JournaMarketing

Friday timesaver: Flock

If you upload a lot of photos to a flickr or Photobucket account, you might want to try a Web browser called Flock.   Its creators call it the "social web browser."  It integrates your membership at Photobucket, flickr, YouTube, and other online services, right into the browser.  When I want to upload a photo to Photobucket, for example, I just drag the photo into the appropriate box, and up it goes. 

It also integrates with blogging services like Blogger, Typepad, Xanga and others.  Same for bookmarking services del.icio.us and Magnolia.

I don't use Flock a lot, but when I have a batch photo upload, it makes things a lot faster and easier.  (And it comes in handy a lot more often, with baby photos to be uploaded for my sister all the time!)  Give it a download and play with it this weekend, to find out if it can save you some time, too.

Note: I'm posting this from Flock's integrated TypePad feature, and it's fairly slick -- although I'm not sure it would replace my current posting tool, ScribeFire.

Age of Triskaidekaphobia

Check it out -- I was a little slow to order the book, what with the new baby and all. But my copy of The Age of Conversation has arrived! And there's my chapter -- on page 13! Not that I'm superstitious or anything.  But at least if someone tears out my chapter, I can blame it on their irrational fear of the number 13.

By the way, it's not too late to get your own copy.  The book has 100+ authors with experience in new media marketing, and all the proceeds go to Variety - The Children's Charity.

Technorati Tags: age_of_conversation, AoC, marketing, conversation, blogs

No idol necessary

Katya blogs about the Idol Gives Back campaign, the fundraiser organized by the producers of American Idol. It raised $70-million, but Katya has a great takeaway point:

"...remember, you DO NOT NEED AN IDOL to raise money. Idol is great for attracting a mass audience, and that audience is what led to the scale of the money raised, but it wasn’t Simon or Madonna who prompted giving as much as the compelling (and perhaps slightly exploitative, though effective) stories they showed about people in need on their show. While we’d all like an audience of that size, or a celebrity spokesperson, don’t despair if you don’t have an A-lister out promoting you."

What a great way of putting it! Now, more than ever, the important thing is that you're offering your community something valuable, and that you're effectively communicating that value by telling great stories. Think of yourself as a journalist-advocate -- telling stories for a cause, because you believe in that cause, and because the product or service you're offering can make a difference to people.

On a smaller scale, organizations often get hung up on their own "local idols." They spend so much time chasing after TV and radio and newspaper coverage, that they don't realize how easy it is to communicate directly with the people who care the most. Sure, you still need local media coverage of your events. But if you take the time to cultivate your community online, you'll be well-positioned to communicate important information when those "idols" of local media fail to come through for you.

Technorati Tags: nptech, nonprofit, marketing, PR, communications, American Idol, Idol Gives Back

Small organizations: serve first, communicate second

Seth Godin gives you the #1 reason you can pursue a successful new-media communications/marketing plan -- even if you're part of a tiny nonprofit organization. He writes about the devise of mass-media marketing, and how you should respond:

If I want a book review, I'll go read one. If I want to learn about turntables, I'll go do that. Mass is still seductive, but mass is now so expensive, marketers are balking at buying it (notice how thin Time Magazine is these days? Nothing compared to Gourmet.)

And yet. And yet marketers still start every meeting and every memo with ideas about how to reach the unreachable. It's not in our nature to do what actually works: start making products, services and stories that appeal to the reachable. Then do your best to build that group ever larger. Not by yelling at them, but by serving them.

The beauty of this new reality is that you don't have to connect with a lot of people. You just have to connect with the right people. How do you measure the ROI of making life easier for 50 or 100 people who are vitally important to your organization, by becoming their source of information about the stuff they need to know?

Look around your organization. Are you proud of the work you're doing? What makes you proud? That's the stuff you should be sharing with others as part of a new-media campaign -- not because you want to brag about your organization, but because it will genuinely serve the people who choose to receive it.

Technorati Tags: marketing, seth_godin, PR, journamarketing, nptech

How my blog gained 1,000,000 spots on the Technorati rank in 2 days

When I started this JournaMarketing blog, my Technorati ranking was somewhere over 3,000,000.  I figured that was pretty good, for a start.  But little did I know that my blog would soon rocket up the charts to be currently ranked in the top 2,000,000, a mere two days later! I can only credit my solid upbringing by my parents, and a little hard work.  This truly is the Land of Opportunity.

clipped from technorati.com

JournaMarketing

Rank: 1,925,824 (22 links from 2 sites)

• URL: http://www.journamarketing.com
                   
• Tagged: advertising, blogs, journalism, journamarketing, marketing, new media, podcasting            
• Description: Doing great journalism to sell your ideas, your organization, and even yourself

Technorati Tags: technorati, blogging, journamarketing, humor

Why your small idea-driven organization should "go global"

Laurel Delaney at Marketing Profs points to a report that tells us, "In the future, there will be two kinds of enterprises: those that go global and those that die."  The report is long, but worth a look.  And it applies to you, even if you don't have dreams of exporting products to another continent.

Here's why: if you're part of a small organization (whether a business or a nonprofit agency), you have something to offer people. If you don't, you'll soon be out of a job, along with the entire organization. Even if that "something" is ideas, it's valuable to the world. And the value is almost never limited geographically.

I  was on a call yesterday with the directors of several small "regional centers,"  who deal with child abuse prevention issues. As I talked to them, I could tell they were excited about the opportunity to use their blogs as resources for people in their area.  I encouraged them to see their sites as extensions of their office -- not merely telling about what the agency does, but doing it online. Even though these regional centers are geograpphically named, the resources they draw on are not limited to one area.  Their blogs will allow them to "go global" by drawing on worldwide resources in the area of child abuse prevention.

Your online presence should do the same thing.  Just as small manufacturers can easily "go global," a small organization with big ideas can become a part of a global community -- importing good ideas from everywhere, and exporting good ideas to the rest of the world.

Technorati Tags: nptech, nonprofit, ideas, global_marketing, marketing, blogging, journamarketing