Cincinnati Social Media Marketing Series for Creatives & Others

Excited about a new partnership with the  Mason-Deerfield Arts Alliance in Cincinnati.  We have teamed to bring together social media educational programming for Creatives: artists, writers, directors of arts organizations, marketing managers for arts organizations and businesses, musicians and anyone who wants to learn more about digital marketing. Here's the full info:

Please join C3: Creating Connections Consulting, LLC and the Mason-Deerfield Arts Alliance for four (4) unique Social Media Marketing seminars that can enhance your marketing efforts; build awareness around your work or organization; and help you to connect with your target audience online. It is our goal to help artists, creatives and leaders of arts organizations to get the digital marketing education that they need to utilize key social media tools to their fullest potential. We're here to assist you in showcasing your work, your organization and your business in the best possible digital light.  Each seminar can be taken independently of the others, but as a series, are designed from an introductory level to the final advanced class.  Not in the arts field? Don't feel left out. Social Media Marketing is key for all organizations, non-profits, small business, and solo-preneurs.  All are welcome to attend.  Space is limited, so register early! 

Seminars and workshops will be taught by Michelle Beckham-Corbin, President & Social Media Strategist at C3. Creating Connections Consulting.  Michelle is a long time trainer and presenter in the social media education field and is a Procter & Gamble Marketing and Customer Business Development alum having spent 15 years with some of the biggest brands in the consumer packaged goods industry. Read more about Michelle here.

Introduction to Social Media Marketing (includes Pinterest)

Date:  Thursday, 4/19

Time:  9:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m. (2 hours)

Cost:  $59.00

This seminar provides an overview of key social media platforms that arts organizations should consider integrating into their marketing efforts in order to reach their target market, build awareness, and establish relationships that lead to an increased call to action response.  We will examine: Facebook Pages, Twitter, Blogs, YouTube and the rapidly exploding Pinterest.  Examples from the Arts Industry will be show-cased and live sites will be examined.  Strategic planning and reputation management systems will be discussed. Participants from all fields and industries are welcome!

Learning outcomes:

• Greater understanding of key social media marketing tools
• Importance of setting a social media marketing strategy
• Why goals and measures are important
• How to create a social media plan
• Reputation Management & monitoring tools

 

Additional courses include:

Facebook Page Timeline & Settings Optimization Seminar
Info HERE


Exploding Your Organizations' Reach with Pinterest
Info HERE


Facebook Page Marketing Strategies Seminar
Info HERE




 
 Copyright Michelle Beckham-Corbin 2011-2012

East of Eden, South of Despair

Have been reading your blog lately

You claim to speak from the universal voice,

but it seems to me that you are battling personal demons

in your words

All this talk of rain and burning embers and

Death

Sounds like you are dealing with loss

Loss of love

Loss of the guidance that never was

Loss of the dream

So drummer boy, keep writing

Keep waiting, but

never stop dreaming

because the truth shall set you free....

Copyright Michelle Beckham-Corbin 2011

Life is a Highway: Adding Some Road to My Words

News Flash:

Have finally gotten my writing space organized into the three realms where my words will exist. They are:

• Here at Kaleidoscope Discoveries:

Creative Writing, Random Thoughts, Slice of Life Essays

• C3 Website Biz Blog- All things on the seriously business side of social media & business development

• *NEW* Blog- Michelle Beckham's Blog (ok, the title really needs to be tweaked!)- all things on Social Media from my personally, unique perspective. This is where I am as authentic as it gets; where being PC gets put aside in favor of the stark, naked truth as I see it. Will also be a birds'-eye view of how I use social media in my life and in my business.
  

It's a highway and I'm on a journey of discovery. Come along and hitch a ride with me. I promise you won't be disappointed and you certainly will be entertained!



Copyright Michelle Beckham-Corbin 2009

WHAT I WANT.....

Time for some stream of consciousness writing.......Finally getting to a place where I can breathe- summer has that way of relaxing you mentally. Life has been crazy busy in the best of all possible ways so I welcome the whispers of summer calling me to slow down and take stock.

Our time to walk this earth is fleeting and summer reminds us that we need to appreciate each day and make the most of the connections that find us on our individual paths.

So in deference to heeding the call. Here is my list of non-work things I want to do this summer:

• Bake my first apple pie ever (or at least find a damn good replica at a local bakery)
• See one (1) Cincinnati Reds game (gasp... I hate baseball, so 1 is really all I can handle)
• Read the stacks of magazines purchased last year to assist a local school's magazine drive (they run the gamut from Mother Jones to Time to Redbook to Rolling Stone with a bunch of People thrown in for good celebrity measure)
• Read a book that has NOTHING to do with SOCIAL MEDIA
• Finish writing my own NOVEL which is where my relationship with social media began in 2004
• Ride my bike all the way to our local library
• Take a canoe trip on the Little Miami and fall in for the hell of it
• Grab a jelly jar and catch lightning bugs while Ryan Adams plays on my iTouch
• Campout in the backyard (until the neighbors go to bed, then sneak into my own)
• Make homemade icecream and invite friends over to party
• Stop working....(well, hmmmn, going on strike would not be such a hot idea in a universe where the county unemployment rate is 11%)

That's it for now. Glad I came up with some things. I was recently asked what I wanted for my birthday, which is fast-approaching and I still haven't come up with anything. Maybe a world where everyone is gainfully employed and all people have access to affordable health care.....


