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We're taught to use Social Media to promote ourselves?

Jim was delighted, finally after years of spending thousands on printed marketing material, he had a digital alternative, social media! He was already super excited about reaching millions if not billions of people, just by sharing content on these amazing platforms for FREE.

He couldn't believe his luck, he blessed his stars that he was alive at this time of technological development, a development which the world had never seen before. Finally he could save thousands of printing and mailing costs and do it all for FREE!

It all seemed too good to be true, but yes indeed, it's 100% free. He couldn't sleep with excitement, he told everyone about it and soon all his friends, business associates and even family were just as excited as him, they too started to explore the possibilities of going digital, no more printing, who would have thought? Of course he felt a little sad for all those printers, but hey they didn't move with the times and it was ironic just as the printing press was such a technological feat in its own right, now it was being replaced by these marvellous social media companies.

Sludge Theory is alive, well and thriving everywhere!

The two defining characteristics of a sludge (Thaler, 2018) are “friction and bad intentions” (Goldhill, 2019). While Richard Thaler strongly advocates nudging for good by making desirable behaviour easier, a sludge does the opposite: It makes a process more difficult in order to arrive at an outcome that is not in the best interest of the sludged. Examples of sludges include product rebates that require difficult procedures, subscription cancellations that can only be done with a phone call and complicated or long government student aid application forms.

Even when a sludge is associated with a beneficial behaviour (as in student aid, voter registrations or driver’s licenses, for example), costs can be excessive. These costs may be a difficulty in acquiring information, unnecessary amounts of time spent, or psychological detriments, such as frustration (Sunstein, 2020).

Social Media, you’ve made us all addicted!

We’re now scrolling junkies. Why would we all waste our time scrolling through such utter nonsense, abuse, anger, ‘look at me’ posts, sharenting (parents sharing their kids), promotional jargon, show-off knowledge, repeated news stories, so-called opinions, thought leadership, questions as clickbait, engagement requests, follow requests, regular ads, so many examples, I could go on but I guess you get the idea.

Why do humans inflict suffering on other humans?

If you turn on any news channel or read any news publication or social media channel and pay careful attention to what is being said or written, you will discover that they basically report on human suffering.

It could be wars, ethnic cleansing, shootings, knife crimes, sexual assaults, human trafficking, drug offences and the list goes on, stories of countless human suffering inflicted on humans by other humans.

I've only started to wake up to human suffering after hearing the Dalai Lama speak about it a few years ago. He says that everyone is entitled to their human suffering and instead of interfering with it, we should have compassion for their suffering.

Everyone's entitled? But what if it is inflicted on the innocent, what if those that have been inflicted with suffering were just in the wrong place at the wrong time?

How I managed to uncover Google’s ineptitude

Google is a 1.5 Trillion company whose share price is at an all-time high and whose CEO gets paid $4 million per year with 135,000 full-time employees worldwide.

I have been so disappointed with the amount of spam I receive via Google’s servers without them intercepting them.

In December 2016, I opened a G-Suite Google account, which has recently been renamed as Google Workspace [2020]. I wanted to do this in order to have it speak to a CRM account I had at the time and also for it to speak to an online calendar booking app. A lot of apps these days give preference to Google when adopting integrations. I only wanted one email address, my business one and one calendar a simple solution, but still it would cost me a handsome price of £3.30 per month (£39.60 per year). 3 years later in May 2019 it increased to £4.14 per month (£49.60 per year) and then in October 2020 to £4.60 ( £55.20 per year).

This is a 40% increase in 4 years of using the service. Not only is this abusive, it’s also scandalous and unacceptable considering we’re going through a pandemic and quite frankly business is tough.

My domain, which is with Hover.com has provided me with a small mailbox for just $20 or £11.00 per year, a saving of £44.20 or 80%!

Being courageous

The past year has been tough for everyone on the planet and as such I have tried to be quiet, considered and have compassion for the world's suffering. The trouble with putting yourself last is that everyone else walks off with the handouts and that's pretty much how I feel my last year has gone.

