Lots of companies — more every day, it seems — want to have Facebook “fan” pages, where customers or would-be customers can connect with them and become part of their online community. But what are those fans actually worth to a company? Everyone has their own views on that question, but now a social media measurement firm called Syncapse has come up with an actual dollar value in a report released today (PDF link). The answer? An average fan is apparently worth about $136.38, although for some very successful social marketers the value can be dramatically higher, while for some less successful companies it can be virtually zero.

Syncapse came up with the figure by asking 4,000 fans of 20 of the top brands on Facebook — including Nokia, BlackBerry, Victoria’s Secret, Adidas, Nike, Coca-Cola, Starbucks and McDonald’s — why they were fans of those companies or brands, and about their past and future purchasing behavior. Syncapse then tried to estimate what the value of each fan’s spending would be to a company, as well as the value of continuing to have that fan as a customer over time.

The key findings of the report are likely to come as music to the ears of advertisers that have been pursuing a Facebook-based social media strategy. According to the survey:

• On average, fans spend an extra $71.84 they would not otherwise spend on products they describe themselves as fans of, compared to those who are not fans.
• Fans are 28 percent more likely than non-fans to continue using a specific brand.
• Fans are 41 percent more likely than non-fans to recommend a product they are a fan of to their friends.

That probably helps to explain why, according to recent statement by the company, the number of advertisers working with Facebook has doubled in the past year. But Syncapse also said that its results showed how the value of a fan can vary widely:

An average fan may participate with a brand ten times a year and will make one recommendation. But an active fan may participate thirty times and make ten recommendations. The impact this has on fan value is quite dramatic. In the case of Coca- Cola, the best case for fan value reaches $316.78 but is $137.84 for an average fan. In the worse case scenario, a fan is worth $0.

As the chart below shows, fans of McDonald’s spent, on average, more than $300 on the company’s products, while non-fans spent just half that amount. Fans of Starbucks also spent more than twice as much as non-fans.

Some might argue that these conclusions aren’t exactly rocket science — after all, one would assume that if someone goes to the trouble of becoming a fan of a product on Facebook, that person would be enough of a supporter of the brand that they would buy it more often, recommend it to their friends and so on. And Syncapse’s results may also not be 100 percent reliable if extended to the entire universe of 500 million Facebook users, since a few thousand users is a relatively small sample. But it’s still interesting to see someone try to put an actual dollar figure on the value of a Facebook friend.

www.facebook.com/holidaymagiccd

By Corey Binns

Itchy eyes, runny nose, sneezing and coughing are all signs that allergy season has arrived, and it’s hitting harder than ever, with experts predicting this will be the worst allergy season in a decade. While many sufferers typically reach for an arsenal of over-the-counter or prescription medications to fend off symptoms, others may be bothered by the potential side effects or unable to take some due to certain medical conditions. The good news is you may be able to treat your worst allergy symptoms without medication.

Supplements and lifestyle strategies may promise relief. But be sure to talk to your doctor before taking any supplements, as they may interact with other medications you’re taking, says Roberta Lee, M.D., vice chair of the Department of Integrative Medicine at Beth Israel Medical Center and author of “The Superstress Solution.” In addition, read the box for the appropriate dosage and take according to the directions or as instructed by your doctor.

Read on for AOL Health’s expert’s picks for natural allergy relief.

Watch the Clock
To keep pesky pollen, grass and other allergens at bay, keep your windows closed in the morning and at dusk, when allergens are at their peak. Avoid exercising during those times, as well.

“If you’re running at that time of day, you’re basically inoculating yourself,” says Lee.

Take a shower after being outside to scrub off pollen and other allergens. Same goes for Fido. Give your pets a good washing so they’re not dragging pollen into the house.

Neti Pot
The fewer allergens you have in your system, the less you’ll sneeze and sniffle. Take a deep breath outside, however, and you’ll inhale pollen and other allergens that stick to your mucus membranes. That’s where a Neti Pot comes in handy. The hypertonic saline wash can flush out these allergens in your nasal passages.

