Welcome
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 08/06/2006 - 14:24Welcome to Orient Lodge, a literary outpost on the internet.
This site contains a collection of thoughts and other writings. Recent posts will show up on the front page, and other posts can be found through links on the right.
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Turkeys, Soda and Paid and Unpaid Posts
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 11/21/2009 - 11:20I must admit, I am not a big fan of paid posts on blogs. I’ve read many paid posts as I surf blogs and most of them are uninteresting content promoting uninteresting content. However, this morning, I found two blog posts that caught my attention. First, I found Freaky Frugalite’s post a lot of turkeys will be there. It was a paid review of Jones Soda’s “ORIGINAL Tofurkey & Gravy Soda”. I must admit, tofurkey and gravy soda sound original, but I don’t think it is something I will serve on my table.
Jenn at My Kids are My World has two great posts up about Tofurky and gravy soda. It is fun reading and reinforces my desire not to try the soda.
With that, let me get to my recommendations: When I drive home from Virginia and cross Pennsylvania on Interstate 78, I often stop at Dietrichs Meats in Krumsville, PA. They describe themselves as an authentic Pennsylvania Dutch Butcher Shop. Typically, I stop and pick up something small to eat and some of the soda. This time, I picked up a case of Reading Draft White Birch Beer and Reading Draft Sarsaparilla Soda. I’m not a big soda drinker, but these are also sodas that have authentic character. I also picked up a sixteen pound smoked ham.
h to feed twenty people, so had a nice ham dinner. Then Kim took some of the ham to her parents for their dinner when they returned from a long trip. We had a few days of leftover ham and we’re still working on it.
Kim suggested that we make Ham and Coke. It didn’t seem quite right to pour Coke on a nice smoked ham, but I did, and let it bake in the over on a low heat for a long time. When we ate the ham, you couldn’t taste the coke, but the house filled up with a wonderful smoked smell and the ham was delicious.
So, there’s my unpaid response to a couple paid posts. Seems like Jones Soda hit on a good idea for paid posts, and I’ve enjoyed reading Rebecca and Jenn’s posts about their soda. However, I enjoyed even more, the ham and the soda that I picked up at Dietrich’s meats in Pennsylvania and if people send me free soda or hams, I’ll enjoy them.
#NaNoWriMo Liza
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 11/20/2009 - 17:18This month, I’ve been trying to write a novel for National Novel Writing Month, which I’m currently calling Liza’s Party. It is a twenty first century remake of Pygmalion, where two guys attempt to create the ‘perfect woman’ online via sites like Facebook. The novel is moving along okay, a little behind schedule, but most of the characters are well defined, except Liza.
So, I thought I would ask people who visit my blog their views of what Liza should be like? What would make her the perfect online companion? More importantly, how would she demonstrate these attributes online?
Another question that I want some of my characters to struggle with is, what benefits, if any, might there be in attempting to create such an online companion? The potential downsides are much more obvious.
So, what are your thoughts? How would you imagine Liza?
#socialmarketing Convergence CoverItLive Page
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 11/19/2009 - 12:03This page is the CoverItLive aggregation of the #socialmarketing TweetChat that is taking place Thursday November, 19th at 12 noon, Eastern U.S. time.
You can join in by tweeting with the hash tag #socialmarketing via Twitter, Tweetchat, or other Twitter tools, or by posting comments in the CoverItLive frame while the chat is occurring.
Example QRCode pointing back to this blog post:
#socialmarketing Convergence, The Long Tail and The Innovator/Influencers
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 11/19/2009 - 10:36Today at noon, Eastern U.S. time, @ckieff and I will do a Social Marketing Tweet Chat. Chris runs the Social Marketing firm, 1 Good Reason and we often chat at various conferences. He has been running the Social Marketing Tweet Chat for some time now, and asked me to join him to share some of my perspectives.
While I pay close attention to social marketing, I approach it more from the technology side than from the marketing side. I typically present myself as an “Old guard, hardcore geek”. The closest I get to marketing is when I describe some of my work as “helping people tell their stories on computers”. So, I will present a different perspective than some of the other folks that Chris often speaks with.
The current themes that I’m most interested in, in this area, and that I expect to explore at lunch time are convergence, the long tail, and the technology adoption lifecycle. In short, I believe that too many marketers do not spend enough time focusing on convergence. Various forms of digital technology are rapidly converging, but too often, it seems, marketing campaigns are not converging.
At the conferences Chris and I attend, it always seems like all of the focus is on the really large publishers. However, the long tail suggests that marketers, and especially those focusing on a social component, need to look more at the publishers that are not at the top of the A list. That is where the social action really is taking place.
Finally, I suggest that marketers should look more at innovators in the technology adoption lifecycle instead of early majority, late majority or laggards. The innovators are the folks that test out technology, when they find a product they like, they become the champions of the product and are the most effective influencers for a product. It seems like technology firms understand this, but few other firms seem to focus on who the innovators and early adopters for their brands might be. As an aside, the original research that led to the sociological model of the technology adoption lifecycle was based on hybrid seed corn sales in the 1950s.
So, join in at noon and share your thoughts for what I hope will be a lively discussion.
