Friday, I planned to do my usual, hit Four and Twenty Blackbirds for a new tradition I’m calling Summer Pie-days.

It’s a chance to sit down and think about small business marketing — what I can write, what resources I can create, how I can build connections.

This Pie-day had different plans for me however. I ended up miscalculating my way to Bushwick, wandering down brightly lit industrial streets in the summer swelter looking for 3rd Ward.

This place was slightly the Wonka’s Chocolate Factory of creative spaces for me — intimidating and inscrutable.

What I found inside was a pleasant surprise. An amazing space, and an incredible incubator for Brooklyn makers. Woodshops, artists studios, classrooms, coworking spaces — the place seemed to faintly hum.

I really enjoyed talking to the folks at 3rd Ward about their community, many of them local Brooklyn businesses, exactly the sort of passionate people I most like to work with.

Of course I made it a Pie-day, at Roberta’s. Man I had forgotten how good this was.

I hadn’t imagined my Pie-days being this adventurous but what can I say?

The post Summer Pie-Days (Bushwick Edition) appeared first on jellybean boom.

Summer Fridays are a beloved New York media company institution.

I remembered when I first heard about them. It was likely my first full time job, slinging copy for the Quality Paperback Book Club. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, all of Friday afternoon gloriously off!

Now that I’m indie, I have to be more conscious about not falling into a work hole. So I’ve been thinking a lot about “Summer Fridays” — what would it mean if I took them?

I think I’d like to use the opportunity to work on something that’s more of a lark, something fun.

I thought a bit about holding office hours at my favorite pie store, Four and Twenty Blackbirds. But I’m also on a crusade to stop spreading myself too thin. And once I start hearing about cool business challenges, I get obsessed. What can I say?

So I think I’m going to use my summer pie days to start working on a marketing resource for small businesses that I’ve been toying around with in my head. Guidance on being authentic and social and unmistakably you in your marketing efforts. How to master the basics like online advertising and showing up in search while building your fledgling brand.

I’ll need help with this. So if you have a small business and need to boost your marketing efforts, leave me a comment or drop me a line. I just might enlist your help as a “beta tester.”

Now, back to this pie!

The post Summer Pie-Days appeared first on jellybean boom.

Image via Marissa Mayer’s Tumblr!

I just spent the last weekend grilling my friend’s fourteen-year-old niece about her cohorts’ use of digital media.

Did you know that teenagers don’t use email?

They love Snapchat and something called Kick?

And Facebook — never, ever Facebook!

Everything changes so fast. Even my opinions about Tumblr. You may have heard a thing or two in the news about the blogging platform/social network Tumblr since it’s recent acquisition by Yahoo. For like more than a billion dollars. Obviously someone was impressed by the 100 million strong blog network.

I, on the other hand, was initially very put off by the service’s poor reliability and it’s incredibly bad performance in search.

Now I’m starting to explore what it can do for brands and I’m starting to like it a lot more.

Why? Because while it is a lot like a blogging platform, it’s also as fast-moving and mobile friendly as Instagram, and relationship-driven like Twitter.

Marco Arment (who basically cofounded Tumblr with David Karp) wrote an insightful blog post over the weekend:

MySpace was where you went in the past, WordPress and Movable Type were where people went if they had the patience and writing output to maintain a traditional blog, Facebook was where you went to define yourself by schools and checkboxes, and Tumblr was where you went to make your own identity and express your creativity.

So that’s how I came to appreciate Tumblr, because it’s a little bit like platforms I like for marketing, and yet a little bit different. I am trying it for a restaurant client after perusing how many restaurants are using Tumblr successfully. Here’s a good list.

So, do you Tumblr for your business?

Here’s a few reasons you might consider it:

You’re in a Tumblr sweet spot

Obvious categories include food, retail, fashion, books, creative fields. Here are some ideas to get you started.

Your product is highly visual

You either have or can produce a number of visual assets (see Cirque de Soleil). Or, like Sharpie, you have a product used and beloved by many.

