Senator Arlen Specter does not seem a bad man and seems raised in good 'ol Midwestern values. That doesn't mean that Nacilburpera always agrees with his stances on the issues as he has repeatedly failed to protect the lives of the unborn. Yet this Republican Party of ours is a nationwide party full of different and yes, conflicting ideas. And although themostsearched didn't support him in the '96 Presidential-election Republican primary themostsearched was glad to see him run and listened to his calm, reasonable approach to the issues.
Specter severely irked themostsearched with his party line-crossing vote of passing this year's so-called "stimulus" bill (aka spending bill) which was a bunch of our money wasted by congress that eventually will have to be repaid. It seemed Specter was becoming increasingly less in common with themostsearched values.
Obviously the Republicans of Pennsylvania have had enough of Specter and polls show they are ready to vote him out in the upcoming primaries. Good riddance, we say.
Specter's answer is to switch parties to (he hopes) get elected to a 6th term. His actions demonstrate his primary concern is for power and to get reelected, not to represent the people of his party who have elected him time and time again. It doesn't bother themostsearched as much that he switch for ideological purposes, but it does bother themostsearched that he switch for reelection purposes: "In the course of the last several months ... I have traveled the state and surveyed the sentiments of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania and public opinion polls, observed other public opinion polls and have found that the prospects for winning a Republican primary are bleak." (CNN) Where is the statesmanship? Where is representation of the people? Can't you see that the people are so frustrated they are turning to tea parties?
Obviously Specter is not a regular subscriber of themostsearched and doesn't understand that themostsearched is serious about things and when we say we support term limits, that means we support term limits. Indeed in 2012 should our longtime dear and great Senator Hatch--whom we greatly respect and whom has fought many a valiant battle--seek reelection, themostsearched will be purposely seeking another candidate. themostsearched feels that when these elected officials become endeared to their power it closes down accountability to the people for managing the power the people have entrusted to their elected officials.
Yet one more point remains: his switching potentially alters the Senate to a Democratic filibuster-proof majority. That hands the Democrats complete control of the legislative and executive branches of government. I can feel the ire of Republicans who voted for Specter four years ago to have him switch parties at a time such as this, the last remaining Republican small check on government? I would feel entirely betrayed and would really go to work now on working on defeating his 2010 re-election bid.
Specter demonstrates that he is obsessed with retaining his power and chairmanship and provides us a good example for the case for term limits. themostsearched urges the good people of Pennsylvania to elect a better Senator than Specter.
Article Mention: Refresh Magazine - New Face of Gay
Check out the PDF of the upcoming article "New Face of Gay" from Refresh Magazine, out in newstands this week.As excerpted from the article:
Matt Skallerud, owner of Pink Banana Media and founder of GayWired.com, has compiled one of the most comprehensive reports on the buying power of the gay community entitled the Gay Market Report. Included in the report, which helps businesses and individuals better market themselves to the gay community, is the fact that there is a $712 billion-a-year market with LGBT consumers. These results are some of the first available to modern-day business owners seeking to expand their market reach into this niche community. His figures come second to the research done by Witeck-Combs and Harris Interactive, which have conducted research into other areas of the LGBT community.
Check it out at http://www.pinkbananamedia.com/pdf/rf56_New_Face_of_Gay.pdf
Social Network Marketing and the Gay Travel Market
The first step in the social network marketing process is to develop your primary “Touch Points”, including a Facebook Business/Fan page and Twitter account (see this link for more information: http://themostsearched.blogspot.com/2009/04/social-network-marketing-updates-for.html).
Touch Points need Connections/Friends in order to make them work for your business. To get started, follow GLTBT travel individuals and businesses on Twitter (use the SEARCH function on Twitter to identify new connections to follow). Also, invite GLBT travel contacts in Facebook to join your Facebook Business/Fan page. You may also want to consider advertising with Facebook on a CPC basis (cost per click) in order to drive more traffic and get more people to connect with you on your Facebook page. Your ad can target "gay" and then keywords such as "travel" and "vacation". This ad can be set to target travelers in specific regions (thus focusing on your destination’s “feeder markets”) as well as by gender, age range and more. The benefits of this ad is that it will include your logo, thus providing you branding as well as directly measurable performance. To maximize the effectiveness of this ad, be sure to link it to your Facebook page, not directly to your website... you’ll get more Facebook members opting in to connect with you if you do.
