It's really not that hard to win friends and influence people.

It’s the Holy Grail of interactive marketing: getting “social media influencers”—the ones with the voice and the reach, the ones to whom everyone else listens—to endorse and promote what you’re doing.

Recently, my company managed to inspire 60 such influencers to participate in our event, called The Influencer Project, and they even took it upon themselves to help spread the word.

People like Social Media Examiner’s own Michael Stelzner, Guy Kawasaki, Robert Scoble, Gary Vaynerchuk, David Meerman Scott, and others all signed on. We were grateful beyond belief.

Why’d they come on board? And how’d we do it?

First Things First: No-one Cares About Your Brand

Many of us who are new to the social media space want influencers to “get behind” our brands, products and special events.

We think we can just reach out to them, and if we have a great thing going on, they’ll naturally want to endorse what we’re doing.

It’s an honest mistake, usually, but it does backfire—or at least, it won’t get you the results you’re looking for.

Of course, if you have deep reserves of cash, you may be able to afford paying handsomely for a big name to review your product—although, to be sure, that can get into very tricky ethical territory and is a delicate issue.

But for the rest of us—for those who don’t have tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend on “influencer outreach”—we have to be a little more creative.

In fact, we have to get rid of the very idea of “trying” to “get” a social media influencer to “back” our brand.

Instead, we need to create innovative ways to inspire not only well-known influencers, but also large numbers of participants, to join a project, a cause, an initiative. And that takes a different kind of thinking—one that I’ll explain below.

How to Inspire a Social Media Influencer

The thing is, no-one wants to be your salesperson—unless they are, of course, being paid to sell your products. But everyone—social media influencers included—wants to be part of something that’s bigger than them, that’s creative and that brings new ideas into the world.

So, without any further ado, here are my 5 creative ways for inspiring web celebrities to come on board with what you’re doing:

#1: Don’t Ask for an Endorsement

Don’t ask them to endorse a product or site. Instead, create a project—related to, but independent of, your brand—that they can get behind. Think about the “Yes We Can” video that will.i.am created for Barack Obama’s campaign.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsV2O4fCgjk

Regardless of your political leaning, there’s a lesson here. Yes, will.i.am’s a celebrity. And yes, Hollywood is known for bringing other celebrities on board political campaigns. But that’s not the fundamental point. The point is that there was a cause, an initiative, a project that people wanted to get behind, that inspired them to act—and they did.

This is what you need. You want to create something that many people will join. A cause, a vision.

#2: Make it “Memetic”

Memetic means that it has a meme-like quality. Well, what’s a meme, you ask? In its simplest definition, a meme is an idea that spreads from person to person, one that’s so “catchy” that people almost can’t help but to spread it.

“Yes We Can” was a meme.

A meme is bigger than a brand. Just Do It is a meme. No Fear is a meme. The Red Bull Flugtag is a meme. It’s something that people can identify with, make their own and share with others. If you’re simply trying to strong-arm a social media influencer into singing your brand’s praises, good luck. But if you have a project that has memetic quality, then you’re on the right track.

#3: But Make it Values-Driven, too

A meme unto itself isn’t enough. Sure, you could get lots of YouTube video views by trying to replicate something like a funny hamster, but you won’t be enrolling people in a vision.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8Kyi0WNg40

In other words, you won’t be providing extraordinary value—to the end user or to the influencer.

On the other hand, if your project provides overwhelming value and is memetic, then you’re not only sure to inspire people, you’ll also be making the world a better place.

It makes business sense, too. Simply trying to make a campaign “go viral” for the sake of going viral is far riskier than creating a project that offers tremendous benefit. In our case, we provided users with more than 60 helpful tips that they could use to increase their digital influence in 60 minutes. They heard from luminaries they respected.

Everyone won. There was no attempt to manipulate people to act on our behalf for a hollow goal. It was values-driven all the way around.

#4: Reduce the Barriers to Entry

There are two things all of us have an increasingly short supply of: time and attention. Unless you’re Apple or Microsoft and you’re offering a blogger a sneak peek at your new product, asking someone to write a whole blog post about you—or, for example, do an hour-long webinar to your not-quite-robust-enough-yet list of subscribers—is going to make getting a “yes” a lot harder.

In our case, we only asked for 60 seconds of the speaker’s time. The proposition was often met with enthusiasm. “Sure, I’d love to do a 60-second interview!” It was fun, short and interesting. There’s no way we would have gotten 60 busy people to do full-hour interviews each right off the bat. So we made it radically easy for them to say “yes.”

But that’s only part of the picture: we also made it incredibly easy for the audience to say “yes.” For only an hour of their time, we were going to give them 60 tips from 60 experts. Not a bad deal. And that’s exactly what we heard from participants: it was completely manageable and reasonable to take one hour to learn from so many people.

So don’t just reduce the barriers for those you want to headline your campaign, also make it easy for your intended audience to participate.

#5: Be Creative, but Err on the Side of Accessibility

When describing his company’s financial practices, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff said that while his software-as-a-service platform may have been revolutionary, his bookkeeping methods were as traditional as they get.

