Use Social Media to Defeat the Giants in Your Industry

Today, let's consider the High and Mighty --  vs. -- the Low and Loved. 

Social media is leveling the playing field, enabling the small business to compete with giant competitors. You can now beat the colossus by running between their towering legs and finding common cause with customers. Getting "down", or better, across to where the customer is located -- this is the key. 

Coming down off your superior pedestal and going deep into the valley of human need, human reality, human suffering, human hopes -- this is where the treasure is hidden. 

The big corporations are sluggish and bloated. They can't move as fast as you can. They are "too successful" or "too busy" to worry about connecting and interacting with people on social media. They are used to one-way broadcast messaging, with little to no feedback. 

They still "don't get" social networks. They spend their time and money on stupid Super Bowl commercials and advertising that is hard to track and do ROI analysis on, then they complain about social media ROI. 

They are clowns and fools. Their world is dying fast. 

One-way messaging to a dumb and passive consumer, with no input from them, is a dead platform. People are paying more attention to user forums and review sites than they are to old fashioned ad campaigns and press release PR. 

Fight the giants on your home turf. Defeat them in social media. Use blogs and YouTube videos to launch your assault. 

Remember, these golf-playing, conference-speaking, hush money/golden parachuted CEOs are "too busy" to engage in social networks.

They "don't have time" to participate. They can't think of anything to post as content. They're not used to engaging the public in conversations. They delegate that to interns and marketing companies. 

Social media interactions! 

This is their hideous vulnerability. This is where they are bleeding. This is where they display a humiliating cluelessness. This will be their graveyard. 

Cooking shows that are instructional, with an "expert" or chef on a high and exalted stage, talking down to an audience, and graciously imparting their superior knowledge -- these shows are in decline. 

The most popular cooking shows now are the reality-based competitions, where non-celebrities vie for a coveted crown, people just like you, only more achievement-oriented and goal-driven. 

We are seeing "elites" fall from their undeserved heights of fame and glory. Hierarchies are crumbling. 

It's the rise of the downtrodden. The Age of the Level Playing Field. Athletes are losing their gleam and glamour. Actors are going ballistic on Twitter. Musicians are booed for ignorant partisan statements. Things are not well in Higher Than Thou Land.

What does this mean for your business? 

Is it time to get off the elevated stage, or emerge from the manager cave, and start talking to people, caring about their needs, and improving customer service? 

Is it time to focus less on how great your company is, and "get dirty" (as the crooks say on Wall Street), by listening and paying more attention to customers? Is it time to say less about your own expertise and legacy, and say more about the problems for which your customers are seeking solutions? 

They won't care what you know unless they know that you care. 

I hear a lot of whining about how Walmart destroys local, family-owned businesses. 

I have no strong feelings for or against Walmart, but I will say this. If you have a big box store in your area, you need to stop complaining about their unfair advantages, and start hitting them in their weak spots. 

How can a little mom and pop store compete against the large chains?

Service. Expertise. Customer relations. Innovative marketing. Going the extra mile. Providing customization and personalization. Positioning yourself not as a deep discounter of generic garbage made in China, but as a seasoned purveyor of durable, reliable solutions made in the USA. 

Become the Top of Mind Choice, by sharing your insights and tips on social media, your blog, YouTube tutorial videos, GooglePlus, Twitter -- wherever your customers hang out. 

The "we have products, how much can we sell you today?" mentality must wither and die, to be replaced with the "you have problems, and we understand them and know how to fix them" attitude. 

As I repeat endlessly, people prefer to do business with companies they know, like and trust. 

Use warm, human social media interactions (not just sales hype posting) to become the business that is well known, dearly liked, and greatly trusted. Share your expertise. Offer good advice. Link to helpful resources. Produce interesting videos. Show that you understand and care about customer needs. 

Sales will increase. I guarantee it.

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Paula Deen, Racism, and the Lower Standards of the Elites

Paula Deen, not 30 years ago only, but recently, is accused of using the N word, treating black people as inferior, segregating black and white bathrooms, making racist jokes, and planning "plantation parties" with blacks dressed in white, in manner Paula Deen admits as being representative of slaves. SLAVES.