As a micro-enterprise and a very small Ltd business, I have received no financial (COVID19) support from the UK government, not a single penny, I guess it's my own fault for listening to my accountant 15 years ago when I set up my own company to set it up as a limited, VAT registered one. There was no mention of a turnover threshold or anything like that at the time. I assure you, never during all my years of trading have I even got close to any kind of made-up threshold, which was suggested by accountants, eg. £50k profit before setting up a Ltd company. Unfortunately I have never made that kind of a profit in all my years of trading.

Are You Storytelling Yet?

Chapter 1 - Is Storytelling fact or fiction?

To what extent is story or storytelling currently used in events, meetings or conferences in your business?

I don’t believe storytelling is used widely as yet. There is a tendency in business to show and tell. With that I mean with the presenter or speaker usually has something to sell, their product or services and therefore they have an agenda. You can’t blame them as this is how any kind of presenting is mostly done, we are conditioned by examples and training in society. When I create whiteboard animation videos for my clients, I often have to coach them and help them to prevent their tendency for using a selling narrative and instead share a story. Here is a fun video I created to explain this message in a memorable way!

An old YouTube video is showing viral promise!

Out of the blue I started receiving a lot of emails from YouTube advising me that someone commented on my video. This video, see below, I posted on YouTube in February 2018. At time of writing it has received nearly 35,000 views and over 95 comments so far.

I recorded a scammer calling me from India, pretending to be from BT Openreach and advising me that my equipment is faulty. In order to keep him on the phone as long as possible in order to make sure that his phone bill or the company phone bill is as high as possible, I pretend to not know much about IT and as such manage to take him down a blind alley. It usually works and often they don’t call back.

‘Share Your Story’ Whiteboard Animation Productions — Update

Staying Alive UK - Share Your Story.png

How are you feeling?…

How are you dealing with this Pandemic? I read a line on LinkedIn by someone who’s suffered with mental health in the past. He suggested that during these weird times we must avoid asking how are you and instead ask, how are you feeling? Personally, my answer would be; ‘It’s different that’s for sure’, and avoid answering the ‘feeling’ bit altogether and this might be the same for most?

Now that Winter is nearly upon us in the Western Hemisphere, we’re retreating more into our caves, don’t you think? Human nature as it is, is always wishing for better times, good news, miracle cures and to get back to the good (or bad) old days, but of course it never turns out that way. Usually there are potholes in the road, diversions on the route and inevitably many many mistakes by government officials along the way. Above all it will never go back to how it was, society has changed forever and beyond recognition. Then we have the; ‘To vaccine or Not to vaccine — what a massive question!’ — so many believing it will work, when they haven’t even published the data properly. After all, commercial companies need their stock value to go up during the pandemic, so of course they will make an announcement that will guarantee that, even the rest of the stock market responded favourably. Call me cynical, yes of course I am. Early on in the Pandemic I kept a daily Journal on Medium, (to help my own mental wellbeing), which I then changed to weekly and then I stopped it altogether a few weeks ago, it was exhausting to do in the end but at least I have something to look back at in years to come. 🥴

And now to business…

As a storyteller, I’m always thinking of better ways to tell stories for our customers. In the past couple of years, we’ve experimented more frequently with a tiny bit of 2D-Animation within our Whiteboard Animations, for example giving characters a little bit of movement in their faces, blinking eyes for example, making them come to life more. It has worked, our customers have been genuinely pleased with the results. Of course it takes more time to produce and time is money, unfortunately. Is business currently kind to you and your teams, well I hope it is? I bet it has been tough, it certainly has been a struggle in our studio, not many projects flowing in during the past 8 months and my small business qualifies for exactly zero handouts from the government. That’s why I’m reaching out really. Whiteboard Animations could be a great vehicle for delivering training, education and explainers. Explaining how things have to change for the future or how business has to be done differently, whether it is to educate customers and colleagues. It could be to get a mental health message out. If you can think of any opportunities at all, either in your organisation or you spot something elsewhere please do keep us in mind. So much appreciated.

