This is Week 42 of a 52-week project/experiment in DIY marketing. Armed with nothing but a copy of the 2009 Grow Your Business Marketing Plan + Calendar and my bare wits, I’m applying the skills you need to grow a business in real time, day by day, and reporting on them week by week here, on the podcast, and at the Marketing Mix blog.
The good news is that the Biznik meetups I initiated and have been working steadily to promote, now in partnership with my amazing friend and uber-talented designer, Heather Parlato, have taken off.
We have a solid core of people who show up each month, so that new people get folded in and taken care of by the regulars, who are all quite comfortable. The circle keeps growing, with new, interesting people joining us each time, adding to the flavor of the group, and becoming inspired to start their own Biznik events in other parts of the city.
The bad news is that we’ve gotten so comfortable, I forgot one of the cardinal rules of networking: business and politics do NOT mix, especially when you’re just meeting for the first time. Everyone who knows me at all (and most people who just spot me from a distance) know that I’m a big, fruity, crunchy, kumbaya liberal. And a vast majority of the people I come in contact are as well.
So—you can see this coming, right?—I was not even thinking when I brought a batch of equal marriage rights stickers to the meetup to hand out. I’d made a donation, wound up with a giant stack of stickers, and thought, “Great! I’ll hand them out as presents!” Most people were excited to see them—we had a big discussion in a small group about the NoH8! campaign, and how well done it was, at the last meetup; a couple people were neutral (and I now realize that they may have just been acting polite, which is more than I can say for myself).
One man, however, looked a little uncomfortable when I started handing them out. To his eternal credit, as he gave it back to me, he did not say anything nasty or sharp, just, “Here—why don’t you save this for someone who’ll use it?” I apologized (I think) and didn’t make a big deal out of it, but inside, I was dying: the last thing in the world I want to do is make uncomfortable someone who’s just showed up to mix and mingle for business. The conversation ground to a halt; it was obvious we were all uncomfortable now. Somehow, someone started it up again and things blew over without a big fuss. But I never got a chance to pull the man aside and apologize for my rudeness and presumption. I’ll try to locate him from the sign-in sheet, but if for some reason he’s reading this now, I hope he accept my sincerest regrets.
I’m at BlogWorld Expo now, through Saturday afternoon. If you’re here, too, come up and say “hi” if you see me, or @-reply me on Twitter (I’m @communicatrix.)
And whether you’re here or not, if you have any other words of wisdom to get me through the weekend without stepping in it again, do let me know!
xxx
c
Marketing round-up for this week:
- 6 blog posts (five at the main blog, one here)
- more emails about upcoming Pam Slim seminar
- attended wildly successful Biznik meetup (except for my unfortunate faux pas!)
- met up with some people early here at BlogWorld Expo
- one-on-one catchup confab with a colleague-peer (mm…ketchup…)
- email, eternally
- morning and afternoon checkins with Facebook and Twitter
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