Tom Martin: Positive Disruption

Three for Thursday - Nov 13

2009-11-13T08:18:41-06:00

Reposting this today because it didn't go live yesterday... so enjoy.

First up is Minggle which the really smart Jason Falls posted about recently. Like other multi-platform update tools, Minggle pulls all your various fees into one place and gives you the ability to post to all platforms in a single update. What I think is really nice though is Minggle gives you an option to selectively update. So for instance, if I'm about to do a marketing talk for a conference and I want to notify everyone, I can post that to LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter with one update. But if I just want to post a business update (mabye winning a new client) on LinkedIn I can do that too and it won't post to FB and Twitter.

Second up is Readability. Earlier this week I commented on Twitter that it would be really cool if blogs had a "format for printing" button on each post so that I could just print a good post (especially longer ones) to read later. Luckily Mark Wanczack saw my tweet and shared Readability with me. It's a simple plug in for your browser. Get to any web page that you want to format for offline printing, click on the Readability button and presto, formatted for printing version. You can even set the type size, margins, etc. Very cool little tool.

And lastly, another one from Mr. Falls -- StreamThatCause.com. This is a great, innovative way for non-profits, churches, or school groups to raise money. A very web 2.0 update to the standard selling of candy, wrapping paper, etc. But instead of explaining the whole thing, I'd prefer you just pop over and read for yourself. Great concept and I'm sure you or someone you know can use this service for good.

Let me know what you think folks. And if you have a great idea or you've found a really cool tool/site that you think my readers would like, please let me know in the comments, via twitter @TomMartin or email me. Link up there under my pic.

The Modern B&B Hotel

2009-11-11T07:42:00-06:00

I've been doing a lot of traveling lately -- both for business and pleasure. And for whatever reason, my travels have often been booked in places like Hilton Garden Inn, Courtyard by Marriott, Embassy Suites, and Hampton Inn & Suites. The common theme in these types of hotels is good value, clean room, and usually free extras like WiFi, breakfast and in the case of Embassy -- my personal favorite -- Happy Hour.

These aren't the high end hotels with lots of high end services. That is a very different type of hotel and a different type of stay. No these hotels are clearly aimed at providing a good value for the traveler that basically wants a bed, some grub and free WiFi.

But as I sat an ate breakfast with my three boys this past weekend at the Hampton Inn & Suites in Jennings, LA -- a lovely hotel by the way for you I-10 corridor travelers -- it hit me. These types of hotels are the modern day Beds and Breakfasts. They basically give you both and the later is served in a quasi-communal manner, much like a true B&B. In fact, as I sat with my boys, an older couple seated nearby took the opportunity to strike up a conversation with us -- and of course, commented on the boys, especially the youngest (2yr old).

Which is exactly the kind of incidental conversation that makes B&B's kind of a cool alternative to hotels. Which is the point of this post.

I wonder why none of these hotel brands has or is exploring this kind of B&B'esque positioning. B&B's are known as quaint, cool and of course, higher priced. So by positioning as a modern day B&B for the 21st century, technologically savvy traveler, wouldn't they be putting themselves in a better position to justify a slightly higher rate? In the case of the Embassy Suites in Austin (link above) we enjoyed a great little happy hour and a truly good breakfast buffet -- and as a family of 5 (my daughter stayed back in New Orleans) total savings was easily in the $70 range -- which made my actual room rate near $79-$89/night... a pretty awesome deal for Austin, Texas on a Longhorn home game weekend.

And in the case of the Hampton in Jennings -- they had this really cool table designed for laptop toting business travelers (pic above) where you could plug into a central power strip, eat breakfast and chat with fellow business travelers that like you, were dining solo. If you don't know the value of a casual dinner or breakfast conversation while traveling solo -- ask a real road warrior -- they'll tell you dining alone is a huge pain and gets old quickly.

So what do y'all think? Should these value chains or at least one of them consider a quasi-B&B type positioning? Would they need to add higher end services or amenities like better bedding, etc.? Could they pull it off with an ad campaign or would they need to include some kind of experiential or maybe virtual experiential/social media component? Personally I'm intrigued but are you?

