Marketing Safari

Last night I made a dream come true

It wasn't anything big. I bought a maple tree and planted it. Trees are usually not very big in Iceland (they say if you can't find your way in an Icelandic forest, all you have to do is stand up) but maple can grow to be quite big. It can become a tree where you can hang a swing in the branches, build a tree house in the crown, and you can even see it from a cross the street. So I've been thinking about getting one for some time. And last night I did. I bought a four year old tree which I can watch grow so that one day, my grand children can play in it.

Why is this such a big issue that I decide to blog about it? It's not. Nobody cares about that tree except me. It's just a reminder that it is important to have dreams. Dreams of all sorts and sizes (and prices). It increases the chance of some of your dreams actually coming true significantly, though some of them will never be. I have made many, many dreams come true but I'll never run out of dreams waiting to be fulfilled. So think about it, what dreams do you have? Which dreams can you start realizing today? It can be visiting a place only an hour drive away, going to a pottery class, riding a horse, tearing down that wall you don't need anymore, having a baby (or a puppy), painting the room green, or pink ... Pick one and make a dream come true.

Carpe diem
Hjörtur

ps. if this post inspired you to make a dream come true, no matter how big or small, please share it with us :)

Catch of The Week - May 17th

Each (ok, almost) Sunday I post links to the most interesting articles I've come across that week. Most of them are found via Twitter, Sphinn or my RSS reader. Enjoy!

Marketing, SEO and Social Media

Individuals have got the hang of Facebook. Here in Iceland, over 48% of the population is now on Facebook! But for companies, it can be a bit more tricky. Alison Driscoll picked out 8 Essential Apps for Your Brand's Facebook Page on Mashable.

Will Twitter Change The World? Maybe it already has. Here's a good discussion on the topic from Media Shift.

Twitter evoked harsh reaction from the community when they removed the option of seeing reply from people you follow to people you don't follow. Do you follow? You can read more about it on the Twitter blog.

Everyone is teaching people how to succeed at startups. But fact is, most of them don't. So we need to learn how to fail succesfully. Here are 10 lessons from a failed startup in The New York Times.

Travel Marketing

Marketing Montana as Nothing is Something from Forbes

How Much Time Does Web 2.0 Take? Nina Simon from Museum 2.0 asks herself that question and tries to answer it.

The Wild Catch
(other stuff than marketing that I still find interesting and worth sharing)

Education is Ignorance. An interesting article about the bias in education by Noam Chomsky

Double check your sources. Student Hoaxes World's Media on Wikipedia

And if you're interested in Icelandic economics or Bristish politics, you might like reading about Brown's Icelandic Blame Game in the Guardian.

Happy reading

Hjörtur

If this is your first time on my blog, you might want to consider subscribing to my feed or email updates (here on the left). You can also follow me on Twitter.

Who's Going to the 140 Character Conference?

Jeff Pulver has organized a very interesting conference in New York which he calls the 140 Character Conference. As you may have guessed, it's all about Twitter. There will be a lot of great speakers like Jeff him self, Tim O'Reilly, Chris Brogan, Liz Strauss, Howard Greenstein, myself and loads of other excellent tweeple. So if you'll come to the 140 conference, we'll have a chance to meet in person. If you haven't registered already, use this special "Marketing Safari's Readers Discount Code": FQSMJKVX.

I'll be on the road in the upcoming weeks (not that roads can take you far here in Iceland, they only go in circles, so I'll be doing some flying too), if you'd like to meet. I'll not only be in New York at the 140 conference on June 16th and 17th, I'll also be in the Faroe Islands this week (I'm actually somewhere over the North-Atlantic Ocean on my way to the Faroe Islands as I'm writing this) and might be doing some talking in Spain by the end June. I'll be running a two day course in Internet Marketing in Danish in Torshavn on the 6th and 7th of May. For my local readers, I'll be running a two day course in Internet Marketing in Icelandic on the 14th and 15th of May at my office location in Iceland.

If you're interested in some of those events, let me know. If I'm not coming to "a theater near you", that may be arranged.

See ya
Hjörtur