Defined Presence Blog

Why Aren't You on Twitter?

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 22:17:00 GMT

I am now 28 days into my personal branding experiment and I have stumbled across what is undeniably the best new piece of knowledge to date. The number of followers you have on Twitter will directly affect your overall ranking in Google. Fact!

Up to this point it was clear that just by having a Twitter account, you were going to be ranked due to the fact that it is a constantly updating social media site. But now I can prove that more followers on Twitter will result in your page being indexed higher in Google.

How do I know this?

- 10 days into this experiment I had a modest 45 followers on my personal Twitter account

- Over the next 10 days I diligently built up to a respectable 490 followers

Result...

- My Twitter account moved from 14^th to 3^rd in Google for the search term “David Albertini”

This is great knowledge for anybody out there who may still be struggling to see the value in Twitter. Not only is Twitter a great platform to network, learn, and share ideas – we’ve proven it’s a fantastic entry point for anyone searching for you or your services online.

Assuming your name is John Smith and you are struggling to find ways to promote John Smith Plumbing Services, why not ...

- Create a profile on Twitter

- Share knowledge about backed up drainage and grow your following

- Follow others and learn about new and exciting plumbing practices

- And reTweet valuable information from other plumbers.

And, if you are in fact a plumber, perhaps Twitter can help you network online with welders and contractors in an effort to create a mutually beneficial cross promotion program!

Where do your leads come from? The Yellow Pages? Probably not. Most people stopped using Yellow Pages once they stopped needing something to prop up the corner of their broken sofa.

Are you still skeptical about how a micro-blogging platform such as Twitter to help grow your business? Still not sold? Maybe you just assume that I’m blowing smoke in hopes of creating more leads for myself. Possible, but know this, the term ‘plumber’ has been mentioned 54 times on Twitter since I started writing this article! (~ 30 mins) Fact. People are talking, shouldn’t you get in on the conversation?

At the end of the day ...

- Would I call myself the world’s most knowledgeable marketing guru? No, that’s silly.

- Do I already know everything there is to know about the industry YOU are in? No, also silly.

- One thing that is for sure is this, if you search my name in Google, links 2, 3, and 4 come directly to me and one of those is my Twitter account. The other 2, LinkedIn.

Join Twitter, share ideas, network with like-minded individuals, build your network of followers and the rest will come. Don’t dismiss the value in sharing your ideas with the world.

David R. Albertini

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Living NOW

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:14:00 GMT

“When I am anxious it is because I am living in the future ... when I am depressed it is because I am living in the past” - Anonymous

Why do we find it so hard to focus on what is right in front of us. I find myself in this conundrum on a daily basis. When you’re sitting at the office and have nothing to do but think (well, you actually have a ton to do, but you wind up just sitting) one inevitably removes themselves from their current situation, place and time, and shifts to yesterday or tomorrow.

Shifting focus into yesterday brings about most often regret. Things we wish we did or didn’t do. There is no way to avoid this. Many times things happen that are the direct result, of us being in a place and time, and we wish we could simply go back and be elsewhere and in a different time. But, that invariably carries a sense of depression and regret as well. I could say I wish I glued myself to my chair in the library during undergrad and I’d be a rocket scientist by now, but how many great experiences would have been missed by not making oneself available to a variety of experiences at that time.

The worse part of reflecting on the past is not the regret of things done, but rather the regret of things that were left undone. That girl you should have asked out, or that time you didn’t pull the trigger on a business opportunity staring you in the face. This, as far as I’m concerned, is the style of reflection that really gets you down. You are powerless to know what the result may have been if you’d taken that leap and you have no way of ever getting back to that place, to take that chance.

On the other hand, pondering the future is exciting stuff. It is an opportunity to start over, to make ‘the right moves’. In the future you’ll take advantage of all those perceived missed opportunities from the past, and to avoid the scenarios that led to poor outcomes. It’s a time to set lofty goals.

Thinking about the future allows us to become the person that we wanted to be to avoid those depressing, regretful moments from the past. We’re going to take the bull by the horns, make opportunities happen, take the ones presented to us, and live a more enlightened existence. This time the changes are really going to stick!

