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Brian Zen is Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Zenway.com (http://zenway.com) Inc., a New York-based registered investment advisory firm. He also serves as Director of Research at Superinvestor.net (http://www.superinvestor.net/), a collaborative research co-op for investment advisors and... More
My business:
Zenway Group
My blog:
Enlightened Investors Club
  • The Art of Digital Marketing

    Shelly Palmer knows a few things about the art of digital marketing and promotion. 

    While traveling in China one day, his car got stuck in traffic. He looked outside the window and saw all the cars on the road had stopped and all the drivers were busy honking the horns on their steering wheels.  A cacophony of car horns filled the air.

    Shelly turned to his driver: "What's going on?" The driver explained that all over China, drivers were participating in a national act of mourning by pausing for three-minutes and honking their horns in memory of the 50,000 lives that were lost in the 2008 Great Sichuan Earthquake. Shocked and amazed at the sight of this national act and how the Chinese people worked in unity and solidarity for each other, Shelly sensed the potential news-worthiness of this experience. He immediately pulled out his cell phone and posted on twitter.com that he was having this shocking experience in China.

    Within a few moments, Shelly got a phone call from CBS: "Are you in the middle of the China national mourning right now? Can you come on air via cellphone? ..."

    There you have it: Out of a short twitter digital message, Shelly Palmer, the master digital promoter, got his few minutes of fame on a national network TV station. Not bad for someone who pounces on every opportunity to generate some media buzz for his name sake.

    I recently had a chance to attend Shelly's one day seminar "Get Digital: Reinventing Yourself and Your Career for the New Digital Economy" through the courtesy of Seeking Alpha. Bringing your own notebook computer to the event is a requirement: for a whole day, Shelly hooked us onto the web via wireless connection and shared all kinds of tips on how to market yourself and your company via the social networking websites.

    It was an interesting seminar full of marketing insights presented with a sense of humor. A few takeaway tips are:
    1. "Google" your name and remove things that could hurt your professional image.
    2. Active use social networking sites to find prospects and form business networks.
    3. Use webtools like facebook and twitter to broadcast news updates about yourself.
    4. Email your contacts and prospects regularly. Publish a newsletter.
    5. Invest in a contact management and mass email software, such as ACT! or GoldMine, to personalize your email blasts instead of using primitive "cc" or "bcc" email fuctions.

    After the seminar, we got a homework email where Shelly showcased some of the best links for social networking and his preferred contact management software where you can send out mass email blasts with individually tailored emails.

    With Palmer's tips, this author personally rolled up the sleeves and tried GoldMine email software. The bad news is that I had some problems configuring it with gmail's server. I also tried a few tricks Shelly suggested and was delighted to find out that you can really get in touch with a lot of people with various social networking websites. The downside? You get lots of junk emails and distractions as well, even if you follow Shelly's advice not to post your email directly onto the web. Instead, Shelly suggest posing emails in the form of: info (at) zenway.com, so spammers would not be able to harvest your email address.

    The "Get Digital" seminar is designed for those who do not have an active digital life. For the experienced users of social networking websites, the event could be a good place to network while getting interesting insights from a master internet marketer.

    Tags: GOOG, MSFT, Internet Marketing, Social Networking, Email Lists Management, Conferences, Get Digital Conference
    Apr 15 12:12 am | Link | Comment!
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