Those who know me well have heard countless stories about ‘Disneyland in the Desert’, when my nephew, Chase, would head west every summer.  It was a wild week of movies (13 in four days is our personal best), balloon rides, and a gazillion kisses from his Arizona grandma (my mom).  I knew we had fun, but never realized the impact of those trips until this conversation at his funeral:

Friend of Chase (FoC):  You’re Chase’s aunt from Arizona?

Me:  Maybe.  What did she do?

FoC:  Seriously.  He raved about his trips out there.  He had the best time hanging out with you.  He was so excited to go and when he came back, we’d hear all these stories about all the cool things you did with him.  He said that someday he was going to move to Arizona.  I want you to know how much he loved those trips…

Me:  speechless.

Wow.  I had no idea the impact of a good visit.  So as we kick off the summer vacation season, let’s remember that it’s not the lavishness of our adventures.  It’s the connections we create when we go off work mode.  And that track record is more important than whatever results we create with our clients.

As for Chase, he’s pain free now and hangin’ with his Arizona grandma.  Thanks, dude, for 22 years of fun.

Thanks to budget cuts at univerisities, Corporate America is expanding their marketing machines to academia.  Insiders are seeing more marketing events and sponsorship deals outside the athletic department and predict more to come.

This is good news for us, especially for experts prominent with students, or who have great content in areas such as financial literacy and careers.  Watch for an influx of cash for current student programs as well as sponsored lecture series to pop up.

Great place to start:  programs within the professional schools.  Look for introductions via the alumni associations.  To make the short list, outline what you will do to draw a crowd and increase brand awareness.  Happy hunting…

The biggest question about content marketing:  where are the best outlets?  Social media networks are a great example.  They spring up like weeds after a rain, so it’s hard to know where to put your best brilliance.

Enter social media firm 97thFloor.  They did the heavy lifting for all of us who use social media with this handy little chart on the top ten networks.  They evaluated each for communicating with customers, getting our brand out there and, of course, generating traffic to our site.  Click here to get the chart.

Now that we know where to put our sound bites, let’s work on making them compelling.  That’s on my agenda for the next Extreme Mini Makeover call coming up this Tuesday.  Click here if you’d like to join me.

The “here, take my content” free-for-all is not letting up soon.  According to Junta42 2010 Content Marketing Research Study, we ain’t seen nothing yet.  Over 250 marketing pros had these findings:

• Small companies spend more than twice what larger companies spend.  Small shops devote around 40% of their budget to marketing content.
• Content marketing spending equals a little over 33 percent of total marketing budgets.
• Six out of ten marketing pros report increases in content marketing spending in 2010.
• Favorite outlets:  social media (72%), e-newsletters and blogs (both at 63%).

Why do we care?  Because if larger companies are spending major bucks to get their content out there, then we, as experts, need to match that investment.  Not in dollars — who can afford that?  Our content just has to be better.  And I’ve got a plan to do just that in the next Extreme Mini Makeover call next Tuesday, May 11th.  Click here if you’re ready to get out there and compete with the bigger players…