January 2011 – 7 Veils Social Media

Remember to Rock XBiz LA: Business Card Tricks

Friday we talked about how to keep your focus. Now let’s talk about how to remember every person you meet. At Xbiz you will meet so many people, and have so many different conversations, it would be amazing if you can recall them all. Here are some tricks to help keep your conversations clear in your head.

Collect Business Cards

Ask for them. Get as many as you can. Do not try to remember who they are, and who they are with, and think that you’ll just look it up later. If someone does not offer their card, be sure to request one. If they don’t have one, give them one of yours, or ask them to write their information on a scrap of paper or the back of another card.
Give your card to everyone

Give it to every person you meet. You never know who might be a great connection for you. Bring more cards than think you will need, and hand them out like candy!
Call me!

If someone wants you to send them information, or wishes to talk to you more in depth about something, ask them to email you later. Request that they mention what you are discussing in the subject line. It might feel awkward to do this, but they won’t mind. Plus it gives them an easy intro to connect with you via email.
Take Notes

When someone gives you their card, make notes of the conversation as soon as you’ve finished it. If the conversation is generic, then make a note of what the person looks like. This will refresh your memory when you follow-up with them later.

Trust me when I tell you that you’ll be happy you did this. Every time I have a conversation at a conference, I am convinced I will remember. But after I have 200 conversations (and my day is not yet over) they start to blur together. These little tricks will help you tease them out of the masses of information you’ve processed when the day is done.

January 31, 2011/by 7veils

3 Tips to Help You Rock Xbiz LA

7 Veils, Adult Industry

iPorn girls promote iPorn mobile apps. Despite all the pretty, shiny, sexy distractions, try to stay focused.

The next big gathering for all things porn is coming up in just a couple of weeks, Xbiz LA. This will be another event where networking is king. If you want to make connections to grow your career or business, this will be a good place to do it.

Over the next week I will post tips and tricks that will help you get the most out of the conference.

Here are some to get you started:

Know your purpose

Are you there to meet people to help your business? Meet people who can help your career? Grow your network of connections? Get people familiar with you? Work on personal branding? Or generally be at the right place at the right time?

Make sure you know why you are there, because that will affect how you meet people. You always want to have your agenda first, otherwise you will not get the value out of the venue.
Work your angle

Now that you have established why you are there, make sure that you are putting your agenda first in all conversations. If you want to grow your social networking, get people’s twitters and tweet them from your phone. If you are pushing a product, start a conversation and make a segue to talk about the product. Make sure that despite all the glitz and glam you always have your agenda at the forefront.
Know your pitch

A lot of times when you are networking with people they will ask you why you are there and what you do. Make sure you have a succinct response that answers their question and opens up the topic for conversation. End your pitch with a question that ropes them into further conversation.

Over the next week I will post topics to help you get the most from Xbiz and walk out of there with more contacts and business opportunities than you can throw a stripper pole at!

PS – Click here to see my post from the Vegas Adult Entertainment Expo. And here are some pics from the AEE!

January 28, 2011/by 7veils

Doms on Twitter: I don’t follow you, you follow me!

7 Veils, Adult Industry, Facebook & Twitter

Does your Twitter Strategy include who you follow and why? Branding extends to how you manage your social media.

When creating a Twitter strategy, always keep your audience in mind. Generally speaking, I tell people to follow their followers. After all, following doesn’t cost you anything and it helps grow your network faster. It also aids in social proof. However, it is not right for all people. If you are in the BDSM community, following back might be counter to your image.

When you start on Twitter you need to decide the personality of your account. This is a key part of your branding. If you are a dom, and use your tweets to continue that persona, then following back might be the wrong solution for you, especially when it comes to following clients. As a dom, you might need to work a bit harder for your networking while telling your audience, “You follow me! I don’t follow you.”

The important part of this is consistency. If you are going to not-follow as a Twitter strategy then you need to stay true to that. You will also need to find other ways, such as engagement, hashtags and content as primary ways to grow your network.

Not following can be as much a strategy as following. You just need to make sure your strategy is in alignment with your branding.

The image used in this post was provided by Joe Lusty. He is a producer, director, photographer and performer. A full-time photographer, he has some beautiful xxx photographs that are both provocative and artistic. Visit Joe’s website at www.joelusty.com

January 26, 2011/by 7veils

Is Apple Paving the Way for Porn?

7 Veils, Adult Industry, Technology

Is Apple paving the way for porn on their iOS or has the industry just found an effective work-around?