Lastly, assuming you’ve been maintaining a LinkedIn.com and Plaxo.com account, keep the connections in these sites up to date with all of your main business contacts in travel. When you meet someone new at a trade show, don’t just add them to your contact database... ensure you’ve added them as a connection/friend in these sites as well.
The next step in the social network marketing process is developing a “story to tell” about your organization, product or service and posting it in the form of a blog. This story becomes the cornerstone of your social network marketing process, and feeds into the various “touch points” created in Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Rather than make this a place to post press releases, product information, etc., you should instead try to make this story more interesting and humanize the editorial as best as you can. Online consumers tend to view and read this editorial more frequently, and a good story is passed along to friends, thus increasing the viral nature of your content.
For the world of gay travel, there are a variety of blog posting themes you could choose from in order to keep your blog, and thus its content, fresh in the gay travel consumer’s eye.
These themes could include:
- Events: you could focus on upcoming GLBT events in your area, including Pride festivals, film festivals and more.
- Club and Bar Reviews: you could run a series of blog postings highlighting GLBT clubs and bars in your area
- Restaurant Reviews: you could run a series of blog postings highlighting GLBT and GLBT-friendly restaurants in your area
- Hotel Reviews: you could run a series of blog postings highlighting GLBT-friendly hotels in your area
- Destination Attractions and Highlights: you can feature art exhibitions, museum openings and wide variety of attractions and highlights in your area
- Individual interviews: you could have featured interviews done as blog postings of key GLBT business leaders in your area
This content would be posted on your blog, as well as requested for inclusion on other gay travel blogs you’ve developed a relationship with over the past few months, along with direct links back to your site. A link to the blog posting would also be posted on your Facebook page and promoted using your Twitter account.
To make your blog more interesting, consider the use of photos taken in a variety of social environments (bars, events, groups traveling together, etc.). A few of the key photos can be integrated into the blog along with a link to the full set of photos you’ve posted online. You should upload and tag the photos onto Facebook as well as uploaded to Flick (photos should be described and tagged with web link in description in order to maximize their marketing efforts in driving more traffic to your website.) An additional advantage to using Flickr is that the photos can be added to their gay travel group, currently at almost 700 members.
For hotel owners, try taking photos of hotel guests who would agree to having their photos uploaded onto your Facebook page and tagged so that they could share and remember their hotel stay with you. The same can be done for bars, clubs, group travelers and various other GLBT events as well. In all of these cases, when taking photos, do all you can to get the names of people in the photos, connect with them on Facebook and then tag the photos... this will increase your overall viral marketing and increase your overall number of connections/friends.
Lastly, the use of traditional destination photos can be used here as well... our recommendation is to always focus on people when using photos for social network marketing, but for a destination’s Facebook page, quality destination photos could work here as well. Similarly, a hotel or bar could use property photos to help make the online visitor more familiar with their property.
For those ready to take a more advanced leap in online viral content, videos can be a useful tool for destinations, hotels, bars and more. The videos can be informative (having a narrated walking tour depicting gay life in your city) as well as designed to tell their own story as well. The more unique the story in the video production, the more likely the videos will be shared and spread virally online. Posting video on YouTube and your Facebook page and properly tagging these uploaded videos will allow them to do the work for you. Posting the
video on your blog will increase your exposure even more.
To ensure your automated viral social networking is working for you, make sure to connect up your blog, photos, video and Twitter to Plaxo’s GLBT travel group, LinkedIn.com’s GLBT travel group and other relevant groups found on social networks including those found on Ning.com, CollectiveX.com and more. Also ensure you’ve connected your blog, photos, video and Twitter to Friendfeed.com and other automated social networks.
Also make sure to work some of the more manual social network updates that reach your specific audience, including posting some of your blog, photo and video updates in GLBT Travel groups on Facebook. More specifically, if you’re a bar or restaurant, ensure your up to date with Yelp.com. If you’re a hotel, you would use TripAdvisor.com. Specific social networks in the travel industry include TripWolf.com and specific social networks in the GLBT travel industry include GayCities.com with their user-generated reviews, and the new OutAdvisor.com.
