A Hunka Hunka Burnin’ Cellphone Love

Marketing, PR, journalism, community building, and social action. They’re coming soon . . . to the smartphone in your pocket.

If illiterate Indian villagers can do it, anyone can. Frustrated by their government’s unwillingness to keep its promises, destitute farmers are making their case via cellphone “broadcasts.” (See the BBC story here)

Citizen journalists talk to the farmers and distribute the stories on cell phones. They “call a Bangalore number to upload a news item and a text message goes out to all the phone numbers in the contact list and anyone who wants to hear the report calls in to the same number and the message is played out.”

In other words, anyone with a cell phone and some ingenuity can become an independent news publisher, PR and marketing distributor, community action organizer. Whatever.

Marketing, media and message are becoming one. Take full advantage of this, and lift your business to the next level.

It’s not as hard as you think, for example, to distribute a self-produced audio or video news clip to your network. Use it to tell us about your clients, customers and prospects from a phone, as you’re talking to them. Everyone is hungry for recognition, and will support you if you give it to them.

Or get really interactive. Challenge the people in your broadcast list to take a photo of your customer’s ad or billboard and send it to you. The first sender will get a free meal or similar small goody as a prize.

Your customers will appreciate the way you use technology “Marketing with a capital ‘me.’

Mobile Marketing and Cloud Computing

Eric Bellman, WSJ

Could this Indian farmer–a man without a toilet or tractor, just a cell phone–be your future customer or follower? You might be surprised; and if necessary, you could even find and ask him.

He represents the future of mobile marketing. Very personal conversations between diverse people, in an increasingly multi-layered world.

And could he benefit from something you already know, or perhaps something you can give him access to? It depends on how you’ve designed the future You.

Your incredible brain represents the future of cloud computing–also about very personal conversations.

Thanks to technology, even Indian farmers can move toward the intersection of mobile marketing and cloud computing. Want to get there first? That will depend on your sincere willingness to share.

My six-part video series (see this introduction) will explore six ways that mobile marketing and cloud computing can help you nurture unexpected conversations for a more successful business. These powerful technologies have the potential to:

1. Help you share your brilliance, so you can stop repeating your hard work.
2. Speed up the process of sharing for faster, more reliable results.
3. Make sharing more inclusive, so you can apply diverse thinking to every question.
4. Prepare you to tap into all the human capital you’ll need to succeed.
5. Work wherever you are, whenever you’re ready, and with whatever valuable thought occurs to you.
6. Generate the human kinetic energy you need to power your business’s future.

Every day the Internet takes you to unexpected destinations. Shouldn’t each stop be on a unique journey?