Hugh Hefner announced, in a tweet on Tuesday, that uncensored Playboy issues will be on iPad starting in March. Playboy has already joined the mobile app trend but this flies in the face of what Steve Jobs has said about blocking porn on iOS. So does this mean that Apple is paving the way for porn or does this tweet mean more than meets the eye?

Truthfully, a bit of both.

The uncensored Playboy will not be an app. Through Bondi Digital Publishing, Playboy has all of their issues past and present optimized for the web. What they have done is taken the digitized magazines and made them compatible with the iOS web browser, Safari. It will be a subscription service, so if you subscribe you won’t browse the pages of Playboy through their own native app like you do with Time Magazine – you will be viewing a version optimized for the web on Safari (though they do say it will utilize iPad functions, whatever that means).

Do you really read Playboy for the articles? There is a Playboy app for the iPad and iPhone which clearly states that it features no nudity, but does include provocative photos and articles. There are “plans to release a non-nude version of a Playboy-branded iPad app in the coming months that adheres to all of Apple’s policies and guidelines,” said Playboy spokeswoman Theresa Hennessey. This will likely be very similar to the app that currently exists for the iPhone and iPad. But can Playboy be softcore enough for Apple, and hardcore enough for their audience? Response to their existing app says no.

Allowing porn on an Apple app would be a complete turnaround for their official stance on porn on the iOS. Of course there have been apps that are testing the limits, like the app where you can blow up the skirt of an Asian girl. Then there was the Asian Boobs app that was eventually removed. Currently the line seems to be drawn at nudity.

So porn might be banned on iPad apps, but moves by brands like Playboy are getting Apple closer to defining the difference between acceptable suggestive content and unacceptable explicit content.

On Tuesday in a tweet,

January 21, 2011/by 7veils

What’s the Next Big Trend in Porn? (part 2)

Adult Industry

On Monday we spoke about the “next” trend in porn. With threats of pirated content and free amateur tube sites, the survival of quality porn is being threatened. The adult industry is no stranger to being on the front end of the technology adoption curve and cutting edge tech strategies. We are already seeing how mobile and 3D are coming in with a bang. But the new trend in strategy is engagement.

Not only are studios creating more ways to deliver content, they are finding more interesting ways to deliver it. Riding on the popularity of “webisodes” on mainstream networks like NBC and FOX, you might start seeing your favorite porn star, like Jenna Haze, creating webisodes. The neat thing about them is they are much like sitcoms – you get attached to the main actors. When you combine webisodes with Jenna Haze’s great Twitter strategy then you will have a more interactive experience because Jenna will be able to drop clues about the up and coming episode and discuss the past episodes with fans.

With interactive sites that feature webcams with chat, live Q&A’s with fans, Skype, vidchat, blogs, Twitter, Facebook and more, we are seeing porn tearing down barriers.

Joanna Angel, the owner of Burning Angel: “I think things that are becoming a lot more community oriented. The wall of the porn star is breaking down and I think we’re moving in a direction where there’s a lot more interaction between fans and stars.” (Joanna Angel as quoted on CNN)

Whether it is communication on live chats or Twitter, or virtual cams where the customer controls the toy, the porn world is going to be getting to know their fan base. If you want to stay ahead of the curve you better figure out your engagement strategy.

January 19, 2011/by 7veils

What is the Next Big Trend in Porn? (part 1)

Adult Industry, Technology

Now that the dust is settling from the Adult Entertainment Expo (AEE) and the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), people are asking what is the next big trend in porn? CES and AEE happening at the same time is more than just a ploy to get geeks to mingle with porn stars. Porn has traditionally been on the cutting edge of technology. We are the early adapters and often the trend setters and influencers of the adoption of new tech. Porn is the reason VHS won over Beta. That seems like decades ago…well, it was decades ago, but it was a technology that had a lasting impact on the movie industry as a whole, as well as personal video and home electronics.

