Promotion management for the rest of the semester

I hope you’ve found learning how to use the WordPress content management system helpful this semester.  Having a website/content management system is key to managing promotions.  It all starts with a domain name.

Now that you have a content management system and you know how to install WordPress plugins, you can integrate your website/content management system into every aspect of your promotional mix:

The WordPress Content Management Systems and The Promotional Mix

Advertising

Integrate your YouTube ads into your site!  Do a “YouTube” search in the WordPress plugins directory and look at what’s possible.

Personal selling

CRM with Salesforce.com? Get the plugin, watch the video.  Ask Zac Sandy (former student) for help.

Sales promotion

Trying to promote some events?  Use Eventbrite and integrate Eventbrite into your WordPress site with a plugin.

Public relations

Got a press release and a blog post just isn’t enough?  Integrate your blog post and website into a pitchengine press release.

Corporate marketing

Did you just start a crisis and you need to open up a forum to let people vent?  You can start a forum with bbPress!

Direct marketing

Wanna start spamming your friends?  Get a cool email template from MailChimp and integrate MailChimp into WordPress with a plugin.

Exhibitions

Do you have cool images to share?  Put them on flickr and integrate flickr into your WordPress site with a plugin.

If you don’t have a content management system and you’re trying to promote something your life is going to be more difficult.

Remember the blog post about Reviving the Traditional Press Release that I showed you at the beginning of the semester?  Since then Brian Solis has written a book and been on WLTV.

We have 3 weeks left in the semester.  We’re going to learn how to use iMovie so that you can create YouTube videos, and on the last day of class we’re going to share the videos.

You can also use this time to work on your WordPress website.  Now that you have a better idea of the big picture, capabilities, and limitations of WordPress you might want to do something different than you’d originally intended.  I know the idea of personal branding is kind of weird (products are inanimate objects, but you’re a person!), but it’s important.  When somebody with money needs a website/content management system you want them to hire you, right?

On the last day of class we are also going to share our WordPress websites, so please be ready to share something about your website in addition to sharing your YouTube video.

Editing Video with iMovie

Editing video with iMovie is easy, but doing it for the first time can be tricky.

Apple has some great tutorials on its iMovie page.

With some basic special effects you can do some catchy things in iMovie.  Titles, transitions, splitting clips, fast forward and slow down the speed of the video, add images to a video, and more.

You guys probably have better examples of YouTube videos that you like, but here are some that you could make with iMovie: Mobile Home Commercial, Guy Catches Laptop With His Butt, Do You Know the Way to Michele Slumberger?

If you enjoy editing video then push yourself to learn FinalCut or Adobe Premiere.  I’m going to try to learn Adobe Premiere and Adobe AfterEffects CS5…

Next class in the lab we’ll be going over capturing, editing, exporting, and uploading video in the lab.  Bring some video to work with if you can.