“Pre-made nasal irrigation solutions found at the drugstore are perfectly fine to use,” says Lee.

She recommends using the Neti Pot twice a day.

Capsaicin
This ingredient, found in many spicy foods, comes from the chili pepper plant and can act as a pain reliever. It may also clear up your congestion. An over-the-counter nasal spray for allergies, called Sinol, uses capsaicin.

“The spray has an apparent effect on nasal membranes to reduce irritation by allergens such as pollens,” says Clifford Bassett, M.D., a member of the faculty at New York University School of Medicine and assistant clinical professor of medicine at the Long Island College Hospital SUNY at Brooklyn.

Omega-3 Fatty Acids
Oily fish, green leafy vegetables, flax seed and hemp seed are all rich in omega-3.

“The trouble is most people don’t get enough in their diet,” says Lee. “I prescribe omega-3 for general health as an anti-inflammatory.”

This can help reduce inflammation, which amplifies an allergic response. Lee recommends eating oily fish such as salmon, tuna, herring and sardines once or twice a week. If you’re not a fish eater, take one to three grams of omega-3 fatty acids from supplements each day.

Vitamin D
Found in sunlight and naturally occurring in some foods, such as egg yolks, herring and cod liver oil, vitamin D is vital to protecting muscle strength as we age and in preventing cancer, diabetes and autoimmune diseases and may offer asthma and allergy protection. Ask your doctor to check your vitamin D levels. Lee recommends taking 2,000 international units of vitamin D3 a day if they’re low. Or, if it’s a warm, sunny day, expose one third of your body to the sunshine for 10 minutes.

Ginger and Turmeric
Your spice cupboard is home to a host of tasty allergy remedies.

“Get involved in your senses and enjoy spices that inadvertently make your food healthier,” says Lee.

Both tumeric and ginger are powerful anti-inflammatories that may help reduce nasal and sinus inflammation. And unlike medications, they are also high in antioxidants. Lee says you can reduce inflammation and add more vitamins to your diet all at once by drinking two to three cups of ginger tea a day or cooking with two to four grams of tumeric a day.

“It’s kind of like getting two medicines in one.”

Stinging Nettle and Quercetin
Your body’s mast cells are filled with chemicals that cause inflammation. Exposure to an allergen can cause the mast cell to rupture, releasing chemicals that start an allergic reaction. Stinging nettle and quercetin are anti-inflammatory supplements that can act as mast cell stabilizers. Lee recommends taking two to four capsules of stinging nettle every four to six hours. Quercetin works like a natural Benadryl, Lee says. Take 500 mg twice a day.

Butterbur
This herbal supplement avoids the chain reaction of an allergy attack and decreases swelling.

“It helps with itchy eyes, swelling in your nose and coughing.”

She recommends taking about 50 mg twice a day.

Acupuncture
This ancient medical practice can alleviate many allergy symptoms. But, Lee cautions, you should find an acupuncturist who has trained for at least four years. Lee says you may want to visit an acupuncturist as often as twice a week when your symptoms are at their worst. During the winter when allergies subside, you may not need to see someone at all.

Reduce Stress
Pollen isn’t the only thing that makes a bad allergy season. Chronic stress can contribute.

“People with asthma have far worse asthma when they’re stressed,” says Lee.

Allergies are similar. To alleviate stress, Lee recommends an anti-inflammatory diet and deep breathing exercises.

More on Allergies:

Spring Cleaning for Allergy Sufferers
Surprising Side Effects of Allergy Medication
Worst Allergy Season in 10 Years

After being told I had a good voice and becoming a DJ on the air, a production director, and a marketing promotions director in radio for 15 years, give or take, I decided to transition into the world of voice-over.   Having a good voice and being told so is only a part of it.

I want to share about a different type of opportunity that the voice-over world presented for me.   I am a believer in “paying it forward.” My story is a little about that.

In 2003, after doing voice-overs officially for six years and creating my company GelderHead Productions with my own home studio, I was tasked with an assignment in a self-improvement course I was taking. It required me to create a project that would enhance one or more of my communities and take on a life of it’s own.

