When I watch the videos I did for and with celebrity chef Rocco DiSpirito I am overwhelmed with a feeling of gratitude. I feel grateful because it was that experience that made things click for me. While wine and food had always been important to me and I had previously dabbled in integrating it with my professional goals, the experience with Rocco made me realize that wine and food should be more than just a serious hobby of mine. Nothing makes me feel more alive and more myself than sharing my wine and food experiences with the world.
There’s a similarity for me in the experience with Rocco and the last few months with Murphy Goode. Applying for the Murphy Goode job and making it to the final 50 has driven me to make some big changes, leaving my very corporate job as a marketing consultant to focus more specifically on what I love, and nothing has ever felt better. So when thinking about the Murphy Goode A Really Goode Job (which I do every day, all day), I also feel incredibly grateful as it’s made me take a really meaningful leap in my life.
This experience has also made me think a lot about what I bring to the (winemaker and chef’s) table. What I feel and what I hope people see is my charisma around wine and food that makes others want to engage with the content and want to have their own wine and food experiences. I believe connecting is what social media is really all about and at the end of the day one’s social media expertise is not what is going to make people connect with that person. Connection is about an authenticity and genuine feeling that comes across in what is being communicated and I hope that when you see these videos of my experiences cooking with Rocco you feel that from me.
One year ago today cnn presented an online article on wine marketing featuring non other than wine guru Gary V. There are many valuable lessons to be learnt for all who are currently interested in wine marketing, social media and a really goode job.
#1 Lesson from Wine Guru Gary Vaynerchuk: Become part of the conversation.
“I became part of the conversation instead of dictating the conversation,” says Vaynerchuk. Becoming part of the conversation (online) means you need to find that conversation. What has been your focus? Who are you trying to converse with? Are you talking to them or are you talking with them?
Essentially, your average consumer is responding to messages that are more closely attuned to his or her individual preferences – so it pays for you understand these preferences or better yet, to help shape those preferences. You need to understand your target audience, and people: your target audience is not Murphy-Goode.
Take some time now to think about and understand who MG wants to reach: have you geared your campaign with the consumer in mind? Have you engaged in conversation? Is it all about wine? Or are you able to look beyond this and communicate on a deeper level? Wine media needs to be like wine drinking: a beautiful accessory to the conversations you enjoy, not the full content and over dominating denominator of your purpose. You need to remember this especially when you are a guest at someone else’s blog.
On your own turf, it might help to remember that although some people will blurt out there needs and desires, many will be too intimidated to come out and ask you questions or engage in conversation. This is why you must consider how you will present any information you wish to transport to your reader. Are you a wine marketer looking to land the MG gig? Then you may need to get over your lingo and learn to engage with your reader from a different perspective… from a perspective which resonates with the non-wine marketer, more specifically: with the wine drinker.
One year ago today, the article closed with these words: “It’s all part of Vaynerchuk’s plot to transfer control of the wine conversation out of the hands of trained professionals and to those who might once have been afraid to buy off a restaurant wine list.”
Today I come to you with a quick re-cap of a few interesting articles I found for you on the web.
As you all surely know by now, my short, intense MG campaign has been built almost solely on this blog and on twitter interaction. Over two months I have posted over 80 posts (including over 25 awesome guest posts) and generated over 600 comments. On twitter, I started at zero and have a modest following which I vet regularily (get those spammers away from me!), have generated over 2.3K tweets and have met loads of amazing people in the process. My seo is strong, even ranking for “horse treadmills” on google above the fold on pg. 1 (he, he, the power of guest posts thanks to Anita!). So it should come as no surprise that I think blogs and twitter make a bombastic combination.
