Pass this on, please

This amazing story of the will to change is inspiring, both at a human level and as fantastic marketing, see Leader Notes' commentary on the actual invisible children site for more information

Three 20-something kids with a video camera wind up in northern Uganda. They see incredible horror and encounter heartbreaking suffering, most especially among children.

Instead of turning their backs, they can't stop thinking about it. They decide to do something about it.

What can three white kids do to stop 20 years of horror and war? They decide that alone they can't do much, but if they can mobilize enough other youth, they can influence the powerful.

They know their audience - other youth. They use multimedia, they use rock music, they use myspace, they make music videos, they portray things raw and gritty and honest and authentic.

They first tell their story of their experience in Northern Uganda about the Night Commuters in a documentary:

Can we make a difference from this end of the world? I bet we can.

Tags: think, ninefish, marketing, purpose

Think first, and be clear about what you want

Having been lurking madly, Seth Godin has bought me out of hibernation with this idea that's particularly apt this week for some of our clients

"The first goal of copy is to get you to read more copy.
The second goal is to tell a story that spreads.
And then, finally, to have that story get people to take action"

Seth is talking about a billboard, but the concept is critical in all the communication you do.

Billboards in my opinion should have no more than 6 words on them. You have to hope you can communicate enough to remind the traffic your idea was exciting enough to talk about when they get to work, and memorable enough to be able to find the long story online or via the yellow pages [or even via a memorable phone number]

Tagged with:

• good-copy
• think

Lurking around

I've purposely been quiet recently, enforced by time, but also to see what would happen. I've been keeping an eye on a number of statistics and been surprised a little by what I've found.

As I've blogged more, and commented on other pages and conversations the benchmarks I've been following show that the ranking of this site has been going down. When I was in full flow and posting most days then I saw this trivial blog rise into the top 2 million and get towards being in the top 1.2 million ranked sites on Alexa. This isn't much to shout about I admit. Considering that all that was happening was that I was taking part in the conversation though I was impressed to see the site's rank increase. No animals were hurt in the process, no metatags or code changed, no smarter keywords, just lots of conversation.

As I've been quiet, I've been watching the rank slide again.

My takeaway from this is that if Ninefish can do it, so can your business. Nothing more than sharing ideas has been going on, it's not as if I've been making an effort to find if anyone is listening, but if someone is searching for the same ideas I'm talking about, then they'll find my business easier, just because I'm talking here.

So even if you think no one is listening, talk. If your idea or business is worth anything, if you're passionate about something; talk about it on the internet and they will come, just like in the Kevin Costner movie Field of Dreams!

Tagged with:

• SEO
• think