Back in the 90′s Anthony Parinello came out with a great sales book called Selling to VITO (Very Important Top Officer). It’s still an excellent book that offers some effective strategies for getting the attention of  real decision makers in any company.

One strategy however, you won’t find in that book  is one that Alec Brownstein recently implemented to get his new job. Alec purchased 5 Google Adwords with the keywords being top company officers he wanted to interview with.

Out of those 5, Alec landed 4 interviews, with 2 being job offers. Total cost for him – $30 in Google Adwords.

In their classic marketing book Positioning,  Al Ries and Jack Trout taught us that that the easiest way to get in the consumers mind is to be first. After all, no one remembers #2 right?

Charles Lindbergh was the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic. Who was the second to cross it? Sir Edmond Hillary was the first to reach the top of Mount Everest.  Who was the second to reach the summit? People rarely remember 2nd place.

It’s good to be first when you have a great idea or product;  but being first with a stupid idea is just stupid.  RJ Reynolds proved this when they introduced us to the smokeless cigarette years ago. Their strategy was simple- come up with a new product that targets non-smokers. It took over $325 million going up in smoke before they realized that non-smokers don’t buy cigarettes.

There are a number a products that fit that “what were they thinking” list. Remember Sony BetaMax? New Coke? The Ford Edsel? And what about FrostyPaws? Yes, that’s right,  ice cream for dogs. Huh?

Being first cannot can’t shield you from lousy market research.

Time to face reality. The days of getting found with optimized title tags, meta tags  and a few carefully placed keywords throughout your pages are over. Your site is now competing with video, images, news, and more. And now comes social media. In their attempt to get in on the social networking action, Google has introduced Google Social Search and added yet another spoke in the wheel of search engine marketing.

No need to worry about getting hit with search results from  every Tom, Dick and Harry out there who make a twitter post. Google Social Search s will only bring up posts from  people within your social network.

So how do you get optimized for Social Search? Just setup a Google profile that includes information about you. This would include links to not only websites you want to promote but also links to social network profiles on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube etc.

One thing that will increase the chances of getting found is to get as many Gmail chat contacts as you can. They’ll certainly boost your exposure in Google Social Search. And don’t forget also, that it’s not just your contacts who will find you in Social Search, but also friends of your contacts as well – connects of your own connections. Social Media is no fad.  Get used to it, and learn to implement it into your own marketing strategy.

According to research from Compete, Facebook became the most visited website this January, passing other popular sites like Yahoo and Google. All of this popularity has a down side though. More employers are now using it to screen potential employees. A recent survey showed that 30% of employers are using Facebook to research job candidates.

Here are a list of Facebook mistakes that according to this article could come back to bite you if you’re currently seeking a job:

1. Inappropriate Pictures
2. Complaining about your current job
3. Posting information that conflicts with your resume
4. Posting statuses you wouldn’t want your boss to see
5. Not understanding your security settings
6. and associating with the wrong people

Ever since I started reading Dan Roam’s fascinating book
The Back of the Napkin
, I’ve been inspired to create simple screencast presentations based on his method of communicating simple ideas. Drawing illustrations comes very easy to me. I’ve always loved to scribble pictures on scraps of paper.

Now I’ve finally found the tool that will allow me to create screencast tutorials in the same method as Salman Khan of Khan Academy. His lessons are simple yet effective in teaching students.

I thought I’d need a Tablet PC to do this at first, but then I came across a much cheaper tool that allows me to do almost the same thing.
The Wacom Bamboo Pen Tablet is a lightweight writing board that plugs right into your USB port so you can instantly start writing and drawing illustrations on any most any application that lets you write or draw.

I ordered mine through Amazon using standard shipping and it arrived only two days later- fast!

It works great even with a simple program like MS Paint. Its perfect for doing on on-screen webinar presentations or screencast videos.

Not only that, it works on conjunction with Word 2007; letting you mark up documents using a function called “pens”. This is a great way to add some flash to your ebooks and reports. This is one tool, I’ll be putting to use a lot this year for my new website (soon to be launched).

Here’s an interview with two teenager entrepreneurs who reached millionaire status before they were old enough to vote. Notice that they achieved this by building successful online businesses, and that they didn’t hit a home run with the first one. Sometimes it takes takes trying a few different ideas before something sticks. Thankfully, the web is very forgiving when you make mistakes. There’s little upfront cost to close down and start over.