Cartoons...

Did you know that we did cartoons? We created this one, showing Boris Johnson (The UK PM) on a mountain of toilet rolls, at the time that rumours spread about something called ‘lockdown’. We thought people got over hoarding and panic buying after (UK) lockdown 1.0, but exactly the same happened during lockdown 2.0. I don’t get it, why toilet rolls? Anyway, these cartoons can be animated too if needed, if you click on the image it will play on YouTube. A 20-seconds cartoon can be even more effective compared to a longer 90 or 120 seconds animation and of course much cheaper too.

Showreel...

I’m slightly embarrassed to say that I didn’t have a showreel to demonstrate a few of our productions. Seems fairly basic I know!. Anyway we’ve done one now and you can watch it in all it’s glory below, just click on the play button. Feel free to share it widely, every bit of promotion helps during these dark days.


That’s all folks...

This article was an email (which I sent to 50+ customers and prospects) and ended up much longer than I had intended, so apologies for that. If we’re not already connected on LinkedIn, let’s do so, just connect and feel free to look me up on Twitter, follow us on YouTube and maybe have a read on Medium, my blogging platform of choice.

Thanks for taking the time to read this far, I know there are a lot of distractions around and I don’t know about you, I’ve been inundated with emails about Covid PPE. Anyway, stay focussed, stay well, stay realistic and above all stay safe please.

I sincerely appreciated your past business or past interest and maybe one day we can either repeat or create some business together. Always happy to Zoom — link below to schedule one.

Best, M ツ

Michael de Groot

Chief Storyteller
 Staying Alive UK - Zoom with me

Why do you need all those votes?

0*dmgMn9SIHqEvg9Xv.jpeg

We all desire plenty of votes, let me give you a few examples.

Votes from our parents, to confirm we are enough.
Votes from our teachers, to confirm we are worthy students.
Votes from our employers, to confirm we make a great contribution.
Votes from our peers, to be recognised and feel like we belong to the tribe.
Votes from our friends and families all over social media, non-stop confirmation that we are loved.
Votes from our industry in the form of awards to prove that our company is among the best in the industry, in our region, in the world etc.

Why?

Everyone wants to be loved, feel good enough, feel recognised and we are constantly looking for this throughout our lives, it shows up everywhere!

Even when I’m writing this I need you to agree with me, that you can see what I’m saying is true, confirmation that I’m enough.

We are already enough, but we don’t wish to accept it.

This is the human experiment, the human drama, all of our individual stories acting out every single day, searching for approval, searching for acceptance, for love and belonging.

Look in the mirror and there you will find it all the votes you need!

Crisis UK - Homelessness Charity Resources and Reports

Crisis Plan.png

I have been a volunteer with Crisis UK in Birmingham since February 2017. I am very impressed with their research and campaigning to end homelessness in the UK. They have a fantastic learning programme to help 'members' (our term for homeless individuals) get off the street, out of hostels, B&B's, sofa surfing, stop sleeping in cars and other places and back into employment and a decent house to live in.

I am creating this blog post with a series of links to reports and resources to assist anyone to understand homelessness better. This way I can just share this link and you can learn more by downloading the reports or listen to the radio programmes, watch the videos etc.

I hope the resources will prove useful for you and your friends and family to better understand the plight of the homeless and maybe you can share a few minutes to create awareness in your network and community, donate a few pennies, spend a few hours per month donating your time for the many charities that exist across the UK.  I appreciate your interest and curiosity to learn more. I will continue to add further resources as I become aware of them, so make sure to bookmark this page.

