1. Start a Twitter account and give people incentives to follow you. The more topical the better - it keeps people interested and they’ll stay tuned. Like this:

2. Use Google’s keyword tool to find whatever keywords related to your business are being search for the most. Blog about them and Make videos about them. Make them entertaining. Watch your web traffic go through the roof. Like this:

3. Become an expert, start a blog and use your knowledge for good. Industry secrets don’t exist anymore. If you try and keep them to yourself someone else will trump you. We’re operating in a knowledge-based economy. Be the fountain of knowledge, be prolific and people will turn to you, and when they turn to you, you can start relationships with them (you know what I mean, don’t be rude). If you can’t write, podcast it. If you can’t talk, make videos out of it. Make claymation. Do something, don’t just sit there hoping people will come to you because you know so much. Publish. It’s free.

4. Start a Facebook group that people will want to join and subtly sponsor it. Don’t just start a fan page for your business, create a community that people want to be involved in. If you sell surfboards, create a fan page for six foot waves. If you sell wedding photography create a page for people who hooked up with a bridesmaid and are proud of it. If you sell candles start a Facebook group for people who are afraid of the dark. Like this:

5. Figure out whoever the key influencers are for whatever it is you’re selling. Read their blogs and leave comments on them regularly. Proper ones. Ones that make them feel loved. They’ll get to know who you are and then when you want to sell something you won’t have to make a bunch of new friends. Never forget thatthe purpose of a conversation with a new friend is not to sell something. It’s to have another conversation. Seth Godin told me that. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, or what you’re selling.

You know that thing you’ve always wanted to do? You can do it. It’s possible. This is the 21st Century. Anything is possible.

And if for some strange reason it turns out to not be possible, it just wasn’t meant to be, but you will have learned a hell of a lesson trying to make it happen and you’ll be able to apply that lesson to something else and it will probably work out for the better anyway.

Don’t ever not do anything because you thought it was impossible.

This just in from news.com.au’s business section:

“THE head of marketing for Coles has pledged to make its stores consumer-led and slammed the supermarket industry as “backward” as the Wesfarmers-owned chain embarks on a massive reinvention of its brand. Coles, which has recruited MasterChef judge and restaurant owner George Calombaris to help it lift the quality of food lines, was shifting its attention from dictating to customers to listening to them, marketing director Joe Blundell said.

“Our marketing philosophy is quite simple, which is about listening to customers and making improvements that really matter and moving the bar,” Mr Blundell said. “So when we do something like the value meals campaign it’s because customers have said we enjoy cooking at home but some of us have quite tight budgets and so can you help us out.”

I can’t believe they’re taking such a backward approach and treating their customers with so much respect. Surely it would be far better to ignore what we actualy want and pander to a sterotypical view of what they think we need by using a reality TV star to ram it down our consuming throats.

Can’t they at least bring back Lisa McCune?

The presenter would have prepared for weeks; researched diligently and practiced five times the night before, just to make sure everything went according to plan. No stone would have been left unturned. No ‘t’ would have been un-crossed. No ‘i’ left un-dotted.

Presentation day would have arrived. Seats would have been arranged. A screen erected at the front. The presenter would have turned up, ready to begin; a glass of water beside the lecturn; a hot cup of instant coffee on standby.

Marker pens would have been in hand, ready to highlight the important points; a few carefully-practised hand shadow animals would have lurking in the wings, ready to storm the virtual stage should the crowd require some half-time entertainment. A strange bunch of clear plastic sheets would have been piled neatly on the table, but they would have drawn negligible attention, because they were dwarfed by the strangest looking lamp the admin assistant had ever seen. The year was 1957.

“What’s that?” She would have asked (excuse my misogyny, I’ve been watching too much Mad Men).

“It’s an overhead projector,” the presenter would have announced proudly. “It’s the latest in presentation technology.”

The admin assistant would have nodded.

“Is there anything I can get you then before you begin, Mr Presenter?” She would have asked

“Yes,” Mr Presenter would have said. “I need a power point?”

“Power point?” She would have asked, a puzzled look on her face. “Well, there is one, but it’s way over there in the back of the room. If you want people to see your presentation I’ll need to get you an extension cord.”

Powerpoint, of course, the Microsoft version, spelled the end of the overhead projector back in the early nineties.

Slideshare.com, has spelled the end of the extension cord.

Here are ten brilliant presentations you need to watch if you want to be a better marketer.

Shift Happens

A look at how globalisation and digital technology has changed our world.

Universal Mccann International Social Media Research Wave 3

This is the Social Media Research done by Universal Mccann including 17,000 people in 29 countries. Detailed stuff

What the F**K is Social Media?

Social media for dummies; with swearing.

