Hasta La Creative!

Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Revver, WordPress, Reddit, Digg, Ning, Xing, Squidoo, Tumblr and Flickr (overwhelmed yet? I can go on) are all social media. What is the hype? It’s the talk of the town and everybody is doing it. However, is it of any use as a tool for marketing? It is! And you aren’t using it yet?

As a follow up to my last post, 10 Reasons to Use Online Video for Your Business, and a non-related follow up to Megan Green’s post, I thought I’d keep the ball rolling with 5 reasons why you must use social media to advertise your business:

It’s FREE – Connecting with customers/clients through Facebook and LinkedIn, posting your deals on Twitter, and demonstrating your expertise through a blog or video can all be done at the cost of $0. What it will cost, however, is time and some DIY prowess because each social media platform requires its own variation of communication for optimal effectiveness. Some initial research is suggested to decide which platform may best suit your business. However, if you’re a strong believer of “time is money” and are too busy to teach yourself social media, there are companies that can help you and your business get started for as little as $299.

Location, Location, Location – You want your product/service seen by as many people as possible, and, without any statistics to back me up here, there are a lot of people on the internet using social media sites. A lot. We’re talking hundreds of millions. For you naysayers: as of July, Facebook alone had 250 million users. Can you afford to ignore these people? A better question: can you afford to have these people ignore you?

Sharable – Not only will your product/service be seen, you can also have it shared. If a person on Twitter sees your tweet promoting your business and knows people in his or her network that can use it, he or she may pass the promotion on with a retweet. If you write a great blog post on the benefits of your service and submit it to social bookmarking sites, people can discover and rate it moving it up the site’s ranks, which allows more people to discover it. If you made an entertaining video about your product, it could be passed around to hundreds, thousands, and possibly millions of people. Imagine that, a :60-second video about your product seen by millions. It’s FREE advertising.

Long Lasting – Once your business/product/service information makes it onto these social media sites, it can live on forever. That’s a long time (don’t worry, it’s a good thing). There it is, your info being seen and promoted long after you posted it and readily available when you want to put some extra muscle behind it.

Engagement – People who use your product/service will have an opinion about it, and more often than not, they will voice their opinions through social media, and you should know exactly what they are saying, good or bad. If someone sings your praises by writing an elaborate blog post, you can share that with your network or use it as a testimonial on your website. If someone tweets a complaint about your product/service, you can address it and ideally change their mind. No one likes to feel ignored, so if you can show your customers/clients you care and listen, that will definitely strengthen relationships.

There are easily more than five reasons to use social media for your business, so be sure to come back for updates. As usual, feel free to ask a question or drop a comment.

P.S. Once again, to redeem my cool points, here’s a video from my Creative Director poking fun at so called “social media experts,” because you can’t be an expert in something that is constantly changing with new platforms, bells & whistles.

Tommy Liu, the man, the legend (to be) wields his pen of creativity against the injustice of mediocrity plaguing the world as the Senior Account Executive at Supercool Creative & SpotZero where he also manages the blog. Click here to view some of his battles (he doesn’t always win).

Last week I posted various movie taglines that I enjoyed from the last two decades. One thing I realized about these taglines is that they aren’t very compelling if you don’t have any prior knowledge of the movie. Particularly the puns. Pun-intended taglines come off as awkward and persuade you to raise an eyebrow (kind of like this guy ~_^ ). Overall, there were actually very few from last week’s list that would lure me into watching that movie based on its tagline alone.

Anyhoo, here are the corresponding movies to last week’s taglines:

“Five good reasons to stay single.” (1994) -Four Wedding and a Funeral

“Vampires. No Interviews.” (1996) -From Dusk Till Dawn

“Before you die, you see…” (2002) -The Ring

“Earth. It was fun while it lasted.” (1998) -Armageddon

“On May 6th… See Paris Die!” (2005) -House of Wax

“Love is in the hair.” (1998) -There’s Something About Mary

“See Our Family, Feel Better About Yours.” (2007) -The Simpsons Movie

“Even a hit man deserves a second shot.” (1997) -Grosse Pointe Blank

“From the brother of the director of Ghost.” (1994) –Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult

“The Lucky Ones Died First.” (2006) -The Hills Have Eyes

“When it comes to love, sometimes she just can’t think straight.” (2001) -Kissing Jessica Stein

“A life misunderestimated.” (2008) -W.

“Be All That Someone Else Can Be.” (1999) -Being John Malkovich

“He loves her. She loves him not.” (2005) -Just Friends

“He Was Dead… But He Got Better.” (2008) -Crank 2: High Voltage

Don’t beat yourself up for missing them as I chose some pretty tough ones. Now that you’re all warmed up, here comes a second batch of movie taglines. The twist? These are the really bad ones.

“He stole the money…and he’s not giving it back.” (2003)

“Rocky shows he’s a champ…and wins!” (1979)

“Size does matter” (1998)

“You will believe a cow can fly” (1996)

“The wait is ogre” (2008)

“Twelve is the new Eleven” (2004)

“Everything that has a beginning has an end” (2003)

“The saga is complete.” (2005)

“It could happen to you!” (1997)

“Cowabunga, it’s the new turtle movie.” (1991)

Good luck with these! That second and last one you may never guess. Be sure to look for my next post (or IMDb) for the answers.

Tommy Liu, the man, the legend (to be) wields his pen of creativity against the injustice of mediocriety plaguing the world as the Creative Officer at Supercool Creative & Marketing Director at SpotZero where he also manages the blog. Click here to view some of his battles (he doesn’t always win).

What can you do with $70 and some social networking? How about produce an interesting zombie flick from the point of view of the zombie that will wow audiences and critics at the Cannes Film Festival and then have the rights of the film bid on by Japanese as well as American distributors? According to CNN, this is what is happening to the no-budget film Colin from emerging British director Marc Price. That’s right, Price made a film for $70.

How in the world is that possible? “The approach was to say to people, ‘OK guys, we don’t have any money, so bring your own equipment,’” and that they did, along with that Price borrowed make-up from Hollywood blockbusters like X-Men and taught himself how to produce special effects. Oh, and he used a couple of websites called Facebook and MySpace to get actors to volunteer to be zombies along with his friends.

This is social networking at its essence; connecting and bringing people together – and when together some amazing things can happen. And now, through social media the movie is picking up more buzz and recognition. The Internet sure is a beautiful place. Who knows, if this movie gets picked up by Hollywood maybe Price can have a bigger budget to work with, like $100. Check out the trailer here.

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Tommy Liu is a Creative at Supercool Creative where he also manages the blog, feel free to leave him a Tomment. Click here for more of his writing as well as his contact info if you dare.