It's true, for years my friends and I spent our Saturdays doing talk shows in front of the video camera. I was always responsible for the introduction and saying the date was a requirement of my mothers. When the opportunity came to do it at HubSpot, I knew I was prepared and since my teeth had been controlled by years of braces, I jumped at the opportunity. Enjoy!
It's true, for years my friends and I spent our Saturdays doing talk shows in front of the video camera. I was always responsible for the introduction and saying the date was a requirement of my mothers. When the opportunity came to do it at HubSpot, I knew I was prepared and since my teeth had been controlled by years of braces, I jumped at the opportunity. Enjoy!
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Topics: online video
The small text reads "Fill your desire for something long, juicy and flame-grilled with the NEW BK SUPER SEVEN INCHER. Yearn for more after you taste the mind-blowing burger that comes with a single beef patty, topped with American cheese, crispy onions and the A1 Thick and Hearty Steak Sauce."
Do you think this goes too far? Does it make you want to rush down to Burger King?
Thanks to Gawker and @lintzston for sharing this with me.
Topics: Doing it Wrong
Sanoma wine vineyard, Murphy-Goode, has launched a AReallyGoodeJob.com to find someone willing to live the wine life for 6 months, for $10K a month while doing social media marketing for the vineyard. Sounds like a pretty good gig to me!
Their website explains the position in detail (what you would be doing, how you are compensated etc.) and urges you to apply by submitting a 60 second video.
What a cool way to market what sounds like an awesome position. If I was one of the 80%* of undergrads coming out college without a job right now, you better believe I would be applying for this!
* I think Katie Couric said this was the number when she was on the Daily Show, but I can't find the numbers online. Whatever it is, this year I am sure a lot of kids need jobs!
Topics: Doing It Right, social media
I don't follow a lot of people on Twitter. It's not by design, it's just because I find the twit-o-sphere overwhelming. No wonder, look at my TweetDeck!
I didn't have time to carve out a community on Twitter, HubSpot.tv threw me out there and suddenly I was overwhelmed by emails (which I then turned off) telling me people had followed me. I'm not complaining, I love having followers (in a totally non-religious way :-) but it all came awfully fast and fell behind in my follow-backs.
Last week I got the following tweet from @SarahMerion and I realized she was right!
I barely follow anyone! It's time for me to get back out there and conqure the twit-o-sphere!
I started this the other day and realized how I was selecting people was interesting and probably says a lot about how people (or at least how I) use Twitter.
This is not by any means and exhaustive list and if I am not following you, the best way is just to send me a tweet and let me know. I do hope these tips help you get other followers and enjoy Twitter a little more.
1. Say something interesting
The second column in my TweetDeck is where all my @ replies are located, and where I start looking for people to follow. I did a webinar with Mike the other day and had a lot of @ replies. I figured I wasn't following many of the people so I scanned through my @ replies for people who said something that caught my attention.
2. Make sure you have an good photo that shows your face
I don't even clicking on people's profiles that didn't have a photo of them. If it was a logo or something obscure, I went right over it. I want to know you are a HUMAN!
3. Fill out your bio with unique information
When I did click into someones profile, I first checked out where they are from and what they do. If they are from the Boston area, I pretty much always follow them. If their profile only says is "social media expert" I generally don't follow.
4. Don't only send @ replies
You are in the Twit-o-sphere to contribute and join the conversation. If you only converse with people you know and follow, your stream is a pretty un-interesting series of half conversations that I don't understand. I look for the articles you share and the things you put out there for everyone and see if those appeal to me.
5. Have followers
I know this seems weird but you have to have followers to get more followers. That's not to say I didn't follow people with only 27 or 62 people following them, but if I did they really had to excel at the points above. If someone has over 1,000 followers, I assume they are interesting and tend to follow more quickly.
Topics: social media
This weekend I was watching some TV with my husband and saw a commercial for the new fragrance line from Polo Ralph Lauren. We were both struck because the commercial showed a life style that not many get the opportunity to live, but also was completely out of touch with what is going on in today's economy.
Polo matches,
jeep rides,
yachts,
sailboats,
and sports cars.
As a marketer you have to constantly be aware of your target market. I expect Ralph Lauren is trying to appeal to people who WANT to live this life-style. I'm just not sure with an unemployment rate of 9.1% in May 2009 this is the best way to go about doing so.
On a side note, I tried to find a video of the ad to include with this post and was unsuccessful. You can view it on the Ralph Lauren site here, or on Facebook here. Props the them for getting it on Facebook, but where is the embeddable version on YouTube??
Topics: online video, Doing it Wrong
On Wednesday I did my first webinar with Mike Volpe. It was a lot of fun! Mike and Ellie Mirman have webinars down to a science doing at least one a month and getting thousands of people to register each time. I was totally impressed with how calm and cool they were as we were setting up and getting started, my stomach was jumping!
Since this webinar was about online video, we did decide to change things up a bit and include a video of ourselves. Users who watched had two windows to pay attention to, one of Mike and I talking and one of the slides up on slide share. The viewers had to advance the slides on their own, but we had kept them updated on what slide we were on.
