While sitting under my beach umbrella (for the two days the sun was out!) at Christmas time, I was flicking through Earth Garden magazine. Odd choice for a city slicker – but it is good to dream while on holidays.
I came across an article on The Birchip No-Power Fridge. David Bell invented this fridge. He lives in the hottest place in Victoria and outside the electricity grid. Yes OUTSIDE the electricity grid. So not only doesn’t he get to watch The Amazing Race on telly, he can’t refrigerate his food.
He does have one solar panel that he generates a tiny amount of electricity. He uses this for... wait for it....a laptop computer! Hmm food or laptop? Laptop or food? Tough choice. I think he made the right choice – because, hey, you can always invent a no-power fridge!
What is really amazing about this is that he explains how to make The Birchip No-Power Fridge, and at the end of the article says: “If you are still not sure how to build this remarkable fridge then you will find my video on YouTube.”
Yes, YouTube. So even though he lives in the middle of nowhere and has (virtually) no electricity he is using video to share his story and promote his invention.
And this is one of my business New Year’s resolutions – embrace video and use it to share my story and my clients’ stories. What are your business New Year resolutions?
Happy New Year and here’s to an amazing year and decade.
PS. Planning on living outside the electricity grid? Want to know how to make The Birchip No-Power Fridge? Click here to watch the video.
PSS. Someone who is using video to connect people is Iggy Pintado with his RealTweeple project where he interviews people for 30 secs about their passions.
Top 5 PR Resolutions for 2010
The start of a new year has always been a time for looking back on the year gone and more importantly, forward to the year ahead. It’s a time to reflect on the changes you want to make and make a promise to yourself to actually do something about them this year!
So what are your business New Year resolutions? This year (and even this decade) why not introduce or revamp your public relations strategy for your business. Here is our suggestion for your New Year PR resolutions for 2010:
1. Embrace Social Media - Start by creating a Facebook page for your business, create a Twitter account for your business, create a LinkedIn account and create a business blog.
2. Network - Networking is an important factor that should be implemented to help you progress in your business or your career in 2010.
3. Write an Article - Writing and distributing media releases is just one way of getting media coverage. You can also write an article and pitch it to a publication. Many publications are stretched for resources and welcome well written articles.
4. Update your website - Search engines such as Google like new, valuable content on websites. These newly updated sites are seen to be providing more timely and relevant information to their visitors. The more content you add, the fresher your site is and the more likely your site will rank highly in search results.
5. Get customer testimonials - Including positive customer testimonials on your website or marketing collateral is a very powerful way to highlighting your business’ expertise and often helps to win new business. Potential customers are much more likely to believe a customer testimonial that praises your product or service than they are to believe yourself written sales copy.
Remember, resolutions are only powerful if you make them happen! Read the full article on our Public Relations Sydney blog.
Create a buzz with social media competitions
Take your Twitter and Facebook strategy one step further by including competitions to engage and reward your followers. CP Communications has been exploring and implementing social media competitions for clients and gaining remarkable results. So why run a competition?
To find new fans – The hope is that the lure of prizes will draw followers in and those that like what they see will stick around in the future. To claim a prize an individual needs to either follow you (on Twitter) or become a fan (on Facebook) to be able to claim their prize – meaning they have to sign up!
To reward loyal fans – Most social media sites have fans or followers that have been around from the start. I know that on our @CPCPR and @CatrionaPollardTwitter accounts there are a number of long-term followers that make an effort to specifically read our tweets. A competition is a great way of giving something back to these fans and provides them with a reason to keep supporting you.
To increase participation – When you first start out in social media it is often difficult to get people to visit your site/fan page or follow you. It is even more difficult to get them to interact with you. A competition gives them something to talk about with you and your community. It gives them something to get involved in, to comment on and to ask questions about.
Create a buzz – Everybody loves free stuff and a competition gives people something to talk about. People will start talking about what is being given away and others that see this will be attracted to your site to check out what all the buzz is about – and get in on the action too.
Want some ideas on how to run a competition? Read the full article on our blog.
Click here to sign up to receive the CP Communications newsletter directly in your inbox every second Tuesday morning.
Comments
Post has no comments.