There is a flood of disinformation about how this whole uproar is over something somebody said 30 years ago. Wrong. It's about current behavior and present attitudes manifested by Paula Deen.

This Old South, Confederate flag waving, white supremacist attitude is rotten to the core and needs to be humiliated and punished. All forms of racism, sexism, and other prejudice should be vigorously opposed and shamed. People need to be held accountable for their bad behavior.

Some are rallying to the defense of Paula Deen -- because they like her Food Network cooking show. Others will support alleged crimes by famous athletes, because they like how they perform in sports, or they'll defend famous musicians, because they like their music.

Our values are twisted. Just because you like what someone does in one realm of life, that should have  no bearing on their ethical inconsistencies or lack of morality in another realm. In fact, those who have more influence and privilege in life should be held to higher standards, not lower.

We idolize the stars and celebrities and overly-identify with them. They become part of us, in a morbid psychic cannibalism. We feed on them and swallow all their lies and BS. When they are accused or attacked, we take it personally.

Musicians. Actors. Sports heroes. Cooking show queens. They are protected by the fans, no matter what wicked thing is done.

Too frequently, the "high and mighty" among are given a pass. They are considered beyond the reach of normal morality. Why? Because they have money. 

It's typically only the poor who go to prison in many cases. White collar criminals, Wall Street crooks, politicians, and other ne'er-do-wells are seen to escape the repercussions that hit the average person.

Rich, powerful, famous celebrities often think they are above the law, above the ethical principles that the common "unwashed masses" are held to. This is one of the problems in this case.

Everybody asks for forgiveness when they start losing all their money due to public backlash and media ridicule. Asking for forgiveness is easy. Repentance (genuinely changing ones heart and orientation) is not so easy, nor is it common.

Politicians do this all the time. "I'm sorry if my words offended anyone." They aren't sorry for the words, they're sorry people were insulted.

"I did the best I could with the information I had at the time" is another cop-out.

"I was raised that way."

"All my friends were doing it."

"Don't blame me, it's the fault of my culture and environment."

Often they lie and deny any wrongdoing, as in the case of Lance Armstrong. They'll ruin other people's lives just to hang onto their empire and glory and wealth.

There is no guilt or shame or begging for mercy...until they get caught and exposed by the media, ditched by their sponsors and boycotted by the consumers.

You see how they idolize their fame and fortune, how they bitterly dread descending to low estate and having to mingle with the downtrodden. That is a fate worse than death to these elites.

READ MORE

Think this is a lot of fuss about something Deen said 30 years ago? You are mistaken

Take a look at the testimony in the deposition associated with the lawsuit against Paula Deen:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/148832518/Paula-Deen-Deposition-Testimony

Huffington Post "Paula Deen Racist Comments"

Fox News "Paula Deen Cooking Show Ratings Were Sinking Prior To the Racism Scandal"

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New Canon camera

I have a new Canon PowerShot SX50 HS camera with 50x zoom.

Check out my photo blog "Lensing and Shuttering" and see some of my recent photos.

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Morozko (Jack Frost) film 1964

One of my favorite movies is "Morozko" ("Jack Frost" or "Father Frost") (1964/66) -- a Russian folklore film that is surreal and extremely beautiful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw2DN4335hU

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Frost_(1964_film)

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No "Followers" on Facebook

Did you know you may have secretive "followers" on Facebook? People you probably don't know and they are reading your posts and looking at your photos?

Ignorant social media experts confuse fans, friends, and followers on Facebook. If you Google "why would someone follow me on Facebook?" you're going to see a lot of articles on why you should want to have more people seeing your brand messages.

But a "follower" on Facebook is NOT a "friend". Let me explain this mess.

Women and other vulnerable people may want to guard against potential predators. I suggest you do something about "followers" on Facebook.

I don't want anybody subscribing to my public posts, which Facebook now calls a "follower," because I only want to share my insights and photos with people I know or who have sent me Friend Requests and I see that we share common interests.

Why would someone "subscribe to" or "follow" your public posts -- but do so semi-clandestinely, "under the radar"? I don't like it. On your profile page you can see your Followers if you click on that word in the left sidebar.