As compared to HubSpot.TV a webinar is a bit more focused and bit more serious. We made a couple jokes, but for the most part kept on topic and focused on the slides. We had some great questions at the end and the audience seemed engaged, so all in all I am willing to call it a success!
As always we recorded the show, you can watch the webinar here or check out Mike and I in action below.
Topics: online video, marketing 101
When I was 8 my family got our first video camera. It weighed about two tons and didn't have any fancy feature, but it was the best toy we had for many years. My friends and I made videos of ourselves doing everything. We hosted talk shows, we did plays, we sang songs and did dance videos, anything we could think of.
I asked my father the other day what happened to all these videos and if he had ever thought to convert them for the sake of preserving them. I had no idea what I was getting into! Here are just a couple of the videos he has sent me in the last couple of days.
I think these are perfect examples of why you should not raise your kids in rural Connecticut, they might turn out like ME!
Okay, it may be a little farfetched that Nationwide Insurance read my blog post on industries that need to meet the internet, but I wanted to give them some props as an insurance company that is at least trying to make it easier on their users.
My sister just pointed out to me that Nationwide has released an iPhone app for their customers. According to their site it,
- Calls emergency services
- Helps you collect and exchange accident info
- Stores your insurance and vehicle info for easy lookup
- Locates Nationwide agents near you
- Takes and stores accident photos
- Converts your iPhone into a handy flashlight
- Helps connect you with towing services*
- Helps you start the Nationwide claims process*
- Finds Nationwide Blue RibbonSM Repair Facilities*
All I can say is props to them and I could have used this last summer when a rock cracked our windshield, or last fall when my landlord ran into my car, or last winter when my landlord ran into my car AGAIN, or the other weekend when my husband ran the car into a pole...
*** Update ***
I tweeted about this post, and look at the reply I got!
Again, kudos to Nationwide! Any small, medium or large business should be on Twitter if for no other reason that to look out for people mentioning them.
Topics: Doing It Right, marketing 101
It shouldn’t be news to anyone that the newspaper industry isn’t doing well. The cost of producing a newspaper far exceeds the cost it is sold for and the real money is earned in advertisements and classified listing services. As the internet has continued to grow and expand sites such as Craigslist.com have provided the same listing services for free and thus the money earning opportunities have dwindled for newspapers.
In addition, because the internet is based on the open sharing of information, newspapers have failed to bring their businesses online in a cost effective manner. Forcing customers to pay online subscriptions has failed and online advertising is continually decreasing in value. The industry has failed to keep up with the changing times and newspapers around the country are bleeding money and beginning to close.
All of this has sparked recent discussion and debate about a potential newspaper bailout which culminated in the Newspaper Revitalization Act which was introduced a couple of weeks ago by Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md).The Act, as described in Tech Crunch,
“allows newspapers to operate as nonprofits for educational purposes under the U.S. taxcode, and thus receive the same tax-benefits as a non-profit organization.Revenue from advertising and subscription would be tax exempt, and contributions to support news coverage or operations could be tax deductible.”
The Act is getting some heat for its restriction prohibiting newspapers from endorsing political candidates, but I think the bigger problem is that it would halt innovation in an industry that is desperately in need of it. Newspapers have been failing for the last 5 years and they haven’t quite figured out that they need to change something drastically in order to survive. A bailout from the government will only prolong their slow death and hinder true forward motion.
I don’t have the answer to how the newspaper industry can have all their problems solved, but I am sure if a couple more fail, people will start to get antsy and the brain-juice will start flowing. Scott Kirsner shared on HubSpot.tv, that he thinks newspapers need to reach out to the local businesses that have supported them in the past, to find out how the newspapers could better support them. It’s not a novel idea to ask your customers what you can do to give them better service, make them happier and then jack up the rates, but I don't think it's something the newspapers have tried yet.
Another idea might already be in the works between Google and the New York Times. Newspapers have fantastic data about what people are reading they just haven’t put that data to use to serve better targeted ads. If there is any company in the position to help them do so, and supply the infrastructure to do so, it’s Google.
Newspapers provide a valuable service to the country by keeping us all informed. I agree it would be tragic to see the industry bite the dust, however I also think it would also be tragic to miss this opportunity to embrace innovation and instead provide a crutch to a failing industry.
*Photo Credit: Lakewentworth on Flickr
Mike had been planning this for months, or at least since his wife kicked the puppet out of the house. He grabbed me last week around 4:30 in the afternoon and asked if I wanted to tape an interview with the Pet.com Sock Puppet. Who am I to turn down the chance to be in a video?
The whole thing took us about 2 hours to complete. We figured out what questions I would ask and his general responses. We then took 1 tape and got some feedback from the all star marketing team. They said it was too long and not funny enough, so we cut a bunch of stuff and tried it again.
I think that this is exactly how video should be done. If you over think it, it will take way to much time. We didn't edit the video, we didn't spend hours on a script. We just figured out the key points we wanted to make, took a couple takes and got feedback.
Who knows if it will be a viral hit, but didn't cost us a lot to produce, so there isn't a lot to lose. The more we produce, the higher chance of us making a hit that spreads like wild fire. The secret is to keep it simple and easy!
Topics: social media, marketing 101
