You, Happier

Sam Van Eman from “New Breed of Advertisers” has noticed a new Best Buy advertising campaign called “You, Happier.” The idea is, of course, that you will be much happier after you’ve picked up a new notebook computer or stereo or flat screen television set.

Sam isn’t the first Christian to speak out against the materialism of our culture, but I LOVE the way he does this. He begins by confessing that he really is happier when he buys stuff. No, really. Buying stuff makes him happy. And if you and I were honest, we’d admit that it makes us happy too.

The solution, according to Sam, is not in denying our basic materialism, but in being willing to set it aside and be unhappy sometimes for the sake of the Kingdom.

Check it out.

Houston let me know about Best Buy’s “You, Happier” slogan. Somehow I missed it, yet it seems that other critics have, too.

After a cursory Google search, I didn’t find too many folks up in arms about “You, Happier.” Perhaps BB’s customers are happier enough that the slogan failed to raise concern. BB didn’t say, “You, Happy,” or, “You, Happiest.” They just said “You, Happier,” and for most customers (including me), they’re right.

I am happier when I get a new laptop or scanner. Shoot, I’m happier when I get a fresh ink cartridge. Not happiest and maybe/maybe not happy, but I’m definitely happier.…Read More.

Affliate Marketing Could Be the Key to Monetization

Marcus here. I know many of the people here at HighCallingBlogs.com are really blogging for hobby or nonprofit.

But some of you are business people, too. Or at least non-profit entrepreneurs. And you should hear the conversation Chris Cree, Dustin Steve (pronounced “stev-ie”), and I had with Wade Tonkin of ChristianAffliateMarketers.com. (Be sure to click through and watch Wade’s HILARIOUS promo video.)

For the business people and nonprofit entrepreneurs, you MUST go to blogworld. Register NOW. I’m serious. If you are serious about social media, this is seriously the place to be. Did I mention that I was serious? I’m serious. Listen to me. Read the words I am typing onto this screen:

This conference is important.
Flesh and blood encounters with like minded bloggers is important.
Ok, I’ll get off my soapbox now.

After you do that, consider downloading the podcast interview and listening to it on your commute. Or you can listen to it right here in one of my little podcasting experiments:

You load sixteen tons and what do you get?

In keeping with the 1980s nostalgia that has captured some bloggers, I started thinking about one of my all time favorite movies: Joe vs. the Volcano.

And I wondered, how many people go to work and feel like the guy in our featured video?

Poor Joe. He works in a medical accessories factory. They manufacture devices that sound really uncomfortable. I’ll just leave it at that.

And his job looks like hell. I’m being literal. Bad lights that suck the life out of people. Bad bosses that bark inane orders into the phone. Electric hums. Muddy parking lots.

And people marching into work in time to the 1980s rock version of the Tennessee Ernie Ford miner’s song:

You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go;
I owe my soul to the company store.

Here’s the good news. Work isn’t really like this. It’s not like the Office either. It’s not like Office Space. Or any of those workplace satires. Those are all exaggerated to make the point. We want to take the fax machine out and beat it with a bat, but we don’t. Not really.

Because really. Work isn’t that bad. In fact, it’s better than bad. It’s good. It’s not part of the curse. It’s part of our original purpose–Adam was placed in the garden and given work before he ever messed up:

The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
(Gen. 2:15)

Sure, we still live in a fallen world. But we are Christians. We’re not part of the fallen world any more. We’re in the world, but not of it. We’ve been given a new chance to get back to work in the garden. We’ve got work to do. We’ve got things to take care of.

It’s what God wants for us.

If you’re with me on this, let us know in the comments. What Garden has God placed you in?

Or maybe you aren’t with us. Maybe the last few weeks and months make Joe vs. the Volcano and The Office seem a little too realistic. Then take heart. This is NOT God’s plan.

This is NOT what God wants your workplace to look like:

Are You Ready for Life Streaming?

In our GodblogCon.com conversation with Andrew Jones (Tall Skinny Kiwi) last week, we talked about life streaming.

That got me thinking during my web 2.0 time today. First, I logged into Facebook to think about that as a location where someone might start life streaming.

Facebook Has Applications to Bring Your Feeds into One Place

Certainly, Facebook’s applications allow other activities to be distributed to your friends. For instance, I link my Twitter updates to my Facebook status with the Facebook Twitter application. And I’ve used a variety of applications to share my blog feed through facebook. After experimenting with several things like Facebook’s Mirror Blog, I finally settled on Facebook’s friendfeed application.

Which requires a friendfeed account, of course.

When Life Streaming Gets Redundant

Still with me? Here’s where things start to get weird. friendfeed aggregates feeds similar to Facebook. I can bring my blog, my flickr, my Twitter, even my NetFlix queue, all into friendfeed. Then shoot it back out in one RSS “life stream” to Facebook and similar services.

Forget the anonymous second and third life stuff of the late 1990s. Life streaming is online transparency that helps us hold each other accountable.

But the technology is still clunky. For instance, Facebook Twitter and friendfeed don’t play well together. Twitter shoots directly to my Facebook status. Then, friendfeed routes the same Twitter post to my Facebook stream. So my friends were getting double notifications.

