No it’s not Santa Claus but it’s still good news. Peter Shankman is coming to town (Utah) to speak. If you don’t know Peter Shankman he founded HARO (helpareporter.com). He’s become one of my entrepreneur heroes.

First I tried to get actual championship skydivers to dive at the event. But we wanted to keep it free and that immediately put us over budget. Even without the skydivers it will be fun.

So please join OrangeSoda internet marketing, and me at:

Jump Into Social Media with Peter Shankman, Jet Setter, Skydiver

Peter will discuss social networking, viral marketing, and all the “fun ways” to use them (or not use them) for your business.

More details and RSVP here: http://skydiver.eventbrite.com

Related Articles:

• Peter Shankman: Social Media: Are We Ever Going to “Get it?” (huffingtonpost.com)
• Helping a reporter out is big business for HARO (socialmedia.biz)
• How To Become A Millionaire By ‘Helping’ Reporters [Public Relations] (gawker.com)
• Microsoft Sponsors New Media Guru Peter Shankman for June PR Conference (eon.businesswire.com)
• Peter Shankman and Janet Muto Join Pixability’s Advisory Board – Shankman Invests in the Promising Video Marketing Company (prweb.com)

I’ve been thinking about clients – the good ones and the not so good ones (which can be subjective).

In Joan Stewart’s free PR tips ebook she mentions the dilemma we face when deciding if we want to take on a new client that we have doubts about. Many times this is obvious – it’s a yes. Then there are clients you have doubts about. There doesn’t seem to be good communication from the start or your prices are too far of a stretch.

Here are some reasons that you might pass on a new client:

1. They have unrealistically high expectations (like that their press release will go viral).
2. The client doesn’t appreciate your skills or think your work or time is valuable.
3. They keep expecting more and more for the same price or even less.
4. The client isn’t willing to pay your fees and try to talk you down (there are all levels in the marketplace – what you think is too low is someone else’s target market. There are also people priced much higher).
5. The client asks you provide service or products that you do not offer.
6. You share different values.
7. You cannot accommodate the volume of work requested.

Any of these sound familiar to you? I wonder if the recession and need for money might tempt you to say yes even when you know it should be a no (but try to talk yourself into).

Are you taking on clients you might otherwise pass on because you need the work? Please share your stories in the comments.

Yesterday I interviewed Craig Wolfe, the Buddhist entrepreneur who’s made millions selling rubber ducks that look like people. He capitalizes on getting license agreements to put the likeness of pop culture icons, celebrities and sports team’s insignia on the ducks. He ties his ducks into what is in the news (an idea I promote in my online pr book) and in the process he regularly gets some amazing press.

He’s one of the first people I’ve talked to who truly built PR into his product. He answers every phone call and email, treats people with respect, and continually improves his product and packaging. The result is he’s often doing push marketing – because more often than not, new customers seek him out. He built CelebriDucks that he runs out of his home with no permanent employees or staff into a big success.

Wolfe started our call by stating that he had made time for me to do the interview and to take as much time as I needed. In our world that is rare – people are generally in a hurry and they are too busy to talk long. The message they send is that there is always something more important than what they are doing. Or that you aren’t important enough to get much time or attention. So he established good karma.

He doesn’t measure ROI or track things – he simply plants a million seeds. Or should I say he tosses a lot of ducks on the water to see what floats. He started the company by sending a pitch to every single newspaper in the country. Only one responded – the local paper (I always say start local first and then leverage that coverage into bigger media outlets). But that one story led to a big deal and stories like that continue to send him more deals. Once the kindling started he constantly stokes the fire by looking for and writing about other places his ducks show up (or giving story ideas to journalists).

His packaging is now custom for each duck. So a penguin duck is sitting on an iceberg with a vivid ocean scene around it. The new WordPress has a bug and I can’t upload the picture but my favorite duck is the glow in the dark “Scream” duck. On the back of each box there’s an ad for the chocolate duck that you can send with some chocolates.

Unlike other kitschy promo items that get throw away, people save his. In fact, they collect them. Some are works of art. Most are funny. But they all have incredible attention to detail and all of his packaging sells the product.

Craig starts his day with a simple to do list and outsources anything he’s not good at. Talking to him it’s a little hard to pin him down. I’m drawn to his stories but I called with a purpose – to find out how he does his PR. I came away feeling that if he could make this business work then I have hope! He’s an idea guy and he’s well, very zen (something I could use more of).

I told him his story could make a great book about the Buddhist entrepreneur. He tells me that he runs a side business free of charge for someone who he considers very enlightened – just so he can be around him. You see, it doesn’t matter anyway because to Craig his job is to direct energy and this guy has a lot of good energy. Besides (this is my favorite part) the money part isn’t that much of an issue. In the end, he plans to give it all to Buddhism anyway.

