Author: themshow

Categories
Podcasting

Under Construction

Remember when websites always used those corny “Under Construction” logos?

Anyway, I’m updating the blog to the latest version of WordPress, so who knows what I might break (which is why I backup first).

Until then, feel free to check out the latest Marketing Over Coffee:

Direct Link to File

or this Week’s M Show, a better than average one:

Direct Link to File

See you on the other side…

UPDATED: That was relatively painless (barring any surprises), aside from the time it took to delete the old install off the server. One other thing, I should have known enough not to delete my plugins, which I then had to upload again (which was very simple grabbing them from my backup). Everything looks ok, please drop a line if you notice anything weird in the neighborhood. Thanks!

More UPDATES: In a bizarre twist www.RoninMarketeer.com is going to www.TheMShow.com (the true domain, Ronin just points to a subdirectory at TheMShow.com), I have no idea how that could happen…

Categories
Productivity Booster

Please Check Out Video Conferencing and Don’t Let Me Get Picked Last in Gym Class

Would you like to talk with some of the sharpest minds in marketing and new media (or how about to me)? You can take part in these Video discussions for FREE.

I’m really psyched to have been selected to take part in My ooVoo Day, a program with a bunch of Marketing and New Media folks who are going to be talking about whatever you want to talk about.

All you have to do is set up an ooVoo account (it’s like Skype but with video), and then sign up for one of the sessions I’m doing. And while you are there you might want to check out some of the other presenters like:

This event is open to the pubilc but there are only 5 slots per session so you have to sign up quickly to guarantee that you’ll get to see some of the bigger names. The first 5 to sign up for one of my sessions and comment here will get a $5 Dunkin Donuts coffee card from Marketing Over Coffee.

Please don’t let me be the loser that nobody signs up for. At the very least, get in on the first Monday at Noon, my co-host from Marketing Over Coffee – Christopher Penn, will also be on that one (I’m going to see if I can get him in on the others but that’s the only one confirmed).

I hope to see you there!

Categories
Email Marketing

Making Your Email Newsletter Suck Less

An email newsletter is a challenging project, probably the most underrated from my experience. Everyone is under the impression that they are easy to do, and the reality is that it’s easy to a crummy one. An excellent and productive newsletter is a ton of work.

If you don’t have an email newsletter and you’d like to get a look at what your to-do list will be after you’ve done it for a year and realized how difficult it can be, check out this report from MarketingSherpa on the Dirty Dozen Email Mistakes. It will make you look smarter, and more importantly help you budget time and resources for what will grow into a project far beyond your initial expectations.

Categories
Daily Life

$uperB0wl Musical Mashup

I don’t talk much about it here, but I have a fairly large (over 10,000 track) music collection. In fact, my love of music got me into iPods, which got me into podcasting, which inspired me to blog. And that’s…. the rest of the story.

The first podcast I listened to, Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code, used to feature Mashups on a regular basis – where two popular music tracks are mixed together.

I tend to not talk much about this because there are all kinds of copyright issues that come in to play, but it is impossible to ignore the “hidden tidal wave” of remixed content out there.

The best source for mashups is Mashuptown.com and today they have a mashup for the Big Game (you need to have approval to call it the $uper b0wl)

And it’s also a chance for me to test out the new audio player!

Warning: For any haters out there, it’s Rap, save yourself the aggravation
Direct Link to File

Categories
Productivity Booster

Housecleaning

With the holidays over I am finally getting around to cleaning things up in my virtual space. A lot of cleanup redirecting links to the “About Me” and “Press Kit” page over here.

I’ve also installed an audio player so when I link to podcasts you’ll be able to listen to them right from the page that the link is on.

And of course backing up everything to a hard drive here and one offsite. Remember there are only two types of people – those who have had a catastrophic data loss and those who will. If you haven’t backed up in more than 3 months please take the time to do it to save yourself a future headache.

Go Pats!

Categories
Productivity Buster

Are You Ready for Some Football

Firebrand will have some coverage of Superbowl Ads by Terry Tate, that’s all I need to know.

Happy Friday

ps – Google reader doesn’t show the embedded YouTube vids in this post, anyone know how to fix that?

[youtube]fs4M9FqgOrU[/youtube]

[youtube]4q4jb-kXebQ[/youtube]

Categories
Podcasting

Thursday Means Coffee Time

This week’s Marketing Over Coffee was a solo show with Mr. Penn out sick, I emptied out the voicemail bin talking about social media (big surprise) and some lessons we can learn from how politicians marketing themselves.


 Go to the site!

Direct Link to File

Categories
The Marketeer

The 4 Types of Networking Event Attendees

So tomorrow I am going to a meeting of the Boston Chapter of the American Marketing Association. It’s an informal event that will have a discussion on The Impact of Social Media. I’ve been to one other event with this group and it made me take some time to think about networking events and how they work.

It’s true that there’s no substitute for face to face discussion, but the problem is getting to the right faces. Both at a live or online event you at least know that the attendees have something in common (in my case, Marketing in Boston). One of the major advantages to networking online is that you can learn a lot about a person before you take up their valuable time. It also gets around the first 5 minutes of awkward conversation, and filters out things like spouses that have no interest in being there, or people who just show up for the free food.

I’ve found 4 levels of people at live events:

  1. Weird Loners – They don’t know anybody and are hanging out trying to meet people. To the other 3 groups this are high risk contacts, they may latch on, be insane, and not let go.
  2. Possible Stalker – These are loners who have done some homework and have a list of people to talk to. They’ll do 100x better than the loners, but the other attendees may have a look of panic during initial conversations as they assess the threat level.
  3. The Connected – Know enough people to have a pleasant time, try and meet a few new people, catch up with old friends.
  4. Group Organizer – Has all the cards, knows the majority of the people and why they were invited.

