I watched the movie “Kick Ass” the other night, and oddly, it got me thinking about social media (It’s a curse we in the business of sm live with. Be kind.) I came up with a list of how social media gives companies and individuals superpowers:

1. Invisibility: When you monitor and listen to the cloud to find out who is talking about you and your competitors and what they are saying, you are enjoying the benefits of a cloaking ability. They can’t see you, but you’re sizing up who your audience is or could be, as well as finding out exactly what they need from your type of product or service. Invisibility helps you prepare and fill gaps.
2. Empathy: The ability I hope you get from using the first ability. The reason you do all that looking and listening is to understand the audience and to empathize

… [Read More]

Guest Writer – Katie Butcher

THERE’S STRANGER THINGS TO DO ON THE INTERNET…

We’re lucky at my firm, West End Enterprises, that we enjoy the benefits of an absurdly qualified team of staff and volunteers when we work here in Nashville. Our events are generally populated with people who come from great educational backgrounds and have solid industry experience. However, even through we made our home-base here, occasionally, like everyone else, we have to leave. Working out of town for almost any firm can be scary. (No, I’m not talking about shipping your gear…but that can be scary, too.) No matter how good your connections are or how well you know the area, at some point, you’ll likely exhaust your resources and need to pull in additional workforce. So you turn to the dreaded internet.

My experience has been that even the most tech-savvy… [Read More]

I wonder often how anyone could have coined the phrase

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me

when we’ve all been at the hurtful end of prejudicial words that cut deep, and sometimes leave wounds that last longer than a bruise. Especially when I have also seen words inspire and start movements. And, for me, there has been nothing more powerful than the first time I said my son’s name allowed to him moments after his birth. That kind of power is staggering…humbling.

I believe in words and the roots of words. I was the kid who looked forward to that section of the SATs where I had to match a word to its meaning by dissecting its Latin root and hoping I got it right. Maybe if I’d actually ever truly prepared for those tests, I would have even done well at… [Read More]

There are two different lines of thought in marketing – the feel gooders and the analyzers. Feel gooders look at trending, human behavior, and endeavor to uncover what makes human beings tick. The analyzers look at hard numbers, popular word choices, times of day people are in the stores, and anything else you can assign a hard and fast number to. Feel gooders rely on intuition and gut to guide them. Analyzers rely on facts and figures.

See where I’m going with this?

Ideally, every office would have a balance of the two. You want there to be some hard and fast numbers behind everything, but you do have to rely on gut and human emotion to guide your decision making process in marketing as well.

Online, there is a new kind of marketer emerging. This marketer takes the best of both worlds – the feel good stuff and the… [Read More]

Mayor Karl Dean and the Nashville Music Council held it’s first public meeting on June 29th at the W.O. Smith Music School. The NMC was created by the mayor and the local Chamber of Commerce, and is made up of 50 music industry professionals ranging from Mark Montgomery (2007 Nashville Business Journal’s Entrepreneur of the Year) to Tim DuBois (Pollstar’s Record Executive of the Year). The council’s goals are to expand the Music City brand, grow public education music programs, increase live music presence, and produce more ‘creative types’ in Nashville.

Nashville Music Council certainly understands the role technology plays in the new music business – or the “wild west” as Ken Levitan (President of Vector Management) calls it. In an attempt to bring in more creative businesses, plans may already be in the works for entrepreneurial tax incentives in designated areas. Other efforts for small business and ‘starving artists’… [Read More]