Archive for the ‘Corporations’ Category

I love promoting awesome people, great causes, events, and organizations/businesses that are doing interesting things. My favorite tech tool to help me do this is the Apple iPhone 3Gs.

There’s a reason the iPhone 3Gs is such a hot seller, it is a mobile promotion machine. I use it to check email on the road or at home when away from my laptop. I use it to take pictures that I post to my Twitter and Facebook status feeds and to various blogs. The built in video allows me to post to my YouTube Channel, post via email to my Posterous account, send short videos via 12seconds.tv, and to live stream using Qik.com and UStream. With this single tool, I can immediately share what’s going on with my life or at an event.

Here’s an example of how I used my iPhone for shameless self-promotion. A couple of months back, I noticed Nancy Rodriguez’s Twitter update where she mentioned that she and the crew from Q1047, the local Hip-Hop and R&B station, where going to be live broadcasting from a nearby McDonald’s. It was around 7am so I grabbed a fast shower then zoomed over to McDees. I had chatted with Nancy before via Twitter so it was great meeting her and the rest of the Rico and Mambo show. I took a couple of photos of them in action, posted the pictures to Twitpic and Twitter, spoke to Nancy, then headed back to go home.

Now, I’ve been listening to Q1047 since I moved to Ventura County and it’s my favorite station. So I was glad to post pictures and tweet about them on Twitter. But as I headed back to the car I realized that I could have plugged my new online blogging course. So I decided to grow a sack and went back to ask Nancy to send a shoutout to my BuildYourFanBase.com readers and she kindly did so.

Fifteen minutes after I left the live broadcast, I had uploaded the video shoutout to YouTube and had already tweeted out a link to my blog post on the event. Minutes later Nancy retweeted the link and gave my blog and new blog class an on-air shoutout.

Now that’s promotion at the speed of light!

Do you have any other mobile promotion tech tools that you swear by?

[Cross posted to www.jesseluna.com]

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There’s nothing wrong with using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. In fact, Twitter recently changed its pages to use more SEO friendly page titles to get better “Google juice.”

But if that’s your only focus then you can end up going down
some unsavory paths.


There are large companies out there that will help your site improve its Google rankings by creating multiple blog sites, each containing blog posts on various random topics (because they serve many different clients), and include links back to your site.

In the long run, this strategy will not serve you.

Sometimes the “SEO-optimized” blog post will end up complete gibberish because it’s main job is to associate a set of keywords back to the main client site.

It might help your Google search rankings for a bit, but it will mostly help damage your brand.

Nowadays, blogging is easier than ever. Use your blog to share your expertise and attract fans. Remember, content is still king.

[Photo courtesy of @Vermyndax via his blog]

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The revolutionary part of social media is that it takes offline ways of doing business – networking, one-on-one communication, relationship building – and offers an online way of building and fostering them.

This is a fundamental shift in the way companies sell and market online.

In this new sales and marketing world, “leads” and “eyeballs” will now be seen as “people” and “fans”.

The only way social media will go away is the way the “e” fell off of “e-business.” Social media will be folded into the way all companies conduct business.

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I recently had “the Twitter talk” with the CEO of a high tech B2B company. His one main question was, “Will Twitter help us make money?”

My response was that B2B companies should not look to Twitter as a way to sell widgets, but to view it as a trade show.

At a trade show:

1. Conversations and actions are focused on building relationships
2. Outcomes are evaluated on a long-term basis, not a quick hit
3. Strong partnerships are the greatest financial reward. In the CEO’s business, a new vendor can mean millions in sales per year
4. It’s a great place to share the company’s brand and personality
5. To get the most out of a show, you have to engage participants or you will get lost in the crowd

So there is a reward at the end of the Twitter rainbow for B2B companies. But it takes time, work, and a decent strategy.

Oh, and don’t forget the swag.

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I’ve been buying IKEA furniture since the company first opened its doors in California. So when a Twitter friend tweeted about an IKEA social media case study video, I had to take a look.

IKEA ran a promotion this Fall on Facebook to engage its customers and fans. By cleverly using the picture-tagging feature built into Facebook, they drew in over a thousand friends for one of the store owners, Gordon Gustavsson, and spread awareness of IKEA’s products.

The IKEA promotion, as described in the video below, had three key features that made it engaging and memorable:

1) Easy – For Facebook users, the promotion was simple. All they had to do was friend Gustavsson then tag pictures. There were no spammy applications to install in order to participate and share with other Facebook friends.

2) Interactive – It required fans to keep an eye out for new showcase pictures so they could rush to them and be the first to tag a furniture item.

3) Clearly Defined – Facebook fans knew the rules of the promotion – that there would be limited number of showcase pictures to tag and that they had to be first to tag them to win.

I don’t have the numbers on the overall reach of the promotion, but engaging over a thousand fervent fans on Facebook is great way to build a fan base.

Did YOU hear about the IKEA promotion before this blog post? What would YOU have done to extend the reach of this promotion if you were in charge of the campaign?

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