You use Tumblr for a clever campaign

Maaco is a great example of a business that is not particularly interesting or visual on its face. Yet they are doing a very clever and interactive campaign called “Maacover” on Tumblr right now, prompting fans to submit their own photos of junker cars that need new life. Which just goes to show a little creativity goes a long way.

Getting started on Tumblr

1. Pick a good name. Your business name is a great place to start.

2. Find and follow blogs in your niche

3. Pay attention to what’s on your Dashboard — that will be other blogs’ posts relevant to your business category.

4. Participate in the community. Be sure to reblog and look at other blogs.

5. Tag your posts with relevant keywords so people can find you!

6. Publish great content regularly — especially pictures!

The post Should You Tumblr? appeared first on jellybean boom.

For too many people — especially small businesses and nonprofits — mobile is still an afterthought.

It’s understandable. For a long time, you had two choices for having a mobile website — create a mobile version of your website, or create a mobile app. 

Both of these options were fraught with complications. A mobile version of your website required a lot of extra work, and might not look good on all devices. A mobile app was incredibly trendy for a while — causing all matter of media companies to spend a lot of money on apps that no one needed. Both approaches cost a lot of money and required fairly intensive development, two things which small business and nonprofits have in short supply.

Luckily, there is a third path, a really awesome path that puts content front and center, and allows for maximum flexibility.

Behold the mobile responsive website, that is, a website developed to respond to the device on which it is viewed.

This example is from Copyblogger, which has a great article on mobile responsiveness.

That’s right — view the website on desktop, laptop, iPad, Android phone or iPhone and it looks great.

Even better? It’s not a version, with cut-down features. It’s not an app that you have to download. It’s your website. It looks and functions like your website.

The great thing is that it’s increasingly easy to get a mobile responsive website, especially if you use WordPress. WordPress users can choose from a wide array of themes that are inherently mobile-responsive. In fact, I’ve created a class on making a mobile-responsive website with WordPress’s free default theme, Twentytwelve.

Next time you’re surfing the web, check out whether the site you’re on is responsive or not by dragging the right hand corner to make the window smaller. If the website adjusts, you’re looking at a mobile responsive website.

If the cost of mobile has been holding you back, maybe it’s time to take a look at the options that are available now.

Your readers will thank you.

Check out my class now>>

The post Why Making Your Website Mobile-Responsive is Easier Than You Think appeared first on jellybean boom.

Gary V…does not know how much women are shaping social?

So. Gary Vaynerchuk, the digital media guru who launched a thousand brands into the social media sphere, just released a two-part list of “19 Essential Twitter Follows.”

And…amazingly, it’s almost all male. Just 2 women in 19.

Before you say I’m jumping the gun on his little list — hold up. This is Twitter we’re talking about. I mean, not only do women dominate the major sites like Facebook and Twitter as users, but to borrow a favorite Gary V. phrase, they “crush it” as practitioners and thought leaders in the space.

Yep, in every niche and corner of social, women have been leading the way since day one, and innovating all the time since. So where is the love, Gary?

I think Gary needs more women on his radar, so I made a little list of my own. Women who have influenced my social game. Women who consistently bring a lot of value to the table. Women Gary (and you) ought to know about.

I left out some of the ladies who influenced me a ton but who are extremely well known (@kanter, @swissmiss and @pistachio are good examples) to follow Gary’s model of calling out people who really deserve more attention that they are getting. I’m 100% sure I have inadvertently omitted amazing gals, so I will be adding to this list, on the blog and on Twitter.

But for a start, here goes…follow them!