"Followers" (who used to be called "subscribers") are typically unknown strangers. You may think it's creepy, or odd, that someone would follow, be able to read, your public posts. The posts of most Facebook users are public by default. Few have changed their privacy settings to limit who can read their status updates.

I agree with those who consider "followers" to be creepy. I assign them to the category of stalkers.

Here's how to prevent strangers from "following" your public FB posts:

(1) Click on the gear tool icon in the upper right of your Facebook page, to the right of Home and [Your Name]

(2) Click on Privacy Settings

(3) Look on left sidebar

(4) Click on Followers

(5) Then UNCLICK "Turn On Followers".

http://mashable.com/2012/12/05/facebook-subscribers-followers/

http://www.quepublishing.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2036563

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Evolution of Cosmic Dystopia

Nature > Humans > Machines > Humans destroy nature > Machines become self-aware and destroy humans > Machines consider themselves to be godlike > Universe is replaced with a manufactured network of machine constellations.

File under: Quantum Computing.

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Becoming Less Transparent On Facebook

Facebook Cleanup Phase 2. 

A few days ago, on my Facebook profile (About page), I deleted about 100 Likes that I didn't recall clicking Like on. I was not opposed to the topics, activities, products, or organizations. I just don't support them, or they post content that I'm no longer interested in, or they don't post anything and may be abandoned FB pages.

Tonight, I deleted 100 more, almost all the rest of my Likes. I've dwindled down my Likes list to just a few entities that I really care about and want to get updates on.

Some people want to reveal who they are by clicking on things they like, abstract ideas like Organic Gardening or Philosophy or Astrophysics.

They also display on their About pages all their family members, past employers, places where they've lived, schools they attended, and the music, movies, TV shows, sports, games, books, and events they like. They apparently want to "be known" and be transparent about their interests.

I see no point to this. The entities that preach to you "be transparent" are themselves not transparent, especially about why they want you to be transparent. Those who most vehemently want you to submit to the "privacy is dead" mantra are stalkers, predators, identity thieves, "Big Data" mongers, advertisers, and surveillance agencies.

I reveal my basic data about myself and share my insights, photos of places around town, links to interesting information, and food I'm eating. That's about it. The rest of my life and interests are basically boring or of no relevance to what I want to accomplish on Facebook -- which is to help, amuse, inspire, and educate people.

I am also blocking people who follow my status updates, but I don't know them personally. I suggest you consider doing the same.

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Breakfast Food is Gross

What is the deal with breakfast food? Do people put up with this slop just because it reminds them of happy days as a child? Think about it. The WORST, most unhealthy food on earth is tossed into the "breakfast" category.

By the time you drink a couple of cups of coffee, you've come to your senses. You stare at your empty plate and ask yourself, "What the heck was that garbage I just ate? I wouldn't feed that stuff to a dog!"

Because we are still sleepy, the restaurants think they can pass off this horrible mess as "breakfast", charge a ridiculous amount of money, and we'll go ahead and consume it. Why? Because we've barely emerged from a dream state. We aren't focused yet. The only reason they serve you coffee is so you'll be alert enough to pay the bill.

Sugary donuts. Greasy sausage. Runny, incompletely cooked eggs. Toast slathered with butter. Fattening gravy with bits of sausage floating in it. Pancake batter smothered in butter and syrup. Sickeningly sweet cereal in weird shapes and colors, that you add milk and sugar to, turning it into a mushy monstrosity.

Notice how they have to load up breakfast food with a lot of butter, sugar, and syrup to force, I mean, entice people to eat it?

I almost never eat breakfast or breakfast foods. It's all so slimey. If I eat anything early in the morning, I'll generally have a banana, or a bowl of citrus fruit like lemons, grapefruit and oranges.

It's like the worst kinds of food are reserved for early morning, because you're not awake enough to realize how awful the stuff is. When you do wake up, and can think more clearly about what you're going to put into your stomach, you eat real food for lunch and dinner. LOL

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Facebook Hashtags and How To Use Them

TechCrunch has announced that Facebook confirms it will implement functional #hashtag capabilities. 