Creating Brand Passion - The Movie

2009-11-06T07:42:00-06:00

If you've been around this blog for a while you know how passionate I am about brands and more importantly, how you create and sustain brands for a competitive advantage. Earlier this week I was invited to speak at the Iowa Chapter of the American Marketing Association and to share my views on how brands, even every day brands, can create and sustain passion.

Here is the video of the talk -- as always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on Tom Martin as a speaker, and the concept of creating brand passion via the 9-steps I outline in the talk.

Three For Thursday

2009-11-05T07:03:00-06:00

I scan and read a lot of stuff in search of new ideas. Much of it finds its way to my Twitter stream but still a lot of it just sits in my "to read" file and then never gets shared. So today, I'm going to try something new. With a hat tip to Steve Woodruff's now defunct Five in the Morning series, every Thursday I'm going to post the three coolest things I found that week. I'll also try and give a brief thought as to why I think the info is cool and more importantly, relevant for marketers today. This way, it will make it easy for you to scan and click if you're so inclined. So here goes:

Pop-Up Store Chain
Pop-up stores aren't all that new. Heck, they've been in malls (think those little carts you see around the holidays) since I was a kid. But of late, the idea has been taken to new heights with companies actually renting unused street level retail space and creating these pop ups. But that is kind of expensive from a build out standpoint. Enter BrandNew Stores. They build the frame of the store and then brands just need to move in and out when they want to literally pop up in the consumer's life. I think there is power here in terms of giving brands a way to present their brand when and where they need to without having all the heavy lifting associated with the traditional pop-up store model.

Connecting Volunteers with Need
Traditionally when a non-profit group needed volunteers they made calls, sent newsletters or maybe an email campaign, etc. They focused most of their time around "funding" a specific effort. Yet, every day, non-profits struggle with getting things done on a shoe string budget and skeleton staff. Enter Catalista. Catlista is a downloadable app that sits on your phone. With the app you can find local volunteer opps in your area and sign-up. Once you're done you can rate the event/activity/group and even invite friends to donate their time via social media networks. What's cool is that if you have a few hours to kill one day, you could use Catalista to find a group you care about and that has a need you can fill on those couple of hours. Kind of a cool way of approaching the recruiting and management of volunteer forces.

Giving Away Excess Inventory
Yokmok is giving travel bloggers free trips in return for guaranteed posts on the travel bloggers' blogs. Now that is nothing really new and you can talk amongst yourselves about the rightness or wrongness of paid play on blogs...but what I think is smart here is how Yokmok is doing it. They are stealing a page from the airlines and yield managing the offer. If a spot opens up on a Yokmok trip for which they cannot find a paying customer, they offer that spot to travel blogger who has registered with them and has passed their requirements. This is smart because the incremental cost to bring one more person on a managed trip like Yokmok provides is negligible and a very cheap marketing opp. Anyone here run a hotel, airline or even a restaurant? This approach is a great way (IMHO) to gain targeted coverage with minimal cost. Something to keep your eyes on I think.

Now these three items all came to me from a great trend newsletter distributed by Springwise. If you're not on that eNewsletter, you should be... great stuff. So in parting this morning, two questions for you. First, do you like this idea? Should I do this again next Thursday? And second, what did you think of the ideas/services I shared? Did you think they were as cool as I did? Do you have specific categories, audiences, or products that you'd like me focus my attention towards? Let me know that too so i can curate good stuff for y'all.

Creating Campfire Conversations

2009-11-02T09:37:21-06:00

If you didn't get a chance to attend the first TribeCon in New Orleans last week, you missed a great first time conference focused on community. I was lucky enough to know the founders Chris Schultz and Tiffany Starnes who were nice enough to invite me to speak.

My talk focused on an idea I've been playing with for a while that I call Micro-Content. But more importantly, how a brand can use Micro-Content to grow its tribe and ultimately to sell more of its products/services to said tribe.

Here is the entire talk.

Warning, the audio isn't awesome but I did what I could to help it out. I'd suggest using headphones and cranking up the volume on your computer a bit. And as always, please let me know what you think about the talk, about me as a professional speaker, or pretty much anything else that comes to your mind. I'm always all ears.

