Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

This is a note I’m sending to my valued friends and family. I think it’s a great representation of what I’m doing in 2009 that’s different for me.

1. I’m repackaging my services to be extremely relevant to what brings me most joy and defines my best work
2. I’m asking (at the ripe old age of a Baby Boomer in full swing) for what I want (that’s very hard for me to do)
3. I’m asking my friends to help me realize my dreams of doing great work

As you read this note, think about how you might do something similar - need to refresh your services? Want to be more relevant in today’s markets?

I’m a firm believer that people love to help each other out, which is one reason I spend a good piece of every week networking with others, and in communicating in the social media realm… So here’s my note, in case it prompts some thoughts for you and your brand. And in the spirit of walking the talk… It’ll be interesting to see who ‘gets’ both the email and the blog post.

:::::::::

January 2009 - the sands of change are moving underfoot. The questions for many of us are: How will we keep our hopes and energy high, and how will we play a part in creating positive change?

I’ve decided to focus on enabling businesspeople to use social media.  I’m writing today to both encourage you to join the conversation, and to ask for your support in growing my business.

Here’s the context as I see it:

• Much of the world is shifting from defensiveness to diplomacy. Listening and learning are increasingly valued as organizational practices.
• People are turning to each other for information, transformative and sustainable ideas, products and support. Word Of Mouth is increasingly important in consumer and B2B decision processes.
• Technology is facilitating these connections largely without regard to geographic boundaries. And communities – like synapses – are forming around ideas, causes and concerns.

I’m focusing my work on businesses – from PR and advertising firms to product and service organizations – being in shape to safely enter online conversations online using social media tools and practices.

In a time when marketing budgets are being slashed to save jobs, social media is becoming an increasingly viable communications option.  What companies need in order to get desired results are: education, preparation and tools. Social media tools are relatively free, and measurable benefits await those who learn how to strategically implement a social media plan.

I’m ready and able to ensure that strategy, training, tool selection and launch of social media marketing fit each business like a glove. Most organizations can get the job done in 90 days. As you think social media, I would appreciate it if you thought of me.

I’d love to speak with you or your trusted partners and colleagues about what works and what doesn’t, and share some of my recent experiences. Of course, you can find some of this on my blog at www.janetleejohnson.com.

Want to jump in? I’ll call soon…

Cheers,

Janet

Inspired (in part) by a post on ReadWriteWeb on how enterprise RSS is dead (really Marshall?), I thought I’d show how I use RSS every day. I think RSS is a critical business tool - especially for marketers - and it’s a free tool that can save time, increase your awareness and improve your productivity.

What’s RSS?

There’s a great 3-minute video called RSS in Plain English by Lee Lefevre of Common Craft on YouTube: http://smub.it/janet/rss. Watch it first, then pop back to me.

See you in a few.

Welcome back - wasn’t that a great, simple explanation?

So to me, RSS is about two things:

1. Subscribing - like my own custom magazine subscription, subscribing to RSS feeds is basically a way to have news and blog posts that you’re interested in come to you, vs. going out and searching for them.

For example, I like to read my friends’ blogs, and keep up with my clients’ blogs. I set up subscriptions every time someone announces they’re blogging, and every time I get a new client who blogs. I also like to read top technology and marketers’ blogs. So every time I find another interesting one, I subscribe to it.

To subscribe, you generally just right click on the RSS Feed button, which looks like this:

Copy the URL that’s there, and paste it into your RSS reader. Since every reader is different, I’ll show mine here - Attensa - where you click on the Add Feed button, and paste the URL.

Immediately your reader will start ‘listening’ to the web for you. I can read all of my subscriptions all in one place, my RSS feed reader. It looks like this: (Click on the thumbnail to get the full picture!)

2. Search - like an indefatigable watchdog, “persistent searches” alert when subjects I’m interested in (like my clients’ products, brands and names) are talked about online.

I set up searches in my RSS feed reader for every new client that I have. That way, if there’s something being said that I need to be aware of, I’ll know, and be able to either respond to it, or let my client know about it. I also keep a persistent search on my own name. I think it’s important to have early knowledge of anything being said about important topics and brands, and it’s incredibly easy to use RSS to do all the work for me.

To use RSS, you need an RSS reader, and there are tons of them on the market, tools from Yahoo!, Google, Portland’s Attensa and NewsGator… a list of RSS readers is here: http://smub.it/janet/rsslist.

Regardless of what you use, start experimenting with RSS. Start by doing what I do -

• Subscribe to your favorite blogs - read them from one place at one time…
• Set up persistent searches for yourself, your brand, your product names, or your clients’ brands.
• Set up persistent searches for keywords of interest to you - I keep my antenna looking out for “health 2.0″ and others.