Hashtags are used to facilitate discoverability of content related to topics, issues, people, places, TV shows, celebrities, politics, locations, conferences, beliefs, companies, events, products, etc. -- whatever users mark with a hashtag. 

Facebook claims the hashtag content will be governed by your privacy settings, so a hashtag post will be viewable only by who you enable to view it according to your account's privacy settings. 

I hope this means we can finally search our own FB content, if we hashtag it, like #stevenstreightSEO or #str8sounds or #stevenstreightlocalnews.

Max Woolf is not impressed. He claims that the implementation of hashtags on Facebook is stupid. Hashtags on comments won't be searchable, nor will they be included in conversation feeds. Privacy settings will greatly limit the hashtagged content available for public view. Marketers will exploit hashtags. Porn spammers and other ne'er-do-wells will abuse hashtags.

Read his article "Facebook Hashtags are Fundamentally Broken."

You must learn how to use hashtags correctly and effectively. They must be phrases with no spaces between the words, for example.

The purpose of hashtags is to identify, organize, and find specific conversations. The key to effective use is to determine what the essential keywords are, which is a classic SEO tactic. 

You don't want to pick an unpopular hashtag, nor do you want to use a nebulous or inexact keyword for your hashtag. For example, a #marketing hashtag is so vague, you probably won't find it as valuable as #mobilemarketing or #eventmarketing conversations. 

Instead of hashtagging an event as #conference you should hashtag it with the name and year of the event. For example #smx or #sxsw2013 or #pubcon2013 

Sometimes people are using multiple hashtags to refer to an event, topic, or whatever. So you may have to click on #summercamp2013 and #chillicothemusicfest and #threesisterspark and so forth. 

You can use more than one hashtag in a post, but it pays to discover what exact hashtag others are using predominately for a given topic. For example, ABC Television prefers that people use #DWTS as the hashtag for Dancing With the Stars, rather than, or in addition to, hashtagging the individual dancers. Search a hashtag BEFORE you use it. 

You may find out that what you wanted to use as the hash tag for a topic is already being used, but for a very different topic. 

Using stupid hashtags just muddies the waters. The classic example is Entenmann's using "notguilty" in a hashtag about their cookies, when everybody was using the same tag for the Casey Anthony murder trial verdict. Hashtags are often used by spammers and cyberbullies. 

You should become familiar with the black hat SEO and trolling ways of using hashtags for negative purposes. There are #hashtagdirectories that give you standard hashtags in common use for specific topics, events, people, and issues. 

READ MORE

http://blog.microsecommerce.com/index.php/uncategorized/5-tips-for-using-hashtags-effectively/ 


http://minimaxir.com/2013/06/hashtag-hashtag/

https://support.twitter.com/articles/49309-using-hashtags-on-twitter 

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/hashtags/ http://twubs.com/p/hashtag-directory 

http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/12/facebook-hashtag/

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Notes from an Ascetic's Journal

Living a noble life, with a good conscience, simple needs, deep devotion, abiding thankfulness, and a loving family -- brings you a joy and peace that the super wealthy, celebrities, rulers, and powerful people will never know and can never attain.

When their fortunes are lost, their talent subsides, their beauty fades, their bodies deteriorate, their minds are scrambled, their popularity crumbles, their expertise is outdated, their egos are crushed, their entourage abandons them, their power is usurped -- they are more miserable than you will ever imagine.

They won't have the simple, pure, decent things to fall back on, because they never felt a need for them and never cultivated them in their rush for dominance and fame.

Remember this as you lie in your bed, drifting off to sleep, with a smile on your face and contentment in your heart.

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Amateurish Link Anchors is Smart SEO

SEO specialists are recommending, to avoid "over-optimization", you be a bit amateurish in your link anchor text (the wording of a link).

In most fields, the more professional you are, the better. But in SEO, the spammers and black hat practitioners are spotted by Google due to their slick and sophisticated methodologies.

(NOTE: Black hat SEO means taking advantage of loopholes and gimmicks to trick Google into thinking a thin content, poor quality, or deceptive/malicious website is relevant to keyword queries and should be ranked high in search engine results pages (SERPs). 