Aina Abiodun - Aina is at the forefront of a new way of telling stories using technology in innovative ways.
Follow @ainaabiodun

Paloma Baytelman - She Tweets frequently in words I cannot understand (Spanish), however I know this Fullbright scholar is one smart lady. And I know she’s “Twitter famous” but because she came to a taco party I threw I consider her a neighbor. Follow @Paloma

Emily Best – Emily is reinventing the idea of filmmaking and community through her startup Seed and Spark. Follow @emilybest

Ope Bukola -  Ope does a terrific job of pulling together resources around tech, education and entrepreneurship. Follow @ope_bukola

Emily Cavalier – Emily is an incredible connector of passionate people — and a trove of insight on business, digital and food! Follow @ECava

Lauren Cerand is a glamorous woman-about-town who helps authors and publisher build their profiles. Her Twitter stream is eclectic but always thoughtful. Follow @luxlotus

Kristina Drury – I took a wicked awesome Skillshare from Kristina about doing demographic research, and ever since she’s been a must-follow in my world. Follow @TYTHEdesign

Cheryl Furjanic - My old and good friend Cheryl really understands what it means to cultivate an audience in the age of Kickstarter and she’s shaped my game so much through her intelligent writing and teaching. Follow @cfurj

Roxane Gay – I discovered Roxane through her epic Tweets about Elizabeth Wurtzel’s New York mag piece, and I was like “where have you been all my life?” Hilarious and intelligent commentator.Follow @rgay

Susan Halligan – Marketing presenter extraordinaire and a big influence on the incredible NYC Digital Culturals Group (which hosted digital folks from just about every museum and cultural you can think of), Susan has definitely shaped my game in social. Follow @srhalligan

Julia Kaganskiy – she wrote the Twitter book on the intersection of art and technology in this crazy city.  Follow @juliaxgulia

Kristin McCracken – Kristin built the vibrant social presence around Tribeca Film Festival, and her secret sauce around Facebook engagement, particularly, is worth emulating. Bonus — her tips about pop culture are never wrong! Follow @kmc1213

Emily Meitner - We “met” on Twitter originally. All I know is that Emily is a gal to watch as she build her New York Creative Interns empire. She’s a connector and a prolific Tweeter. Follow her!Follow @emilymiethner

Jennette Mullaney gives awesome and social insights into museum world. She was at the Met Museum, and now is at the High Line, how cool is that? Follow @JennetteM

Mira Ptacin – discovered her through a moving essay in Guenica, and have stuck around for her incisive updates on the writing life. Follow @MiraPtacin

Nichelle Stephens – Cupcake guru, food-tech conference organizer and entrepreneurship writer — Nichelle does a little bit of everything! Follow @niche

Felicia Sullivan – A frequent and witty Tweeter with a distinctive voice, Felicia knows how to mix intelligent commentary about the business of social and digital with Tweets about her passion for food and design. Follow @felsull

Frances Uku - Wherever creative folks converge, you’ll find Miss Uku reporting on it in clever 140 character bursts. Follow @missuku

Who else? Tell me who you’d add and let’s help Gary expand his horizons a little bit!

The post Amazing Women That You (and @GaryVee) Should Be Following on Twitter! appeared first on jellybean boom.

It absolutely blows my mind how much technology has changed our orientation towards major crises like these. You see that in incredibly positive ways (such as Redditors rallying to help and Google running a people-finder), but you also see a grab for attention. Publications pushing to be first, bloggers posting reflections within hours or even minutes.

Adweek, for instance, quickly posted a piece called “Boston Marathon Tragedy Shows Why Brands Need Human Touch” within hours of the event to upbraid major brand about posting automated Tweets and Facebook status updates during an unfolding crisis (the post was later taken down, likely because of the outcry over its timing). I saw a number of social media gurus, too, posting about stopping automated updates.

I manage social media for several clients, and because it’s part of my job to be thinking about making them look good on social’s 24-7 cycle, I was cognizant of the fact that beyond my own shock and horror at what was happening, it was my responsibility to look at what I had planned in terms of their social updates. I needed to adjust their plans on the fly.

At the same time, I have mixed feelings about calling brands out for posting automated updates. I have mixed feelings about posting anything at all to be honest. That includes messages of support and encouragement from brands which runs the risk of seeming self-aggrandizing.

Throughout my career in social, I’ve had the experience of building huge, highly engaged communities for brands literally by hook or by crook, through one-on-one interaction after one-on-one interaction, AND harnessing and fully utilizing automation and optimization technology at huge scale. Because of that I can say that none of the issues are cut-and-dried. But I’ve been thinking a lot about them, both in terms of how I interact with other in social and how I do so on behalf of the brands I work with.

