I so believe in the important significance of direct selling to the future of our "indie" capitalist world. Please check out this video and tell me what you think.

TO understand the strategy that kept J. C. Penney in the pole position for so many searches, you need to know how Web sites rise to the top of Google’s results. We’re talking, to be clear, about the “organic” results — in other words, the ones that are not paid advertisements. In deriving organic results, Google’s algorithm takes into account dozens of criteria, many of which the company will not discuss.

But it has described one crucial factor in detail: links from one site to another.

If you own a Web site, for instance, about Chinese cooking, your site’s Google ranking will improve as other sites link to it. The more links to your site, especially those from other Chinese cooking-related sites, the higher your ranking. In a way, what Google is measuring is your site’s popularity by polling the best-informed online fans of Chinese cooking and counting their links to your site as votes of approval.

How valuable was that? A study last May by Daniel Ruby of Chitika, an online advertising network of 100,000 sites, found that, on average, 34 percent of Google’s traffic went to the No. 1 result, about twice the percentage that went to No. 2.

Please come to this lovely reception for local artists. Everything is for sale ($50-$3000) and this should be really fun. See you there!

Fast Company says:
The user is king. It’s a phrase that’s repeated over and over again as a mantra: Companies must become user-centric. But there’s a problem: It doesn’t work. Here’s the truth: Great brands lead users, not the other way around.

The Apple and IKEA way
Take Apple. One evening, well into the night, we asked some of our friends on the Apple design team about their view of user-centric design. Their answer? “It’s all bullshit and hot air created to sell consulting projects and to give insecure managers a false sense of security. At Apple, we don’t waste our time asking users, we build our brand through creating great products we believe people will love."

Another hyper-growth brand, IKEA, has the same belief. One of us had the privilege of working closely with IKEA’s global brand and design leaders; at IKEA the unspoken philosophy is: “We show people the way.” IKEA designers don’t use user studies or user insights to create their products. When I asked them why, they said “We tried and it didn’t work.”

Fast Company, my favorite daily newsletter about innovations in marketing and technology, has the following to say about the Super Bowl ads -- most of which I thought were great, especially Eminem, all the Chevy ads (my brother runs a dealership in Delaware)...The Doritos ads were gross...anyway, here's a quote from Fast Company:



Jason Peterson, chief creative officer at Euro RSCG's Chicago office, believes a Super Bowl hit is more than just YouTube views or Twitter tweets. The most successful ads, he says, will not just be watched again online, but be reimagined. In other words, they'll not only go viral--they'll become Internet memes.

"I think YouTube is obviously a big metric--if you see a cultural hit, you're going to see it first reflected online on YouTube," he says. "The next level is: How many parodies are you getting? How many people are getting off their asses, getting video cameras, and actually interacting with the work you put out there? Parodies, to me, are the biggest gauge of whether an advertisement is relevant with the market."

So, who is making fun of your ad campaign???

Are you keeping track of your hours?

For most entrepreneurs, the line between work and play is a little fuzzy. I love my work, so isn't that play? Vacuuming feels like work, but it doesn't really contribute to my bottom line, unless it's in my office and I don't want my clients to sneeze.

A great and fun exercise is to actually clock in and clock out -- meassure the time you are actually working (and you get to define what that is). Getting a massage is working, if you are a massage therapist and looking for best practices or checking out your competition. Shopping is working if you are looking at the prices other jewelry designers charge for their work.

So, this week, keep track of your hours. If you want to get really sophisticated, you can even categorize your hours by what you are doing. Divide it into categories, such as:

Direct client hours
Market Research
Sales (networking, phone calls to potential customers)
Operations (calling the phone company)
Human Resources (going to the doctor--yes, that's work. If you had a job your employer would be okay if you went during work hours)
Finance (paying bills, doing taxes)
In my next blog I am going to talk about what we do with this information. Let me know how this is going