Similarly, I believe that it’s important to let your creativity and imagination run wild, and to create something new—for example, to take a conventional idea (say, marketing conference) and challenge it (the shortest marketing conference ever). But I see far too many campaigns that feature weird, wild and avant-garde stuff without making it accessible to the end users.

The “60-in-60″ idea was new. But it wasn’t “43-in-68.” We didn’t ask them to speak for 10 seconds. We didn’t request that they sing, dance or rap. In other words, it all made sense—both to them and to the audience. “60 tips” is still an attractive value proposition, and participants felt that they truly benefited from the advice.

But the other side of completely inaccessible and avant-garde is utter banality. Think of the typical webinar, conference or jargon-ridden special report. Sure, those can be great as ongoing lead-generation sources, but not as a way to get noticed and build digital influence rapidly.

So even though I’d recommend erring on the side of accessibility, I still want to challenge and encourage you to come up with something innovative.

Now the Ball’s in Your Court

Hopefully, these tips have given your creative faculties some juice to explore what you can do to inspire social media influencers—and your target audience—to join your cause.

What do you think? Have you had success recruiting influencers? Put your comments in the box below.

Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. We’re keeping our eyes on three particular stories of interest today.

iTunes 10 and Ping Are Now Live

Apple’s latest version of iTunes and it’s new music-centric social network, Ping, went live late Wednesday evening, some eight hours after the product was announced at the company’s press conference in San Francisco. Mashable’s Christina Warren contends that Ping has a long way to go if it’s going to become a better alternative to MySpace.

Samsung Unveils Galaxy Tab

Samsung has revealed its long-awaited tablet, the Galaxy Tab, at the IFA consumer electronics fair in Berlin.

The tablet sports a 7-inch TFT-LCD display with 1024×600-pixel resolution, Android 2.2 support, a Cortex A8 1 GHz processor, 512 of RAM and 16/32 GB of internal memory with upgrade options. It also comes with a 3-megapixel camera with autofocus and LED Flash, plus a second 1.3-megapixel camera for video chats, as well as Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity. The battery, Samsung claims, can last up to seven hours of movie playback.

Samsung, it appears, has created a real competitor for Apple’s iPad, which lacks the Galaxy Tab’s cameras and support for popular multimedia formats such as Flash.

Samsung has partnered with Vodafone for the launch, which is scheduled for October in Vodaphone’s European markets, and later this year in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Twitter Releases Official iPad App

Twitter has released its official iPad app, available now in Apple’s App Store [iTunes link] for free. The app allows for seamless navigation between tweets, photos, web pages, videos and other content, enabling users to load videos while they’re browsing their timelines, for instance, as well as view them in-line with other content and expand them to full-screen size.

Further News

• Starbucks is rolling out its Starbucks Card Mobile App for BlackBerry today, enabling users to manage their payment and rewards cards, and even pay for their purchases at 16 stores in Seattle and the Silicon Valley region, as well as 1,000 Target stores nationwide.
• Google will remain AOL’s exclusive search partner through 2015, both companies announced this morning. The deal has been expanded to include mobile search and to bring AOL’s content to YouTube [via PaidContent].
• Competitors Boxee, Rdio and Roku have all issued responses to Apple’s latest TV and music offerings.
• Microsoft announced Wednesday that it has completed the development of its forthcoming Windows Phone 7. The mobile OS has reached the release to manufacturing (RTM) stage.

Disclosure: Samsung, BlackBerry and Microsoft are Mashable sponsors.

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Series supported by HTC EVO 4G

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This series is brought to you by HTC EVO 4G, America’s first 4G phone. Only from Sprint. The “First to Know” series keeps you in the know on what’s happening now in the world of social media and technology.

More About: apple, first to know series, galaxy tab, ipad, ipad app, itunes 10, Ping, samsung, Tablet, twitter

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When he was introducing Ping, Steve Jobs mentioned that it will immediately reach a user base of 160 million people in 23 countries. Sounds impressive, until you remember that 23 countries actually isn’t that big of a number; and if you’re in a country such as Chile, the Czech Republic, Croatia, or India, then Ping – just like the music store component of iTunes – is simply not available.

The users in most countries around the world are used to products and features not being available to them – receiving money through PayPal or buying music through iTunes doesn’t work for me, for example – but Ping is different. It’s supposed to be a social network; its competitors, Last.FM and MySpace, are available in most countries in the world. Users expect it to just work, but in my version of iTunes, Ping simply doesn’t exist.

Here’s a thread from Apple’s support forums, in which users from all around the world complain that they can’t find Ping. After Apple’s big announcement, most of them don’t even consider the possibility that this great new social network is not available in their country: they think they’re doing something wrong. But Apple hasn’t said a word about availability in other countries, so it might be a long wait for all these users.

From Apple’s point of view, it’s understandable it chose to tie Ping closely to the music store. One feature Steve Jobs had highlighted is buying a song directly from a status update; something you obviously cannot do if you don’t have access to the store. But the social networking part of Ping will suffer for it.

