Pilgrimage - A Novel of the Sovereign Era

I don't often do this, but I feel like I owe it to Matthew Wayne Selznick to try and help support his Kickstarter campaign; his novel, Pilgrimage - A Novel of the Sovereign Era, is a sequel to Brave Men Run, one of the first podcast novels EVER!  I read the first one and have been a fan ever since!

Click below to watch the video trailer for the book and to read more about Kickstarter and crowdfunding.

More charitable giving as marketing material

My 30-foot-tall tree fell in my front yard on
December 1st, 2011.

Last week, a barrage of unusually strong wind came whipping through the western United States.  When it whipped over the eastern mountains of the Wasatch Front, my town was the hardest hit; the gusts were over 100 miles per hour!  For those of you keeping track, that's level-two-hurricane-strength winds!

Making money through "charitable contributions"

Seth Harwood's Latest
Print Release

Check out this link: http://kck.st/piYHWd.  It'll take you to a page where one of my favorite authors, Seth Harwood, is raising money to help fund an independent book release.  While it might not be ideal for all situations, it seems to be a viable new way to get some initial funding through, what is essentially, charitable giving.  It's actually a genius idea to offer people the chance to be listed as a contributor IN THE BOOK if you send some cash his way.

Minor Leauge Player Falls into Marketing Gold!

Recently, a minor league outfielder facilitated a triple play with his head. His quick reaction and cool execution, despite what must have been a decent headache, could be used to promote the team and help his career. The key will be to market the incident properly.

I STILL love this restaurant, but...

Within three weeks of downloading that great coupon from Tucanos, I found another offer in my inbox.  This one was for a New Year's party deal at

I LOVE this restaurant!

I got this coupon in an email a week prior to my birthday.  Not only was it a great deal (50% off), it's for a place I actually eat at.  So, hooray for Tucanos, a company that gives great deals to people that already like them!

Beard Types

Not that I'm an expert on facial hair, but this list seems incomplete. Most of my facial hair experiments are on this chart. I've done the short boxed beard, which eventually got shaved down to the Van Dyke, but never had the courage to try most of these.

Disney as a Key to a Happy Brand

I was recently at Disneyland, and I was amazed at the number of products they sold that weren't made by Disney. For instance, a giant Mr. Potato Head interacts with the guests standing in line to ride Toy Story Midway Mania; not only is it my favorite ride at ANY Disney park, it's also a great cross-promotional opportunity for Hasbro. There's no way to know how much Disney pays each year to use Mr. Potato, but it has to be a lot since he's featured so prominently in the ride's "pre-show" line cue.

Word-of-mouth traffic, attracting and tracking

The following is an article I read on Lyris, a marketing website

Tracking & Attracting Word-of-Mouth Traffic

Written by Joy Brazelle - Serengeti Communications

Thursday, 16 April 2009

Word-of-mouth traffic can be some of the best, most qualified visitors to your site. But, how do you actually know if you are getting traffic from word of mouth? Pay-per-click and search engine optimization efforts are easy to track with Web analytics because you can segment out traffic based on the specific referrers or entry pages. You have to be a bit more creative to find the word-of-mouth traffic. 1. Check out your direct traffic (AKA no referrer). These visitors either knew your URL and typed it directly into the browser, or they had your Web site bookmarked. As your brand becomes part of more and more conversations, the number of visitors who will know your URL will naturally increase. 2. Check out your branded keyword traffic. This is the same concept as the direct traffic. Only for those visitors who cannot remember your URL, the most likely place they’ll look for you is on one of the top search engines. Word-of-mouth conversations about your brand will result in more traffic from the search engines by visitors searching on terms related to your brand. 3. Check out the blogs. Using free tools such as http://blogsearch.google.com/, you can enter specific dates to see if the number of postings about your brand is increasing month to month. You can set up a Google Alert to periodically receive this information. 4. Check out the blogs + other conversations. As many companies understand just how crucial it is to know what people are saying about their brand, paid tools like Trackur (http://www.trackur.com/) are becoming very popular. You can proactively see the conversations about your brand (and your competition) just by logging in. 5. Ask your customers. This is perhaps the most obvious and the most overlooked way to find out if people are talking about you. Talk to your customers. You may be pleasantly surprised to learn what your customers are actually saying about your brand. Encouraging and rewarding feedback is a great way to grow loyal customers who will be happy to say positive things about your brand to their friends. Once you benchmark the data for your word-of-mouth traffic you can begin to improve on it, and attract even more traffic by word of mouth. 1. Make it easy to spread the word. On every email you send, landing page you create, or any other online marketing campaign add a ‘Send to Friend’ link. Make sure you test the link to make sure that it does not break and it is easy to use. Also make sure that it is obvious that the user was successful. There is nothing worse than ruining someone’s experience with your brand by lack of testing or confusing functionality. 2. Make it worthwhile to spread the word. Reward your loyal customers and visitors. It is likely that a small percent of your customers will become true brand evangelists. These are your BEST and most important customers and you need to keep them happy. It is well worth the effort to go out of your way to make sure that these customers are appreciated and know it. 3. Use contests to grow word-of-mouth traffic and your email database. This is such a simple and great way to increase the volume and quality of word-of-mouth traffic, but it is often ignored. Create an email contest for your opted-in list that explains the contest. In the email, add a form so recipients can forward the email to their friends (e.g. five or ten) by simply entering the email address and first name into the form. It will involve some simple database programming, and some validation that the email addresses received are valid and qualified. But it is a simple way to encourage your loyal customers to spread the word, and grow your email marketing database at the same time. There is a fourth way to encourage word of mouth traffic. Be remarkable. OK - so that is not easy, not by any means. But it is great when companies really go the extra mile to be remarkable. About the Author Joy Brazelle is vice president and director of analytics for Serengeti Communications. She has made analytics her priority over the years, helping clients build and grow their online presence. Joy has been a member of the Web Analytics Association since its launch in May 2006. She stays plugged into the current world of analytics by participating in Facebook groups from "Web Analytics World" to "ClickTracks Addicts."

A tweet worth tweeting about

Image via Wikipedia

In an attempt to engage people that follow them on Twitter, Southwest Airlines did a "20,000th follower on Twitter" prize. The lucky winner was from New Mexico, and that person won a lot of travel-related promotional items branded with the Southwest logo.

This promotion was a success for two reasons. First of all, it engaged customers in a more social setting than television, print or a traditional website. Twitter, Facebook and other social networking outlets allow customers to virtually shake hands with companies they admire.

Secondly, it was just nice. They didn't HAVE TO do anything, but they did anyway, just to say, "Thanks." Often, there's no better reason for a company to do a giveaway; "just because" is a good reason to do promotions because customers often see it as a great big "hug," so to speak. And let's face it: everybody needs a hug every once in a while!