Leveraging Your Digital Ethos to get Real World Results

Man, I don’t know about all of you, but I love the Internet. I’m not sure when the love affair officially began, but I tell you what - it’s the real deal. The fact that I just left an AIM chat session with a girl from New Jersey whom I met on family vacation in 2000 is awesome.

I know that it sounds very cliche’, but these days everyone is just a click away.

But, creating these online connections and releationships (your digital ethos) is one thing - creating an opportunity for tangible results because of them is another. When I say ‘tangible results’ I mean it in a very broad way. For example, tangible results from my online friendship with my friend could simply mean having a couch to crash on while traveling through New Jersey (which I’ve done), while tangible results from a college’s digital ethos could mean a result in increased student applications for the upcoming academic year. Although the results and audiences (friend vs. prosepective college students) are very different, the way that the relationships are built and managed are surprisingly very similiar.

One recent example of me leveraging my digital ethos happened just last week. As you may or may not know myself, along with another Digital-Ethos contributor, Mitch Maxson, recently finished the book MySpace For Dummies. Well, there is a local alt-weekly newspaper called INtake here in Indianapolis that is going to write up a story on the book in a couple of weeks and they needed a photo of the authors. Originally they wanted me, Mitch and Ryan Williams to pose with the books in the usual, cheesy way that you always see people posing in newspapers.

Needless to say I had a better idea. Why not see if some of my fellow MySpace homies want to get into the photo (and in INtake) with us? I know I only had a little under 24 hours to get something together, but why not? Anyways, I’m always up for a challenge.

I quickly got the OK from INtake to set up a new photo shoot and I found a new place for eveyone to meet up, Hot Box Pizza (a local pizza joint in town and a current MediaSauce client). Next it was time to tell all of my MySpace friends about it…that is always the fun part.

First, I created a nifty little flyer in Photoshop. I know…mad skills, right?
It never hurts to put something fun together in order to get people’s attention. I’m not the greatest flyer designer by any means, but it still did the trick.

Then, I wrote a blog inviting people out to the photo shoot madness in my MySpace blog here.
At this point it’s all about creating understanding and setting expectations for the people reading it. Plus, who can pass up free pizza? Also notice that I inserted code into my blog that readers could copy & paste into their own bulletins. This extended my reach even further beyond just my friends list.

Next, I shot out a bulletin that went out to all of my MySpace friends that pointed them back to my blog.
The bulletin had the flyer image included and it also had a link that opened directly to my blog (in a new window). It’s very important to make it as easy as possible for people reading your bulletins to interact with them.

Considering that I had less than 24 hours to get people to the shoot, I did’t have super-high expectations for the turnout. Mitch also made sure to tell me that “It’s going to really suck if only like 4 people show up.” I can always count on my homeboy Mitch.

Anyways, the time for the photo shoot came and believe it or not, people showed up. Lots of people actually. We had so many people that we couldn’t even fit eveyone into the photo, which is going to be the greatest INtake photo ever taken. Why did all of these people show up? Simple - I gave them great reasons to come out (free food, chance to be in INtake, hang out with friends, etc.) and I communicated it to them in a clear, fun and engaging way.

My digital ethos was officially leveraged…and I even have a video to prove it.

Indeed, I love the Internet.

14 January 2007 | Ryan Hupfer, ethos | Comments