An acquaintance of mine on Facebook--oh stop acting like you don't start sentences with those words all the time. Unless you're a Luddite. In which case, why are you reading this blog and not churning your own butter or shoeing your horses or something while it's still daylight?--recently noted that since he had left his job, he could now tweet with impunity, since he didn't have to worry about marketing anymore. Oh my.

I'm not a huge fan of this um "friend," so I didn't say anything. But I do have a soft spot for people who read this blog, so here's what I would have said: "You are incorrect." He was incorrect to 1) think he didn't have to worry about marketing anymore, 2) to think he could tweet with impunity (especially, given the fact that he is unemployed), and 3) to think that he was ever not marketing.

News flash: We're all always marketing. We're marketing, in big and small ways, when we go to the gym, when we gain weight, when we go to graduate school or drop out, when we get hung over or laid, when we get married, when we stay single, when we post photos on Facebook, or don't post photos, when we wear shorts or jeans or capris, when we have pets or don't, when we wear makeup or don't....if you're breathing, you're marketing. And to think that you can somehow choose when you're going to market...alas, no. All you're doing then is choosing to market poorly.
Marketing is interacting with other humans, it's leaving a path through life, it's being alive. (Oops, almost became a Barbra Streisand lyric there.)

I, for example, have a personal Facebook page and a public page. At this point, I don't accept any friend requests anymore--sorry, Bradley Cooper, you missed your chance--since at one point, I was perhaps a little less savvy about marketing and put up quite a few status updates and photos that um, perhaps I didn't think out too well. (Translation: http://youtu.be/QYHxGBH6o4M)

So, as I got deeper into this business, I realized: this is who I am. I could try and hide it...meh. Lying is so boring. Or, I can embrace it: bingo! Its now part of my organic marketing. Or something.
My point being: you are always marketing. Every social media imprint you leave, every comment, every joke, every photo you click "like" on, every group you join, every stupid thing you re-tweet, every party you attend, the people you date, the types of food you eat...you are marketing. And if you think you aren't, then you're marketing something even worse...your lack of intelligence.

Before you get cranky and join a Luddite commune (unless it's a free love kind of commune, and then high five, son!), email me @carlotazee.com and let's see how I can help you improve your marketing...or at least avoid making some of the more egregious mistakes I made.

Being on-message, good & bad

I've been spending a lot of time, recently, with new clients, helping them design their Facebook fan and business pages. (Someone reading this, just snorted and thought, "Thank god, you're not wasting your Wellesley education, right? Get a real job, hippie!") And yet, it is a real job: it's called, 'branding,' boys and girls. We all do it, some more successfully than others. Why, for example, do I retain any info about Kim Kardashian's "wedding" in the nooks and crannies of my brain? Especially, why do I retain said information, when all of civil procedure, which I swear to god I studied, is gone?
So here's my point: if and when you grow up, leave the drum circle and decide that yes, a Facebook page, and all the inherent free marketing and advertising (ka-ching!), could be very extremely essential to you and your business: remember what Facebook is there to do. Namely: give people a place to goof-off and waste time; allow people to stay in touch with friends, kinda-friends, girls who married boys so fine it drives me insane, freneies, ex-mens and rivals; receive and post ginormous amounts of cat pictures; dog diaries (don't ask); let people occasionally learn something; post even more kitten pictures.
Therefore, unless your page is promoting a baby orange kitten or some porn star, there is such a thing as being too on-message. Your friends and family, and various strangers, I'm sure, are going to support your cigar business, or real estate business or winery, but 10 postings a day about cigars is seriously TMI. (And not, TMI, in the good way, like when I bitch about being hung to the over.) On the other hand, 3 interesting, informative, even witty postings about cigars, mixed in with links to funny articles, interesting news, relevant products, music and video clips...okay, I'm down. Since now you're keeping your brand in my head...but not shoving it down my throat.
Which is, of course, why this info does not apply to any Facebook page about 1) kittens, 2) baby orange kittens, 3) tiny tabbies, or 4) women with large breasts who have sex in public.

As a creativity yenta, I frequently get resumes from potential clients. Frequently I find these resumes rather impressive. So impressive, in fact, that under other circumstances, I might get a little jealous. Under other circumstances--as in, if we weren't inhabiting an its’-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it economy--these people would probably be giving me directions on how they like their coffee.

But since we do live in an economy that’s bad and getting worse, an economy which can sometimes make you hopeful for The Rapture as a ticket out, I work with said clients to make them understand: you’re resume is great, I’m super impressed, but to get hired, you have to make an employer understand that you are a valuable return upon their investment.

To do that you must constantly upgrade your skills, your education and network. For example, I worked in TV news for years. I did a lot of fancy jobs on fancy shows. I have a lot of friends still in TV. But if  I wanted to return to TV, just sending in my resume and asking my old friends for help would get me a whole lot of nada. I haven’t worked in TV since 2008. All of my “skills” are at least 3 years old…well, except for my innate ability to throw phones at people who miss their deadlines and make bad writers cry. That gift will stay with me forever. The gift that keeps on giving.

But... I can’t do digital editing, I don’t shoot, I don't have my own equipment, etc. So why would a network hire me? I’m going to cost them a large amount of money in benefits, or even a straight day rate, and they’re going to have to spend extra time and money training me. I was a history major who avoided math like an ugly date, but even I can see that in that situation, I would be a waste of their resources. The value I bring would not be a sufficient return on their investment. 

That sounds a little cold-blooded, right? Yup. As the man said, “The business of America is business.” And once you start thinking about yourself as a business, as a business that must succeed, and thinking about what skills you have, as well as what skills you lack, and how you would market yourself, and who would be receptive to that marketing……well, then you too can be in business.