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I’ve been crazy busy with client projects leaving this blog like the cobbler’s kids who go barefoot — marketing for clients means my own marketing has fallen by the wayside. Ahh well, such is the life of the sole proprieter!

I’ve closed down a handful of big projects including a terrifically fun volunteer gig for the Short North Business Association to help get the virtual word out about HighBall Halloween. I worked with Walker Evans and the brilliant Ryan Morgan to craft a social media strategy. My job? Managing the Myspace, keeping up via our Twitter, blogging over at the Short North blog and setting up our Flickr including a HighBall group.

Getting personal with our HighBall social media efforts went a long way to helping folks understand that this was a grassroots community event. My friend, Tracy Zollinger Turner, who works as a stringer over at Columbus Alive, used the blog info to help her figure out how to structure her article about HighBall.

“The blog has had the most useful info from our perspective,” she wrote in an email to me. “I get a clearer sense of the event from things like the organizer profiles than the general descriptions.”

As a journalist myself, I understand the value of narrative in marketing, which is why I wanted to help our target audience build a relationship with the HighBall organizers. Putting a face and a story (and a favorite Halloween candy) helped people start feeling attached to the event and when people start feeling attached and start feeling ownership, they care how things turn out.

HighBall was a roaring success and I look forward to helping out again next year!

courtesy of AIA Guy on Flickr

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The good women at Digital Eve have invited me to speak tonight at their monthly meeting. Come by Panera’s on Bethel at 7pm tonight and let’s talk blogging!

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From Technorati: State of the Blogosphere (emphasis mine):

Whether or not a brand has launched a social media strategy, more likely than not, it’s already present in the Blogosphere. Four in five bloggers post brand or product reviews, with 37% posting them frequently. 90% of bloggers say they post about the brands, music, movies and books that they love (or hate).

Company information or gossip and everyday retail experiences are fodder for the majority of bloggers.

Companies are already reaching out to bloggers. One-third of bloggers have been approached to be brand advocates.

If your customers have blogs, they might already be talking about you. That’s why you need a social media strategy even if you’re not ready to bring your marketing plan online.

A social media strategy should address:

• How you’ll discover and keep track of people talking about you and your business.
• How you’ll respond to people blogging about you. What if the comments are good? What if they’re critical?
• How you’ll handle your employees or colleagues blogging about the business or linking to your company from their online profiles on social networking sites.
• How you’ll handle your non-professional presence online. Are you sure your personal handle isn’t linked to your professional one?
• How you’ll keep an eye on your competition and their online strategies.
• How you’ll discover what your potential customers are learning about your industry from their online experiences.

You need a social media strategy. Are you ready to build one?

Contact me — let’s talk!

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Sometimes I think the online social media world is full of Crazy Eddies. Not sure who he is? Don’t worry — he lives on thanks to YouTube:

These social media enthusiasts want to sell you on the power of the interwebz and they’ll shout, they’ll holler and they’ll use all kinds of jargon to get you going.

I’m not gonna do that.

For one thing, the social media web isn’t a quick fix; it’s a lot of work. And while I think every business should understand it, not every business needs to get on board with it. (You have to understand it, mind you, because it might make sense for you later on down the road. You also need to understand it so you can at least grab your branding and keep track of your online reputation.)

For another thing, if it all seems overwhelming to you, noise from your marketing consultant will just make things more confusing. (Less can be more when it comes to selling Web 2.0 to the world.)

I ease my clients in so that they get acclimated at their own good time and never feel like they’re drowning.

I’ll be honest if I think the latest magic bullet will just end up being a waste of your time and resources.

I’ll build a creative, unique marketing plan that will suit you and your business so that you can set it up and keep it up without feeling like you’re at my mercy.

There’s no Crazy Eddie around here.

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But we didn’t have it for a week. Yup, we were one of the not-so-lucky households who didn’t have electricity from Sunday until the next Saturday (at 5:15pm to be exact) and what that meant is that this week I’ve been playing catch up on everything!

I’ll be back to the blog just as soon as I put some of these projects to bed!

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Instructor: Dawn Friedman
Date: Saturday, September 13
Time: 1:00pm - 4:00pm
Location: Junctionview Studios
Workshop cost: $15
Enrollment limit: 12

Workshop description: This hands-on workshop will provide a grounding in some of the most common tools and concepts associated with Web 2.0 and blogging. The following topics will be covered:

• What is Web 2.0, and why is it worth exploring?

• An introduction to blogging: What is a blog, and why would I want one?

