Recently, an image of a found Capital One Receipt stirred up a lot of attention online with roughly a balance of $100,000,000 on it. Someone withdrawing money from their bank account found the receipt of the previous person’s transaction. After finding the bank receipt with a ton of cash in the account, the person quickly decided to post a picture of their find online. 2.5 seconds later, the world is awash in Tweets, Facebook posts and the like of this “millionaire’s” account.

I personally call BS on this viral experience. It would be pretty easy for Capital One to use this as a clever marketing tool. After all, if someone trusts us with $100 million, why wouldn’t you trust us with $5,000? Not to mention, the photos of the receipt have the bank’s logo and web address all over, increasing brand awareness. The whole story, explanation and idea just seem a little too perfect in my world.

What are your thoughts?

Happy 4th of July everyone!

There is a myth that only the marketing department controls the brand outside your business’s four walls. Even if you are the programmer who never talks to a single client, your marketing is how the program works, feels and functions. If you are the front desk worker, your presence is marketing how you reach out to people both in person and over the phone. If you’re the boss, every policy you make markets how you feel about your employees and your company.

Knowing that marketing isn’t just one aspect handled by one small group within a company makes you examine how you can get greater returns on your marketing efforts. If you hire the best coder in the world yet the design and troubleshooting are highly lacking, how does that reflect on the company?

What about the HR person who is told to hire someone for the lowest cost? Someone can be excellent on paper, yet move the company in the wrong direction with her marketing. It’s no fault of the HR person if he was told to find the best person for the lowest cost.

If you have a customer support person who hammers out calls but lacks in personality or compassion, how does that make the customer feel? Look at zappos.com. They built an entire company around talking with people on a personal level.

When you want to focus your efforts on marketing, don’t forget to look at the other people in the company doing the marketing. Cheers.

Then you have come to the right place, almost… Technically you want to go to Echelon Media (www.echelonmedia.com).

This project has been in the works for some number of months now, and I have to admit it is coming together quite nicely. I have teamed up with three other amazingly smart and talented people to bring the best possible service and information for those looking to gain a footing in Internet marketing and social media.

Who are these people?

Allyn Hane – Master of his own domain located at www.bloggerillustrated.net
Steve Sherron – Media Entrepreneur www.bloggerlens.com
Brian Matson – Mr Fargo/Moorhead when it comes to social media www.fargomoorhead.org
Josh Whitford – Myself, with an emphasis on marketing techniques and startegies www.joshwhitford.com

What is our goal?

We want to bring the world of social media and Internet marketing to real people running real businesses. How can a mom and pop flower shop use and gain a return on investment from communities like Facebook, Twitter or local sites. This would include using all kinds of different methods for promoting that include a little bit of everything, SEO, community websites, video and cross platform marketing and advertising techniques.

Who are we trying to serve?

The team we have assembled is very good at many different marketing techniques and we want to bring that knowledge and experience together to better serve more people. We are here to serve businesses of all size and have quite a foothold is some prominent industries already. We will also be creating products and services that everyday people can use to better utilize and leverage these social and marketing techniques to their advantage. This isn’t going to be another fly by the night membership site or service or just an excuse to be invited to conferences to speak. No, we are trying to further other people and businesses to the next level in the ever-changing landscape of Internet marketing and social media.

Where can you find info on the other guys?

Our Blogs

http://bloggerlens.com/ (Steve)
http://bloggerillustrated.net/ (Allyn)
http://www.joshwhitford.com/ (Josh)
http://www.fargomoorhead.org/fmnews/ (Brian)

Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Monroe-Scoop/142453226861?ref=nf (Steve)
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Blogger-Illustrated/127955991346?ref=ts (Allyn)
http://www.facebook.com/therealjosh (Josh)
http://www.facebook.com/FargoMoorhead?ref=nf (Brian)

Twitter

http://twitter.com/hyperlocalblog (Steve)
http://twitter.com/AllynPaul (Allyn)
http://twitter.com/therealjosh (Josh)
http://twitter.com/fargomoorhead (Brian)

Echelon Media Links

http://www.echelonmedia.com/
http://twitter.com/echelonmedia
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Echelon-Media/372799737541?ref=ts

What do you think?

We’d love to hear your feedback and ideas. What do you think of the site? What topics would you like us to cover?