Shelly*Louise joined ‘Scorch TV’ last month as Hostess and corespondent at large, heading off to shows and interviewing the rock gods of New England.

She loves rock n’ roll as much as Scorch loves wrestling and today she’s sharing her Top 5 Songs to get you through the week!

Bufferapp

One of the services we offer to clients is social media strategy and implementation. This means I manage a multitude of Twitter handles every day, all day. The scheduling function that many twitter clients offer is ok, but not ideal for someone who really needs a one-step process to streamline their Twitter work flow. Bufferapp works as a bookmarking function and allows you to pre-determine a schedule to send out your tweets. Sign up and choose the times you’d like your tweets to go out from the drop down menus (the free plan allows for 10 scheduled tweets a day). Download the plugin to your browser (its compatible with the major ones) and start surfing the web. Once you come across an article you think would be great to tweet, click on the icon, select the twitter account you’d like to tweet from and voila! Click on the ‘Add to Buffer’ button and you’re on your way. Bufferapp also included analytic information for each tweet, showing CTR, RTs, Favorites and Mentions.

Evernote

I’m certainly not the first, nor am I the only person to champion this little app, but I’m going to do it anyway. I discovered Evernote in 2009 thanks to the advice of a tech trendy co-worker. I use Evernote for everything. I have the desktop application, the iPhone app and the iPad app. My notebooks sync across the three devices, meaning I can begin writing a blog post draft on my computer and pick it up at home from my iPad. I use the snapshot function on my iPhone after our big Monday meetings and I can reference that picture from my desktop once I’m buckled down at my desk and every note, picture, list etc. I create is easily findable thanks to Evernote’s search capabilities. There are some bugs to it; the syncing function between the computer application and the mobile device apps isn’t fool proof and formatting can be a b**** on the iPad. But when all is said and done, Evernote helps me be 50% more productive and organized. Oh, and you can easily share your notes with team members, friends or family via social media or email. There is also an arsenal of Evernote compatible apps to help make your experience better.

GoogleDocs

I was skeptical of GoogleDocs when it first became available. The “cloud” seemed scary to me somehow. “What do you mean my files just live on the internet? What does that mean?!” I laugh at my naive hangups now. I deleted Microsoft Word from my computer two years ago and haven’t looked back. GoogleDocs not only allows you to create documents, spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations; it gives you a seemingly unlimited number of templates from editorial calendars to To Do lists from which to choose and everything is easily shared with anyone on the internet. All you need to do is click the ‘Share’ button and enter the person’s email address. Then they can view the document and/or collaborate with you on the document if you give them permission. I use GoogleDocs to keep track of projects with clients, keep my internal team on the same scheduling page and to track business expenses.

Dropbox

Dropbox may not be the best cloud solution, but it is the best file sharing solution for our company. Our business is content creation. Because everything we produce for our clients is HD and broadcast ready the files we deliver can get quite large, larger than services like YouSendIt can handle. Once upon a time we did use our FTP site, but time is a precious commodity and explaining how to login and download from an FTP site to a non-tech savvy individual is downright time consuming and frustrating for both parties. Dropbox allows us to upload a piece of content to a shared folder and our work is done. Amazing. Dropbox lets you invite people to share folders with and emails them with a link to that folder. They will need to download dropbox, but it’s completely free. We also use Dropbox like an internal server. We subscribe to their Team Package which gives us 1TB of storage and 5 user accounts. We use the 1TB to share internal assets with one another, like client logos or other clients assets. It takes the running around and searching for the person with the right asset out of the equation. And my favorite part of Dropbox is that it synchs across my mobile devices. As long as I have a wireless signal I can share videos from my dropbox with clients when I’m out on a shoot or at a pitch meeting and likewise, I can view and approve my co-workers’ work remotely.

Column Five – who created this chart in collaboration with Esquire – said this:

“There will never be a formula to accurately predict the outcome of the Grammy Awards, which are notoriously whimsical, almost to the point of becoming a punchline. But there are certain patterns to the Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences’ record that can help one understand the choices, something even approaching a kind of logic.”

It’s pretty interesting to read. I’m looking forward to seeing whether any of their predictions come true!

[click on the image for it to appear in a light box. Then expand it to see the full view.]

Check it out! And check Krista out on her Facebook page!

This graphic walks you through best practices in three key steps of launching a new product or service - Launch, Distribution and Buzz to Bucks - complete with the Pros and Cons of  leveraging Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.

According to their research, 93% of U.S. Marketers have used Facebook to launch a product, 78% have used Twitter and 61% have used YouTube. Also worth noting, “Online Consumers who habitually talk about brands they love are 80% more likely to share brand information and these brand advocates are 50% more likely to persuade their friends to make purchases.”

And the key to seeing this sort of success? Great content. “You can have thousands of initial followers and all the blogs in the world writing about your startup, but if the content you are producing is not interesting you will never see a viral following.”

