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Soulati Media On The Street With Amy Howell, Howell Marketing

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Amy Howell of Howell Marketing w/ Jayme Soulati of Soulati Media

There’s a kindred spirit I have with this woman, Amy Howell, president of Howell Marketing. We’ve had the pleasure of meeting IRL three times, each at Social Slam, and this year I grabbed her to shoot this two-minute piece for Soulati Media On The Street (in spite of my technical difficulties).

Amy is the proud new author with cohort in “crime,” Anne Deeter Gallaher (with whom I sat on a panel at the first Social Slam), of Women In High Gear, A Guide for Entrepreneurs, On-Rampers and Aspiring Executives. The book came out at Social Slam, and the ladies gave anyone interested a copy.

In this piece below, you’ll note the time they took to write their book. In reviewing my copy, I know why. It is chock full of quotes, testimonials, research and readings which all prove their collective point — showing the path for women who excel in high gear.

Their stories, with some differences, mirror mine; I can connect my dots to theirs along the journey from childhood, college, career, mom/working mom, entrepreneur, and personal brander.

Below, Amy Howell shares more on her book, and I encourage you to connect directly on Women In High Gear on Facebook, buy the book here, or find Amy Howell @HowellMarketing to reach out directly. Like all good PR professionals, Amy and Anne are accessible on all the channels.

Enjoy Amy; I did and do.

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Soulati Media On The Street With @JasonKonopinski

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Jason Konopinski, Social Slam 2013

This gent, @JasonKonopinski, has grown leaps and bounds with his copywriting and experimentation on his website and blog with poetry, podcasting, and posting great content. We had the pleasure of chatting in the flesh at Social Slam, one of the best conferences I know to bump shoulders with anyone on the webz.

See right here what Jason is working on now; here’s a hint — pay special attention to square something or other!

 

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CCP Games’ Eve Online And A Media Relations Win

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EVE Online logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Virtual gaming is nothing I’m familiar about, but how executives of CCP Games tell their story, share messages and a mission statement are. On the eve of Eve Online’s debut of DUST 514, the CCP Games media relations team scored a huge win.

This article in Bloomberg BusinessWeek showcases why and how the company is a phenom in the gaming community. Instead of getting excited about Eve Online, something that’s alien to me, I instead took a look at its similarities with social media. Virtual gamers addicted to Eve, an Icelandic space game, formation of …still in the dark?

This article from BusinessWeek will shed some light on the subject, and it’s a must read.
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You might read it for any of the following factors:

  • Gamers who live life to play games in a virtual world without governments or rules adopt online personalities often stronger than in real life.
  • Spaceships are built and asteroids are mined for minerals to build the ships. In Russia, tycoons hire kids in real life to virtually mine the asteroids for arbitrage and ship building.
  • A counsel of gamers is selected to meet in person every six months in Iceland with CCP Games, the founders of Eve, to discuss how the game should evolve.
  • Serious relationships are formed in the game. When one of the gamers died in the Benghazi attack on the U.S Embassy and shared his last message with the world whilst playing Eve, thousands of people in the Eve community united and flew their ships to the same quadrant and spelled RIP VILE RAT like space candles.
  • The community raised $127,000 for Sean Smith’s family.

Inside Media Relations

In the midst of this 5-page, single-spaced story in BusinessWeek, the public relations factors are also impressive:

  • The co-founders shared the company mission statement, “To make virtual worlds more meaningful than real life,” and proceeded to give the reporter full opportunity to showcase the culture of CCP that knows its success is due to the 500,000 gamers (more than the population of Iceland) who subscribe.
  • The company has hired a real economist to monitor economic activity of Eve, and numerous economic studies by academics have been undertaken about the world of Eve online.
  •  The company feeds its employees (because food is expensive in Iceland) and families of employees come to eat at the company, too.
  •  The interactivity by the company with the elite Eve counsel occurs over three intense days. The gamers have a voice, and they influence how Eve evolves.
  •  Providing access to customers/game players to media for such an in-depth story is highly unusual for most companies; yet, the story is told primarily from the customer/player perspective.

 

Thoughts About Media Relations

Earning a story the likes of this one is practically a once-in-a-lifetime experience. All the factors for national media relations and the stories media love have to be in place.

Factors for National Publicity

1.    A large corporation with global reach
2.    Oodles of fanatical customers (yes, half-million would be good)
3.    A product like an online game that makes grown men stay up all night and vacation in Iceland in the dead of winter in the dark.
4.    A youthful executive team interested in giving back and opening the doors wide to showcase company secrets.
5.    Customers who do nothing but laud the product

To even begin to get to that point once factors are all secure, you need a Message Map. (I haven’t done a plug in awhile, get ready.)





is a service many types of companies need to launch, re-launch, and re-energize.

I applaud the PR team that earned the story in BusinessWeek for CCP Games. I was so inspired when I read it that I had to write about it when I’m not even a gamer and probably never will be.

Social media is enough of a game for me; yet, I see the similarities between virtual gaming and social media engagement. It’s like playing roulette; the wheel never lands on the same place twice.

What do you think about games, social media, and media relations? Got any stories about your wins you can share?


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The Happy Friday Series: Five Seconds And Happy

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Credit: Brian Meeks, Author

Generally, the last five seconds of the 29th minute of the 10th hour every day are, at best, much like all the rest. Not for me, though. I can tell you what I was doing during those five seconds every Tuesday through Sunday for the last year.

I work in a wholly unremarkable cafe in mid-town.

The list of things I know about her could fit on the side of a coffee cup. She has green eyes. Her hair, black, has gone from short to shoulder length and back. She doesn’t have a favorite coffee, as far as I can tell. Some of the regulars mix it up from time to time, but her order is always a wild card.