The problem with all of this is that there is no past and there is no future. The future is NOW and by the time you’ve read this sentence it is in the past. What the hell does that mean? Well it means that any positive changes that you are going to make in the ‘future’ need to happen right NOW. And anything that happened in the ‘past’ is completely irrelevant because NOW is the only thing that is tangible. To truly grow and make lasting changes, one has to grasp that the only time that we conceivably have control over is the moment that we are currently existing within.

Worrying about the past robs today of its strength, and sitting around cogitating about next week only wastes precious moments that could be used to right course and start on your true path from this moment.

Experience living in the now; start to see the ‘forest for the trees’. Appreciate moments, and be empowered in all the moments of life, and your true path will reveal itself.

Adam R. Steinhoff

LinkedIn's Role in Personal Branding

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:10:00 GMT

Now that I’ve declared the mission for my social media experiment, it’s time to start putting the appropriate pieces in place to make it happen. For anybody who is reading this entry and is unsure as to what I am talking about, I have declared that I am going to control all 10 of the search results in Google for my name, David Albertini.

When I started this campaign, I already had a Facebook account, a LinkedIn account, and a Naymz account. I opened a personal Twitter account a couple of days before writing my first entry, so we won’t count that. To this point, the bulk of the social media work that we have done has been to promote our company, Defined Presence. We have seen some great results for our company and our clients, so why not take a very similar approach when promoting an individual. The highest ranking search results for Defined Presence, aside from our actual website, are our Blog and our Twitter accounts. As much as these social media outlets will be a major focus for me, I would like to touch on how well LinkedIn can work in your favour when it comes to self promotion.

LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site, and for the most part, it’s only used for professional networking. LinkedIn has been around since 2002, but it’s only been over the past couple years that people are starting to see the value in it. Through LinkedIn, you can create and maintain business connections, while also “virtually mingling”, for a lack of a better way of putting it with shared contacts. For me this is currently serving a few different purposes. For starters, I can maintain the connections with past co-workers, clients, business associates, and so on. I can also join groups related to the field I work in and lend insight while learning new things. This is also a great way of finding prospective clients who may be in need of our services. Most importantly (really only for the sake of this social media experiment), it offers great results in Google. There are 43 million people currently registered on LinkedIn and because people are constantly updating their information, adding connections, and so on, the site itself receives significant respect from Google and its search algorithm. As of right now, when you search David Albertini you will find two links to myself, one of which is a LinkedIn directory for all people who share my name, as well as a link to my personal profile. These are the second and third search results respectively.

One thing that needs to be noted, I currently have my profile 100% completed. I would suggest anyone using LinkedIn to make sure they have done the same. Fill out your interests, join some groups, even if you feel as though you lead a boring life and don’t have interests, just tell people you like to skydive or something. I’m sure that will impress at least somebody.

So it appears as though the moral of the story for today is that LinkedIn is absolutely awesome and should be considered amongst the elite social media platforms currently on the web.

Here is an update of the results I am currently seeing with this social media experiment.

•   Currently the 2nd and 3rd search results are links that will either get you directly to me or to a directory to find me (LinkedIn). My last weeks blog entry jumped to 6th (which proves the power of blogging).
•   My Naymz account is currently ranked 12th (I will discuss with my next entry all the reasons why I don’t care)
•   My Twitter account is currently ranked 14th (I expect significant gains with my Twitter account over the next couple of weeks)
•   My Plaxo account is currently ranked 16th (Proving that registering on more than just the standard and well known social media sites is worthwhile)

David R. Albertini

One foot in front of the next.

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:15:00 GMT

I would love to know if Sir Isaac Newton had complete grasp of the scope with which he was explaining the universe as he studied physics in 17th century Britain. His three volume ‘Philosphae Naturalis Principa Mathematica’ is often regarded as a defining literary work which created modern physics. About these writings, Clairaut says Newton “shed the light of mathematics on a science which, up to then, had remained in the darkness of conjecture and hypotheses”(1).

