Archive for December, 2010
A Very Lite Brite Christmas
Dec 24th
At this time of year I’m not thinking too much about marketing and business so I just thought I would tell you a Christmas Story.
This is the tale of the only Christmas present that ever made me cry.
When I was a little boy, all I ever wanted for Christmas was a Lite Brite set. Lite Brite was the Photo Shop of the 1960s. You could create beautiful picture light shows by manipulating tiny colored pegs on a black paper screen. This was right up there with 8-track tapes and Seas Monkeys as the technology marvel of my generation.
But I was the eldest of six kids and we didn’t have a lot of extra money for Christmas presents. Actually asking for something as glorious and exotic as a Lite Brite seemed impossibly greedy. So I kept my little secret between me and Santa Claus. Every Christmas morning I would open my presents and find socks and shirts and maybe a baseball, but no Lite Brite. Yuletide after Yuletide passed, never brightened by the phantasmagoria of Lite Brite masterpieces that lived so vividly in my mind.
Eventually I grew out of my Lite Brite phase but never really stopped wondering what it would be like to feel that little peg break through the crisp black paper to unleash its beauty.
Fast forward 30 years. I received a mysterious Federal Express package. No return address and it said “Don’t open until Christmas!” Being just a little spooked in an era of terrorist bombings and anthrax letters, I opened it right away. It was a Lite Brite set with this enclosed message:
Dear Mark,
You will never guess what happened. I was cleaning out my sleigh and found this Lite Brite set for you! It must have dropped from my sack many years ago. You were a good little boy and deserved this present. Sorry I goofed. Have fun!
Love, Santa
A grown man had tears in his eyes as he finally opened up his Lite Brite set, a gift from a sister who had paid attention, kept a secret, and had a loving heart.
May your Christmas, and every day, be filled with the joy and wonder of a child painting with little colored pegs! — Mark
reprised from December 2009
The blogger’s end of the year report card
Dec 22nd
I’m going to take a few days off over the holidays to relax, do some writing, and reflect on my blog and my business.
I know that to earn your support, I need to keep listening to your feedback and improve the experience you have here. Would you do me a great favor and please fill out this 2 minute confidential survey? Thank you!
If you cannot view the survey below, please click on this link – SURVEY LINK
The Majestic Hope of Social Media
Dec 21st
This has been a strange year of growing pains for the social web — privacy issues, cyber-bullying, gurus galore, and technical failures seemed to dominate the headlines.
But there’s something amazing and wonderful ahead. Can you feel the hope and momentum building like I do? Here are three reasons to be excited about the next year of social media marketing and networking …
1) Creativity unleashed
We’ve spent the past few years establishing a technological foundation and distributing increasingly sophisticated smart mobile devices (I am including iPad in this category) and we’ve reached critical mass. At the same time, the cost of developing and distributing content has plummeted. Something incredible is about to happen. The competitive focus is going to shift. It HAS to. The battlefield will move from selling devices to unleashing them.
Have you tried this brilliant little game called Angry Birds? I got hooked on it a few weeks ago (damn that level 12) and this is the new standard for orgasmic creativity. The game is so stupid that you can’t let it go. You fling birds and blow up green pigs. Now why is it birds? Why not jars of peanut butter? Why isn’t it called Angry Corn Flakes? Isn’t time great companies joined in the fun?
By the way, this game cost $100,000 to develop and has brought in $8 million in revenue, one 99-cent download at a time.
This is the year we move from mindless smartphone apps to mind-blowing apps as the competition for attention reaches a global frenzy. Movies, television and online publishing are going to be more interactive, more personal and more exciting than ever. One of the most interesting developments is the level of innovation coming from the Third World.
Creativity has never gone out of fashion, but we are about to see something amazing stir in 2011 as the perfect storm of consumer access, social simplicity and technological ubiquity collide. 2011 is the Year of the Digital Idea.
2) New Voices, New Energy.
Social media marketing is rapidly moving from a siloed cottage industry to mainstream mojo. Thought leadership is transferring from a few pioneers pontificating about “the conversation” to both fresh young voices and big company professionals armed with statistics, budgets and the ability to integrate social media with television, games and movies. The blogospere is literally being flooded with new energy.
I see new blogs on a weekly basis and literally go “wow.” This is fresh. This is going somewhere. The echo chamber is crumbling.
