Gowalla Trips: San Antonio Culture Crawl

I’m fairly new to the geo-tagging service provided by the folks over at Gowalla, but one of my favorite features thus far is “Trips.” Once exclusive to a select few, now every Gowalla member can create a trip (list of “spots” where a person must check-in in order to complete). When people check-in, they can leave comments, tips, pictures, etc., which makes these visits a little more exciting and engaging. There are several public trips available for historic spots, pubs, bars, and other venues. I decided to create one for cultural exploration here in San Antonio. The name of the trip is San Antonio Culture Crawl, and includes places such as the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, Witte Museum, Artpace, and others. If you find yourself in the area and are a Gowalla member, please feel free to check out the trip and tell me what you think. Please leave any comments below in this post or on Gowalla when you check in.

Citizen Photojournalism: Guardian Eyewitness

What ever happened to picture books? Remember how well they told a story with few to no words? Remember when you read your first “chapter book” and how accomplished you felt? It seems as though, the older we get, the longer the content has to be. That’s not the case with photojournalism. Photojournalists are somehow able to capture incredible moments and tell incredible stories, often with no words at all. We might say we want content, content, content - and in many cases that’s true. I find myself constantly reading. Between academic journals, literature, business books, magazines, blogs, and news articles, I fill up just about every spare minute by consuming words. However, sometimes it’s nice to take a look at beautiful pictures and let those pictures explain their stories. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/eyewitness lets me do just that. They showcase great pictures from around the world, commenting on global catastrophes, successes, events, and cultures. Take a look at some of the images below.

All photos provided by Guardian Eyewitness

Common Sense's Webinar on Mobile Marketing

Normally I don’t attend webinars. They seem to neglect the value proposition altogether and instead opt to provide some lengthy, boring pitch for services. That’s why I was skeptical when I sat down to watch the Mobile Marketing webinar hosted by Common Sense, a technology products and services company with offices in the United States and Argentina. I’m glad to report that I was pleasantly surprised with the session. The information was insightful, helpful, and actionable. At the end, they even provided links to—wait for it—other websites. After the session was over, they made the entire presentation (with transcript) available on SlideShare. If you’re interested at all about how mobile marketing might help your business check out the slides from the presentation below.

Mobile Marketing Tips

10 Things Traditional Marketers Can Learn From Non-Profit Marketers

Non-profit organizations face unique challenges when it comes to marketing. Non-profits have different types of products and services, timeframes for projects, goals, people, and funding (or lack thereof) than most other traditional businesses. Because of the higher pay, most professional marketers (read: marketing majors) tend to gravitate towards the private, agency, or consultancy sectors.

This leaves those who aren’t formally trained in marketing to assume the marketing efforts and positions of many non-profit organizations. However, this presents a unique opportunity in that they typically end up with people who care more about the cause than the money. Many entrepreneurial types, such as myself, find ourselves in social organizations because we often find ourselves stifled within the bureaucratic structure and slow action of the traditional, corporate atmosphere. Because of the limitations on the social sector, these entrepreneurs often come up with creative and innovative solutions that traditional marketers could learn from, such as:

1. How to use social media effectively
2. How to build a personal voice in marketing
3. How to react quickly to a changing marketplace
4. How to identify and reach specific target markets
5. How to market through blogs
6. How to make use of a collaborative environment
7. How to do grassroots marketing effectively
8. How to build sustainable partnerships with (public/private and public/public)
9. How to engage in guerilla marketing
10. How to measure results