Promotional Rescue
Daniel Pinchbeck
The most inspiring statistic we gleaned from our recent Reality Sandwich survey is that over 50 % of you who responded want to help us build the community by telling others about the site. We were thrilled to learn that so many of you feel that the subjects we are covering on Reality Sandwich deserve wider attention. We tend to agree. Now we are asking for your help in spreading the word far and wide.
As part of our ongoing effort to use the shiny new tools of Web2.0 in the service of creative chaos and shamanic insurrection, we are forming a Reality Sandwich "digital street team," a group of volunteer marketers. To sign up for this effort, all you need to do is email our Community Director, jonathan(at)realitysandwich(dot)com, with "Digital Street Team" in the subject line. Each week we will provide a couple of simple "missions" that you can choose from. Examples include posting a banner link on your MySpace page, emailing a group list about RS, dropping RS cards at events in your area, or writing witty and insouciant comments about RS stories on other like-minded sites.
There's a definite power in numbers. Our new digital marketing project is a way to harness our collective talents to expand the potential of the site, which we hope will serve the larger project of promoting transformational culture. Margaret Meade once said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." Your efforts can help ensure that the essays and articles featured in Reality Sandwich reach out to inspire new thoughts and commitments among the growing audience of global evolutionaries.
http://realitysandwich.fancorps.com
(Creative Commons Image: "life_preserver by Fisheye Harvest on Flickr.)
- Daniel Pinchbeck's blog
- Login or register to post comments
- Printer-friendly version
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Propeller
Reddit
Magnoliacom
Newsvine
Furl
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
Technorati
Icerocket
non US citizens
what about non United Statiens ? :) i'm from Europe and i'd like to be part of the team too. at the registration form i can only chose a state. not a country.
why aren't you going global?
Good Point
going global
There is no problem with doing this from overseas. I am surprised the system is limited to the US. I will raise this with our marketing team. For the moment, why not choose NY, as NYC is almost like being from another country.
Thanks for your enthusiasm!
Yours,
dp
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
Why not use Web 2.0?
"As part of our ongoing effort to use the shiny new tools of Web2.0 in the service of creative chaos and shamanic insurrection, we are forming a Reality Sandwich digital “street team,” a group of volunteer marketers."
um ... that isn't really a very Web 2.0 method, that is the old-school marketing/canvassing model, and I think, if you don't mind my saying, that it could backfire. The shills who hawk RS will lose some credibility on their own forums, RS will lose even more in the eyes of those readers. it just seems to me very counter to the objectives.
whereas ... to use web 2.0 methods, that seems very desireable, easy, doable and does not require volunteer canvassers, it only requires an honest participation by RS.
Daniel, were I you or on your editorial/web staff, the first thing I would abandon is my fear of Facebook and go over there and sign up myself, then post an official bona-fide RS Group page, and then return here to tell the fan base to please go and add themselves as fans of that page. The ripple effects of just that one move could do a lot towards getting known among a right sort of audience (the friends of your fans). That's the easy part.
The harder part would be to keep that page current, ie, to keep it in the currency of the flow of the facebook profiles of the group participants by keeping that page active and fresh with supporting and promotional material.
An excellent example of this is the G-FAN magazine (for Godzilla Fans), an actual print magazine that maintains an issue in progress website and uses FB to post general all-points-bulletins; whereas once upon a time we might have expected weblogs.com or technorati tags to spread the word, as the world got bigger those services predictably fell to near zero signal:noise ratios, and the world now belongs to the situated applications, embedded in real-life networks.
So you can, as in William Gibson's stooges paid to sit in bars and chat up marks about movies and fads in jeans, or you can just leverage the fanbase to do nothing more than to be fans, but to wear their hearts on their sleeves. Were it me, I'd do the latter long before I stooped to the former.
thanks for your thoughts
hi teledyn,
thanks for your thoughts. I don't think it is a question of "either - or" but why not make it "both - and"? Just as I would have no qualms in sendng people flyers or magazines to leave around their local coffee shops, it seems ethically sound to me to have volunteers who feel like it going about and spreading the word about Reality Sandwich. I do like your idea about the Facebook links - I think we have a Facebook page. I know we have a Myspace page (one of my top friends, in case anyone wants to find it and link to it). I will pass onto your thoughts to our marketing people.