The Social Media Playbook

2009-10-27T07:34:23-05:00

I think one of the hardest things about selling social media solutions or campaigns has to be getting companies to understand you can't give them a media plan like you do in advertising. I understand the trepidation. No one likes to sign a contract or proposal with a big number on it and a rather nebulous set of ideas about "what we're going to do for you."

But if you're thinking about hiring someone to help you with your social media, understand this. The person you're talking to can't give you a playbook because it hasn't been written yet. Social Media is an organic space. Thus, while we can have a general idea of what we plan to do, we craft strategies but we follow discussions. That means that what we think we're going to do may, and likely will, change based on what we're hearing in the marketplace. Likewise, if you're talking to someone and they give you the complete plan, along with primary and secondary tactical implementation plans, well.... you may want to go get a second opinion if you know what I mean.

Most coaches try and script the first 10-20 plays of a football game. They may want to establish the run or go deep to force a defense to cover the entire field vs blitzing. Sometimes this works, but often, it doesn't. You see, no plan survives contact with the enemy. Once the game starts, you have to quickly figure out what is working and what isn't. Then make adjustments based on what is happening right in front of you in real time. And that is what Social Media is like... making real time adjustments based on what you're seeing every day on blogs, Twitter, your Facebook page and even your in-bound email stream. Sometimes this will mean you can just keep going because your plan is working, but often others you'll need to make an adjustment. And on those really great days, you'll discover a gem of an idea that will send you down a path you never even considered. But then, that is the beauty of communicating with your customer. They'll teach you a thing or two if you just listen.

What do y'all think? How do you approach game planning for your social media efforts?

photo by avinashkunnath

Hire Explorers not Experts (part II)

2009-10-22T07:58:00-05:00

Yesterday's post included a promise to upload the video of my Hire Explorers Not Experts talk at the Omaha AMA's Hot Topics Conference. So here you go. A bit long maybe and once or twice I may have gotten a little carried away...but overall, not bad, if I do say so myself.

But more importantly, what do you think? Good stuff or yawn?? LMK.

Hire Explorers not Experts

2009-10-21T07:50:00-05:00

Today at the Omaha AMA's Hot Topics event, I gave a talk about Finding the Ying & Yang of Marketing 2.0. I'll post the video later this week but tonight, as I sit here at 30,000 feet blogging (so cool) I thought I'd expand on a thought I shared with the group today.

As I sat writing my notes for my talk, it occurred to me that it was odd to be asked in 2009 (almost 2010) to give folks tips or a road map for integrating old media and new media. Yet, I'm often asked to speak to various groups on just that topic. So why is that?

My answer is that we're all asking the wrong question and we're looking in the wrong place for the answer.

First, we're still asking folks how to do it versus asking how to think about doing it. That may sound like I'm splitting hairs but stop for a minute and think about what I just wrote. When you ask someone to tell you how to do something, you're asking for a process that you can replicate. But that is just one process. Sure it worked for them this time, but is it truly replicable. Will it work tomorrow or the day after that?

Instead of asking "how to" do social media we need to be asking "how to think" about social media, digital media, old media and the blending of all of it. We need to be asking folks that "seem" to have it figured out or at least seem farther along than ourselves for a framework not a solution. You see if I give you a framework for thinking, I've empowered you to think for yourself. If I give you a process to replicate, well I've just made you reliant on me to give you a new one when the old one finally fails to be effective anymore. But a framework, well you can take that learning and build upon it, make it bigger, stronger and better than I could make it myself. Sort of how the Open Source peeps write code.

So my first suggestion to the group and now to you is start asking the right question if you hope to get the right answer.

Second, we're looking in the wrong places for that elusive answer. We keep looking for experts. Social Media Experts, Digital Experts, Traditional Experts. But here is the problem with experts, (social, digital and traditional). Experts are looking in the wrong direction. Experts become experts by focusing on the now and more importantly the then. They look backwards and study what has been done and what is being done. That's gives them this huge depth of information, which we as a society define as expertness -- if that is even a word. Now don't get me wrong, he who thumbs his nose as the value of studying history is doomed to repeat the mistakes of history, but at some point you need to stop looking behind you and start looking in front of you. Experts by and large don't do that...otherwise they risk being less of an expert.

So my advice today was instead of hiring experts, hire explorers.