Visual and Creative Thinking:What We Learned From Peter Pan and Willy Wonka

Visual concepts for marketers - how to express yourself visually, handy if you’re presenting…

Big Brands & Facebook: Demographics, Case Studies & Best Practices

Forrester’s advice on Facebook. Very worthy if you’re getting asked about it.

Luxury Brand Marketing

Relevant because it’s about creating a desire for things no-one needs; something every marketer has to do sooner or later!

Great Quotes To Use & Repeat When You Can’t Find A Better Way Of Saying It

The title kind of says it all - the layout isn’t much, but they’re great quotes!

Seth Godin on Tribes

Haven’t got time to read the book? Here’s the picture version, yay!

NASA - GenY Perspectives

Why does NASA care about Gen Y? Because Gen Y will be giving them 124 billion dollars to poke around places no-one can see. You can bet they’ve done their research into engaging the kiddies.

Marketing Management By Philip Kotler

Go back and remember the stuff you forgot from marketing school: 719 slides from the 11th edition of the textbook.

We had a meeting with the bank earlier this week. We knew they were interested in the whole social media thing or they wouldn’t have asked us back. We also knew they were going to struggle to see value in monitoring social media channels when they could easily setup Google alerts for their brand and catch anyone having  a sneaky whinge. We knew Google alerts were only half the story though; if you want to engage people, you need to meet them. It’s hard to meet people when you only know them as just ‘levinator25′ or ‘ID203′ in a database. So this is what we did…

“Tegan,” from Australia is actually a digital project manager at Cummins Nitro, the Brisbane agency behind Queensland Tourism’s best job in the world campaign and the tattoo is quite clearly fake. Discerning YouTube viewers picked up on the facts pretty quickly (for goodness sake, fresh tattoos bleed, you don’t walk out of the shop with a pristine design), yet the video has had more than 60,000 views so far and considerable traditional media attention from around the world.

Who looks dumber, AAP and the major news outlets who ran with the story, or Qld Tourism who used it as an example video without a disclaimer?

Either way,  nice acting Rhiannon. Are the freckles real?

UPDATE: It seems Tim Burrowes over at MumBrella actually beat me to the punch on this story - for further reading and a response from Tourism Queensland, make sure you check out his blog post.

1. To learn more than I did in 2008
2. To write more, much more than I did in 2008
3. To have good ideas and take responsibility for them
4. To balance work, love, music and life on four equal, gigantic pillars and spin them until they blur into one harmonious symphony
5. This

A friend of mine has developed his marketing mantra. It’s quite good and it goes like this:

1. Markets are conversations
2. Conversations happen around social objects
3. Social objects are products or services that are remarkable
4. Remarkable is not just something special, but something worth being remarked about
5. A great product, and even better customer service are the most remarkable things you can offer.

I like it (although I’d change the first point to read “your market is conversing”), and it fits in with pretty much everything I hold to be self-evident: The TV-industrial complex has crumbled and in an age where advertising saturation makes it almost impossible to push your message out, the best way of marketing your product is to get people to talk about it. Social media, as a form of word of mouth marketing, works, but what if you’re not remarkable? What if no-one wants to talk about you?

What if you make brown shoelaces, or you have a brand of aspirin that does the same thing as all the other brands of aspirin? What if you don’t really have a story or you don’t have a chance to really impress your customers with amazing service… What do you do? Do you just give up and start something else?

Nope. You invent a story.

If you make brown shoelaces you get Bear Grylls to explain that if he was stuck on a mountain and needed to create a makeshift parachute, he would only recommend using your brand. You would start a YouTube channel with a series of videos detailing other amazing uses for your brown shoelaces and explain how they are the best. You would find bloggers who talk about running shoes and dress shoes and adventure shoes and you would send them free product samples. It would be so successful that people would start buying your laces to put in their brand new shoes because they would think that shoe manufacturers didn’t know enough about lace technology.

If you make a new brand of aspirin you would create a 1300 number that people could call and whinge to; you’d remove their headaches. This number would be advertised, radio presenters would copy the idea. You would setup a social community where people can talk about their headaches and you would get experts to jump online and give advice.

If you think your product isn’t remarkable, you’re not trying hard enough.

Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft provide solutions to people with video game problems. The trouble was, in 2006, the proportion of people who realised they had a gaming problem in need of a solution was very small in comparison to the population of the earth. Worse still, most people with video game problems needed to get hold of their mom’s (sic) purse first.

Rather then come up with the next fastest/loudest/baddest/blue rayest/most violent/most banned/most wanted new gaming console in the history of the world to date, Nintendo, instead, were smart. Very smart. They created Wii. Kids like it. Mom’s love it, heck, even the Queen of England has one. In fact, Wii sales now account for more than both main competitors combined.

If you’re going to develop a new product, think outside the (X) box. It’ll pay off. Especially if you back it up with customer service people rave about.