NEMOA Idea Blog

Idea #3 - Cool Ideas from the Spring '10 Conference

So many great ideas came out at our recent conference in Boston... I'm going to start with Andrew Davis from Tippingpoint Labs. The first cool thing about Drew was that he presented using a tool called Prezi. The format was much more dynamic than PowerPoint. Watching a Prezi presentation is more like watching a film than watching slides. I checked out the pricing on Prezi and it is incredibly competitive. If you do any sort of presentations, check out this new software.

Drew's focus at the conference was what is coming up next for direct marketers on the web. His big take-away: Make sure you understand that "search" is at the center of the universe. No matter how great your web message is, if people can't find you, you are not on the map. And get to know the new sites people are using for search like Flickr, YouTube, 5min.com (a "videopedia"), ted.com (incredibly interesting posts here), kosmix.com, and duckduckgo.com. Don't depend just on search results in Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Drew was amazed that most of our group was not blogging and not posting podcasts.

All of this takes time, yet it is where the market is headed. It's hard to keep up - and it's fun to jump in.

IDEA #2: A clever way to use FaceBook for business

I'm not a big advocate of using FaceBook for business except to set up Fan sites and common-interest groups. But I saw a post the other day from a friend on FaceBook to "look up" my first name in the urban dictionary, www.urbandictionary.com. The deal is to post the link to urbandictionary as your status update, then in the comments area give the urban definition of your first name. The definitions are funny and outrageous - so you do it. And now I've been to urbandictionary.com. FaceBook made me look. No sales pitch. No giveaways. Just a clever use of curiosity and humor and I visited a new website.

How can you apply this to your business?

Welcome to the NEMOA Idea Blog

Idea #1: Jump

One of the coolest things about the web is that allows for a free exchange of ideas - sort of like NEMOA, except we exchange ideas during conferences which we pay for and have to travel to...

So why not keep our excellent discussions going in between conferences?

All of us in direct marketing are looking at how to best use social media, like FaceBook, and Twitter, and  blogging... Seth Godin advises in his blog: Don't over-analyze social media. It's free. Jump in and start being part of the discussion. If you wait until you have everything perfect, you'll miss out. Express an opinion. Dare to be wrong. Get started!

We hope this blog becomes a place where you can find and post great ideas on business, marketing, and direct marketing. If you like an idea or it inspires a comment - please do. And please feel free to pass ideas you like along to fellow marketers or to contact me with your own great ideas.

More to come...