January 04, 2010
Each year, I spend more time than I should researching and pondering the best holiday gift for each of my clients. Inevitably, I end up with my fallback—a holiday gift tower from Wine Country Gift Baskets. Everyone loves chocolate and goodies, right? This year I was stumped by many of my favorite online gift shopping sites either not offering shipping to Canada for food baskets or charging ridiculously high shipping fees. I finally broke down and went with Harry & David.
Next year is going to be different. I’ve decided to do something unique, memorable, and that supports my goal of getting more visibility for my clients. So here is my pledge: for any clients that engage with Red Giant in 2010, I will either sponsor a day of IWearYourShirt.com, or get you a custom jingle from LoveJingles.com.
If you haven’t heard of these creative entrepreneurs, Jason from IWearYourShirt.com will wear a t-shirt with a corporate logo for one day (rate depends on what day of the year). But your exposure isn’t limited to one guy (actually two guys in 2010.) He also does a video, blog post, tweet, posts photos to Flickr, and add your logo to his site. If you want to get a bit more interactive, Love Harnell will write you a custom jingle, record it, and share it through his blog, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr.
What does it buy you? That isn’t clear but it is a holiday gift, not a marketing strategy. What are some of your favorite gifts from vendors? What do you usually send your clients? How much do you spend? I would love to hear your ideas.
December 28, 2009
After seven years, I finally decided it was time to refresh my own website and start a blog. I’ve suffered a bit from the “cobbler’s children” syndrome, where I’ve launched nearly a dozen websites for various companies, written and ghost-written blogs for clients, and guest blogged here and here, but thoughtfully neglected my own web presence.
I say thoughtfully because it is not as if the interest in blogging has not been on my radar. However, in an effort to maintain my work-life balance and focus my work time on my clients (they do pay the bills after all), I decided to focus building my personal brand through Twitter, LinkedIn, and maintain personal profiles on various social outposts including Facebook, YouTube, Goodreads, and private networks. I even wrote a personal blog for a while for moms in Rhode Island.
The lack of professional blogging hasn’t affected my business at all because frankly, my business has always come from my personal network and referrals. However, the tide has started to change. I recently received a request for proposal from a comment I posted on the O’Reilly blog nine months prior, while other inbound inquiries have come from Google searches, and recent publicity in WebWorkerDaily, CIO Magazine, Mobile Entertainment, and Mobile Marketer. I realize now that more and more, peoples’ first impression of me is going to be my website and therefore, a blog went from a nice-to-have to a must-have.
So THANK YOU for joining me here. You won’t find me posting just to post, but I do hope to maintain a weekly publishing schedule. I encourage you to subscribe, but even more, I’d love for you to comment and tell me what you think.
