A 2.0 Event That Actually Happened!

So for the last 3 weeks I have been working on making Mike Boss’ WordPress blog site ready for NECC in San Antonio. 

There were 3 things we wanted the site to provide:
1.  A holding place for our Caricature portraits -via Flickr
2.  A brief Utterz (audio & picture) of the interview Mike had just completed w/one of four major education publications
3. A mp3 Podcast from the above mentioned interview (btw: love Twitter, but look out! Here comes Utterz!)

For those that know me (and my skill set) know that I am not a programmer by ANY stretch of the word.  But what I do know is the message that we need to project and that there are certain apps that talk to other apps & I know that those apps can help us make a great first (public) blog!  I don’t want to be one of those “failed” blogs that Jeremiah has talked about recently!  I don’t FAIL well.
It took some time to research the best options, routes of delivery, a lot of testing and a few rounds of training…but we did it!
Wendy polished it off beautifully with her HTML knowledge & as we were heading out to Taco Friday today (on a Thursday) we said the look of the site reflected Mike’s laid back personality!  Couldn’t ask for a better representation!

So big thank you’s to:
Angela Lewton for giving us the green light to do something way outside the box of “normal”…
Wendy Fox for the beautiful skin
Mike Troverfor trusting me on putting the caricatures on Flickr that would be displayed on a site that would generate “repeat customers”
and MIKE BOSSfor your beautiful vision of what New Media means to you & expressing it so eloquently next to me: the over excited, “over-enthusiastic”, 2.0 passionate gal!

Have a GREAT 4th of July & stay tuned for our next baby step! 
-jen

Social Media in Plain English.

This is a GREAT little video by Common Craft who state that Social Media is as easy to understand as ice cream.

Check it out here.

How to Blog w/o being “pitchy”

I say this all the time…”you need to blog, but DON’T be pitchy!” 

Blogging w/o selling…you want to sell, you have to sell, you NEED to sell…but you need to blog & communicate in this New Media/2.0 format…but how?  How do I sell w/o pitching?

Leave it to Seth Godin to say it so simply:
ENGAGE, CONTRIBUTE, QUESTION, PAY ATTENTION, READ, INTERACT.
This will have an end result of sales and not put you in the category of a door to door salesman.

-jen

IN vs. AT Marketing

Michael Brito wrote a great post that talks about On LIne marketing changing a bit…

IN vs. AT Marketing

IN marketing is participating in conversations that costs a company time which will have long tail results.  Consumers will believe someone (a friend, collegue, a fellow community memeber) more than an ad…if feels more real, more trustworthy, more of a value to use someone/something that is recommended.

AT marketing is still trying to interrupt the consumer through banner ads, buying ad words etc.  I will go to AT marketing if I hear from a “friend” that there is good & valuable information at that particular online location. 

Your thoughts on IN vs AT Marketing?

The ROI of New Media

Shall I dare say…it doesn’t exist?

It’s just not as concrete as your traditional marketer would say while pitching you “over 10,000 cars will drive by and see YOUR billboard” or “we have a circulation of 400,000 readers”…

It’s about starting conversations, participating in conversations, linking your conversations to other RELEVANT converstations…and most important…is being relevant in these conversations.  You have to participate, engage dialog.  If you participate in order to “push” your information out there, you might as well have bought that billboard for 6 months.

Ross Mayfield wrote a great blog talking about how you can’t do the same type of marketing with social media as traditional marketers have done for years. 

 

Top 10 Reasons Why I Like My Job

10.  I have support from inside…at least NOW I do. 
New Media is a difficult pill to swallow.  Some people thought my job was to blog all day, but after education and some good 1:1 time, people get it as to what we are doing.

9.  I have support from my geek buddies, always.
We are always in such a state of change, that if you miss something, you know for sure that you will learn it from someone else via your reader, twitter, blog, IM or the old fashion email.

8. I love learning & applying
Along w/continuing with the MPC Community launch I am working on a corporate blogging plan and a Twitter advocacy campaign (it’s amazing, I am a rookie, but learning more every day). 
I love taking it all in, flip it into my words & teaching others the importance of 2.0 tools.

7.  The “about time” syndrome
After educating on the Community project, I have levels of enthusiasm…most of them being “it’s about time” and “we can’t wait”.  Very gratifying.

6.  I have my own desk
Yes, I do miss the coffee shop days of plopping down at a Moxie, chugging down a few 20 oz’rs & getting “work” done…but honestly, I get more work done when not distracted (hello ADD friends) by shiny objects in the room. 

5. Free Coffee
I mentioned this one in my Working Mother blog…how can you go wrong with a company that offers means to get your work done at break-neck speed (that is my speed after at least 3 cups of my ghetto mocha).

4.  My boss is a closet tree hugger
At least this is my impression.  We haven’t had much time 1:1 outside of work…but the gal wants to open up a 100% organic vegan restaurant…love that (even though I am a self proclaimed organic carnivour).

3.  The Go-To-Gal
I love being the go-to-gal on how to approach 2.0.  I don’t consider myself an “expert”, but I know enough to make change, make results & keep the fires burning.

2.  Baby Steps are turning into toddler steps
As in reason #7, people are excited.  With New Media I am finding that the more you educate the more people want to learn & learn faster. 
For example: I have been talking Twitter for about 5 weeks now and how we can use it to our advantage to join the conversation with the industry analysits.  The idea is gaining momentum faster than I thought & I hope to have our PR guru set up w/in the next week!…or 2. 

1.  Trust
I want to be trusted with my 2.0 knowledge & how we should apply that to marketing strategies.  I know that people didn’t trust what I was doing for a while, mostly because they didn’t trust/know/understand 2.0…and I am ok w/that.  Now I KNOW that I have to earn trust of the nay-sayers through education.

What is your top 2 reasons for liking your job?
-jen

 

Jennifer Jones has a pod cast that I love to watch called Marketing Voices.

Today she had Lisa Abbott, VP of Marketing at Ugobe.  Ugobe has a little robotic dinosaur named Pleo that has his own social network.  Owners of Pleo can upload pictures, comments and can even “plog”.

The best part and what I believe is VERY relevant for any company entering into the 2.0/New Media/Community space is that they were able to fix an issue w/in 4 hours of a customer bringing it to the engineers attention via their community Pleo site.  Lisa said 4-5 years ago an issue like this would have taken WEEKS if not MONTHS to take care of!  Instead, they saw the issue, taped the solution & put it on their site (and I believe YouTube as well)for other Pleo users to fix the small issue…all in about 4 hours.  Wow.