7 Things About Me

So, I get a link through WordPress from Advergirl. The link was an announcement that she had tagged me in a post. The post was a meme that was (as far as I can tell) started by Ad Broad called 7 Things About Me. Well, I absolutely love Leigh so I decided to do it and post 7 Things About ME.

7 Things About Me

1. I started and ran my first business my sophomore year of high school called Picture Perfect Lawn Care. I have a really good friend named Randy that was new to Anderson when I started the company. We become really good friends because he had a license and I was 15.

2. Like Leigh, I also have a box full of lovey-dovey camp letters from a church camp I attended in high school. We would color on manila envelopes and post them on the wall categorized by cabin number. If you had your eye on a pretty lass you would write her a quick note to meet you after prayed time.I still have… all of them.

3. My favorite author is Milan Kundera. My favorite book by Mr. Kundera is the Unbearable Lightness of Being.

4. I have the tendency to become obsessed with certain things throughout life. I have an addictive personality which can be (and is) detrimental to relationships. Whether it is being a workaholic or blogging uncontrollably it can be a good and bad trait.

5. I rarely ever cook at home. If I am cooking at home it means to is one of four things: Macaroni, Ramen, turkey sandwich or rice and chicken. That’s it. I hate cooking.

6. I would love a dog. My favorite dog in the world is a chocolate lab. I just do not have the time to devout to taking care on animal. I desperately would like to have one in the next year.

7. My biggest pet-peeve is stupid people. And I’m not talking on any level other than common sense. USE YOUR HEAD! I love most everyone else.

Okay so you are suppose to tag 7 more people you want to learn more about. Here it goes.

Amber Lambke

Andy Sowards

Ahmed Naguib

Ezra Butler

Shannon Seek

Scott Stratten

Jennifer Leggio

There you go. I am calling you out. 7 Things.

Small Biz. It is Important to Listen in Social Media.

We are kind of getting on this kick of authentic marketing and the people behind advertising being absolutely terrible at it. So why stop now? Let’s keep this trend going.

Amber Rae has an awesome post called The Missing Ingredient in Marketing and Advertising is Trust. We all know the video this is based off of: The Break Up. Where advertising comes in and tries to convince the “consumer” to stay with him. If you haven’t seen the video. DO IT. It is absolutely hilarious.

There are two things we should touch on when it comes to putting the trust back in the hands of the consumer: Listening and Humility. So, when we are looking at a diagram for Trust in the world of Advertising.

I am pointing this concept more to the small business owners of the world. Why? Because you are the face of the company. You are out on the street (at least you should be) selling the services and products of your company.

You are also working into the world of social media. Figuring out how to use this wonderful tool to increase sales and push your products past the eyes of the consumer and into their minds and hearts. Let’s figure out how to use listening and humility to build trust in your personal brand and your company brand. We are going to focus on listening this post and humility the next.

LISTENING

It is pretty simple. Listen when people are talking to you. If you are asked a question on a social network or on your blog, respond. If not through comments then through an email. It is extremely important to respect the opinions of others. Let’s run through an actual real life scenario to show you the importance.

Imagine being at a networking event. Walking throughout the room and handing out business cards, talking to other people about your company and learning from each other. You can see him/her out of the corner of your eye… the annoying sales professional. This individual walks up and introduces him/herself to each of you and starts talking about what they can do to help you out in your business.

Did they ask you what you did? Not really. They don’t care. They are there to be seen and be heard.

You will not survive in social media if you are not listening to your clients and your referral partners on your social networks. We don’t care about what you sell. Eventually we will create a relationship built on listening + humility = trust.

Until then.. you better be listening to your community partners.

Next time… humility.

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I Was Just Punched In The Face

Brad Ruggles hadan awesome picture on his blog today:

How true. How freaking true! I wrote a post last year about the concept of advertising professionals being completely out of tune to the general public.

I saw this picture on Brad’s blog and it all came completely clear to me. This may not be a huge realization for most but it hit pretty hard for me.

What is the reason we love social media so much?

Is it the information sharing? The community development? Meeting people all over the world while learning as much as possible in one sitting? In my opinion it is all of the above. We use social media because we aren’t bombarded with advertisements every ten seconds (at least in some communities). The question is then… as advertisers… how do we CHANGE the thought in the picture? How do we speak to the general public?

The answer is social media or social media marketing. There is no place in the entire world that has such a concentrated group of individuals that care about each other and care about information. You want a way to talk to people? Join their network. BE A PERSON!

We are all people. We are all striving for one thing or the other. The rat race isn’t really a rat race at all… it is more LIFE. Quit trying to hard sell

become a HUMAN.

become an INDIVIDUAL.

become a member and join one THE largest community in the world (counting at 250 million)… the Internet.

So.. I was punched in the face a second time by the thought of joining a community instead of speaking to the community…

I am going to go fix my bloody nose and hop on Twitter.

The Difference Between Being Inspired and Living Inspired

Sometimes it is nice to step away from social media marketing. I am going to do that today.

