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Social Media – The Old Fashioned Way

2010 December 13

I’m playing “blog catch-up.” I started working on a new Friendly Voice website back in July (while on vacation) and have been too busy with client work to tend to my own knitting. A good thing!

A Note Arrives in the Mail!

Just before Halloween, this note arrived via the US Postal Service (remember them) from my friend and noted art director/illustrator/creative director Rayne Beaudoin.

He was letting me know that he had completed work on his book Home Ownership; Welcome to your Delightmare and that it was available for purchase at Amazon.

When I opened the envelope that Rayne had hand addressed, and got my first glimpse at the nice hand written note it contained, all I could do was smile.

After all, I’m a Social Media zealot who counsels clients on engaging internal and external customers through the use of various social media channels day in and day out.  I live my life online like so many others, inundated with messages from friends, colleagues, advertisers, spammers etc.

Now, this note I got from Rayne will not in and of itself help him at all with search engine optimization.  But it will engage certain influencers to talk about his book and his novel (retro in 2010) approach to marketing it.

I did something similar when I had decided to sell Bad Animals/Seattle to focus more on creative and less on running a business.  In 1998 45 rpm records were dead.  So I sent my voice over demo out to about 300 television stations and networks on vinyl.  Attached to the 45 rpm demo was stamped postcard offering several options to the recipient.

The choices were:Steve Lawson sent out his voice over demo on a 45 rpm record

A) I don’t have a record player, can you please send me a CD?

B) Contact me – we’re looking for a new voice.

C) We’re happy with the voice we have but stay in touch

D) You suck!  Take me off your mailing list.

Out of the 300 records sent, I received 15 postcards back (one had the “You Suck” box checked) and three contracts; two for domestic TV stations and one with HBO and Cinemax in Asia.

The moral of the story?  Do something that gets attention.  Online, offline, wherever.  Not in-place of your social media efforts, but in addition to them.  In fact, the dust cover of the 45 I sent out prominently displayed my website address – in rubber stamp.

Steve Lawson rubber stamped www.friendlyvoice.com to the 45 rpm records he sent out as demos

It was hard and expensive to track clicks back then, but I’m sure the site saw some action.

Who knows, do something out of the ordinary and maybe a blogger will pick up on your novel idea and spread it to the masses.

2 Responses leave one →
  1. December 13, 2010

    Amazing, that the new novel approach is US Mail. It does a couple of things: Stands out among the garbage mail, and shows that the author spent some time and energy to get you the information.

    Now with text to voice, and voice to text technology the next thing you know they’re going to come up with a devise that you can use to actually talk to someone in real time. Another novel idea.

    • Steve Lawson permalink*
      December 13, 2010

      Hey Ric –

      Nice to hear from you. The handwritten note is still a great way to communicate – unless you have MY handwriting which sucks! Trying to read my cursive typically leads to cursing . . .

      The telephone is a great device for communicating – spoiled only by voice jail. I was once having a very hard time getting a TV Program director to return my phone call, and I really needed to get some answers from him about a project I was working on. I finally attached a voice message to an email and got an instant response.

      That’s the tough part for marketers. How do you get noticed without being obnoxious?

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