Don't let anybody use black hat tricks on your website, because eventually Google catches on, changes their search algorithm, and penalizes or de-indexes websites employing black hat techniques.

Once your website is removed from Google search results, it can take you 6 months to a year to plead with Google to put you back on.)

Now it is recommended that in your wording for links, you should use naked URLs (e.g., www.pluperfecter.blogspot.com), brand anchors (Pluperfecter), brand-keyword hybrid anchors (Pluperfecter web content development and SEO blog), and junk anchors (click here, read more, next page).

The former rules were (1) never use naked URLs as they look clueless and slow down reading, (2) use brand and company anchors for domains only (home pages), (3) use either brands or keywords but not both, and (4) never use junk anchors because they don't convey to human users or search engines the keywords indicative of the information you're going to navigate to and see when you click the link.

It's funny that, in the current SEO landscape, to appear less malicious, you need to appear less competent and consciously violate usability principles.

Another odd thing I came across in my SEO research is that when Google comes out with a new algorithm update, don't respond to it immediately.

Why? Because spammers and black hats typically change what they're doing the minute there's a new update, while legitimate webmasters are more sluggish and less attuned to Google's changes.

READ MORE

Search Engine Journal "Post-Penguin SEO Link Building"

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/post-penguin-seo-link-building-the-naked-url-truth/46936/

Google's Matt Cutts video on internal links and anchor text

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The Internship: Google PR Movie fact check

The Internship -- a comedy loosely based on a false notion of Google internships?

How many movies have you seen that claim to be "based on a true story," or "a dramatization of real events," only to find out that there were so many factual aberrations, that the film's rendition of the story is mostly fantasy, or falsified in important points, and thus  gives a warped viewpoint of the reality?

The Internship is one of those movies, apparently. A film about two older guys who want a job in technology "with Google as the backdrop." That means, with a fictionalized, unreal portrayal of Google. 

Many reviewers are calling The Internship "a love letter to Google" and "a 2 hour  commercial for Google," but there are some odd misrepresentations.

FACT: There is no public Google "help line" you can call.

FACT: Google internships are not given out as prizes for team competition events.

FACT: New AdWords accounts for small businesses do not get processed through written purchase orders.

FACT: Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson do NOT have GooglePlus accounts.

FACT: Google, in fact no corporation or organization, is as wacky, fun, altruistic, and innocent, as this film makes Google out to be. It's easy to chant "Do No Harm" -- but that doesn't mean that you are in fact never doing any harm. Of course, no group of humans will ever be perfect.

The film makers confessed that they weren't trying to portray Google accurately. They admit to not caring about the facts. Then why not call the firm Zillions, give it a fake name and fake characteristics?

The movie revolves around Google internships, but presents a very inaccurate perspective on Google internships, offering a make believe substitute instead. It strongly pushes the good intentions of Google and its Do No Harm mantra, while avoiding any of the negative publicity related to Google's policies.

What is the point of doing such a thing? Didn't the producer have enough imagination to build a story on the truth about Google internships? Was the truth "too mundane," not exciting enough?

Why can't a film maker take the reality and build a story around the actual facts, instead of twisting things around, for the sake of "what I want to imagine it to be"?

My reason for disliking this common ploy is that the movies create a powerfully embedded false sense of a real thing. The fantasy of the film dictates what the masses perceive about the object of the film. 

Movie-goers walk away with a fake that they consider the real deal. This can cause trivial or serious problems when people discuss the true story, or the actual entity, and base their opinions on what they remember seeing in the movie.

I'm not saying that every film based on a true story or a real entity has to be a documentary. What I'm saying is be faithful to the facts of the real entity, because your portrayal will be taken by most movie-goers to be the truth. Most of them probably won't fact check the film.

I believe that films based on true stories or real entities swerve from the facts due to the arrogance of the producer. Ego gets in the way. A power trip ensues. The producer gets some kind of weird thrill imposing his vision and disregarding the truth.

The motivation of the film's producer often is declared: "I told the story in my own special way because I wanted to put my personal stamp on it." They apparently want to tell their own story, and just use the true story or the real entity as a convenient springboard to go off in all kinds of wild, fanciful directions. To me, that's not cool.

