Thursday, December 16, 2010

I+H: Joining Cellit

I'm excited to announce that I will be joining Cellit as its Vice President of Operations later this month. Cellit helps Fortune 500 companies, small businesses, and other organizations connect with customers through text messaging, mobile devices and other digital marketing.

I can't imagine a better fit for my skills, or for my core belief that Each Person Matters.

Mass marketing doesn't work anymore. Thoughtless, mindless advertising is just noise. People have too much else to worry about. They care about relationships. Their friends. Their family. For companies or organizations to communicate with people, they have to earn trust first.

This concept–what Seth Godin calls permission marketing–is the basis of mobile marketing. If I send you annoying text messages, you're going to drop me. But if I reach out to you with messages that are helpful, interesting, valuable or touching, you might keep me around.

I want to live in a world with less noise and more connection. Where people are free to be themselves. Where businesses, government and non-profits compete for my attention by being more helpful, creative, generous and funny. Cellit is making that happen.

Friday, December 10, 2010

Helpful: Twitter

Since Josh has sent folks over here with a post about Twitter, I figured I'd share how I use Twitter as a communications professional. I currently work for the United Methodist Church and will soon be starting a job at Cellit, a digital marketing company in Chicago.

1. Post links that my followers find interesting and/or helpful
2. Link to great things that my followers are doing (they LOVE this)
3. Post official comments from leadership (since no one seems to check their email anymore)
4. Point followers to other leaders in the industry who might have inspirational/educational things to say
5. Give a little personality to our brand – I did this by making our Twitter icon a picture of Methodism founder John Wesley wearing an iPod

You can find me on Twitter at @mattkuzma. Good luck!

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Secret to eating cheaply: Rice cooker

Last Night's Dinner

Ingredients:
1 cup rice ($.50)
1 cup red lentils ($.30)
1 bag frozen soybeans/edamame ($1.99)
1 cup salsa ($1.00)
1 cup water

Directions: Put it in a rice cooker and hit start

Preparation time: 45 seconds
Cooking time: 25 minutes (with no supervision)
Yield: Tasty dinner for two and leftovers
Cost: less than $4

On the other hand...

I also am tempted to jump in to Evernote again. This article by Ezra Klein explains it all.


That turns Evernote from something I might search if I remember into something I'll search constantly without even trying. And that means I'm much likelier to be routinely confronted with old insights and facts that I might have forgotten. In that world, I don't need to rely on my memory of what I've read so much as the judgments I made when I was doing the reading. And I trust those a lot more.

Helpful: Workflowy

I like to outline and make lists. I read lots of business and self-help books. I aim to improve my skills and advance my career.

Problem: I forget all the stuff I read, lose my lists and get all my training materials trapped in a huge folder of crap.

Enter workflowy. Web-based outliner that works just an outline program should. Auto-saved, easy to export and save elsewhere. This should help me complete my Big Database of Knowledge I've been working on. Free to sign up, hopefully there will be paid features eventually (like Dropbox sync perhaps?) so it can survive.