Michael Mock writes over at Some Disassembly Required a great piece about how you can leverage blogs for business. Here is a small glimpse at what he has to say:
If done correctly, a blog can attract a dedicated audience to build upon and share expertise, information, ideas and content, while boosting awareness of your company and brand. If done incorrectly, however, you can leave customers feeling dissatisfied and ready to turn to your competitor. Source: 4 Ways to Boost Business with a Blog
His four way plan is a great jumping board for all those who want to build their own brand: how to set your blog up to boost your readership, encourage engagement, build a loyal following. You may not have a product to sell, you are out to sell yourself! So if your blog is kind of flapping around with no real impact, consider what Michael has to say.
Another great tidbit was to be found at Training Marketer. Here you will find some great content on how to get the attention of online shoppers, from the mom-and-pop business down the street, to the giant corporation across the globe. I want to share a video which really wonderfully shows you how something can go viral, you can go check the text here What does Viral Marketing look like?
Those are my tips for today. Basically: harness you passion and present it to your readers on your blog… reach out to others and have a good time and you will begin to draw people to you.
Now the time is ripe: we have all been networking like crazy over the past weeks… you are connected with at least a handful of social media wine lovers… are you ready to leverage your advantage you have gained over the past 8 weeks?
The whole wine world is watching Murphy-Goode and regardless of where you are in the race, you can come out victorious! Let’s leverage this opportunity and create wine web2.0 history! Are you in?
What a great time it has been and very challenging to toss up my first carnival. There were 7 great answers to the three questions I posed and I have the impression that you all had fun partaking in the challenge.
To recapture, contestants were to choose one from the three questions:
How to avoid red teeth while drinking red wine?
How to avoid palate fatigue while at a wine tasting?
Why smell the cork?
Submissions were allowed in any format (blog post, video, podcast) and were judged in three categories:
People’s Choice by poll (which took place here on my blog)
People’s Choice by comment (any comment I could find relating to any individual post)
My Choice by a) education, b) entertainment and c) tech savvy values.
Everyone who participated I want to extend a great shout out! I can only recommend your blogs to my readers… the fact that you took the time to get involved with this little action shows that you have a good grasp about this specific aspect of social media, about networking and pooling together on one topic and connecting with others.
So without further ado, here I present you with the winners! *drum roll please* (please excuse, I had a video in the making but my programme is striking in this heat, sorry):
Peoples Choice by poll: Natasha Foy with 33%.
Peoples Choice by comment (including comments I found here directly concerning the submitted posts): Michelle Lentz
Andy’s Choice:
You all educated me. I see in all entries the ability to take a mundane subject and translate that into education and present it in an entertaining manner. Some of you were funny “ha, ha”, some were very subtle and some of you simply entertaining in how you presented a non-eventful question.
I looked to a few technical indicators and you really did not make my job easy. All of you have definite (and to certain degrees very different) strengths and weaknesses so I will be sending you all emails with some advice concerning what I observed in the hopes to help you along. But before you get your knickers in a knot: I am not as tech savvy as you may think so there will be many other parameters which you could be doing well — but which I did not notice, or they may be some grave errors which I am also missing out on… and we are all in the dark.
Before I tell you my choice, you must know that I truely believe that all of you have excellent opportunities waiting for you in the social media scene… think of it, you have been learning loads and discovering lots, and you have already shown by going for the Wine Country Lifestyle Correspondent that you have the guts to go for it. If you keep on track, I can assure you that not too few wineries are out there watching, watching, watching what happens with the MG gig.
Imagine you place yourself as a key player in this happening? Do you realize that you have been networking with all the other hopefuls? Do you realize that we together have the power to make this work for MG? Do you realize that the greater MG’s success means the greater chances that other wineries take the plunge? Do you realize that those who take the plunge will already have a good idea who and what they want when they take that plunge?
*You* can be as central a person you want to be in this network! And *you* can go as far as that successful applicant for Murphy Goode…. if not further!
Yes, you are all awesome and I look forward to seeing you go places!
But I have to choose ONE of you. And the winner of my choice is Natasha Foy. Natasha, you were only slightly savvier than most here, but you want to know what pushed your submission over to the winner category? It is the fact that you made a viral video. Did you know that your video was published and highlighted on another Murphy-Goode blog? In fact, on a blog which is more a vlog? Yup. Was it planned or a lucky stroke? It does not matter, you educated, you entertained, you showed me your tech savviness and you impressed more people than just Andy.