The first week I thought she might be a lawyer because of the suits, but then there were shorts, dresses, and once, a gorilla outfit. I asked her, “Are you an actress?”

She said, “No, I’m a gorilla.”

She once wore a black burka and followed it up the next day with a pink one.

She sits in the same booth, if it is available, sets her coffee to the side and looks at her watch. When it is time she closes her eyes, inhales slowly and then exhales. She opens her eyes and that is that. She sometimes reads the paper, does a Sudoku, types away on her laptop, or just stares out the window.

In March and April the sun light floods the booth and her olive skin speaks of angels. It doesn’t matter if I have a customer, I spend those five, precious, favorite seconds, watching her singular breath. The world goes quiet and for 4.9 seconds I can’t look away.

Today, a year of curiosity, distant admiration, and modest stalking came to an end. After the inhale, for no reason, her head turned slightly and she opened her eyes. She caught me. We spent the next 2.5 seconds just looking at one another. It could have been magical, had the next 30 seconds not been a decent into chaos.
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What happens next? Meh, we may never know.

What we have here is an example of what makes me happy. It isn’t the story on the whole (or part, as the case may be), but a singular moment within. A moment that the reader never sees. It is between the author and the narrator.

It is a point where the narrator slips something in the writer didn’t see coming, much to both their delights.

That moment…that sneaky little unprepared bit of writing that leaps forward and fills one with the excitement of a first kiss? It is pure joy.

When I read a book I judge it by the number of times I am forced to set it down and marvel at a singular finely crafted passage. Elmore Leonard consistently provides five or more such moments. A good writer will offer up three delicious morsels and I will be fed.

Are you curious? Would you like to know, specifically, where in those 345 words I experience writing euphoria?

Okay, I’ll tell you.

I had thought about this little scene two days ago, while driving from Iowa City to Martelle. All of it, except one part. When I typed, “Are you an actress?” she had, in every instance that I’d imagined it, said, “No.” That was all.

The “I’m a gorilla,” just sort of showed up. It made me chuckle. Did you laugh? I hope so.

But it wasn’t just a laugh line that was the source, it was all that one infers about the type of person who would come up with such an answer. It speaks to her intelligence, as one couldn’t imagine a dullard being so quick. It shows a confidence in what wasn’t said afterwards.

Most people would feel compelled to explain, to answer the unsaid questions, “Why are you wearing a gorilla costume?” but not her. She is quite content to leave it at literal. It is playful and mysterious and, if I may be so bold, sexy as hell.

Is there more to the story? Yes, sure there is. I don’t know what it might be and it may never come to the page, but it’s out there.

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Did you enjoy my writing? If so, I’d love to have you as a reader. You can find me at Extremely Average!  I write novels as serials.

That is what makes me happy.

Oh, and one more thing. People who subscribe to my blog. They make me doubly happy.

About The Author

brian-meeks.jpgBrian Meeks writes a blog at Extremely Average, and his Henry Wood Detective Agency books are published and for sale in paperback and also ebook. He’s been hawking his second book on a blog tour and doing a mighty fine job of it: Check out his Amazon second book.

Official Brian Meeks bio: He is a graduate of Iowa State University with a degree in Economics. He has also written a book about the 1986-87 Iowa Hawkeyes Men’s basketball team titled, Two Decades and Counting: the Streak, the Wins, the Hawkeyes Thru the Eyes of Roy Marble.

 

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Twitter Hoax Spirals Markets

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Hackers got into an Associated Press Twitter account on April 23, 2013 and erroneously tweeted that two bombs in the White House had injured President Obama.

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...

Image via CrunchBase

Stocks took an immediate downward spiral, “erasing $200 billion of value from U.S. stock markets Tuesday, underscoring the vulnerability of financial markets to computerized trading programs that buy and sell shares without human intervention,” according to today’s Wall Street Journal front page.

In the rest of the article, the alleged responsible party is the Syrian Electronic Army, a group backing Syrian President Assad. The group has apparently hacked into other national media in the U.S. and tagged websites.

The electronic software that deciphers tweets to influence trading are programmed to detect “bomb, hacked, blowing up” and other key words that indicate a disaster or lack thereof.

But, the facts remain; this incident took place over two minutes and U.S. markets were affected, although they nearly recovered the loss at the close of trading.

The Influence of Twitter

Let’s digest this story a moment. I’ll wait.

Were you astonished that a mere tweet could affect the financial markets of the U.S. with extension into global trading? Two minutes is not long, but apparently it is for traders.

At some brokerages, the humans (not the computer programs) with cognitive ability to monitor news feeds to corroborate a White House explosion, mentioned to traders, “careful, these Twitter ” and no phone calls were made to clients. Smart.

Luckily, the Associated Press took swift action to tweet retractions and hacked posts so everyone knew; however, the damage was done. Cyber-terrorism at its finest.

Analyze Your Twitter Account

  • How’s your password? When has it been changed?
  • Who has access to your corporate or company account?
  • Do agencies or third parties have your passwords?
  • What are they permitted to say?
  • Does the C-Suite monitor the Twitter stream to ensure content passes muster?
  • Who monitors the stream all day long?
  • What if your company didn’t monitor all day and your account was hacked, how long would it take for you to catch an erroneous tweet?

The likelihood of hackers caring about a small company account on Twitter is probably low; but stranger things have happened.Twitter has become a channel of influence; it’s no longer “I’m having steak for dinner tonight.” Pay attention, People; we’re in an era where our owned messages are sometimes not ours.

 

 

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