For an example of how being available only in a small number of countries can hurt Ping, consider one of its most important features: concert listings. This is where Last.FM shines; go to any place in the world, and you’ll be able to see which concerts are available, when, at what clubs and who’s attending. But if residents of a certain country cannot access Ping, then the concert listings for that particular country will be a sad and empty sight.

Facebook, which hasn’t really focused on music so far, is also available in most countries in the world; it’s the de facto standard for social networking, and it has half a billion active users. Yes, Ping is directly tied to music, but users aren’t used to network from iTunes. Should Facebook introduce some features similar to those Ping has, it would automatically have a huge advantage simply because it would work for all users, not just the select few. If Apple has any serious aspirations to grow Ping into a global social networking powerhouse, it should strongly consider making it available everywhere.

We’ve contacted Apple to find out when (and if) Ping might become available in countries other than the initial 23, and are still awaiting their response.

More About: apple, itunes, Ping

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The success of an e-commerce website is defined by sales, not by design. However, that doesn’t mean that design does not matter. In this post we’ll showcase 25 well-designed e-commerce sites from a wide variety of industries. For more on e-commerce sites please see these posts from the archives:

• 50 Inspirational E-Commerce Website Designs
• 25 Inspirational E-Commerce Website Designs – Part Two
• 35 Excellent E-Commerce User Interface Designs
• 25 Creative E-Commerce Website Designs
• WordPress E-Commerce: 30+ Resources
• 37 Shopping Cart Options for Developers
• 9 Characteristics of Well-Designed E-Commerce Websites

Best Buy

United Pixelworkers

Vera Bradley

The Greeting Farm

Layla Grayce

Rip Curl

W + K Studio

Chicago L – Shirts

Wheels & Dollbaby

One Village Coffee

St. John

Velorution

Killer Brigade

The Limited

Blossom Mother and Child

Hunter’s

Lark

Brooklyn Industries

Jones New York

Breezy Baby

Morgan Ranch

Anne Klein

Reebok

Alexander McQueen

LuLu’s

For more design inspiration please see:

• 25 Flash Portfolios for Your Inspiration
• 25 Impressive Design Portfolio Websites
• 40 Beautiful Corporate Websites
• 27 of the Best Real Estate Websites
• Graffiti Art Showcase

Part of the new iTunes 10 software, announced and launched yesterday, is a significant new social networking feature for iTunes called Ping. It allows you to comment on music, 'like' it a la Facebook, or rate it. Ping is also very similar to Twitter, in that you can 'follow' people and music stars. All of this happens inside of the iTunes application, either on your computer, iPhone or iPod Touch.

We took the new feature for a spin and came away intrigued, despite some initial flaws. We do however wonder at the overly commercial focus of Ping. Is this really about social networking, or mostly for Apple and artists to sell more music?

Sponsor

How to Get Ping

To access Ping, you first need to download iTunes 10 onto your computer. You'll need to also download 300+ MB worth of iPhone Software Update, to get it on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

On the computer, once you've downloaded iTunes 10 click the iTunes Store link in the sidebar. You'll see a "Get Started" link in the top right of that page (also 'Ping' appears as a menu option in the sidebar). You'll need to turn on the Ping feature and agree to Apple's privacy policy. After that, create a profile.

Note that you may encounter issues with uploading a profile photo and connecting to Facebook. If you wait for about 10 minutes, eventually your photo will upload. However Facebook Connect appears to be broken at this stage. We assume these are technical teething issues.

Once you have your profile set up, you're invited to follow other people and also stars like Lady Gaga and U2. This is very similar to how Twitter works, except that it's all happening inside of iTunes (on your computer or on your iPhone or iPod Touch).

Social Networking, or Prodding You to The Cash Register?

Ping isn't entirely intuitive. It took some head scratching to figure out that to actually post content, you need to be in the iTunes Store. You can't create new content from within Ping itself, although you can comment on what others have added.

To add new content to your Ping stream, go to the iTunes Store and either comment on an album, 'like' it or give it a star rating.

The fact that you need to be inside the iTunes Store to create new content or like something, seems a rather cynical move to encourage people to buy more music. Why not let users search inside Ping for a song or album? Or, even better, let them right-click and comment, like or rate music from within the iTunes player?

Follow The Stars

To track - and optionally comment on - what others are doing, click on the Recent Activity feed in Ping.

Ping places more focus on feature accounts than Twitter, inviting you to "set your inner groupie free by following your favorite artists on Ping." The service comes pre-loaded with accounts for some leading pop, rock and other music acts.

These accounts don't offer much more than what the stars can already do on Facebook and Twitter. The main difference is that it's within an application where people can buy the music.

I'll Follow You (If You Share My Music Tastes)

Overall, I can see Ping being useful for following friends who have similar tastes in music to me. In those cases, if they 'like' a new album then it's a great recommendation - and yes, I'm more likely to buy it. Also the ability to see which concerts they plan to go to is a useful feature.

