ShanaRay.com

taken by daniel brusilovsky

This past Tuesday I ventured to San Fran to make a stop at social media camp, a conference much like cupcake camp or bar camp and I learned a few things:

1. “Wanna be successful, make people around you successful.”  This quote struck a cord deep down in me when I heard it in Erica O’Grady’s opening speech.  It is from the book Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz.  It is so obvious, yet so powerful.  Working in marketing, the first rule is that if your client is not making money then you won’t keep the business for long.  In my new position as the social marketing and promotions manager for Healdsburg Magazine, my job is to care about bringing more money to local businesses and the Healdsburg community/economy as a hole.  I recently learned that many small family owned wineries in the area are already on the Open Wine Consortium (social network for people in the wine industry). This proves that they know that the web is a great vehicle to get their voice across, now I want to help them get heard through multiple other social media sites, thus making them more successful (and in turn, making me more successful of course).

2. Sex still sells! At the Half Baked activity, the room was split into 3 teams, my team constituted of a few people, including Tilly from Yahoo. The idea of Half Baked is to spilt into teams, pick two “buzz” words from a list that the crowd yelled out and then to create a website (with name, tagline, revenue model and marketing plan) in 10 minutes. Our team chose AtomicPimp.com, a subscription based dating site where people pay to be “pimped” out to find dates. A percentage of the profits go to “pimps”, who set people up on dates. Pimps can promote themselves through various social networking, blah, blah, blah…. Anyways, our team won tickets to the Summer Mash SF party at the Mighty… All because sex sells (oh, yeah, and our idea kicked ass).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS2tmS17q30]

3. Twitter is one of the biggest social networks out there, yet it is still only known by other fellow web geeks. In the beginning of the camp, we all went around saying our names, three “tags” (mine: Healdsburg, tourism and live events) and our favorite Social Media site (Hi my name is Shana and I am a Twitter-holic). Almost everyone in the room said Twitter as well. I must say there is definitely something in communicating in 140 characters or less.

4. Geek guys are hot (It is the glasses). That is all.

5. Just be honest and write about what you know, if it is interesting, people will read (just don’t constantly spam your friends with your blog URL *oops).

6. Social Media Marketing takes time. You have to build relationships, as well as maintain them. Old Media talked TO people, not with them.

7. Basic Online necessities:

1. Create a blog— WordPress is my personal favorite

2. Twitter — Start following people and have something to say

3. Facebook — It isn’t just there so you can poke old high school friends, FB has allowed me to connect with business owners, wineries and journalists in the area. It works.

4. Email — If people email you, make sure to follow up!

I just wanted to say that I am truly humbled by the generosity of people during times like this.

That is all.

Lia Huber, Clos du Bois’ blogger for swirlingnotions.com just posted a blog asking the question, does having the experience just for the sake of a blog post make the experience satisfying enough to blog about, or is it that the experience was so satisfying that it creates a good blog post?

Her post made me think about my own time spent outside of my 40-60 hour work week.

The back of my head is in a constant state of circulating ideas for my current, potential and dream clients; it doesn’t matter where I am: at the store, at a friend’s house, watching a movie, driving, walking down the streets of San Francisco… My friends have all rolled their eyes each time I pull out my camera to take a picture of a billboard, graffiti, in-store signage, a front of store display, a cool new high tech product, almost anything that I think should be forwarded onto my co-workers, blogged about or remembered for later.

Granted, there is nothing I enjoy more than great friends, the perfect wine and laughing until my eyes tear up, but it doesn’t mean that you have to sacrifice the experience for what you do for a living.

When I was younger I used to be the one at the parties taking the pictures. When I would get them developed I noticed that I was never in them, I was watching other people having fun. I finally realized that there is a balance of actually living and capturing the moment to share with others.

I don’t really think that I answered her question, nor do I even believe it is a question that can be answered, because it all comes down to enjoying life the way you want to without having it pass you by.

I wouldn’t want to be in any other profession, and yes, I do tend to obsess about work, but the best ideas come from real life experiences, being in the pictures, and maybe some time spent lounging on a hammock.

I love everything about a clever marketing campaign surrounding a movie, The Simpsons Movie started last year off for extremely well done marketing (the movie, not so good) and one of Cloverfield’s many viral campaign’s (Widget where people could embed the trailer on their blogs, MySpace, Facebook, etc. and if their widget was grabbed the most, they won a special screening of the movie, along with several websites) was a huge success (over $40 MM at the box office). I am seeing this movie this weekend.

The newest campaign I learned about has been under sad conditions. I just started paying attention to “The Dark Knight,” but for nine months, comic book geeks and Batman movie fans have been interacting with a web marketing campaign to “slowly unveil the new look for one of Hollywood’s most popular characters: the Joker.”

The viral campaign came out last May. Websites, thegothamtimes and thehahahatimes came out along with an online scavenger hunt.

With the death of the Joker, Heath Ledger, will the marketing change? According to a Wall Street Journal article, no it should not.

“The best thing that could happen is that all this marketing stuff just goes on and the movie and the campaign don’t turn into some kind of weird grave marker.”

Will his tragic death just turn into a marketing ploy? Should they studio continue their marketing as they have been or change it to not be seen like they are trying to capitalize on the death?