Congratulations!
Thank you all again for taking part, I really enjoyed it and look forward to a continued networking with you in the future! Keep your eyes peeled, on Tuesday I will be sending out your little information emails with some deeper tips and observations.
These days there are sooooo many vehicles for entering the social media sphere to connect and share it can become overwhelming. Each platform has become a microcosm of information, experience and expertise’s.
While promoting my video application for “A really Goode job”, along with many other impressive applicants, I dove into as many social media platforms as I could. I have been reaching out and connecting on social media platforms stretching far and across the world wide web.
Last week, I found my niche on Linkedin. During this process of developing my web presence, I have spent a lot of time beefing up my Linkedin profile. When you google yourself your Linkedin profile should be the FIRST thing that pops up. Linkedin is powerful. Be sure to update your status and MOST importantly…
1. be sure to enter key words in your “professional headline”. Here is an example of mine: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rhobys. Keywords are the FIRST piece of info people see when checking you out. It pulls everything together very quickly.
2. Make sure your resume on Linked is up to date and forecasts your future plans and endeavors.
3. (and what I found to be extremely fortuitous) JOIN GROUPS!! in your field, your interests and your competition.
4. Engage in discussions!
Sharing and connecting are the main ingredients in social media… but nurturing your relationships is what REALLY makes things cook!
In my experience, joining a discussion to promote my video application was just the seed. Interacting and PARTICIPATING in the discussion was where the growth happened. The key element in social media is nurturing your relationships. Seeing this in action has reinvigorated my faith in social media. The discussion I created worked because I was engaged in responses and commentary.
This is how it ALL works.
What you feed will grow and most important nurture your relationships! GOODE luck to us ALL!
1 2 3 Rhoby
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Rhoby, I have just recently jumped into LinkedIn and –um– I need to put some *any* content up there… Thank you so much for teaching me what I need to have in my profile!
Have you seen Rhoby’s video application for Murphy-Goode?
This past weekend I attended the wedding of two of my close friends. They had what in many ways could be described as a ‘traditional’ Jewish wedding. The couple were married under a Chuppa (Canopy) and the ceremony featured readings from the Torah, which was followed by a reception featuring kosher food and wine (yeah!) and hours of dancing.
One part of the ceremony really caught my attention — a ritual called the ‘Seven Nuptial Blessings,’ which offered blessings to the newly married couple and were recited by those they wished to honor, such as grand-parents, aunts, uncles, etc. As for the blessings themselves, they offered thanks for things such as the creation of humanity and of the world, and the ongoing joy and happiness of the new couple. All pretty heady stuff, but what surprised me most was the first blessing: the giving of thanks for the ‘fruit of the vine.’ When I heard that I thought, here’s a wedding ritual that’s possibly two-thousand-plus years old, which saw fit to acknowledge the gift that wine is to the world and our lives, first and foremost before all else. Pretty amazing!
Mulling all this over, post ceremony, I worked my way to the bar with the intent of toasting those wise ancestors who had it so right. Wine is something to be thankful for. It is after all an agricultural product and which is by no means guaranteed year-in-year-out (as hard as that is for those of us who live in sunny California to believe). While waiting at the bar, I overheard a woman comment to a friend about a recent party she threw. Apparently, this woman loves wine and throwing parties, yet admitted to her friend that she never knows what kind of wine to serve. And I thought, wow, we just came from observing an ancient blessing that originates from a time when just having wine, any wine, was something to be thankful for. And yet contrast that with today — a time when people can actually be intimidated by the variety and number of wine choices available to them. Do we have too much wine, are there too many choices? Barolo, Chardonnay, Burgundy, Port, Cabs, Pinots — Gris, Noir, Grigio… do we need this myriad of wines when our ancestors would have been thankful for a glass of plonk?
