My awkward moments on National Awkward Moments Day
March 18th is/was National Awkward Moments Day. As I said before, I did not make up this wonderful holiday, but it is certainly like Christmas for theCRICKETtoy®. To celebrate this grand day, I had a huge event that went on all day long both online (via Twitter) and live in person. Over $4500 worth of prizes were donated to give away.
In town, I travelled all around in theCRICKET car with theCRICKET mascot (Calvin) doing fun and awkward things. Online, I had a Twitter contest asking random questions throughout the day. It certainly was an awkward day in a good, bad & ugly way. Here’s the recap:
Ugly
It turns out you CAN NOT sit in the food court at the mall and then walkaround in a giant cricket costume. The security guard informed me of that. Thrown out of a mall-priceless and awkward!
Good
1. We did a photo shoot at Belmont University. The folks there were gracious enough to allow me to come on campus and do a photo shoot with a giant cricket. Here’s how the conversations went:
Student:What’s going on?
Me:It’s National Awkward Moments Day. Do you want your picture with a giant cricket?
Student:YES!!!!
It was awesome. The photos are online for you to see and for the students to download and do with as they please. I obviously encourage them to post them everywhere (and mention www.theCRICKETtoy.com)
2. Sweet CeCe’s downtown Franklin. ‘CeCe’ donated 5 free yogurts to the first 5 Tweeters to show up. It was a pretty good crowd and Sweet CeCe’s rocks! If you haven’t been there, check it out! If you don’t have one in your town, they are now franchising!
Bad
I did not do a good enough job marketing the event (live and online). As a result we didn’t have crazy crowds and I wasn’t swamped with answers for the trivia questions online. When it’s a one man/bug show and you are just getting started, you do what you can. There are only so many hours in the day. I have a publishing company. I’m producing a children’s record and along with having 2 daughters and an amazingly supportive wife, I have a 5 month old son. You can only do so much. BUT, I ABSOLUTELY know what to do better next year. No question!
Here’s the really interesting part that many social marketing experts don’t talk about. I have 6,000 followers on Twitter and over 1,000 friends on Facebook. I talked about this event for the week building up to this grand day. During the actual day, I tweeted the questions and did fun updates (like when I was thrown out of the mall). I think the draw to my blog from folks is more about an entrepreneur starting out without investors and learning as he goes while admitting his failures. Admission:I had only about 40 more hits to my website than normal. Yes…40.
CHIRP. CHIRP.
I should have done a LOT more marketing to radio, newspapers, tv and put up signs all around town. That would have really helped out. BUT, I really thought with the 6,000 followers and 1,000 facebook friends that we would get some viral traction and folks would share this silly day. That did not really happen. I did have some great folks do some tweeting/facebooking, but as a whole Twitter completely failed in my opinion. You would think that of 6,000 followers, at least 500 of them who CHOSE to follow me would talk about National Awkward Moments Day. That did not happen.
I had 15 people tweet about it.
So the questions comes to mind:What value is there in large follower counts when you are not some sort of celebrity whom ALL of your followers live to see your tweets? I just don’t think it’s as powerful as it used to be before all the direct marketers took over. Just my opinion though. I would love yours. Post your comments below!
Takeaway
I ‘think’ one of my greatest strengths is the ability to step outside of myself to see what did and what didn’t work and learn from it. I am not afraid to adjust my expectations, my plans and my direction. As my good Marine friend always says, “Adapt and Overcome.” That is a GREAT philosophy in business. You just have to constantly assess where you are and where you should be.
There were some amazing moments in the day, but they were not ALL amazing. So that’s the goal for next year.
Pure Amazing.
That and don’t get kicked out of the mall again.
CHIRP. CHIRP.