Yours,
Daniel
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
Facebook Link
Here's the Facebook link. Add us as a friend; we'll be updating more soon.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2426879957
Rewarded with. . .
sigils
No, we were planning to follow Grant Morrison's method, which requires no sacrifice of any type.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
I think you missed the joke
I think you missed the joke there Daniel...
"Attaining gnosis" and "sacrificing children" *wink*wink*nudge*nudge* and all that.
got it
got it just after i posted.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
so glad...
that you're doing this! great idea, Daniel and the rest of the team! was wondering - is this going to be the site for social interaction that's been discussed, or will that be forthcoming? seems like the forum feature would lend itself well to social networking
... also, just wanted to mention real quick that I'm going to be publishing a newsletter out of Macon, GA, starting this fall, that will feature a lot of 2012/Mayan and ecological topics. would love to plug the RS site there. hoping to get a group together in the Atlanta area so we can have some Evolver-style events...it kills me that the folks in NY are having all the fun - the bible belt needs a swift kick in the ass when it comes to conciousness and partying!
Chattanooga too!
hey Adam...drop me a line on
-
commercial sandwich
I removed my earlier comment so i could re-consider. I find it rather cheeky to ask people to promote a commercial site without offering real payment, on the pretext that it's helping expand consciousness.
RS is a commercial site, as evidenced by the banners and ads prominent on the front page.
You could have waited for a decent period of time before capitalising on Albert Hoffman's life & death! Instead, the ad for the DVD appeared less than a month after his death, if i remember well.
In the US people are so embedded in the marketing/advertising/commercial "culture" that these things may seem inevitable - necessary, even.
But to many of the rest of us, they just suck, and make the whole thing look cheap and fake.
I could take claims to providing a community service and promoting change a bit more seriously if the site was purely non-commercial.
And this is why i am not promoting RS, even if i really like some of the content. This is why a link to RS does not appear on our blogroll, nor on the links page of my own site ( http://www.eyohey.com )
To sum up, remove the adverts and commercial crap, and i'll promote your site for just a link back!
http://www.tranceparents.org/
All of us Americans are all the same
You got that right eco, all 250 million of us "US people are so embedded in the marketing/ advertising/ commercial "culture"". Too bad we can't be like the "rest of you". And all this time I thought we were all the same. We need to be shown the way. We are all sheep over here.
"Mirror of Sarcasm"
Hey ecolocal,
I hope you had the opportunity to view your reflection in my "Mirror of Sarcasm". If not, I would be more than happy to polish it for you.
After thinking for a while I actually came to the same conclusion you did, but in a different way.
I don't think a corporation is the answer to the problems facing the world today. I think it will take individuals acting individually, with love bursting forth from their hearts, to make a significant change in their local community.
And local is really all that matters to an individual. On a small scale all an individual can do is try to be an example to his or her friends of a way of living that is better than the one in which we all live now. Then of course the ripple effect would take place and over time, networks or webs or whatever would naturally form.
I signed up for fancorps.com, but I am going to resign, the propaganda tab and the boot camp crap just turned me off. Why not elect McCain instead?
We are not "all the same"
You don't need to get defensive when Amerikan culture is criticised, unless you identify with it.
Amerika does need to close its smartass big, voracious mouth, shut it and listen and be shown the way, indeed. Amerika needs to get used to the idea that it is a failure, and a dangerous one at that.
Amerika has become a pariah nation, despised by pretty much every other nation on the planet, and the reason is that Amerika's mission is to make everyone and everything all the same, McDonald's, Starbucks and facebook available throughout the global village. The bombardment is not just with physical bombs but also with cultural poisons.