However, Ping is probably not going to be very useful for following friends who don't share my music tastes. That could be most of them. You may be a mate of mine on Facebook, but if you listen to electronica then sorry I'm not very interested in the content you're liking (you probably feel the same way about the alternative music I tend to favor).

Have you tested out Ping yet? Let us know your verdict in the comments!

Discuss

Google and AOL have signed a deal that extends the search and advertising partnership between the two companies for another five years. The agreement also includes mobile search and adds a content sharing partnership with YouTube.

In a statement, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said that, “After nearly a decade-long partnership in search, we’re looking forward to expanding our global relationship to mobile search and YouTube. All aspects of our partnership will be improved by this deal.”

The extension of the deal wasn’t a given by any means; the $1 billion investment Google made in AOL back in 2005 proved to be disastrous financially. Further, Microsoft has been aggressively making deals to grow marketshare for Bing, most notably with Yahoo, which now sees Bing powering Yahoo search and its related advertising.

With the renewed AOL deal, Google locks up about 2.3% of the search market according to the most recent numbers from comScore. Google currently has 65.8% of the market, while Microsoft has 27.1% between Bing and Yahoo.

Beyond web search, today’s deal also broadens Google’s reach on mobile and gets additional premium content onto YouTube – both of which are currently high priorities for the company, as CEO Eric Schmidt noted in his statement on the deal. “It’s particularly exciting to see our relationship expand into video and mobile. These areas are now at the heart of users’ online experiences and at the core of both of our businesses,” he said.

More About: aol, Google, Search

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A picture is worth a thousand words. But if you include an entire database, make it interactive, and add filtering options, the word-to-picture exchange rate is even better.

Infographics at their best are more than just pictures — they can provide new understandings, succinct summaries, or just plain old fun.

In that respect, reading newspaper archives isn’t the only way to get a deeper understanding of current events. Infographics can help us get a better grasp on what’s going on.

Check out these 10 visualizations to learn more about the news with a quick look.

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1. Google’s Appetite for Acquisition

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Last month alone, Google acquired social-search service Angstro, visual shopping search engine like.com, and social currency company Jambool. Google has been on an acquisition binge for some time, and it’s getting tricky to keep track of its appetite.

This graphic shows a timeline of Google’s activity in three categories: “Building Revenue Streams,” “Cutting Competition,” or “A Little of Both.”

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2. Gay Marriage Chronology

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The campaign for gay marriage has passed a multitude of milestones over the last decade. Unfortunately for those trying to keep track of them, the victories and setbacks vary drastically by state. Decisions are reversed and in some cases overturned by higher courts, which makes progress hard to track.

This map from the LA Times shows the status of gay marriage in each state by month. Click on a state for its most recent ruling or watch the country change from being legally similar in its treatment of same-sex couples in 2000 to sharply divided in 2010.

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3. IED Attacks from Wikileaks’ Afghanistan War Logs

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The frequency and fatality of IEDs (homemade bombs) in Afghanistan was highlighted when WikiLeaks published more than 90,000 secret documents about the Afghan war. Anti-war activists published this illustrative video that includes all of the incidents reported in these leaked documents.

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4. Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

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On April 20, an explosion on a BP drilling rig started what has become the largest accidental oil spill in history. Despite numerous strategies that were deployed to plug the leak, it wasn’t capped until July 15.

This video graphic by New Orleans online newspaper NOLA wraps timeline, graphic, and cumulative damage data into one easy-to-digest piece of media.

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5. CIA World Factbook Dashboard

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The CIA World Factbook has always been a great resource for putting news stories into the context of their geographic location. But now it’s also easy to get the information at a glance.

The World Factbook Dashboard allows you to color code the countries of the world by population, population growth, infant mortality, agricultural GDP, industry GDP, services GDP, total GDP, GDP/inhabitant, or inflation. Clicking on a country zooms in for more information.

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6. Geography of a Recession

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This map from The New York Times illustrates not only which areas suffered the highest unemployment rate after the recession, but also offers the option to filter data by metropolitan areas, areas with housing bubbles, rural areas, and manufacturing centers.

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7. Afghanistan and Pakistan Regional Violence Map

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The Wall Street Journal updates this map constantly with violent conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If you want to learn about the day-to-day details of the war or understand its scope, there’s no better visual resource.

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8. What Does the Health Care Bill Mean to Me?

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Even if you read through every health care bill article, it could be hard to exactly pick out what the law would change about your insurance coverage and taxes. The Washington Post made it easy by providing this nifty tool. Input whether you have insurance coverage, your family size, your income, and your marital status, and it will tell you how health care reform will impact your life.

For the broader picture on healthcare reform, see this subway-style map from GOOD Magazine.

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9. Obama’s $787 Billion Economic Stimulus Plan

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The government is still busy spending much of the $787 billion it allotted for the economic stimulus in February of last year. This infographic effectively illustrates how that huge chunk of change is being distributed.

