Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Sometimes you just hit a wall

When you get into a habit of doing the same thing over and over, you dig a rut deeper and deeper and eventually you hit a wall. You might not hit the wall until your rut is so deep that you hit the Great Wall of China, but you will hit a wall.

With the changes in Social Media happening daily, you can no longer do the same thing you were 6 months ago. If you are, your results will plateau. The steady climb you may have been seeing over the past 3 weeks may abruptly stop or slow to minimal numbers.

In order to break through this wall you need to mix it up a little. Add a new interactive feature to your website. Try different types of links on your Facebook fan page. What about a mashup somewhere?

Just adding something new will help break through the wall. Change something up if you think you are heading towards a wall. It will be easier to change it now than once you hit the wall.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Today's Battle: Blog vs. Twitter

Today's winner is Twitter.

In honor of my tweet today, I have replaced this post with my twitter feed.




Enjoy!

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

How to Get a Jimmy John's Sandwich in PHX

It started with a simple craving, and a plead for someone to eat a Jimmy John's Pepe for me. This craving turned into a $42+ sandwich.

For some unknown reason, Jimmy John's has not allowed franchises in the Phoenix area yet. Not having a JJ's nearby causes problems for anyone who loves their deliciousness. The yummy warm bread, the sauce, the cucumbers, the...Wait! I digress.

Knowing that someone out in Twitterville would help me out, I put my precious desire in the Twitter gods hands not knowing who would be able to help me out.

Not even 5 minutes later I received this in my inbox:

I knew the Twitter gods would come through!!!

With a little creative thinking, @mhaithaca did some research to see how to best pack the JJ's Pepe sandwich to get it to Phoenix and it still taste amazing. After several IMs and tweets, my JJ's sandwich was in the mail. Now all I could do was wait, wait, and wait.

I'm sure you all think I'm crazy by this point, @mhaithaca sure did, but that didn't stop me.

Around 10am on Wednesday, over 15hrs and 100's of website refreshes later, the FedEx Website said my sandwich had arrived. However, it wasn't at the front desk!! Panic! Did I just pay (well still need to send the check, sorry @mhaithaca. The check's coming!) for a sandwich I will never see?

Where else does FedEd deliver? Student Support Desk! Nope not there either.

The Bookstore?! Yes, it's there. My sweet, delicious sandwich had arrived!! Off to eat it!

However, whoever packaged it wanted me to work for it. Or maybe they wanted to make sure all the wonderful smells were kept inside.


Five + minutes later I finally got the package openned.

More to open?


Okay by this point I'm ready to eat through everything! I guess it's alright. At least nothing was soggy.

No one said "Some Assembly Required!"


Once everything was together it was time to enjoy! And was it good! It has been about 2 months since I had a JJ's. The extra 15+ hours was worth the wait.

Yes, everyone at work thinks I'm crazy for this. However, it goes to show the relationships you build online are priceless. I can gurantee that my family and friends in St. Louis would never have gone through this to get me a sandwich.

Huge thanks again to @mhaithaca! You will be the one I visit if/when I make it to New York!

Rock on,
Lane J