Will The Internship be a funny movie? Probably. Will it be enjoyable to watch. Undoubtedly. Will it get people interested in pursuing a career in technology? Hopefully. Will it implant some errors about what Google is really like in the minds of viewers? Unfortunately.

Bottom line: A good PR tool for Google, that pointlessly deviates from the truth about Google internships. A better idea for a movie might have been the zany antics of brogrammers that occur at Google's Summer of Code (SOC) program.

https://developers.google.com/open-source/soc/

http://readwrite.com/2013/06/01/why-i-wish-the-new-google-internship-movie-was-actually-true

http://marketingland.com/the-internship-movie-google-45618

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Peoria All America City video 2013

While I appreciate the effort, I'm not impressed with the All-America City 2013 video for Peoria. In fact, I don't think it shows Peoria as a unique community. I think the historical value of Peoria is completely disregarded.

According to the All America City Award website of the National Civic League, the focus is supposed to be changing a community in a positive way.

QUOTE

Once described by pollster George Gallup as a “Nobel Prize” for civic accomplishment, the awards have been given to more than 600 communities since its inception in 1949. Some have won it as many as five and six times. Not just cities, but neighborhoods, towns, counties and metropolitan regions can apply for the prestigious award.

To qualify for AAC, participants fill out applications listing three examples of successful community change. Applicants are enocuraged to use the National Civic League’s “Civic Index,” a widely used tool for assessing community strengths and weaknesses. In their applications, they describe their capacities for civic engagement, collaboration; inclusiveness and innovation.

END QUOTE

A Rod Stewart song "Forever Young" with several groups of people marching toward the camera, and the same people are shown repeatedly? It seems more appropriate for a commercial about people who quit cigarettes and are now marching in freedom from addiction.

Why not use a Dan Fogelberg song? That would be the real Peoria.

Why not show Preston Jackson and his new Richard Pryor statue?

Video begins with "Peoria, IL. Founded in 1680" -- but there is no photo or drawing of old Peoria. No historical artifacts, buildings, or scenes are shown. A quick sequence of the evolution of Peoria, from Henri de Tonti days to now, would have fit the theme of "Forever Young."

Not much of Peoria is shown in this video. Any sites that are shown are obscured by close-ups of people marching toward the camera. This video is not "Peoria", you could put any city's name on this video.

People are important, but this video looks generic. A city is its landmarks, colleges, industry, family-owned restaurants, third generation retail shops, historic buildings, scenic views, unique monuments -- not just some marching people lip-synching a Rod Stewart song.

Only long time Peoria residents will be able to recognize what businesses and facilities are being shown, because the camera focuses on the people walking down a corridor or a sidewalk near the facility. A focus on the name of the facility, the sign on the building itself, then sweeping over to some people, might have been a better approach.

I would have liked to also see: Peoria Public Library North Branch, Castle Patio Inn, Naturally Yours Grocery, Relics, Re-, Cyds, Lariat Steakhouse, the Shoppes at Grand Prairie, the Hoffbrau, etc.

At least Platteville, Wisconsin has "we have a lot of manure" as a claim to fame for the 2013 award.

People marching and clapping seems to be a common theme in All America City competition videos. "We love our city. Vote for us." is a pretty unimaginative theme though. Lower Naugatuck Valley.

Yet another marching video for the All America City competition. Fayetteville, NC (2011).

Granite City, IL won All America City award in 1959.

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Guide to Music Genres

Guide to Music Genres : 

How Each Would Do "I Saw a Flower" Song

ROCK -- Hey man, what's that thing growin in your yard? I think it's a flower, cuz I stared at it real hard. Flower! I saw a flower! Every hour. The same old flower.

PUNK -- Anarchy in the gardens today. I saw a flower. And I threw it away. Government shall not hold sway. Abolish the Fed and IRS, I say. Police state, it cannot stay. Defiance is the only way. I saw a flower and I threw it, I threw it, I threw it away!

FOLK -- Rich man on the hill, popping narcotic pills, what gives you a thrill? No stopping you until. We protect our ecosystem. Listen children, children listen. I saw a flower. It smelled so nice. I saw a flower. I smelled it twice.

