The Great Social Marketing Experiment

Are we late to the party? A month or so ago Marc and I and two of our managers went to a business seminar presented by Holly Green, author of More Than A Minute and she mentioned in her discussion how because of Twitter she managed to secure a guest appearance on the today show. What, the Today show? – I thought to myself. And what is this …”Twitter”… you speak of?

That day, Marc and I thought maybe we were missing out on something so we each signed up for a Twitter account and began posting – not really knowing what we were doing or how this plays in to our bigger marketing strategy. Marc being the less gullible and not as easily influenced business partner was and is more skeptical than I on how we can leverage Twitter and other social media however since then we have started formulating and weaving social marketing into our overall marketing strategy.

Right now this effort remains as ”The Great Social Marketing Experiment” but one that we have fully embraced to see where it might lead. This is what has given rise to a Productive Computing, Inc. blog that will cover some of the more technical aspects of our company’s products and a newly concocted business blog aptly named theBizBros.com.

While blogging has been around for a while, Marc and I have shyed away from anything that distracted us from the nuts and bolts production of our company. Now that much of that is being run by processes and infrastructure and talented individuals we have trained and mentored, we are looking where else we can leverage our own individual talents.

For quite a few years now we have been told that we are missing a brand that we were born with. We have noticed this phenomenon as well. Since we entered the professional FileMaker Pro scene in 1996 I think we can modestly say that we have become fairly recognizable not only as a respectable company within the industry but certainly as individuals on the trade show floor. Our, ahem, short stature and obvious family resemblance (no we aren’t twins) causes great confusion in telling us apart when you first meet us – and don’t even try to tell us apart over the phone. The fact that we don’t seem to ever be separated at events enhances our recognizability – so much so that when we walk into a room one of our favorite colleagues happily announces that “the evil twins have arrived”.

We have been wondering if this persona will be a good brand vehicle for delivering our business experience to the market place. We hope that by us sharing our business experience a dialog can develop with our followers that will lead all of us to learn something. Business is not work for us, it’s really fun and if you feel the same way, we are looking forward to sharing ideas with you in this new social medium.