This past Tuesday I ventured to San Fran to make a stop at social media camp, a conference much like cupcake camp or bar camp and I learned a few things:
1. “Wanna be successful, make people around you successful.” This quote struck a cord deep down in me when I heard it in Erica O’Grady’s opening speech. It is from the book Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz. It is so obvious, yet so powerful. Working in marketing, the first rule is that if your client is not making money then you won’t keep the business for long. In my new position as the social marketing and promotions manager for Healdsburg Magazine, my job is to care about bringing more money to local businesses and the Healdsburg community/economy as a hole. I recently learned that many small family owned wineries in the area are already on the Open Wine Consortium (social network for people in the wine industry). This proves that they know that the web is a great vehicle to get their voice across, now I want to help them get heard through multiple other social media sites, thus making them more successful (and in turn, making me more successful of course).
2. Sex still sells! At the Half Baked activity, the room was split into 3 teams, my team constituted of a few people, including Tilly from Yahoo. The idea of Half Baked is to spilt into teams, pick two “buzz” words from a list that the crowd yelled out and then to create a website (with name, tagline, revenue model and marketing plan) in 10 minutes. Our team chose AtomicPimp.com, a subscription based dating site where people pay to be “pimped” out to find dates. A percentage of the profits go to “pimps”, who set people up on dates.Pimps can promote themselves through various social networking, blah, blah, blah….Anyways, our team won tickets to the Summer Mash SF party at the Mighty… All because sex sells (oh, yeah, and our idea kicked ass).
3. Twitter is one of the biggest social networks out there, yet it is still only known by other fellow web geeks. In the beginning of the camp, we all went around saying our names, three “tags” (mine: Healdsburg, tourism and live events) and our favorite Social Media site (Hi my name is Shana and I am a Twitter-holic). Almost everyone in the room said Twitter as well. I must say there is definitely something in communicating in 140 characters or less.
4. Geek guys are hot (It is the glasses). That is all.
5. Just be honest and write about what you know, if it is interesting, people will read (just don’t constantly spam your friends with your blog URL *oops).
6. Social Media Marketing takes time. You have to build relationships, as well as maintain them. Old Media talked TO people, not with them.
7. Basic Online necessities:
1. Create a blog— WordPress is my personal favorite
2. Twitter — Start following people and have something to say
3. Facebook — It isn’t just there so you can poke old high school friends, FB has allowed me to connect with business owners, wineries and journalists in the area. It works.
4. Email — If people email you, make sure to follow up!
It has been a little over a week since my life was completely changed. Yes, I got laid-off.It has been a huge blow to my money situation as well as my sometimes overly exaggerated ego, but thanks to the support of friends both at Hamilton Partners and around Healdsburg, I have come to terms with my first (and hopefully only) lay-off.
The reasoning is as straightforward yet complex as it sounds. People don’t print as much as they used to, thus they buy less ink. Yes, many more factors are involved, but it is pretty simple. It is cost effective, sustainable and smart to not print as much no matter who you are or what you print. A simple theory…. The complex part is that this trend has been going on for sometime, yet some have been so obsessed with trying to figure out HOW to get people to print more that they never took the time to look or ask WHY?
Thankfully, this set back has made me realize what is important in life and it isn’t sitting at my desk staring at the computer until I can barley see straight anymore.
Part of my new plan: I already promote different Healdsburg events such as parties, concerts, art openings, wine tastings, etc., so why not try to turn event promotions and planning into a career.
For Healdsburg Magazine, I will be contributing content about local events in and around Healdsburg, populating and promoting the What’s Happening calendar and promoting the site via different social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.
As my last post described, Healdsburg Magazine is an Online New Media magazine that discusses real life in Healdsburg, including reviews of local restaurants, retail stores and wineries.
Please take a look, and let me know what you think at:
For the last three days I have made Palette Art Café my latest stomping ground to do my everyday online activities. Today started off dedicated to writing a blog post about my life as of Monday morning (link to post to come) but as I got up to grab my soy mocha, I came across a flyer announcing an event for Healdsburg Magazine.
Healdsburg Magazine…. WHAT is this, WHY haven’t I heard about it and WHO came up with such a great idea to capture the beauty and personality that our little town has in one day??
My eyes lit up….. Is this flyer a sign that Healdsburg is where I should stay to pursue my next chapter of my life (once again, link to post to come). I had to check out HealdburgMagazine.com.
The site is a newly created new media magazine dedicated to life, food, wine, events and business in Healdsburg, Ca.
I believe it definitely has the potential to help bring Healdsburg into the new millennium (i.e., creating active participants within an online community). The creator of this site, Jennifer, seems to know about SEO and using social media to market a site. As some may know, I am just starting to attempt to get Healdsburg online, so news that someone else wants to do the same thing gets me very excited.
The event in more detail: On Saturday July 19th, 2008 Healdsburg Magazine is asking all locals or visitors in Healdsburg to take a minute of their day to capture their experience.
“Just record being in Healdsburg”
If you video it, create a short video of your experience and email a link to the video
If you photograph it, send in the photograph with details about who, where, when, and how
If you blog it, just blog it and send the link to your blog
Or, just call and leave a voice mail. 707-477-2528
I will definitely be participating in this event, as well as telling everyone I know in Healdsburg that day to do the same. I also look forward to seeing what Healdsburg Magazine has in store for the future.
