Social Media Mavens

What does it take for a business to benefit from social media marketing?

First you need a budget. If you don’t have a budget don’t call me. I mean it.

Second, make a decision to go all in. Half measures will avail you nothing.

Third, hire a social media marketer or at the very least a social media writer.

But don’t take my word for it. Read the article in today’s Financial Post called “How To Make Social Media Stick.”

The article is a why-do-it piece on a business that makes labels for moms who use the cute labels for things their kids lose.

Look if four moms can make a successful business (no insult intended moms but I’m trying to get the attention of men who still think father knows best – and no insult aimed at fathers) with the help of social media so can you Mister Titan of Industry.

After you’ve read the article, go visit the site.

Notice there’s no woo woo social media glitz distracting stuff. This site is all about business. If I have a criticism, it’s that the hyperlink tags for their blog, Facebook page (viewed by over 37,000 at last count) and Twitter are kinda small but then maybe that’s the point.

So how does social media work for Mabel’s Labels? Take some time at your computer and go through the site and read everything there and ask yourself how could this work for your company.

If nothing else, it got the moms a full page in the Financial Post. Not bad ladies, not bad at all.

I apologize to all teachers

Yes It’s true. When I’m wrong I have no issue in admitting it.

One of my dear friends in Toastmasters, who herself is a teacher of some note and a wonderful Toastmaster, made a comment about yesterday’s post about the decision to ban  WiFi by some school districts.

And while I disagree with my friends conclusion that it’s best to be prudent (the same argument was made to justify not vaccinating children resulting in an unnecessary outbreak of polio. The doctor has subsequently had his license lifted and some children are crippled for life) I do agree that my comment was unnecessarily insulting and I do apologize.

In regards to the arguments I put forth my friend points out that at one time asbestos was considered safe. I even toured an asbestos mine when I was a child.

What’s More Dangerous Than WiFi?

If the teachers really want to save some lives here’s where they can start.

It’s with wearing headphones while walking.

Kids, joggers and old farts like me listen to music, radio or podcasts when out walking. You see it all the time. Back in the old days this wasn’t such a big issue. First of all the sound from the device was relatively weak and the headphones or earbuds let in a lot of ambient noise.

New noise-cancelling headphones and the expensive snug in-ear buds seal the ear and combine that with better and louder audio and you’ve got a deadly combination as discovered by the 16-year-old Oshawa boy who walked in front of a CN freight train.

Regrettably you only do that once. Mercifully the lad may never had known what hit him.

I’ve gone walking with full noise-cancelling headphones and in earbuds and trust me you’re a danger to yourself and others when walking. It would be easy to step off a curb and get hit by a truck or bus that you never suspected was making a right turn on top of you.

The new technology creates really great music but a deadly risk. Teachers might want to point this out if they can get their tin-foil hats (see below) off.

Why Are Teachers So Stupid!

Is it the teachers or is it school administrators or just union leaders? It’s whichever group is wearing tin-foil hats and like Chicken Little is screaming that the sky is falling.

In this case, it’s that old chestnut that WiFi is harming the kids.

Honestly how can we have confidence in our educators when they make such stupid recommendations such as the Catholic teachers advocating the woo-woo idea that WiFi signals are harmful?

WiFi signals are low wattage high-frequency signals that pervade our environment. I’ve got two of them running full time in my home office. Their electrical potential ability to harm you is so low as to be inconsequential and virtually unmeasurable.

Your big screen TV is more dangerous especially if it’s a plasma model. Your microwave is a killer. Your computer screen emits energy and so does the electrical wiring in your house.

And don’t ask about cellphones. Even I am less than convinced that holding a transmitter to your head is safe. It’s safe enough a minute or two a day but if you’re a teenager (most who would rather text and that’s a lot safer so long as you don’t rest the phone near your reproductive parts) or a stock trader I’d be using headphones.

Oh yeah: The biggest danger? It’s the sun. Radiation from an hour of summer sun is equal to a lifetime’s use of WiFi. Solar radiation is a real danger for airline pilots and astronauts and sunbathers.

Kids get out of primary and high school as fast as you can. The next thing the tin-foil hat bunch of educators will introduce is the abacus.

