The Face Behind the Artisanal Ball Bearing that Keeps Your Plane in the Air?
Don’t Mock the Artisanal Pickle Maker, read the headline in this past Sunday’s New York Times magazine.
It tackled something that I’ve been mulling for quite a while. It’s all well and good to make novelty t-shirts or artisanal bitters, but with small, home-spun craft businesses proliferating, can they really, seriously stay afloat? Continue reading
Yesterday at work, we were talking about how people engage with customer support. Some people use the phone, some people use Google and some people (though I don’t know any) use the manual. We were trying to better structure our support site, but we had to confront the simple truth that people access information differently. So our next question was naturally: how do we equip users with tools that help them filter better — match the need with the correct information more seamlessly? “It’s like being the Netflix of support,” I said. Continue reading
The other day, I was reading a long thread about pit bulls. Obviously, these pups suffer from a branding problem that gets magnified every time one of their members gets splashed across the news. The common thread of the mythos of pit bulls in the media is that there are dogs over here, and then there are pit bulls over there, pit bull being synonymous with scary, unpredictable monster. And if we fall into this type of reasoning, then it logically follows these monsters-not-dogs should be banned, banished, destroyed, right? Continue reading
A few days ago I was reading a blog post by a new mom and native New Yorker who was planning to move to the suburbs. In it were a lot of the familiar complaints about what a hassle it is to live in New York, how many compromises it entails, and how it’s just “not worth it” if you’re not making the most of everything you can do.
While reading this post on my iPhone I was partaking in the happy hour special at the bar at James, which is basically one of the best grass-fed burgers in NYC (please don’t tell) at half price from 5:30 to 6:30. Sipping on a James’ Revenge, I was smack dab in the middle of a moment that makes me feel like the luckiest girl on the planet.
You see, I’m precisely where I should be. I’ve lived here for years, came here for college, and even as I change as a person, my feelings and romance for the city remain a bedrock. That, for me, is the definition of true love.
I was thinking about this while coming home late from work one night in a cab in the rain sometime in the fall. Whooshing down Seventh Avenue South, I was reminded of walking those same streets as an undergraduate, how much has changed, and how much has stayed the same.
So in honor of Valentine’s Day, I want to take you on a tour of my first true love, New York. It’s a tour that exists mostly in my head but represents actual physical places.
The hassle thing is totally true, but hassles come with the territory of loving a complex character wholeheartedly, tenaciously. Don’t you think? Continue reading
Been a little quiet round here, and I didn’t mean to go silent. I love blogging, being able to take interesting people that I meet and ideas that I encounter and turn them into posts.
It’s just it’s been pretty busy lately. First of all, we launched SocialFlow Optimized Publisher last week. So much went into that from my side, from crafting copy to planning advertising to launching a new website to engineering social promotions to coordinating creative from design to coding. Whew. But I’m happy to say we launched it. Continue reading
Social Media Week is nigh upon us and Susan Halligan and I have been busily preparing a knock-out panel on the future of books and “social reading.” In a prep session a couple weeks ago, we gathered together Jason Carey of Brooklyn Public Library, Stephen Duncombe of NYU, Richard Nash of Small Demons, Aziz Isham of Arcade Sunshine and Corey Menscher of Findings.com to come and chat about some of the topics we would hash out during the conversation. Continue reading
I’ve written in the past about Facebook ads and how much of a boon they are for small businesses and nonprofits.
For instance, I created the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s first digital marketing program by purchasing ads that helped connect our diverse programming with appreciative audiences. These ads in turn put our programs in front of thousands of prospective ticket-buyers in the metro area who might not have otherwise heard of us.
One thing that I think is really important for a fledgling effort is building up a base of “fans” to consume and interact with the content you post. That’s why if you’re just getting started, I’d strongly suggest that you post an ad that asks for “likes.” You’ll find you can drive up your fan count really, really quickly with highly qualified individuals and prospects.
Now there’s even less reason to weigh the pros and cons of Facebook advertising — because the social network is giving away ad credit for FREE! Continue reading
This past week I got an email that the Brooklyn Academy of Music had just launched a blog. I clicked over and found BAM’s new blog on blogspot in commemoration of their 150th anniversary, already pre-stocked with a bunch of posts by the staff, including one that hit close to home, about Paul Auster’s Park Slope.
Cooper Hewitt, too, has just launched an interesting new twist on the institutional blog, Cooper Hewitt Labs, which takes you inside the Digital and Emerging Media Department at the Museum: Continue reading
Late last week, Chris Brogan had a great post up called 97 Ideas for Building a Valuable Platform. It’s jammed-pack with ideas on standing out, with so many I thought I’d underscore a few that resonated most with me here.
One common thread throughout the piece was something that should be familiar to readers of Jellybean Boom — a strong exhortation to get up and go. Continue reading
What does it mean to be a creator in 2012?
It means you’ve got to be ready to be your own cheerleader, creating websites, micro-marketing and just figuring out by hook or by crook how to get seen by the world.
But entrepreneur? Is this the new de facto addition all writers, actors, critics and filmmakers should be tacking onto their biographies?
Obviously, it was Louis CK really kicked the conversation into high gear.
The comedian had the audacity to self-distribute his latest comedy show “Live at the Beacon Theater” for $5 over the internet and made a cool million in exactly 12 days.
Imagine that. Continue reading
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