Back when I was a wine buyer for a restaurant group in New York, I regularly observed a phenomenon that I called ‘wine fright.’ This would occur whenever a normally rational and intelligent human being would open our wine’ tome,’ aka wine list, and start perusing. Financiers, doctors, lawyers, fashion designers, old, young, wealthy, working class, none of these descriptors were any indication of a person’s ability to navigate the list with real confidence. Of course that’s what my job was–to provide assistance to our guests–but very often there was a mild subtext of embarrassment and fear of not being able to pick the ‘right’ wine.
I’ve always been an advocate of discarding rules when it comes to wine and instead promote a ‘drink what you like’ philosophy. Sauvignon Blanc with steak, why not? Cabernet with that tuna steak, sure! Who am I to tell someone otherwise? Which brings me to my point (finally!)… how does one overcome their ‘fear’ of choosing the wrong wine or knowing which wine to pick? And the answer is… by continuing to try new wines. Sounds simple enough, no? And yet is often something few of us practice. We as human beings are creatures of habit as we tend to stick with things that work. But if you want to learn about wine and expand your knowledge and improve your palate, you have to keep tasting new wines.
Think about it. Inherently, we all seem to know what types of entertainment we prefer, whether it be music, TV or film. And why is that? It’s because by the time we’re young adults we been exposed hundreds if not thousands of hours of entertainment which serves to develop our tastes. And the same must be done with wine. The best way to expand your palate and knowledge is to seek out opportunities to try new wines. Tastings at wine shops, visiting wineries, joining a wine club where people meet weekly or monthly to try new wines, are all great ways to explore.
Once you’ve begun this journey, all you need are a few catch words to describe what you like, and you’ll be able to walk into any wine shop or restaurant with confidence. If you like ‘earthy’ red wines, then something from Provence or Southern Italy could work. If ‘bold tannic’ wines are your thing, then a California Cab or Bordeaux. ‘Fruity and delicate’ might lead you to a Riesling from Alsace or Germany. Just having these catch words ready will allow you to ask questions — which is one of the reasons I prefer privately owned wine shops as opposed to chain stores or supermarkets to buy wine. I have nothing against the chain stores as you can often find great values, but when I’m looking for something new, that’s where the privately owned shops shine as they are staffed with people who can offer quality advice.
After you’ve caught the bug (and you will!), you can continue your journey by digging deeper into the subject by reading. Between the major wine publications and thousands of websites dedicated to the subject, you’ll find plenty to keep you busy. In the end I’m sure you’ll agree as I do, that we are indeed very lucky to have such an abundance of wine in our lives and that really is something to give thanks for. Happy tasting! I want to thank Andrea for giving me the opportunity to post on her Andy’s Goode Life Blog. If you have a second, please check out my video entry for the Really Goode Job here:
No, Greg, it is I who has to say thanks to you! What a beautiful observation as well as simple truth about discovering wine. Thank you for taking the time to offer my readers this side of you! One of the aspects I love about this whole wine web2.0 gig with Murphy-Goode is the simple burst of creativity in many of the videos! I find I am really starting to think in 60 sec. spots. What wonderful story telling to be seen thanks to Murphy-Goode and all who have joined the team of applicants.
Ok, for all you visual people out there, here is a new and funky search engine. Spezify. I tested it for the terms “areallygoodejob” and “murphy-goode” and had a great time seeing many trusted faces and noticing a few new people, posts, pics I have yet to discover!
My name is Brendan McGuigan. And I love wine. That’s the simplest way I can describe my own interest in this job, and is absolutely the best qualification I think I possess for it. I’ve spent years doing social media consulting for companies, writing on wine and travel, and tasting wines for work. But ultimately, none of that means a whole lot next to the fact that I adore this ridiculous drink with a passion unmatched by anything else I’ve ever experienced.
