SaulColt.com has moved.

Well to be honest. SaulColt.com hasn't moved but rather it has been redirected to Saul.is

I won't be posting here any longer but really don't want to lose you as a reader so please check out the new posts and pictures over at saulcolt.com or saul.is

Thanks!

S!

When Brands start doing this I hope people remember who did it first.

*Please Note* I have launched a new home for my blog at http://saul.is/ I will keep cross posting here for a little while but please update your bookmarks or click on the link an subscribe to the new rss feed.

So I hope you have noticed the new look here at Saul.is (and I will write about that in the next blog post) but there is something pretty special that you may have not noticed yet…and I expect to be copied.

The thing that is so special, imho, is the url. Ya see I went with a “.is” extention (from Iceland if you are keeping score) so I could create blog posts like this one with the url www.saul.is/a-genius or even better full pages of this site that are as clear as day to what they are like www.saul.is/speaking (for my speaking career) or www.saul.is/consulting (for my side projects) and I have plans to add hundreds of pages of things that will entertain and amaze.

Pretty clever huh? Now imagine what a big brand could do with this? www.wwe.is/protecting-the-environment or www.bmw.is/the-ultimate-driving-machine or even www.coke.is/it The possibilites are endless and with the number of .com’s getting almost impossible to find I would not be surprised if this becomes more popular…so please just remember where you saw it first!

Please Vote for my SXSW panel!

*Please Note* I have launched a new home for my blog at http://saul.is/ I will keep cross posting here for a little while but please update your bookmarks or click on the link an subscribe to the new rss feed.

Hi Y'All,

As you can see I have a new website and all and I will get to that in the next post becuase I am still tinkering a little with the look and feel but this post couldn't wait till I was done because well, it's time sensitive!

Voting has opened for the panel selection at SXSW Interactive and I am fortunate to be on two pretty amazing/interesting possible panels but I need your help in getting them voted in! Please read over the descriptions below and if it is interesting to you please vote! Even if it isn't interesting to you consider this a chance to right whatever wrongs you may have done to people in the past because voting is really the only thing that separates us from countries that can't vote...well that and a few other things but please vote!

The first is called

Influencer Throwdown: Proving Influence Once and For All

With David Binkowski, Krista Neher, Kevin Duggan and myself.

Influence "experiments" like Fast Company's project do more harm than good when it comes to defining and measuring influence. It's more than how many people you can get to vote for you. Instead of counting the people who reach you need to reach the people who count. Four marketing veterans will weigh in with individual presentation on their real-world examples of influence and discuss the current state of influence. What's real, what's wrong and what's next. As part of the interactive discussion attendees will learn * different approaches to measuring influence * specific examples of influence including the impact it had for a brand * ways to identify and measure influence.

The other Panel is

Startup Marketing: It's More Than a Twitter Account

with Sarah Prevette @sarahprevette, Maggie Fox @maggiefox, Micah Baldwin @Micah, Ben Huh @BenHuh and Krista Neher @kristaneher and myself.

Have you ever looked at the Sky Mall catalog and say to yourself "How have I gone this long without an ankle air conditioner?" Probably not but the fact is that there are a lot of start ups and more will be formed before you finish reading this description. It's getting harder and harder to get the attention you need to prosper and reach your prospective audience but that doesn't mean it is impossible! This talk is going to cover a few tricks and tips for actually marketing your business from a start up perspective and you may be surprised that this talk isn't going to be all about Social Media!

This is my last blog post on Blogspot cause I am rebranding myself.

You may have noticed that I haven't posted anything here in a few weeks.

wait...you hadn't?

Shame on you.

Anyway, the reason is because I am launching a brand spanking new site and have been busy putting the final polish on it. The new site is going to be a more accurate look into my head and act as a re-brand of sorts.

This has got me thinking a lot about re-branding and what my goals are for the new site and have over simplified my thoughts so I can share with you possibly the worlds simplest brand discovery strategy formula.

If you are unsure of what your product "brand" is answer the following questions:

Who is this for?

What is it one of?

How is it better?

The answers you come up with will tell you a lot about your company, product or in some ways yourself. Hope to see you over at the new site real soon.

How I learned the importance of Vision.

One of my favorite podcasts is Creative ScreenWriting Magazine because every week they interview a writer and begin each discussion with "breaking in" stories.

