As an aspiring writer, I’ve had to learn a lot about the power of social media and branding. Understanding how to create and reach your audience is no longer the sole purview of agents and publishers. It takes a proactive and well-planned strategy to attract readers to your material and educate them about your brand. Exposure isn’t just a matter of having the loudest megaphone or the flashiest lights. With the right tools, the right timing, and the right strategies, virtually anyone can establish themselves in the social media arena. The key is to become a student of the process and learn from the experts.
In my case, Gunnar Simonsen has been instrumental in helping me learn and use the social media tools freely available. It was Gunnar who taught me the power of the Twitter hashtag. After using the #amwriting hashtag over just a few days, I gained several new followers, which ultimately led to short story being accepted by a new ebook application scheduled to launch in the summer of 2013. He also gave me some invaluable information about how to dialogue and network with people in the publishing industry and other writers like myself. I still have a long way to go. But thanks to Gunnar, my compass has been fine-tuned and I can move toward success with confidence and clarity.
I have known Marc for over twenty years now. We actually met while we were both attending Mt. Hood Community College. Marc is an amazingly gifted human being who I find is one of the brightest people I know. I asked him to write this short piece to best showcase how he used something as simple as a hashtag (or pound sign#) on Twitter to cut through the noise and reach his target audience.
And to be honest, my secret here is that I also wanted an opportunity to introduce him to each of you. Marc is a thinker with a deepness to him that comes out in wise words with a touch of snark. Do yourself a favor and check out some of his blog posts. I think the guy is brilliant and a gift to this world.
As for the kind endorsements he gave me in his post, I did not ask for them. But that’s how Marc rolls. I simply wanted to introduce you to him by way of something he took to heart on using social media that brought a meaningful connection. (I know a lot of folks don’t believe that is possible)
Please stop by his blog and Twitter feeds to say hello. I’m sure also Marc is cooking up something fresh for us all to read sometime soon.
Why must we all grow up? Can’t we just be like Peter Pan and stay young forever. Become one of the Lost Boys and roam the island that is Neverland.
“If growing up means it would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree, I won’t grow up, never grow up, not me.” ~ Peter Pan and the Lost Boys.
Can we take the tape and rewind? Go back to going to Grandma’s house and finger paint a masterpiece. Or when you would eat berries and dot the additional juice that was on your finger tips onto a napkin; covering it with the pinks, purples, and blues that fascinated you. The curiosity of what grass tasted like. You expected it to be like the kind from ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,’ but when you ate it you were disappointed to find out that it was indeed not candy.
I remember when I was about 4 I thought what people meant by “the ocean will sweep you away,” is that King Triton wanted a bigger population in Atlantis. So therefore I thought if you were “swept away” you would turn into a mermaid. I had thought about “turning into a mermaid” then I didn’t because I would miss my mom.
Don’t you miss how everything was a discovery? Such as, looking at a mirror and seeing your reflection. Confusion entering your mind because of the thought, “Is this me or another person?” And you wave and smile to see if your newly found friend would respond.
The feeling of your little fingers brushing the strings of a guitar. In awe of how such a magnificent sound came from just plucking one single string. And the urge to put your fist in the sound hole in the center of the guitar. When you heard someone playing it you couldn’t help, but start to dance. Twirling, jumping, and spinning around till you feel dizzy.
Thoughts of what you wanted to be when you grew up excited you. Whether it was being a Firefighter, Police Man, Rockstar, Vet, Artist, etc. Remember how you would re-enact what you would do on the job. I had wanted to be an Opera Singer, so I wrote songs and performed them for my parents. I remember being so proud of what I accomplished. Thinking about how I was going to be the best Opera Singer there ever was.
Now that I have looked back at these memories, somethings haven’t changed. I still have the urge to put my hand in the sound hole of a guitar. Also I put excess juice from berries that are on my fingers and I put them on napkins; so that my napkin is polka doted. Though whatever age you are, everyone of us will always be kids at heart.
The inspiration for this path came from a presentation by Rachel Hitchcock, whom I serve on the Portland Tool Bank board with. Rachel is an expert in development. When she gave this presentation, I immediately new I had to build a bridge from development to strategistics.
