Camera’s, Concerts and Free Marketing

I go to a lot of concerts. Music is a big passion of mine and whenever I have the chance to see an artist live I will very quickly and usually without thinking jump on the bandwagon. Last night I went to We Will Rock You. Although not a concert, it is a musical inspired by Queen. It was absolute crap, but that’s not the point of this post. What really struck me as surprising and what has struck me many times in the past is the fact that they wont let you take pictures or video clips in these shows (concerts included). I can understand flash photography, but why not video clips? It’s not like people are going to be able to video tape the entire concert on their camera and post it to YouTube (thus eliminating some people’s need to actually pay and go see the concert). Video camera’s that can take hours of footage, I can understand, but if someone is just taking a clip on their little digital camera that they will most likely post to YouTube or Facebook, let them do it, its free marketing! It really surprises me that this archaic rule is still around in a time when all the little marketers are scrambling to find ways of moving their activities online. You are not paying for these people to do this work, they are doing it because they want to and the exposure is fantastic. All their online and offline friends will see these videos and explore the artist or show which means there is a much better chance of you selling more seats the next time you’re in town. I want to open this up to the audience because maybe I am missing something here. Why does this rule still exist?

Will humans live to see 10G or even 20G wireless technology???

From the creation of the internet by Tim Burners Lee in 1989 to the latest technology running in 3G wireless networks, the world has literally seen what some call the greatest human invention of all time grow up right before their eyes.  (Always funny to think about what work must have been like before 1990… no email, no social networks, no research… weird)  Now the next logical step in the evolution of the internet is 4G wireless technology that will bridge the trillions of wireless devices that the world will be using.  Check out the latest project from the EU called MAGNET Project http://www.gizmag.com/magnet-beyond-project-4g-wireless-world/10380/.  How much further can wireless technology go?

Dead Fish Can’t Vote? That’s Fishism.

Yes, in Chicago a Dead Fish was registered to vote.

“There was no fraud involved,” said Nudelman, a Democrat who supports Barack Obama. “This person is a dead fish.”

The paperwork sent to a “Princess Nudelman” likely came from the “Women’s Voices, Women Vote” project, which sent nearly 1 million mailings to Illinois households in August using a list that mistakenly included some pets, said Sarah Johnson, a spokeswoman for the not-for-profit group that encourages single women to vote.

My Pumpkin.

Here is a photo of the pumpkin which I grew. People seem to like it. (but seriously I grew this thing) Feel free to copy or upload it. S

Late night TV is good for you

I was up watching The Colbert Report last night.  It’s usually good for a few laughs, but ever so often something of use is given. Ok so not to become overly political, but the new fall TV season have yet to really dive deep into story lines, production on the follow up to “The Dark Knight” has yet to begin so this election has become a hobby of mine.

The coolest, and (claims to be) unbiased poll tracker out there is FiveThrityEight

Their mission is to “Most broadly, to accumulate and analyze polling and political data in way that is informed, accurate and attractive. Most narrowly, to give you the best possible objective assessment of the likely outcome of upcoming election”

Neat stuff.  Obama has an 89% chance of winning.

Social Media for business

I just got back from this mornings seminars at the IncentiveWorks conference and had the opportunity to hear Phil Barrett speak about Social Media and how it has evolved and how it will progress over the next 10 years. Interesting stuff. (He used a different type of video by commoncraft)

It was also amazing to see just how easy it is for small business to harness the power of web 2.0 and use it to promote their product or service.Take Facebook

 

, for example. 75% it’s users check their account daily with the average visit time of 29.8 minutes. That is ludicrous compared to every other website in the world. Think about how this can help small business.  

 

Videoblogging,  RSS, feed aggregator, social bookmarking, and the social media release  were amongst the other topics discussed. This truly is a time where your business can be everywhere all at once, but it is tedious and time consuming. My question is should Marketers tap into every form of social media possible, or should they select a few to go after? 

Social Media Sites … is it too much?

I came across an interesting article last night written by a blogger I have never read before. Her name is Kelly Livesay and she made a very interesting call to action. In her post she declares that she is sick of all the different social networking sites out there; facebook, myspace, twitter, social networks for dogs, cats, you name it and there’s a network. The reason I found this intriguing is because I woke up this morning to find Renee’s post documenting even more social networking sites. Kelly suggests that we should just ditch all of them and keep only a blog and a twitter account. The blog will contain all your links, videos, etc and each time you post something you notify all your friends on twitter. I am not sure where I stand on this one and I want to open up the dialog to see what everyone else thinks. I personally think there are way too many social networks and I am sick of signing up for new services. However, I do not know if I would ditch everything for simply a blog and a twitter account (hell most my friends don’t even know what twitter is). An even simpler alternative would be to ditch everything for just Facebook and use it as a hub for all my information and sharing (which is what I already do, until recently). Facebook is essentially twitter built on top of a blog (at its most basic level). So what does everyone else think? Is this social networking craze getting too niche or do they actually add value? What do you think?

