicians should really be addressing. Scottish Nationalism has already killed support for the Labour party. Fear of migrants stealing jobs is killing the support for all established parties who fail to be offering alternative ideas. But the real answer for a twenty-first century Britain appears to have been ignored by all the political parties. Making it harder to migrate to the UK does not prevent Amazon using robots in their warehouses or every major company doing their IT, accounts, HR, research, and litigation offshore. Improving the education system and making it easier to participate in a twenty-first century digital economy where people and companies are competing globally is the only long-term answer. But what is the most likely outcome of the recently elected Conservative government? Even higher tuition fees - wait for it to happen. Unfortunately, none of our elected leaders appear capable of seeing beyond the next election. They might want to consider that China and India together create as many graduates each three years as the UK has working-age citizens. This is an enormous debate and affects countries far beyond the UK, but the recent UK election demonstrates clearly how the public are losing faith in a traditional approach to politics. Democracy can be difficult for most politicians to swallow, but if they don't listen to the people it's going to choke them all.]]> What is The Internet of Things? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.7224346 2015-05-06T13:14:18-04:00 2015-05-07T06:59:01-04:00 Mark Hillary http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-hillary/ Internet of Things (IoT)? The name doesn't help much does it? A thing is how you describe something that's difficult to describe. The Thing was the subject of a John Carpenter horror movie where a parasitic extra-terrestrial imitates human form. Perhaps there was no better way to describe a parasite like that? I am not a network specialist involved in building the IoT, but I know enough about technology to be able to imagine some of the implications of the IoT as it grows. However, I keep on hearing "experts" on radio and TV using the fridge example to describe the IoT. You don't know the fridge example? Let me enlighten you. The basic premise of the IoT is that everything around us can be connected, on the grid, sharing information. So various devices around your home like your TV, fridge, radio, car, oven, and energy meters can all be connected and communicating. Therefore in this wonderful new world where information is abundant, your fridge will be able to warn you that you are running low on milk. In fact, it may even be able to order milk for you when stocks are low. This is reminiscent of the Amazon Dash buttons, which at present seem like a solution looking for a problem. Dash allows the homeowner to install buttons featuring frequently required products, like laundry liquid - in addition to having a home scanner that can scan items to order them as they are used. Never again will you need to go to the store or even browse a web page because one punch of the Dash button will bring a delivery person over carrying a bottle of Tide. Dash is not really intelligent in the same way as the fridge example is supposed to be, but suggesting that the best way to describe information sharing is that your fridge becomes intelligent and can order milk on your behalf is vacuous beyond belief. So how best can the Internet of Things really be described? There are many ways and it changes depending on where you focus - the individual, the home, the city, the country, or the continent. If enormous amounts of data are collected automatically then with careful analysis it can inform and educate. For example, look at the Google Waze app, where real-time traffic speeds can be applied to maps thanks to the phones whizzing around in cars and uploading their present location and speed. The data is gathered in the background. The drivers don't need to do anything to contribute information to the community. I think there are two devices for the home that really summarise what the constantly connected nature of the IoT really means. . The Nintendo Quality of Life Sleep Monitor is a box that sits in your bedroom. It doesn't need to touch you in any way. It's not a wearable device in the sense that you have to put anything on - it's just there. But it is smart enough to monitor you, especially your sleep patterns, and can advise on how to improve your health through exercise and diet changes based on what the monitor senses about you. . The Amazon Echo is another box that you introduce to the home and can be thought of in a similar way to Apple's Siri, but inside the home. Your Echo box can be connected to any other electronic device in the home as well as the Internet allowing you to just ask questions out loud and hear them answered. Want to know what the weather will be like tomorrow? Just ask the question out loud. Want to turn off the lights upstairs while you are relaxing on the couch in front of the TV? Just ask and it happens. This is what we are moving towards, an interconnected environment where all the systems in your home are networked, intelligent, and can be controlled by your voice. Where your home is monitoring your health automatically. Where your car is automatically diagnosing potential mechanical problems by communicating with the manufacturer directly. All this interconnection and intelligence will allow systems to self-diagnose problems and to change their use. Your electricity meter can advise you which appliances cost the most to run, your water meter can tell you exactly what it costs every time you run the washing machine. Your natural speaking voice will control everything - not apps on a phone. Much as it all sounds like science fiction, these technologies are real and here today. Only the earliest of adopters will have transformed their home to this extent at present, but within a decade this level of connectivity will be entirely normal. All these interconnected devices will not only communicate and work together, but they will generate enormous amounts of diagnostic data. Your vital signs will be constantly recorded. Doctors will be able to play back every heartbeat you ever had. Car manufacturers will be able to see exactly how their vehicles are being used. Utility companies will be able to better plan when and where power is needed because they can see how everyone everywhere is using what they supply. Just storing, managing and analysing all this data is going to be the next big challenge. Think about it, we didn't even have smart phones or social networking a decade ago. The Internet of Things is set to explode into the reality of our daily lives. It is about time the "experts" stopped talking about fridges ordering milk, because people need to understand how this technology can really change and improve their lives.]]> Do We Get the Hate-Filled News We Deserve? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.7107726 2015-04-21T14:18:00-04:00 2015-06-21T05:59:01-04:00 Mark Hillary http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-hillary/ 'The Sun' featured an article last Friday by Katie Hopkins that featured these lines: 'Make no mistake, these migrants are like cockroaches. They might look a bit "Bob Geldof's Ethiopia circa 1984", but they are built to survive a nuclear bomb. They are survivors.' Also: 'It's time to get Australian. Bring on the gunships, force migrants back to their shores and burn the boats.' Burn the boats sounds like an incitement to mass murder to me - assuming they have not reached the shore before the boats are burned - and describing desperate refugees as cockroaches sound like an incitement to racial hatred. It also invokes the old Nazi Germany language of the untermensch - the subhumans that civilised people should not fraternise with. Consider how similar this 1942 pamphlet, 'The Subhuman', edited by the Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler sounds when compared to Katie Hopkins: "Although it has features similar to a human, the subhuman is lower on the spiritual and psychological scale than any animal. Inside of this creature lies wild and unrestrained passions: an incessant need to destroy, filled with the most primitive desires, chaos and coldhearted villainy. A subhuman and nothing more!" Himmler was second only to Hitler as orchestrator of the Holocaust and Katie Hopkins also has Holocaust form. Commenting on Ed Miliband's wife Justine, Hopkins recently tweeted: 'Pollsters say Justine is the least popular of party wives. He might stick her head in the oven and turn on the gas.' There are many anonymous trolls spouting bile, but Hopkins writes as a high-profile columnist in the national press. As a commentator on British politics and society she would have known that Miliband's parents were Holocaust refugees. Or maybe that was the point of the 'joke'? How did the British media ever get here? A national newspaper printing views that are openly racist with their mockery of the 1980s famine relief, inciting hatred, and suggesting that the way to fix the refugee problem is to burn their boats? Katie Hopkins revels in her rent-a-gob status. Her earlier pronouncements about children and class seem tame compared to her jokes about the Holocaust and refugees. Like a drug addict increasing the dose to get the same hit, Hopkins has to become more and more offensive to generate a reaction from the public. Why does she have to be so offensive? There are other commentators who are far from being seen as bleeding-heart liberals - those who hate the idea of refugees 'flooding' into Europe - and yet they don't charge around making pronouncements in the style of Kenny Everett's General. Even Nigel Farage of UKIP sounds restrained as he warns of the 'waves of millions of Africans' who may invade Europe when compared to Katie Hopkins. Without Hopkins the press might have been pointing out how Farage had alluded to the 1968 'rivers of blood' warned of by Enoch Powell. In many ways we - the news-consuming public - are really to blame for the rise of the rent-a-gob. News today has to 'perform'. A news site needs to attract an audience. Our immature online media model means that news sources need to either put up paywalls and charge a subscription, or be free and subsidised by getting a large audience. Katie Hopkins may spout endless offensive bile, but people click on the stories she writes and the stories commenting on how offensive she is. The journals that publish her columns get traffic. People share the offensive stories on their social networks. The