Peripheral vision is a part of vision that occurs outside the very center of gaze. (wikipedia)
Do people that stand on the side of roads twirling things, wearing sandwich boards, waving, and wearing crazy mascot outfits cause you to make an immediate decision to stop and take them up on their offers?
Or, have they just become a part of the scenery?
From an employers standpoint, who makes the decision that this works, and therefore a corporate memo goes out saying that soon, all branches would receive a trunk in the mail that houses a mascot uniform for some lucky part timer to have to model up on the corner of 9th and Broadway?
I saw a beauty earlier this week while driving to Lodi from Sacramento. The local Subway must have worked the seniority card and sent the newbie out to the street carrying a huge sandwich board (how ironic, being a subway) which straps to the newbie over the shoulder like a guitar strap.
I loved it. Slouched over with the board just hanging there, the employee just sat there looking down as she was text messaging the whole time.
Nice investment in payroll there. Everything I saw there told me everything I needed to know about that Subway shop… Don’t shop there. Seriously, that’s going to get me to stop everything and crave a foot long. Of course, as much as they have played that jingle makes me never to want to have a foot long ever again. But, I digress. Point here is… where do you want me to start making points?
No engagement equals no business.
I always love the Little Caesar mascot that carries a guitar like something and waves at me as I drive home each day. Well, maybe it just seems like a guitar because the mascot always seems to be rocking out on it like it is a guitar. My other thought here is… I thought this was Little Caesars? If so… why is this mascot outfit like 6 feet tall?
From my point of view… this person is engaging. It doesn’t make me want their pizza any more or less. It’s just the person inside does really funny things that catches my attention. It makes me wonder if Little Caesars has a training video for this and Subway does not. If so, I would so love to see this. It probably wouldn’t be better than the Krabby Patty training video from Spongebob, but it would be a potentially sweet view.
Quite frankly… does Little Caesars really need to spend payroll dollars on this? Doesn’t the fact that they have $5 pizza do the job for them?
I remember one evening driving home with my daughter. It was dusk and getting dark quickly when we drove by the local Wendy’s. Now, where they are located is where the turning lane starts for me to take a right and head towards my neighborhood.
With that said, who’s idea was it to dress up an employee to look just like Wendy and stand on the curb waving to cars?
First off… it was getting dark so you couldn’t even see her. (Which she probably figured out and that is why she was practically standing in the middle of traffic to get people to see her.)
Secondly, I nearly hit her and sent her straight to the McDonald’s drive thru window next door.
I don’t even know where to start with this one…
She either wanted to make the best of it or was threatened by her job to go drum up more traffic.
Either way… bad move and not effective.
I have actually over the years have begun to appreciate the furniture clearance folks that stand at street corners with their signs. To be honest… these folks have mastered the art of twirling. Sometimes, I may even get a few honks from behind me because I don’t catch that the light turned green because I was enamored by their talent.
Of course, I never stop or check out what they are pawning, but… they sure are engaging.
I myself had the opportunity to do this once. I refused.
The owners wanted me to put on a clown outfit and stand on the sidewalk of the busy street holding a sign that said… we have Bibles.
What?
This morning on my way to the airport, I was so bummed that I didn’t have my camera ready to snap the grand poobah of mascots. It was for a brake repair shop and no kidding… it must have been 4 feet tall and it was a brake with two hands sticking straight out and of course legs. The poor mascot outfit didn’t appear to allow for the person inside to control the arms and hands so they just stood there and wagged back and forth to try to give us passerby’s the appearance of them waving. The eyes and the smile on this lil feller were priceless. I laughed out loud inside the super shuttle on that one.
Now, for that… I may consider pulling in to have my brakes checked. Was I personally engaged by this? Not really. But, was it ever silly looking!
In the end, we all need something silly to engage our peripheral vision. It gives us a break from focusing on things that we are generally obligated to. Not sure it’s a good investment by employers. But, it sure takes the edge off life sometimes.
Have you seen one lately? Have you been one lately? Do they work?
I am not even sure why I am writing this… it’s how I think while I wait to board another plane.
