The Marketing Mix | official blog of the Marketing Mentor community

December networking in NYC

Thursday, December: PRESTO! Presentation with Jezra Kaye
(The Fast, Fun, Foolproof Way to Speak to Any Audience about Any Topic)
NYPL’s Science, Industy and Business Library
188 Madison Avenue (at 34th St.), NYC
5:30-7:00PM
Open to all; no fee.

Thursday, Dec. 11: Digital Exposure: Keeping Your Data Safe from Prying Eyes
The 5th in the Taste of Technology Small Business Series
Samsung Experience, Time Warner Center | 10 Columbus Circle 3rd floor
6:30-8:30pm
$39 (but I have a few free tickets so email me (ilise@marketing-mentor.com) if you want one of them)

Any others you know of, here or there?

New resource of business help launched for designers

If you’re looking for a good place to visit on a regular basis for business articles and ideas check out the newly launched CreativeBriefcase.com. You can find a range of business articles targeted for creative professionals, newbies and veterans too. The membership site includes hundreds of articles about accounting, business planning, client relations, employees, pricing and marketing (with a few articles by Marketing Mentor too!). The site also includes a business directory of essential resources for all areas that can support your creative business. Check it out and let them know Marketing Mentor sent you!

Marketing Mentor in Toronto 10/30

If you're a designer near Toronto....

I'll be in Toronto the week of October 27 speaking at DesignThinkers, the annual conference hosted by the RGD Ontario (see the video clip of the last talk I gave for them here on our site.

After the event, I'll be staying an extra day to give our half day Marketing and Pricing for Designers on Thursday, Oct 30, 9 AM - Noon.

We'll keep the group small so I can do a very hands-on workshop that is appropriate for both new business owners and those who have been in business for a while but haven't yet focused on the business aspects of running a business -- that is, marketing and pricing.

Click here for details about what I'll be covering and more.

An ebook about the value of tribes, by a triiibe who knows

Three months ago, marketing guru Seth Godin posted one item on his blog about a private, online group he was setting up on Ning.

The idea was to create a real-life experiment/lab to play with his ideas about community, or tribe, in the weeks leading up to the launch of his latest book, Tribes.

I was one of the people who made it into the triiibe, and was fairly active in the first month, meeting a number of interesting people it probably would have taken me a lot longer to meet in real life (most of us were only a degree or two or three apart--it's a small, small Internet world.)

My favorite of these new acquaintances, Mark Hayward, is an entrepreneur who chucked "regular" life to go open an island resort with his wife. He was in the throes of putting together a nifty nonprofit with Leo Babuta of Zen Habits and author-adventurer Dan Clements when triiibes came about, and was able to solicit a lot of help from the triiibe around his design, his marketing plan, his promotion--all kinds of many-minds stuff.

(Coincidentally--or maybe not--Mark just wrote an interesting post on the value of expanding your network during difficult times. He lists a number of people he's met via the Internet, myself included, whom he's started following to help him get over the social media learning curve. I found it extremely interesting that the links he shared were all from Twitter--another knife in the heart of the myth that it's nothing but a time suck.)

One of the projects Seth fostered in triiibes was an ebook about...tribes! It contains dozens of case studies, one by yours truly on the famed Group Theatre (see p. 220), and it's free!

Download the free Tribes Case Studies PDF ebook here.

Pretty interesting range of tribes in the book. Between that experiment and my month's working sabbatical in Seattle, meeting local members of Biznik, I'm getting full immersion in community.

What tribes are you a part of? How are they helping you day-to-day? And how are they helping you in these weird economic times?

Stop tweeting and start listening!

It was Labor Day. I had just come back from the CFC and was still unpacking when a neighbor invited me to a picnic in a local Hoboken park. I whipped up some green beans with ginger and garlic and headed out with a blanket.

One neighbor brought a friend from New York. We started talking about  our dogs, of course, then eventually got around to, “What do you do?” of course.

When she mentioned she is an editor at BusinessWeek.com, my ears perked up. Then she said she’s always looking for people to write opinion pieces for her section, The Debate Room. That was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. I put my thinking cap on. Which of my opinions should I propose?

A couple days later I followed up with an idea that had been rolling around in my head for several weeks. Ever since I got back from Bizjam in Seattle, I’d been threatening everyone, especially Colleen, that I was going to write a piece about why I won’t Twitter. This seemed like the perfect place for it.

Not only did she like the idea but my timing was perfect; they had a series on microblogging planned for this week! I had to write fast.

So I did. And here it is: Stop Tweeting and Start Listening.