journals get an audience and the advertisers are happy. Unfortunately, this is how news works today. What we used to call news has become entertainment and the successful are those who get the most clicks, however that is achieved and whoever is offended. So who is really to blame? Journals like The Sun, Katie Hopkins herself or the millions of readers who click on her rants and then share them with friends, adding a comment to say how outraged they are? The real news story of the tragedy off the coast of Libya on Saturday - a day after Hopkins had been suggesting we burn migrant boats - is that hundreds of migrant deaths have finally forced European politicians to act. A set of immediate plans has already been announced and I expect these will be refined over the coming months. Nobody knows what the leaders will do yet, but they are finally wringing their hands and trying to do something. Fewer than 10% of all global refugees are entering Europe, but attempts to seek asylum in the EU are up almost half in a year. Clearly the EU needs to work together on this issue rather than leaving the Italians and Maltese to bear the cost alone. However, the hatred that leads migrants to be compared to cockroaches can only exist in a society that has little sympathy with the plight of those forced to flee their home in search of a better life. All the British political party leaders have been quick to condemn what happened off the coast of Libya, but will they also condemn popular commentators such as Hopkins? People don't risk their life in these boats just because they want to come to Britain to claim Job Seekers Allowance - these people are desperate. The UK has a problem with immigration. Even those who support migration have to concede that there are practical difficulties, such as a squeeze on school class sizes and GP waiting lists in areas where many new people have settled. This has boosted parties such as UKIP where a withdrawal from the EU - and therefore an end to free migration throughout Europe - is one of their major policies. But will this crisis in the Mediterranean force the major parties to start a mature debate about migration and the difference between helping desperate refugees compared to the management of economic migrants? History does not demonstrate that the debate was any more mature before the rent-a-gob Internet commentator was a part of how we consume news. A little known fact about the UK is that as the Second World War became imminent, and even after the war had commenced, the only Jewish refugees allowed to enter the UK were those who had guarantees that all their living expenses would be met by the Jewish community. It would be wonderful if the UK could move on from this indifference and intolerance, to embrace a more global and connected view of the world. An educated and connected Britain is surely the only way for the nation to retain relevance in a twenty-first century where economic power has already moved east. But this shift in power is hard to accept for a nation that still commanded a global empire almost within living memory. Whatever the solution is for the changing structure of UK society and EU migration it will not come from hatred whipped up by the media. Hatred of this kind comes from looking back at the past. The leaders in the UK desperate to be elected by the population next month all need to be looking to the future.]]> How Long Can You Survive Without Your Phone? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.7071200 2015-04-15T12:08:00-04:00 2015-06-15T05:59:01-04:00 Mark Hillary http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-hillary/ Swarm. I update Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and I upload photos to Instagram and Flickr. But you know what? I rarely use my phone as a phone these days. So if it is just used for social networks then it shouldn't be much of a wrench when it gets broken right? Well, my iPhone did break this week. It actually just died. It refuses to charge and despite trying several different cables and making sure it has been dried out, nothing seems to bring it back to life. This happened to me once before with another iPhone, but that time I had dropped it into a swimming pool and despite jumping in fully-clothed to save it, the pool water finished it off. The phone that stopped working this week was an old iPhone 4S, so I had already been thinking about upgrading, because I couldn't even update to the latest Apple operating system - there was just not enough space on the phone. However it is one thing to go out and buy a new phone and upgrade from the old one and another to be forced to do sooner than planned. I decided to get an iPhone 6 and to order it from Apple directly online as there are some good discounts if you pay immediately rather than asking for credit terms to pay for the handset. However, it is going to take a few days to be delivered to my home and given that the phone stopped working on Monday this means that for almost an entire week I am without a phone. We are not often forcibly separated from our phones these days so this period of not having one for as long as a week has already made me notice what I miss most about not having a smart phone in my pocket. . Meeting people is harder. I do still remember the pre-mobile phone days where you agreed to meet someone in a certain place at a certain time and if they were not there then you just had no way of finding out what was going on. Are they running late, are they not going to show up, are they here already just I can't see them in the crowd? All these problems are back for me right now as I do have several meetings this week with people I've never met and they are surprised to hear me telling them not to bother trying to call me. . Audio books. I always have an audio book on the go all the time. Depending on the narrator it is possible to turn up the speed to 2x so you can get through an entire book really fast. The narration on the new David Nicholls novel 'Us' was so slow I could comfortably listen to the entire book at 3x speed. I miss having books always with me for when I'm on the bus or train. . Podcasts. I listen to dozens of podcasts, especially for news, current affairs and political analysis. With the UK general election coming soon, I'm missing out on so many political interviews right now - or am I? . My camera. I love taking pictures everywhere and just capturing normal daily life as it passes by. Whenever I see something interesting I feel a sense of loss that I don't have a camera instantly available in my pocket. . Having information on tap. When I want to check a bus time, translate a word, or check a sports result it is usually there in an instant. Now I have no access to instant information unless I am at home in front of my laptop. That is how the Internet used to be, but we have moved to accept always-on as normal so fast that it now feels strange needing a computer to get online. And what does all this confirm? That all the things I miss about my phone have nothing at all to do with anyone phoning me. My phone has replaced the need for a camera and iPod. It's really just a mobile computer with a phone app. Perhaps we will eventually start calling phones something else? Communicators... or is that just a little bit too Star Trek?]]> When Does Blogging Become Content Marketing? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.6933984 2015-03-24T15:35:20-04:00 2015-05-24T05:59:02-04:00 Mark Hillary http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-hillary/ This is an extract from Chapter 2 of my new book "Customer Engagement Officer (CEO): Content Marketing and the Realities of Executive Blogging." The chapter opens by talking about how blogging has changed the media industry and how we consume news, then explores the effect of this for companies and marketing professionals... This change in the way we consume news is all very interesting for media students, but you might be asking how it helps you to promote your business. There are a couple of key points to remember from what you have just read: 1. Blog content can easily bubble into the traditional media agenda; 2. Blogs and corporate content are now included in news streams along with other content of interest to specific readers. This change in the way that information is consumed has created the possibility for content to be used for marketing. Instead of a company publishing information as press releases, product announcements, or other news that is specific to what the company is doing, the company can also attract interest from prospective customers just by talking more generally about the industry they are engaged in. In his book The Curve, Nicholas Lovell gives the example of River Pools, a swimming pool sales and maintenance company that serves the Virginia and Maryland area of the USA. River Pools used to spend $250,000 a year advertising on the radio and on pay-per-click web adverts until the company founder Marcus Sheridan had an epiphany. He figured that when most people want information about swimming pools, they go to the Internet and use a search engine to ask questions. He was already using tools like Google Adwords so his ads would appear when potential customers were searching for relevant topics, but he wondered whether he could just start publishing some common questions and answers - would these answers start popping up in the search engine results automatically if customers were searching for answers to these common problems? He wrote blog posts answering those common questions, comparing his company to the competition, and even openly debating the pros and cons of fiberglass swimming pools - the product his company is primarily focused on. This change in approach took place in 2009 and in the past five years Sheridan estimates that his initial blog post has generated over $1.7 million in new business. Because now whenever anyone searches online for information on swimming pools, particularly fiberglass pools, it is Sheridan's company that comes top of the search results - organically. They find that customers will often get in touch for an appointment and they have read thirty or more pages of his blogs about swimming pools. Prospective clients like this are much easier to turn into sales than those who just clicked on an advert - they are interested in the content before they even get in touch to discuss a possible purchase. We have moved on from just calling this process "corporate blogging." Now we are referring to the process of publishing corporate information, which is not specifically advertising, as content marketing. We