Think Outside the Bowl

Here's a link to my review of the book: “What’s Your Purple Goldfish?” over at marketinglagniappe.com. It's free on the Kindle for another few days and available in paperback.

And did you know there is a Purple Goldfish Jingle? Here's the winner of the jingle contest we held a while back. It's catchy. I bet you'll find yourself singing it to yourself in the car later.

Creating a Purple Buzz

Yesterday was a marathon day. My video podcast partner's book, What's Your Purple Goldfish?, was released and we spent the day promoting it and celebrating the fruits of the past couple of years. Seeing this book in print was such a great feeling.

One of the things you learn quickly in social media is that you can't just put stuff out there and wait for people to come to you. You have to go find your audience and engage with them where they live online. For us, that was Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Amazon, blogs and even some emailing and good old fashioned telephone calls. If you want to start a buzz, you gotta poke the hive.

We ended the day with a live, online chat moderated by our friend, social media strategist Susan Borst. It was fascinating to see the variety of people that logged into the chat room. There were a couple of long time friends and followers of the Purple Goldfish Project and there were a few people that had just discovered us that day... thanks to the buzz. They had no idea what a Purple Goldfish was or how to even pronounce "Lagniappe." (Lan-yap.)

It was amazing to see one person, who practically stumbled upon us, follow the conversation, ask questions and at the end of the session proclaim that her next move was going to be to buy the book.

This social media stuff works. It's not a magic bullet and it takes a lot of dedication, time and imagination. But when it starts to click, what can happen can be amazing.

I "Like" The Purple Goldfish

What a day!

The Purple Goldfish book was released today. Author Stan Phelps and I celebrated with lunch at Five Guys Burgers and Fries, one of the original Purple Goldfish. One of the great things about this book and the Purple Goldfish Project is that we gathered 1001 examples of marketing lagniappe from a grassroots campaign using our blog, video podcast and other means to spread the word.



And the bigger news is that to offer a little something extra, just like a good Purple Goldfish would do, Stan is offering the book for free on the Kindle for five days.

Here's a shot of me piloting the social media command center for the launch of "What’s Your Purple Goldfish?" Spreading the word about the new book and connecting with people from all over the place. It really is an amazing world we live in.



Now that the book is out, we are busy connecting with people on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. (There's even an online chat tonight.) Gotta run!

PS- If you read the book, let me know what you think.