  1. Join the #everybodyin campaign and pledge your support.

  2. 10 year plan to end homelessness in the UK executive summary

  3. 10 year plan to end homelessness full report

  4. Rough sleepers’ experiences of violence and abuse on the streets of England and Wales

  5. An examination of the scale and impact of enforcement interventions on street homeless people in England and Wales

  6. The creation and use of better evidence for a world without homelessness - Centre for Homelessness Impact

  7. Understanding the models of Housing First in England

  8. The picture of Housing First in England

  9. About Housing First England (website)

  10. Homelessness and Addiction: Getting Clean & Off the Streets

  11. A home for as long as someone needs it, as well as meaningful work in our social enterprises, by Emmaus.

  12. The big idea that can help end homelessness.

  13. The Stingray, a model and platform to utilise and repurpose unused and derelict public houses.

  14. The Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 - All you need to know.

  15. Counting the deaths of homeless people around the UK

  16. No Second Night Out (NSNO) was launched on 1 April 2011 as a pilot project aimed at ensuring those who find themselves sleeping rough in central London for the first time need not spend a second night on the streets.

    In 2018-19 there were 8,855 people seen sleeping rough in London. Of these, 5,529 people slept rough for the first time in 2018-19. Our aim is to ensure there is a rapid response to new rough sleepers, and that they are provided an offer that means they do not have to sleep out for a second night. Other projects exist to support those already rough sleeping and living on the streets.



I've moved to Medium

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I've got 3 publications there so far. Medium allows me to be freer then I am able to be on either my own website blog or here on LinkedIn. There are other writers there who write great stuff, so I'm learning much more too. It allows me to have different publications, it feels a bit like having a book there, the book of me. I really enjoy being on Medium. Hope to see you there. https://medium.com/@stayingaliveuk

Typewriting

This is a daily blog post, quite short and to the point. It's basically about stuff I notice across the digital and the physical, which makes me want to make a statement.

https://medium.com/typewriting


Michael and Josh

This is our daily cartoon series. Well we publish on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I try and look out for topics in the daily news and take some sort of spin on it.

https://medium.com/michaelandjosh


Staying Alive UK

Well this one was basically a copy cat from this blog, so not been updating that much lately. Will have to think where this one goes in the future.

https://medium.com/stayingaliveuk


Hope to see you all there!

https://medium.com/@stayingaliveuk

Michael

 

 

 

How do you know if you are being authentic?

@stayingaliveuk.png

This article was inspired by my LinkedIn connection Rebecca Bell, who posted an update about the case of self-proclaimed titles, like ‘Thought Leader’, 'Influencer’ or ‘Visionary’.

See the post below.

The discussion has been fascinating and you can see how many likes and comments are clocking up on this topic, it really has never-ending opinions.

This topic has touched a nerve with many and it’s making me wonder why do we try and big ourselves up so much. Is it because we need that recognition to feel good about ourselves? Is it because the world around us has conditioned us to claim titles for ourselves, so we can be seen by others as important and they will believe in us?

Most of us have heard the saying ‘people buy people first’ and that means someone has to be in your company, face to face (or at least a video call) before this can take place. But because we now spend most of our time in the digital world, the non-physical, we are making up our own non-sense titles to impress and be bought by our connections and sometimes to manipulate search results too. 

Have you ever heard anyone at a networking meeting say. Hello my name is Michael and I’m a visionary or I’m a thought leader or I’m an influencer. Probably not. Recently I was invited to connect to someone who calls themselves a 'Business Maven'. Who encouraged him/her to use this title to suggest that they are maybe better than you or me, better qualified than anyone else to be an expert in the world of business?

A better description, title or headline for any of us would be:

'Have learnt everything I know from others and therefore thank you to all for the great lessons'. 

Because when we came into this world, we knew diddly-squat, nothing, absolutely nothing. Everything and I mean everything we know we had to learn from others. Sure we put our own spin on it and we create some amazing technology because we may think of a different approach to others, but really every tiny bit of knowledge we own, someone gave it to us.

So let's be more humble, grateful for what we know and NEVER proclaim that we are better than anyone else, NEVER!

@stayingaliveuk

What’s your story’s formula?

Every great story ever told has a formula. These days we might like to call it an algorithm, a story algorithm.

Ever since I decided to major on whiteboard animation stories as my mission, I have been attracting more knowledge from the people in my network. 