are telling stories, providing information on products and services by talking about the issues rather than hard-selling the solutions. The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as: "Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience - with the objective of driving profitable customer action." The institute goes on to add: "Content marketing's purpose is to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating relevant and valuable content with the intention of changing or enhancing consumer behaviour. It is an ongoing process that is best integrated into your overall marketing strategy, and it focuses on owning media, not renting it." Then the next paragraph in their definition is what I would declare the kicker that nails it: "Basically, content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling. It is non-interruption marketing. Instead of pitching your products or services, you are delivering information that makes your buyer more intelligent. The essence of this content strategy is the belief that if we, as businesses, deliver consistent, ongoing valuable information to buyers, they ultimately reward us with their business and loyalty." If you can communicate with your customers and prospects and show that you are the best at what you do without just pitching or advertising then this makes your buyer more intelligent and more likely to work with your company. In the case or River Pools there is a high value product that customers will want to research extensively before buying, allowing them to build a freely available online resource that can draw customers to their business. In the case of a common consumer product, like Coca Cola, this would not work so well. Coke is sold because people want a cold soft drink and given the choice of various drinks the customer chooses Coke mainly because they identify with the brand - many brands of drink are equally tasty and can be served just as cold. If the Coca Cola Company published details of their expertise in making beverages it would probably appeal to very few actual consumers of the product. But this is why content marketing is such a powerful tool for companies that operate in a B2B environment, only ever selling to managers in other companies. This is an audience that really does want to understand your expertise and ability to deliver. The power of content marketing for the B2B audience extends much further than just the ability to create a body of work proclaiming your expertise in a given business area. Most B2B purchasing decisions are taken by managers after consulting with information available in the marketplace; before one company buys from another they might read a consultant's report, information published by an industry analyst, or even the view of a business journalist. These influencers are the real targets for a B2B content marketing campaign. If you can demonstrate knowledge of your industry in a way that impresses the journalists who write about your sector, or the industry analysts who compare your company to your competitors, or the consultants who advise your clients which company they should do business with, then you are not just blogging. You are building relationships with the people who influence your customers. This engagement is what is truly valuable, but it would be hard to achieve without using content on a blog to establish your credibility and knowledge.]]> The Future of Work Is a Global Arms Race for Skills tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.6762672 2015-02-26T14:15:27-05:00 2015-04-28T05:59:02-04:00 Mark Hillary http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-hillary/ rely on a main job that features a zero hours contract. This means that the employee has signed a contract indicating that they are available to work, however there is no guarantee of work from the employer. This type of employment takes the invisible hand of the market to an extreme that many find abhorrent. Employers used to train and nurture their employees, expecting loyalty in return. Now employers treat their employees as units that can be dropped in to cover shifts as and when required, with no need to offer any commitment on slow days. The life of a zero hours employee is in many ways similar to that of a freelancer. Compare a graphic designer working in a company to a freelance designer. The freelancer has to hustle for new work, they need to network, they need to produce work, and they only ever get paid as each project is completed. They are paid only for their output. The contracted employee is almost always paid based on the time they are contracted to work, not by what they produce. The employed graphic designer can come into work hungover and achieve nothing all day and yet still be paid for that day of non-work. Some people are paid for what they produce and some are paid for the time they are punching the clock. But there are bigger changes taking place in the world of work today. Some political parties blame a 'flood' of foreigners into the UK for reducing the availability of good jobs. Some commentators blame the wave of offshore outsourcing that has meant that contact centres can now answer calls halfway around the world. But I believe that there is a more complex web of interlinked issues that is dramatically affecting the employment market globally. Professional work can be outsourced; the Internet has created a robust international platform allowing almost any professional task to be performed anywhere and delivered online. You need a new logo designed, or some accounts checked, or some software to be coded? You no longer need to offer these jobs to a local company, they can go to the best (or cheapest) supplier anywhere in the world. However, outsourcing does have detractors. The Labour Party policy chief, Jon Cruddas, is due to publish a new book next month titled 'Blue Labour: Forging a New Politics.' In the book Cruddas argues that: "[We should have] no more outsourcing of relational services to those parts of the private sector that are driven purely by corporate profit rather than a social purpose." However, I think the ideological argument that a government should not outsource has been lost. It is only right that a government requiring specialist services should be able to pay the best global specialists to provide those services, but this change in both the private and public sector attitudes to work, along with the increased number of skilled candidates ready to relocate for a job, is having a serious effect on employment - and society more generally - today. Some people are more prepared to move for work; my mother's family moved from Ireland to England in the 1960s because there was no work available in Ireland. As the European Union has expanded we have witnessed far more movement of labour around the continent than ever before, but highly skilled people are able to migrate to anywhere their skills are needed. It is also important to note that in many cases, products and services have lost a national identity; we don't even know where they come from. Did you download Angry Birds and think about how it was created in Finland? Or use the Google Waze traffic-monitoring app and think about how it was born in Israel? Or hosted your company website on a system provided by Amazon with servers located... where? Where are they located anyway? Employers can get the skills they need at an ever-decreasing price because they now have a global pool of labour to choose from in many professions. Just look at the recent example of Brazilian IT giant Stefanini who brought employees from Romania over to work on a project in Switzerland - on their Romanian salaries - causing outrage in the Swiss media. Stefanini has done nothing wrong - in the eyes of the law. Their employees from one location can go and work in another for short periods of time without requiring local pay, but stretching the definition of a short-term transfer has caught out many other companies. Is there one moral law where we define what we 'feel' is right and another that companies use to plan their operations? But where do we go from here? The future appears to be an arms race based on skills. Employers can hire from anywhere, they can set contract terms that are heavily loaded in their favour, and they can easily send work elsewhere using the Internet. The only way to avoid being unemployed or abused by an employer is to possess skills that are valued globally. The unskilled and semi-skilled working-class face a grim future where technology, or foreign workers, can perform their work better and at a lower cost. The answer is not futile attempts to ban foreign workers or ban outsourcing as a business strategy. Banning companies from working with other companies is reminiscent of King Canute barking orders at the waves. The real answer lies in the need for Britons to compete with the world. We need skills, we need innovation and creativity - there is no future in low-skilled work in a highly developed, high-cost country. So why does the UK now have one of the most expensive education systems in the developed world? This May, I hope that the British electorate can see beyond short-term reactionary political rhetoric and try imagining how the UK will fit into the world order twenty years from now.]]> Five Steps To Getting Your Book Published tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.6746092 2015-02-24T15:01:54-05:00 2015-04-26T05:59:01-04:00 Mark Hillary http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-hillary/ Buzzfeed article in my Facebook timeline this morning. Titled '18 Things All Writers Wish They Could Say' I clicked to have a look and found a long list of clichés about writers. Almost every one of the aphorisms on the list suggested that the greatest wish of a writer is that they might one day be able to write. Now this is all very funny, but sometimes writers do actually write. I got a knock on the door from FedEx this afternoon and inside the parcel they delivered was the very first printed copy of my latest book. It's an exciting moment to see your own book up close in paperback. It had already been published for the Kindle, but there is still something exciting about a physical book that I can sign and hand out at a business conference. I have written quite a few books now. Some were for traditional publishers, some were direct to Kindle e-books, and some were published using Lulu. But regardless of how they were published - and ended up being transformed from and idea to an object I can hold - they were all exciting. They all give me an opportunity to be heard by an audience across the world. But as the jokes in Buzzfeed allude to, there are a lot of people out there who say they are writing and yet produce nothing. We are surrounded by more distractions than ever today. Social networks offer endless opportunities to publish short thoughts without the effort involved in crafting the 200-pages of content you might need for a book. So with this in mind, here are five lessons that I have learned over the years on how to write and actually complete what you set out to do - publish a book: 1. Distractions don't matter. 