Looking through the other guest posts here, it seemed like many of the good ideas had been hashed out fairly well so far, and I found myself wondering what to write about. Should I talk about why I think social networking and wine is an obvious fit? Already done. Should I talk about why I think what the world absolutely needs right now is an exciting and dynamic web show about wine country, because, let’s face it, winemakers are without a doubt the most interesting and lively bunch of characters I’ve ever met? Seems a bit like pandering. Should I talk about the type of person I think Murphy-Goode could most use in this position? I wouldn’t presume to know their mind.
Instead, I thought I’d talk a bit about the larger lesson that this process has driven home so strongly for me – a lesson I’ve learned once or twice before in my life, but never absorbed quite so fully. It’s pretty simple. Here it is. When an opportunity presents itself on the internet, jump in with both feet forward.
Let me explain what I mean by that: Every day there are thousands of interesting things springing up on the internet, be they contests or new technologies or new blogs, and it is of course impossible to be a part of all of them. But every once in a while a confluence of events occurs where one of these Happenings chances to center around something you are in a position to take advantage of. When that happens, take full advantage of it. Do whatever it takes, but make sure you’re in a position not just to graze up against it, but to genuinely contend. There are millions of people on the internet, but the strange truth of this new world is that you can still be someone special, just by trying hard enough.
I remember very vividly being 17 and making the decision to let a handful of twelve or so domain names I had purchased expire. It was 1998, and I had bought them hoping to be able to sell them at a profit, but they hadn’t appreciated very much by then, and the $70 a year registration fee was killing me. If I had simply gritted my teeth, borrowed a few thousand dollars from friends and family, and registered them for another five years, I wouldn’t be writing this right now. I’d be lounging in retirement on a tropical island somewhere.
Two years later I was offered a job helping with marketing for a start-up down in Palo Alto, but the idea of moving so far away just out of high school, and with the bubble having just burst, seemed like too great a leap. So I refused. Again, if I had taken the job I wouldn’t be writing this. I’d be sitting pretty on my stock options.
About a month ago someone forwarded me information on what they thought sounded like the ideal job for me, as a lifestyle correspondent for a winery in Sonoma. I agreed it sounded like a great gig, and I started working on a video application. Of course, work kept getting in the way, and I wanted to shoot primarily in wine country, so each day of shooting was a long drive and a day without income. So the video creation crept along, until I finally finished it a week into June. Throughout that time I also dragged my feet a bit on setting up the other components I wanted to, since I felt I should have the video done first. So I didn’t really get behind a blog dedicated to my project until quite a bit after the contest began, I didn’t get a Facebook group set up until even later, and worst of all, I put off all of the crucial networking I would need. In the meantime, of course, buzz had already begun to build to a fever pitch, connections were whizzing back and forth, and VinTank went ahead and chose eight people they thought were best for the job.
Now, I’m not saying that had I tossed my hat in the ring three weeks earlier VinTank would have chosen me instead of the extremely talented, very worthy people they did choose. But the fact is, I’ll never really know that, because I allowed the daily necessities of my life to take precedence over putting everything I had into an application. Had I made the commitment, I could have taken a week off of work, driven to the Valley every day and filmed, and been building steam by the middle of May.
This whole thing is a long way from over, and I certainly haven’t given up – I still know in my heart I’m right for this job, and I’m still going to push as hard as I can to get it – but I will always regret the fact that I took so long to build up steam. How much respect I have for Alina, who took time off of work to embark on a wonderful journey in pursuit of this dream. How much I admire Hardy, who hopped on that plane without a second thought, just to be first in line.
It’s this commitment to the trying that I am pushing here. This whole beautiful Murphy-Goode experience will come and go, and at most a handful of people will find jobs out of it, although many of us will be changed by the experience. Ultimately, though, other opportunities will arise. They may take the form of similar contests, they may be unknown new technologies you see great potential in, or they may be something we can’t even begin to imagine. But whatever they are, I would urge everyone to put aside feelings of inadequacy, or worries about failure. To close your eyes. And to leap.