Related articles

• PR Pros: Will you Blend? (newspapergrl.com)
• On Giving Referrals (newspapergrl.com)
• The Problem with Multi-tasking (ignitemylifenow.com)

I recently saw an interview on Nightline with Judge Judy and then read an interview with Oprah. Both are enormously successful, but have very different shows and demands. They are both vying for #1 for queen of daytime TV.

Quick Facts about Judge Judy
15 years on the air – started being a family law judge and her style was profiled in an LA Times article then picked up on 60 Minutes. That publicity led to her reality TV show. It started slowly but has risen to the top rated show on daytime TV.

Watched by ten million people daily.

When asked about Oprah Judge Judy says: Her talents are boundless, I think she works 24/7 – it’s not for me. I like my life of balance.

Married with kids and grandkids.

She frequently beats Oprah in the ratings. 13^th Emmy nomination (no wins). Here’s the Nightline interview  of Judge Judy on Hulu.

She doesn’t try to form a relationship with the audience really and it’s not her entire life. Her audience is made up of paid extras which are carefully orchestrated to be part of the show

Her straightforward style that can be abrasive is said to start the mean TV style of Dr. Phil and others.

Salary: $25 million/year

Quick facts about Oprah

24 years on the air

Salary put at $385 million (according to Wikipedia) and is one of the highest paid TV stars and much more than Judge Judy (but after several million who’s counting, right?)

By her own admission she works hard and her work is her life. “I would like to have a little more balance…My obligations have become my life.”

I keep saying yes to everything, and managing it all gets to be overwhelming. A typical day for me starts here with a 6:30 workout; by 7:30 I’m in the makeup chair. And then I don’t usually get in the car to leave until 9, 10 o’clock at night. Get home just in time to breathe, get the damn puppy thing done—I don’t know what I was thinking, getting a puppy—then go to bed, get up, and start the whole process all over again. It’s too much.

Single, no children…”I do feel like I am a mother in a broader sense—to a generation of viewers who’ve grown up with me.”

7.4 million watch daily

I’m always curious about the most successful people in an industry. What it says to me is that you can be successful being Gary V and making your work your entire life. Or you can be Tim Ferris and pair down work to a minimum 4 hour work week so you can play the rest of the time. You can make your millions connecting with people, updating Twitter and not sleeping or you can do it on your terms.

I’m more Judge Judy than Oprah in terms of I want the balance. I don’t want my ambitions or work to consume my life. I’m also more Tim Ferris – it’s much easier for me to make money when I take myself out of it and let it run (which is why I love affiliate marketing.)

What about you – are you more Judge Judy or Oprah?

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• Judge Judy Stomps Oprah in Daytime TV Ratings (idiomag.com)

I have to tell this story. Nigel Swaby and I were going to interview Pounder’s Grill in Salt Lake City Utah about their social media success last week. I’m fascinated by the expansion of restaurants in Utah and the common thread of the ones I know of, is that they use social media. Mo Bettah Stakes, Smashburger, Pounder’s and other restaurants are thriving in a tough economy and opening new locations in Utah while so many are closing. I wanted to explore the correlation between their growth and how they engage their audience through social media.

But it didn’t happen. Why? This gets interesting. One of the owner’s of Pounder’s Googled Nigel’s name. Or perhaps it was Google Suggested his name. In 2006 Nigel wrote about and befriended and controversial figure Casey Serin during the real estate boom. That was enough to cancel the interview. Note that Nigel didn’t actually do anything wrong.

If you start typing my name into Google you’ll see that it says “Janet Thaeler Smashburger” which means that people have searched for that phrase. Yes even though I have been writing about online PR and internet marketing for over 5 years, Smashburger is what people have linked with my name (in searches). Thankfully it’s tame, not something not true but making me look bad, or someone with my name that is a convict. Janet Thaeler isn’t easy to spell or remember but it is unique.

Thankfully there is only 1 video I know of that could haunt me – I wouldn’t want it to show up when I’m running for pubic office. But when I was in college no one I knew was snapping photos and posting them online.  It wasn’t as easy as it is now. My phone didn’t have a camera. I didn’t even have a cell phone. But my son’s generation – that is a fact of life. Cell phones will get cheaper and more powerful and most things will be mobile. We must assume that anything we do could be posted and shared with the world – and yes – show up in search results when someone searches on our name. FOREVER.

I just heard Marty Cooper, inventor of the cell phone say this on 60 Minutes,: “Sorry, privacy is a thing of the past…” That means that your mistakes, associations, guilty or not are there for anyone to see. It also means that we’ll know that no one is perfect and it will be harder to escape your past.

