Newsletter - Working the Internet, Multiculturally  Famed animal trainer Gunther Goebel-Williams knew that even elephants eventually have to move out and take their place in the light.
Web 2.0 Replac... moreNewsletter - Working the Internet, MulticulturallyFamed animal trainer Gunther Goebel-Williams knew that even elephants eventually have to move out and take their place in the light.
Web 2.0 Replaces Traditional
Internet Marketing Tools
By taking one weekly or monthly marketing piece – your newsletter, blog and/or podcast -- and building an internet marketing plan around it, your firm will step into the Web 2.0 spotlight, generating the cash to take you to your next level.
What’s the Difference?
Web 1.0 was the first step, when we would create a marketing piece and send it out to everyone we knew or had ever heard of, hoping someone would want to hire us.
What happened was that most people started blocking and deleting those messages; people were getting so many messages, from us and from everyone else on the planet, it seemed, that they just weren’t interested in wading through them.
Now, in Web 2.0, the tide has turned, and the trend is to entice people to come to us, not only by providing informative internet articles, but by targeting the articles specifically to the groups we really want to reach. That would be the decision-makers on the economic level applicable for our product or service.
Are you ready to take Goebel-Williams’ cue and come out into your own light, so that your target market will want to applaud your firm monetarily? The Word Mason can help you.
The Multicultural Element
We live in a multicultural society, whether our differences are related to gender, generations, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomy or any combination of the above. The more skilled we become in negotiating the waters of diversity, the happier and more successful we will become financially and socially.
The Bottom Line
Financial Benefit. By regularly sending one strategically worded marketing piece rippling across the web, you will be able to attract the level of paying customers or clients you desire, and you will be enhancing and solidifying your credibility as the go-to person for your product or service.
Multicultural Benefit. All firms are diverse whether by gender, generation, ethnicity and/or religion. Each cultural group is working on unspoken premises of beliefs and values. Employees may relate to your dictates in several ways. They may:
- Verbally subscribe to your mandates, inwardly agreeing to them completely.
- Agree in another form more comfortable for them.
- Verbally acquiesce while secretly sabotaging your efforts by ignoring or distortion.
Manage the Unspoken.
By communicating with your employees effectively they will buy into your message and you will benefit financially. You will:
- Produce a stable harmonious workforce that will increase productivity by quality and numbers.
- Enhance your firm’s reputation as a solid work environment.
- Create multiple new markets.
The Word Mason will guide you through the often-murky waters of diversity.
One Piece = Multiple Morphs
To turn a profit in today’s economic environment, every penny counts in marketing. By regularly sending one strategically worded marketing piece rippling across the web in a variety of formats, you will be able to attract the level of paying customers or clients you desire, and you will be enhancing and solidifying your credibility as the go-to person for your product or service.
The marketing piece, a blog or newsletter, can be prepared and sent out weekly or monthly, but it should be sent regularly in order to build credibility and strength on search engines and social media websites. We will discuss the various details in future newsletters, but here’s an overview.
First of all, the content must be value-packed to the reader, in terms of tips and helpful information. Web 2.0 is a soft marketing approach, not an advertisement for your firm. An advertisement or listing of your services in the guise of a newsletter or blog will ensure that readers do not subscribe to your newsletter, nor do they return to your blog. On the other hand, strategically worded valuable content will draw readers to you, and entice them to want to learn more about what you can do for them.
The Word Mason stands ready to help you bring your message to the Web, the 21st century way.
Irish and American Communication
A True-Life Case in Point
When I lived in rural Ireland, most of our local communication was by word-of-mouth and, on one particular day in the early ‘90s, the neighbors were buzzing! A leading insurance company in the United States had decided to have their forms processed in our nearby town.
Unfortunately, both the Irish employees and their American managers had 180-degree opposite expectations and understandings. To make a long story short, the forms weren’t getting completed but the workers were having a grand time with their short days and long overtime pay!
Just before the whole operation collapsed, American management decided to send an Irish-born, American-trained manager back over to straighten it all out. He did; eventually they all came to a good-enough meeting of the minds, and they’re all still there today, but what a lesson to learn the hard way!
The moral of this story is that real agreement has to take place before employees will buy in to management’s decisions. And that agreement comes with effective multicultural communication, which happens to be a specialty of (you guessed it) The Word Mason.
