First off, I really liked the downtown area of Grand Rapids. Nice growing scene was lots of cool spots to hang out. Thanks to Ben for showing us around. We’ll be posting a couple more pics tomorrow on another post.
On Thursday we got to tour their new Art Museum (GRAM) and I was just blown away by the building. The art was amazing too but the space was just incredible. Loved the way they used natural light and moved it throughout the building with carefully planned glass.
Only weird thing was the ridiculously long staircases which Jason enjoyed, but for shorter people like me, made for awkward stair ascending.
While Jeff holds down the ol’ fort, Jason and I will be heading to Michigan tomorrow morning til Saturday. We’re doing some onsite work for TheCommon.org as well as planning a very big project for the future. Also, Ben will be showing us around and giving us a sliver of the Brilliance lifestyle.
Looking forward to the trip and we’ll be posting pics really soon.
Where does the time go? Has it actually been a month since Part 2? My apologies for keeping you waiting and if you weren’t waiting, well, you should have been!
So recapping quickly, you started your blog in Part 1 and then exhausted your network in Part 2 to promote yourself to your peers. Now we move on to some exciting stuff, Marketing.
Market yourself. The key here is to spend as little money as possible when getting started. There are a bunch of great opportunities you can take advantage of which are free and easy to use.
An easy place to start is with your blog. If you used WordPress or Tumblr, an RSS feed is generated for you. Make sure to promote this handy little feature as it can be a great way to attract all types of users. It’s a good idea to use Feedburner to have some analytics to review regarding your RSS feed.
Create a press release. This isn’t rocket science and doesn’t have to win you a pulitzer prize. Think of this as an announcement message to someone who has never heard of your company. A good rule of thumb, if your grandmother doesn’t understand your press release, re-write it. This is a two-parter, as you want to send this press release to all of your contacts. Try using Campaign Monitor, Mail Chimp or Constant Contact and make sure to follow CAN-Spam rules and regulations.
Leverage a social network or two. Obviously social networking is all the rage these days, but in all seriousness there are large audiences you can promote to for free! Create a MySpace profile, you can buy cheap templates that look extremely professional or do it yourself (like we did for Only Human). Facebook Pages is another social networking solution which is easy and free, this one takes no design and you can import your RSS feed from your blog (check out our Facebook Page for Thought & Theory)!
Start microblogging. This isn’t the end all be all to marketing, but can attract a new audience and help you meet like minded individuals. Twitter and Pownce are good places to start.
Reach out to get exposure. Local news stations, newspapers and magazines can be a great start to getting your name out there. Obviously do the same with blogs around the web. Don’t be afraid to send someone an e-mail or make a phone call and ask if they would like to hear more about your company/product/service. Don’t get discouraged if someone says “no”, there are a ton of options out there.
Last but not least, get out there and meet new people. There are BarCamps, Refresh Events, Small Business owners meetings and all kinds of other networking opportunities to take advantage of.
Stay tuned for more and feel free to reach out to us with any questions.
Sometimes you can learn things by learning what not to do. Rapidshare shows what you shouldn’t do with captchas.
Now I realize spam is an issue but this is quite possibly the worst captcha I’ve ever encountered online. There has to be a better way to filter out bots than trying to guess which letters have a cat on them. Some of the cats look like dogs and vice versa so it usually takes about 3 tries before I can actually download the file.
+10 points if you can figure out this captcha so I can actually download this file.
Almost everyone knows M. Night Shyamalan’s name. You may or may not have watched any of his movies, but you’ve most likely seen a few of his movie trailers/teasers. I can vividly remember almost every movie trailer for his movies and how excited it made me for that movie. He has a knack for creating captivating trailers but for some reason tapers off on the delivery of an entire movie; most definitely in his last 3-4 attempts. The stats don’t lie (from Rotten Tomatoes):
The Sixth Sense (1999): 84%
Unbreakable (2000): 68%
Signs (2002): 74%
The Village (2004): 42%
Lady in the Water (2006): 24%
The Happening (2008): 15%(current)
So what happened in the last 4 years? He has written, directed, produced and acted in every one of those films. Has he gotten caught up in the media hype? Has his success changed his outlook on film creation? It doesn’t seem to have affected his movie trailers, they still create an incredible buzz. I can’t imagine that Shyamalan wants to have his legacy be great movie trailers and mediocre movies. I know I will be seeing his latest movie, The Happening, but I will be going in with low expectations.