In this publication Newton describes mathematical explanations for effects around him which, at the time, appeared far beyond the understanding of man. He mathematically explains gravity, and derives Newton’s Laws of Motion, forming the foundation of classical physics. It is within his Laws of motion that he comes to understand and define the concept of ‘inertia’. Inertia is the resistance of mass (ie. any physical object) to a change in its state of motion. In even simpler terms, inertia means that an object, whether moving or sitting still, has the tendency to continue in that trend, unless some profound force causes it to do something else. In defining inertia, Newton also explains the fundamental reason why people often feel ‘stuck’ in life situations they are unhappy with.

Now, certainly, no one should beat themselves up about not being able to break out of negative situations – it’s Physics after all! Remember, this is the same set of rules holding your car to the road and keeping your house from blowing away. It is physical law (and human nature) to avoid change. When we find ourselves coasting down certain roads in life, the thought of doing a 180 and heading in the opposite direction is terrifying. Many questions enter one’s mind – “what if I’m making a mistake”, “what if it doesn’t work out”, “what if this all blows up in my face”. These thoughts are defense mechanisms that our brains provide to try to help us feel that staying on the ‘comfort and complacent’ track is the right move. Natural response is to listen to these concerns and continue along with the status quo.

However the beauty of being human (ie. not an inanimate object) is we have within us, the ability to choose. We are able to create, through our intentions, a ‘profound force’ great enough to break our personal state of inertia, and change our direction in life. Though it may not come inherently to us we have the ability to choose our response and reaction to any circumstance. When we feel like we cannot break free from a situation which we find ourselves in, the reality is that it’s just a quick choice away. It is that easy! We can, at any moment, walk away from a bad situation, and live the life we want. It’s many times been said that a journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step.

I’ve been forever converted by a piece of literary genius titled “the 4-hour work week” by Timothy Ferris. In this book Tim Ferris describes the steps he took (and everyone can take) to ditch the herd mentality, and break free into a world where you decide what you are going to do to make money and what you will do with your resultant free time (another must read for those sick of the same old grind!). At any rate, Tim lays out a plan for breaking free from the mold which includes assessing the worst case scenario. Decide what is the worst scenario that could arise by leaving your current situation and thrusting yourself into a life that will bring you more happiness. When you sit down and actually think about the worst case scenario, and get it down on paper, you’ll realize that your fears are largely unjustified.

Worst case scenario, your entire plan blows up in your face. You can always go back into the industry you were in before. Or you can go back to school. Or you can wait tables at Jack Astor’s for 6 months till you figure out a new plan. Or you can move onto a buddy’s sofa and sift through dumpsters collect empty beer bottles and return them for bar money. If you have had the good sense to take time out of your day to read this, it’s not likely you’re the type of person who would ever get to that last scenario, but the point is that there are always options. The worst case scenario is never as bad as you make it out to be in your head.

So, first things first, break the inertia that is keeping you tied to your current situation. If you want to break free, assess the worst case scenario. Make a detailed back up plan – you’ll likely never have to use it. Having it in place will help give you the confidence to make the bold first steps of, what could be, a journey of 1000 miles - to the life you want to live!

Adam

(1) - (in French) Alexis Clairaut, "Du systeme du monde, dans les principes de la gravitation universelle", in "Histoires (& Memoires) de l'Academie Royale des Sciences" for 1745 (published 1749), at p.329 (for which a sidenote on p.329 states that Clairaut's paper was actually read at a session of November 1747).

Owning David Albertini

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:38:00 GMT

I’m going to start off by stating, yes, I have ‘googled” myself…. recently… and more than once. I feel comfortable saying this, because I know that by now most people with a pulse and a pc have probably done this at least once. The first time I ever searched for myself online was in High School. So let’s say it was the year 2000. Upon searching David Albertini I was happy to find that a couple links on the first page made reference to myself and my slightly above average tennis skills. Clearly at 18 years old, my biggest concern was something making reference to how big of a loser I was or anything else remotely embarrassing. All clear. So far so good. I was intrigued to see that at least someone who shared the same name as me was doing something impressive with it. As it turns out, there was a David F. Albertini, Ph.D who was a Harvard grad and at the time, the Professor of Anatomy and Cellular Biology and Obstetrics and Gynecology at Tufts University School of medicine. Cool right? That’s what I thought at the time.