I owe thanks to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for helping turn on my lights. Yep, it’s true. Something happened to me a few years back while watching a Facebook news conference that set in motion a journey for me that has brought me to a place where my personal and professional life has become intertwined.
God sure does work in mysterious ways.
In the press conference, Zuckerberg was talking about how Facebook was not in the business to build applications. They were in the business to build infrastructure in which application can then be built upon.
It is amazing that something so simple can be yet so profound. But first, let’s reverse engineer back to the meaning of these words.
Infrastructure: the underlying foundation or basic framework (as of a system or organization)
Application: ”the bringing of something to bear on something else”
With these definitions in mind, let me break down how they have impacted me from both a personal and professional stand point.
Professional -
If you have been following me over time, you will know that I have been working on a book for way too long. Well, as I write this, the book is finally only days away. To keep updated on the release, click here.
In the book, which is called Strategistics: How to Architect your Message for Viral Success, I discuss something that I believe is the infrastructure needed for one to drive their message in this new viral world we live in. In a sense, my book can be summed up as this…
So often, we are in a rush to be relevant. We are in a rush to say guess where I am in this fast growing social media world. As we do this, we don’t often realize that we are making a huge mistake. What we are doing in the rush to be relevant is to mistake application for infrastructure. When we do this, we eventually run out of ideas and therefore end up shooting from the hip our very message.
I recall watching one of the debates during the last election when one of the candidates failed miserably to answer a question. It was so bad they needn’t ever tried to in the first place. It was plain miserable.
As I watched, I thought to myself… you got to own it, to sell it. You can’t mail it in by simply cutting and pasting from the mind that which you heard from someone else. That’s simply applying knowledge on top of a lack of understanding of it to only appear to be one of knowledge rather than one that is of knowledge.
In the end, I believe this is the difference between intrigue and noise. Application without infrastructure is like a message without a rudder that only sets sail to create more noise and less effect.
Personal -
In my forties now and reflecting back at life, I recognize that we sure can collect a lot of baggage in life. With all of this baggage, have we ever stopped and truly took a long hard look at it and asked this one question… why?
So much of this baggage we must understand is baggage we were never meant to carry. So, why carry it any longer?
I too have come to a place recently where it was time for me to ask this question of myself. Certainly from time to time in the past I had asked it, but I was not ready to own it. And So, like insanity, I banged my head against the wall everyday and expected different results as I tried to fix it myself or sought to apply the guidance others had given me.
What was it, you ask? I suffered from low self esteem and approval addiction. Yep, it’s true. This was the effect of the baggage that which I carried throughout my life. The cause, you ask? That’s for another post.
With carrying baggage throughout life, too often it seems it collects on us unknowingly like barnacle on the side of a dock. In doing this, it has an effect on us in that at some point, we begin to believe that it is actually part of us and therefore it can cause us to become someone we were never meant to be.
Stay with me…
By the time I truly recognized this, I finally stopped long enough to see the wake I had left behind in life because of it. A lot of times, we are already aware of it but are too numb to do anything about it so we run the other way. Or as I stated a moment ago, we essentially seek to force the application upon what infrastructure we think we have by attempting to fix it long enough to survive another day while keep those around us at bay.
Oh, you mean to tell me this square peg will not fit in this round hole?
Here is where my lightbulb turns on.
Application is not sustainable when built upon faulty infrastructure.
What I realized is that for every time I made a bad decision and then cycled through it over and over and over, is that though for a moment the guidance I was given (or willed it myself) to help effect change worked, it was not sustainable.
Oh the pains of recidivism and we don’t even know it.
What I found is that though as well intentioned as they were or even I was, the guidance I was given was really a form of application. Yet, it was never sustainable because the infrastructure it was built upon was faulty and needing to be rewired.
Application was never the core problem. The infrastructure was.
And let’s be honest, when one is not ready to own something, they will say and do whatever they can to survive another day only to fall back into that vicious cycle once again.
As I said earlier, you got to own it to sell it and perhaps with this, you have got to own the infrastructure to sell the application.
Until I was willing to own baggage and recognize that I was never meant to carry it as well as own what I have allowed it to become in me, nothing I could do would really make one bit of difference. Sure I could seek to will it into practice with hopes of creating new habits, but it will not last.