One such attraction was Michael-Don Smith (Don), someone I’ve been connected to for 7 years. We met recently again at a networking event and he mentioned Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey (1949). And no I had not heard of it, remarkably!

(The word Hero in this article is being referred to a gender neutral form, which is allowed apparently, I looked it up!)

There are other story algorithms that came after, David Adams Leeming (1981), Phil Cousineau (1990), Christopher Vogler (2007).

And when I researched it, it made just perfect sense, something I naturally had adopted in my whiteboard animation stories for clients and now I had confirmation that my story approach was 100% correct. A polite pat on my own back and I know I have loads to learn still.

I will explain briefly. Every great story told tells the journey of hero. Their quest and their obstacles and villains to defeat. Pretty much like life itself really. Maybe that’s why we can all relate so well to stories. They all follow 3 basic steps and then more steps within those as per the table below.

But for us to really be drawn into the story, it will pivot back and forth between what is and what could be. There really is no point of a story to start with the hero, starting their quest, defeating the villain and then going back home. That would be too predictable and too easy. The hero will have several obstacles to face, making us believe that it’s almost impossible to come back from those. Every time the hero overcomes an obstacle or defeats a villain another one comes around the corner. 

We all love it that the hero has an almost impossible task to achieve and somehow, some way it manages to survive and come back from the dead, in some cases literally.

That’s why we all love movies so much, especially the biggest blockbusters, whether Star Wars, Harry Potter, Avatar and many many more. 

Now let’s take The Hero’s Journey into your own world. If you are in business or have a role in sales or marketing, your mission is to become a better storyteller. If you know that everyone and I do mean everyone loves stories then you already know that your clients will love stories too, it's a given.

We already know that most of us do not like the adverts and yes some of them are clever little stories too. Not all of them though, next time you’re watching TV just observe and count how many are stories and how many are just ‘buy me’ messages.

Awareness is the first step and although most of us are reluctant to change to start with, when we finally decide to change we will conquer our fears. 

Practice makes perfect.

Start by writing a short story about your product or service. Place a hero as the main character in your story, how was your hero affected by the problem or the obstacle being faced, present a couple more issues on top of the first one and then present how your hero overcame all of those obstacles by using your product or service. 

Often there is no need to share the full detail of your product or service and how it solved your hero's issue, it is enough to just imply it. Leaving people wanting more is often a good thing.

Try it out, send me your draft and I will be happy to critique it.

Success with your new story!

@stayingaliveuk

ps. Saw this great TEDx talk titled the magical science of storytelling

Why is Storytelling so powerful? And how do we use it to our advantage? Presentations expert David JP Phillips shares key neurological findings on storytelling and with the help of his own stories, induces in us the release of four neurotransmitters of his choice. Learn more in this 2nd TEDxStockholm talk of David's.

Is your Intention purely Self-congratulatory or is it Selfless?

@LinkedIn & @gapingvoid

@LinkedIn & @gapingvoid

When browsing the internet, my apple news app and the social media networks, the content speaks volumes.

The content largely is self-congratulatory, especially on Facebook. There is very little value in the content that gets posted whether by the news media, your friends, colleagues and the hundreds of strangers that you are connected to. 

Everyone is trying to distract us from our attention in the moment and engage with their story, bring us into their world view and opinions. Mostly it's #fakenews and sucks us in to express a like, heart, laugh, cry, wow or mad, and if we can be bothered, write a comment. 

 

Whether you believe the research or not, they say it takes you 25 minutes to return to the original task after only an 11 minute interruption. That is an absolute age, have you ever tried to sit still for 25 minutes? It's impossible and lasts a very very long time. 

So why do we do this to ourselves?

Don't get me wrong, I like social media, I really do, well maybe I did and I am starting to wonder how much time I have actually wasted on social channels, whereas I could have been creating some fabulous stuff and change my life for the better?