Please read and comment.

Should You Use Your Web Site to Weed Out Tire-Kickers?

One of my articles posted on FreelanceSwitch last week recommended, essentially, that freelancers use their web sites to filter out bad prospects. Here's what I wrote:

Post a form on your web site that prospects fill out if they want an estimate or proposal. The serious prospects will take the time to fill out your form. Tire-kickers and those shopping for price will not. The form, once filled out, also will give structure to the request, help to focus your potential client and put in one place all (or most) of the information you need to get started preparing a proposal. Beyond that, this structure also gives your prospect a sense of how you work and some of the requirements of working with you. It’s part of your positioning as a professional.

There were lots of comments on this, a few questioning the idea of creating a barrier to entry.
What do you think? (Post your comment here or on FreelanceSwitch.)

The nexus between organization and promotion

One thing a lot of people don't know about Ilise is that her roots are in professional organizing. I forget it myself, since she's so good at marketing, self-promotion and helping other people get a handle on their own tasks in those areas.

But a quote of hers for a story in this recent edition of The Oklahoman reminded me of the link between one and the other. She talks mentions that she "consistently found information on self-promotion at the bottom of piles of paper that people saved." Clutter was literally getting in the way of her clients' ability to promote themselves—and, I'm sure, a lot of other tasks.

I struggle with staying on top of things myself. On the one hand, I'm a huge fan of organizing as an art or even a science; on the other, I'm really abysmal at the day-to-day practice of staying organized, and implementing my tools and systems to actually get my work done.

I'm wondering if I'm alone in this, or how alone I am in this. Are you organized? Do you use your skills in service of work? Or do you get a lot of stuff done, self-promotion and marketing included, despite being disorganized?

(Thanks to Kay Stout for the heads-up on the article.)

New podcast up: What's the magic $ formula?

Tuesday morning brings another podcast from Peleg's and Ilise's new book, The Designers Guide to Marketing and Pricing.

The ninth of 13 podcasts answers that sticky but all-important question, "What should I charge?"

Take a listen, and please let us know what you think in the comments!

 

Tuesday morning brings another podcast from Peleg's and Ilise's new book, The Designers Guide to Marketing and Pricing.

The ninth of 13 podcasts answers that sticky but all-important question, "What should I charge?"

Take a listen, and please let us know what you think in the comments!

 

The best prospects are like truffles (Designer's Guide Podcast 2)

There are clients and there are C-L-I-E-N-T-S.

Ilise and Peleg are masters of unearthing the latter. Part of it is probably just an uncanny knack, but an even bigger part of finding great clients and prospects is, in fact, quantifiable.

In this second of 12 podcasts covering each chapter of the new book, The Designers Guide to Marketing and Pricing, I interview the mixmasters themselves on best practices when it comes to finding great clients and prospects.

Listen online to all the episodes here.
Subscribe via iTunes here.
Subscrive via RSS here.

Mixmistress Colleen on networking...and on "networking"

I've never thought of myself as much of a networker, but if things keep up this way, I may have to revise my thinking.

I recently did an interview on the subject of networking with professional speaker Josh Hinds for his Business Networking Advice website.

Now I didn't know Josh from Adam before "meeting" him via email. Josh approached my friend, Becky McCray, with whom I did the Great Big Small Business Show podcast a couple of years ago, and whom I met through my friend (and networker supreme), Chris Brogan, whom I originally heard of when he was interviewed by shameless self-promoter (and Podcasting Princess) Heidi Miller on her podcast, Diary of a Shameless Self-Promoter.

To carry it further, I was at an event earlier this week where I met a 20-year veteran of the real estate business who is shifting into speaking, trying to help other real estate agents navigate the newly horrible waters of their business by using social media tools and showing them there's life outside the headshot business card and advertising bus bench. So I had to hook her up with Josh, right? I mean, the networking and the speaking thing—how could I not?

The interesting thing to me is that it's fun now, just meeting people and seeing where they're going and how I can hook them up with people or resources I know about to help get them there. I remember seeing my dad do this when I was a young woman, just starting out, and thinking, "No WAY could I have a Rolodex like that, and know so many people, and actually be friends with them all."

Well, I'm starting to see that it's not about being BFFs with everyone: it's about enjoying every relationship or chance encounter you're graced with, and passing that enjoyment along. Some people may wind up close friends in the inner circle; most will float in and out of your Dunbar range, depending on what's happening with your life and theirs. All good, really.

Still, just for fun, I'd love to hear about circuitous connections you've made. Got any good stories?