Twitter and the news cycle

Twitter is an incredible tool for capturing news in real time. I had a chance to learn this first hand while working at SocialFlow, where I wrote and edited data-driven stories about the news for our blog.

The brilliant research team there studied the way news filtered out on social media during the raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound, the East Coast earthquake of 2011, and the KONY2012 saga and produced stunning analysis and visualization. I took that material and help to craft it into compelling blog posts.

It became clear to me looking at all of that data that Twitter is without a doubt our first and most valuable tool during a real-time event. While it does at times offer false reports, it also gives all of us incredible proximity and access to what’s happening on the ground. Social can also be life-saving, as I explored in Trends that Matter 2011: Geolocation and the Social Media of Crisis.

Twitter, however, is a unique case that’s tuned specifically to what we call “real-time.” During events like the marathon tragedy, it is literally taken over by the conversation. Facebook is not completely “real-time” in nature and does not follow the exact same pattern. We turn to Facebook to find out what our friends and family think about something. We turn to Twitter to track something second by second.

What’s Your Plan? 

Have you had an internal discussion about what happens to your company’s social media during a crisis? I’ve had enough experience with this to have a feel for it — and I generally make adjustments on the fly — but it wouldn’t hurt to call together the relevant players and adopt a “wait and see” pause when a major news event takes place.

Automation

To hear social media gurus with large staffs tell me to never automate updates strikes me as incredibly arrogant.

At the same time, I have a deep-rooted feeling that Twitter works best when not automated. You definitely see that when Twitter ripples with of-the-second updates and nuggets of info during times when the information it conveys are literally matters of life and death. This is truly Twitter at its most transformative and world-changing.

Do I think there’s a place for automation? Absolutely. But I also think that some of your most effective brand-building and profile building happen when you cultivate a one-to-one relationship,  a human “voice,”  with your audience. That was true for me when I was building the Film Society’s nascent social presence and I see it working incredibly well for even multi-million follower accounts like Whole Foods’. I was at a conference over the weekend on food and tech of the weekend and I realized that all of the accounts that I saw as real models were thoroughly and completely human in the way they approached social, even if that meant they might not be achieving optimal leveraging of all their content at all times on all fronts.

In other words, be human. It’s human to feel, it’s human to make mistakes.

And sometimes it’s human to be at a loss for words.

The post What We Talk About When We Talk About Social Media During a Crisis appeared first on jellybean boom.

Daniel Delaney of Briskettown at work.

But email marketing has great things to offer BBQ, says Pitmaster Daniel Delaney of Briskettown. I saw him speak on a Social Media Week panel at Whole Foods Bowery on social media and the food business.

He said something surprising but nonetheless essential: email is a major tool for his operation, helping him to turn a quixotic dream of toting a BBQ smoker to NYC into an actual revenue-generating business.

Why should you care? Because in addition to thinking about paid marketing, social and PR, you really owe it to yourself to give this tactic a second look.

Here are some resources for building an email list:

The Big Idea: Using RSS Feeds for Fun and Profit

Building Email Engagement and Click-Thrus the Groupon Way

2 cool free email tricks that you should try right now

The post BBQ and Email Marketing appeared first on jellybean boom.

I love the video above.

Obviously, it never happens. So what does work when you’re looking to get noticed?

That’s the subject of an online class I’m teaching in April with Skillshare.

Resume 2.0 is the quickest route toward burnishing your personal “brand” — along with getting all of your wonderful, brilliant and talented online “selves” on the same digital page.

We’ll look at people who have used the web to create wildly successful careers — people like Amanda Palmer, Heather Armstrong, Lois CK and that gal who made $600K with a self published novel and extrapolate and apply their secrets.

By the end of the class your online self will be whipped into fine digital shape through:

A Brilliant Personal Positioning Statement

Whether you’re making chitchat at a party or sharing an elevator with Richard Branson, never again struggle for the answer to the question “What do you do?”

