Archive for February, 2009

Posted on February 27, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

Email marketing booming in the recession, Bronto's CEO talks startups, marketing but thinking twitter with Tweetica

Yesterday Bronto, an email marketing service provider based in Durham, NC held an open house to invite the community to view their new office space. I got word about the open house event via twitter from a few of their coworkers (@Covati @djwaldow ) and decided to attend. Immediately when you walk in to the new Bronto, you’ll notice a huge dinosaur which is their logo/mascot and bright painted walls.

The space is awesome & I’m hoping to host a few meetups in the future there too. The event started at 5:00 p.m. and at 6:00 p.m. Bronto’s CEO Joe Colopy (@colopy on twitter) gave a brief presentation on the history of Bronto in which he talked about how he co-founded the company out of his house in 2002, the various office spaces and the how Bronto recently won the best customer service department award.

After Joe’s presentation I had a chance to ask him 3 questions:

1. Why does he think email marketing is so important, durning a time while companies are cutting marketing budgets.
2. What is his #1 reason why someone should use Bronto.
3. What advice would he give people looking to launch a start today.

Here’s the interview:

After the interview, Joe showed me a demo of his new twitter analytics and automation site called Tweetica. I was surprised that he was working on it but excited to see that a CEO with kids and a growing company has time to work on a new twitter app but I guess that what has made him so successful; always thinking ahead. Joe is thinking about the future of mobile and micro-messaging and how sites like twitter along with facebook status updates reminds him of email in it’s early stages and is looking to embrace those technologies with Bronto. Of course you can track the status of Tweetica on twitter as @Tweetica.

• Are you working on a startup during the recession?
• Does twitter remind you of the early stages of email?
• Are you using email marketing more or less now and if so what company are you using?

Posted on February 19, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

Talk Social News Episode 21: Adam Wallace of Roger Smith Hotel talks social media in New York, plus cotweet, twickie, hulu vs boxe and facebook TOS noise

There’s buzz about a hotel in New York that’s tweeting, blogging and doing almost everything that a hotel could do to embrace social media. That hotel is called The Roger Smith Hotel @rogersmithhotel and they’re hosting Social Media Breakfast events, they sponsored @NYCTwestivl, live streaming events and embracing the local NY local tech community. If you’re like us, you wondered how they got started using social media and who’s the man behind the tweets and movement. That man is Adam Wallace @adamjwallace and we had a chance to talk with him about the Roger Smith Hotel, how he got started in social media, advice for other hotels and business looking to do the same.

The interview: Talk Social News Episode 21 – length 48:00 download or click to play:[audio:TalkSocialNews0021AdamWallacerogersmith.mp3] Subscribe to podcast in iTunes:

Other segments of the podcast are:

News of the week:
twickie from @chrispirillo

@Cotweet

The fail of the week:
Hulu vs Boxee

Here’s a link to Kipp’s tweet on how to add Hulu back to Boxee

News of the week:
Facebook Terms of service (TOS) noise

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Posted on February 17, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

A look at social media and the future of the film industry: Joshua, Napoleon, Hill & Jane Fonda

I’m sure by now you know how the music industry is doing and it’s need to embrace the internet for more direct one to one relationships between the artist and the customer.  But what about the film industry? How will the film industry use social media to market  movies and continue to sell out theaters.  Here’s a look at three examples of using social media, online video and the film industry.

I recently attended BarCampCharlotte and met Joshua J. Mills @JoshuaJMills who’s the founder of Filmblazer @filmblazer. Joshua will be starting the Two-week Turnaround Tour or T3, that’s a community filmmaking project where he’ll travel to 14 cities over 7 months and write, shot and screen a short film in two-weeks. Joshua stated at BarCampCLT that in the future you’re going to be able to make a movie for $100,000 vs millions and compete with Hollywood. I posted the message on twitter and it seems that others agree.

