Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

Influence: The digital game has changed in blogging

Unless you're selling advertising, you might forget monitoring the overall traffic on your blogs.  Where influence is coming from is not from the average of visitors.  Instead, it now happens via the one well-done post which goes viral.  Because on the web we're operating in a niche marketplace, the right people will see it.  Likely they will pass on that post to more of the right people. 

Soon enough there are invitations on LinkedIn to connect. There is a surge in views of my LinkedIn profile.  The phone rings with requests for information about how I work and what I charge.  And I get more confidence.  In this era of uncertainty when we all wonder about The Next, believing in ourselves is everything.

More of my best thinking is now invested in zeroing in on the right topics, with a provocative angle.  

Sweet Caroline Has Competition: Chelsea Clinton dominates media

The Chelsea Clinton Brand, when it comes down to presidential daughters, might trump the Sweet Caroline Kennedy Aura.  After all, this is the era of Leaning In.  Our focus is on females with big career ambitions and accomplishments, no apology accepted.

Sweet Caroline has been a player in the nonprofit sector.  Busy she has been giving awards to this achiever and that achiever.  Eventually she could be appointed an ambassador to this or that.  But that is still within the realm of nonprofit. 

Chelsea is involved with businesses which monetize.  Just look at her involvement in the world of broadcast. NEW YORK Magazine chronicles her career paths.  One wonders if Sweet Caroline envies Chelsea? 

Rajat Gupta Remains Enigmatic: NYT MAGAZINE updates puzzle, doesn't provide new pieces

This week the court will hear Rajat Gupta's appeal for a new trial.  No surprise, this enigmatic character is being deconstructed yet again in brandname media.  THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE has a long feature by Anita Rghavan on him.

However, it doesn't offer any new pieces to solve the puzzle of who this square-jawed striver is.  Rehashed are the details about his rise to influence, which wasn't enough for him.  Financially he had plateaued at being a millionaire and chased being a billionaire. Not new either are the legal details.  Those following the indictment, trial, and conviction already know that the evidence was circumstantial.  Not once had he been heard on the government wiretaps of former hedge fund Galleon allegedly providing non-public information that could lead to trading gains.   In addition, it again presented, as did so many other media properties, the Machiavellian talents of Galleon head Raj Rajaratnam to discern what people like Gupta emotionally needed, provide it to them, and therefore be able to take them over.

The article, however, does present some small updates on what once dominated the news - business, legal, and general.  For example, it tells us that Gupta now sits in his Westport, Connecticut home library overlooking the pool working on his appeal. Also, it speculates on the odds of a comeback. That betting is risky stuff because, with changing social values and digital tools, many more options are available to reinvent a powerful and profitable new identity.  Disgraced Henry Blodget oversees commercial success BUSINESS INSIDER.

One wonders if Gupta will continue to be a platform for supposedly insightful articles and books, like the Kennedy dynasty.  Or will he fade like former New York governor Eliot Spitzer. It could be the former.  After all, I took the time to pore over what Raghavan had decided to add to the pile of Gupta deconstructions.

 

Staples, The Baby Boomer, Windows 8 - Still small business' best friend

Back in the end of the 1980s, millions of us middle-aged managers were downsized (now called "rightsized") out of corporate America.  We hung out our shingle.  And we flocked to Staples for everything. In its aisles we agonized about buying the kinds of office supplies we had received free in our days as fat and happy wage slaves.

Now, Staples has become our best friend in another way.  We're lots older now. The angst isn't over the choice of mailing envelopes. It's keeping up with technology.  Yesterday I had to make the giant leap forward from the PC I had purchased light years ago, at least in technology time (not all of us can get by with smartphones and tablets). Since Staples was my comfort zone as a small business and since I knew from writing on stocks it was now in the consumer electronics space, I bellied up to the Easy Tech desk. 

Easy Tech associate Ron Lima explained the new configuration of Windows 8, the options in hardware including space on hard drives versus battery life, and how Staples could have that all set up within hours.  His manager Dennis Troiano oversaw what was a giantic transition for me.  At 5:46 P.M. I was back in business.

The marketing folks at Staples should position it as the sanctuary for small-business Baby Boomers.  Statistics show we are the fastest growing and the most successful group of entrepreneurs.

