NJ Common Sense

By Lon (Alonzo) Hosford

Christmas presents that are the best come in people and unexpected gifts. For me this was having my daughters both home from distant parts of the US and the introduction to how to Crush It!

Your Battle Plan For Spreading Freedoms Message

Careful You May Get What You Ask For
Besides the blessed gifts of my daughters being home, I also got the gifts I asked for and yes many other gifts, all appreciated, destined to clutter drawers and other cavities in the house. Some are marked with a date for safe re-gifting. Some of the gifts I went for were Beck’s Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government, Beck’s Glenn Beck’s Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine and Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto. Santa was generous and my patience to hold out paid off.

Sorry Jim Cramer
I find the holiday weeks are a great time for reading and was delighted to see I was blessed with content of my liking this year. Last year it was Jim Cramer’s books. Unfortunately after finding he supported the Democrats in 2008 I doubted he has a full understanding of capitalism. This doubt turned to conclusion when he expressed “buyer’s remorse” in voting for Obama and then repudiating that. His books are finding their way to Amazon where they can truly contribute to capitalism for me. Plus despite his apparent personal successes, I can tell you he can hurt folks who try to follow him. Cramer is no pundit in my humble opinion and I have since stopped following his show. But I digress.

Oxygen Now!
After all the Xmas gifts were opened my oldest daughter Beverly, who is a people networking virtuoso, mentioned two books she bought for a cousin in her same age group: young and looking to make a mark in the world preferably through capitalism whether or not they truly understand the crumbling liberty foundation needed for true capitalism. She suggested I might want to read them and we could buy fresh copies before we visit her cousin. This is her networking acuity hard at work – knowing people including her father – breathtaking – give me oxygen now.

Sorry Glenn Beck and Mark Levin
The two books she offered up are  Crush It! and What Would Google Do? While waiting for Christmas dinner, I took on the shorter book Crush It! Sorry Beck. Sorry Levin. Within pages I realized I had the real surprise gift of the holiday. I consumed most of the 134 pages by dinner and polished the remainder off after my younger scholarly daughter Julianne delighted us with her culinary arts for another fabulous holiday meal something that I look forward to in the past years since she started doing our holiday meals.

Gary Vaynerchuk: Social Media = Business
Crush It! is written by Gary Vaynerchuk a former resident of Hunterdon County New Jersey and family member of the Shoppers Discount Liquors of Clark New Jersey. Gary is famous in the Social Media world in particular with the Wine Library that is his proof of the new business formula: Social Media = Business. Gary makes big bucks with his passion for wine using social media. I also learned he redesigned the Vemma web site for brand partners like me to meet the new business formula of social media equaling business. I was delighted when that upgrade was released in September but did not know who Gary was then. I now blog there as well.

Traditional Business Media Models Are Obsolete
The business models of reaching people have changed dramatically in this decade that is ending this week. If you have not caught on, you will have to wake up because your current ways of business building and using media is becoming obsolete. Yes just like the buggy whip. Let me say it this way: The New Media is Social Media. How it works is foreign to traditional business thinking and to most boomers on up in age. This book shows you how to embrace it. Social media applies to any business from one person to one as large as Dell. Dell is talked about in the What Would Google Do? book and demonstrates how social media can be the end or the savior of a company that large. I am still knifing through What Would Google Do? and expect to have some mind changes once done such as all businesses need to create a platform. I bet you wonder what a “platform” is. Get the book.

Social Media Is The Mass Media
Waking up is all about the conservative movement. We need to wake up people who vote. The question comes up time and time again about how to get the message out and perhaps how to raise money to get the message out. Standing on streets protesting, going to DC, meeting with “elected” officials and sending emails are obsolete in the sense of media outreach necessary to wake up voters. Embracing and mastering social media contains the muskets we need for the second revolution. So I want to reapply Gary’s formula as Social Media = Freedom’s New Voice. This applies to every person who wants the truth told and there are no excuses for you not to learn how. Every tweet in social media represents a shot heard as a mass media necessary to get the message out.

I Do Not Get That Twitter Thing
So what is a tweet? Many tell me they do not understand Twitter or Facebook or YouTube. They think it is above them or too complicated or they do not have enough time. They are still stuck with email and many do not know how to do that effectively either to the point the senders are complaining about the volume in their own inboxes. I have to say a large majority of my emails now go into a folder for future reading to which I may never get to read. Sorry those are facts.

Bayonets vs AK45s
Social media communication domination is critical for capitalism and conservatism to grow again. The world order communists, progressives, socialists or whatever have this social media weapon well in hand are using it to accelerate their agendas at hyper speed while their intended captives, YOU, are not. Look at this way. Bayonets to AK45s is email to social media. Guess who has the AK45s.

If you have a burning passion about this conservative movement and the 100+ year communist infiltration into US education and government, then you need to look at expressing it via social media. So the question you ask is how are you going to learn to use social media?

You start with Crush It! I get asked over and over by fellow conservatives about starting a web site. Frankly its a big job and nothing gets done and maintenance is a bigger problem. Then consider that communicating via a web site is obsolete in many respects as you will learn in reading Crush It!. Even the idea of a home page is decreasing rapidly as a media force. Effective application of social media is the priority and the web site and home pages are moving to second place. Wait until Google Wave hits. Ah another big technology change is on its way. They just keep coming like new weapons.

What To Master In Social Media
For social media you to learn about building followers. Terms like tumbling, call-to-action buttons, share buttons, lure, lasso, widgets and platform are few you need to master.

For just a hint on some for these outlined in Crush It! consider call-to-action buttons. These are subscribe to email, friend me up, follow me and become a fan. Many I know in the conservative movement only understand subscribe to email which everyone fears. Subscribe to email is one the younger generation could care less about. How about share buttons? Stumble upon, Digg, Reddit, Facebook and Email This. Again more advanced way to build followings you need to study and master.

Talk to the Hand
Crush It! is an easy read. The chapters are short so you can take many breaks although you may gulp down two or three at a read. Gary will help you identify the social media style for your DNA and provides a simple list of steps to get going. End goal it to brand yourself in social media for a following. Leading by example is how minds are changed and social media is the path.

Warning! Folks who now want to discuss with me a web presence and have not done Gary’s Crush It! are going to get a “talk to the hand” response because you need to get the importance of social media first.  Just as print is becoming obsolete, television is too and soon your business and worse freedom. Gary explains how TV and cable are doomed. Sorry Fox and Comcast. Perhaps the demise of television broadcasting is good for liberty if we learn to master the alternative because of the tidal wave of expanding media that it brings intertwined as social media.

So you are warned. Want to not understand and daily use social media then “talk to the hand”. As well watch what you love overrun by a generation who was denied learning the truth about freedom and how it can be taken away in slivers until one point is unrecognizable.

A Quick Social Media Readiness Test
Want a social media readiness test now? Try the Share/Save button below and if you do not have a choice on there you can pick besides email and bookmark, you are at zero. Have 3 choices you can use? You get a barely passing grade.