Read all about how stupid our school leadership has become in today’s National Post or Globe and Mail.

RIM Changes Nothing

Oh dear. If I was the PR guy for RIM I’d take myself out in the backyard and shoot myself just to get some relief.

Seems like the new boss is just like the old boss…err bosses.

In an unexpected move RIM’s co-chief executives Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie are out and former RIM chief operating officer Thorsten Heins is in…sort of.

Why sort of? Because if he does another interview like the one on CBC Radio this morning, I’d fire him out there by noon.

Why?

Well, instead of vision we got… deception is too strong a word but misdirection is close enough.

When asked about the past failings of RIM and RIM’s Playbook, the new guy recited statistics. Dumb. This put him on the defensive and he lost the opportunity to promote his vision (if he has one).

When challenged that the ouster of the old guys was a major change of direction for the company, the new guy said it wasn’t a change at all but part of a plan. Sort of like it was part of the plan when the captain of the Costa Concordia fell into the lifeboat.

This is too weird for words and it threw the new guy off his script, if he had one to begin with.

You see back in the days when I was in public relations for government and later as a VP of a national PR firm we’d grill the new guy for two or three days of mock press conferences and meetings until he or she could repeat the script with absolute sincerity. (PR is a black art folks.) Only then we’d let him or her out of the back office.

Heins says his first priority is to hire a new marketing manager. He might want to consider hiring a new PR guy as well.

 

APPLE Changes Everything

Apple’s IBook format has the potential for fundamentally changing how we learn.

IBook is a free app for creating interactive textbooks on Macs for distribution on IPads.

The potential for this technology is endless.

This could change the way we learn. It could make possible global education for everyone. It may be exactly what the world needs right now to spark innovation in the minds of our youth.

See for yourself. Prepared to be amazed!

How To Make A Splash

The video is called The Girl In The Red Dress.

The five-minute video was shot in New York City on a warm summer’s day.

The setup is a girl in a red dress doing yoga posses as a guy with a DSLR shoots photos of her with iconic NYC scenes in the background. The whole photo shoot is recorded on video by a videographer.

Okay the girl is cute as all get out and she’s very very strong in yoga and the video is shot at a professional level (No big camera movements. Looks like a Glidecam was used. Good lighting and the audio is fine.)

Right now just over 9,000 people have viewed the video but I bet it’s going to go viral.

Also (This took awhile to do.) but I found the photographer and the photos. Robert Sturman says he and Meghan Currie met by chance in NYC and five-minutes later shot the video. Here’s a link to Sturman’s website.

So why shoot a video of a pretty girl in a red dress, wearing cowboy boots in New York City?

Publicity of course!

The girl’s name is Meghan Currie and this little video is a great way to get your name out.

A B.C.-based yoga teacher, Ms Currie is also connected to the yoga-behemoth Lululemon and any comments she makes on their site hyperlink back to her own website. Very smart.

There at least (and I’m guessing) 100,000 yoga teachers working full and part time in North America. Most of them are going to make somewhere between $12K to $24K (I’m guess salaries range from a low of $30/ hour to a max of $40/hour for new teachers) in 2012.

A few of the best will make upwards of $50k annually. Let’s say $50/hour x 20 hours/week = $1,000/week X 50 weeks = $50K and one busy schedule (Remember you’ve got to drive yourself to the different studios to teach.) and one sore body which is ageing as we type.

So how do you get out this no-win scenario?

You create a name for yourself in the yoga world. How do you do that? You shoot videos of yourself. You post them online. You spread the word via Facebook.

If you can get over your own shyness you start doing the yoga conference tours. This is going to take you away from home for a week at a time several times a year. It’s not an easy gig.

You keep working and teaching at the smaller studios in town.

Then you start working at the better yoga studios where you can teach 30 or 40 students at a time.

Sooner or later you open your own studio and you hire aspiring young flexible things (and more men please!) to make money for yourself while you go back to India (Meghan I think is there right now. Bet she’s shooting stills and video so she can post the images when she’s back in Canada.) I might have avoided giggly on the beach video but then again I’m not 20 and will never be again.

So where to start? Read the E-Myth by Gerber to get a glimpse of your possible future.