After giving it some thought, I came up with a plan that would give my voice-over and singing colleagues an opportunity to showcase their talents, and be a gift to some very deserving sick children during the holidays. I knew of some amazingly talented folks in my radio days that were not getting the outlet they needed to be heard. The project was a CD that contains songs and stories donated by talent from southern California and weaved together by a holiday tale, featured some animated characters including Jeffrey the surfer reindeer, and Santa.   And the CD’s were to be given to the sick kids at Children’s Hospital in San Diego, CA who couldn’t go home for the holidays and their siblings who sometimes got neglected due to the attention given to their sick sibling(s).

I truly wanted to give my talented community an opportunity to be heard, contribute their gifts and bring a smile to as many children’s faces as possible.   I wanted to make this project exciting so I created a contest for each talent to submit their songs, stories and poems about the holidays. Next, with the help of some caring friends narrowed submissions down to however many would fit on the CD.

The submissions were terrific, the script for the tale was written and rewritten and the characters voices were cast. Finally, the first CD was born and titled Holiday Magic, A Gift for Children of All Ages.

The amount of generosity that came from the voice-over community was no less than amazing.  I was truly touched by how everyone came together.

I then began to raise funds to produce the CD’s and gift them to the kids.  So many people wanted to give back and be a part of this.  It was overwhelming.  Enough money was raised to give 1000 CD’s to the kids at the Children’s Hospital in San Diego with some overflowing to the Ronald McDonald House.

A group of the talent from the CD and friends went to the hospital to sing carols with the sick children and hand out the CD’s.  This was the culmination of the whole project!

That was seven years ago and the CD has truly taken on a life of it’s own!   The latest edition called Holiday Magic, A Gift for Children of All Ages 2009, contained twenty-nine tracks with some creatively crafted timely stories from talent around the world including Italy, Russia, New Zealand, and England. The yearly tale that weaves the CD together has expanded from Santa and Jeffrey to include Carlito Jeffrey’s cousin from the Wild Animal Park, Kate the adventurous reindeer from Milwaukee and a new guest character each year. Two thousand CD’s were created and delivered to nine Children’s Hospitals around the United States.

Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego is now anticipating our visit every year!  Hundreds of voice-over artists and singers have donated talent, creativity, time and money to continue this project so it continues to bring smiles to sick kids every holiday season.

If your gift is your voice and you have a gifted voice, we encourage you to use your talent by contributing that to your community.  The submissions to the CD over the years have ranged from beginners to very advanced in the business and both always impress me.  It is really about helping others.

How will you “pay it forward?” There are many opportunities like this such as reading to the blind on the radio for example. My career isn’t about what I can get but how I can contribute.  I have to constantly remember, what I put out there comes back to me ten fold.  I treasure what I do and the difference it makes.  “Pay it forward” and contribute some of that terrific talent you’ve been given.  It truly is a gift!

For more information on the Holiday Magic CD or Jeff Gelder visit:

]]> http://gelderhead.com/blog/2010/03/making-voice-overs-more-than-a-business/feed/ 2 http://gelderhead.com/blog/2010/01/be-present-to-conquer-your-fear-of-change/ http://gelderhead.com/blog/2010/01/be-present-to-conquer-your-fear-of-change/#comments Sun, 31 Jan 2010 18:08:43 +0000 admin http://gelderhead.com/blog/?p=152 By Timothy Thompson in Awareness on January 29th, 2010 / No Comments

Being simply present and holding a respectful attitude that includes being willing to help but not being pushy about it, along with a compassionate understanding of the person’s difficulties go a long way towards gaining a friend in need rather than an enemy with an attitude.

Every person is anchored by their beliefs for good or bad. Everyone experiences difficulty at some point, some more severe or consistent than others. It is the anchoring beliefs in a person’s life that determine how that person will react when faced with challenges.

