Reading time: 2 – 3 minutes

I was reading Seth Godin’s blog (the father of permission marketing), and he had quite an interesting post today titled, “Why bother having a resume?” — This spotlight is dedicated to him. See below to read what he wrote.

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In the last few days, I’ve heard from top students at Cornell and other universities about my internship.

It must have been posted in some office or on a site, because each of the applications is just a resume. No real cover letter, no attempt at self marketing. Sort of, “here are the facts about me, please put me in the pile.”

This is controversial, but here goes: I think if you’re remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular, you probably shouldn’t have a resume at all.

Not just for my little internship, but in general. Great people shouldn’t have a resume.

Here’s why: A resume is an excuse to reject you. Once you send me your resume, I can say, “oh, they’re missing this or they’re missing that,” and boom, you’re out.

Having a resume begs for you to go into that big machine that looks for relevant keywords, and begs for you to get a job as a cog in a giant machine. Just more fodder for the corporate behemoth. That might be fine for average folks looking for an average job, but is that what you deserve?

If you don’t have a resume, what do you have?

How about three extraordinary letters of recommendation from people the employer knows or respects?
Or a sophisticated project they can see or touch?
Or a reputation that precedes you?
Or a blog that is so compelling and insightful that they have no choice but to follow up?

Some say, “well, that’s fine, but I don’t have those.”

Yeah, that’s my point. If you don’t have those, why do you think you are remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular? It sounds to me like if you don’t have those, you’ve been brainwashed into acting like you’re sort of ordinary.

Great jobs, world class jobs, jobs people kill for… those jobs don’t get filled by people emailing in resumes. Ever.

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Reading time: 2 – 3 minutes

I’m currently taking an English class that focuses on the news media called, “Who’s Watching the Watchdogs?”

One thing we covered this week which I found extremely interesting was how photos – a lot of the time – are not a proper representation of reality. If you disagree, perhaps you want to see the examples I’m about to give you. Depending on what instance you decide to capture a photo, it could make a world of a difference as to the emotional reaction people have when seeing it.

Below, is one of the most famous pictures in American History. It’s a picture of soldiers raising the flag at Iwo Jima, Japan during WWII.

This is one of the most reproduced images of all time. I want you to stop and analyze the picture for a minute… what type of emotions does this picture evoke? What is the story or the message this image tells you?

Well, most of us see the representation of struggle. The soldiers placing the flag amidst the rubble. Patriotism. That they are exhausted yet determined to raise the flag of victory… correct?Now, look at the video of the same incident. See if the photo evokes the same emotions as the video:

Here’s another:

This image was altered for no other reason than to create drama. The man who altered this photo was later fired from the Los Angeles Times.You know what gave it away? Look closely in front of the soldier’s leg.. you’ll see the back of the Iraqi man that is sitting behind him also in front of him.

If you are interested in photography or plan to make films – specifically photo journals and documentaries- make sure that you are depicting reality for what it really is. Don’t take a picture of the one kid at Islamic school sleeping, while the others are captivated by the teacher and say that Islamic School is not of the same quality as public schools.

WAllahu ta’ala alem.
~Shirien

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Reading time: 2 – 4 minutes

This past Wednesday I finished developing an project I’ve started called Message Mastery, where the goal is to equip 200 Muslim brothers and sisters on producing effective and profitable dawah videos. Not only produce them, but also equip them with the tools necessary to develop, write, produce, edit, market and distribute their the call to Islam.

With any sincere initiative, Allah-swt sends down tests…

Saturday, the day we decided to produce the introduction video we had thunderstorm that knocked down plenty of branches and powerlines in the neighborhood. No power, no internet, no light, no heat. Where to go to meet my Sunday night deadline? – The house of Allah-swt!

I went to the masjid for Isha, and spent the whole night finishing up development and begin editing on a client project while I pondered on how to make these videos for message mastery. I prayed fajr, ate breakfast, and went home to get some rest. I woke around duhr time, to find that dad bought a generator to get the basic functions of the house going. — Our basement began flooding since the pump was off due to lack of water.

Shooting Time!

Only having a couple hours to shoot, I borrowed my little brother’s room, put up the lights, camera, mic…and action!

That night in the process of capturing, the generator went out. I resorted to using my car’s engine power and ciggarette power converter to power my laptop, hard drive, and camera as I captured the video. When I had 30 mins remaining in capturing the footage, I decided to drive to my university where I can have power and internet access.

I arrived around mid-night, prayed isha, and burned the midnight oil. Once Fajr came in, I just had some touch ups to make. I went to work, and made the final changes and set it to render. Below is the result. Watch the video

Now that you’ve watched video…take action! Do the following:

• Go to messagemastery.com and tell me 1….2….or..3 things you want to be able to learn from this program (you can post it here if you like as well), by posting it in the comment.
• Sign up for the early bird notification list by going to: http://www.messagemastery.com/earlybird

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Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes

If you have your own business or are working on a major project you must have a media kit. If you don’t have a media kit available to give members of the media, your business or project looks very amateur and hardly worth promoting in the news.