Everyone who is “online” knows all about what Tony Hsieh the CEO of Zappos is doing via Twitter to create a brand personality based on human interaction and honestly.
Zappos hires new employees, provides a four-week training period that immerses them in the company’s culture.
Then, a week into training, Zappos offers them $1,000 to quit…. Why? According to the article, it is because if the employee takes the money, then they are not the type of person they want working there anyways….
Coming from an ex-Starbucks employee, I can easily say that other companies in the customer service industry need to pay attention to what Zappos is doing. Their obsession with customer service has turned them into a billion dollar company. Their continuation of their free shipping , easy to use 800 number and free return service is a welcome change from Best Buys’ new policy of not being able to return items when you lost your receipt and paid cash or numerous amount of time spent on hold with AT&T.
My favorite quotes from the article:
“So the value proposition is a winner. But it’s the emotional connection that seals the deal.”
“Companies don’t engage emotionally with their customers—people do.”
Noah Brier has taken his site Brand Tags even further. Starting yesterday, visitors canpick the brand that they like best with Battle Mode! This new feature allows people to pick their favorite brand out of two random brand logos.
Try it out for yourself here, though, it is addicting…
I have argued this point with many of my friends: People pick brands based on emotion, and then they use their logic. I compare this to falling in love with a song based on the warm feeling it gives you about your middle school boyfriend…. Yes, I am talking about “Name” by the Goo Goo Dolls. *sigh.
This new addition to the site another great tool that Noah has created to get insight into people’s mindset, to look at the emotional aspect of a brand and of course, another tool to make Marketing Geeks like me gitty.
Some statistics that I have found thus far AS OF 11:15AM PST on Sunday:
Wins 100% of the time:
Arm & Hammer, Trek, Disney, Staples, VH1, Doritos, Adidas, World Wildlife Federation, Playstation, Scion, eBay, Post It, Xbox, Wii, Four Seasons, Coach, Discovery Channel, Bic, Kelloggs, Tupperware, Sharper Image
Loses 100% of the time:
Chevron, Sams Club, Bumble Bee, Kroger, Mexx, Exxon, Tide, NHL
More Stats that mean something to me:
§ HP wins 67% of the time
§ Barbie loses 60% of the time
§ Kodak loses 71% of the time
§ Wal Mart loses 40% of the time – Meaning that it wins 60% of the time…. Very surprising
§ Best Buy wins 63% of the time
§ Cadillac loses 80% of the time
§ Starbucks loses 63% of the time
§ Coffee-Mate wins 50% of the time
§ Nike loses 22% of the time
§ Patagonia wins 50% of the time
§ REI wins 71% of the time
§ NBA loses 67% of the time
§ Camelbak wins 75% of the time
§ Converse wins 75% of the time
§ Shell wins 56% of the time
§ WD40 wins 55% of the time
§ McDonalds loses 80% of the time
Currently this site is a day old, so I look forward to watching this site grow, and to see if it will brands will pay attention to this an example of how to use consumer mindset to leverage a brand’s personality.
On a another note: His site has encouraged me to pursue a branding experiment that has existed in my head for the last few years into realm of reality. Look for a blog post about this soon.
There is so much that could be said about this event, but after seeing some of the pictures that I ended up with on my friend Lizzy’s communal camera, I was speechless so I will allow my pictures to do the talking.
I think these pictures sum up my experience very nicely.
The party bus that drove us from Healdsburg to the tasting room.
I won my first round, alas, my victory was short lived, I guess, not enough THUNDER was brought.
Mike Smith, the roshambo winemaker, me, a few friends and two disturbed clowns
YouTube is the latest social network that is offering brands free demographic data about users who click on their offerings. These facts will highly influence how bands, TV shows, movies and consumer products are marketed virally on the Web.
A feature called YouTube Insight, introduced in March, gives YouTube account holders a range of statistics, charts and maps about their audiences, and it is free!
The data bring some science to what has in the past just been a crapshoot in terms of knowing who exactly is watching/reading a brands viral marketing efforts.
The video was posted on May 23 and in less than two weeks, over 5.5 million have watched it, and now because of Insight we know that 65% of viewers are male. And after three days, 38% of viewers had discovered the video on other websites where people had posted it.
With this information, Weezer is planning on figuring out how to target the same demographic groups that watched the video, and how to reach out to those that didn’t.
My blog started off as a project just so I can familiarize myself with the “art” of blogging so I could blog for my company Hamilton Partners. Now over a year later it has become so much more. Although I am sure no one is even reading this, my blog has become a good way for me to remind myself about different campaigns or ideas that are truly important and influential to me.
Since the main part of my job is to collect stratgetic ideas to help the creatives and account team come up with great marketing ideas, this blog has served as the perfect outlet for my random thoughts.
Though, I do not recommend going back too many pages on my blog unless you want to see how far I have come and how much has changed, here is my first post and then even better my third post about how much I hate Twitter (btw, I am now completely addicted, so please follow me here)