16 years ago the horror writer Stephen King was laid up in hospital recovering from a road traffic accident - an out of control driver hit King while he was out walking and left him for dead. King was bored. He started writing some ideas about why he writes, how he writes, and it became his memoir 'On Writing.' One of the most important lessons King offers in his book is that if you have a great idea then you can write it down even if you are living in a trailer park with six kids screaming all night. Your writing does not get better because you are enjoying a writer's workshop by a paradise in the sun. Just write. 2. You need to read. Another important lesson from King's memoir, although something that almost every writer will echo, is that if you want to write then you need to read. Don't sit around reading self-help books on how to get published, just read as many books as you can. Those writers got their books published, now do something just as good as that yourself. 3. Facebook isn't writing. I was watching the English singer-songwriter Billy Bragg on stage once and between songs he talked about activism and politics. Over the years Bragg's songs have often touched on social issues and the politics of the time and those words live on. Bragg argued that books and songs and poems all live on, yet has anyone ever claimed that a fantastic Facebook status update made all the difference in the last election? Social networks are great for communication, but the message is ephemeral. 4. Stop planning, just start writing. I wasn't a professional writer earlier in my career - I worked in technology for a bank. When I was first trying to get published in the 1990s I wrote a letter to the poet laureate Ted Hughes. He responded with a charming personal letter that said you need luck to be published, but you also have to write, rather than say you are going to write - "the stuff has just to be written" were his final words to me. 5. Ignore the detractors. Sometimes a negative review may contain advice that will improve your work in future, but most of the time negative comments are not driven by a desire to help you improve. Remember this, because otherwise you will never want to create anything that is published and available for the public to comment on. My first book was about doing business with India and at the launch party in London a prominent Indian businessman came up to me offer congratulations, then he said "of course, being Indian myself, and with my business experience, I'm sure that I could have written a better book." I just responded by reminding him that I have actually written and published the book that was the reason for the party he was attending - he can invite me to his party when he writes his own book. He never did. Great writing is an art. I make no claim to be able to craft fiction that would rival Kazuo Ishiguro, but when I think of a subject I want to write about I do more than just talk about it. I plan the book, write it, and get it published. You can also do it. Stephen King really did write his first few novels dirt-poor in a trailer park surrounded by noise. In the words Ted Hughes wrote to me: "...if you haven't written the work, of course it will never happen."]]> Do You Want to Convert Your Blog Into a Book? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.6669192 2015-02-12T09:05:54-05:00 2015-04-14T05:59:01-04:00 Mark Hillary http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-hillary/ UK-based magazine for about three years and notching up hundreds of blog entries, I approached the magazine editor and suggested this interesting collection of articles was worthy of a book. He immediately began asking questions, including, "Why on earth might anyone be interested in a series of blog posts collected together into a book?" He was also concerned about the complexities of publishing, but having already published with Lulu, I knew this was the least of our worries - I published that book in 2009. Can anyone turn his or her blog into a book? In theory yes, but there are some questions worth considering before you initiate that big WordPress download. Is there an audience for the book? You don't need to do a lot of market research on this. You can publish with online publishers such as Lulu even if you anticipate a limited or specialized audience. How much effort is required? If you are doing this because you just want to see your name on the spine of a book, you should consider that selecting your best posts and formatting them for the printed page will be quite a bit of work. Will your blog work as a book? The blog I converted to book format was mainly journalism and commentary, so I could easily imagine it on the printed page. On the other hand, turning your years of Tumblr posts into a book may be a futile exercise - and may even infringe copyright unless you personally own every image you shared. Remember, your posts may work well in the context of a blog where you might feature video clips, Instagram photos and other media that looks great when viewed on an iPad, but is not going to translate to the printed page. Are the blog posts relevant now and in the future? Blog content almost always features a date-stamp, which can translate to book content in an epistolary format - dated blogs in sequence - but there is an important time distinction between blogs and books. Blogs are written and published in the now, usually referencing the exact time they were written. As time goes on, new posts may update or supersede earlier ones. As such, some of your blog entries will be completely unsuitable for use in a book because they are comments on a moment, rather than less time-bound thoughts or comments. A book needs to be planned with a much longer shelf life than an individual blog post. When you publish a book, it is published at a moment in time and cannot be quickly updated except through new editions. In general, book content needs to be planned so that it will not become quickly dated. Will the structure of my blog translate to a book? It is worth viewing your blog in the round. You may have a hundred thousand words of great content, but you may end up stripping away half of that content to preserve your best posts. It is worth thinking about whether you want a literal version of your blogs in book format or whether you can do more with the text when planning how it might be read on the page. For example, you may be able to connect several blogs together and present them as longer essays. Why should I do it? If you are already blogging then you are a writer. Many writers have used short publications that were eventually collected together into a longer book format - The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens is one of the most famous examples. In fact, there is little to distinguish the way Dickens wrote then from a blogger today who releases short articles then collects them together into a longer book. Posterity is as good a reason as any to take a close look at your blog to see if it might be worth publishing as a book. Even if your blog posts are individual and cannot be collected together into a coherent story, there may still be value in collecting them together. In my case, my articles from 2006-2009 that went into my "book-of-the-blog" have now been deleted from the magazine website. Now my book is the only place where they continue to live! This blog originally featured on the Lulu.com blog here.]]> Is It Unethical to Use a 'Ghost-blogger'? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.6562030 2015-01-28T19:00:00-05:00 2015-03-30T05:59:01-04:00 Mark Hillary http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-hillary/ So how can ghost blogging be fake? There is nothing wrong in supporting a CEO, in helping them to articulate their ideas into blogs and then publishing them in the name of the CEO. But for a social media program to work and avoid the accusation of just being marketing spin, it is important to involve the real person in responding to comments and questions. For example, as I mentioned earlier, the writing team may use the Twitter account of the CEO to promote the published blogs and to watch over the influencer hit list - reaching out and saying hello when an influencer mentions an area that would be of interest to the business. I have a golden rule with all my clients for whom I do this kind of work. I will never engage in a conversation with anyone online using a named social media account and pretending to be that person. Everyone has a right to believe that if they are chatting to someone on a tool like Twitter, then it is the real person answering their questions. I don't know if this applies to every business leader online. When I see the amount of content Sir Richard Branson manages to publish - blogs, video, and photos - each day I can see that he obviously has the Virgin communications team supporting him, but I do wonder if the real Sir Richard would reply if I messaged him? I hope so, and I have seen him blogging about how he really does interact with his readers. I was once talking about the James Bond movie 'The Spy Who Loved Me' with a friend, Peter Ryan, on Twitter. We were talking about the Lotus car that can travel underwater. I asked him if he knew where the scene was filmed where Roger Moore drives the car out of the sea onto a beach full of tourists. We both thought it was Malta, but then Sir Roger Moore tweeted the correct answer, "Sardinia." Peter and I were astounded, but when I recounted the story to someone else, he just dismissed it and said it was a PR or film company hack using the Roger Moore account. I hope not. Tools like Twitter are very personal. If you are representing a CEO and ensuring that their account remains active with tweets on the latest news and rumours in their industry, that support has to stop when people send messages and expect the real person to respond. Even if your writing team is using the Twitter account of the CEO to promote blogs and monitor the hit list, if anyone sends a message then your team needs to alert the named individual and get them to respond personally. So in this example, the writing team would need to be able to send a text or email directly to the CEO asking him or her to check their Twitter account. The executive embarking on a social media program cannot be entirely ignorant of how these tools work. They need Twitter installed on their iPad or phone even if they don't look at it on a day-to-day basis. But when that journalist from the New York Times sends a tweet asking a question about what the company thinks on a specific topic there is no way you want a marketing or writing team member to be replying to that message - public or privately. Always involve the management team in your online content activities. If they are putting their name to blogs and tweets then they must be available to answer questions online even if they have a support team helping to generate the original content. Think of it like ghostwriting a speech. You can prepare the words and feed the lines to your CEO, but when the Q&A begins, there is no prepared script; they need to know their own business. This is an extract from Chapter 7 of my new book 'Customer Engagement Officer (CEO): Content Marketing and the Realities of Executive Blogging'. Published earlier this month the book explores how many company leaders, politicians, and celebrities are blogging more than they can possibly write.]]