Create A Talking Avatar for a 3rd Party Referral

Create an online talking avatar for yourself. It's a great third-party referral mechanism. It is more effective to have a message delivered by a third party as there is a sense of credibility attached to the process - whether real or imaginary. After all, the reason these avatars are used is because they help get the job done. They work 24 hours around the clock. Why not put one to work for your business?

Want to see an example of an avatar that is helping to draw customers to a Thai restaurant? Visit Paul Robert Guy on Tings Thai Kitchen.

Showcasting Someone Else's PFD and Vlog

Take a look at this - Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Where's Dan? To showcase what someone else sends you online, all you need is a link placed on a blog. Any free blog site will do for this. Any free Squidoo lens will do this as well. But, if you want to actually create something similar to what Dan has done - and you do not have access to a web server because you do not have a domain name of your own - I recommend you open up a Slideshare account. This may be all you need. However, I want you to know that Slideshare has a module that works within Squidoo. And, a Squidoo/Slideshare pairing my prove more to your liking.

Where PR and Social Media Merge

Thanks to PitchEngine.com, I have access to a unique press release service. I am able to get news listed on Google News. In fact, both of my press releases for a recent festival got posted to Google News. Believe it or not, I got a letter of accommodation for that festival from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I admit to being a little unconventional. When I spread news about an event, I get the world involved. I am a big advocate of mutual collaboration. Just visit Hardesters Shopping Center's Spring Fling. I got Canada's Globespan TV to interview a woman in Hidden Valley Lake, CA regarding the local festival. I also got vendors for the festival to showcase "Dear Editor" letters. These letters were used not only to draw the local media to the festival, but also to aid them in promoting it. I may soon have my own (online press room) up-and-running.

My press release service is social media-based. I not only target specific media, I inter-mingle with the PR community. The best way to reach a target market is NOT to push your message AT THEM. The best way to reach a TARGET MARKET is through a THIRD-PARTY REFERRAL. And, the best way to get a third-party referral today is through the dynamics of SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS. See the diagram below.

In addition to having access to a press release service, I have an online talk show, called Power Networking on Talkshoe.com. I have had celebrities like Jon Provost ("Timmie" of the Lassie TV series) and members of the National Speakers Association, such as Rebecca Morgan, as guests. I also moderate a special network on Ryze.com called Clusters: Small Business Group Netweaving. This network is designed not only to educate folks on the use of social media tools, but to help them in small groups get goals they want to achieve reached. Quite simply, it is much easier to GTD (Get Things Done) when you work in a small group of passionate people. I have also created CD's and done direct-mail campaigns for professional speakers, set up Wi-Fi hot spots and market Wi-Fi digital photo frames.

If you know a business anywhere in the English-speaking world - not just your local community - that needs to create some "buzz," please know I am confident I can help.

Contact information:
Email - lamar@mchsi.com
Phone: 707-709-8605
Skype: lamar777
Twitter: lamarjmorgan

PitchEngine - Social Media Meets Press Release

Tired of the traditional press release? Sick of Word docs, pdf email attachments and image CDs? PitchEngine makes it easy for you to incorporate PR assets like video, audio and images directly into your press release and share it with your media contacts via email and cut-and-paste links or post it directly to Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook and more!

Your media contacts will be able to make comments, ask questions and find more resources about your company, client or brand right from within each release. No more attachments, no more unnecessary phone calls and voice mails asking for photos, product samples or interviews- it's all available for easy delivery with the PitchEngine SMR. Streamline the media relations process and make journalists, bloggers and writers see what they’ve been missing.

Make Friends With The Foundation Center

The Foundation Center is America's philanthropic library system. More than likely, you will not run across anyone who knows more about connecting the people who need grant money with those that have it than them. For that reason, it would be good to develop some kind of relationship with them - whether you happen to be personally associated with a nonprofit organization or not.

While The Foundation Center is headquartered in New York City, it does have branch offices across the nation in major cities - such as Atlanta, Chicago and San Francisco. It also has what it calls "cooperating collections" across the US and into Mexico.

If you want to learn the basics of grant-seeking, how to write grant letters - including putting together a grant budget proposal - The Foundation Center is well-qualified to teach you. The library system has been in existence for 53 years.

If you happen to live in Lake County, CA or know someone who does and needs grant-funding assistance, there is going to be a FREE grant-writing seminar, conducting by Scott Ullman of The Foundation Center of San Francisco on Wednesday, April 15th, from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Hidden Valley Community Church, 18160 Spruce Grove Rd. Ext. in Hidden Valley Lake. All that is required to attend is to RSVP.

For more information on the seminar and to RSVP, visit www.squidoo.com/TMMF.

Take My Twitter Bird (pause)...Please

If you are old enough to remember the Ed Sullivan TV Show, chances are you remember a comedian named Henny Youngman. His signature comedic line was "Take my wife(pause)...please!" Well, this post is sort of a play on Youngman's words. But, unlike Youngman, I actually want you to make use of my Twitter bird picture for the benefit of your own blog and Twitter site. To do that, you simply need the code. And, here it is -


<*center*>
<*a href="http://twitter.com/lamarjmorgan"*>
<*src="http://i363.photobucket.com/albums/oo76/lamarjmorgan/th_TwitterBird.jpg"*><* /a *>
<*/center*>

In order for you to be able to view this code, I have added *'s to the code. You will need to delete those *'s paces for the code to work with your blog as I have done on this page. You will also need to replace "lamarjmorgan" with your actual Twitter username. If you do not have a Twitter account, visit http://twitter.com and sign up. If you would like to follow me on Twitter, just click my little blue bird.

Happy Twittering!

Getting Media Support - A Mutual Uplift Process

In the spirit of the win/win scenario, here is a marketing approach that turns the marketing sales funnel into a potential megaphone and makes clever use of the personal referral.

Let's say there is an event coming up - a trade show, business mixer, or even a shopping center grand opening. You want to create significant buzz about the event, but have almost no funds for advertising. What can you do? Answer: get folks you know - both online and offline - to help spread your message by sending you actual "Dear Editor" letters via email. Here are the steps:

1) Send email to schools, post to your blog and social networks that you would like to be sent "Dear Editor" letters as email or email attachments which you can in turn capture as JPEGS and post to a Squidoo lens.

2) Explain what the content of those messages need to contain. Encourage the person writing the message to include his contact information because you want that kind of information to be available to the news media for follow-up and confirmation purposes. Since this is a win/win deal, encourage the letter-writer to cleverly also promote his business in the "Dear Editor" letter. The letter needs to be brief. No more than a half-page in length.

3) Capture each message used as a JPEG and load it to a Squidoo lens using the Polaroid Squidoo module. Should the Polaroid module does not meet your needs, us the Text/Write Squidoo module and HTML from a Photobucket.com account. This formula is designed to acknowledge the people helping your promotion. It demonstrates you really do appreciate their help. It should also give the news media a wide selection of "Dear Editor" letters from which to choose for their respected publications.

4) Simply contact the news media using a brief email message with a link to your Squidoo lens. The news media should figure out what you are doing and be impressed with your clever approach. Why? Because you are actually helping them do their job in ways most folks do not.

This is not pie-in-the-sky rhetoric. This process is being implemented for a shopping center grand opening in Hidden Valley Lake, CA. Visit the following link to see what is scheduled to take place at the Grand Opening of Hardester's Shopping Center.