On a personal note, I wrote my latest blog on the 40th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King. Coming next month, Internet Marketing:
How a newspaper article scores a home run, multiculturally, and
Multicultural Marketing:
Breaking in to the North American market.
Thanks for reading WORKING THE INTERNET, MULTICULTURALLY; until next month, I’ll be looking for you on the Web, and standing by to help you launch your own customized internet marketing plan á la Web 2.0.
Molly Alexander Darden
The Word Mason©Molly Alexander Darden 2008
Order our Basic Network Strategy Plan and our Multicultural Media and Public Relations Guide. $5 each, via Paypal.
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Forty years ago we were in the midst of another Presidential election. Robert Kennedy went to Indianapolis to speak to a group of volatile black ... moreBlog - Yes, We Are Listening, and We Are Praying
Forty years ago we were in the midst of another Presidential election. Robert Kennedy went to Indianapolis to speak to a group of volatile black people. He had been warned against going to that location and, when he arrived, his police escort left. Here’s what Sen. Kennedy told that audience.
"I have some very sad news for all of you,” Kennedy said, "and I think sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.
"Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in.
"For those of you who are black - considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible - you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.
"But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to get beyond these difficult times.
"My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote: 'Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."
"What we need in the United States,” he continued, "is not division and hatred, but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black."Whether they be Christian, Muslim or Jew.
Kennedy continued, "So I ask you to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love - a prayer for understanding and compassion. We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past. And we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's not the end of disorder.
"But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.
"Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.
"Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people."
(end of Sen. Kennedy's speech)
Today, on April 4, 2008, we have elected two Muslim men to Congress, and we are in the midst of another Presidential election. But this time, we are choosing between a black man and a white woman.
Yes, Bobby, we are listening, and we are praying. And yes, Dr. King, we hear you and we believe. And yes, Miss Xernona, we do remember. May God bless America!
Note: Ms. Xernona Clayton is an icon in Atlanta’s black community. Founder of the acclaimed Trumpet Awards for black achievement, she wrote "I've Been Marching All the Time".
In this, her memoir chronicling her gentle but persistent march toward gender equality, as well as her work with Coretta Scott King and other life-changing experiences, she tells of driving Dr. Martin Luther King to the airport for his trip to Memphis; he returned in a casket. She was with Mrs. King when she broke the news of Dr. King’s death to the King children.
Ms. Clayton is still marching, in her own way. This blog is written in the spirit of a white woman reaching out to a black woman -- as Bobby Kennedy, a white man, reached out to the black community on that history-changing night. At particularly poignant anniversaries such as the death of Dr. King, we remember that we all must reach out and clasp each other’s hands because, in the end, we are all marching together. Blog - Looking Through The Eyes Of Others When we don’t understand another culture, we may tend to approach it through our own stereotypical understanding. Through this blog, we will explore u... moreBlog - Looking Through The Eyes Of OthersWhen we don’t understand another culture, we may tend to approach it through our own stereotypical understanding. Through this blog, we will explore understanding and expectations regarding various ethnic groups. Take my experience in India, for example.
Through Indian Eyes
When I was living with my then-husband’s family in India, my former mother-in-law took me to visit her friend, who had not spoken English since her childhood 50 years before.
I was dressed traditionally, in a simple printed cotton sari and sandals, and I wore no makeup except for the traditional red dot on my forehead. The dot, according to Hindu custom, denoted that I was not a widow.
The older lady invited us to sit down, and she asked her daughter-in-law to bring the tea and snacks. Then, getting down to the business of conversation, Nita-bhen looked at me intently and I sensed she was searching for the right words to speak in English to the first American she had met in her life.
“Well,” she began, “you must CERTAINLY enjoy smoking. And drinking. And dancing!”
Trying to maintain a poker face, I told her that not all Americans were the avid partygoers she had seen in the movies. Nodding dismissively, she turned to Ba, my mother-in-law, and began speaking in Gujarati. I was dismissed from the conversation.
Nita-bhen had placed me in her American niche, and there I would remain, in her eyes. Had she seen me through American eyes as well as Indian, she would have seen a woman whose values were similar to hers.
Marketing Is Personal
Marketing is a personal matter. Sure, when we market, we market to thousands but who reads our marketing materials? Individuals.
And who are these individuals? Each is a composite of age, education, religion, experience and families all wrapped up in ethnic heritage. People see the world through this multifaceted mesh.