Many of us are extremely busy. We get caught up in the everyday occurrences in life and ignore the things that are truly important to us. Well.. maybe I am just talking to myself (which is completely possible). I have begun to find myself losing track of everything other than business. I am extremely focused on running a company but there is no balance.

Good Thing: We are growing and clients are satisfied.
Bad Thing: You negate everything else in life.

I have put it upon myself to start living a little less selfishly. How am I going to do that??? What a great question!

My cousin has an organization called Krochet Kids International. The organization is built around the concept of:

To create sustainable economic development programs that support holistic growth of individuals and communities within developing nations.

To inspire the knowledge of a generation about their ability to bring change to a world that is in need.

I began thinking… I read business books and I get inspired. I read autobiographies, blogs, and watch shows about people who have done amazing feats…and I get inspired. The question is… have I ever sat down and thought: I am going to start something that inspires an ENTIRE GENERATION to live and believe in their ability to bring change to a world that is in need. My inspiration is more along the lines of… I am inspired to make the next sale.

I can watch the Krochet Kids video and BE Inspired. I can read a book about Mother Theresa or Ghandi and BE inspired. I am tired of constantly going up and down, hot and cold.

Isn’t it time to live an inspired life instead of constantly BEING inspired? Start the chain reaction.

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Your Marketing SHOULD Be Recession Proof

I love reading Hutch Carpenter’s blog over at I’m Not Actually A Geek. Mostly because we both would rather not think of ourselves as geeks when in reality… we are.

He has a great post called: Do Not Kill Off Marketing During a Recession. He talks about the idiotic tendencies of companies to cut their marketing and creative departments FIRST when a recession hits the economy.

It doesn’t make much sense does it? As a social media marketing and design company, we tend to be a little bias towards marketing because that is what we love! Hutch has a great graphic that I am

going to post here. I encourage you to go read his blog when you have the chance it will never let you down!

It is easy as a small company to sit here and moan about the big brother’s cutting of creative and marketing. Honestly, I don’t mind that they do because we tend to get more work after the cut. It is still idiotic to think that cutting marketing would result in slimming down the business in order for the competitive nature of the company to shine through.

Marketing should be recession proof as far as your balance sheet is concerned. You cannot slim down a marketing budget because of a recession. People are still buying. People are still wanting to spend money. Keep that marketing budget going.

A Message to A FEW Fortune 500 D-Bags:

Next time you decide to lay off your creative departments…

Next time you decide to lay off some floor workers from a plant…

Next time you get mad at marketing for spending too much money…

I would advise to cut the tens of thousands of dollars spent on your spa treatments… your first class plane tickets.. your rental car that had leather interior and a butler…the lavish hotel rooms during conferences… and taking the executive team out to eat every day.

Social Media, Just Do It!

Today’s guest post is from Chris Lucas. Chris works for Formspring, an online forms company in Indianapolis.

Not a real original title, I know…but I have a point. First let me introduce myself. My name is Chris, I work for an online forms company in Indianapolis. I am not a social media expert. I have been experimenting in social media for the last couple of years….now, on to the good stuff.

I am tired of people looking at social media and staring at it like its last week’s leftovers, wondering just how good it really is. Social Media is not a science. It is not a complex equation that should take years to study and years to implement – some people may think I am wrong, but oh well.

Companies and people need to stop staring and start participating. It isn’t scary, you learn by doing. You learn by listening. That is where many companies get it wrong…your first action is not to talk. Your first action should be to listen. Listen to what the people are saying. What they accept, what they don’t. What they need and what they want to see. I know, you’ve heard it all before. But seriously. Do IT – see what the fuss is all about.

If you need to “sell” it to your organization, don’t sell it as marketing or sales. Sell it as online PR. Sell it as brand management, sell it as protecting your name in one of the biggest unknowns out there – the internet.

You don’t need to be an expert, you just need to get involved.

Ah, the experts…don’t get me started. One of the reasons why companies are so afraid of getting involved is because they are afraid of the inevitable attack on their brand. The diatribes against ACME Co, because they are doing it wrong. Listen. This is new. People are experimenting. Social media experts need to stop lecturing. Everyone is not going to be authentic. Everyone has an agenda – even if they are authentic, everyone is trying to sell something. So we nee to let people figure it out for themselves. We need to let people find that balance. For every 30 authentic posts, comments, tweets, etc, they can sell once, mention their brand. Let them figure out what their audience will absorb and tolerate.

The beauty of social media is that people can listen to whomever they want, people will dictate who is successful and who isn’t. So when a company starts spamming or not being authentic people will stay tuned or not. They will run or they will stay. Companies will adjust or won’t. Some will get it, some won’t. The people will decide and most companies will pay attention. They will learn, but let’s not get our social media panties in a bunch, just because we were here first. Let the experiment continue and grow, that’s the beauty of this thing.

Is Email Marketing REALLY Effective? Really?

Just like everything in my twenty-four year old, completely ADD mind… things come and go. I have been up on traditional direct mail and then I have hated it. I have loved email marketing and then hated it only to return to love the form again.

I was reading a post by Jason Baer at Convince and Convert about email marketing. He had listed some interesting statistics that came out of a panel discussion at the Marketing Profs Digital Marketing Mixer. He has a list of 15 Email Statistics That Are Shaping The Future.