• Getting started: Build your blog

• Tools for a better blog

• Web 2.0 marketing strategies

• Online social networking tools: MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

Contact the Fuse Factory to register!

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And things aren’t slowing down yet!

Right now I’m working on a nifty campaign for a client, helping another client get their new site set up, indulging in some regular old writing work and (most fun of all) I’m knee-deep in HighBall Halloween committee work for the Short North Business Association. Our launch party is tonight at Skully’s from 5:30pm to 7:30pm.

I’m working on the marketing plan with SNBA director John Angelo; ColumbusUnderground.com guru/owner Walker Evans; and the brilliant owner of Brilliant Ryan Morgan. So far we’ve got a Facebook group, a Twitter page and a MySpace page to give folks lots of ways to keep track of what’s going on with us! And of course we’re going to be doing some blog outreach, too.

See, if you want to reach a diverse audience, you’ve gotta diversify your efforts. That’s what we’re doing. The blanket approach will work for us because we’re putting on what we hope will be the biggest Halloween event to hit Central Ohio! But if you want to get specific, you need to be much more discriminating.

Too often blog campaigns are wild shots in the dark — sending out press releases without understanding who you want to reach and what you want them to do with that information. People share themselves online for different reasons and in different ways. To reach the right people and in the right way, you have to use finesse. You’ve got to ask yourself some questions like:

1. What are my goals with this campaign?
2. Who do I want to reach and why?
3. What do I hope the online world will do with my information?
4. How can I help them understand and help me reach my goals?
5. What can I do for them in return for their time and effort?

Traditional press releases, let me tell you, do NOTHING for most bloggers. You’ll need a more thoughtful, more personalized approach, which is time consuming, sure. But you’re building relationships and relationship-building takes effort.

Need help figuring out a creative campaign that bloggers will CARE about? Having trouble finding the folks you most want to reach? I can help. Gimme a call, shoot me an email or head to my contact form. Let’s talk.

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The Short North Blog officially launched today with a press release post about the stellar Art Al Fesco event.

I partnered with Madison & Fifth on the project. Chris Fry set up the blog and themed it to reflect the Short North Business Association’s main site.  I added appropriate plugins, set up the Twitter account and met with John Angelo to teach him how Wordpress operates and how to figure out his blogging goals.

I’ll remain on call for John as he gets his blogging sea legs, which is a service I offer to all of my clients. Meanwhile, add the Short North Blog to your feedreader to stay up to speed on the many exciting things happening in Columbus’s very own arts district!

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Unlike bloggers who came to the blog for hits or SEO or building buzz, I came to it because I’m a writer and I love narrative. I was already reading other people’s stories (their online journals, not quite blogs since they were insulated and many didn’t have comments) and I wanted to write my own. I wasn’t sure what my story would be, exactly, but I was a long time fan of journaling and I was interested to see what I would write if I was writing my life knowing that an audience might be watching.

I didn’t expect blogging to take hold and take off the way that it has but here it is, almost eight years since I first hit “publish” and blogging has become a great way to sell your self, sell your services and it’s created a whole new market to target.

But I’m still in it for the stories.

When I work with my clients, I encourage them to find their own stories. SEO is important (and a WordPress-powered blog will help you with that easy-peasy) and creating “sticky” entries is a great thing but if you don’t have a compelling narrative, you’ll get lost in enormous noise that is the blogosphere.

I read a lot of social media sites — some big and some small — and because I read them via my feedreader I have a helluva tough time remembering which one is which. They all sound the same. With their bullets and their headers and their voices of authority (and many guest bloggers), I can’t tell you which one said what.

Part of my high-touch service includes helping you identify your blog-worthy stories and the larger trajectory of your business narrative. As a confident, accomplished writer and editor, I know how to find your narrative arc and help you write it. I can help you categorize and index your entries to give readers more opportunity to dig in so that you can build a loyal audience who cares about the things that make you stand out from your competition.

And that’s what makes me stand out from the competition: Love of narrative.

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KidsKnowStuff.com is a product review blog with a unique twist: kids run the show! My client needed easy youtube integration and a bright, peppy theme. I also helped her set up and brand a twitter account to help get the word out.

JanODaniel.com is the new home of an accomplished marcom expert. Jan wanted a sophisticated site with lots of bells and whistles. I set up her WordPress as a content management system, integrated it with her aweber-powered email list and gave her customized sidebars throughout the site. Then I gave her a separate WordPress installation to power her blog; this gives her more blogging options. The second install was carefully branded to give her site a seamless look.

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