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10. American Casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Beyond

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This chilling interactive graphic from USA Today simply illustrates the deaths in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Information seekers can search deaths by personal factors like name, age, gender, race, or home town as well as by military service details, date, cause, or place.

CNN has a more elaborate version here.

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More Graphics Resources from Mashable:

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- 5 Fab Twitter Follower Visualization Tools
- 10 Beautiful Social Media Infographics
- 5 Amazing Infographics for the Health Conscious
- 10 Essential Free E-Books for Web Designers
- 12 Beginner Tutorials for Getting Started With Photoshop

More About: afghanistan, bp, current events, gay rights, graphics, healthcare reform, infographics, iraq, News, oil-spill, stimulus, visualizations, wikileaks

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Something has gone wrong, but you can’t put your finger on it.

Your posts aren’t attracting the attention they deserve.  Comments are scarce and retweets require hours of pleading on Twitter. You spend days scouring the web for answers.  You even reach out to other bloggers for their insight. But you still come up empty.

Soon you ask yourself if your market is ready for your blog. Or is the problem in your own head?

You May Have Talked Yourself into a Corner

Along the way you may bought into “rules-of-thumb” that sound right but are really holding you back. These lies are killing your blog.  Here are 10 of the most crippling ones…

1. “They” Are Different Than Me

   This lie prevents you from using sound advice from other successful bloggers.  It tells you that “You are Unique” and that you can ignore “proven” strategies offered by successful business people.  So, instead of moving forward, you waste scarce time re-inventing the wheel.  Or even worse, you believe that everyone else has a special advantage.  You have to take the “scenic route” to success because you don’t have the money, education, or connections.  Trust me – this is bologna.

   Truth Serum: This post by Sugarrae will do the trick: “There are No Damn Silver Spoons (Or Defining and Achieving Success Online)

2. My Branding Can Wait

   It’s easy to fall for this lie.  It cons you into believing your readers only care about the content of your posts.  Not true.  Your reader’s visit your blog for an experience.  Your writing is just a (big) part of your success formula.  The rest relies on how you present yourself and your brand.  Poor graphics and layout will distract your reader and disrupt  their experience. Your blog needs to look great now.  Get on it.

   Truth Serum: Annabel Candy’s excellent post will set you on the right path: Personal Online Branding to Make You Shine Online
   

3. All I Need To Do is Publish Great Content

   This is a subtle lie that works because it is partially true. Great blogs DO have great content.  But, they are also great because people know they exist.  The big blogs promote themselves religiously.  Their content just pays off the promise. You may be buying into this thinking because your believe Marketing is inherently anti-social.  If so, then let’s deal with that fallacy right now -

4. Marketing is Anti-Social

   This one really gets under my skin. Listen, passion hidden under a basket is worthless. You need to get your message out there.  That means you need to market your viewpoint constantly.  Get this straight – BAD Marketing is Anti-Social.  Good marketing is authentic, backed-up by real products, and focused on serving your reader.

5. Making Money Shouldn’t Be A Goal

   You may believe that money is dirty and immoral.  Ok, fine.  However, consider this, if you were given $1 million would you use it for noble ends?  Could you help a person, a community, or a nation?  If you are truly passionate about your subject then why not make money to advance your cause?  Think about it.

   Truth Serum: I hang out with a great crowd of people called the Third Tribe.  We are learning how to combine authentic social strategies with business.  Check it out.

6. I Need to be A Great Writer First

   This may get me into a little trouble, but I’ll say it anyway.  Most top bloggers aren’t the greatest writers.  They succeed because they are constantly improving their writing skills.  Now, I need you to hear this.  This lie is a stalling tactic.  It bottles you up until you hit some imaginary expert threshold.  Don’t fall prey to this mindset.  The best way to become a great writer is to write.  So get started.

7. Blogging is My Business

   This lie uses misdirection to send you in the wrong direction.  If you look closely, the A-Listers use their blogs to gather an audience.  They then sell products to that audience.  It’s a simple model that works.  Blogging is not a business it is a tactic.

   Truth Serum: Taylor Lindstrom’s guest post on Copyblogger nails this one: “Why Your Blog Doesn’t Make Money”

8. People Don’t Want to Know About Me

   This lie feeds a deep-seated fear that you aren’t good enough.  You may be thinking that your story isn’t all that interesting.  Or worse, you believe that people will be turned off by you.  This is simply not true.  Blogging is a social activity that works when you put yourself out there and make connections with real people. It still shocks me that one of the most popular pages on this blog is the About Me section.  Give this some serious thought

9. There’s a Magic Formula to Success

   This is another stalling tactic.  You’ve fallen for this lie if you are scouring the web looking for the perfect formula.  If you are busy “researching” then you aren’t writing and promoting your passion.  The only “silver bullet” that I’ve found is disappointingly simple – Get started.  That’s right – start writing.

10. I’ll Build A List When I Have More Readers

    I’ve fallen for this lie.  Thankfully, I caught the deception early and started building my email community.  Your email list is your first “asset”.  The people who sign-up are your first loyal fans. Take great care of them and they will take amazing care of you.

