Too often when digesting Social Media blogs, I read the same crap about how to take advantage of basic Social Media tools and methods to promote yourself or company. It's all the same crap about setting up a "listening post" by populating your google reader with tons of blog feeds about social media or using Twitter search tools like Summize or blog search tools like Technorai or just a good "advanced" and narrowed Google search to find where people are either talking about your brand or your niche. The idea is you find these blog articles or twitter conversations or whatever and go comment on them and attempt to interact with people, without hardselling them. That's pretty much the exact lesson that is reguritated in all these Web 2.0 blog articles. And they don't even say it as specifically as I do--they just abstractly say: "Setup a listening post and use X tools" and then some fluffy "everybody loves everyone" crap that connotes genuinely interacting with people you come across in blog comment walls, rather than hardselling them by saying, "come by this from X URL." At the end of the day, what they really mean is just go around blabbering around to important people, i.e. tastemakers, and eventually bring up what you want to sell to them as if that wasn't your intention in the beginning. My thoughts are: Yes this works, but only for small extremely targeted brands like mine, FaceySpacey, where I only need a few clients to make my nut...So I want to share with you a comment I left to one of the top "Social Media Gurus." Expand the whole article to see it -->
Join FaceySpacey and other software entrepreneurs, financiers, social networking executives to discuss important trends effecting software firms.
When: Thursday May 22 - Friday May 23, 2008
Where: Auburn Public Theater 108 Genesee Street, Auburn, NY 13021
Schedule:
Thursday May 22
4:30 PM Registration
6:00 PM Dinner
Speaker: Dr. Jeffrey Sohl – Director Center for Venture Research
“Software Trends: Alliances, Bootstrapping and Venture Capital”
7:00 PM Wine Tasting
9:00 PM Music Jam (bring your favorite instrument)
A block of rooms have been reserved at the Inn At the Finger Lakes
at a special Forum rate of $79.
Friday May 23
8:00 AM Late Registration, coffee, networking
8:30 AM Social Networking
Speaker: Aaron Newman – Techrigy
Speaker: Speaker: James Gillmore – FaceySpacey
9:45 AM Virtual Worlds
Speaker: Jill Hurst-Wahl - Hurst Associates (Second Life)
10:45 AM AM Break
11:00 AM Hosted Solutions
Speaker: Bill Doolittle – VP Sales and Marketing USA Datanet
12:00 PM Lunch - Interactive Marketing and the Business of Social Networks
Speakers: John Whiteside – Sr. Consultant Communigration
Speakers: J. Sean Branagan – CEO Communigration
1:30 PM Financing Software Firms
Panelists: Scott Murphy – Managing Director Advantage Capital
Panelists: Nasir Ali – Executive Director Seed Capital Fund of CNY
Panelists: Debora LaBudde - Envoiventures
2:30 PM Optional Activities
Option 1– Extended equity financing conversations with Scott, Debora and Ali
(by appointment)
Option 2– Seward House Tour ($5 when you arrive at the museum)
Option 3– Parade of Homes with Lake Country Real Estate
Buy Your Ticket Now!!!! See you There!
Need I say more? A picture is worth a thousand words. These are some of the most clever viral marketing and word of mouth marketing campaigns I could quickly find on the internet during a warm Monday morning. Enjoy!
To preface a little fictitious story I wrote on how I feel the world will be in the future, I wanted to share some notes I’ve compiled on the future of the internet technology and how it will affect the world, mostly inspired from futurist Thomos Frey – presenter, founder of the davinci institute and ex IBM engineer (and receiver of over 270 awards, more than any IBM engineer).
Even with today’s technology, we are able to draw RF radio signals from the air and convert them into energy. With the ability to pull energy from the air to power your electronic cars and appliances, can you fully imagine the possibilities?
"All information, ever created, is still in existence." - Thomas Frey - Executive Director, The DaVinci Institute
...a day without internet? yea, right.
The Ten Steps I Take When Writing a Company or Product Tagline.
The right process is always to keep your main objectives in mind. “It’s not to be clever for wit’s sake, but to imbed a lasting sales message into your prospect minds.” Be clear, not clever. A snappy tagline tied to your firm’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP) can answer the prospect’s question “Why you, not your competition?” before they even ask it. Slogans like DeBeer’s “Diamonds are forever”, Quizno’s “Mmm, Mmm Good.” and Maxwell House’s “Good to the last drop” can make it easy-peezy for consumers to justify a decision.
I should be able to understand your entire business by reading one page: Your executive summary. If I, as an investor, am compelled to read further, then I might read the rest of your plan. Make sure you include a solid monetization plan. Have several methods lined up and get quotes from all the ad networks. For instance, how many users before they will place ads on your site. CPM rates, etc. Explain how you plan to optimize your site and show that in your projections. Make sure you also account for all your possible expenses. Explain how you differentiate and how you plan to gain traction.
We are all familiar with the term viral video. But for those of you that have been locked in a basement without internet access for the last three years, let me explain in a very simple manner. So basically, you create a video and post it on a site like YouTube, then it get’s embedded into a bunch of blogs and Myspace profiles, it gets shared on Facebook, it gets pushed up on Digg, the link is passed around via instant messenger, and before you know it you’ve got over a million views. Think of a virus that’s very contagious and how fast it can spread. Now relate that to video.