> Why Can't We Move Beyond Conducting Election Debates on TV? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.6552948 2015-01-27T05:23:53-05:00 2015-03-29T05:59:01-04:00 Mark Hillary http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-hillary/ The first televised election debate in the USA drew 66 million viewers out of a population of 179 million. The most recent American election debates in 2012 still drew an audience of 67m, although the population is somewhat larger now. With these figures in mind it seems a little pathetic that it took the United Kingdom until 2010 to ever hold the first televised debates. But in the battle to secure a new set of debates for the 2015 election in the UK, are the broadcasters conveniently forgetting how those 2010 debates went? I blogged the debates and the election night live for Reuters so I was keenly following the 2010 elections and I don't remember anything very positive about the TV debates. In my opinion, the 2010 election campaign had the life sucked out of it by the TV debates. As soon as the election date was announced, the TV debates were agreed and then the focus of the backbenchers, journalists, and political pundits was entirely around the content and format of the first TV debate. Nothing else mattered. Once that debate was over, several days were spent analysing the performance of the party leaders in minute detail. Then the next few days were spent previewing the next TV debate. The campaign in general had no life because nobody in the media appeared to be interested in covering anything except what was going to happen in the next TV debate. And yet in all the analysis during 2010 I don't recall anyone ever asking why we were all paying so much attention to the TV debates. So what if Nick Clegg performed well in front of the cameras and managed to use a few one-liners to the expense of the Prime Minister? How does that really influence the outcome of an election based on a first-past-the-post constituency system? The UK does not have a president. The British debates cannot really be presented as presidential, they are merely the leaders of the main parties arguing their case. It's entirely possible that Nick Clegg might participate in the 2015 debates - if they happen - and then lose his seat and play no further part in the leadership of his party. Everyone knows that TV debates are difficult for the incumbent leader. It's the Conservatives and Lib Dems now, but last time Gordon Brown was suffering the brickbats as New Labour wound down towards their ultimate failure at the polls - after leading the nation since 1997. The 2015 debates in the UK will also need many more voices as the SNP has become a far more important voice since 2010, the Greens now have an enormous number of party members, and Ukip is asking the migration questions all the established parties appear to be ducking. So it's understandable that any Prime Minister in the UK will try to avoid TV debates, but I hear so many ridiculous reasons used to justify why they are essential for British democracy: TV debates are the only way to interest floating voters in the election process. It's where people get their information about what the parties stand for. If this is really the case then people are voting with almost no information at all. Every day we live out a life that is engaged with politics to some degree, from the taxes you pay to the way the railways function. How can a few short debates on TV really make voters decide how they want the next five years of leadership to look? TV debates are the only way to interest young people in politics. This is a funny one and I keep hearing the 'youth' vote being mentioned when justifying the debates. Let's just get this straight, nobody who can realistically be called young watches TV channels or tunes in for a debate at a fixed time any longer. They want content on demand and to say that broadcast TV is reaching out to the young is like suggesting that the future of the media is in print newspapers. The Americans have been doing it for over 50 years. The British electoral system means that you can be watching a TV debate, find yourself agreeing with the Labour leader and plan to vote for the party only to then find that you don't like the candidate they have standing in your own constituency. Or you might be living in a safe Tory seat where your preferred candidate has no chance. The British system is very different to the presidential left v right (plus possibly an outlier) system used for debates in the USA. I strongly believe in more transparent, accountable democracy. I'm not trying to make this case as a defender of the present Prime Minister, who seems to be dodging any attempt to confirm these TV debates. I just believe that the 2010 TV debates did not work very well and the British people are sleepwalking back into repeating them just because the broadcasters believe it's a good idea. I believe that the main political parties should just move beyond the ideas used in the USA since 1960. Why don't the main political parties join forces with Twitter and Facebook and create regular debates between local MPs and candidates that operate at a constituency level? A YouTube debate was planned anyway, but this should be given more weight. Who cares about a debate on ITV at 8pm? A debate on YouTube that goes out live, with the audience anywhere able to participate, and with the video immediately available to be reviewed and shared is far more valuable than anything the traditional broadcasters are offering. All of the parties - the major ones and the new players - should want to debate the issues with the British public. But public expectation of interaction with political parties is no longer going to be satisfied by a few TV debates, although I realise that some form of TV debate is certainly going to happen - even if it requires empty seats to be used. In an ideal world, I would hope that the parties could join forces to make the 2015 election an exciting and informative election campaign by ignoring the TV broadcasters and going straight to the Internet. I guess this will not happen until 2020 now. In any case, do you really think that the TV and radio broadcasters are not going to repeat everything that is said online?]]> Why Won't The Sun Scrap Page 3? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.6526434 2015-01-22T15:32:34-05:00 2015-03-24T05:59:01-04:00 Mark Hillary http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-hillary/ The Sun, has been mocking critics this week who assumed that Page 3 had been retired because it did not appear for a few days. If you are not familiar with The Sun's Page 3 then it can be quickly summarised as a large photo of a young, attractive, topless glamour model. Captions on the Page 3 photographs often feature a quote about a recent news story that is attributed to the model. The Sun has featured these glamour photographs for over 40 years now, commencing publication in 1970 when The Sun was still only a few years old. The title was losing money and had recently been purchased by Rupert Murdoch who was eager to cause a splash in the British media market. Murdoch caused more than just a splash - The Sun has long been the most widely circulated newspaper in the UK, only recently losing the number one spot to The Daily Mail. Campaigners have tried for years to get The Sun to scrap Page 3. Some take a strongly feminist view that printing images of naked women in a newspaper is offensive to women - why should a national newspaper be objectifying women? Some take a more pragmatic family-oriented approach, taking offence at sexualised images of naked women in a family newspaper that is freely available in any store that sells papers and magazines. Regardless of how you politicise the debate over objectification what is obvious to most people is that Page 3 has served a purpose in popularising The Sun in the 70s and 80s, but is now of another time. It's difficult to understand how a newspaper that proclaims itself to be a champion of family values can be printing nude teenagers on Page 3 in 2015. Rupert Murdoch has tweeted - almost two years ago - that perhaps it is time for Page 3 to be retired. He suggested it might be replaced by a new format that features photographs of "glamorous fashionistas." To see Murdoch himself wondering about the future of Page 3 gave campaigners a shot in the arm. In the past couple of years there has been an almost non-stop onslaught on Page 3 featuring campaigners, celebrities, and politicians. I think this campaigning has shifted the general opinion on Page 3, but why does editor David Dinsmore keep publishing the photographs and openly mock those who are calling for an end to it? The Sun communications team spent much of today tweeting nude images to rival journalists and campaigners. They don't listen to the campaigners because they don't need to. What they are doing remains legal. The models are all 18 or over - although they used to be even younger back in the days when pop stars chased children for sex. The bottom line is that this is all about business. Forget about the campaigning by people who probably don't read The Sun. What are the two things that would cause an immediate change in editorial strategy? 