Janet Johnson | The Art of Marketing

In a great post last Friday, Marshall over at ReadWrite Web set forth a great set of examples of how they (RWW) use Twitter in their journalistic efforts. Head on over and read the whole thing - but in a nutshell, he tells how they use Twitter:

• the discovery of breaking stories,
• performing interviews,
• quality assurance
• and promotion of our work.

What was fun for me personally about this post is that I finally met Marshall (in person) the afternoon he was writing it - via Twitter. I was waiting for another networking meeting, and was watching my Twitter feed via iTweet:

How many “Earthhippy” buildings in the Pearl are there? I surmised I was sitting in the exact spot (EcoTrust Building/World Cup) I’d find him. And I looked up toward the register, and le voila… an introduction eased by coincidence.

Fast forward to Monday. I went to meet Scott Kveton, also down in the Pearl. On autopilot, I had neglected to check where we were to meet, and went to World Cup again. I wondered whether I had crossed my wires, when, at 2:08, I hadn’t seen Scott walk through the door for our 2:00 yet. Knowing Scott is an avid Twitter advocate, I checked my feed only to see:

Ugh! wrong place… so I immediately DM’d Scott (sent him a direct message) letting him know I was in the wrong spot, and we quickly arranged to meet in the middle. He DM’d me back saying “meet in middle?” and the rest was captured here:

So: (and I know I’m on a rave about Twitter recently) the two events are linked in my mind forever as little examples of the beauty of “in the moment” speed, usefulness and connectedness that Twitter provides me.

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Last November I switched from PC to Mac - because of my iPhone. At the time, my PC was acting up, and I had been futzing with trying to connect my Blackberry to my Outlook (without IT help) calendar for months. I love my Mac, and the seamless integration with my iPhone. But now that iPhone has a hope to connect to the Blackberry enterprise server, I have to say I’d advocate for the iPhone as the tool I’d choose to call essential.

Tool #4: The smartest PDA - iPhone

Before I got one, I wondered what all the fuss was about. But once I started using it, I immediately got it. Elegant usability.

Seriously, the UI was so beautifully developed, every single tool was intuitive, and once I tried the controls - setting times for appointments, for example - I wondered why everyone’s phone didn’t work that way?

How is it a great marketing tool? I have the intelligence of the web, the immediacy of text, the connectedness of email, the logistic satisfaction of context-sensitive maps and the joy of a camera built right into my phone.

I will never be lost again, I can Google answers to any questions, respond to email, and snap photos to share with others (and send them right to recipients from the camera application).

It was worth the money AND worth the $200 cancellation fee I had to pay. (That’s another story altogether…)

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I love the end of a year/beginning of a New Year. It always gives me the opportunity to look back over the past 360+ days and note what I’ve loved, and what I want to do differently in my life. I’m starting to think about that now - and here’s what I’ve loved from a work perspective. (Don’t worry, you’re not missing out on much, those who really know me understand I put most of my energy these days into work.)

1. Yoga. As a business tool, a healthy body is essential. As a bonus, somehow twisting, stretching and standing on your head a few times a week really helps your thinking. I discovered yoga as I watched my sweetie blossom by practicing, and now I’m hooked. It has truly given me more energy, more creativity and more perspective.
2. Apple. With my Mac and iPhone, I have complete connectivity and control over my schedule where ever I am during a day. Critical for a consultant, I had no idea how hard I had to work at my Blackberry to get it to work halfway (fine for email, poor at everything else). I was an Apple Business Development Manager in the late 80’s; and was sucked back into the Wintel platform once I got into the Internet startup/telecom world. The iPhone hoopla was lost on me when it came out. It took a stint at a client, Chockstone, who used Macs prolifically around the office, to get me back to the Mac. And the commercials are hilarious.
3. USB Drives. In conjunction with my iPhone, I’m able to be a self-contained unit wherever I go as long as I have my files on my thumb drive. And for someone who has schlepped her laptop around the country, there’s nothing that feels more free than tucking a drive into my purse and walking, hands-free, to the train into a client.
4. RSS. I write about RSS a ton, and have a client, Attensa, who’s developed the most secure enterprise RSS platform available. But as a small consultancy, I’ve found RSS to be an integral tool to keeping up with client coverage, watching trends, and reacting quickly to competitive announcements, etc. News and information comes to me. I’m pretty lazy - so having something with a much greater reach and awareness watch for me is a kick.
5. iGoogle. Having an iGoogle account this year saved my bacon many times. My workaround for getting to my calendar anytime, anywhere (except from my Blackberry - where it was one-way communication only) was Google calendar. It was brilliant - sending alerts and reminders to me (on my Blackberry) of meetings and locations. I was able to log on from any client or Starbucks, and get a full view of my day/week/month. And the Docs and Spreadsheets were fantastic for capturing client meeting notes and sharing information collaboratively with teams of people. I used them regularly for one client, OpenMake, who has people all over the country who need to collaborate and capture information.
6. Smartbrief. Okay, so here’s a bonus - since I wonder how many people will really give me credit for the Yoga tool - I love Smartbriefs. They’re daily compilations of news about a whole bunch of subjects. I subscribe to the IAB Smartbrief to keep up with news about online marketing trends and such. When I worked for Chockstone, they served the restaurant industry - so I found a NRA Smartbrief that served up information about restaurant trends. The quality of the content is excellent, and Smartbriefs are free.

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I had lunch with my friend Michael Krol today, who fixed my Mac email problems. He told me he’s been blogging about Mac OS for awhile, and solved a niggling problem for me that I didn’t even know I had…

My iPhone opened iPhoto every time I plugged it in… Michael published a fix here, which caught the attention of some Mac bloggers, and he’s received plenty of thanks in his comments.

He blogs about what he’s passionate about - things that make his development life easier. And it’s paying off nicely for the rest of us.

Even for those of us who don’t know a lick of code, there are gems at MichaelKrol.com.

Subscribed.

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I’m part of a movement.  What kind of movement will be dependent on your POV; but over the weekend I switched from PC to Mac as my primary machine.  I did it for two reasons:

1) My laptop was increasingly fragile - Windows was not launching properly at times, and it took utmost patience (which I have precious little of…) and too much time to boot the doggone thing many mornings.  So I knew I had to upgrade.

2) My Blackberry was up for trade-in/renewal on my cell phone plan… and guess what was calling my name? I bit the bullet, walked into the Apple store the day after their one-day-only sale, and upgraded.

The systems (Mac and iPhone) were a dream to set up. Intuitive isn’t the word for it. Automatic is how I would describe it. Those Apple folks have UI design down. I have largely worked the kinks out of moving information between systems.  I kept most files on a USB drive anyway, and have for months worked seamlessly between Mac and Windows systems. 

My final thrilling acts are pulling bookmarks from Firefox to Safari - a breeze to do myself, thank you. And installing Attensa for Mac for my RSS feeds. I’m so used to my Attensa for Outlook, it’ll be interesting to see how closely they resemble each other on the different systems.

Two Issues (so far..) 

I do have a gripe about the Apple Mail application.  I can’t figure out (on my own) how to move files from my inbox to folders.  Anyone have a clue?  I’m stymied, and it just seems as if it should be possible. 

My .csv contacts file can’t be imported into Apple’s address book.  As I was looking around on the iPhone forums, there were threads about that difficulty, but I haven’t had the time to go back and look into it. I’ve been getting mail (from four accounts - again, easy to set up) and have been adding contacts easily that way.

If anyone has a tip/trick/hint - or a blog/site to go hunting for tips/tricks, please let me know.  I’m converted, and am absolutely thrilled to be back home in the Mac world (that I entered in 1984) again.  

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