Maybe we are one, but we are certainly not all the same, at all. A subtlety often lost in the New Age , which is known for its lack of discernment and its brainless wish to flatten everything into a homogeneous mass.
As for mirrors, there is something unwholesome about spending a lot of time looking in the mirror , or using the mirror as a shield.
Smash the mirror and see through to the other side!
The amerikan "counterculture" also needs to learn that it is not the cutting edge, and to realise that its much-hyped "abundance" comes from genocide and cultural devastation on an unprecedented scale. Amerikan counter-culture will only be free of this karma when it stops identifying with the Amerikan Dream and understand that most Amerikans are indeed the same, big mouths and egos who think they have something to teach the rest of us.
Amerikan culture in all, its forms, thinks it is more advanced or evolved, when actually it is retarded, the product of death , destruction and global devastation.
Have a nice day!
We are not "all the same" pt. 2
We are all humans. That is what I meant. I don't know or care what country you are from. I hate the idea of imaginary boundries.
I guess you can consider all Americans the same by what they're leaders and corporations do, as sheep or followers.
That just means that you don't care or have the time to get to know a few Americans on an individual basis. You just see what our shitty gov. and what it does on the news and think we all agree with it?
I'm sure the gov. under which you live is responsible for some tragedy in its past. That's all I'm saying, no one and certainly no gov. is perfect.
Every country has had its time in the spotlight, hopefully America will pass it on to a country that can do a better job than England, Spain, France, Rome, Greece, Persia and all the other super powers of the world that came before America.
i hear you
hi ecolocal,
I hear you, and I hate the idea of exploiting anyone's labor.
The fact of the matter is that this enterprise has not yet reached a level of economic self-sufficiency that allows us to hire people for these tasks. I believe there are good reasons, for the long term, that we chose to be a for-profit rather than a non-profit entity, yet those will only become clear if we succeed in connecting with a large enough audience - and advertiser revenue - to move forward with our larger plans.
I am interested in the corporate form because it is one of the most powerful engines for planetary transformation that has been created. Our future goal is to create an awesome hippie corporation that helps lots of people to make their way while providing a support system for building and strengthening communities, and moving toward sustainable and sane practices. We hope to use the tools of capitalist entreprise to help transform the system. Right now, broadening the audience for Reality Sandwich seems like a necessary step in the larger mission.
In any event, the "ask" is purely optional - if you are not called to help out in this way or in any way, that is fine also.
Yours,
Daniel
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
Thanx
Thanks for the response, Daniel.
I don't believe the tools of capitalist enterprise can be used to transform the system, as the tools are the system. And the system is embedded in the "culture" of marketing and advertising. I'm not even sure that the system can be transformed, but that's another story.
It would be much better, in my opinionion, to move forward with a radically anti-commercial, anti-capitalistic paradigm.
In practical terms, that could begin with challenging the paradigm of advertising by removing ads from your front page and having a separate "sponsors" or "recommended products and services" page - and eventually doing away with ads altogether.
Many of us are sick of the constant bombardment of ads and "click here so we can make a buck" content all over the internet.
There is no actual need to get too busy with a community site such as this to the extent that it becomes a job instead of a labour of love, and takes up so much of your time that commercialisation becomes necessary.
It should be perfectly possible to run the site through a network of volunteers , and accept unconditional donations.
There is no need to have new content appearing every day, unless you are trying to get lots of traffic and attract advertisers and sponsors.
Quality , not quantity!
I don't believe you can claim to offer a paradigm-changing, higher consciousness content and still attempt to make money from it.
The ends do not justify the means in this case, IMO. It would be better to reduce the busy-ness and make it non-commercial if it takes too much time. In other words, i'd prefer it if people made their money from other ventures and a "community" site like this was 100% ad free.
There's enough money among the hipsters and acid dealers of California to make this possible!
I'd offer to help instead of just criticising, but i strongly disagree with much of what gets published here, so , i'm just offering some suggestions as an outsider interested in alternative communications and paradigms.
Take care...