If you develop the unshakable power of presence when around a suffering person, you become the realest, most substantial thing in his or her life for a time. You are the rock that the sufferer relies on to provide answers or insight, solace or support, clarity or the dissolution of obstacles. Really, being unshakably present just allows the other to fully express the amazing power of knowingness we all possess, which is the the first step in changing the causes of suffering into inner wisdom.

In Buddhist tradition, suffering is given the name of dukkha, which is derived from the earlier duskha, meaning uneasy. The Buddha himself reportedly observed that:

Birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, death is dukkha.
Sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair are dukkha.
Association with the unbeloved is dukkha.
Separation from the loved is dukkha.
Not getting what is wanted is dukkha.

He elaborated further, classifying dukkha into three categories, sometimes referred to as:

• Direct pain like physical pain, illness, old age, death and bereavement.

• Pain and suffering caused by change or the intransitoriness of happiness.

• Reactive pain to others in pain themselves or to inherent limitations imposed by existence and consciousness.

When it comes right down to it, suffering is usually brought on by an adverse reaction to change.
Hardship is neither particularly positive or negative in universal terms. The universe keeps on churning out potential disasters fraught with danger or opportunities for happy fulfillment depending on how you look at them. The only constant in life is that everything changes. Fear change and attempt to resist it and you will suffer. Believe that the change that you experience in your life is mostly just a way to experience more pain and you will suffer even more.

Take it even further by attempting to dictate to the gods what and how you will take your change and you will fall prey to what ancients in the Greek world recognized as hubris (overweening pride) and hamartia (error or sin). Dictating change for yourself and others exposes the central flaw of the human ego, as we have observed in numerous dictators of change in the persons of Attila the Hun, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Kim Jong-il, Idi Amin, and Slobodan Milosevic.

Fear of change can be mild or severe, and can have an impact on only you or on millions.
Assuming for the moment that you are not some monstrous tyrant ready to cause suffering to millions in the pursuit of living out your worst fears, how can you begin to conquer your fears in a way that eliminates anxiety and painful effort?

The following are offered as a guideline to achieving that goal for yourself. This method takes a willingness to be honest with yourself and to ask questions that may not have readily apparent answers all the time. Persevere and you will be rewarded with a healthier awareness of change and a willing acceptance of it as a means to grow from experiences that require heartfelt change.

Identify your fears around change.

• What situations or persons do I hold onto no matter what?
• What or who am I willing to let go?
• Am I anxious or uptight about either holding on or letting go of them?
• Will I show weakness to myself and others if I change my attachment to holding on or letting go?
• Can I experience change with joy and anticipation?

Identify what it takes to truly change.

• Where does my passion come from?
• Am I willing to seek it out by doing whatever it takes?
• Can I be open to change as an instrument of self-growth and realization?
• What do I modify in my thoughts, beliefs, actions, or relationships that will make that so?

If you answered “no” or “I don’t know” to any of the last group of questions, you are not ready to attempt to conquer your fear of change just yet. Be patient, observe in your life where failing to change means increased suffering or pain in some form, and find ways to work with your fears to balance them to the point of being neutral. When you have a state of neutrality regarding your concerns, come back to this exercise and begin again. Do this process as many times as it takes to be able to clearly identify your passions and to answer “yes” to the other questions.

Put it all together.
Working with your fear of change requires an honest desire for a better life as well as self-awareness, energy, and committed resolve. You don’t need to trick yourself into it, but you may find that a good amount of creative flair and a playful attitude will go a long way towards achieving your goal. You may uncover many beliefs about change that either directly or indirectly inhibit your ability to roll with the punches when required to do so. Take your time.

Be present and practice presence on yourself and others to see how suffering affects us all. Understand that sometimes change is beyond our control and that it can bring serious situations that are full of misery for all concerned. Your ability to fearlessly handle day-to-day change will ultimately prepare you for the times in life when pain and suffering seem inevitable.

About the Author
Timothy Thompson is a professional freelance writer/editor whose work with Dream Manifesto helps illuminate life for online and offline audiences around the world. He currently makes his home in southern California and is working on several content writing and editing projects. Visit Thompson InkWorks for information.