Dan Janal | Publicity and PR Leads Blog

My humble blog has cracked the top 1,000 blogs on Bloglet!

That inspiring note comes from my blogmaster, Ted Demopoulos.

I find it hard to believe, frankly. I’ve been doing this for about three months, and I know the traffic numbers aren’t Amazonian, or Ebayian.

So how did it get to rank so high? Beats me. I can only guess that blogs are NOT being read as much as the media bandwagon is making us believe.

On the other hand, can 38 subscribers be wrong?

Don’t forget to subscribe to this blog (see the sign up box near the top of this page) so we can move even higher!

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If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then the measure of a good picture is if it can be understood with not one single word.

Look at the two examples: the new government food “pyramid” and the Cingular cell phone signal strength indicator.

The food pyramid cannot be described or understood without at least 1,000 words. If that’s not enough, you can probably link to a dozen footnotes and references to research reports.

Never has there been a more confusing symbol. It has been described in the media as a cross between a gay rights flag and a health club logo. If people can’t “get it” by looking at it, then 1,000 words won’t help.

The Cingular symbol is four vertical bars, each one longer than the one to the left. Everyone recognizes this immediately as the strength indicator on a cell phone. In their ads, they show four items, each larger than the previous one — people, popcorn boxes, houses, office towers. Each time I see a new commercial, I marvel at their creativity. Sort of a corporate “Where’s Waldo?”

Look at my logos at http://www.prleads.com and http://www.greatteleseminars.com In both cases, the logos give the reader a good idea of what the business does.

A good symbol is like a good joke. If you have to explain it, then it doesn’t work.

Today’s Chipping Point: Does your logo show what you do? Does it do it in a way that is memorable? If it doesn’t send me a note and I’ll put you in touch with my designer.

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Fame is relative. And I don’t mean if your relatives are named Kennedy or Bush that you are famous, although that doesn’t hurt.

Every niche has its own superstars. You’ve seen them at conventions. Or you see their names everyone on the web.

But only the people in that niche have any idea of who those chosen personalities are. And sometime, niches are micro niches with their own levels of superstars.

Case in point.

I attended an Internet Marketing conference over weekend. Now, I don’t want to toot my horn, but I did write one of the first books about marketing on the Internet back in 1996 when the Internet was really new. And I taught the first course on Internet Marketing at Berkeley. I am pretty well known, although I don’t make a career of getting known. I have a life.

So imagine my surprise when I attended this conference and the conference promoter didn’t know who I was!

My ego was a bit crushed, I’ll admit, but life goes on in an interesting way.

The conference coordinator told his story. He had produced the first Internet marketing conference a year before my book had been published — and I had never heard of him!

I was known in the corporate marketplace. He was known in the business opportunities marketplace.

Coincidentally, we knew a lot of the same people!

Point of the story: Fame is relative. You could be sitting next to the president of the American Bar Association on your next plane ride and never know it.

Today’s Chipping Point: Treat every new contact as a potential superstar. They just might be.

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