I’ll give you an example — Steve Goldner (aka @SocialSteve). This guy is living it. He’s telling it. He’s carving his own no-bullshit path on his blog with his real business experience.
Christina “CK” Kerley takes no prisoners. She doesn’t just march to her own drummer, she’s creating a whole new parade as she forces us to think about B2B marketing in a new way. Jacob Varghese is taking some interesting routes in his new Binary Perspectives blog.
I also love all the new students coming on to the blogosphere who don’t know the “rules” and are writing these little neutron bomb posts that deserve to be read. These people also deserve to have a voice at the conference podium and I think we’ll see that begin to happen too.
3) A Focus on the Human Experience
There’s a lot being written about the isolation and bleakness that can come with a reliance on digital communication. Certainly there is legitimate aspect of that concern but I choose to celebrate the astounding opportunities to connect meaningfully and deeply.
I recently had one of my marketing students tell me that Twitter had changed her life. She is a music teacher and within a month of her first tweet, she had been invited by her new connections to perform at a festival in Austin, TX — a dream come true.
I hear those stories every single day. And sometimes I am the story — I’ve made more friends in the past two years than probably the last 20 combined. And I don’t mean Facebook friends. I mean people you would invite to stay at your home.
I was recently re-connected with somebody who used to be my best friend — in kindergarten! Carrie Bond and I had been separated by thousands of miles and decades of living our own lives, but we now have such a supportive and fun relationship again through Twitter, Facebook and of course {grow}.
The social web has this random, synergistic majesty about it. Too many focus on the growing pains. It doesn’t have to be an anonymous, snarky, Bieber-fied mind-muck. For the first time in human history we have access to free, instantaneous, global communication. This is a breath-taking opportunity our ancestors couldn’t even dream about!
What are you going to do with this power, with this amazing moment in technology, in history, in your life?
Case study: Social Media Makes Big Splash for Small Entrepreneur
Dec 19th
Here is the most colorful social media success story you’ll ever read!
The story starts with paint. Colorful … get it? I crack myself up.
My friend Julie Boney became tired of painting splotches all over her walls every time she wanted to re-decorate. So she invented a product called “Small Wall” that allows decorators to paint a small board and then post it on a wall like a post-it note. It’s easy and won’t harm the walls.
To market her clever invention, Julie sensed social media might help but needed direction. She decided her primary objective was brand awareness so I walked her through some fundamental strategies.
The first step was finding meaningful, targeted followers on the social web — people and publications who would be interested in her idea. That way, she would be delivering content and building relationships with people who mattered, people who would love her story. We also talked about strategies for engaging with these audiences in a helpful and authentic way.
One targeted publication was Woman’s Day magazine, which features lots of home-oriented tips. After Woman’s Day published an article about “try before you buy,” Julie commented on their Facebook page, suggesting that her Small Wall invention was an excellent solution to the problem of selecting paint colors. Within an hour, she had a response from the magazine’s editor-in-chief Elizabeth Mayhew, asking for samples!
In October, the Nashville-based Small Wall was featured prominently in a Woman’s Day Online decorating feature (see graphic above) and in the January 2011 print edition, Small Wall is once again the star of an article on decorating tips for the new year.
“This is exposure we never could have afforded through traditional advertising methods,” Julie said. “It made me a believer in the power of the social web for small businesses.”
And Julie’s success is just beginning. A Facebook connection also resulted in the product being discussed on a Martha Stewart broadcast and now Martha is following her on Twitter (Martha follows less than 1%of her followers)
Publicity like this has been helpful introducing Small Wall with zero expenditures and pulling through sales at Sherwin-Williams, Ace Hardware and Amazon.com.
A key lesson is that both print and online publications have an insatiable hunger for content and are scouring the social web for ideas, connections, experts, angles and quotes. But you can’t take advantage of this opportunity if you’re invisible or not actively connecting and engaging.
The social web can be a great equalizer for small businesses if you apply a little know-how, creativity and content!
Welcome to {grow}
You’re in marketing for one reason: Grow.
Grow your company, reputation, customers, impact, profits. Grow yourself. This is a community that will help. It will stretch your mind, connect you to fascinating people, and provide some fun along the way. I am so glad you’re here.
-Mark SchaeferFollow Mark
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