Realising that social isn't going away soon I have started to re-assess my activity there. I used to post 3 times per day via my favourite scheduling app, Buffer, but now I only post once per day. I paid for the 'awesome plan' so that I could have all my channels there and post to all of them and now I just have the free plan with only a few channels to post to. I continually had to search for new and interesting content from other channels, I even have a feedly account to locate all that content. The stress of having to keep finding content was crazy at times, when I saw my buffer of content emptying, I panicked and had to spend a few hours to find more stuff to load it up. I am feeling like a massive weight has been lifted from my shoulders by not having to do that any longer.

But did it actually work and did I get a return on my investment. I never truly know whether it did or not and my hunch is that it probably didn't. My engagement is no better or worse as a result of reducing my content sharing. 

So what about the way forward? Pretty much as the image says really.

  1. Be impartial.
  2. Inform next steps and offer guidance.
  3. Answer questions.
  4. Solve problems.
  5. Listen, respond and be helpful.
  6. Make people smile, laugh and sometimes give them pause.
  7. Design engagement and customer journeys across screens, platforms and networks so they are seamless.
  8. Create experiences that are delightful, memorable and shareable.

How about you, what have you noticed?

@stayingaliveuk

Do you really believe you’re getting better at it?

@LinkedIn & @gapingvoid

@LinkedIn & @gapingvoid

Depends what you’re talking about right?

Well, I am talking about the quality of your content. If the stats are right and I have no reason to believe they are not, then you and me are checking our phones 110 times a day.

I seriously can’t think of 110 things that I have looked at on my phone, can you? I certainly haven’t shared 110 things. The other day my darling wife Clair received her year in review by Facebook. I don’t get one by the way, because I’m not active enough there! Anyway, her most interesting stat was that, over the year, she had liked 13,500 posts. Averaged out over 365 days, that is 37 posts each and every day and that means some days she will have liked much more and some days much less.

If you are a Marketer, a Social Seller, a Writer, a Digital Native, a Coach, a Trainer and more, you undoubtedly be looking at the Social Web to get noticed, to be heard and be searching for engagement.

Just consider the attention span of your readers. They essentially have about a split second, like a ‘Formula 1’ racing car split second to make up their minds, whether your content is worth engaging with.

I bet you haven’t even read this far. And if you have do tell!

I’m wondering if you’ve even realised how quick you check your phone and ‘thumb’ through the content. How much do you actually retain and what grabs your attention to want to engage with it? Not much right? So have a think, what does actually make you stop and read further. Is it a video, a great image, the crafty and sneaky headline, the compelling question or the incredibly useless tip list? Or maybe it’s just good old regular dogs, cats and food. Yep food is a strange one, really it is, but obviously it’s something we’re totally consumed by, food!

Right then did you get the answer yet? What engages you?

I’d love to learn and I am sure you would to, so help me and all the other marketers out there, share your answer below.

LinkedIn created a brilliant eBook with my favourite illustrator. @gapingvoid (Hugh Macleod) creates the most amazing messages through his illustrations. Read more about him and @gapingvoid here: http://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/team-members/hugh-macleod/

Regularly I will share one of the articles and illustrations from the eBook and give you my opinion, interpretation, insight and my meaning.

@stayingaliveuk 🚀

contentmarketing #content #socialmedia #engagement #marketing #socialselling

Online is great and talking is even better. Everyone’s ultimate goal in business and life is to make real connections, where you meet someone face to face. Before that meeting a conversation is the ultimate icebreaker. I value my LinkedIn connections and realise that I don’t really know you or what your goals are and how I might facilitate or support those goals. Feel free to click through and book a call with me. I have blocked out only Fridays each week, excluding holidays, for calls. Hope to speak with you soon.

Originally published on Medium

HELP! Older Generation targeted by Computer Virus Scammers based in India

We all receive unsolicited calls from companies trying to sell us stuff. And although we can protect ourselves with ’telephone preference service’ in the UK, companies that call us from overseas are not bound by the same regulations as UK companies. 

When I received a call from an overseas company pretending that they were aware of a computer virus, allegedly on my PC, I decided to record the call and explore exactly what it was that was wrong with my computer.