Link to PDF version of article: http://www.pinkbananamedia.com/pdf/PBM_Web20_Travel.pdf
LAGLCC-IGLTA-GayTravelocity Reception @ Custom Hotel
We had a wonderful evening reception at the Custom Hotel in LA, hosted by an incredible staff. Over 75 people were in attendance for our first event bringing members together from LAGLCC (www.laglcc.org) and IGLTA (www.iglta.org) and sponsored by GayTravelocity.com
A few words about the Custom Hotel... it's a gorgeous boutique hotel located very near LAX. Every other Wednesday night is Crush, their local gay night they promote to the GLBT community living on the westside of LA.
Links to photos here:
Job Posting: Business Operations Manager for The Clubs
Help wanted. Seeking energetic, enthusiastic and goal-oriented candidate for the position of Business Operations Manager for the Dallas and Houston Clubs (www.theclubs.com).
Tasks
- Oversee local management team in Dallas and Houston
- Develop staffing programs to focus on and improve overall customer service
- Ensure accounting processes established by company are implemented, verified and routinely audited
- Oversee marketing initiatives from conception to implementation, based upon set marketing budgets
- Interact with local organizations, contractors and local authorities
Background
- 10 years of hands-on management experience
- Online marketing experience, including understanding of current social networking and Web 2.0 trends
- Staff training experience desirable, with the ability to motivate, evaluate and direct employees
- Accounting experience with Quickbooks
- Previous management experience in hospitality industry a plus
Requirements
- BS or greater, preferably in business, management and/or marketing disciplines
- Travel between Dallas and Houston on a regular basis, with possible travel to other Midwest destinations in near future
- Computer experience and knowledge, including Excel, Word and PowerPoint
Selected candidate will report to the Board of Directors. Salary is negotiable. For interview consideration, please submit resumes to dennis648@aol.com.
Should You Promote Your Company On Facebook and Risk Competitors Stealing your Customers?
This question has come up several times over the past month... one client in particular recently wrote: "Is it dumb for us to have a business/fan page (as opposed to profile), because competitors could start emailing all our peeps…friending them (and a lot of people accept everyone) and the start marketing to out entire mailing list?"
My response was as follows:
So you know my overall position on this… I think that the net, overall good that comes to your company by creating a Facebook business/fan page far outweighs the possibility that a competitor can poach your online network of friends (aka, your e-mail list).
First, Facebook discourages this. If someone started going through your friends and “friending” them all, Facebook would catch it at a certain point and warn the person not to do it or risk having their account closed. I know several people this has happened to, which then subsequently keeps them honest in the future. Being “honest” means that most business users of Facebook have come to realize that they need to earn friends, not just spam or steal them, and thus the greatest benefit to you as a company is that I believe what you have to offer in order to “earn” those friends and keep them staying in touch with and on top of your business offerings is considerably greater than that which your competitors can offer.
The video you’ve been placing online has been watched my almost everyone you and I know… your photos, uploaded to your business page and tagged, will go a long way in terms of spreading the word about your company far and wide to Facebook’s audience of over 200M users and growing. Posting links to your various new tours and travel packages is one way to promote yourself… posting your customers blog links, as well as providing them a page where they can post these themselves, will also help to create more buzz and bring more awareness to your company, your brand and your product offerings.
The bottom line is that your customers ARE already on Facebook… they are viewing other gay travel and tour operator offerings… they are engaging with each other and sharing information and stories about trips they’ve taken with you. Without a business presence on Facebook, these conversations and engagements are going on without you… you are NOT part of the conversation and you are missing out on shaping and influencing the direction those conversations and engagements go, which should be towards your business.
I hope this helps.
Matt
Tea Party!!!
Lisa Benson's politcal cartoon today found online at cartoonistgroup.com really cracked me up. It became the anthem for today's Tea Party celebration. I think the only thing I'd change is to make the guy on the bow Obama, the chief pirate.themostsearched, like many others, was unable to attend a Tea Party today because we are working hard to earn enough money to support our families AND pay our taxes while still giving back to our communities.
themostsearched is outraged at the Democratic-controlled US Congress. They have frivolously spent TRILLIONS left and right. This out of control spending will result in future severe inflation and devaluation of the dollar. Worst yet, many of the politicians who got us into this mess such as Barney Frank through his promoting home loans to those who couldn't afford it shrug off responsibility and accountiblity for their actions. (hey hey ho ho Barney Frank has got to go!!!)
But Congress is not solely culpable. Now that themostsearched as let Obama have some time in office without criticism, it is time to speak loud and clear: Obama your signing these massive spending bills rates you (so far) as the worst president in modern history. But then again I wasn't surprised because you had no executive experience and your ideals come from a far left socialist agenda.