And secondly, notice that they didn’t reinvent the wheel. They simply improved on an existing idea. The 14 year old girl took a popular site like MySpace and added her own twist to it – custom page layouts.

A few weeks ago while shopping and running a few other errands, my wife was approached by a salesman for the local newspaper. She decided to buy a weekend subscription, from the guy. My first guess was that this guy was an incredible salesman. From her description though, it sounded more like this guy was desperate to meet his quota. I think most print sales guys are feeling the pinch. They’re selling something fewer and fewer people want or need.

Whenever I’m traveling out of town, I still grab a USA Today out of habit from the hotel I’m staying at, but rarely do I get a chance to do more than scan the pages. I really think it’s the smell of newspaper print that lures me to grab a copy.

I’m a  grazer as this article suggests, and like most Generation Xers out there, I primarily get my news online. Today, there are hundreds of thousands of business and political blogs. There’s Podcasts and Ustream and Google News. There’s smartphones and cool new devices like the Kindle and the iPad that allow us to take news on the go; making paper news irrelevant. I realized this trend years ago when I bought my first 16MB pocket PC, the Dell Axim. It allowed me to download the latest local and national news each day when I synced it with my laptop. Now I use my Blackberry to scan the latest on Drudge.

Google news allows me to customize my news settings with whatever specific categories I want to read each day.  All I have to do is log on and click “Edit this page” and then start “adding new categories” that I’m interested in.

Print media had better start seeing the handwriting on the wall. Using desperate salesmen to push a stale product is not a strategy for long term survival.

I really like this quote from Seth Godin in his new book Linchpin:

“Expertise gives you enough insight to reinvent what everyone else assumes is the truth”

Those great men and women who’ve turned conventional thinking on it’s head were passionate experts in their fields. They were dedicated to testing, practicing, questioning and then re-testing.

Think of the Wright brothers.

They spent an immeasurable amount of time  in their workshop calculating forces and experimenting with different wing shapes. Their knowledge and understanding of flight allowed them to change many preconceived notions about air travel. Whether you’re a programmer, architect, teacher or entrepreneur, when you immerse yourself into something that fires you up, you gain not only the insight but the confidence to shed the status quo.

Natasha Wescoat is one artist who knows the power of social media sites like UStream.TV.  Her live paintings have inspired a huge following and in the process increased buyers at her online auctions. Anyone looking to create an authentic voice within their niche can follow this example.

What kind of live streaming content could you offer? A live talk show? Or how about a “how to” channel for scrapbookers, organic gardeners, and do it yourself home improvement types?

UStream is a free service, so anyone with a webcam can start broadcasting in minutes.

I came across this live stream of these Shiba Inu pups while on Bill Myer’s site just the other day.  It has over 20 million views and around five thousand at any given time.

Live Videos by Ustream

For the few days I’ve been humming Dave Carroll’s song in my head – “Uniiited ….you broke my Taylor guitar”. If you haven’t seen the video, you need to take a look. Why I like the song so much is not so much for the tune alone, but the story behind it. You can see the video here.

You see, Dave had a little problem with United Airlines. Apparently his Taylor guitar (valued at about $3,500) was damaged during a flight due to negligent baggage handling. After nine months of getting  the runaround by United, Dave took matters into his own hands. He created a simple music video called “United Breaks Guitars”. At last check, it has over 7.6 million hits on YouTube. Dave brought Goliath to his knees, by doing a simple video with the help of some friends and a few cheap props. It’s turned out to be a pr nightmare for United.

As I described in my book, the Goliath’s of the world (big companies, traditional media) just don’t get it. Cheap technology like the Kodak Zi8 HD Pocket Video Camera and the Internet allow the people like Dave to expose them in an instant, or however long it takes to upload the video to YouTube. Not only that, it’s helping the small guy like Dave Carrol to build his personal brand.

Gary Vaynerchuck did what most other wine retailers would have never thought of doing at the time. He exploded his brand by creating Wine Library TV.

Don’t like video? What about audio? Start your own online radio show. Jack Spirko created his incredibly popular theSurvivalPodcast.com site by simply recording his show on a digital recorder during his  daily 50 mile each way commute between Arlington and Frisco Texas.

There is plenty of opportunity for a maverick to build a name today. Get started.