A Strategic Action Plan

Forget about just getting by — what is the prize you are ultimately aiming for? Sundance Grand Jury Prize? Book deal? Major coverage for your startup in Tech Crunch? We’ll map the distance between the here and now and mind-blowing success in your personal Strategic Action Plan.

You-Inc-Dot-Com

Creating an online destination that showcases your talents and pulls together the disparate social media channels that you use doesn’t have to be time consuming. In the course, we’ll create personal websites with the Wix platform — a free tool with lots of great looking templates that will help you set up your very own personal website in no time at all.

Along with powerful case studies of those who’ve used the web to supercharge their careers, this course will also teach you:

• How to search-engine-optimize your resume
• LinkedIn: the five key areas where the words you choose can make or break you
• Video – how to use and what to choose to showcase
• Strategies for using the web to uncover the hidden job market

34 students, filmmakers, artists and entrepreneurs have already honed their online selves with Resume 2.0. Here’s what they have to say:

“Amanda is an amazing instructor. She conducted the class with a perfect balance of student interaction, Q&A, and ‘lecture.’ I learned a lot and had fun! I would definitely take another class with her,” -Lisa

“Resume 2.0 was a wonderfully interactive experience.” -Yang

“Amanda is a digital marketing guru with a warm teaching presence. Her classes have been both informative and really enjoyable.” -Mitch

“Very informative. The best part was honing POV and passions as I find it’s always hard to talk about myself.” -Allison

Amanda is a great teacher who really knows her stuff.” -Nomsa

If you yearn to make your mark and connect with more awesome professional opportunities, sign up for Resume 2.0 now!

The post Whip Your Online Brand into Shape in Just 3 Weeks? I’ll Show You How! appeared first on jellybean boom.

It was hosted by American Express OPEN Forum, and featured speakers who come from the startup, venture funding and public policy worlds.

How do we make the entrepreneurial environment more open, inclusive and diverse? This was one of the most interesting questions raised by the panel. Check it out to hear more on the topic.

The post Fostering Entrepreneurial Ecosystems (A #SMW panel) appeared first on jellybean boom.

Seriously — they exist. I was one of them. I know I am lucky. Through awesome friends and professional contacts, I scored a fair amount of work. Not just any kind of work, but interesting, challenging work with clients doing cool things. It all just kind of fell in my lap.  Except for a few nail-biting moments in the Fall where I was juggling an outsized group of projects, I had enough quality time to maintain my mayorship of Prospect Park. Life was good.

This Spring, as the tax man approacheth, I have faced a bit of a reckoning. It’s nice to be lucky, and beyond amazing to have great clients and awesome friends, but where am I going with all of this? What’s the bottom line? Looking at all those little stubs and receipts I felt an overwhelming desire to build a bigger picture.

I realized that I need to keep a better balance sheet, set strategic goals for myself, and doing a better job of putting my best foot forward and winning new work.

However, between my lofty goals and my present reality is a lot of legwork, right? A lot of boring stuff, like writing proposals. While I can write quickly and on deadline, I dont know, I freeze up when faced with the prospect of a blank proposal page.

In my darkest hour, I started Googling for help. And it turns out that there are actual, you know, applications, that take the pain out of writing proposals.

I just tried one, Bidsketch, and I am thrilled at how much less sucky it makes the process of proposal writing. It gives you a template, and you simply fill in the blanks with your own unique spin. Press a button and voila, you have a crisp, beautiful and extremely professional-looking proposal. I especially like the way I can customize my own boilerplate to make the process of writing the next proposal that much less annoying. Basically, this nifty little software has taken away all of my excuses to not beat the streets for more work.

While Bidsketch cannot actually write the proposal for you, it basically does the next best thing…make it dead easy, so you have no excuse but to get out there and bid on more work. Who can argue with that?

So if you are a proposal procrastinator like me, give it a try.

The post An Easier Way to Win Awesomer Jobs appeared first on jellybean boom.