It is at this time that themostsearched gives our support to an alternative plan, a better way:
(1) For the first time in our life, themostsearched gives support to the Fair Tax (see http://www.fairtax.org/). The 16th amendment needs to be repealed and IRS abolished. There is no defense for the status quo when Treasury Secretary "Tax Cheat" Geithner can't even get it right. The Fair Tax will also enhance savings as taxes will be increased on consumption. There should be some control in the Fair Tax to prevent particularly those with higher incomes from spending a bulk of their incomes out of country to avoid tax but this is so much better than what we have. Also we will reap a huge effeciency as we rid ourselves of a parasitical tax collecting sector of our economy and federal bureaucracy.
(2) Establish US Congressional term limits. maybe 3 or 4 terms for senator, 5 or 6 for representatives. The Congress is so concerned about controlling business that they are becoming too powerful. This modest proposal would help provide a check on Congress.
(3) Establish a federal balanced budget. Exceptions would include war approved by Congress and a majority vote by the people (its our money; we should have a say if we're going to suddenly spend more for some reason).
Social Network Marketing Updates for 2009
The concepts of Touch Points and Connections become even more poignant in this new age of Twitter and the recent Facebook updates
There can be little doubt that social network marketing is becoming one of the fastest growing areas in the marketing world today. Every day, we are inundated with new terms and forced to continue to keep up with the latest in social networking technology, including these new Twitters everyone keeps talking about, and the more recent updates Facebook has launched in order to both stay on top of the growth curve and counter this Twitter phenomenon.
In addition, it is becoming more and more clear that the eyeballs and attention of online users worldwide are continuing to migrate and spend more time in social networking sites than ever before. Facebook was at 100,000,000 users as of July 2008, and they are now surpassing 200,000,000 today, doubling in the span of just months. To accommodate this growth, Facebook has made a variety of changes designed to try and anticipate how users can continually manage this greater and greater influx of information in a way that’s still both useful and relevant in their daily lives. Of course, this accommodation and change is met with greater resistance today as so many people are now personally vested in the functionality of Facebook and don’t want to see key features for staying in touch with friends and business associates become diminished.
That said, Facebook is still the dominant social network for businesses large and small to reach their consumers in ways never thought possible before. With the new Facebook redesign, a Facebook Business/Fan Page is fast becoming the way to go for companies wishing to have the most impact with online users today. The new design allows a business to more conveniently present itself similar to how an individual presents himself today, with photos, status updates and even blog feeds imported as Notes. All of these elements appear in a user’s News Feed, which means that the business has a better chance of staying front and center with their consumer base. The more popular the elements are (such as a great photo album tagged with multiple people), the more often that element appears in the news feed, as well as appearing on the right-hand column where Facebook now features what it deems the most popular content for a user to view for that day.
Of course, an update for 2009 in the world of social networking would not be complete were it not to discuss Twitter. This service, which has definitely taken a lead position in terms of what new social network topic people are talking about, allows all of us, individuals and businesses alike, to keep our friends and fans up to date as what we’re up to in business and in life. The technical term of a Twitter is a microblog, which is simply a small amount of information equal to that which fits into a typical cell phone text message.
One important aspect of Twitter is to have as many people following you as possible... the more that follow you, the more you’re spreading your message out there on the Internet. So if your company has just posted a new update in its blog, has issued a press release, has an event to announce or simply has something to say, putting it into a Twitter means that you have one new online location from which to get the word out. And people will hear you and respond almost immediately.
The second power of Twitter is in the non-immediate responses found when using the SEARCH function on Twitter, which was rather hidden by the folks at Twitter until only recently. You can do a search for key words relevant to your business, such as “gay travel” or “gay business” to find Twitter postings several weeks or months old that are relevant to you and your industry. Finding these postings allows you to see who is posting what, discovering more about them through their online Twitter bio and link to their website. It is fast becoming a great way to expand one’s business network to reach individuals not found through some of the more traditional social network sites we’ve been using over the past year including LinkedIn.com and Plaxo.com.