Now that you know these lies, you have to decide to not let them stop or misdirect you again. Here’s a quick suggestion to keep you moving forward: be suspicious of anything that is stopping you from writing, connecting with your audience, or promoting your blog.  It’s working for me.  It will work for you too.

Comment below and tell me about a Lie that is crippling your progress.  Go ahead talk to me and I’ll talk right back

Excited about your new Facebook page but don’t know what’s next?  What does a truly advanced company look like in social business?  They can say yes to seven or more of these ten criteria.

We’ve been interviewing the most sophisticated brands in the world when it comes to social business for our upcoming report on “Enterprise Social Strategists Role”.  We’ve come to learn which companies are advanced and why.  Secondly, I meet a variety of companies who tell me they are “Very advanced, having done this for a few years, and have dozens of Facebook efforts” but when I ask them some specific questions on their sophistication, they often retract their statement.

How to tell if your Company is Advanced: 10 Criteria Of Social Business Maturity.
Corporations that have these and other following elements in place, may truly be sophisticated when it comes to social business:

1. Clear understanding of their customers socialgraphics. Clear understanding of how their customers use social media by knowing the socialgraphics of your customers.  Granular knowledge of where their customers are, which behaviors they use, who they trust for information, and how they influence their peers in the context of their own products.
   The true test? Your company can adjust budgets of your integrated social strategy based on data –not gut feel.
2. Your organization is in Hub and Spoke, Dandelion, or Holistic formation. Social technologies enable all employees that want to talk to customers to do so.  This means a massive change inside of your organization to get ready.  Your company is sophisticated if you’ve organized in the Hub and Spoke, Dandelion, or Holistic and all employees clearly know their role, process, and contact points.
   The true test? A product crises has emerged on YouTube on a Friday evening before a three day weekend and you can sleep peacefully.
3. Corporate website integration: Social sign on. When customers come to the corporate site, they can see which one of their friends uses which product, and what they think about it.  Common technologies would include OpenID, Facebook Connect, and other social sign on technologies.
   The true test? You can disable your corporate registration page and use social logins instead.
4. Personalized corporate website based on social data. When a prospect (someone who’s never logged into you website before) arrives to your corporate website, they receive a customized experience based on their social IDs.  This would be based on Social CRM infrastructure, social sign on technology and a large inventory of personalized content.
   The true test? The voices of the consumers real world friends emerge above that of the brand right on the corporate website, see Levi’s foray.
5. Thriving advocacy program: customers are actively selling on your behalf. The sophisticated marketing program isn’t really the company talking much at all, instead they’ve a thriving advocacy program and word of mouth program that encourages customers to recruit prospects for them –all unpaid.  Learn how to do this, by reading this piece on Forbes.
   The true test? most leads are coming in through existing customers –not your sales team.
6. A community of customers supports each other, reducing support center calls. A company that has a thriving branded community where customers are self-supporting each other with little aid from the brand or the support team is a sign of a sophisticated social support program.
   The true test? A majority of customer support issues are resolved by community faster, with greater satisfaction than your dedicated support team.
7. Anticipation of prospects and customers using Social CRM technology.  Brands can anticipate before a customer has a problem, or grab leads “right out of the air” by using brand monitoring software, intelligent keyword monitoring and responding to be faster than real time using Social CRM strategies.
   The true test? sales and marketing are getting leads before the consideration phase, and the support team reduces inbound calls by triggering the community to resolve a potential issue before it’s escalated.
8. Innovation of new products with customers using web collaboration.  Companies that use these same tools to glean input from customers (ethnographic data collection) or create private communities, or use collaboration and innovation tools like Ideastorm or Uservoice and build new products and services demonstrate true sophistication.
   The true test? faster time to market on products because consumers have dictated the specifications, and less inventory as the product is built on spec.
9. Supply chain is influenced by social data in real time. Social media isn’t just about marketing and support, but is very valuable in listening to customer signals then to anticipate which products, services, and teams should be when and where.
   The true test? Your company is sophisticated if you’re using social data to adjust your supply chain in real time based on customer signals from checkins, tweets, and plancasts.
10. Real time reporting of revenues, costs and efficiency:  I’ve met with some of the most advanced teams, and they have clear reporting and can measure the increased revenues (over the total cost of the program) to tell their executives the true ROI of their business program.
    The true test? Real time dashboard measures the health of all social channels revenues, CSAT, sentiment and overall program costs.

We’ve done research on the roadmap for companies to reach these 10 levels of nirvana, but have found few companies that have done a few, or even a majority of them. If you know of any companies that have achieved five out of ten of these criteria, we’d love to know, please leave a comment.

More and more designers are into creating their own blogs and websites either to showcase their works or to advertise. At this pace, it is quite important that as designers who are interested in blogging, one should learn the basics in PSD to HTML, turning Photoshop designs into HTML format. If you are equipped with this technique, you will be able to simply turn your designs into codes that are good enough to turn into active blogs or sites. This new post is a compilation of tutorials on converting PSD into HTML. Learn the basics of this technique to apply them to your designs and be one-step ahead from the rest... Enjoy!!!

