Millenium Marketer

OK I admit it.

I’ve been kind of out of it. There should have been fresh posts here since January 1st. Well, the truth is, while blogging isn’t perfect, the perfectionist in me doesn’t want you to see half-baked ideas randomly thrown on a page. I am thinking strategy, so if I am quiet, that’s a good thing because you probably don’t want to see what it looks like in my head.

So, apparently I can’t write as fast as I can think.

Even though the inauguration is tomorrow, I’ve had my mind on other issues, mainly cows, pigs, chickens and manure.
Yes, you’ve read that correctly: manure. I’ve been working on an event to appease a different part of my brain and stomach: the culinary arts, business and the environment.

I’ve recently learned that manure is causing a huge economic problem, called “externalities” where local communities in the US are suffering because of excessive quantities of manure due to dairy cows and mass meat production. And no, cows do not sing happily in green pastures.

So, what’s a girl to do about it?

In the past couple of months, I’ve been trying to learn more about where food comes from. The seed of thought was planted by CleanFish CEO Tim O’Shea months ago during an impassioned interview on TriplePundit.com. It took me a while to convince the President of Net Impact Silicon Valley to move on this issue, but we’re finally there!

If you are local to the SF Bay Area, come meet us at Bistro 413 on Emerson Street on January 28 for a deep look at entrepreneurship, food ethics and eating local.

I think you will be shocked by the origins of your food, but I would hope that would not stop you from having a good appetite–there will be hors d’oeuvres!

Until this event comes to fruition, social media and technology as a journalist’s beat is on hold. Business and management will take the front seat soon, but just hang tight….

There’s been a lot of my mind lately so the range of topics on this blog are really going to go all over the place for a little while and I hope it won’t be too hard to follow. Mainly, I’ve been out in the world talking to people and it’s tough to process all the ideas that are coming from different directions. I’m directly enjoying the benefits of info-preneurship (see my Mission statement).

So instead of write about any one topic, I decided I would outline a few of the things that I’ve been up to, and which are all experimental conversations that may or may not apply to you. I’d like to hear your comments on any one of these.

Social networking

This week, I’ve come back to social media and using LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Twitter as of late has become my main news feed. Twitter is great but it is also an awful distraction if you enjoy clicking links as much as I do. I thought that if I got back into it, I could find trends on what people were talking about and thus have better ideas on what to write about, but it’s really all over the map. People are talking about the Red Sox, Obama, a trip to Tokyo, and the last conference they went to or the next one they are going to.

It’s ridiculous and really obvious that Twitter is not going to tell me what people want to read on my blog. So, I decided whatever it is, it has to be professional but still transparent and personal. I’ll range between the two extremes until I find my blog’s sweet spot. So I think what I want to talk about next is the radical idea of crowd wisdom, because that is a theme that is coming up a lot for me.

Peer Resistance against social media and crowd wisdom

Some of my older friends, even those who say they are into social media, or the engineers out there who are really tech savvy, most of them don’t really understand some of the things that I do online because I do it differently.

Their way of getting news is different and they might even think that the way I do it is a little foolish, only because they can’t understand it. So the next post is going to discuss this in greater detail.

Staying connected: Touch point analysis

These two weeks were a whirlwind of new insights for me, mostly gathered from talking to other people. It is both exhausting and rewarding, and I love the challenge. High Riseis now my very good friend, because it’s a CRM for individuals who just need to keep track of conversations. At some point, I will have to figure out a strategy so that my touch points are consistent. There are email templates to be created as well, but that requires carving out a chunk of time to do so.

So I’m more certain than ever that you can’t hide behind your computer screen and send emails and IMs to people all day. Lead generation seems to require two key qualities that people don’t always talk about: persistence and optimism. That sounds vaguely familiar…oh, yes, that is what we say about entrepreneurs.

If you’re not too familiar with networking, Irene Koehler’s blogpost, “Top 10 Tips to Totally Suck at Networking Events” will make that entry into networking bliss a lot less painful. The main idea is that it’s not about you, it’s about them.

So, they say on blogs that Content is King, but actually it’s not true. Reciprocity is King, which makes Cialdini one very brilliant man.

I hate to say this, but I didn’t get to make it to Social Media Camp. And it’s really a transparency thing than anything else to admit it, since I promised I might write something. I watched a few tweets during the day from @marianne_m from wordpress, @chrisheuer (but of course!) and @Pistachio talking about some Tweetups for Blogher also happening this week.

Things got a little crazy today. I have to say though, I have my eye pointed towards the social media horizon and I am going to get my questions answered.

I’m in the Hayes Valley Café Boulange and I am in love with this place. It makes me feel like speaking French…“J’ai hâte revenir à Paris!!!”

I just looked up LinkedIn and found this in my newsfeed:

“between 1pm and 3pm PST (after lunch) or between 5pm and 7pm PST (after work) are the best times and Thursday is the best day. The worst time to post? Between 3 and 5 PM PST on the weekends – nobody cares.”

I’m trying this out to see what happens.

The funny thing is, I am not sure if announcing the best time to post will really get many eyes on the page, because information fatigue is an ongoing thing, so I’m trying to find ways to solve this problem.

In case you are interested, my new obsession is… Continue reading

Thanks to everyone who has been checking out my blog in the past few months.
My Feedburner reports 174 page views and 752 clicks to direct blog links from the past month, which is really impressive to me, because I didn’t intend for this blog to really be something for a wide audience.

Thank you all who have been reading, and thanks for being patient during this time when I transition to WordPress. It’s challenging to do, especially if I want people to still find me here.

And to the 7 subscribers currently on my blog, thank you for listening. I hope you will identify yourselves over the next couple of months so that I can recognize you properly. :o)

Well every once in a while a blogger has to take a break. I am writing this with two pens punching the keys one by one, which means it takes quite a long time to write a sentece. :)

So I’ll be back on tomorrow with some of the origins of blog-writing…stay tuned.

Nothing here yet. Check back soon.
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If you want to read the Millennium Marketer, it is currently located at http://clairedlunemedia.blogspot.com.

Sorry I did not post anything yesterday but I had a real world experience with synergy and building human relationships offline at the SVAMA Networking event last night. There was such a diverse crowd ranging from consultants, graphic designers, young people just getting their feet wet to seasoned professionals.

There were a few fab Rookie Stylie marketing professionals
and I was just impressed by their finesse, so much that I think I will just have to work a little harder to keep up with them.

I met another Asian-American guy there too and we were having a good time talking and joking. I am all about diversity and sometimes extremely pro-diversity but sometimes it’s good to meet someone of the same cultural background who immediately understands where you are coming from.

I am going to the Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner tonight in Mountain View, so I will have something to report on that later.

It is totally sold out and I am going to be so shocked to see *this* many girls in Silicon Valley all at one place.

Hasta.

I’ve been trying to learn some Photoshop techniques and made up my own logo in the process.

This logo goes with a pitch that says, “I help entrepreneurs understand how to develop their business strategies clearly and easily.”

There are a ton of Photoshop tutorials on YouTube that can help and of course, obviously I can’t do anything fancy like graphic designers do. Not sure which tagline would sound better, so if any thoughts, I’m open to your ideas on this creative endeavor.

This is really a divergence from the usual subject matter but I just can’t think straight. I bought some really fragrant rosemary from Trader Joe’s and was making a sauce with it, hung it over my kitchen sink to dry, then started to get blurry, spotty vision and now nausea. It’s really odd, actually because I have not had this kind of reaction before.

I searched a few articles on the internet and it’s said that some people can be allergic to rosemary oils and experience nausea.

Need to get out of the house but I am so dizzy….