You can listen to several calls below. Just press play.


It was particularly interesting to me because they told me that they were Microsoft Certified specialists and as I'm a Mac user I was interested to learn how they knew that I had a virus on my computer.

After I recorded the call I uploaded the call on Mixcloud and shared it on Social Media. When someone on Facebook asked me for the Mixcloud link some months later as she too had been targeted by them, I discovered that an ex-employee of the company had shared his experience of working for the company and shared the company’s contact details openly including two of their directors' names and phone numbers.

To read his post just follow the link below to the Mixcloud recording.

http://styin.me/scam-computer-virus-call

The person who contacted me on Facebook asked me how we could make use of Social Media to get this company and its directors brought to justice? She has assisted me with this blog and will be giving it exposure across her network.

So this Blogpost is our attempt to get as much publicity around this scam as possible. Would you like to help us? We need this trending on Twitter for the proper authorities, the press and TV to take notice.

Here are a few options for you to share this blogpost via Social Media.

  1. Tweet this article using the following text: 'investigate urgent #pcvirus #scam http://styin.me/expose-pcvirus-scam @BBCwatchdog @actionfraudUK @ofcom @ICOnews @ScamWarners #askpcxperts' CLICK TO TWEET

  2. Ask others to retweet and tweet their own version too.
  3. Post on your Facebook page the shortened blogpost link: http://styin.me/expose-pcvirus-scam and ask your friends to share and re-post as well.

Let's use the power of Social Networking to get this company investigated by the proper authorities and stop them from causing problems for an older generation who are far too nice and trusting based in the UK, USA and Canada.

If you're outside the UK, please ensure you report them to the proper authorities in your country.

We did further research on social media to see if the company had any profiles and found the following accounts. I have no idea if they are real. I suggest that we report the profiles to the Social Networks.

When you report them use the following text. 

'I would like to bring to your attention that this company's profile represents a company in India that carries out bogus calls to the UK, USA and Canada telling computer users that they have a computer virus. We are reporting them to the proper authorities but I suggest you remove their profile from your network'.

1.  Twitter: https://twitter.com/AskPCExperts

2.  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ask-PC-Experts/536416523112033

3.  Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/askpcexperts-com

I found some further evidence that ASK PC Xperts and United e-Services are one and the same company by further web research. United e-Services was mentioned in the ex-employee's post. The address details certainly appear to match. Below are some web images from a directory search and a job advert.

Thank you for your support!

Additional information:

Domain details: http://styin.me/whoisdomainlookup


Teenager says: 'Sorry, I forgot...'

Really?

We all know that teenagers are wonderful people, they are the engineers of the future, the brilliant leaders of the world, the amazing inventors and very clever scientists. We value them and we respect them, well most of the time...

My brain goes purple with rage when I hear them say:

oh sorry I forgot, you know what my memory is like, I just didn't remember...

Why? Because in today's digital world there is absolutely no excuse for anyone, and I mean anyone who has a digital device to forget anything ever.

Teenagers, in the western world at least, have phones, iPods, iPads, iPhones, Androids, Computers, Laptops, Tablets, Kindles, Blackberries and many other digital devices.

All of these devices have something in common and that is they have apps like calendars, notes, tasks and reminders.

Why are they not using these tools?

Every parent and teacher needs to remind their teenage darlings that it's about time that they started using the devices for memory joggers or they will take those expensive devices away from them for ever, not just for a few days.

There should never ever, ever never, never never, ever ever never be an excuse to forget stuff that they are just to lazy to want to remember. It's too convenient to say ’I forgot’, it just doesn't wash anymore.

Remember they have to learn and remember tons of stuff at school and colleges to get through exams and get good grades. They are brilliant at doing this and they do actually remember huge amount of data in their young lives. They are actually much better than adults in doing this because they have to practice remembering stuff every day.

Time to hand out some tough love then, they either start using their devices also for remembering stuff instead of texting, instagramming, tweeting and chatting or they lose them.

