My aim is to see how many members would join a group such as this and how information could grow without all of it coming from one entitiy or source. ie. me. This group hopefully would use information uploaded by each member to help each fellow member learn or understand something new in the city that they live.

The Bratislava idea was hatched after I had seen a live TV broadcast about the group that was set up in London, Secret London started the whole “Secret cities” idea off. I personally decided wanted to create an English speaking area where myself and my friends could learn more about the city in which we reside from the people that lived in the city and knew the most about it.

The project is nearly two weeks old and I already have 791 members… something to watch out for and something that shows that live social media marketing has a great potential. Check out the group at: Secret Bratislava. If you want to see what is being said on Twitter please visit: Secret_Bratislava.

Social media in a thriving online market – Facebook’s Secret Bratislava is a post from: Chris Plant, creative images

I really liked what John Jantsch wrote here, it makes sense and as I have read it so many times it made sense to post it here so you can read it too. Simple and spot on…

I write about exceeding expectations in business quite often. I happen to think it’s one of the secrets to success in business and life.

The thing is, it’s not really that hard sometimes because people have grown to expect so little. Just giving a little something extra, after the deal has been agreed to, can go a long way towards creating good will and word of mouth.

For example, my wife and I tried out this new restaurant in town – . Meal was great, service very cheery, atmosphere appropriate, price in line. All of these things added up to a nice experience that had us agreeing to come back some time. But, when our server brought the check she also brought a pint of soup in a go container and told us to let them know what we thought of it.

Now I’m not just going back, I’m sitting here at my computer telling your about Cafe Augusta. As I said, that soup didn’t set them back much, but I had found memories of my visit the next day over a bowl of warmed up soup.

So, what your soup to go strategy? Can you add something to the box, repair something for no charge, provide a free analysis of other systems, or give free stuff from your strategic partners?

Image credit: avlxyz

Posted by: John Jantsch on Aug 20, 09 | 7:07 am

What’s Your Free Soup To Go Strategy? is a post from: Chris Plant, creative images

17 September 2009 – A new publication launched in Vienna today profiles the anti-corruption policies and measures of the Fortune Global 500. The report, issued by UNODC in cooperation with PricewaterhouseCoopers, collects existing practices used to prevent corruption in some of the world’s biggest companies. It highlights a range of measures, and different approaches.

“There is no one-size-fits-all set of rules to prevent corruption, but businesses should not go below international standards contained in the United Nations Convention against Corruption”, said UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa.

Friedrich Roedler, Senior Partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers Austria, stressed that “leaders and managers must set the tone from the top by enforcing a zero-tolerance policy”.

At the launch, which included a panel discussion chaired by Haig Simonian of the Financial Times, participants underlined the need to identify good practices, and get companies to apply them. The importance of measuring compliance was also stressed. “Too often there is a big gap between what companies say and what they do, especially when large amounts of money are at stake”, said Mr. Costa.

“The private sector has a lot to lose from corruption, and has considerable leverage to stop it”, said Mr. Costa. He urged business leaders to attend the Global Forum on Fighting Corruption and Safeguarding Integrity, to be held in Doha on 7 and 8 November, as well as the third session of the Conference of States Parties to the United Nations Convention against Corruption, which will also take place in Doha, from 9 to 13 November. “This will be a golden opportunity to strengthen corporate responsibility in line with the world’s only universal anti-corruption instrument”, he said.

The UNODC Marketing Toolkit by creative images.

Having collected existing practices, the next step is to highlight good practices and have them widely applied.
Click here to see the Original Post from the UNODC website.

The full report is available on the UNODC website and on a memory stick.

Anti-Corruption Policies and Measures of the Fortune Global 500

creative images produce USB Marketing Toolkit for United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime is a post from: Chris Plant, creative images

I’m covering some overarching advice today as I believe small business owners and marketers need to think strategically about social media use, perhaps before they ever start to discuss tactical use.

1) Integrate – Don’t treat your social media activity as something separate from your other marketing initiatives. Feature links to your social media profiles in your email signature, on your business cards, in your ads, and as a standard block of copy in your weekly HTML email newsletter. In addition, make sure that links to your educational content are featured prominently in your social media profiles and that Facebook fan page visitors and blog subscribers are offered the opportunity to subscribe to your newsletter and attend your online and offline events. Make your social media profiles a part of your address copy block and you will soon see adding them to all that you do as an automatic action.