So…
So, I let go and recognize my infrastructure (my heart) is faulty and needs to be rewired, replaced, or reconnected to this life I am seeking to live within.
It’s amazing when one can recognize the root of the problem and the effect it has on the guidance one gives it. Throwing application at a problem where faulty infrastructure dwells is like throwing darts with a blindfold on and hoping for the best only to find out later that you were aiming at mid air.
For me, I am ready to set sail with new infrastructure and upon this infrastructure, I am ready to put into action applications that will help me get the most out of life rather than life getting the most out of me.
And this is how infrastructure and application changed my life. Thanks Mark, I had no idea.
What does ready look like when there are no guarantees for tomorrow?
Too often as I speak to people I get the sense of hesitation or even the flat out admission that when they are ready, they will do __________.
But lets be honest, as I stand here and look directly in the mirror, what does ready look like to me?
What I have found within this introspective discussion with my self and a dear friend whom I meet with on an almost weekly basis is that how can one ever truly be ready when they have no idea what the now looks and/or feels like?
In a life where the battlefield is now, how does one maintain a clear view of the now?
Between seeking to out run your past and/or manipulating the future, when does anyone ever have time for the now and to further my point, when does anyone therefore, ever have time to be ready?
If one seeks to launch into implementation from a posture of readiness, one would be best served in doing so with with solid footing. Certainly finding oneself in a ping pong match between yesterday and tomorrow, how does one ever have the footing to win the moment?
And yet here I stand in life wondering… what does ready look like? When will I know when I am ready?
In asking these questions, do you want to know what the real irony is?
What does ready look like when there are no guarantees for tomorrow? Matter of fact, the only guarantee in this life was guess what? That last breath you took.
So, how must we now seek to dwell?
Life is built on a stack of moments. When built up, how will they stand? Will they stand? Will they fall? Will they lean to the left or to the right? And, what happens when they fall (and they will) will they rebuild stronger than ever?
It is my belief that the key to being ready is found in one’s ability to win the now. To win the moment and to be fully present in the moment. Certainly, we should all set goals, but these goals will never be fully realized unless we gave each goal each moment we face.
That being said, when one is pulled towards regret from their past to fear of their future, I question the even sound validity of that which was established as a goal in the first place.
So, how does one win this battle? If the battlefield is the now, we must put to rest the two opposing forces… the past and the future.
We must let go of the baggage we carry that we were never meant to carry. In this, we must also own that which we have allowed this baggage to cause us to then become which is that which were never meant to be. This means owning our actions and the wake that ensued.
In letting go of the past and letting go of the things we were never meant to carry, it is amazing how that holds the power to how we view our future. Put to rest your past and one’s future will seem like a breath of fresh air.
What does this look like? Well, it’s up to you. This could mean forgiving and/or being forgiven. Quite frankly, doesn’t it always?
Do you want to be ready? Make a your moments make a difference by putting to rest both your past and your future. This will maximize your now, increase your chance for success in the future, as well as give you a sense of more clear objectives of that future.
Why? Because the posture of living is a lot different than the posture of surviving.
What does ready look like? Are you ready? Who know’s what that next breath will hold… or if it will even come.
Life is built on a stack of moments… win them back and turn your readiness into action, now. Be free and soar. Your time has come.
And in the blink of an eye a decade past me by. Where has time gone since my last goodbye to the one who raised me?
Ten years ago today I said goodbye to my father for the last time. Though he was in a coma state for the last 24 hours, at 8:05 am on March 13, 2013, he took his last breath.
What a surreal moment that was. You could literally feel life leave the room.
And now ten years later I sit back and reflect the journey since this world last laid eyes on the one William Simonsen.
Life was sure different then. I recall driving home that morning crying out from deep inside…
Everything seemed so new. This very city in which I was raised was immediately a new experience for me. I would look at places I had driven by a thousand times and yet it seemed like it was the first time I ever laid eyes on them. This time, it was laying eyes on them in a world that no longer was my dad’s home.
Certainly these places didn’t change. I changed. My life changed. My view of this world changed.