Copyright Michelle Beckham-Corbin 2009

TO REVEL IN THE AFTERGLOW OF CREATION

Have you ever had such an intimate relationship with the written word, that you could literally feel a book calling out to you to be claimed, to be consumed and to be regurgitated into new revelations? I recently had such a moment. Zora Neale Hurston's book (first published in 1937), "Their Eyes Were Watching God" called to me while I was in the check-out line. I had never heard of it before, but it bore all kinds of accolades on its slim paper cover: Harper Perennial Modern Classic, P.S. insights, interviews and more (included) and a wonderful front cover accolade by Alice Walker, author of "The Color Purple", which reads: "There is no book more important to me than this one."

I found it fascinating that I had never heard of it. The 20- something Borders Clerk even told me at checkout that he had read the book for school and found it to be one of the best he had come across. So the words whisper to me to claim this slim volume above all of the other books and periodicals who have taken up residence in my house long before its arrival. I am simply hoping to be inspired and mired within that inspiration should be a desire to spin my own story. As Neale Hurston says in the book, "...there is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you."

I want to feel the agony and birth of my words and to revel in the afterglow of creation.





Copyright Michelle Beckham-Corbin

BOOKS, BOOKS & MORE BOOKS!!

Ask anyone that knows me really, really well, and they will tell you that I am an avid reader. This love of reading goes way back to my childhood where I began as a precocious reader. I had read the complete works of Shakespeare (although the abridged version) by the time I was 7 and moved on to the Iliad and Odyssey several years after that. My house was filled with books during my growing up years and my mother was a librarian at our local public library. I used to go to work with her on Sunday afternoons and just sit in the library for hours and hours reading.

I am a particular reader, preferring certain genres and even subjects within those genres. I also am one who needs to employ the full senses when it comes to book selection. I like to pick up a book, wonder at it's cover art, smell it's pages, look at the font size and feel the heft or lack thereof within my hands. A paperback would never do for me, especially when combined with the romance or summer beach- read genres.

After reading the summary on the inside flap, I turn to the center of the book to read a paragraph or two so that I can lock into the feel and flow of the words. If I don't like what I see, then the book goes on the reject pile, never to be considered again. Thank God, I'm not a New York Times Book Reviewer able to make or break careers because I am so damn subjective! There would be several depressed first time authors wandering the streets because of my rejection of their work.

I love to save money and help with the whole green movement by borrowing as many books from the library as possible vs. buying them. The exception, and there always is one, is that I do collect all of the works of my favorite authors; even when I don't have time to read them. They just continue to line the shelves with the hope that one day I will stop reading other books and return my attention back to them. The authors that I collect include:

• Jean Auel
• Stephen King
• Mary Higgens Clark
• Ann Rice
• Dave Pelzer
• Jodi Picoult
• Toni Morrison

I think they represent a pretty ecclectic range of work.

I am currently reading (ok, let's call it what it is: these books are currently lurking on bed-side tables, kitchen chairs, family-room end tables, under the seat in my car, etc.):

• Just After Sunset by Stephen King
• One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life by Bliss Broyard
• Louisiana Creoles by Andrew Jolivette
• Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why it Matters by Bill Tancer
• Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World by Joanna Weaver
• The Small Business Bible by Steven Strauss
• Blogging for Dummies
• Dreamscape by Michelle Beckham-Corbin (ok it's not published yet, but I am re-reading it!)

Next on my list to read will be:

• A Mercy by Toni Morrison
• Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
• and any new books that the PostSecret folks put out- I find them highly fascinating and have their website posted here on my Blog- must be the Psychoanalyst in me.

You know, I think one could make some conclusions about a person from glancing at their reading lists. Let me know if you gain any insight about me from mine!

One of my New Year's resolutions is to read more (and hopefully those piles scattered about will become a little smaller). So if you truly need me, you now know where to find me. Grab a book and join in.

HAPPY READING!!

Tim: A Lesson in Looking Beyond the Pond

Tim says in the strictest of British accents: “My standpoint is thus: I know exactly what I am going to say, and have therefore absorbed any value it may have had, and curled my lips in quiet contentment at whichever subtle hint of wit it inevitably let slip. Whether I type it or not makes far less difference to me than absorbing the theoretically greater goodness that may come from what, by typing, I may have deterred you from typing.”

Now I have no clue what he just said, but I love reading his words and on the random chance that fate intervenes, I love listening to his voice. It sounds like he is a character straight out of a Dicken’s novel. I enjoy our ability to trade pieces of work for critique and pure enjoyment. He gets my poetry and the audio version of Dreamscape and I get the music and accompanying lyrics that he creates. He is very talented and a bit of a genious having been a child prodigy before having to succumb to the rank and file of evey day adult life. He somehow finds humor in my exuberant personality and finds the many balls that I juggle quite amusing.

If I need a bit of inspiration to get my writing going, a “fast-start” of sorts, I only have to look for a Tim-ism to get my imaginative juices flowing. No longer will I be in search of the perfect web-site to give my writing a kick- start, I can borrow beginnings like this to prime the creative pump:

Tim says: “Have you ever had one of those moments when the sheer incredulity of the world aligns with the universe as a whole, and being the first person to notice, you burst out laughing uncontrollably in a non-sequitur of hysteria?”

*******************************************************

I asked Tim the other day, what he truly thinks of me and this was his answer in perfect Tim fashion:

“I think I'm extremely lucky to have met you. You exist on such a ridiculously high level, it dwarfs virtually everyone. Talking to you is engaging and enthralling and always challenging in the best of ways.”

I would just love to bottle that admiration and pour out a bit on the days that the words just won’t come or when what I have written seems less than the sum of its parts. A rapt audience is great, but to have an audience with a true ear for subtlety and an excellent command of the language even if it is the Queen’s English is an outstanding proposition.

So thank you Tim for being the voice in my ear, the eye on my words and the gourmand of all of my literary creations. Cheers!!