(Click to see in lightbox and then click expand icon to see in full size)

While he was here, Adam sat down and shared his Top 5 Songs to help you get through the week.

Adam Ezra is a Music Drives Us Ambassador, a terrifically talented song writer and musician, and an all around great guy. If you’re interested in hearing his music or catching him live, check out the Adam Ezra Group’s website or ‘Like’ him on Facebook!

I recently started working with a new client. They’ve commissioned me to build out their content strategy to help them stand out from their competition.

I’m in the process of researching their industry and identifying what it is that makes their service special and asking them, what is the lingering impression they leave with their clients after a project is completed?

Seth Godin has a TED talk on Standing Out, and yesterday I stumbled upon it (literally, I was using StumbleUpon when I found it).

It was a serendipitous stumble because,  the client with whom I was working yesterday loves Seth. He and his employees are such avid fans in fact, they refer to themselves as “Seth Heads.”

Seth speaks about finding an audience for your product and speaking directly to them. He starts out by discussing the near failure of the man who created sliced bread.

This man’s name was Otto Rohwedder and Otto’s biggest pitfall is a common mistake for innovators; he concentrated too much on the technology that made his product possible and didn’t spend enough time thinking about his product and the audience that would gravitate toward his product and spread the word of its innovation for him.

This isn’t an issue with which my new client struggles but it leads me to common issue with which many businesses do struggle.

Your clients, customers, audiences, don’t just buy your product. They buy the feeling your product gives them. And it’s identifying that feeling that people associate with your product that is the key to marketing your product. It’s that feeling that creates fans out of your consumers.

Michael Gerber discusses this in his book “The E-Myth Revisited.” Realizing that people buy feelings and not products is critical for the success of every small business. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend doing so, regardless of where you are in the growth of your company.

Once you identify the feeling you want your consumers to associate your product with, your marketing strategy will fall into place. The bigger picture of where your potential fans are hanging out will come together and finding them and engaging them will become simple, a second nature to you.

What has your experience been in this process? How did you name the feeling people associated with your product? How has that helped inspire your overall marketing strategy?

Related articles

• Seth Godin: World’s Most Wanted Marketer (hubspot.com)
• Five Effective Internet Marketing Strategies (cash-bandit.com)

After the tour ended in October he decided to produce a 3D concert of his band’s performance. He gave us a call and asked if we’d produce the Behind-the-Scenes documentary of the Making-Of this 3D epic. We said yes, of course.

Here are a few of our favorite pictures from that Decemeber 16th evening at Boston’s Wilbur Theatre.

Please excuse the amateur photography. These photos were taken with my Canon S100, which performs poorly in low-light situations. Our DSLRs were busy shooting video for the Behind-the-Scenes footage.

Let us know what you think. For creative people, we’re pretty receptive to feedback!

Beware of the un-dead lead.

Previously thought of as simply ‘dead,’ these leads are now known to come back. 

Mediabistro posted a great article recently on what to do with ‘dead’ leads, quoting research from Ed Gandia’s “The Wealthy Freelancer.”

According to Gandia’s book, a large percentage of your ‘dead’ leads will hire someone to do what you do within 18 to 24 months of your contact.

In his example, a ‘dead’ lead qualifies as someone who responded to a pitch you gave, but did not return your follow-up call. According to Gandia, many people in business make the mistake of only following up with those leads that express either immediate interest or down-the-line interest, dropping the remainder of leads that do not respond to a follow-up call.

I was baffled when I read this  (not at the finding that ‘dead’ leads will eventually buy a product like yours; I am also a consumer after-all) but at the statement that sales people leave these leads for ‘dead’.

In the five years I’ve done business for myself, I’ve never had a ‘dead’ lead. I’ve only had long sales cycles. I’m sure anyone who successfully works for themselves, or has gone into business for themselves, understands what I’m saying.

Sales is as much about creating an experience for and building relationships with people as it is about turning a profit. I firmly believe that once a project is over both parties–the vendor and the client–come away with more than a payment and product. They come away with a relationship. And relationships last a heck of a lot longer than a client/customer project.

So that being said, when a potential relationship doesn’t return a phone call or an email, we don’t take it personally. We understand building relationships can take time and we’re more than willing to put the time into that development. We’ll shoot them an email down the line or give them a quick a call after while, but we’ll make it more about them and less about us. Because let’s face it, no one likes a one-sided relationship.

Our sales cycle is generally a long one. I can tell you that 75% of our sales this year came from conversations and pitches we gave in early 2010. I can also tell you, with a fair amount of confidence, that at least 30% of next year’s profits will come from these same leads, whether directly or from referral.

If we had given up on these leads as dead after eight months; if I had not checked in every few months with a friendly email, we ‘d certainly not be in the position we’re in now.

The lead is dead, long live the lead. I certainly hope so.