I heard from my friend Paul Colligan this morning. If you don’t know Paul, you are missing out. Follow Colligan on Twitter and listen to what he says. The man is a genius at marketing.
Paul told me about a video on YouTube. At first glance, it didn’t seem like much. A young woman with a new product and a cause. Since I got the link from Paul, I knew it would be worth a minute.. IT WAS.
The video is Daniella Armijo from Cause For a Cause, selling a handmade case for your iPad.
I don’t use a case for my iPad, but I do love a good story.. and I was sold by what Daniela told us.
Case For A Cause exists to help women from this area escape from a life of abuse – whether domestic abuse, forced prostitution or human trafficking. Every penny of the profits goes back to help these women develop and sustain a better quality of life. All artisans are paid a fair wage to make each case, and the Issyk Kul Development Center is provided valuable funds to help their work of intervention, counseling, job training, and other programs to help these women gain hope and the possibility of a better future for themselves and their children.
Now she really had my attention. A handmade product, each unique in design and what a story to share every time you go anywhere with your iPad.
Smart marketing.
While I’m wondering which of the color combinations would work best for me, Daniella went on to explain more about the women the project and company are helping.
This is not some simple “send some money so you won’t feel guilty” pitch, the Case for a Cause web site has details which Daniella summarized in the video.
All profits are sent to the center
Participants are rescued from some horrible situations
Women are trained to be self sufficient
Here’s Where You Can Learn Something
The video doesn’t stop with a plea for help, a sales pitch for the product or the way overused “help us get the word out” appeal. Daniella explains a promotion that is
Easy to do
Specific in explaining the details of how this will help
Incentivized
How can you resist? Watch the video now.. and I’ll add a couple more ideas to create a win/win for you
I’ve placed the video here, but you want to open it up on YouTube when you’ve read the rest of this post.
Action Steps to Follow Today
I’ve already done some of these and a few of the other tactics I used every day to share good stuff and build relationships online. I am share a few obvious steps that I’d like to do as a minimum:
Make sure you are signed in to YouTube and click on the LIKE button
If you’re YouTube account is set up right, this will send a Twitter and Facebook post. If not, make sure you share it in at least two places.
Very important. Daniella is asking for comments. Follow here instructions in the video to win the prize, or just because it is the right thing to do
Consider a blog post, a Facebook video share, or Tumblr with this video and idea. Just like I did here. You can tell your own story, give another shout out to Case for a Cause and give your community something to talk about besides “buy my stuff”
The publicity value of doing good is great for any business. Naturally, in this age of transparency, people will know if you are doing it just to look good, but I know you aren’t like that. You will be authentic in sharing your feelings about the issue, the people involved, the women being helped and the cool new case. You’ll be doing good and looking good.
Speaking of looking good. Did you order one of those cases?
Best practice says I ought to post on a regular schedule in one place. Sticking to a topic my subscribers will appreciate and build my expert status and marketing niche.
Good ideas. I teach that myself. I have never been too good at practicing what I preach
On a good day, I’ll say I’m a renaissance man, a generalist with a lot of ideas to share on a variety of topics. Then, I’ll sit down and get busy with a project and decide it need to be put with a certain type of post on a separate web site.
I think if I was put up 3 posts on each of my blogs and kept up with the social media correspondence that results from sharing things, I’d need about 150 hours a week and still would miss some things.
But the real truth is… I get bored easily.
Social Media to the Rescue
I love how we have current technologies are allowing me to post small pieces of content, dozens of times each day. I’m gong to keep sharing news, tips, quotes and ideas I find with my social media network.
However, blogging is still the biggest of the social media platforms and I’ve got a two or thing I think are worth putting out there.
I must admit that the TODO list for blogging has gotten out of hand. This morning, I found a site that had a nifty slider to highlight posts.. with empty posts. A project I started six months ago. Several thousand people saw an error page as a post of another blog.
I could go on.. but I’m embarrassed just thinking about it.
So I’ve fixed up a few, put in a TON of redirection links so that people looking for my posts longer than 140 characters can find me and tried to put most of my plans for near term future writing to point here.
Check back tomorrow for a post with substance.. and let me know how I’m doing with a comment below, a tweet or message on any of the 30,327 sites I’m using when I’m not here.
Ever feel like going down to corporate headquarters to speak personally with the employee who said “It’s not my department?”
We don’t all have a band and a video producer to make something like this.. but it’s getting closer everyday
In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didn’t deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss.
So I promised the last person to finally say no to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world. United Breaks Guitars is the first of those songs.
How to Avoid a Label of “Corporate Irresponsibility”
Most issues aren’t near as hard to fix as you might expect. Just follow this two step formula:
Think about the people you love, your friends and family. You can’t always get them what they want, but you do your best and they understand that (most of the time).
So do your customers.
Listen and love. It’s a simple as that.
What are you doing to listen to your readers and customers?
Now she really had my attention. A handmade product, each unique in design and what a story to share every time you go anywhere with your iPad. 