This brings me to Napoleon Wright, Napoleon is a Filmmaker, director, producer and founder of Becauseus. Napoleon recently filmed and produced a Raleigh-Durham Hip-Hop documentary called: “One Day, Introducing Kooley High” .  The documentary is a 40-minuted film that chronicles a day in the life of Triangle-based rap group Kooley High and their desire to be heard. It was filmed throughout Raleigh-Durham, N.C and is produced in association with M.E.C.C.A. Records.

Napoleon released a few trailers on youtube and vimeo and the film was premiered at the Galaxy Theater in Cary, NC on January 24, and it  was sold out . Here you have a guy with a passion, time and skills to produce a movie way less than $100,000 and sell out a movie theater. I won’t say that he only used social media marketing to promote the movie because having a strong offline local community played a strong roll in the success of the premier, but using social media help spread the buzz about the premier to make it successful.

I had a chance to interview Napoleon early this year about the film, how he got started and what next, now that he’s produce a successful movie project. Take a look.

If you want to watch the movie “One Day, Introducing Kooley High” . here’s a link to the trailer here and the movie here.

What about current Hollywood actors; what are they doing while we’re seeing a trend of great independent films being produced and doing well on the internet? I’m not sure about everyone else but Hill Harper @hillharper and Tom Arnold partnered with upcoming producer Christopher Angel to make a film called “This is Not a Test” . While on a live chat with Hill and Chris they were talking about how they used social media marketing to promote the movie.

For more about “This is Not a Test” check out the movie website here or watch the trailer on youtube here.

As I’m closing out this blog post, I took a quick look at James Andrews @keyinfluencer facebook profile and I see that he helped legendary actress Jane Fonda to launch her blog and twitter account: @Janefonda . Hollywood is going social, get ready.

What are your thoughts on the future of the movie industry using social media marketing?

Do you think we’ll see more actors using social media to produce and market their own films?

Are you working on any video projects?

Posted on February 16, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

New Binary Game for the iPhone, competitive, fun & social by @Garyvee & @Yonnage

There’s a new additive app in the iTunes app store called Binary Game [itunes link] made by John Kassimatis @yonnage and Gary Vaynerchuk @garyvee The app cost $1.99 and if you’re good at math and very competitive I recommend you give it a try. Here’s a video screencast of the game.

If you’re watching @garyvee’s twitter stream then I’m sure you know all about the app, take a look at one of the 1st tweets about the game tonight.

I’m starting to see a trend from new iPhone apps being released in the app store. With so many app being created and everyone trying to cash in on the popularity of the iPhone, developers now need to do more marketing for their app to get noticed. But with all the marketing your app still must be interactive, fun and must do more than just fart to make a few thousands dollars from the app store.

With the Binary Game, Gary and John has created an app that’s fun, competitive and social. The game has has it’s own website http://b1narygame.com/ with a Challenge mode & Speed Mode High Scores page where you can see all the top 50 high scores.

Another trend I’m seeing is that almost every new iPhone app has it’s on twitter profile:

The Binary Game twitter profile is @b1narygame With @Garyvee ‘s popularity I’m sure this app will be a success and the @b1narygame profile will have more than 2 followers it has right now.

I’m going to stop here and let you download the game and recommed you give it a try, as I’m going to try to increase my score and stay on the Binary Game top 50 list.

What’s your thoughts on the game? If you have an iPhone app how are you marketing it?

Posted on February 9, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

Talk Social News Episode 20: Erik Martin of Reddit.com on community buidling, plus more google juice, iPhone updates, kindle 2.0 and the ma.gnolia fail

After a short break Talk Social News is back bring you the latest news in social media, online communities and technology. This week Kipp and Wayne interview Erik Martin @hueypriest , Community Manager for Reddit.com. Take a listen as we talked about how Reddit compares to other social news sites, the upcoming reddit iphone app, the role of a community manager, and how Reddit uses social media.

The interview: Talk Social News Episode 20 – length 38:12 download or click to play:[audio:TalkSocialNews0020ErikMartinReddit.mp3] Subscribe to podcast in iTunes:

Other segments of the podcast:

The what to blog :

http://www.wordle.net

In the fail of the week:

News of the Week:

Google Latitude and books
Kindle 2.0
and what’s next for the iPhone

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