Win the 20,000th Reader Celebration Prize on one of our sister blogs!

Just a quick post to let our community of readers know that we’re offering a great prize to FIVE WINNERS who become the 20,000—20,004th reader hits for our sister blog, Creativity and Innovation Notations...read about it at the Creativity and Innovation Notations blog.  Since many of you here also read that blog, I wanted to give you a heads-up that this is happening right now, so YOU have a shot at winning one of the five prizes!

This prize requires doing a wee bit of homework, so go over there now and follow the instructions—you can win a great bonus prize for yourself or your organization (for-profit or non-profit)!  If this is successful, I may offer a similar prize again on this blog—keep watching for announcements.

~Cathryn Hrudicka, Chief Imagination Officer, Creative Sage™/ Cathryn Hrudicka & Associates

An Unexpected Source for an Ingenious Viral Video—will YOURS be Next?

OK, I want to hear from someone out there about the virtual International Podcasting Expo this past few days, as I wasn’t able to participate. Instead, I attended a conference presented by the Arts Council of Mendocino County, about Arts and Tourism Promotion and Marketing in the beautiful, rural Northern California County of Mendocino, a topic I may write about soon. Meanwhile, if anyone out there wants to submit a blog entry for this blog, about the Podcasting Expo or another relevant PR and marketing topic, please email me for guidelines, and I’ll be glad to give you full credit and promotion for your entry.

I also want to call your attention to the innovative marketing and PR video clips on the VodPod widget that I’ve posted on the right-hand sidebar of this blog (if you haven’t already watched them). There’s a new, terrific one I just posted that’s also mentioned on my Creative Sage™ What’s Innovation Got to Do with It? blog.

Created by Stanford graduate student Gus Bitdinger, based on a fabulous, original song he wrote about innovation in organizations, “Back to Orbit,” it’s well worth watching below or on YouTube .

I predict you’re going to see a real viral video effect with this one, and probably some great job offers for Gus in the future, if not a recording contract and a tour! This brings me to my second request—if you’ve got a short video clip, audio clip or podcast that fits with the overall themes of either the PR and Marketing Mentor blog, or What’s Innovation Got to Do with It?, please feel free to email the clip or a link to me, or send it to my VodPod account, and I’ll consider posting it. A word of warning, though…I’m a busy person, so I’ll only get back to people who really send me something that is relevant in subject matter, not infringing on someone’s copyright, and is suitable for viewing by all age groups. Please indicate how YOU would want to be credited, with correct title and copyright information, and if the clip or podcast was used by another media source before (name the original source). We may have to get permission to use it, so please include the correct contact information, if that is the case.

We love it when someone’s college video project becomes a personal or business viral PR and marketing tool, whether it was intentionally created for that purpose or not. A personal commentary on innovation becomes a great story angle that could also be formatted into a social media press release, as well as a video blog clip. You just have to keep your eyes, ears and mind open to find the great, viral story angles. In that spirit, our team at Cathryn Hrudicka & Associates is always aiming to innovate in print, broadcast, trade, social media, network and other PR and marketing channels. We bring your message to the world and the world to you!

Innovation Bloggers Virtual Forum on April 26th—an Example of How to Create an Online Event to Position Yourself as an Expert, Drive Web Traffic and Generate a PR Buzz

Here’s another example of how to partner with colleagues who have complementary areas of expertise and will help drive a new audience to your business or nonprofit web site—create an exciting online event, forum or webinar! Then, get other notable and popular bloggers to announce it, and send out press releases to print, online, social and broadcast media, podcast and videocast it, and watch your Web traffic soar!

I wrote about that before when a group of online marketing and PR colleagues got together and participated in Web Content Awareness Day, created by my copywriter colleague, Dina Giolitto—each of us contributed articles for the event site in our own areas of expertise. Here’s how one of my Innovation colleagues, Jeff De Cagna, got a group of colleagues together to create an Innovation Bloggers Forum:

News From my colleague, Jeff De Cagna, of Principled Innovation

“Innovation is now recognized as the single most important ingredient in any modern economy.”
–The Economist

Innovation continues to be a top priority for leaders in all sectors of the global economy, yet actually making innovation happen remains a profound challenge for many organizations. What’s more, the new dynamics of a rapidly-changing, Web-enabled global marketplace are shifting how we think about innovation itself.

If you would like to better understand the current state of innovation thinking and practice, as well as the emerging trends that will shape the future of innovation, join some of the Web’s top innovation bloggers for the first-ever Innovation Bloggers Virtual Forum on April 26, 2007.

Here is the Forum line-up as of right now, and my colleague, Jeff De Cagna, of Principled Innovation, will be adding more bloggers. I have signed up to participate in the forum, as I’m also an Innovation Journalist, as well as an Innovation program designer, management consultant and executive coach:

Morning Forum Roundtable (11 am EDT)

Renee Hopkins Callahan, IdeaFlow
Chuck Frey, InnovationTools
Jeffrey Phillips, Innovate on Purpose
Dave Pollard, How to Save the World

Afternoon Forum Roundtable (2 pm EDT)

Dominic Basulto, Endless Innovation
Sanjay Dalal, Creativity And Innovation Driving Business
Mark McGuinness, Wishful Thinking
Joyce Wycoff, Heads Up! on Organizational Innovation

Keep checking—we’ll update this list and provide more information about the event as it becomes available. This is a unique opportunity to participate in two outstanding conversations involving many of the blogosphere’s smartest innovation thinkers and practitioners. I hope you will be able to join us!