Mark Goodyear tweets via Twitter and Facebook. Followed by identical Mark Goodyear tweets via Twitter and friendfeed and Facebook. Just look:

I still have the problem with redundant blog postings on Facebook.

And now I’ve got the problem of redundant social book circle sites. Oh, the woes of web 2.0. Do I stick with Shelfari? Do I switch to Goodreads (which has the PERFECT name)? Or Library Thing?

After the conversation with GodblogCon speaker Wade Tonkin, I’m also curious about experimenting with one of these as if I’m an affiliate marketer.

Who knows. Who knows. Is anyone else trying this kind of stuff?

Before you answer that, here’s a cool widget from Goodreads:

Two Men Fighting with a Knife by John Poch

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Not many poets these days are committed to forms like John Poch. He’s the editor of 32 Poems Magazine and a professor of poetry at Texas Tech. And he understands sonnets. This collection of sonnets, sestinas, and other forms often has a wonderful southwestern flavor. Poch isn’t limited to that, though. His sonnet crown written in thanks to a neurosurgeon, for instance, transcends any brand of American regionalism in a way that is joyful, playful, and spiritual.

View all my reviews.

What about marketing?

High Calling Blogger “New Breed of Advertisers” asked a hard question in a recent posting. Who is at fault for the rank materialism and consumer greed in our culture? Are we selfish and materialistic people, so the marketing folks just give us what we want? Or do the marketers use the tools of their trade to create desire in us? It’s a hard question and one without any easy answers. It might be the old “What came first, the chicken or the egg” question.

There is an online poll you can take. Drop by and vote.

Are marketers amoral?

That’s a question Brandweek recently asked Rob Walker, “Consumed” columnist for the New York Times Magazine. I told you I’ve been reading Rob’s book, Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are. Here’s his answer:…Read More.

Join Our Facebook Network

One of the things we do here is experiment with social media. It’s fun. So earlier today I got a Facebook notification from Drew McLellan about a new application called Blog Network.

Hmm. Sounds right up our alley.

If you’re on Facebook, help us out by clicking over, joining our blog, confirming me as the author, and rating our new site. (It’s okay to be honest. Desired in fact. Also, Gordon Atkinson and Chris Cree are authors too, but this application only let me list myself as the author.)

Write Good Titles and People Will Read Your Post

Marcus here with another good blogging tip. The interesting thing about HighCallingBlogs.com and other feed aggregation networks is the importance of good titles. In fact, I first became a follower of Brian Clarke at Copyblogger.com when he posted his series How to Write Magnetic Headlines years ago. (Judging from my post title today, maybe I could use a refresher course.)

From Brian, I learned that good titles tell people what to expect from the post. They are headlines, really. They give us a reason to read.

Or if we’re scanning a list of RSS feeds, they give us a reason to click over to your blog. For example, from the HighCallingBlogs.com feed reader today, I was really interested in these posts:

• Why I Became a Vegetarian
• Jesus for President
• Tomato Theology revisited
• Safety Dance (because I LOVED that song in the 80s)
• How Not to Do Youth Ministry

See what I mean? Those are just interesting. I want to know what they are about. Now, I may not stick around. I may get lost in the first paragraph. Or the first sentence. Or I may leave before readign because I can’t stand the site design.

But if the title is lame, 9 times out of 10, I never click over at all.

So you owe it to yourself to go read Brian’s series on Magnetic Headlines. It’s still good. It’s still smart. And it’s worth reading again and again.

An Interview with the President of Disney Parks: Al Weiss

Our own HighCallingBlogs’ Marcus Goodyear had an opportunity to dialog with the head of Disney Parks, Al Weiss who not only oversees the four Disney theme parks world wide but also heads up Disney Cruise Lines and the Disney Vacation Club.

Al Weiss shared about how his faith affects his work with one of the premier entertainment companies in the world.

Read the entire Al Weiss interveiw .

Learn to Love Annoying Coworkers

In this second installment, Marlo Schalesky shares with us how to get beyond our coworkers’ faults. Drawing from Peter’s example in the Bible, Marlo shows how we can learn to love those folks at work—even the ones that we find really annoying.

Be sure to read the whole thing .

Comments Don’t Matter? Think Again.

Marcus here. If you don’t know Problogger, you should. It’s true that he’s more into the business side of blogging. That just means sometimes he gets pretty technical about the direct marketing, money making side of social media. It can be a little overwhelming.

From time to time, we’ll be referring to content on his site and a few others to help you blog better. For example, we think you should watch “How Leaving Comments On Blogs Drives Traffic to Yours.” Don’t worry about the bits you don’t understand when you watch this video. And don’t worry about installing CrazyEgg (though I did to run a test on where people click at GoodWordEditing.com while I’m on vacation).

Right. So that is your hint to go over to GoodWordEditing.com and click somewhere. Be part of the experiment. You know you want to.

I would be ashamed of self-promotion like that, but really, I have no shame. Besides. How can we help you learn to do this stuff, unless we know how to do this stuff too?

So watch the video. Learn about what makes a good comment. Then go and do likewise throughout the network! Gordon, Chris, and I will do our best to be right alongside you. At least, I’ll be there when I get back from my family roadtrip.

Remember, we’ve got a lot of blogs here–over 150 now! And we need everyone to serve each other with encouraging comments and trackback links!

Here’s that video:

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