Explorers spend their days looking forward. They may not know everything there is to know about the past, but that is because they are busy dreaming up a future. Find the people on your staff or at your agency or at another agency for that matter who explore. Find the people that are bigger, bolder and dream more than the rest. Find the folks that are not afraid to fail, that embrace failure as the necessary precursor to knowledge. Find the folks doing things not because someone is paying them to do it but just for shits & giggles because they want to see what will happen. Find the people that don't know what questions not to ask. Get out of your geography. Get out of your industry. Go to places you've not looked before and find the explorers. Find them and then hire them. They are the key to the promise land of effectively leveraging old and new media.

I go more into detail in the video... which you can see tomorrow. But for now, what do you think? Hire experts or hire explorers?

photo by goneforawander

Blog World Expo Travel Panel

2009-10-20T07:45:00-05:00

Last week I had the extreme pleasure of sitting on a panel at Blog World. I promised to post the video of the panel for everyone, so here it is. The entire thing is about an hour, but if you're a blogger and you'd like to hear how big brands like Fairmont Hotels and Disney Parks work with bloggers, then well worth a listen. I also chime in with my two cents about how bloggers can better work with ad agencies. Enjoy and if after watching the video you have any comments, please share.

How to improve your networking at conferences

2009-10-16T07:52:00-05:00

As I'm sitting in Vegas at BlogWorld, I thought I'd share a few ideas on how to get more out of your conference or tradeshow efforts. Mostly, I'm going to give you a few ideas on iPhone apps you may want to consider downloading and a thought about how to be memorable. Because lets face it, the number 1 challenge when working a conference or tradeshow is being memorable. You just meet so many folks so quickly, that if you don't do something to stand out, well, it's easy to blend in. So here goes.

Bump: if you have an iPhone, do yourself a favor and get Bump. It makes exchanging information so easy. You just activate bump and you and the person you just met "bump" your iPhones together to trade vCards. I love this because a) it's really easy and b) it enables the use of the next idea with little to no real effort.

GoPostal: I'm a huge fan of this app. Primarily it was designed to make it easy to send "postcards" to your friends and family when you're on vacation, etc. You just take a picture with your iPhone, select a contact to send it to and then type whatever message you want. Then you upload to the GoPostal site and approve the $1.29 credit card charge (you put your credit card in once and the app remembers is) and presto, within a few days a good old fashioned postcard arrives at the selected contact's address. Remember, the hardest thing to do is be memorable. So what better trick than to snap a pic with everyone you meet (you and that person in the pic) and then send them a little "glad to meet you" postcard featuring that pic. So simple. So cheap. It's my new favorite way to make an impact with someone I meet that I really want to make sure remembers me.

LinkedIn: have you played with the LinkedIn iPhone app lately? It's actually improved quite a bit. My favorite use for it at a conference is to instantly look up someone's LinkedIn information and if they are not a contact, go request a connection. It's a great tool to use right after you meet someone. Request they link to you and include a little note about how you enjoyed meeting them and that you wanted to keep the relationship alive by LinkingIn together. Again, simple, easy and immediate. All while you walk to the next session.

Yelp: someone is always needing a restaurant or bar recommendation, phone number, address or directions. With Yelp's iPhone app, you can search by category, name or just say "show me all the restaurants near where I am." Be the one who can share that info and you give folks a reason other than business to talk to you. In fact, they might even invite you to join them. Bonus! [LOL note to Yelp: if you're reading this, can you maybe put a link to your iPhone app on your home page? Just saying.]

And lastly, a suggestion. Before you leave for a conference, put 10 great blog post URLs in your notepad app on your phone. Or if you plan to have your laptop a lot at the conference, put them on a Word doc. Then, after you meet folks and get their twitter handles, look and see if (based on your conversation with them) any of the posts you brought along would be something they might find useful. If so, send out a tweet or email to them letting them know you enjoyed meeting them and include a link to the post with a note of why you think they might like it.

That's it. Considering it is 2am my time (midnight BlogWorld time) probably time to call it a night.

Oh yes, one more thing. Anyone else got any great ideas or tips for doing a better job of networking at conferences and trade shows? I'm all ears... help a brother out eh?