2) Amplify – Use your social media activity to create awareness for and amplify your content housed in other places. This can go for teasing some aspect of your latest blog post on twitter or in your Facebook status, creating full blown events on Eventful or pointing to mentions of your firm in the media. If you publish a bi-weekly newsletter, in addition to sending it to your subscribers, archive it online and tweet it too. You can also add social features to your newsletter to make it very easy for others to retweet and share on social bookmark sites such as and. I would also add that filtering other people’s great content and pointing this out to your followers, fans and subscribers fits into this category as it builds your overall reputation for good content sharing and helps to buffer the notion that you are simply broadcasting your announcements. Quality over quantity always wins in social media marketing.

3) Repurpose – Taking content that appears in one form and twisting it in ways that make it more available in a another, or to another audience, is one of the secrets to success in our hyperinfo driven marketing world we find ourselves. When you hold an event to present information you can promote the event in various social media networks and then capture that event and post the audio to your podcast, slides to Slideshare, and transcript as a free report for download. You can string 5 blog posts together (like this series) and make them available as a workshop handout or a bonus for your group. Never look at any content as a single use, single medium, act.

4) Lead generate – So many people want to generate leads in the wide world of social media, but can’t seem to understand how or have met with downright hostile reactions when trying. Effectively generating leads from social media marketing is really no different than effectively generating leads anywhere – it’s just that the care you must take to do it right is amplified by the “no selling allowed” culture. No one like to be sold to in any environment – the trick is to let them buy – and this is even more important in social media marketing. So, what this means is that your activity, much of what I’ve mentioned above, needs to focus on creating awareness of your valuable, education based content, housed on your main hub site. You can gain permission to market to your social media network and contacts when you can build a level of trust through content sharing and engagement. It’s really the ultimate two step advertising, only perhaps now it’s three step – meet and engage in social media, lead to content elsewhere, content elsewhere presents the opportunity to buy. To generate leads through social media marketing, you need to view your activity on social sites like an effective headline for an ad – the purpose of the headline is not to sell, but to engage and build know, like and trust – it’s the ultimate permission based play when done correctly.

One glaring exception to this softer approach for some folks is twitter search. I believe you can use twitter search to locate people in your area who are asking for solutions and complaining about problems you can solve and reach out to them directly with a bit of a solution pitch. People who are talking publicly about needing something are offering a form of permission and can be approached as more of warmed lead. The same can also be said for LinkedIn Answers – if someone asks if “anyone knows a good WordPress designer”, I think you can move to convincing them that you are indeed a great WordPress designer.

5) Learn – One of the hangups I encounter frequently from people just trying to get started in social media marketing is the paralysis formed when they stare blankly at twitter wondering what in the world to say. The pressure to fill the silence can be so overwhelming that they eventually succumb and tweet what they had for lunch. If you find yourself in this camp, I’m going to let you off the hook – you don’t have to say anything to get tremendous benefit from social media participation. If I did nothing more than listen and occasionally respond when directly engaged, I would derive tremendous benefit from that level of participation. In fact, if you are just getting started this is what you should do before you ever open your 140 character mouth. Set up an and subscribe to blogs, visit social bookmarking sites like and delicious and read what’s popular, create custom twitter searches for your brand, you competitors, and your industry, and closely follow people on twitter who have a reputation for putting out great content. And then just listen and learn. If you do only this you will be much smarter about your business and industry than most and you may eventually gain the knowledge and confidence to tap the full range of what’s possible in the wild and wacky world of social media marketing.

Article from John Jantsch who has been called the World’s Most Practical Small Business Expert for consistently delivering real-world, proven small business marketing ideas and strategies.

John Jantsch is a marketing and digital technology coach, award winning social media publisher and author

of “Duct Tape Marketing – The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide” published by Thomas Nelson, with foreword by Michael Gerber, author of The E-Myth and afterword by Guy Kawasaki.

He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing small business marketing system and Duct Tape Marketing Authorized Coach Network.

Getting More From Social Media Marketing is a post from: Chris Plant, creative images