Designing a city logo can be a difficult but rewarding process: when doing this one should keep in mind that, unlike company logos, a city logo involves a huge cultural background and will be representing the image of the city on many levels - from the political to the social and economical one. Therefore, a careful consideration of what the image chosen for the logo will symbolize and entail is absolutely necessary.

First of all, this sort of logos originate from the old city heraldics, and they still have a strong resemblance to them: when designing a city logo one should be aware that, much like in the old heraldics, each visual element is expected to be a symbol for something related to the city, and that this logo will become the image of the city and it should be very effective in essentializing its main features or its general cultural representation.

It is absolutely necessary to study the city’s past and present landmarks, its history, its main economical activities, its cultural symbols and to look at the old heraldic emblems of the city as well. That is why, managing to create a modern, functional image of the city can be a very difficult and elaborate process.

In this article we will be looking at some highly professionally designed or re-designed city logos and we’ll be comparing them with the old symbols that they started from - just to make the process of modernizing them more visible and to show how a historical symbol can be re-evaluated and successfully used in modern logo design. Finally, if your city/town is not listed here or there is no current modern logo for it, how would you make it look like?

Montreal Canada

London UK

Lisbon Portugal

Melbourne Australia

Belfast Northern Ireland

Berlin Germany

Mexico City Mexic

Hamilton Canada

Venice Italy

Amiens France

Stuttgart Germany

Coventry UK

Bristol UK

Dublin Ireland

Amsterdam Holland

Stockholm Sweden

Sydney Australia

Vilnius Lithuania

Seattle USA

Phoenix USA

Prague Czech Republic

• Some Amazing Retro Style Illustrations Part 2
• 33 Very Original Creative Industry Business Cards
• 40 Cool Mascot Style Website Inspirations
• Some Amazing Retro Style Illustrations Part 1
• 30 Cool Websites with Vector Like Background
• 30 Impressive Surrealist Website Designs

Today, we have a new set of Premium Brushes available for Psd Premium Members. This set was crafted by Grant Friedman of Colorburned and includes 20 High Resolution Photoshop Ink Stain Brushes. If your next project calls for a grungy, stained look, then this set is perfect for you. Learn more at the jump!

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High Resolution Ink Stain Brushes

This new Premium Psdpack Pack is available for Psd Premium Members today and includes 20 high resolution brushes ranging somewhere in the neighborhood of 2500 by 2500 pixels. Each brush was created using varied mixtures of ink and water. This mixture was applied in layers which allowed the stains to dry and mix together in a wide range of opacities. Members can Log in and Download! Otherwise, Join Now! A preview of the brushes is below.

This new Premium Psdpack Pack was created by Grant Friedman of Colorburned and is available for Psd Premium Members to download today. Grant is also the Editor of Psdtuts+ and creates loads of professional quality Photoshop brushes on a regular basis. We’re excited to partner up with him on this release.

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Psd Premium Membership

As you know, we run a Premium membership system that costs $9 a month (or $22 for 3 months!), which gives members access to the Source files for tutorials as well as periodic extra tutorials, and Premium Packs like this one! If you’re a Premium member you can log in and download this set. If you’re not a member, you can of course join today!

WiseStamp Brings Your Email Signature to Life

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

On the spectrum of really big marketing tactics, the email signature isn’t terribly sexy, but this little touch can say a lot about what you do and how you connect.

If you’re like me, you send a lot of email so why not make sure your email signature is working in the background for you. This doesn’t mean you need flashing lights and honking horns, but you should supply recipients, even those that contact you often, with all the necessary contact details, including social profiles, so that you are easy to connect with.

Creating an email signature, while not that technical, can take a little work and may even be limited on services like GMail. WiseStamp is a browser plugin (Firefox, Chrome, and Safari) that makes the act of creating multiple, highly engaging email signature profiles very easy. This free addon allows you to create rich HTML text, add images, add social profiles and even add applications such as your last tweet, your last blog post, or your latest eBay listing.

The signatures work in Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail, and WindowsLive. Once you download and install the plugin you will see a WiseStamp option in your mail. The first step is to create your signatures using the simple online editor, connect your various social profiles and applications, and save your profiles. You can then toggle between personal and business signatures as needed.

Since this is a free application the default setting adds a little promo for WiseStamp at the bottom of your signature. You can remove this by opening setting and clicking that option off. On that same screen you’ll be given the option to make a donation. I recommend throwing a little coin to the creators of this nice tool. It’s good karma and it’s what makes the free app world such a cool place to hang out.

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Think what you will about the ultra-widescreen, 21:9 format Philips is pushing, but you can’t deny that its cinema-proportioned Full HD LCD TV is gorgeous. Now, Philips plans to push it even further, with a 58-inch, 3D version of the device.

