Month: June 2010

Tonite I went to a Darryl Worley concert – for free. In fact, when my wife told me this morning that we had to go to the kids’ Vacation Bible School evening mixer, I was less than enthused. But when she told me the real Darryl Worley was going to be performing a live concert there – my eyes perked up. How could that be?

(The answer is simple – this is Tennessee) 🙂

So there we are in the parking lot of the church and Darryl Worley is playing under a tent. Following him are a few other acts – otherwise the entire event was pretty family focused and centered on food and kids games. But that’s not the point. (Although the idea of a huge music star playing at a local church “picnic” is pretty cool.)

The point is Darryl Worley and these other two acts had an incredible opportunity to send people to their website to get on their mailing list. Now Darryl Worley is not hurting for fans – so this is probably not something he would do, but for you or me this is Gold.

Whatever you are. . .a musician, magician, poet, speaker or even street performer this is something you should be doing. One thing that’s great about performing live is the visual experience that aids the audio. A song on the radio might not be too catchy, but hear it among hundreds of dancing fans and you’ve got a new experience. Well, that experience likes to be remembered.

People love capturing memories. So in that manner – record your public performance and offer it to the crowd for free if they go to your website and download it. And while they are there, make the give you their name and e-mail to get access to the file.  Imagine going to a concert in the park and being given the .mp3 recording of it for free. How cool.

These music artists who performed tonite may have created fans. But without the ability to reach those fans in the future – they’ve built nothing. The hope that people buy your album that comes out next fall is the same whether you gave a live concert or not. It’s still just hope. But get them on a list and you can tease them to death until you’ve built up enough anticipation they absolutely want to buy it.

If live events aren’t for the sole purpose of creating fans – then what are they for? And if you’re going into a live event without a plan to back-up that event – you may as well not go.

Have a moment when you could have used recorded the audio or video but didn’t? I’d love to hear about it. Leave a comment!

I look forward to the day that I have to come up with a logo like David Perdew is doing with his NAMS logo contest.  That makes me think of George Lucas and how cool it must be to walk through the store and see Star Wars stuff everywhere. At some point he was sitting on a couch wondering if the idea of Star Wars would ever make it. And now look. . .

So I jumped on the chance to put together a logo entry for the contest. I visited the official site for the contest and quickly realized that some people are really good at it. So here’s my contest entry and what I was trying to produce:

I think logos need to be dynamic – not in the Wonder Woman sense, but in the idea that they can change.  So I first wanted one that could change with the NAMS idea. What if it become strictly an on-line event at some point? What if it becomes a cruise event? Maybe even just a series of teleseminars? Or even all of the above?

I wanted a NAMS logo that could change with the wind.

Then I wanted one that represented online marketing. I toyed with the idea of the hub-and-spoke structure, something similar to the icon Twitter Grader uses. Then I flirted with David’s idea of building a site that makes $10/day and then starting on the next one – until you have 50. My thought process led nowhere.

Then finally I tried to come up with something that was common to all of that. And I ended up with the opt-in box. List building, newsletter sign ups and even my NAMS Action Guide come with an opt-in box. But more than that – to succeed you have to opt-in to the learning, to the time, to the commitment to the effort. No one is going to do it for you.

Success can not come to you, unless you first opt-in to the idea of it. So the idea is an opt-in box. There’s a spot for your name, and then a button to subscribe. In the case of the NAMS logo, there’s a spot for the event – and a button for succeed.

Simple really.

What I think would be cool is an animated logo on the site where different words fill in that area – which you could click to learn more about it.

Anyway, logos are cool. I look forward to the day my life needs a logo.

Related Posts:

• NAMS – A website owner’s workshop
• Lessons from NAMS
• After NAMS – Getting it done