1. Readers start deserting the paper and citing Page 3 as a reason why they are no longer prepared to keep reading it. 2. Advertisers start taking their budget elsewhere and suggesting that they no longer want to be associated with The Sun because of Page 3. Neither of these appears to be happening any more than might be expected in a fast-moving media environment. There certainly does not appear to be any catastrophic loss of readers or advertisers specifically because of Page 3. It appears that the readers and advertisers are quite happy with the status quo thank you very much. To influence millions of readers would be an enormous challenge, but if the campaigners turn their sights on the major brands advertising in The Sun and through their actions cause big accounts to take their spending elsewhere then the editor would have to sit up and pay attention. Most readers enjoy The Sun for more than just the model on Page 3 so it would be hard to create an exodus of readers, but without the advertisers on board, all those models would soon be seeking work elsewhere. Until this happens, the editor can sit in a hot tub with the Page 3 beauties laughing as he watches the page hits on Page3.com soar because every other media outlet is driving new readers to his newspaper. Who knows, he might even print a freedom of speech article later this week claiming that The Sun has been oppressed by those who want to stop the newspaper printing legal images. Stranger things have happened in the British tabloids.]]> Six Steps That Will Help Your CEO Achieve Blogging Success tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.6442782 2015-01-09T09:02:11-05:00 2015-03-11T05:59:01-04:00 Mark Hillary http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-hillary/ If your executive team is still asking 'why?' then beware of holding too many shares in your own company. The way people get a job, find a partner, arrange a party, elect a leader, and interact with TV shows has changed beyond recognition in the past half-decade. You know this because you can see it all around you each and every day. Why do corporate communication experts not mention this when explaining why a blog might be useful for your executive team? Blogging cuts across many communications channels that have been previously owned by various departments within your organisation. Think about how the combined use of a blog and Twitter alone can allow the CEO to easily reach employees (current and alumni), journalists, industry analysts, industry consultants and advisors, academics, bloggers, and existing or potential customers. That's PR, AR, internal communications, corporate communications, marketing, and sales all rolled into one. So there are many possibilities, but you are going to tread on a lot of toes in well-established parts of your business. If you want to get it right then you need to plan ahead, so you know exactly what you are getting into. Here are six simple steps to consider: 1. Plan the expected outcomes Are you trying to raise the profile of your CEO? Are you trying to raise the profile of the brand? Are you trying to reposition the brand? Are you trying to get more press coverage from journalists you don't normally interact with? Are you trying to create industry comment that your sales team can use when pitching to prospects? These are all valid questions. Once you have decided on the big picture argument about 'why' your executive team or CEO should be blogging. What should you work on that could not be achieved without the blogging programme going ahead? 2. Plan how you will measure success How you measure success depends very much on what you want to achieve, however I think it is extremely important to separate the achievements of the social network user and the achievement of the business executive. By this I mean that 100 engaged and influential followers on Twitter can be far more important than 10,000 followers that are just bought or obtained by asking employees to follow the boss. Consider what really matters to your business - the real outcomes of social activity. These include influential contacts interacting with you, quoting you, or asking to meet in person. Have you ended up being asked to contribute to a magazine or research report because of tweets? Has an influential analyst asked to meet because of your tweets? 3. Educate the team and get their buy-in Make sure the executives are on board. They must support this because social media is very personal. Even if they have a ghostwriter supporting their blogs, when a business editor tweets a hello because they liked a blog it would be deceitful to have a PR, or the ghostwriter, answering tweets. I was once asked to advise the partners of a major international consulting firm. The senior partners had been asked to tweet by their marketing and communications team. That was about as far as the guidance went - so the executives all installed Twitter on their mobile devices and started tweeting. But after a few weeks, most of them gave up. They couldn't see the point. When I asked to see some of their tweets, it was obvious why. They were broadcasting details of their day - I just caught a train to Paris, I just arrived at the office, I am working on a complex presentation for a client... no wonder they were not attracting any followers or creating any engagement. I told them to turn the entire process upside down, to start listening and to stop all that publishing of trivial information. In front of all the partners I took over the account of the most senior guy and asked him about some journals he reads, some journalists he respects, the analysts he turns to for detailed information on his area of expertise. Within ten minutes I showed them how this executive now had a stream of information on his phone that was all published by people he respects or people that are useful for him to know professionally. He would be free to interact with any of those people, to create conversations based on what those people are saying. Executives are not using social networks because it's cool. They don't care about what teenagers are doing, but if the use of a network like Twitter can enable them to quickly and easily reach the key influencers in their field of business then it's not just a toy - it's an essential communication tool. 4. Plan your scope and targets Once the executive team is on board then you need to plan two key areas with them; what is the scope for the blog content and who are the people they want to see the blogs and other social interactions? It is important to stress that the value of the blog itself is usually to position the individual executive as having their own mind and demonstrating competence in their business area - it should not read like a list of press releases for the business. Think of it more like articles in a business magazine, commenting on the area of business you work in, rather than a series of posts that just say 'we do this well' or 'we are the cheapest in the market'. A lot of this information regarding the scope may be with your marketing or PR teams anyway, but it's worth just asking the executives directly because they will have their name on the content that is published online. The key questions are: . What subjects would you like the blog to cover or explore? . How provocative would you like the blog to be - quite contrary to provoke more response or just demonstrating competence in your subject area? . Would you like to regularly comment on current affairs related to your business area in the blog? When you have the scope for the blog content ready then you have a framework to operate within. You will know the preferred style of comment and the topics to comment on. The next area is the people who the executive would like to see the blog. Who should notice your content? Which individual journalists does the executive read? Which business or trade journals are most influential? Which industry analysts publish the most influential reports about your area of business? Which industry consultants recommend companies such as yours to their clients? Which bloggers and other experts write about your industry? Create a 'hit list' from the individuals and companies mentioned. This can be used on social networks, such as Twitter so relevant people can be monitored and informed about the blog - when appropriate. 5. Create simple procedures everyone understands intuitively Your exact procedures may differ depending on how you are interacting with the executive and what they want to achieve, but it is always best to keep it simple. In social communications things often move fast, you cannot be checking an operations manual when making a decision on what to tweet or retweet. Understanding how the writing and publishing procedures works is important for the day to day operation of the team, but is critically important when you need to hand off between the ghostwriter - assuming you have some help to create the blogs - and the executive. 6. Plan some interim outcomes and review times Sometimes you will see enormous growth and interest in what you are doing and sometimes it will be fairly quiet, but use the strategic planning and expected outcomes to set some checkpoints where you can review what is working and what may need tweaking. I recommend a review every quarter with a focus on: What actual business outcomes did we create in this quarter? Are we targeting the right influencers? Are people engaging with the content we create? This allows a regular chance to improve the content, the way that you get that content in front of people, and whether the focus on business outcomes has slipped back into focusing on social media outcomes, i.e. the team has started focusing on followers rather than genuine outcomes. My new book 'Customer Engagement Officer (CEO): Content Marketing and the Realities of Executive Blogging' was published this week and features more detail on the subject of executive blogging and content marketing. You can find it on Amazon here...]]> If 9/11 Had Happened In 2014 Would We Have Seen WTC Selfies? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.6332798 2014-12-16T07:39:42-05:00 2015-02-15T05:59:02-05:00 Mark Hillary http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-hillary/ Man Haran Monis, was a tragic event. Three people are now dead - including the perpetrator - and many were injured, including one police officer. It is often tragic or shocking events such as this that demonstrate the failings of modern 24/7 news gathering - both from the citizen journalists and the major networks. Think of these three issues that have been debated extensively in the past 24 hours: . The gunman was a Muslim. It was clearly a single-person Jihad against Western society. . The rolling blogs launched by almost every major news network that featured nothing more than banal comments about how little is actually known about the situation. . Members of the public flocking to the site of the siege to take selfies so that their smiling image can be featured on social networks. Australia accepted Man Haran Monis as a refugee from Iran back in 1996. He had claimed that his life was in danger due to his criticism of the regime. Other versions of his refugee story allege that he was running a travel agency in Iran and eloped with $200,000 of his customer's money. Whatever the real story, he generated a long criminal record in Australia that included sending hate mail to the families of Australian troops killed in action in Afghanistan. Last year he was charged as an accessory to the murder of his wife and this year he was charged with sexually abusing a young woman who had sought his help with 'spiritual healing' services. Fortunately the Australian public has responded to many of the anti-Islam comments by offering to support their fellow citizens. The general public appear more able than many media commentators to see that this was probably one very disturbed individual who went on a rampage rather than an ISIS attack on the hedonistic consumption of chocolate and coffee. But a rolling media that needs information fuels this hatred. This siege lasted for approximately 17 hours and even the police did not know the identity of the perpetrator for much of this time. How many times can journalists and bloggers keep on repeating that nothing is happening right now? It's only natural that in this kind of environment the debate would turn to the possible reasons why this had happened and a Muslim conspiracy is more exciting to debate than anything as boring and straightforward as 'he was crazy.' But what really angered me about this whole situation was the selfies. Members of the public took smiling photos with the café in the background as the siege was in progress. Why? Of course the answer is complex. Partly it is because this is possible. Developments in the mobile Internet, smart phones, and social networks that have only taken place in the past 6-7 years mean that it is now possible for anyone to publish a photo from anywhere and for it to be shared globally within seconds. I am certain that if 9/11 had taken place in September 2014, rather than 2001, then our social networks would have been filled with smiling selfies featuring a backdrop of tragic people throwing themselves out of the burning building. The societal question is whether our behaviour as humans has really changed in the last seven years to the point where we now have such a low level of empathy with fellow humans in danger that we just consider their plight to be a good backdrop for an Instagram selfie. I'm not a sociologist, but I believe that many academics will be exploring how celebrities such as Kim Kardashian are now able to build an entire career out of human voyeurism. Does the desire for a photo to be 'liked' outweigh any earlier ideas we may have held about etiquette, chivalry, and what is the right way to behave? As I was trying to consider historical precedents for this type of behaviour I looked back into the diary of Samuel Pepys. In an entry he made on October 13th, 1660 Pepys said: "I went out to Charing Cross, to see Major-general Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition. He was presently cut down, and his head and heart shown to the people, at which there was great shouts of joy." On the same day, Pepys also noted: "Thus it was my chance to see the King beheaded at White Hall, and to see the first blood shed in revenge for the blood of the King at Charing Cross." He then describes how upset he was that he broke his wife's basket, one he bought for her in Holland. He appears to be more upset about the basket breakage than any of the public executions and carnage he witnessed in London that day. Terrible public behaviour has always been with us. I believe that the taking of selfies at tragic events will subside as people establish new norms of public etiquette. At present we just don't know how to behave.]]>


text:
Press release from Marketwire
North American Energy Partners Third Quarter Results Conference Call and Webcast Notification
Thursday, January 26, 2012
North American Energy Partners Third Quarter Results Conference Call and Webcast Notification19:12 EST Thursday, January 26, 2012CALGARY, ALBERTA--(Marketwire - Jan. 26, 2012) - North American Energy Partners Inc. ("NAEP" or "the Company") (TSX:NOA) (NYSE:NOA) announced today that it will release its financial results for the third quarter ended December 31, 2011 on the evening of February 2, 2012 after market close. Following the release of third quarter results, NAEP will hold a conference call and webcast on Friday, February 3, 2012 at 7:00 a.m. Mountain Time (9:00 a.m. Eastern). The call can be accessed by dialing: Toll free: 1- 877-407-9210 International: 1-201-689-8049A replay will be available through March 2, 2012 by dialing:Toll Free: 1-877-660-6853 International: 1-201-612-7415 Account: 286 Conference ID: 387867The live and archived webcast can be accessed at: http://www.investorcalendar.com/IC/CEPage.asp?ID=167245 About the Company North American Energy Partners Inc. (www.naepi.ca) is one of the largest providers of heavy construction, mining, piling and pipeline services in Western Canada. For more than 50 years, NAEP has provided services to large oil, natural gas and resource companies, with a principal focus on the Canadian Oil Sands. The company maintains one of the largest independently owned equipment fleets in the region.FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT: Kevin RowandNorth American Energy Partners Inc.Director, Strategic Planning & Investor Relations(780) 969-5528(780) 969-5599 (FAX)email@example.com

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Sometimes, it feels as if we are eavesdropping on day-to-day conversations rather than just hearing the usual litany of platitudes and regrets.
Sometimes, it feels as if we are eavesdropping on day-to-day conversations rather than just hearing the usual litany of platitudes and regrets.
"Stray Dog" largely succeeds because Granik's technique complements her subject. Both he and the film are modest in their goals and cherish the value of…
"The Ballad of Narayama" is a Japanese film of great beauty and elegant artifice, telling a story of startling cruelty. What a space it opens…
Patrice Leconte's "Monsieur Hire" is a tragedy about loneliness and erotomania, told about two solitary people who have nothing else in common. It involves a…
Nick Allen picks one of his favorite Roger reviews.
An excerpt of Tony Fitzpatrick's column, "Dime Stories," which has its first published compilation in stores this month.
Nick Allen picks one of his favorite Roger reviews.
An excerpt of Tony Fitzpatrick's column, "Dime Stories," which has its first published compilation in stores this month.
A review of Han Gong-ju from a Far Flung Correspondent.
An FFC responds to Kyle Smith's assertion that women can't enjoy GoodFellas.
America takes on Trump; "St. Elmo's Fire" turns 30; Music in Sofia Coppola's films; Chat with "Vampire Diaries" DP Darren Ganet; R.I.P. Brian Clark.
The table of contents for RogerEbert.com's complete coverage of AFI Docs 2015.
I once saw a movie named "Cal" that never got a proper release in America.
It was an honest attempt to deal with the heartbreak of the situation in Northern Ireland. I was reminded of it the other day by "A Prayer for the Dying," which is an almost obscene exploitation of that situation, a ludicrous movie about a subject that deserves more serious treatment.
The movie stars Mickey Rourke, whose name gives it marquee value, but Rourke has repudiated the film, and no wonder. Whatever qualities he saw in the original screenplay are not apparent in this movie, and what remains is a lurid thriller in which a blind girl gets raped and there's a showdown with a bomb in a church.
See if you can get through the plot summary without gagging. Rourke plays an Irish Republican Army terrorist who has killed dozens of men, but grows sick of the killing after he accidentially blows up a school bus full of children. He becomes useless to his cause, and is hunted by both the British and the IRA.
Alan Bates, in a particularly unpleasant performance, is a sadistic mobster who will give him money and a passport - if he commits one more crime. Bob Hoskins plays the priest who witnesses the killing, and Rourke tries to silence him by confessing the murder, sealing Hoskins' lips under the pact of the confessional.
This plot essentially has nothing to do with Protestants, Catholics, Northern Ireland, the IRA or the British. They are just the backdrop for a slam-bang melodrama. By the end of the movie, common sense has been so completely forgotten that we get a completely impossible scene. Bates traps Hoskins and his blind niece in the church tower with a bomb that will explode in 10 minutes.
He counts down, "Nine...eight...." Meanwhile, Rourke outsmarts a plan to trap him aboard a freighter, kills some assailants and somehow is able to get from the docks to the church tower before Bates gets to "one." This is a plot worthy of "Batman."
The "religion" in the movie is particularly silly, because it is about technicalities, not faith. The whole business of the seal of the confessional is treated simply as a plot gimmick, and although Bob Hoskins is convincing as a priest of strong faith, there's nothing for his character to do with that faith - except be horrified by the events around it.
When I heard that Rourke actually waived his usual salary to make this film, I was amazed: What useful statement did he think it made? Then I learned he feels the film has been "butchered" by the distributors to play up the exploitation elements. I still have my doubts; I don't see much evidence that "A Prayer for the Dying" ever had much integrity.
"Cal," by the way, was a courageous 1984 David Puttnam production starring John Lynch as a young IRA driver who falls in love with Helen Mirren, the widow of a Protestant policeman killed by the IRA.
The movie deals honestly with violence, with terrorism, with the religious question and with human emotions. With four strikes like that against it, no wonder it never got a proper release in this country.
I'll bet Mickey Rourke would have liked it.