The first trend: Mobile

The next trends in porn are mobile apps and engagement. Porn has been blackballed from mobile apps on iPhone and iPad, but porn is like sand from the beach. It is everywhere and no matter what you do to try to get rid of it, you will always find it hiding somewhere. Many of the new apps meant for mainstream media have porn sneaking in and accessing it.The goal of mobile is to make porn consumable from any platform. “The eventuality of DVDs going away is something that’s scaring lots of companies,” says Farley Cahen, chief operating officer of Digital Playground. The industry needs to adapt to stay viable. With free porn on the rise and DVDs sliding, porn needs to step up its game if quality legal porn is going to stay viable. Mobile is the answer to this. Sites like Jessejane.com have a “sniffer” code on their site that detects when someone is on an iOS and optimizes the content, including video, to play on that device. Pink Visual used a different business model that created their primary revenue stream from wireless and internet, while using DVD as their secondary stream. This is positioning them ahead of the curve on the transition away from DVDs.Hotels are reporting a loss of income from rentals because people are accessing porn from their phones and iPads.Despite Apple’s refusal to allow porn on its devices, porn apps are focused on the iPhone market. Most are developed specifically for the iPhone. With the news about Verizon releasing their own iPhone on February 10th, the market for iPhone porn apps will grow by about 2 million over night.One of the big benefits of mobile apps is that they are not limited to video. Mobile can mean video, phone calls, video calls, turning your phone into a vibrator, interactive games and more. It is allowing the porn experience to be more thorough and comprehensive. Though the phones might not give you 3D porn, it can give you a 3D experience.On Wednesday, see part 2 of the next big trend in porn!

January 17, 2011/by 7veils

A Review of Paper.li: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Social Media

Is a news aggregator the best way to keep abreast of news on Twitter?

Paper.li is a news aggregator. It gathers Twitter posts from a keyword, a list, or a specific Twitter account and collects what it perceives to be the popular stories and tweets. It then puts them together in a unified format that is like an online paper.

I decided to try it out to see what I thought about the service:

The Good

Gathers news from the sources of your choice
Is a good clearing house of recently tweeted news
Great way to view what has been happening online without having to go through thousands of tweets.
Easy to set up
Easy to read format
Visually appealing
Nice way to promote people’s tweets and posts
Self Promoting, it posts the paper for you
You can have morning and night editions, daily or weekly
Once you set the parameters, it will create itself according to specifications
Establishes authority for people mentioned in the paper

The Bad

You cannot edit the paper, only parameters from which it pulls information
You do not control who it references in your tweet about the paper coming out
You do not have editorial control over your paper
You cannot chose what posts get put in and what gets left out
No approval before posting
Promotes the paper as something you created

The Ugly

Not everyone you put in your paper will want to be in your paper
People might get mis-credited for posts due to re-tweeting
You cannot fix a mis-post
Promotes a message as an overall source when it is pulling news based on set parameters as limited as a single Twitter account.

The positives about Paper.li far outweigh the negatives. Overall I feel it is a valuable resource, however the bads and the uglies do cause concern. The lack of editorial control is the biggest issue I have.

In a paper I created to try out the service, a story was mis-credited. The Tweep that it was mis-credited to pointed it out to me. Of course, because of the lack of editorial control, I could not change it. To remedy the situation I deleted the paper.

I have also experienced this in other people’s papers. I have seen posts I have written credited to other people. Of course when pointed out, it could not be fixed and properly credited.

I based my paper off a list I created called “Adult Industry” that became the name of the paper. Though I could have changed the name, I didn’t think to change it. So the name indicated that the paper was representative of all Adult Industry, when in fact it was not. It was a sampling of the industry. Most of the papers I have seen seem to convey the same thing. They are called things like “Music Daily” “Tech Daily” “Adult Daily”. As readers we are not privy to the parameters of the paper, and most people would probably not think to ask. So in the name it establishes a sense of authority that is not necessarily warranted.

My review:

I think that Paper.li is a great tool and has a lot of potential, but I also think it has some bugs to work out before it achieves that potential.

January 14, 2011/by 7veils

AEE: A Panoply of Porn

7 Veils, Adult Industry

I made it back from Vegas and the Adult Entertainment Expo. The show was great. I met some amazing people and had a blast. The women were beautiful, the men were strong and the booths were entertaining. All in all it was a pretty awesome conference.

I gave a talk about social media with a panel of my peers. It was moderated by Jay Kopita from Ynot.com, and also featured Pete Housely from Pornstartweet.com, Eric Bernstein from Embalaw.com, Danny Dover from Seomoz.org, and Matt Pierce from Pink Visual. We spoke to a packed room and fielded some interesting questions from the audience. It was great fun and we shared a lot of valuable information.

Here are some of my pictures from the show…enjoy!

January 12, 2011/by 7veils

Pics from Porn-Con!

7 Veils, Adult Industry

What an amazing weekend it was! Made lots of great connections and the audience for our panel presentation was “standing room only”. I’m traveling home from Las Vegas today, exhausted but very satisfied (kinda like a really gooood night…). Watch for more updates this week. Meanwhile, here are a few pics from the fabulous Adult Entertainment Expo!