Oh and just in case they don't have a digital device, remember pencil and paper?

Go on you can do it.

Do you Appreciate Diversity in Social Media?

I engage with dozens of individuals each and every week and discuss the merits or otherwise of Social Media. Nowadays the workplace consists of different generations all trying to work together to fulfill a company’s mission.

The trouble is most of us don't have a clue how we can ensure that all the different generations get on together, let alone catering for them in the social media stakes.

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Let me share what I mean in a bit more detail.

Born between 1925-1945, you're a traditionalist, 1946-1964 and you are the famous baby boomer, the largest population group on earth. Gen X 1965-1979, Gen Y 1980-2000 and Gen Z 2001-now.

If you're a traditionalist you may already be retired or you will be in a mentoring and/or chairing capacity or very likely to be working in the 3rd sector.

As a traditionalist you value respect above all else. So being mentioned in a tweet incorrectly, accused of some wrong doing, you’ll be on the phone to your lawyer promptly. Not being shown respect is a major issue for you.

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Baby boomers really value relationships. That's probably why this group is one of the largest on Facebook, which in essence is a massive relationship community.

Believe it or not Gen X value life/work balance and these will be CEO’s who tell their teams to leave on time and spend more time with their families, making them more productive at work and satisfied with life. Social Media more than likely is a way to relax for them. Something traditionalists and boomers would never even consider as relaxing!

Gen Y, want to be heard, they are likely to be the most prolific on twitter, making their opinions known to the world and feel happiest when they receive likes or retweets. It means someone’s listening to them.

Gen Z, are too young I know, but watch out, they will be there soon and despite age restrictions on social networks, they've already been active for a couple of years and by the time they get to work, they will have been active for 7 years or so.

Most of us have only been active for a few years!

With all of these different generations working side by side, you can learn a huge amount about them from just watching their social network activity or maybe even the lack thereof.

It allows you some insight into how they relate to the other generations too.

Would you put a Boomer alongside a Gen X and get them to learn from each other or do you let all the Gen X and Y’s sit together in a pool and feed of each other?

Respecting diversity is important in communities, appreciating how they behave on social media, with some of THE largest communities on the globe, is becoming even more important.

Wishing you massive success always.

Michael

http://www.linkedin.com/in/stayingaliveuk

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How Do You Share Content?

As part of your journey into ’Social Selling’ and becoming your own ’Personal Brand’, you will inevitably need to share content. You don't always need to write your own content, although it’s obviously better if you did. Not everyone likes writing, certainly it took me a few years before I started blogging.

So curating and sharing other’s content is OK, providing it adds value to your own authority on your subject matter.

So how do you do it? Or rather how do I do it?

First we have to answer a few questions. Why share content in the first place?

Well, it shows that you are interested in your subject matter and more importantly that you wish to share it with your network and maybe, just maybe they will get something from it. Don't be concerned about not receiving any comments, likes or shares, that should definitely NOT be the reason for sharing your content.

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However they might and it's that possibility that should encourage you to keep sharing. You just don't know where it could lead to.

I use just 3 apps for doing all my curating and sharing.

Firstly the best sharing app that I use is ’Buffer’.

I have written a separate blog on buffer, so go ahead and read more about it there.

The second app is Flipboard, where I follow different streams that are closely connected to my subject matter, plus all the posts from people I follow.

The third app is ’Pulse’, a LinkedIn app, which allows me to find more content, by LinkedIn Influencers and many other news streams.

Buffer allows me to email all content I find on the web, either via these apps or generally on the web.

I have set my buffer to share the content 3 times per day, meaning my content is posted automatically in the morning, lunchtime and evening. Times of the day that people are most likely to browse their mobile devices.

I will add additional content now and again on a more spontaneous basis. And I also add some personal comments now and again about any subject I wish. This will hopefully show people that it's not all about business and they will see my personality come through too.

So it's time to start writing, get searching, reading and finally sharing. Have fun and ensure that you have your audience in mind when sharing content.

Wishing you success always!