A rebuttal to Joni Edelman's piece on "Inside Out."
The July 2015 edition of The Unloved looks at Andrew Dominik's "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert...
Three films starring Gina Lollobrigida have been released on Blu-ray; Glenn Kenny looks at them and her entire career.
MTV's Scream and CBS's Zoo premiere tonight. One is worth your time. Which one?


text:
There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled. There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled. You feel it, don't you? ~ Rumi
Monday, April 03, 2006
Do whatever You want
i am weary of all my wants in prayers.
i am dispirited by my mistakes time and time again.
i am ashamed of my sins.
So, inspirations descended to my heart.
and today all my prayers have turned into one.
"O my Most Benevolent Lord,
Do whatever You want.
I submit to Your will,
So Your Wish You fulfill."
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Stock Photo:
Pot full of gold coins isolated on white background
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- Copyright: Oleksiy Mark
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Application.Shutdown Method (Int32)
.NET Framework 4.6 and 4.5
Shuts down an application that returns the specified exit code to the operating system.
Namespace: System.Windows
Assembly: PresentationFramework (in PresentationFramework.dll)
You can handle the Exit event to set an exit code. However, if you explicitly call Shutdown, and you handle Exit only to set an exit code, you can call Shutdown instead.
This method can be called only from the thread that created the Application object.
- UIPermission
for permission to use all windows and user input events without restriction. Associated enumeration: UIPermissionWindow.AllWindows


text:
The One Question Test
Their result for The One Question Test ...
You scored 100 Libido!
Their Analysis (Vertical line = Average)
They scored 100% on Libido, higher than 55% of your peers.
All possible test results
HAHAHAHAHA! You're such a liar..... Read more
Well sex IS good!!! Read more
Recent Results
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The Can You Make Me Pee My Pants Test
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The How Groomed Art Thou Test
Hi! This is the first test I've written so please take it easy on me! Ever wondered if you go above and beyond when it comes to grooming? Perhaps you ...
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Can you survive in the wilderness? What if you got lost in the woods or there was a natural disaster? Would you die or make it out alive!
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Hi! And welcome to my Yor mom test Test. I'll be using advanced logic and knowledge to determine your true nature. TODO: REWRITE THIS.
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The SANRIO/HELLO KITTY KNOWLEDGE Test
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Hi! And welcome to the "Are You a Player" test. ** I THINK I have fixed what was wrong, so you should get a more "accurate" reading** Every...
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Hi! And welcome to my What Kind of Diaper Are You Test. I'll be using advanced logic and knowledge to determine your true nature.
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Are you afraid of bugs? Or do you think they're cute? Take this test to find out If you're the Afraid type, the Squeamish type, the Neutral type, or the Adoring type!
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This is my first test and it contains 50 questions of various facts about dogs. Each question is scored 2 points so there is a possible 100 points. ...
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The 50 Question Match Perfection Test
Hi! And welcome to my (recently updated 10-29-09) 50 Question Match Perfection Test. This test was designed to test your ultimate compatibility wi...
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Ok, so you think yor're a geek huh? Or maybe you're trying to prove to yourself you aren't a geek....(honestly, who ARE you kidding?)....Anyway, This ...
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Property Type
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Your booking 100% confirmed. Any problems and we'll give you $50.
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Bed and Breakfasts in Cantabria, Spain
Check out the Hostelworld.com selection of bed and breakfasts in Cantabria. Read customer reviews of Cantabria bed and breakfasts, view bed and breakfasts on map of Cantabria and avail of free SMS confirmations. And why not check out our pick for the best things to see and do in Cantabria while you're there. Hostelworld.com - the definitive guide to Cantabria bed and breakfasts.
Top destinations in Cantabria, Spain
|Hostal Vistapark
|Rating 92%
|Pension Madrid 21
|Rating 85%
|Hostal San Glorio
|Rating 87%
|See all 10 Bed and Breakfasts in Santander


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With 1.7 million freelancers, we'll match you with the perfect talent.
The client has made the following changes to the job.
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a different location.
I am looking to hire a writer to regularly write articles on personal finance for our website, we are willing to give credit for the work.
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text:
Karen E. Peterson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
|Karen Peterson
|Member of the Delaware Senate
from the 9th district
|Assumed office
|Preceded by
|Thomas B. Sharp
|Personal details
|Political party
|Vikki Bandy
|Stanton, Delaware
Karen Peterson is an American politician, currently serving in the Delaware General Assembly as a State Senator. First elected in 2002, she is a member of the Democratic Party.
On May 7, 2013, Peterson came out as lesbian during Senate debate on same-sex marriage in Delaware, becoming the state's first openly LGBT legislator.[1] At that time, she had been with her partner Vikki Bandy for 24 years, and the two had entered a civil union when Delaware legalized them the year before.[2] The two were married on July 1, 2013, becoming the first same-sex couple to be married in Delaware.[3]
- ^ "Karen Peterson, Delaware State Senator, Comes Out During Gay Marriage Debate". Huffington Post, May 7, 2013.
- ^ Michelle Garcia, "No. 11: Marriage Equality Signed in Delaware"
- ^ Neff, Lisa. "Delaware gay couples marry" Wisconsin Gazette July 11, 2013; p. 4, col. 3
External links[edit]
- "Senator Karen Peterson". Delaware General Assembly.
|This article about a Delaware politician is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.


text:
Does daily dosage of 25mg of spironolactone cause weight gain?
- Posted:
- 25 May 2012 by Surpriz
- Topics:
- obesity, primary hyperaldosteronism, spironolactone, weight, dosage
Answers (1)
Further Information
- Spironolactone Information for Consumers
- Spironolactone Information for Healthcare Professionals (includes dosage details)
- Side Effects of Spironolactone (detailed)
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Delivering fresh and innovative posts about Seattle and Bellevue urban living. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin or by subscribing to our feed.
Posts filtered on Category
Comparing Rents, Seattle Condo or Seattle Apartment
Lets examine the difference in renting an apartment versus a condo in Seattle. We'll compare a 2 bedroom at Cristalla and a new construction unit at Premiere on Pine (8th and Pine) If you are in the market for a rental there are a number of different buildings, floor plans, amenity packages and locations. In […] [Read More]
The Ellington Condos
Project: The Ellington Address: 2801 1st Ave Neighborhood: Belltown SEARCH THE ELLINGTON BUILDING Built in 2001, The Ellington is a true urban experience located in heart of Seattle's Belltown neighborhood. The 12 story twin-tower condo project offers quintessential in-city living with an impressive list building amenities: 24 hour concierge, fitness center and spa, community […] [Read More]
Early Design Guidance, Altitude Sky Tower (Escala Impact)
A proposed project at 5th and Stewart (see above) is quickly gaining a lot of attention. It will be presented to the Seattle Design Review Board tomorrow at 7pm. The current proposal is for a 50 story project featuring a hotel, apartments and condos – named The Altitude Sky Tower. We believe that this new […] [Read More]
Post Mews – Travelers Hotel
Building: Post Mews Neighborhood: Pioneer Square BUILDING DESCRIPTION Originally built as the Elgin Hotel in 1913, Post Mews was later recognized, and still referenced to today as Traveler's Hotel. Living up to the name, it's Post Ave location is just steps from waterfront, ferries, sports arenas, charming cafés and art galleries. The low-rise brick building was […] [Read More]
The Condos You Can Rent For $5,000 In Downtown Seattle
Project: Gallery Location: Belltown Rent: $5,000 Bed/Bath: 2/2.5 One of the Penthouse units at Gallery offered at $5,000 per month. Private deck, corner location and Viking and Sub Zero appliances. Project: Cristalla Location: West Edge Rent: $4,200 Bed/Bath: 2/2 10th floor and the Southwest corner at Seattle's forever popular Cristalla. This unit comes with a […] [Read More]
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