Marketing is my current focus. I stumbled upon this list of terrible marketing notions. I think its great to study failures. It’s the second step to wisdom. Here’s what I mean. A wise person learns from his mistakes. The wiser person learns from other people’s mistakes. Now, the wisest person learns from others successes. I’m working on that, too.
Category: Communications
I have managed cutting-edge and strategic communication projects, developed high-impact marketing campaigns effectively utilizing multiple social media and traditional media channels, project management plans that heavily utilize collaboration with diverse stakeholders, and increased positive interaction within teams, customers, as well as with critics.
I view communication as more than just writing. Over the years I worked in print, including a stint in a print shop (three-stage-web, AB Dick, and even an antiquated Heidelberg press). I witnessed the shift from “shooting-plates” printing through the emergence of desktop publishing. I bear many memories of Quark’s beauty and its transformative impact. And have been part of the journey as we’ve moved from Quark to InDesign.
Creating and managing newsletters delights me to this day. Memories of bulk mailing and the aggravations of the postal system evolved into navigating email newsletters. I’ve come to deeply value Mailchimp and modern CRM tools.
I see the web as the future of mass media and communications. I have over a decade of blogging experience, both personal and professional. I’ve used the medium to engage with the full range of stakeholders: clients, customers, and critics. Successful at building organic SEO as well as online advertising (pay-per-click, Facebook and Twitter ads, etc) to increase market presence. I know how to maximize email campaigns with various CRM tools and Mailchimp. And I’m familiar with traditional media as well, everything from writing and distributing press releases to creating flyers, brochures, posters, and bulk mail newsletters.
And I’ve deployed websites with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JQuery, and PHP. I also know tools like FrontPage and WordPress. Wix and Squarespace also reside within my repertoire.
Some of the results I’m proud of:
- 150% increase in Facebook followers
- 250% increase in Twitter followers
- Increased SEO optimization – achieved page 1 Google Ranking for key search terms
- 1000% increase in Facebook engagement (“People Talking About This”)
Short Term Marketing Doesn’t F***ing Work
I just stumbled on Chris Chalmers (via this video, of all things). Chris was a DJ on a couple of local (Seattle) radio stations. Having helped many folks with their digital presence, I fully get what he’s talking about in this video. Short-term marketing, much less short-term thinking, doesn’t work. Not in the long run at least.
Marketing should be a well thought out and well planned element of your business. Strategic thought, analytics, and deliberate execution all play a part in building the long-term business.
I’ve seen too many folks expect a website, Twitter/Facebook/Instagram account to come in and rain money. 9 times out to 10 (99 times out of 100?) it’s not going to work. Regular focused posts, thoughtful interaction and the well timed/placed promotion are what gets you there. You should consider this to be a multi-year long initiative.
Google’s Tea Uglow Featured On This Week’s Design Matters
I’m sad to say that I’ve never heard of Tea Uglow until this evening when I was able to listen to the most recent Design Matters podcast (if you haven’t subscribed, you need to change that). Tea is the Creative Director of Google’s Creative Lab in Sydney, which sounds like an invigorating role.
Tea comes to tech with a delightfully unique mindset. Not from the computer science world, but art and design. A mindset that’s critically important right now, at this point in tech history. I deeply believe that design thinking is the future of tech. And, really, the now of tech. She’s done some other videoed talks, which I’ll explore later. It’s awfully late today.
This talk covers a lot of ground, from sexuality and gender identity to diversity and inclusion in tech. Such broad wandering inspires and engages me.
Give it a listen. It’s well worth your time.
Transitions and Next Steps
Currently, I’m on a six-week plan to change roles. Permitting and feasibility process (what I’ve done for the past 2.5 years) is not what I want for the rest of my life. And it’s time to do what I love. Mike, the owner of Eagle Country and I worked out the 6 week plan, giving the company time for a transition and me a window to shift. I find this a glorious win-win and am deeply grateful.
I’m working on transitioning from construction to, ideally, communications. Writing is my first love, and I’ve appreciated every opportunity to do so. I’m also love photography and video. And connecting people delights me.
I define “communications” as this overarching concept encompassing everything from marketing to PR to public affairs to internal comms. I love writing everything from newsletters to creating flyers to PowerPoint presentations.
I have a plan in place. This week I’ll get my resume out in front of key people, update LinkedIn, my website, Indeed and any other useful websites. And I completed most of all that yesterday. So I’m feeling pretty awesome right now. I need to research what other websites to utilize, if any. Also, I need to work on expanding my list of focus companies.
Boeing is first. As a boy, I fell in love with “space” and aircraft. Growing up in Navy based family gave me visibility to all kinds of aircraft. And at one point I could name off all the different military and civilian aircraft: A6, Tomcat, 707, 747….and on and on. I still get excited watching spacecraft footage.
