Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

@osamabinladen available again on Twitter

May 2 2011

What does the recent death of Osama bin Laden mean for social media marketing? It’s clear the news found it’s most powerful tool since the cellular phone. In our case, it’s doubtful the dissemination of this blog post via Twitter will grab 4,000 Tweets per second as was the case yesterday.

For many of my customers the same is true. However, some of our larger customers should take a lesson from yesterday’s events.

Osama and Twitter

Congressional aides and a former US Attorney let the news slip an hour before the president’s address. While no where near comparable, the idea that a company secret, faux pas, or misstep be released unfiltered would tarnish the patina of even the most respected brands. The real challenge and the pot of gold we all strive to attain is the proactive use of a very powerful media that translates into higher share value.

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Year in Review

December 23 2010

VLG year in review:

Video: Gimme Knucks

Storefront: 5th Anniversary T-shirts

Facebook: Frosty’s Revenge Game

Twitter: @wefightboredom, @frostysrevenge

Microsites: Frosty’s On His Way, Accept The Invitation, Gimme Knucks The Campaign, The iPhone Case, The Marketing Hangover

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Is “i” a dirty word?

December 7 2010

I am a 30 year old female that works full time, has two children (both boys, if you must know that too), a dog, a master’s degree and I own my own house and car. I live in the suburbs and enjoy exercising, reading and photography.

Segmentation by way of demographics, psychographics and the like still exist as the lazy way to attempt to lump me into categories based on traditional market research and I have to say it offends me and you must have realized by now its not working for you. Though I live in the suburbs and have two children, I do not have a desire to drive a minivan or SUV. If you must know, I drive a beefy mustang and yes, my children fit in the back seat and there aren’t stale fries under my seats. When they were small I was not in the market to child proof my home in plastic and vinyl. I have strong values about education, but don’t fall into the “listening to classical music with improve their math skills” hype, so stop sending me invitations to children’s book clubs and educational DVD memberships.

Though I’m 30, live in the suburbs and enjoy photography, I do not sit at home and scrap book, watch Lifetime television or spend my weekends making my home sparkle for my family’s health and well being. I expect my husband to not “help,” but simply do his part around the house. He lives there too! I prefer to watch car shows like Top Gear and Spongebob Squarepants and I still like to go out to a dance club with friends once in a while, the latter of which my mother still disapproves of (because married women with children DO NOT behave that way).

While I know I am probably more of an exception, a one off case to be set aside in favor of the segmented group as a whole, you must realize that in this day and age of iphones, ipods, ichat, ilike and others, its not about reaching the right group. It’s increasingly about “i” - reaching the right individual - or as Joseph Jaffe calls it in his book “Join the Conversation,” generation “i”. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m late to get my car washed and meet my girlfriends for a night out.

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Herding Cats, Part 2

January 20 2010

We promised feedback after week of trying out three similar mtg/event scheduling tools. To recap, we are playing around with Presdo, Tungle and TimeBridge. For our purposes TimeBridge came out on top. I encourage you to run out and try each of these apps and feel free to come back here with comments.

TimeBridge

Pro: Scheduling meetings with several busy people without haggling is our biggest pain point. Problem solved. The user interface was straight forward. Trial account left open the possibility of a cross sell to other features. (We are entrepreneurs, too. Nice to see good pricing strategy.)

Con: Sharing calendars left users confused. Most found it difficult to find the colleagues shared calendar. In the end, that’s not very useful as it makes better sense to send an invite out that fills holes in your own calendar.

Presdo

Pro: Easy to use. Super easy. That bulldog that rides a skateboard could use it. Sign up is easy, so it took no time at all to get going.

Con: Not sure how this trumps iCal or Outlook when scheduling events for your calendar. It seems like an extra step, though I understand the argument for Presdo meeting reminders in advance, which is better than most calendar apps. No collaborative scheduling. Outbound only scheduling, which make it more like a nice scheduling to-do list.

Tungle

Pro: Handles collaborative scheduling with ease. Remember, that’s our biggest pain point. UI is intuitive once you get past the early handholding. Seems this app was intended for perhaps a less web-savvy users–Wall Street v. One Dell Way. Short URL can be copy and pasted into your own email client quickly and easily. That’s an interesting feature for contacts not interested in third-party mail, or leerily of it.

Con: Some of the sharing UI is tough to navigate. It’s just me, but loads of white and purple on the page make navigation visually distracting.

Conclusion

It’s a tie (for now). We’ll continue to run Tungle against TimeBridge and vice versa until we settle on an app. Time to kick the tires when it matters–with clients. Sorry, Presdo. Nifty little app, but didn’t have enough muscle as a business tool.

Tungle
Tagline: Scheduling made easy

TimeBridge
Tagline: Run great meetings

Presdo
Tagline: Make time to “___”.

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GizaPage Social Networking

May 21 2009

GizaPage is a social network organizer that helps manage personal and corporate brands under one roof. The idea is ambitious, but if you’re like me it just might be a cure for the five tabs I have open in Firefox right now to run through the latest news about what Matt had for breakfast, what my wife and daughter are doing today, and the latest on the direct marketing front. Basically you’re consolidating all your online profiles.

A redundant solutions for all but the person using 15 or more social networking platforms.

A redundant solutions for all but the person using 15 or more social networking platform.

Signing up is easy. You create a personalized URL as your single-source destination and click the activation link. The first thing GizaPage asks you to do is import contact from one Gmail, Yahoo, LinkedIn, or similar CRM-like applications. I’m a little hestitnat to start handing out my user name and password, but you can get around this by pulling the contacts in from one of the above then changing your password. Kind of a pain, but a necessary step regardless of their promise not to keep your info on file.

Once you get past that screen the app has you add your public profiles from basically any and all social networking sites on the web. I just went with my top five, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Delicious, and Flickr. Click next, copy and past your personalized URL in your browser and hit go.

My personalized homepage was as advertised with five tabs across the top. I clicked the Twitter tab and was surprised to see not my homepage, but my homepage displayed in TwitterTree. The Twitter app is not a total waste. It expands are trimmed URLs so you have a little more information before clicking through. It’s not better or worse, just different. The other four tabs are predictable and diaplay your profile homepages for Facebook, LiinkedIn, Delicious and Flickr. No changes here.

Why should you spend time signing up for GizaPage? You shouldn’t. Your time would be better spend reading our blog, updating your status and tweeting not creating a redundant social networking site with yet another domain and another password to bookmark and remember.

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