It is this concept of “followers” and “connections” that is fast becoming key in the social networking world. Without a good number of people relevant to your business staying connected with you and receiving those gentle social network updates you’re sending out by posting status updates, Twitters, photos and link postings online, you would run into the “tree falling in the woods” scenario where if no one was listening, one would question whether the tree actually fell! The key is to put in the time to develop relevant friends, followers and connections in these and other social networking sites... it is this network of connections that is fast becoming the key differentiator between a successful social networking campaign and one that is just mediocre. It’s clear that to maintain a consistent network, one must put in the time... thus, as more and more companies are wading into the social network marketing waters and finding initial success, the next logical steps are to increase the time spent (whether that’s hiring an individual to do the work or an outside agency) so that they can continue to maximize the opportunities that are just continuing to expand and grow in this new marketing space.
It is not just Facebook, MySpace and Twitter which have the opportunity to maintain a network of connections. The selection of which site you choose to upload your business photos and videos is very important as well. I tend to focus on Flickr.com for photos and YouTube.com for videos. Flickr.com not only allows for excellent integration of your business photos into a variety of sites online, but it also maintains a strong social network from which you can increase the likelihood that your photos are viewed online. By uploading your photos onto Flickr and tagging them with key words you want them to be found by, you’ve increased the likelihood of your business photos being put to work for your business. By putting your web link in with the photo’s description, someone who finds your photos can follow you all the way back to your website. Lastly, adding your photos to some relevant groups associated with your photos and your business (such as the gay travel group, which currently has over 700 members) will further expand your reach with your photos in ways not possible on other photo uploading sites.
The same applies to YouTube, where your videos can ultimately be set up to drive more and more traffic to your website with the use of tags (key words) when uploading your videos. These tags allow someone viewing one video to see “similar videos” of which yours would be included. Thus, if someone is watching a video about “gay Montreal” and your video is also about gay Montreal and tagged as such, your video will probably be one of their automatically selected “similar videos” as well, which online users click on quite frequently as they “channel surf” on YouTube. By maintaining a strong branding presence on YouTube with the use of these “channels”, your videos will then ultimately bring more eyeballs to your online products and services displayed on your website.
Gay and Lesbian Social Networking
Advertising - Marketing - Community
For the full-color PDF version of this story, go here:
http://www.PinkBananaMedia.com/pdf/PBM_Web20_Travel.pdf
To subscribe to the PBM Monthly Gay Business Report, go here:
http://www.PinkBananaMedia.com/BusinessReport/
For the annual PBM Gay Market Report, go here:
http://www.PinkBananaMedia.com/MarketReport/
NOTE: This article is part of the Gay Market Report 2009 and is FREE TO USE as long as byline above, credit, logo and link are included with story. Credit Pink Banana Media,
Gay Business Report - April 2009
In This Issue
Social Network Marketing Updates for 2009
The concepts of Touch Points and Connections becomes even more poignant in this new age of Twitter and the recent Facebook updates
There can be little doubt that social network marketing is becoming one of the fastest growing areas in the marketing world today. Every day, we are inundated with new terms and forced to continue to keep up with the latest in social networking technology, including these new Twitters everyone keeps talking about, and the more recent updates Facebook has launched in order to both stay on top of the growth curve and counter this Twitter phenomenon....
Social Network Marketing in Gay Travel
Content ideas for gay travel and destination marketing are quite varied, and can include:
- Events: you could focus on upcoming GLBT events in your area, including Pride festivals, film festivals and more.
- Club and Bar Reviews: you could run a series of blog postings highlighting GLBT clubs and bars in your area
- Restaurant Reviews: you could run a series of blog postings highlighting GLBT and GLBT-friendly restaurants in your area
- Hotel Reviews: you could run a series of blog postings highlighting GLBT-friendly hotels in your area
- Destination Attractions and Highlights: you can feature art exhibitions, museum openings and wide variety of attractions and highlights in your area
- Individual interviews: you could have featured interviews done as blog postings of key GLBT business leaders in your area
Beta: New Tool for Measuring Social Network Marketing ROI
As social network marketing continues to grow in the marketing mix of companies worldwide, the one area that it continually falls short is in measurement and resulting Return on Investment (ROI) for the companies making their initial investments in this space. As a result, our company has embarked on a new project to create one of the first ROI spreadsheets for social network marketing. It’s not easy, as the variables to measure are considerably different from the tried and true banner advertising and e-mail marketing used today....
Other Highlights
- Promotion of an Event using Inbound Marketing
- The Power of a Tiny Picture
- Book Recommendation: World Wide Rave
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