It is amazing how we view this world through the eyes of the experiences we had with a parent. Good or bad, it molds us and we carry it. Though some experiences we were never meant to carry, we still carry them and we allow them to cause us to become them.
With my father, it’s funny how life works. As time passes from his passing, the lessons I learned become so much more clear. Kind of like the message on a side view mirror on a car, the objects in the mirror are closer than they appear, its just in life, sometimes we have to live a little before they become obvious or in some cases, we become willing to learn them.
My dad was an amazing listener. When he listened, you knew he was present. He wasn’t thinking about the next thing or the last thing, he was listening to the now thing of which was coming from your mouth.
My dad was a quiet person as well as a very private person. I think this age of social media would have drove him crazy. Heck, he worked for the phone company for like forty years and you could barely ever catch him using one.
My dad was also the funniest person I ever knew. If he thought something was funny, it was indeed funny. One thing I miss more than ever was getting my dad to laugh. When you could get him to laugh, the deep feeling of accomplishment was not comparable to anything I have felt this side of heaven.
To have your father smile upon you for something you said or did is something never to take likely. For some, as my friend whom I met with today, that was a memory never to be had. This breaks my heart.
Was my father perfect? No, and who is that walks among us? Did my father have pain and hurts? Certainly. Did he do the best he could at providing for his family? Yes.
I never heard I love you from my father until the last words he ever said to me before his passing.
It was a day or two before he passed when I saw him last. He was in bad shape and we knew the end was near. Every breath was an effort. On the outside I tried to look strong, but I know he knew… my inside ached to see him this way and my very life knew that soon… I would have to forge on without him.
In this, what was the one thing I needed to hear more than anything that would be like a baton handed off to me to set sail into a life beyond my father’s last breath?
His last words to me…
I love you, too.
I sit in a coffee shop all alone as I write this ten years after his final breath. In this, I wonder…
What have I become?
It is in this thought of what I have become that I notice something deep within my heart that has my fist clenching it so tightly.
A baton that has the words… I love you, too written on it.
Thank you dad for those final words. I love you much. I miss you much. For all the good things, thank you. For those times of not so good things… I forgive you. I know you were doing your best.
In these words, I find freedom. I find the ability to stop flapping my wings and start soaring. I find the wisdom to start working with the wind and not against it. Only then can one begin to soar. To say thank you. To say I forgive you. To say I love you.
In the blink of an eye it is now my turn. What will my daughter say ten years after my passing?
Recently, my good friend Dave Almgren and myself were able to sit down with Hollywood legend James Hong to discuss his role in an upcoming movie we have been working on called The Lost Medallion. Coincidentally, The Lost Medallion releases in select cities on March 1, 2013.
While discussing his role in the film, we asked James to talk about his career, advice for young up and comers in the industry, as well as his upcoming documentary.
In all, James said he as acted in over 500 films and has worked with actors all the way back to Groucho Marx and Clark Gable.
The day we met with James was his 84th birthday. What a treat it was to spend time with a legend!
For anyone who is a film buff or an up and comer in the industry, please take 5 minutes to watch this interview and glean wisdom from a legend.
As many of you know, I have been asked to bowl as a “celebrity” in the Bald Face Truth Foundation Bowl-a-Thon on February 23 from 4-5pm at Big Al’s in Tigard, Oregon.
Going up against various TV celebrities and one owner of the Portland Timbers, who am I?
Well, I am Gunnar Simonsen and I am humbled to be asked to be a part of this.
My job is to not just show up. My job is to believe in the work that this fund raiser will fund and then ask my community of friends to take part.
The work of the BFT Foundation is remarkable. The 501c3 non-profit Bald Faced Truth Foundation — helping kids in the areas of art, music, education and athletics. This is something I whole heartedly support and ask you to consider supporting to.
What can you do?
For a $20 donation, you receive shoe rentals and an hour of bowling with the proceeds going directly to children in our community who need your help. Or sponsor child bowler(s) who wouldn’t otherwise be able to participate with a donation.
Share this post with all of your friends. I may not own the Timbers or anchor the news, but I do have generous friends with huge hearts.