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Hey, Brendan. Thank you so much for your candide picture you paint here. I love your underlying text: TRY. Your words really touch on my experience with this great Murphy-Goode application process: I have been changed by the experience.
I love your video. You have such energy and the simplicity of your takes translates into just plain fun and passion. Let’s have another look…
You can vote for Brendan here (voting remains open till the 26th of June and starts up again for the top 50 on the 27th).
One of my handicaps concerning the MG reallygoodejob is that small yet not insignificant fact that I am not American. Or perhaps I should be more specific: I have no working permit in my hand, no green card and no hope of a quick solution.
So I did the only thing a gal could do. I hit the Governator up for help as I was seeking to become the Gewürztremantor. (And I even asked if he would be interested in giving me a guest post ).
Two days before the apps need to be in I received a response. Here it is:
So. There you have it. Governor Schwarzenegger “is honored that you would seek his assistance with this matter.” But as usual, he it is out of his jurisdiction. Anyone know anything about Senators Feinstein and/or Boxer?
Murphy-Goode has expanded my personal experience in ways I never imagined. It has been a learning experience from the get-go. When the next social media guru gig hits (as we can all be sure it will), we should all be ready to boldly step forward and shine, shine, shine. I know I’m taking home a whole suitcase full of “how-tos”, “don’t forgets” and “think abouts”… like solicite help as early as possible and don’t be afraid to do so: Regardless of the position of the person or the percieved time, you will never know unless you try and you have nothing to loose.
Wont you share a lesson or two you have learned along side your Murphy-Goode application process?
“Well who are you?”– is what you’re probably asking yourself right now – “that you should get the opportunity to post about the topic on Andy’s Goodelife blog?” Well, I’m just a regular gal with some marketing experience and a good instinct for what people want to get out of their social (and other) networking and marketing experiences. My background is in music (vocalist and arranger), Events (DJ, Wedding Coordinator, Caterer, Florist), and most recently – Sales, Marketing and PR as an independent consultant for a variety of B2b Services (Legal, Financial, Real Estate) and currently the arts (Ballroom dance and Symphony organizations.) My husband jokes that there are less jobs I haven’t done than those that I have at some point in my previous experience. I have to agree.
Is there anything I wouldn’t do again? I honestly don’t think so because each job I’ve had, though diverse in nature and some tougher than others, has taught me something valuable along the way but the most important thing that I’ve learned is how to understand the motivations of people – mostly regarding decision making. Do we go for the ultimate bridal bouquet or stick with the budget we had chosen previously? Do we have the DJ play for an extra hour ($225 per)? Do we pick our dream wine tasting menu for our 25th anniversary reception or go with the “chipper chicken”? Do we sign up for the costly private ballroom dance lessons or stick with the slightly less indulgent group lessons for ¼ the price? People’s lives are based around decision making and I have found that they are more willing to be flexible about the decisions they make if they are given an HONEST, up front and straightforward proposal from the beginning rather than being given the runaround.
If the customer can understand the product – there will be no confusion and everyone will be happier in the end. This is why honest branding and a clear marketing message is so important – help your customers understand who you are and what you represent so they can talk about you and endorse you to their friends, family and co-workers. Referrals are gold and cost you nothing more than the time you spend to craft the message, and the time you put into developing quality customer service worth talking about.
So how do you parlay this idea into social networking and personal branding? Well, it’s simple really and there are a few helpful steps I’ve learned and applied to past clients that will assist in the process.
Decide Who you are and what you offer – You need to decide right off the bat how your business is a solution to a potential customer’s problem and who you are as a representative of it. Consider your personality, strengths and weaknesses, communication style and what the most relevant benefits of your product have been to your most satisfied customers. Make a short list of those benefits and think about how you can adapt those benefits to fit those unique needs your customers may have.