Fast forward 9 years. Since the High School era googling (is that a word yet?) of my name, I have graduated university, worked for a high profile winery, worked with the Toronto Blue Jays Baseball team, and moved on to start a marketing company. About time to Google myself again to track my progress. Expecting to come across some sort of reference to myself, what do I find? Not only have I been bounced from the first page of Google, but Mr Ph.D has taken over almost every entry for David Albertini. He has since moved on to the Department of Molecular & Integrative Physiology at Kansas University. He no longer studies the process of oocyte development and maturation. Now he studies the meiotic spindle structure and assembly during in vitro and in vivo maturation of mouse oocytes, whatever that means. I’m sure there’s a chance these could be the exact same thing. All I know is that he has now created a Google enemy out of me.

For the past year I have been working to help organizations grow their online presence through social media and seo, but for some reason I have yet to put forth the effort to control the first page of Google for my own name. As an entrepreneur, this was probably a big gaff on my part, but that ends now. I am putting out notice to Mr. David F. Albertini Ph.D. I’m not sitting back any longer. I am coming for you. And if you decide to Google your name and come across my blog, feel free to follow along and track my progress as I work diligently to remove your accomplishments from the eyes of anyone who might search the name David Albertini. You’re probably thinking, who the hell is going to bother searching your name aside from you? And the answer to that is probably no one, but I’m not going to let that stop me. David R. Albertini is coming for that number 1 spot.

Stay tuned to hear about my progress. In the event that you are amongst the 99.99% of people who don’t care about anything that I just wrote or my progress, don’t feel bad, my blog will index in Google and bump the Ph.D. down anyway.

David R. Albertini

Law of Attraction

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:36:00 GMT

“We don't attract what we want, we attract what we are ”
– Unknown

The law of attraction is a beautiful thing. If you’re not familiar, the theory is that when you start to live your life in the way that you truly desire, you will start to see the world around you change. When you change your world will change – what a concept! Positive, constructive changes that you make, then in turn, bring about new and exciting offerings from the world around you. Thus, the books we’re right, we do choose our own adventure.
It sounds easy enough, and it really is. It is THAT EASY! The trick is sticking to it, and really ‘flicking that switch in your head’ to commit. When you can commit to positive changes in your life, you will find that the bounces more and more go your way. And when the law of attraction kicks in, you’ll really be sailing!
In Robin Sharma’s book the Saint, Surfer and CEO, the saint character is to help the main character discover the virtue of living wisely. (this book is excellent and a must read for anyone who is feeling a little lost in terms of how their life fits into the big picture). The saint offers an analogy of us all viewing the world through our own stained glass window. This is a great analogy. We all view things based on our own set of ideas and beliefs. These ideas and beliefs are the culmination of years and years of logged experiences. These can be positive spins we are putting on scenarios, but sometimes the spin we are putting on scenarios is negative. This is when the old self fulfilling prophecy comes to life ... we are negative and thus attracting the negative. We have stuck in our heads that some situation will inevitably wind up with a negative result, and we’re so sure of it, low and behold it happens! This is the law of attraction at its finest. We are skewed by our personal experiences; we shade situations by looking through our own stained glass, and then low and behold situations we believe will be negative turn out negative.
Now what if we could re-program ourselves to have our stained glass reveal the positive aspects of any situation? What if we can use this positive outlook to attract to us new and lasting changes and experiences from the world around us? It takes a lot of work, but it can be done. You have to re-write years of programming that has been ingrained since childhood ... no easy task. But, if you can commit fully to this, you will inevitably find that the benefits far outweigh the costs. You truly do choose your own adventure, so start now, and bit by bit you too can realize your greatest life.
Next time ... starting down this road ... how to kick yourself into gear.

Adam