So, whether you can make it or not, or whether you are a good bowler or a well… a gutter ball bowler matters not. Please consider coming, having fun, and make a difference. And, if you can’t make it, pay it forward. It is only $20.
Here’s is how you can make this reality right now… (there are only a few more days to sign up)
I am a Food Network junkie. I am now a The Taste on ABC one, too.
Now, I am not going to write a full on review of why I am hooked on this show so early in its infancy.
However, what I will do is share a few thoughts as to why I have been impressed with them utilizing Twitter not only from the perspective of the shows handle, but also with the hashtag #TheTaste and the perspective of the many participants on the show.
I have a list of all of them on Twitter I created so I can keep up with them here.
While some shows boast an impressive singular line of engagement to and from the main handle or hashtag. I love the interaction from the competing chefs.
With this, not only is the main @TheTasteABC handle talking to fans with their message and interacting with participants, they are also doing so by listening to what fans are saying too.
For starters, check out the #askthetaste campaign on YouTube where you the fan can submit a question for the show’s celebrities to answer in studio. Is there any doubt that social media is a must have critical component to launching a new show? Here is a clip from #askthetaste.
But even more organically, during the episode aired Feb. 5th, my daughter and I were commenting on Chef Diane and her abrasive strategy within her own team. When the judges blind taste tested her food, they thought it was good.
“Why did it have to be good?” my daughter exclaimed.
What a great tweet to throw into the mix, I thought.
Who knew that Chef Diane herself would end up reading it and retweeting it? Awkward!!
But that is the nature of TV in this day and age. It is sure a far cry from growing up thinking the people on the screen were untouchable, unaccessible, and in a whole different universe.
Time will tell if this show will catch on for future seasons. (I hope it does.)
However, what they are getting right plays into what Eric Hoffer writes in his classic book The True Believer, in which he discusses the psychology of mass movements. In this book written in the 50′s he writes that the passions of the masses are a sense of belonging and equality. I would then add to this access.
Out of the gate tapping into these passions is critical with seeking to find a connection with your audience that will create hopefully longterm traction. Of course, one also needs intriguing content that meets a need. But for the sake of this post, we will focus on the interaction and access components.
What I also have observed about this show within this lens I am discussing is that by the sheer numbers of those participating and utilizing Twitter, they essentially are launching with their own Tribe in place.
Never mind the already immense popularity of the show’s judges and team coaches. All that is simply gasoline on the fire.
Talk about the passions for the masses being touched from the get go.
Of course this type of community throws the doors of opportunity wide open to how businesses both big and small can leverage the show to either drive their own business or perception of cultural relevance.
This is so brilliant. It reminds me of watching the Superbowl in 2012 where the Amazon mp3 Twitter account would tweet out a link with #superbowl hashtags to songs that were just featured in a commercial during the broadcast of the game.
Talk about brilliant, relevant, and meeting an immediate need. (or at least if it was a cool song.)
But, what about other businesses?
And why not? We are a nation of foodies, are we not?
But of course this is not the first show that has tapped social media in such a way, but for some reason to me, it stands out. Maybe because it is the fact that the participants own involvement gives it more of a tribal feel beyond just interacting with a brand or a celebrity?
It really reminds as well with how effective Nascar has been in embracing Twitter. I mean, beyond the TV hosts, that is a lot of race car drivers interacting with each other and their fans.
For writing a book in the 50′s, Hoffer sure nailed it.
Belonging and equality. (and accessibility. my addition)
Create it, nurture it, feed it, grow it.
I guess this is why social media starts with social. With out the social, it is simply media. And the difference there is the difference between that of a billboard and that of a conversation.
Thanks for the conversation #TheTaste! I have enjoyed it! I look forward to connecting again real soon!
Great job to @TheTasteABC!! I wish you much success!!
See you on Twitter!
P.S. I still would have tweeted that quote from my daughter about Chef Diane because after all, all is well.
![[INFOGRAPHIC] What Path will Your Message Take. #strategistics](http://gunnarsimonsen.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/image-1.jpg?w=190&h=110&crop=1 "[INFOGRAPHIC] What Path will Your Message Take. #strategistics")
By Marc Gilson