Come up with a brief, clear and conciseElevator Speech – a 30 second intro to who you are, what you provide and an example of how it has helped a customer previously. This elevator speech will be the brief basis to all other marketing materials and collateral you create from this point forward. Realize that the elevator speech is the online equivalent of your company or personal bio / profile online whether in twitter, facebook or myspace. Leave out any inessential details from these areas and reserve them to be included in other areas of content on your site later (blogs etc.) where they can be expanded upon and truly useful. Eliminate clutter and simplify whenever possible, more words do not equal more clarity.
Determine who your targeted market is – you might need to do some research or you may already have a great picture of who that is based on your current customer list. Find out where these individuals congregate online or in person, what they are interested in, what topics and other items may also be of interest to them based on their income level and lifestyle. Identify what kind of effort you will need to make to actually be involved in those places to get access to your potential customers. Decide how much time you are able to invest in the process and start working on developing content.
Get Honestly Interested in the topics your potential customers are following and start creating content about those topics that can drive traffic to your website. Don’t forget that people can tell the difference between a sales pitch (even a clever one) and something created by a truly motivated and curious writer who has a blog entry or video that they have twittered about (and most likely asked for retweets for). This means you get the opportunity to learn new skills, hobbies and facts on an ongoing basis – which can be overwhelming but is always more rewarding than watching rerun episodes of Golden Girls on a Friday night. Get off the couch and realize that these opportunities will make you easier to relate to for your future customers. However, if you still can’t generate some excitement within yourself to research the topic, hire some part time interns who can’t stop talking about the topics you are focusing on, and let them loose with some basic ethical guidelines. In no time, you’ll have traffic flocking to your site – coming from places you never imagined – all because someone’s enthusiasm was so genuine that it reverberated through the internet.
Don’t Fake it – even if you think you are missing out on the opportunity to capture business. Bloggers, foodies, Goodies, yelpers, twitterers and the video obsessed are a highly clever and communicative bunch. If word gets out that you posted fake reviews, staged fake events, paid for criticism (or lack thereof) or in any way compromised the integrity of the content about your product or service – you will be sacrificed without mercy on the alter of new media by people whose obsession with “the facts” allows no limit to the time they will spend online defending honesty. Anymore – the only real self-policing media left in the world with integrity is online. Everything else is pay to play or politics at best.
Be Multifaceted – this may seem to go against the “keep it simple” branding message in item # 1, however, what I actually mean is – different customers will relate to your product in different ways based on their age, income level, interests and family situation. So take the content you’ve created and roll it over into various forms of media to create synergy and appeal to more of your niche market of targeted customers in ways that will most quickly result in sales or referrals. You’ve already invested the time to create it – why not consider all the various ways you can make it work for you? The creative process is fun and you’ll have a great time seeing it work once you have set it in place. Create a blog entry, a video entry, a musical entry, a twitter post, some products they can buy, a comment section, a newsletter, a discussion forum, a place for people to upload their photos, videos, music, etc. and link everything to each other.
Don’t Forget who you are. So suddenly, your ideas and products have led to a wildly successful season (now that you’ve followed my steps of course!), and you decide you want to branch out. There is nothing wrong with expanding – but never forget the qualities that made you, your content and your product appealing to begin with. What are those aspects that made it special, that made it worth mentioning? Don’t be tempted to mass produce a lower quality product to try to capture a broader market – marketing to a broader market is MUCH more expensive and you will likely have to cut down on creativity, quality and customer service to survive. At the end of the day someone might buy a second rate, less unique product – but no one is going to be excited enough about it to tell everyone they know about it. The best way to grow is to plan strategically and reinvest your energy and profits slowly into one very closely related product at a time – a product that will also be of interest to your current customer base.
At the end of the day, honest branding and marketing is about self-awareness and integrity. Understand who you are as a person AND as a company. Know what you do well and what you don’t. Identify and focus on your niche market of consumers and sell them a quality product with terrific customer service and you will benefit from the free marketing “Gold” that comes only from the referrals that result when people have discovered something they are truly excited about.
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Wow, thanks Ali! Key post which really drive a few points home to me.
And, my dear readers, you want to see Ali in action, don’t you? Here is her application video:
thanks to 
).