I decided to take the top five out of the post and list them for you. This should help facilitate the discussion around email marketing.

1.  69% of email recipients report email as Spam based solely on the subject line.

2.  Email lists with 10% or more unknown users get only 44% of their email delivered by ISPs.

3.  84% of people 18-34 use an email preview pane.

4.  44% of email recipients made at least one purchase last year based on promotional email.

5.  35% of business professionals check email on a mobile device.

I have always been slightly troubled the way email marketing has been conducted the past two years. With all the talk of pull instead of push marketing it would be assumed that businesses large and small would be making conscious efforts to increase the effectiveness of this online medium.

I have never been a major believer in one hit email marketing. The concept of sending a weekly to monthly email newsletter for marketing purposes seems a little contrite. The majority of the email newsletters I receive are not necessarily marketing efforts as much as they are blog posts within an email. They are announcing a new break through at the company or industry specific news.

There is a big difference between informational email and marketing email. Marketing email should be catered directly to a specific group of people and it should be set up through a drip email campaign. I am a big believer in drip email campaigns because it is measurable and you are constantly changing the message based on the action of the reader.

Sending one email out every month to the same base of subscribers can be a waste of time. Instead of sending out a monthly email why not write a blog? Sign your email list up on your blog subscription email. They will get your blog in their email and you will be killing two birds with one stone (maybe even three or four birds!).

As you can tell by the stats email marketing is still working but what I have seen from small businesses have been less than satisfying. Take some time to reevaluate your email marketing. Should you be doing something different? Maybe you should invest in a measurable system where you can cater specific messages to different users?

In the coming years different forms of more attractive and 1:1 communication mediums will take the place of email. Social Media strategies will be combining (if not replacing) push tactic email marketing.

I would like to think your client or potential customer wants a dialogue… They want communication! An email marketing campaign is a trumped up traditional direct mail strategy with a different method of delivery.

Do something different! Do something unique! Do something noteworthy.

Blog Action Day 2008: Krochet Kids International

Blog Action Day is today. What better way to talk about poverty than to highlight what a cousin of mine is doing to fight poverty in Africa.

Krochet Kids International is an NFP that was started by a group of college students in Washington and California. Their mission statement is simple and yet profound: to “empower people to rise above poverty“.

From the Krochet Kids International Site:

To create sustainable economic development programs that support holistic growth of individuals and communities within developing nations.

To inspire the knowledge of a generation about their ability to bring change to a world that is in need.

They are a powerful group of young people trying to make a difference in the world.

What They Do:

“Each day, a group of women in Northern Uganda gather in a simple brick hut to begin work. Their tools are small, just a hook and some yarn, yet the end product is something much more meaningful than a style accessory. The crocheted products these women are making have a far reaching impact. They provide immediate stability for their families, share about the realities of poverty, and their sale promotes the development of their community.”

Below is a video from the KK International site. I encourage everyone to watch it. I am completely humbled by the hearts of my cousin and his friends. The world would be better off if we had more like them.

BlueLock: Leading the Way in Cloud Computing

BlueLock is a local company here in Indianapolis that is leading the way in the innovative technology of Cloud Computing. They were recently highlighted at a conference in Las Vegas and featured on WishTV. You can watch the video below.

Cloud Computing has been a major topic in the world of blogging:

1. Info World: Will the Downturn Accelerate Cloud Computing

2. bMights: Running Your Business in the Cloud

3. Lorraine Ball @ Indy-Biz: New Developments in Cloud Computing

4. Blogoscoped: Richard Stallman vs Cloud Computing

5. Dan @ itToolBox: Big Trouble Coming for Cloud Computing

Whether you have a distate for the cloud or you love the concept, I thought it was awesome that an Indianapolis company is making headway with this technology.

I know that most of the time I am either talking about social media, social media marketing or social media in Indianapolis but I thought it was awesome that BlueLock was being featured in the technology arena. I encourage everyone to watch the video below to get a small taste of what BlueLock is offering.

Should SocialMedian Use Personal Politics in Communication?

Technorati Profile

Before you read my post I want to state that I LOVE the SocialMedian site and I am an avid follower of Jason Goldberg.

With that said…

I happen to agree with a lot of what Jason posts on Twitter and Friendfeed. Our political opinions vary but we agree on most concepts surrounding politics and government. I have been growing a little concerned with personal political opinions being used on a company branded communication platform. Jason uses his twitter account to post news items from Social|Median but he also uses that account for his personal

political viewpoints.

I am not judging how Jason runs his twitter account but a question should be raised when

it comes to the branding of a company.  Should personal politics be brought into the company communication medium? When you are trying to set an image of a company into a market is it best to keep neutral and just share information with your followers?

I have a feeling Jason and SocialMedian is putting off some users because of the political opinion of one of the creators using Twitter. When you are building a brand for your company is it best to leave personal opinions on the wayside?

This is a great question when it comes to branding a new startup. The personality of a company is directly related to the creators but how far can you go?

What do you think?