This isn't exactly my breaking in story but it is interesting non the less so please indulge me.

As many of you know (cause I keep typing it here on my blog over and over) I used to make comic books for a living and through running my own publishing company I learned most of the lessons I share now in my fancy pants role as "The Smartest Man in the World". Probably my favorite lesson that I have never shared was "How I learned the importance of Vision" so grab a coffee and enjoy cause this one is a tear jerker!

In comics I had the pleasure of working with some amazing artists. One of my favorites was Bill Maus (That is his Batgirl drawing) because he drew beautifully, we got along well and he would make me think about stuff.

Bill told me this story about before he got enough work to draw comics full time he was also a caricature/portrait artist at Sea World in San Diego. One day while working there, a family came up to get a portrait of their son. The boy sat down and Bill noticed that he was missing an eye and didn't have a patch just an exposed socket. He began drawing the boy and purposely left the eyes for last because he had to decide how he would tackle this. After a little thought he drew the boy with two perfect eyes because he assumed that in the mind of his parents that is how he saw them. When he presented the drawing the look on the parents face confirmed he had made the right decision.

I was thinking about this recently and it dawned on me that this is a business lesson. You not only need to see your company or brand as what it is right now but also what it can be and what you want it to be, because how you see your business is going to shape how you discuss your business and how you discuss it is going to also be how others see it.

I haven't spoken to Bill in a while and for all I know I am remembering this the way I want to but either way I'm going to give him a call and say hi and thank him for the inspiration.

This may be the thing that bothers me most about Social Media.

I am a nice person.

I don't go out of my way to be confrontational but I am not afraid to defend myself if need be. Instead of picking a fight I have always thought it more impact full to walk away from a fight, follow the person home and put a bumper sticker on their car saying "registered sex offender".

I think a lot of people are like me but if you were to read social media streams you would imagine more people are like the kid in the picture and less polite then yours truly.

Now I am no shrinking violet and I LOVE SOCIAL MEDIA but I am really bothered by the fact that people use their "amplified voice" to criticize people and brands instead of being more constructive like trying to find love or teach someone something.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I would have more respect for the people who would walk into an [insert brand name here] store and scream expletive filled descriptions of their unhappyness (spelled like the movie...not a typo) to the kid in the store so you are reminded that there are real people involved in these companies then run to twitter and ruin the chances of me finding love.

Everyone knows that Sex Sells but has sex ever offered a discount?

On July 20th in NYC I will be delivering a talk on "How to create brilliant Word of Mouth with no budget". You can see I'm excited to be speaking at the Word of Mouth SuperGenius conference and as a way to get the word out (using no budget) I asked one of the neighbourhood moms to let me take a picture of her in a partially wet shirt designed by Hugh Macleod (@gapingvoid on twitter).

You see by knocking on the door of a a neighbour that I don't really know and ask the lady of the house to pose for a picture (and ignore the super gorgeous 21 year old daughter) I created a story worth sharing, made a new friend, probably ruined the self image of the daughter and proved yet again I am very charming...so by my calculations this family alone will be telling this story forever.

Ruining family dynamics is only one way to get stories to spread and to learn other ways I hope you will join me at the conference and listen to not only from me but Tony Hsieh, Spike Jones, Olivier Blanchard, Lane Becker, Virginia Miracle and Kira Wampler (just to name a few).

...and hey since I am in a good mood and still tingling from the photo shoot I am going to share a discount code to the conference. Sign up and use the code Saulismyhero for a savings of $101

Disclaimer: you realize I was kidding about the whole ruining family dynamics but serious about being charming....right?

People who are good at Social Media know this...

When I worked at FreshBooks the thing I got asked most was "What exactly do you do there?"

The reason people were unsure was because when they met me they would see my title was "Head of Magic" and that was an immediate conversation starter. I've explained my role there 100 different ways but the core message included "a convergence of Social Media, Marketing, Customer Service and PR."

People are always debating the point of where Social Media falls between Marketing, Customer Service or PR and I am here to tell you that if you are doing it really well it will falls into all of them...or even better it's a new category all together and can be run beside traditional marketing departments because when you combine them all, Social Media becomes about one thing and one thing only.

[Wait for it]

Idea Integration.

When you are integrating ideas you are not replacing anything (some people think Social Media is a "cure" to all that ails ya) but rather enhancing what you are already doing in any of your traditional buckets.

What says you?