POP -- I was walking home today, with a heart to throw away, when I saw a pretty flower, braving a rain shower. Oh flower you're so pretty, like I hope to be when I'm fifty. Oh aren't you so cute and sweet? Hope no one tramples you under their feet.

RAP -- I wuz hangin with my homies and smokin blunts when dude knocked on da door and made us jump (we thought it was the poh-leece) an he say "dog, you got a mutha-fin' flower on yo lawn and it ain't no weed either.

OPERA -- I saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw a floooooooooooowwwwwwwweeeeeeeer, I sawwwwwwwww aaaaaaaaaa flooooooooowwwwwweeeeerrrrrrrrrr.

COUNTRY -- Well I got drunk and broke my guitar, then my lady threw up on my pickup truck, so I grabbed my rifle and headed downtown to the honky tonk, and whadya know? I saw a flower and got drunk and drove my pickup truck around.

EMO -- I can't stand the pain. My heart will never feel the same. I think I'm going to go insane. On my soul is a black stain. I feel my life go down the drain. I have nothing in my brain. Don't blame me because I'm sour. I refuse to shave or shower. Hang me from the tallest tower: I saw a sad and dying flower.

METAL -- AAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHUUUUUHHHHH !!@#$%*@*#!!*#$*@#%@#*#$ IYYYYYYYY GRRRRRRRROOWWW SSSSAAWWWW AAARRRRRRGGGGGHGZHXXX FUUUULLL OWWWWW WWWWERRRRRRRRR #@amp;$@!!&**@*#$#*@!

PRAISE & WORSHIP -- God is beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. God is beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. God is beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. God is beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. God is beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. God is beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. God is beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. God is beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. God is beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. God is beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. God is beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. God is beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. God is beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. God is beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. God is beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. Beautiful in power. I saw a flower. I saw a flower. I saw a flower.

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Is The Total Transformation a scam?

Is The Total Transformation a scam?

Are their behavioral techniques effective for parents of ODD (oppositional defiant disorder) children? 

Is having someone hound you to practice "tough love" worth $327 (plus shipping) to you? 

Are people being bullied into signing up for a lot of programs that are difficult to cancel?

Do reviews by affiliates have any credibility? (No.) 

Do anonymous customer reviews have any credibility? (No.) 

When you Google "Total Transformation scam" and all you see are people claiming that it is NOT a scam, is that a good sign? (No.)

Amazon product page for The Total Transformation has a lot of authentic sounding negative reviews and some phony sounding positive reviews.

QUOTE

If you watched the infomercail and thought "wow, I agree with what they're saying, maybe this is a good program" then you've already heard 75% of what you're going to get on the CD/DVD set. 

Most of the hours and hours of guidance is just an extended version of the infomercial, a lot of times it's the exact same script as the infomercail. It's like they're trying to convince you that their method works and you should buy into it. 

Yeah, I got thst part, can we just move on? Unfortunately no, you can't move on. You must listen to hours of them droning on and on about and Lehman and his program and how good it is and testimonials and why you should do this and why it works. I

t's very frustrating to listen to all that when you accept the premise and want to move on to the HOW of the program. I lost patience really quickly trying to weed through all the hard sell rhetoric to find the actual steps of the program. 

- N. Coy

END QUOTE

If you want to avoid being a chump, a victim of a con artist, you must get good at sensing the authenticity of user reviews. After reading a lot of reviews for a lot of different products, you'll develop a specialized awareness. You'll be able to detect fake reviews from real customer assessments.

One way to distinguish a disguised ad from a legitimate user evaluation is this: a real customer will use their real name, link to their other reviews and/or their own blog, and will be mixed -- partly positive and partly negative.

Really bad products can get totally negative reviews, but reviews of great products by actual customers will typically mention a few imperfections or drawbacks. A mediocre product can annoy people to the point where they are completely hostile, while a super fantastic product will always have a few aspects that are disappointing.

Does your teenager "suffer from" ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder)? 

Don't get chumped out by expensive book/CD/DVD packages.

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Waffles At Noon "The Total Transformation: Sifting Through the Fake Reviews"

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