The device, called Philips 3D Cinema 21:9 Platinum, sports a direct lit LED screen with a 2560×1080 resolution, 400Hz picture processing, and Philips’s Ambilight technology, which illuminates the area behind the TV in order to reduce eye fatigue and produce an immersive viewing experience.

And if you think you’ll never use all that horizontal screen estate due to the lack of titles available in 21:9 format, you can watch regular TV programming on one side while browsing Philips’s Net TV on the other.

The price tag, of course, is too high for most consumers. At around €4000 ($5100), there are plenty of high-end TV sets to be found on the market, but this TV is truly unique. For those who want to enjoy their movies as they were meant to be seen on the big screen, and in three dimensions, there are currently no better options out there.

The Philips 3D Cinema 21:9 Platinum is slated to launch in the UK later this month. No date has been set for a U.S. release.

More About: 21:9, 3D, aspect ratio, full HD, LCD, Philips, tv

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We all have our spirit of imagination from our childhood — we give a shape to our thoughts by drawing image on school yard, on a piece of paper or on a digital tablet. Photoshop, Wacom and Illustrator are beautiful tools that help us transform our imagination into beautiful drawings. Today we present useful tutorials teaching us techniques for digital drawing and painting.

Digital Painting Tutorials

Making of Funfair
This tutorial will show you how to make a funny character in Photoshop.

Do you want to Play with me
Author has created this artwork in Photoshop and with a Wacom Intuos.

Making of Hecate
Author will share making of a painting of Hecate who is the Greek goddess of the crossroads.

Project Overview: Public Transportation
In this tutorial, author will take you through the transition process of the drawing of the trucker sitting on a seat to a cool colored picture in Photoshop.

Digital Painting Lesson: Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge Special Edition
In this tutorial author walks you through the construction process in amazing detail.

Colorize a Comic Strip With Photoshop
In this quick tip tutorial author will demonstrate how to import a sketch into Photoshop and color it.

Breakfast Wars
In this tutorial, author will show the process and some techniques to create his artwork from design to rendering.

Painting fantasy eyes
Author explains how to make eyes look natural in painting.

Making of “Autumn”
In this tutorial, you will make Yellow & red leaves flying around the girl, with autumn smiling.In

Painting Jake Sully’s Avatar
In this tutorial, author makes a fan art of Avatar movie’s protagonist, Jake Sully.

How to Paint a Realistic Proportioned Female Face from Scratch
In this tutorial author will show you how to paint a proportioned female face from scratch. this tutorial will start with the absolute basics and move on to more advanced techniques, so even beginners can follow.

Making of Grenat
Author shares the details of making of “sparkling blossoms of the rock”. Grenat (garnet)

Seascape Part I: The Landscape Photoshop Tutorial
This Photoshop tutorial will show you how to complete an underwater landscape painting step by step. This is part one of a two part series.

Making of Under the Root
This tutorial will take you through the process of Making of Under the Root, inspired from the children story “Nausicaa and the Old Tree”.

Matte Painting: Making of Barbarossa
This is a matte painting that author have realized for the “Barbarossa” movie and shows Rome’s sunup in the year 1000.

Draw a T-Shirt in Photoshop
This detailed step by step tutorial will show you techniques on creating shapes, shading, embossing, and more.

Making Of Boudicca 3060 A.D
This article will provide you with a walkthrough ofauthor’s experiences during the creation of Boudicca 3060 A.D.and informative.

How To Create A Slick Anime Character In Photoshop
n this tutorial, we’ll learn how to draw an Anime Style character.

Making of The Royal Assassin
In this short tutorial author will give you a walkthrough of the way he build up an illustration from start to finish.

How to Draw a Photorealistic Coffee Cup
In this tutorial we’ll draw a very realistic cup of coffee. Underneath the cup we’ll add some stain using custom brush.

Cloud strife
This tutorial will show you how to make a character in Photoshop to capture the mood in the portrait.

Making of Cadenus and Vanessa
Author will take us through the process of making Making of Cadenus and Vanessa, made using Wacom Intuos, Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop.

Seascape Painting Part II: Creating the Fish and Finishing the Picture
This detailed tutorial is the second part of the Seascape Painting series to teach you how to draw the fishes and add a finishing touch to the image.

Making of Always in My Heart
Author has created this artwork using: Corel Painter, Wacom Graphire and Hyde, Japanese rocker and vocalist L’arc~en~ciel (in French it means “The Arc in the Sky) band.

Beach Girl Drawing
Learn how to create a delightful portrait from sketch to Photoshop. This tutorial will teach you how to color, shade, and create a gorgeous beach scene.

Use a Tablet to Create Stunning Comic Book Fan Art Illustrations
In this tutorial author will review some tips and tricks when working with a digital tablet and Photoshop. The artwork we will use is a fan art illustration of the Knights of the Zodiac character.

Romantic Couple Painting
This tutorial will teach you how to transform an inked drawing into a full-color piece of fantasy artwork entirely through the use of Photoshop.

Making of Be My Valentine
Author shares the details of making a beautiful paining of a girl.

Spider Harp
This picture represent a fantasy musician able to play harp on a spider web.