New magazine social networking sites: Add them to the list

Most recently, Entrepreneur.com launched Entrepreneur Connect, a business-to-business marketplace for entrepreneurs.  To add to the ho-hum of social networking sites here are a list of others:

 

Wired magazine launched Wired Biz, a ‘niche’ social networking site for Entrepreneurs.  (Hmmmm, similarities to Entrepreneur Connect?) Oh, but this one encourages collaborative problem solving.

 

BusinessWeek and LinkedIn teamed up to create a unifying application where Business Week users can view their LinkedIn contacts at companies featured in articles via LinkedIn’s Company Insider feature. And LinkedIn users can view company profiles with industry statistics and company data.

 

FastCompany launched a platform that blends journalism with online community.  Visitors can contribute content in the form of blogs. 

 

Variety magazine launched The Biz, a social network site for media and entertainment professionals. 

 

And many more…

 

Who started this revolution? Friendster, according to the socialsoftwareweblog, now the Download Squad.

Great Advice from Marc Hedlund

Get Rich Slowly, which was recently named the most inspiring money blog by Money magazine posted an article a few days ago guest-authored by Wesabe CEO Marc Hedlund. Wesabe is a web based personal finance community that believes, “we all can help each other make better financial decisions and ultimately take control of our money to reach financial goals.” It’s a hot new startup tearing through the financial sector right and their CEO Marc has had solid advice for anyone starting up a business. I wont go into too much detail as I think everyone should read this one, but his main points are:

1. Starting a business with friends can be fantastic
2. Write someone and ask them for help every day
3. People matter more than anything
4. Don’t worry about the idea
5. Take money from other people as an absolute last resort
6. Know your customers
7. Have confidence in yourself
8. Treat people well

Feel free to discuss these in the comments section and read the article found below

Entrepreneurship Advice from Marc Hedlund, CEO of Wesabe ∞ Get Rich Slowly

• This is a guest post from Marc Hedlund, co-founder and CEO of Wesabe, a web-based personal finance tool. Marc was formerly an entrepreneur-in-residence at O’Reilly Media. He also blogs about money at Wheaties for Your Wallet.

The Social Surge: Keeping up with Web 2.0 is a job on its own.

Twitter, Facebook, del.icio.us, LinkedIn, MySpace, Blogs, NewsCloud, elgg, Sharepoint, PeopleAggregator, and on and on. What do these social sites have in common, other than the fashionable Web 2.0-ish way of taking away the space between words? They increase confusion for small business owners who are looking to get a respectable online presence and manage their team.

It is often asked what the value is in creating and maintaining a social profile on sites such as Facebook or MySpace, or why purchasing monthly packages for platforms like PeopleAggregator or Central desktop can benefit a small business. Well, the answer is easy especially for low fee sites. These online collaboration tools allow users the capacity to create and maintain content across a range of websites and services – and also use them as their central service to manage all that content while connecting with others. Central Desktop, for example, offers simple to use online collaboration tools for business teams and there is no technical knowledge or programming experience required.

If you are looking into a fee based online collaboration, there are four things to consider before signing up:

1. How well you can use a dashboard to manage projects
2. How well you can host online visual or audio conferences
3. How the service will make your sharing and revising of documents that much easier
4. How quickly your team can adopt, adapt, and maintain their updates and shared calendars.

If you are looking into creating a presence with social networking and viral marketing through free online sources like Facebook, you must consider the following:

1. How much time it will take to maintain your social site
2. How to control content and spammers
3. How to promote your business/service effectively so not to spam others
4. How you can create a credible existence while increasing your referral network, i.e. creating and sustaining a reputable brand
5. What groups to join and how you will use them to your benefit.

Be wise and define your parameters. What platform is your friend? And which is your enemy? Wal-Mart’s exploitation of Facebook is not a model to follow. Their use of Facebook as a sales gimmick angered college students across the U.S. Before setting up a social site or purchasing a monthly package, create a strategy and determine your goals. There is nothing worse than spammers writing hate messages on your wall for all to read. And remember, keeping up with social networks is a job on its own. If you don’t have the time, then don’t do it or hire someone else to do it for you.