So what is a media kit? This is something usually put together by your PR person/firm working for you. It includes press releases, a backgrounder, a fact sheet, a bio, an image bank and more. And it’s getting to the point to where media kits are best done digitally. Make a kit and put it all on a CD, make sure you package it creatively and send it to media outlets.

I created a media kit a while ago for Leechon – and more specifically for Tufaan. The “Press Section” on Tufaan’s website is composed of a couple of things I included in the media kit, including the image bank. I plan to update the media kit and create a creative, graphically appealing digital version of it soon.

Also, it’s pretty important you get someone in public relations do to this for you. Why? Because if you want to send press releases to print media (like newspapers), then you have to write in AP style (associated press style) it was a pain to learn most of the AP Style book by heart. For example:

Wrong: Leechon gave 20% of their profits to charity.

Right: Leechon gave 20 percent of their profits to charity.

—

Wrong: She lived on Burbank Dr.

Right: She lived on Burbank Drive.

BUT

Wrong: She lived on 123 Burbank Drive

Right: She lived on 123 Burbank Dr.

There are a lot of subtle differences. If you don’t write it the correct way in your press releases, they will most likely be thrown in the garbage by the editor. Your job is to provide everything for them and make their lives easier so they willingly give you free publicity by writing about your business or project. Also, if your writing – particularly news writing- isn’t strong, make sure you hire a PR person.

If you want to know exactly what goes into a media kit, I’ll go into detail on my blog since it might get pretty lengthy. I also would like to do a series about each element in a media kit including how to write a good press release, fact sheet and backgrounder. And hopefully at the end you’ll be able to do your own PR work (well, some of it at least).

Finally, I plan in the near future to run my own PR firm for Muslims. Alhamdulillah it’s something I can do at the comfort of my own home and alhamdulillah it’s something I can do quite well, bi’fadhlillahi ta’ala. I’m currently compiling a Muslim Media Database (MMD) with the information of all media outlets and the preferred way they’d like to be reached.

If you are looking for someone to do PR for your business or project go ahead and send me an email @ media (at) leechon.com . I plan now – and in the future – to only accept a few clients at a time. And most of all, it has to be something halal and something worth promoting.

To learn more about how to make a media kit, check out my post.

~Shirien

*apparently I’m going to have to go back and talk about what exactly a press release is and why we send them out. What PR people do is still something a lot of people aren’t aware of. But until then, know that half the stuff you see on the news are things covered due to someone sending a press release. Reporters aren’t always just at the right place at the right time (or know what’s going on everywhere). PR has a lot to do with that.

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Reading time: 3 – 4 minutes

“New Media” includes anything from blogs, podcasts and wikis to things such as RSS feeds and webinars (seminars on the web).

My first part of this series was about RSS feeds. If you are not familiar with RSS feeds then consider yourself behiiiind, baby- behind in technology. To catch up follow my tutorial. Subscribing to RSS feeds will save you so much time during the day and make things so much more convenient.

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Recently, I’ve stumbled upon something addictive – something that can be extremely beneficial for you in terms of marketing, but could also become an addiction that wastes your time. And I don’t want to be the one responsible on the Day of Judgment for people wasting their time and not doing beneficial things, so as a disclaimer: I waaarned you.

So what is this beneficial/non-beneficial thing, you ask? Stumble Upon, of course.

Stumble Upon is a tool that lets you “stumble upon” websites of your interest (Islamic websites, photography websites, media websites…etc). You can even submit your own website or blog as well as any other website you like to this system. People submit their pages so that other people can come across them randomly- with the hope that they will bookmark it, add it to their RSS feed or add it to their favorites and come back to it. This is a good tool for marketing, because you can reach out to (and are more accessible to) your target audiences.

So how does this baby work?A little tutorial I like to call: “Waddle Waddle Boom Bam Waa” <– that would be a little baby trying to walk…. stumbles upon a toy… and … well, you get the point. I know, therapy tomorrow inshaAllah. Sooo…

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Step 1: Go to www.stumbleupon.com, and create an account by clicking the “Join Stumble Upon” button.

Step 2: Download the “Stumble upon tool bar” by also clicking that button also on the front page. I have to admit I HATE extra tool bars, but this one really doesn’t bother me because I use it all the time.

Step 3: Pick the category of websites you want to “Stumble Upon.” I suggest cats, “Meow.”

Step 4: If you want to start randomly coming upon websites, click the “Stumble!” button on your tool bar. And you if you like or dislike the website, click the “I like it!” button or the thumbs down button.

Step 5: If you would like to submit your own site or another website you like, then simply press the “I like it!” button, and if it was not already submitted to Stumble Upon, a new window will pop up asking some basic info on the site you are submitting.

I don’t recommend always stumbling upon sites for a couple of reasons: some of those sites have music that automatically start playing when you come across it and some have bad advertisements or images. So It’s best to use it for your advantage without going into something haram. Wallahu ta’ala alem.

But this was by far the funniest thing I’ve ever stumbled upon: (I told you to add the cat category, )

Enjoy,

Shirien

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