Although this blog will address a variety of cultures, it will concentrate on Hispanic marketing because it is the largest, fastest-growing ethnic group in the United States today, wielding the greatest spending power of ethnic groups.
Savvy marketers recognize that most cultures share elements in common, such as strong cultural identification and participation with family and community.
Blog - Vision And Voice For Girls From time to time I'll update you on progress of the book I'm writing to inspire girls aged 10-to-20. Featuring profiles of current global women leade... moreBlog - Vision And Voice For GirlsFrom time to time I'll update you on progress of the book I'm writing to inspire girls aged 10-to-20. Featuring profiles of current global women leaders who describe their journeys from adolescence to maturity, the book will teach girls that, although the future may look frightening to them, it has always seemed so, and these older women can help to show them the way. These profiles will also serve to raise the girls' social consciousness and to inspire them to determine their own form of contribution to improving our Family of Mankind.
Approaching her 10th birthday Aminah, my 9-year-old granddaughter, was terrified of the changes she would face in her next decade, and all they entailed for her -- physically, emotionally and socially.
Global Leaders Are Former Little Girls
I decided to write a book for her and other young girls to demonstrate that today's global women leaders, each a former little girl, could show them that it's really not so scary. Those women have found the way through that second decade, so they could lead Aminah and her contemporaries along through the pages of my book.
I thought of profiling a woman I have admired for many years - Mary Robinson: human rights attorney, first woman president of Ireland, former U.N. High Commissioner of Human Rights and now Founder-Chairman of The Ethical Globalization Initiative and Council of Women World Leaders. In web-surfing for information on Mrs. Robinson, I came across a site for the Women as Global Leaders Conference, held last March at Zayed University, Dubai.
Not only was Mary Robinson a featured speaker, but so were other women leaders from around the world. Exploring their profiles and words, I conceived the idea of writing the book, Vision and Voice for Girls, incorporating the lives of several additional women who would tell how they journeyed from approximately Aminah's age to maturity.
All the women profiled faced challenges and triumphs they could not have imagined as girls, yet their family backgrounds had prepared them to face adult life head-on, whatever it brought.
Irish-Indian-American Girl
A multicultural child, Aminah's mother (my step-daughter) is an Irish-American woman who was raised a Roman Catholic, but converted to Islam. The girl's father is the Muslim Indian-American first-generation son of a retired university professor and his wife.
My husband Stan and I are Irish-Americans who come from a Catholic culture; I'm a former Hindu as well.
Family Of Man Should Be Tolerant
All of us elders in Aminah's family promote tolerance and understanding while maintaining our own cultural identities. We have worked hard to understand each other, so that now we function as an organic, cohesive and loving family. I would like Aminah and other girls in the second decade of life to be able to project these ideals, to embrace the entire Family of Man, and to begin developing an awareness of their own future social roles in this Family.
By introducing girls from ages 10-to-20 to such women as Mrs. Robinson, Queen Rania (Jordan), Michelle Bachelet (Chile), Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson (Liberia), Hanan Ashrawi (Palestine), Charlayne Hunter-Gault (United States and South Africa) and others, they will see that women everywhere have grown to make their contributions to improving the world in which they find themselves.
'We'll Catch You'
Putting together a very rough pre-first draft of the book, I packaged it and presented it to my granddaughter July 16, as she turned 10. Present also at our family gathering were her mother and her Indian-born grandmother. As the child read my inscription several times, I could see the light dawning on her face. She began to realize that this was not just another book; this would be a guidebook for her as she journeyed through her next 10 years, and became a woman.
Here's what I wrote:
Dear Aminah,
This book is not finished yet. It's still developing and growing, and maturing, like you and other girls your age. Remember, all of us old ladies were once young girls like you. We were standing on the brink of maturing - wondering if it was OK to jump in. Go ahead, little one. Go for it! We're here to catch you.
With love always,
Grandmolly
"We came to The Word Mason when we wanted our current and potential clients to understand better what we did and what we had to offer. Molly delivered clarity. Her concise, on-point narrative helped us 'cut to the chase' when we made that follow-up call to our clients. It was a joy working with her. Always on time, always on target. We strongly recommend The Word Mason."
Richard A. Burg
Director of Marketing
Nationwide Focused Publications
http://www.nfpub.com/.edu
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