Hey guys, welcome to Shama.tv. Today is a very special episode. I’ve got this nice wooden box here and today’s episode is really about a case study. I saw a company doing something very right and I wanted to showcase them here and kind of share what they did.

So one evening, I got this Email from a lady in Chicago who said that they would like to hand-ship me a box and if I was willing to accept, it was actually going to be some premium tequila. And I accepted. I do not drink, but it was a nice offer. I wanted to see where they were going this, so experimentally, I accepted.

This is the box it came in. It is Tres Generaciones – did I pronounce that right, Mo? And it is triple distilled tequila and you guys are going to like this. So I opened it up, and I’m going to try and get this out of here. Check this out, guys. Me and a bottle of tequila. I don’t drink, but it just seems cool.

So anyways, I got this bottle of tequila – very nice – sent to me, and a week later I got a dinner invitation locally and I was welcome to bring my friends so I got my husband and another friend and we went, and they had this great dinner – the same people, Tres G. They sent, you know, their representative down there. We had dinner. They had lots of samples but I couldn’t really sample it.

I was looking at all this from a social media case study geeky perspective that I could look at, but what was great was they had a representative come down from the Tres G company who explained to us how tequila was made, why premium was different than anything else, and it was really nice, because I did see a lot of local influencers in that room, and it was nice that they’d done so many steps.

I mean, I got the box initially. I was very touched, very nicely done. Then I got the dinner invitation, went out there, and got to learn a lot of things from their rep. And they also… what was nice was we really love to network with the people around and so that was very nice. I got to meet other people, and they enabled that.

So not only did they share information about their product and a great dinner, but they also enabled me to meet other people and network and do things, and not once did they ask for a review or – you know, either bad or good – they just wanted to share information about their product, which they did very successfully.

And I wanted to share this as a case study of things done right by a company that, you know, is in the liquor field that you don’t necessarily… It’s not your average technology or start-up company using social media, but something that’s outside the technology realm still using social media to reach people and to get the message out.

As for the tequila, guys? I’m keeping it.

Hey guys, welcome to Shama.tv. I had the most interesting conversation earlier this afternoon that I wanted to tell you guys about. So I get this call from a gentleman and he says he wants to start doing some social media marketing, start, you know, building communities online and build his own community online. And I thought, “Well, that’s excellent. I’m happy to help.” And we’re getting into the details of it, and I say, “Hey, do you think you could drop me an Email because I’m about to run out for lunch. It’s my husband’s birthday. We’re going to go celebrate, so if you could drop me an Email that would be great.” And the thing he said right after it is what shocked me. He goes, “Well, I’m actually so low-tech that I don’t do my own Email. I have someone else handle my Email for me.”

Okay, guys. If you do not know how to Email, if you don’t have a web site, if you don’t know what you’re doing online, social media is going to be a waste of time and money for you! I mean, I’m shocked at the amount of people I see in the social media sphere who are out there and marketing, and sometimes doing a really, you know, hackney job at it, and it makes me kind of flinch because I’m thinking, “God, where are your basics? Where are your, you know, where is your foundation?”

So they’re really building these houses or castles, if you will, on air, and this is my advice to all of you guys. I know social media is exciting. I know a lot of you guys want to get into it. But really, before you even get into this vast world, think about it. Do you know what your brand is? Do you know what you offer? Do you know what makes you different than everybody else in the field? And do you have these basics in place? Do you have a web site in place? Do you have a, you know, a mechanism to capture Email addresses? And do you have a blog? I mean, what do you have that is your basic foundation to capture people’s interest when they come to it. And so social media should be the last thing on your list.

But anyways, I thought that was an interesting story and I wanted to share that little tidbit for those of you wondering, “Should I be doing social media?” and the answer is “No” if you don’t have the basics and “Absolutely!” if you have a very good understanding of your basics and you have a platform to build on.

Hey guys, welcome to Shama.tv. I was recently contacted by a very cool local Dallas company called SticViews, and they do everything from laptop stickers to car graphics – anything that you need to be sticky and promotional, they pretty much do. But what attracted me to them was kind of a couple of reasons. One, it’s a pretty novel idea that when you create something with them, like say you create a laptop sticker or car graphic, they’ll actually let you feature it on their homepage. So free promotion, and I like how they’re blending these social networking aspects.

I’m going to try to see if I can actually get their CEO to come talk with me and talk about how, you know, some of the cool things that they’re doing with their social media strategies. But that’s one of the reasons that I like them.

The second reason is they’re giving you away a laptop sticker today. They’re going to pick someone from the Comments area today to give away a laptop sticker, so be sure to enter your name in the comments. They are not a client. Full disclosure. I’m not an affiliate, not anything like that. I just think they’re doing a pretty cool service and so I wanted to get it out to you guys.

Now, what I did ask the CEO to do was send me kind of five cool alternate ways to promote using something sticky, I suppose. And so he did. He sent me five cool things and I wanted to share those with you. I’m looking at the Email right now.

The first was laptop skins, and if you guys can see mine, the Shama.tv laptop skin right here? I’ve got tell you, so many people stop me and ask me, “Hey, what is that?” and, they’ll, you know, if I’m at a coffee shop I’ll have people sitting across from me who will actually go to that site, and they say, “Hey, I saw your videos.” So I can tell you it is an excellent marketing tool, and it’s so cheap. I mean, I think laptop stickers start at $10, so you definitely want to get a laptop sticker for your company.

The second idea he talks about is car graphics, and car graphics can actually come for less than $50. I didn’t know that. I am looking at doing this for my car, again with Shama.tv, and here’s something really funny. So I didn’t know how car graphics would look or not, but I went to the local mall – and Dallas is a big city, this doesn’t usually happen – and I think I saw a car outside with SticViews all over. Like they had, I think it was, I don’t know, it may have been the CEO’s car, but they had the SticViews stickers all over and it looked really nice. So I got up there close and personal and took a look. And so car graphics, especially if you are a local company, I think that would make a lot of sense.

The third one he talked about was custom stickers, and we’ve talked about custom stickers before on this show in terms of giving them out at trade shows and conferences and things of that nature. So that’s a cool one.

His fourth idea was storefront window signs. Of course this works really well if you’re a local business. I don’t really have an office front so that wouldn’t work, but if you have an office front, that would make a lot of sense.

His fifth idea was to decorate your office or have trade show graphics. I’m really, really intrigued by that because I’ve seen some pictures on their web sites with really cool, you know, full wall stickers, and so I’m going to look into doing that maybe even for my home office.

But here are some cool ideas. Now here’s what I want you to do. I want you to share your cool, wacky promotion idea – something like this, like the laptop stickers, that’s not often talked about. But if you have a promotional idea or a marketing idea that you use like that to get the word out about your company, go ahead and leave a comment and we will just let the CEO of SticViews pick the one he likes best, and you will get a laptop sticker.