You are what Google, Facebook and Twitter say you are (or whatever tools will be in vogue). What we really need to be private is our financial information – but the rest of it is up for grabs. Even if you don’t sign up to be online – there is no opt-out. I like how Chris Brogan puts it that you can delete your Facebook profile – just like you can opt-out of the cash society. Nigel reminded me that the phone book (while the reach is much more limited) is opt-out too. You are there with your name, your address and phone. You have to pay to have it removed.

Privacy is outdated. Anything you do can be used against you online. That’s why trust is such a big deal – because the internet is still the wild west where anything goes. We want to know who we can trust and who we cannot trust. Sometimes that decision will be made based on such tenuous things as the words that are associated with your name in Google Suggest. While I like the concept of transparency we cannot bury Google Suggest results – nor do we have any control over what they show. That’s more disconcerting. That point was driven home this week.

The Women Tech Council has invited 3 social media experts (who happen to be men) to speak in Salt Lake City on May 11. That is on Tuesday. It’s a half day conference that you should not miss if you are in marketing. You heard Seth Godin, now it’s time to hear Chris Brogan. He’s one of the biggest names in the industry.

Speakers:

• Chris Brogan, here is Chris Brogan on Twitter
• Julien Smith, here is Julien on Twitter
• Mitch Joel, here is Mitch Joel on Twitter

Price of admission includes breakfast and 2 books: Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith and Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel. This will also be a good time to network with other social networking geeks like me, Josh Peters, Pete Codella and Nigel Swaby. Yes, even women like Carina W., Kelly Anderson, Jyl Pattee, and Marie LeBaron.

Register Now

This Tuesday, May 11
7:30-8:30 a.m.
Registration and Breakfast Networking

8:30am-12:00 p.m. Speakers and roundtable Q&A

Location:
Noah’s
322 West 11000 South
South Jordan, UT 84095 USA

Event Cost: $65 for members, $75 for non-members
Sponsorship opportunities and group discounts are available.

I hope I’ll see you there! In the meantime here’s a taste of what’s coming:

Since becoming an author I read even more books – mostly nonfiction. I’m also a part of a book club so I read fiction once a month too.

Lately with business books I seem to read them in pairs. I find myself reading books at the same time with what seem like polar opposite messages. Before it was “The 4 Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferris and “Crush It” by Gary Vaynerchuk. One says to work far less hours and one advocates working a lot more than the average work week of 40 hours.

Now the paradox comes from “Linchpin” by Seth Godin and “The Referral Engine” by John Jantsch. They both have the same color orange covers and I carry them around together. The Referral Engine talks about a system that is predictably delivers well. Linchpin is about making your own way and being remarkable.

Another example: I alternatively read Godin praise Bob Dylan  and listened to a CD on my way to work about how inconsistent Bob Dylan is (as in fail).

From an interview with Seth Godin:

Seth Godin: Well, you know, a lot of people want competence, and certainly people on Wall Street seem to, and competence being someone who they think is good at things. Unfortunately, competence is the enemy of greatness because people who are competent like being competent. They like doing a good enough job all the time.

Bob Dylan is serially incompetent. He got booed off the stage in the ’60s. He got booed off the stage when he became a born-again Christian. He was ignored for years because he keeps taking risks, because he keeps doing things he is not good at and then getting good at them. When we look at corporations, which a Motley Fool person spends a lot of time doing, Wall Street keeps putting pressure on corporations to be average and then they’re surprised when they hit the wall when, in fact, it’s the corporations that have strong leaders who ignore Wall Street, the Apple Computers (Nasdaq: AAPL) of the world, the Googles (Nasdaq: GOOG) of the world — those are the people who keep confounding expectations by overdelivering because they’re willing to be incompetent.

Mac Greer: And along those lines, Seth, I have a friend who’s seen Bob Dylan multiple times and said that sometimes he’s been great and sometimes it’s just been awful. I’ve only seen him once and he was great, but it sounds like there’s a hit-and-miss quality to his performing.

Seth Godin: Oh, yeah, I took my son to see him and we left halfway through because it was horrible. (Laughter.) But the point is that human beings would rather have glimpses of genius than day-to-day mediocrity.

Seth Godin is the guy who doesn’t match his socks!

Anyway, I suppose I’ve been going through a bit of an identity crisis. I’m more of a Seth Godin type who wishes she were more of a John Jantsch type. I married a John Jantsch type to compensate. His business does really well and its fueled by referrals. Mine…I’m still (as a new author & with new products) trying to figure it out.