One might think - due to my absence here - that I’ve just returned from some exotic trip over the holidays. Only in my mind. Although the view from my office was transported from a neighborhood of Portland to that of a Alpine ski village for about 10 days.  The holidays were delightful for me and mine… and I’m just now back to blogging.

I have been working away through the holidays, and am proud to say one of my recent client projects has just come into fruition: the delight of bringing Ellen Hoenig Carlson’s voice into the blogosphere.

Ellen is a long-time pharma marketing executive, and today consults with some of the most visible brands in the healthcare space. I’ve been lucky enough to be her Sherpa as she’s pointed her enthusiastic intelligence into the social media space.

Her post today is especially relevant to those of us who are contemplating 2009 with a mixture of excitement and fear. (Who isn’t, in this world climate?) One of five marketing points in her post today, “Stepping Up to Change in 2009” rang especially true to me:

“Breaking through fear. The brain is highly responsive to fear, and doesn’t allow for learning or new thinking when people feel afraid. Fear is one kind of stress that disables the very kind of thinking that we need most. “

Amen.

Just as we’re watching banks latch on to the money we’ve recently injected into the financial systems in this country, we must pay attention to how our brains latch on to fear - playing with it, allowing it to morph throughout the conscious and unconscious patterns as we go through our days (and nights).

Who’s been waking up at 3:00 a.m. and thinking anything but negative thoughts lately? Can we train our brains to focus on the positives (even in the middle of the night), or is it just best to turn on the light and read? (Note: a colleague of Ellen’s is launching a blog that will cover that very soon… stay tuned!)

Anyway, welcome to the blogosphere, Ellen. Your five imperatives for marketers in 2009 comes at just the right time for me. Thank you for lending a sane voice into an increasingly complex world. Perhaps in listening and learning, we’ll not only be better marketers for it, we may also sleep more soundly through the night.

I just stumbled a post by Dwayne Melancon over at Genuine Curiosity called “Picture of the Day” that had a great graphic of how to be productive every day. Ironically, a picture popped up on my screen that I really didn’t like at all - my profile, according to StumbleUpon:

Do I really want to simply be described as a 51 year old woman from Oregon, USA in my profile? (Hint: check the headline of this post.)

I’ll fill out profile information for just about any social network site I subscribe to… but never have I had one “mix” my profile information quite like StumbleUpon does. Sure, it’s truthful and transparent. I am a 51 year old woman who lives in Oregon.

But I would never describe myself that way to virtual strangers, would I?

Believe me, I’m not ashamed of my age or where I live. I love my life, my age, my home, my sweetheart, our dog, family and friends… pretty much most things about me, with the exception of my muffin top, which I’m really trying to control through yoga and my eating habits; and a few long-held beliefs that still hamper me. (TMI, perhaps but I’m really not afraid to share. It’s true. Just ask me!)

Just Ask Me

As more people find their ways into social networks, those who develop them must begin to think more about helping their users profile themselves, and create the best possible scenarios for them to do so.

Give me an option as I sign up (e.g. prompt me through a wizard), and I’d describe myself in a much more compelling manner.

• In StumbleUpon, I have to search to find my bio preferences. No. I should be prompted through them as I register.
• In StumbleUpon, the “Display my age” box is automatically checked. No. I should be able to “opt in” to show my age.

My fault for not setting myself up properly in the first place? You bet. I wonder how many others have just gone through the minimums there until they’re hit with their very own “picture of the day?”

Walking away from a wonderfully hilarious David Sedaris show last night, my sweetie said, “It’s Halloween, and all I want is a few peanut M&Ms…”

It was 10:00 p.m. We stood in Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square waiting for our MAX train to take us home, trying to figure out where we might get a bag of peanut M&Ms.

Unwilling to pop into one of the (fairly seedy) convenience stores downtown late on a pretty crazy Friday night, we decided we’d be quite happy with the delicious dark chocolate marshmallows we’d gotten for Halloween from Alma Chocolates.

As we walked the fifteen minutes down the hill from the train, though, her craving became mine, and my craving became almost obsessive.

Just a few peanut M&Ms…

We laughed at ourselves - frustrated and craving peanut M&Ms on the biggest candy night of the year - as an Audi station wagon drove by, windows down, occupants yelling “Happy Halloween!”

Thunk, thunk. They had thrown something out the window toward us.

I looked in the street, and lo and behold, right next to the curb were two little yellow packets of peanut M&Ms.

Turns out it was a miraculously Happy Halloween.