7/31/2010

Help make a List of Businesses/Industries that Social Media would not work!

Sage Lewis from Sagerock agency always makes me sit back and smile because of his entertaining style with solid tips and points.  His newest entertaining video is titled, "Social Media for Farmers, huh!?"  After watching the video think about what businesses/industries that Social Media would not work or be effective for them and post in the comment section below.  I will compile the list and re-post.




Thank you for helping build our list of Businesses/Industries that Social Media is not effective.

7/29/2010

"Ship or get off the Pot", Inspired by Seth Godin

Yes, it's true, Seth Godin has finally inspired me.  I profess to not being a huge fan like others of Seth, but don't get me wrong, he does deliver moments of brilliance in marketing and business but not just all the time.  Today though, one of my Facebook friends posted this video and for some reason it just connected in the right spots for me.



Key points:
  • Knowing the deep soul-feeling of being responsible for the business to succeed.  Unless you have owned a company there is no other feeling like this other than being a parent (not sleeping well, signs of sickness, wanting to buy every new gadget...)
  • Discipline needs Strategy, period!  You can have all the discipline in the world but if your not performing the right task it becomes a mute activity.  This is why I am a Strategist, because after years of doing task from shipping, unloading trucks at 2am (UPS job in college), writing press releases to creating marketing plans - you have to think strategically in order to have the discipline to perform successfully.
  • Live authentically by writing a blog or even daily Facebook post.  Marketing has changed and as a marketer you must know how to write including tone, when, why... because no matter what business, its all social (media) now.
  • Content online is invaluable for many reasons - Real time results (SEO), link building, SERP, customer segmentation...

What keeps you Shipping?

7/26/2010

Best Quote: "What is the Retail Climate Like"

"The best way to put it is that retail has a hangover right now. It’s awake (but not fully) and is hurting from the past 12 months of weak sales and low margin business. Dealers are beginning to see sales pick up, but they are still having a tough time paying for past purchases, making it tough to freshen up inventory."  Darren Hawrish, Founder and President No Limits Distribution from interview with Shop-Eat-Surf.com

7/06/2010

Threadless goes Experiential for Summer Tour 2010

To celebrate its 10th Anniversary, T-Shirt crowd sourcing specialist Threadless, has launched a Summer mobile event campaign.  The mobile tour includes a 25-foot Airstream trailer, pulled by a panel van designed for the tour with a collage of the most popular T-shirt designs from Threadless’ decade. 

 What is Threadless, according to Wikipedia, Threadless is a community-centered online apparel store run by skinnyCorp of Chicago, Illinois, since 2000. Co-founders Jake Nickell and Jacob DeHart started the company with $1,000 in seed money after entering an Internet t-shirt design contest.  Members of the Threadless community submit t-shirt designs online; the designs are then put to a public vote. A small percentage of submitted designs are selected for printing and sold through an online store. Creators of the winning designs receive a prize of cash and store credit.  So basically, they are crowd sourcing geniuses along with Digital Savants. 

Back to the tour, the tour launched from Threadleass headquarters in Chicago and heads out west then will head across the country to the East Coast.  Tour Dates/Locations.  Stops will include design shows, music festivals and other high-traffic venues. At the stops the trailer will be open for visitors to engage in art work, music, purchase t-shirts, music, enter contest and hang out. 

The other aspect of this experiential program is the digital/social media mix that includes a micro site, twitter, facebook and location based fun with Gowalla.  The tour will be thoroughly videoed, blogged and tweeted on the Threadless.com social network pages at Facebook, where the company has 132,000 likes, and on Twitter/Threadless, where Threadless has 1.5 million followers.