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Yesterday I was a panelist for the Salt Lake City Social Media Club. We talked about small business marketing and PR. Right before leaving I read my friend Chris‘s tweets from a SEMPO (a search engine marketing organization) webinar he was listening to:

1. SEMPO: On average, companies expect to spend 43% more on SEO in 2010 than they did in 2009. We can help @seocom
2. SEMPO: Most important trends in digital marketing: Video, local search, personalized search, and mobile.
3. SEMPO: Most companies social media strategy consists of an FB page and Twitter account. 11% use myspace. 16% Wikipedia. 
4. SEMPO: 50% of companies say social media has had impact on business. 27% report no impact. 10% report “huge” impact.
5. SEMPO: 38% of companies have a hard time making business case for continued investment in social media. I think that number is low.
6. SEMPO: 42% of companies surveyed have hard time measuring SEO ROI. Fail. SEO ROI is easier to measure than most marketing methods.
7. According to SEMPO 62% using social media to measure brand awareness, which – IMO – is incredibly difficult to measure. Disconnect? ROI?
8. SEMPO: Companies are struggling to figure out how to maximize their social media efforts. Most are confused over strategy. 
9. SEMPO: 51% of companies use social media to increase brand awareness and manage reputation. 16% use it for lead generation.
10. SEMPO: 53% of companies surveyed use Bing paid search network – stealing market share from Yahoo. Google Adwords still rules. 
11. SEMPO: 30% of companies surveyed moving budget money away from radio advertising to SEO
12. SEMPO: 69% of companies surveyed shifting newspaper and magazine print ad dollars to SEO budgets
13. SEMPO: Only 13% of companies plan to double or more than double their social media budget in 2010 compared to 2009.

This doesn’t paint a great picture for social media, but it does for SEO. But I do have to note that the source is a search engine marketing company. I also work for an SEO company – OrangeSoda. We do social media consulting – because having active profiles on social networks is good for search results – because search engines look for fresh content.

What I pointed out yesterday is that the problem for small businesses is that social media is a HUGE time commitment. It’s an ongoing commitment. You’ve got to be consistently involved. Even though some purists say not to, I say use every tool available to make it easier. If that’s too much, then maybe working with people who are active may be a better choice than joining in.

In an article about social media for small businesses on CNN it says,

“Maintaining constant, and genuine, dialogue with customers who are on the Internet around-the-clock can be both time consuming and exhausting, requiring extra resources that small companies may not have.”

- Matthew Yeomans, director of UK-based social media strategy firm Custom Communication.

Stephen Leighton, owner of “Has Bean Coffee,” a UK-based Internet coffee-roasting business that has a worldwide following. How? with social media. But look at the time commitment for his results: “he spends up to 17 hours a day, seven days a week, updating his coffee video blog, talking to audiences on Twitter and responding to every email he receives.”

That’s several thousand $$ (I figure about $7-9k on the low end) a month in time spent. Plus it’s not good for relationships  to work those kind of hours (you’re probably sacrificing your family and social life). I wonder if it’s bringing that kind of return. Also, how much would that same business spend on advertising in a month? Does this replace that budget or is all the budget being spent on social media?

I’m not saying that everyone must contribute that much time – but it gives you an idea that it’s going to be hours. If you don’t have a lot to say, don’t know what you want to accomplish and can’t measure the impact, is it worth it? Probably not. But if you have a lot to say and need a platform to reach your customers and you want to engage with them or answer their questions, social media can be ideal. Whether it’s worth your time is a question every business must answer.

For some, social media is a silver bullet, but for most it’s another marketing tool (though a pretty fun one). For me, social media made my entire career. Without my blog and Twitter very few people would know who I am. But because of the exposure it’s given me I’ve built a reputation, gotten jobs, written a book, launched businesses, etc. Plus I’ve loved doing it. I found it hard to stop. Hours would fly by.

Social media can do the same for your business as it has for me – put you on the map and build your reputation and visibility.

If you are a small business how has social media helped you? Or, if you haven’t gotten involved, why not?

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• Smashburger’s Social Media Success (newspapergrl.com)

I’m in Las Vegas for a vacation this week staying near the Fashion Show Mall. It has the huge rotating ad video screens outdoors. There are often iPod ads. I expected iPad ads – but haven’t seen any yet.

Last night as we left a show I heard the words of the ad mentioning PRNewswire. Then turning the corner I saw the ads. It rotated stories from press releases, along with news images. It was awesome. I know this isn’t the best picture, but you get the idea. I’m so curious if it’s worth the investment to advertise – since it’s usually consumer products not business that’s advertised there.

Incidentally we stayed at Treasure Island, then at the Wynn (what a view!!). I love the Wynn except for the $30 fee to use the gym and the prices on all food (mostly worth it but not every time – the $50 light lunch was ok). Generally speaking Steve Wynn has amazing taste and you can count on everything to be good (we should’ve skipped room service at Treasure Island & gotten it here instead). We’ve hopefully walked enough to work off the calories eaten.

Anyway, my point is we also got to go into the Fashion Show Mall to the Apple store long enough for me to play with the new iPad. It made me wish I’d skipped my Kindle (which I’ve loved) and wait for the iPad.  I think it could be a business expense (like the press releases I write), right?