As a professional, the scale of Boeing and their unique challenges fascinate me. As a truly global company I expect the myriad languages, cultures and time zones to make for interesting and fun challenges. That’s true with both internal and external communication. And I see many opportunities within the current OR challenges the company faces. Challenge presented opportunity.
Other local companies intrigue me, too. Whether Premera here in South Snohomish county, to places I’ve worked before (Microsoft, Starbucks). My goal now is to find work I love. And I’m in my way.
Any advice? Especially web tools and such would be great. Please leave a comment and let me know. Cheers!
Anand Giridharadas’ TED Talk: A Letter To All Who Have Lost In This Era
I love well crafted writing. Mr. Giridharadas’ letter, read below, gracefully captures one of America’s most painful divisions. I, like him, get very excited by all the possibilities within the coming culture. I forget, also, the many who find their identity challenged, status eliminated. Perhaps illusions shattered. Many of us find it easy to gaze down our spectacles at these people. Doing so damages our witness, denies the hope that I long for. What place exists for these folks? And if we truly value compassion, we need to look at this with a honest, self-aware gaze.
Some Thoughts On Followers: “Fake followers are hard to shake”
I just read “Fake followers are hard to shake” over at AdAge. Yeah, buying followers is tempting. Sure, it might look good on the surface, to have hundreds or thousands of followers. I’ve had many, many people ask me about buying followers. I think is a waste of money.
- First, why? If your social media efforts are for a business, fake followers aren’t going to come to your store. They don’t engage. They don’t add any value.
- Then there are all the recent efforts to purge fake accounts. If your follower count drops massively after one of the follower purges, you’re outed
- Lastly, as this article points out, there are fairly straightforward ways to determine how many fake followers you have. If your goal is to become an influencer, or gain business leads, tools are coming that will out the buy followers tactic.
I expect that, in the not too far distant future, the various algorithms will easily detect copious numbers of fake followers. And I expect that will hurt you, whether via SEO hits from Google or Bing, or social media feeds devaluing your content. I firmly believe this is coming soon.
So, don’t opt for the lazy and fast. Build your brand slowly, carefully and organically. Engage other folks, post good content, and be your unique self.
Watch “How Unbox Therapy became the Biggest Tech Channel on YouTube” on YouTube
I stumbled upon this video today. Paddy Galloway does a great job in his analysis of Unbox Therapy, one of YouTube’s most popular tech channels. He gives some great insights for utilizing Youtube’s tools and algorithms to maximize your video’s presence.
Social Media Ads: Don’t Forget To Focus Geographically
Just saw an ad on Twitter for a service available in New York and San Francisco. Well, I’m in Seattle. I expect I’ll make my way to each of those cities in the next few years, but not in the near-term. It looked like a great food idea, but it’s not something I can do anything with right now.
What’s the problem, you might ask? Well, I expect they want their ads clicked on by likely customers. I’m not in that category, living a few thousand miles away. So, the few cents they paid for my click won’t turn into revenue, even if I love them.
Maybe, just maybe, these folks are looking at expanding to the Seattle area. But then you should have the ads go to a landing page for an expansion campaign.
Ads like these can be focused on geography. Pretty slick, giving you much more solid impact. And an essential tool to avoid wasting your online advertising budget.
A few years ago, one of my team-mates placed a Facebook ad but didn’t refine by geography. We had a great return on that if measured by phone calls. But most of those 100s of calls were from well outside our region. We would never be able to convert them to sales. So, a waste of money and time. It was easily fixed, but we spent a few hours of time answering gobs of out area phone calls.
Check out this new construction in Snohomish, built by my team
This project is one the first I’ve seen from concept to build. It’s of particular importance to me. I was at the site anyways, and thought it would be fun to share it with you. Check it the video below.
Yeah, I realize I shot all the clips in portrait. Ugh!
Anyway, this house is for sale. Have your agent put an offer on this one! Don’t have one? I can fix that for you.
We’re looking forward to getting someone in there. That’s the best part of this job.
Oh Dear God, More Autoplay Video Annoyances
Ok, gobs of us non-silicon types have vented on the internet about auto-play videos. But instead of listening to us, webdevs are now playing “here, hold my beer” in a case of outdoing each other in obnoxiousness. Just loaded a site that flooded my office with a cacophony of raucousness reminiscent of the Tower of Babble. About 1 second in, I no longer cared, much less remembered, what I opened the page to read. Closed it and moved on, as is my policy.
So, again my webdevy chums, I know you folks need to capitalize on your work. I get it. But don’t render your site useless in either blinding greed or desperation.