Steven Fulop: Wall Street trumps Hudson County politics

A shock to all who know Hudson County Machine Politics, outlier Steven Fulop was elected mayor of Jersey City, New Jersey.  As THE WALL STREET JOURNAL reports, he beat out incumbent old-style politico Jerramiah Healy.

Fulop had been a former Wall Street analyst. In recent years more financial firms have been locating in Jersey City.  As a result this blue-collar ethnic urban area has been undergoing rapid gentrification.  Prices of apartments have skyrocketed. Living there has become cool for Millennials.

Those of us who grew up there and never returned after college share the surprise that anything could really change in Jersey City, especially the politics. Fulop could transform it into an elite small city that can pull us Baby Boomers back. 

Angelina Jolie: Breast-cancer awareness takes giant step beyond pink

Public relations case studies will be written about how Angelina Jolie's preventative double mastectomy singlehandedly moved forward breast-cancer awareness.  It takes a celebrity.

Scrap the pink campaign.  Stick with Jolie's branding of the mission to save women's lives. 

My sister Camille Genova Klinga died of breast cancer in 2001.  In 2012, I had two biopsies for breast cancer.

Being Snooped On: The new symbol of power

The nose knows.  It smells power and the rest is the material for some of the most audacious scandals which have hit since Watergate. 

Bloomberg News has been caught snooping on masters of the universe as well as the crowd at the Federal Reserve.  POLITICO chronicles the snooping by the IRS on conservative groups and that of the Department of Justice on reporters. 

Not being snooped on can be perceived as a negative, transmitting the message that we aren't powerful enough to bother with.  Not since I was deposed about a trial I covered in 2005 through 2006 have I been snooped on.  That was heady stuff, with lawyers representing both sides flying into New Haven, Connecticut to grill me. That included questioning me about what I had posted on my blogs.

Likely I am not alone in craving the attention of being watched.

 

Everything Changes: Hillary Clinton no sure thing for '16

The Democrats, so recently riding high, are now under the kind of attack which could keep them out of the White House in 2016.  Hillary Clinton as the first U.S. President is no longer a sure thing.  Be ready to read plenty in the media about conservatives who are being groomed and funded for campaigns for 2016. 

Scandal is one of the most effective tools for cutting the legs off a political party.  It could be driven out in the wilderness for several election cycles. Since Clinton is associated with one of the them - Benghazi - Democratic party leaders may already be searching for other suitable candidates for the next presidential races.  Other scandals, as POLITICO reports, include the IRS' targeting conservatives and the Justice Department's snooping into members of the media's phone records.

Shell-shocked Democrats might decide to start studying zen, the philosophy which teaches that everything changes and provides tools, including meditation, to stay centered amidst the flux. 

Blogging: When life intervenes

"I'd rather be blogging." That's what I told my blogging coach Paul Chaney back in 2005, after he helped me get this site up and running.  I was totally taken with the ability to publish what I wanted, without middleman editors poking around, making changes, and telling me that their efforts were necessary for me to go to the next level in writing. 

Since 2005, I have fallen apart when, well, life intervened and I couldn't blog as much as I wanted.  There is this nasty reality of having to earn a living.  Today, I started the day with several hours of blogging for this syndicated site and two others (here and here.)  As the day went on, I realized that time should have been invested in two client ghostwriting projects.  Progress on one, for example, was interrupted when the client wanted me to interview two sources for his book this afternoon.  I really felt the loss of those early morning hours.

I dread my blogging time reduced.  There will be major developments I can't comment on.  Not that the world will care.  But that has been my priority for eight years.  Will that priority have to be changed to take advantage of the bull market in executive communications?  

Forward.Us - Facebook doesn't understand power

Is power an old man's game?  Maybe.  Facebook's Millennials have shown they know how to make money.  But their attempt to leverage power to influence public opinion has blown up.

As TECH CRUNCH reports, the Facebook lobbying vehicle Forward.us has become a sort of public nuisance rather than a public-opinion game-changer.  Its mission is to create a conversation about the controversial Keystone Pipeline Initiative.  However it has been doing that in state politics like California in a hardball manner that has been triggering a backlash.  Hardball is the game played in Washington D.C.

In the world of business, companies are not only evaluated on their earnings but also on their power.  The Facebook brand is taking a major hit.  Its founder Mark Zuckerberg looks foolish.