Shoestring Mktg Scavenger Hunt Benefiting New Hope Food Pantry

Our community is great about coming together for a good cause. We also like to have fun. The Shoestring Mktg Scavenger Hunt is a project put together by Shoestring Mktg to show clients how to duplicate promotions that help local charities. I've chosen a Scavenger Hunt to benefit the New Hope Food Pantry which is a Harvesters agency that delivers free food to Johnson County residents in need. For more information regarding the New Hope Food Pantry happenings, visit their blog site at http://bit.ly/NHFPblg or visit the website at http://bit.ly/NHpantry . 

Scavengers collect points for "obtaining the clue". Clues are obtained by following the online action. Clues are items like follow the Food Pantry blog, or share the Shoestring Mktg Scavenger Hunt graphic on Facebook. Bonus Clues will be handed out during the ongoing promotion which are higher point value clues. Scavengers tally their clues obtained on the scorecard including any Bonus Clues they obtained and email completed scorecard to Caylon@ShoestringMktg.net before midnight on 5/31/14. Each point counts as a chance into a drawing for prizes and prize packages, like a $50 Visa gift card, coffee packages, wine packages, BBQ package and other great prizes. 

Raising awareness is not only about getting donations in, but about directing those who need help to resources available in our community. Last Saturday, at the Harvesters Mobile Food Pantry, 220 families consisting of 487 children, 489 adults & 90 seniors were given perishable items including produce, dairy and breads. Pictured right is the director of the Food Pantry, Jim Linker, on the roof looking down at the cars in line at a Mobile Food Pantry. Check out how the cars are lined up and down the street out front too. We don't always think of hunger in Johnson County, but it's here. 

If you would like to get involved in the Shoestring Mktg Scavenger Hunt and help raise awareness for the New Hope Food Pantry, simply leave a comment on this blog. Coincidentally, leaving a comment on a Shoestring Mktg blog post does count for points in the Scavenger Hunt. Happy hunting!

Humor in Marketing

Humor in marketing is used with much success, and April Fools is certainly the big holiday for that! Are you using any humor in your marketing and advertising or are you missing an opportunity to grab your audience's attention? People love to laugh! It produces endorphins inside that make them feel good, and hopefully thus connect those feelings with your product or brand. This can be especially powerful if it is a first impression of your brand, because people tend to have subconscious feelings toward someone or something going forward determined from the way they felt at their first impression of you or it. Humor can give positive and happy unconscious feelings toward your brand.

Check out this image put out by accounting company, Capstone Bookkeeping in Shawnee, KS. It was posted on Facebook today in honor of April Fools. It is industry relevant to the audience, and humor was used for a twist. The  call to action relates well, and hopefully drives home the point that if the audience didn't know this was an April Fool's joke immediately, they need their services. The head shot on this Facebook slide from Capstone Bookkeeping's Facebook page helps build Capstone's "know, like & trust" factor. This is a good slide (or Facebook status turned into a jpg in order to capture more audience due to Facebook's algorithms that show more pictures in the news feed). Be sure to check out the Capstone Bookkeeping Facebook page for more humorous slides. If she can make accounting funny, then she's probably extremely talented. Many people use GAAP brochures to cure insomnia!

People love to laugh. Try to find the light side of your business, your industry and yourselves in order to appeal to your audience. Be informative, and funny. Don't just put up jokes....tie the jokes into serious messages for a deeper connection to your clients and potential clients. As we all know, watching SuperBowl for the "good" commercials are, more often than not, humorous. There's no better day to start than April Fool's!

Facebook Analyzes Daylight Savings Data

Facebook analyzes Daylight Savings data and found there was a shift in mood according to it's users. 2 things I love in 1 post...Facebook & analytics...so sit back and get ready for an extremely interesting post! 

Facebook assembled a team of researchers and anonymized, aggregate user data by Mike Develin, Lada Adamic, and Bogdon State of the Facebook of the Facebook Data Science Team, and what was found across the nation was Facebook users were more sleepy after Daylight Savings clocks sprung forward recently. When compared to the previous Monday, Facebook users reported their mood as "feeling tired" 25% more the Monday after Daylight Savings than previously Furthermore, Facebook users also recorded their status mood to be Sleepy, up 28% from the previous Monday, and Exhausted, up 20%.

The Facebook researchers even went as far as to graph their user's tiredness on a national level to see the geographic differences on the Monday after DST.  According to the Facebook map, the darker the blue, the sleepier the people, as their increase of "feeling tired" increased the most. The really interesting kicker to this map is Arizona, who doesn't participate in Daylight Savings, and is virtually white! A very dark blue trend through the Midwest is prevalent, though Delaware was actually the sleepiest state, whose "feeling tired" statuses increased by a whopping 231%!

The Facebook Data Science Team also put together a word cloud of words used the most by people talking about the time change. Many of them pop off the page as negative, like dragging, sucks, hate and stupid, although a few positive words like sunshine, bright and loving are sprinkled into the smattering. Despite the negative sentiments that seem to plague many who weathered this year's DST, on a positive note, as the week went on, the negative sentiments were but a fraction and seemed to taper off almost completely. The use of the words tired, sleepy and exhausted were up only .1% by the Thursday after Daylight Savings, so apparently Facebookers settled in and settled down about the time change as the week went on.

Like us on Facebook here, where you're guaranteed to hear about our moods, thoughts and feelings...and maybe even a few marketing tips! Feel free to leave us your DST mood in the comments below.   :)

Facebook Emotions Go Viral

The University of California & Facebook have collaborated and research shows Facebook emotions go viral. According to this study which compared Facebook posts and weather patterns between January 2009 and March 2012, when your Facebook friends post positive sentiments, you are more likely to post positive sentiments as well. When your Facebook friends post negative sentiments, you are more likely to post negative sentiments. Doesn't this sound like the old adage that positivity breeds positivity and negativity breeds negativity? 

According to the lead researcher and a professor of medical genetics and political science at UCSD, they were literally trying to figure out, ”If it rains on your friend in Los Angeles, does it make you a little less happy in New York?” The researchers actually used a word classification system called Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count to determine the results.

It was important for the researchers to note that it is entirely possible that the emotions go viral simply because positive people may have more positive friends, and negative people have more negative friends. Can you hear your mother’s words ringing in your head, “Birds of a feather flock together”? Next up, the researchers will be studying how specific emotions spread across social networks.

So, next time you decide to complain about how you want to punch winter in the face if you even hear the word snow again, consider your Facebook friends who might be negatively affected because of your rant. Put a ‘glass is half full’ spin on your status and tell how beautiful the snow is and what an amazing canvass God has to paint with. If you’re a negative Nelly, who doesn’t care if your negativity affects others, then just disregard that last statement and status on to bring the world down. Ugh!