So what does this mean?

  • Fly with a wingman – if you are going into unfamiliar territory having just one familiar face in the crowd, by definition, excludes you from being a weird loner.
  • If that’s not possible, at least be a stalker – have 3 people you want to meet and learn enough about them so you have a starting point for conversation – “Hey, I noticed you blogged about X, could you tell me more…”
  • Crack the code – Figure out who runs the event, who sponsors the event, why and how were people added to the list. This will help you determine who the power players are, if you can find one real connector, then you never have to go to a mass event again, you just ask the connector for some help in pointing you in the right direction.

Just like in any Jungle or Poker Game, if you have no plan everyone else is planning on you to be the meal.

And of course bribery. I’ll be giving out some $5 coffee cards, I have yet to find anyone that can resist free stuff…

Categories
Daily Life

Fear of the Economy

I got an email today from Gary Fong. He makes astoundingly overpriced pieces of plastic that attach to your camera to diffuse the light coming off your flash. The thing is, they work incredibly well and I’m more than happy to pay for them because they are simple to use and do what they say (which, for someone with limited photographic skills like myself, is to perform outright miracles).

He was talking about the recession and his message boils down to “Don’t worry about it, work your plan and you’ll be fine”. I agree with him, although I have a different perspective.

An admission – my undergraduate degree was in Economics so I spent many hours swilling beers at UMass learning about concepts such as staglflation and supply-side, (which was on fire then, and the equivalent of “Steal from the poor” to the average academic institution). I eventually came to the realization that Economics is no different than many other systems that are, by nature, chaotic. This could easily be a series of books, but the big idea is that tiny transactions that seem to be random actually roll up into larger patterns, some of which can be identified and can be repeatable.

Please keep in mind that boiling that down to one sentence is like saying “The history and influence of America is that some guys got so pissed about taxes that they started killing people”. True, yes, but calling it a gross oversimplification would be… well, a gross oversimplification.

Are you still with me? Don’t you wish blogs had editors? The punchline is that although the overall pattern shows economic slowdown, you can move in any direction. In fact, I’d say that as a reader of this blog, someone who has the initiative to read about these types of topics in your free time, you’ve got no worries. Recessions are all about that 2/3rds of the population that hate their jobs. They subconsciously want to get fired.

They’re about people in California housing complexes that buy half million dollar homes on less than 100k of income and take out a 3rd mortgage to build a fountain in their back yard. I hate to see anyone lose their home, but it seems like some people are asking for it. Credit is not a way to live in California while your means remain in Oklahoma.

A good marketing plan will succeed. If you ever have a chance to go to Newport, Rhode Island, look around the town and check out some of the mansions that were summer homes to the wealthy. Think of them partying there during the Great Depression.

Categories
Daily Life

Take this job

I’ve never written about it before, but I have a younger brother named Jason. He’s leaving his current job and heading into a new venture. He asked me to dig up this email because he couldn’t find it since it was written in 2004.

This was the first email I got from him as the prelude:

Sent: Friday, April 30, 2004 11:05 AM
To: Wall, John
Subject: Re: notice

The next message you receive will be an exact replica of that which I shared with the staff. Keep in mind, absolutely no one knew it was coming (and the boss just left for vacation).

J

Interest piqued, I checked out the next message in line. Here it is with names changed to protect both the innocent and the guilty.

Sent: Friday, April 30, 2004 11:07 AM
To: JWall@tibersoft.com
Subject: What I love about *Censored Company*

Jason’s all-time favorite things about *Censored Company*.

1. *Ms. M*’s homemade peanut butter cups.
2. Watching *Ms. S* give someone the finger (and really mean it). Priceless.
3. Working with *Ms. B*. She is without question one of the nicest people on the planet.
4. My Aeron chair (which I claimed before it was even cold :).
5. *Mr. N* inheriting my favorite projects. Hahahahahahahaha.
6. Because *Mr. J* truly is one of the coolest f-ing mofos at *Censored Company*.
7. *Ms. S*’s potential.
8. Listening to *Ms. Q* at my very first *Company* staff meeting.
9. Learning that *Mr.S* DNA truly is encoded with MBTI letter J.
10. Arguing with *Ms. P*.
11. The fact that *Ms. J* complains more than I do but yet somehow remains so darn cute.
12. My color printer at my fingertips.
13. *Ms. T* signing her e-mails Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I’ve researched this thoroughly with
HR and still can’t prove that it is (but it must be) harassment towards all male staff members.
14. The occasions when we actually *do our job function*.
15. The undeniable fact that *Ms. L* thinks I’m a total beefcake and has a crush on me.

Having said all of this, I’d like to share with everyone that in the aftermath of tax time, my wife and I are happy to have a reached a significant financial goal and we’ll both be leaving our jobs as of Friday May 14th. Step 1 will be a vacation. But don’t worry; I’ll be available for good-bye lunches and dinners as necessary. Oh, and the chair is already spoken for. Is that Johnny Paycheck I hear singing?

~Jason

The good news is that he was sending it around to his co-workers at his current job telling them that he is so happy to work with them because it was nothing like the place described above. Of course I discussed this with him prior to publishing it and I told him it would be made completely anonymous. He said: I’d be honored if you would, feel free to say it was “a department at a world at world famous Technology Institute in Massachusetts.”