Happy July 4th, and a Marketing Plan

Happy July 4th to everybody. America’s holiday. Fireworks, grilling, and good times for all.

So let’s make use of it.

Lesson Part 1: If you need photography for your blog, Facebook posts, tweets, etc. you have an amazing and legal archive at your fingertips within the Flickr Creative Commons. Here’s what you do: Go to Flickr.com, type in your subject in the search bar (for example “Fireworks”) and hit enter. Then on the next screen under “Any license” pull it down to “Commercial use allowed.” What you’ll see is a full screen of amazing fireworks photos that you’re allowed to use for any of your commercial purposes. Then you’re free to download and use any of the images as long as you give attribution to the photographer. Try it with wine and you’ll never run out of photos to use.

Word to the wise: don’t steal photography. Don’t use something that’s not yours without permission and attribution. If it’s owned by Corbis or one of the other big companies they will find you, because image searches are easy and lawsuits are profitable. It’s happening more and more often, and it happened to me a few years ago. In order to avoid a difficult talk with my boss at the time, I took out my credit card and swallowed the $600 myself. Scrub your websites and blogs clean of other’s work and start doing it right, now.

Lesson Part 2: Find some great articles on Zinfandel, often cited as “America’s Grape” and bookmark them. Here are four to get started with:

Lesson Part 3: Announce to your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram followers that all Zinfandel is 20% OFF through Sunday. Celebrate America! Print pictures of the fireworks and hang them all over the zins. Pre-set all of your Facebook posts to trickle out the articles all week along with reminders about the Zinfandel sale. Have copies of the article ready to hand out to customers. The goal is to integrate the imagery and the emotions most will feel tonight watching fireworks into a sense of patriotism about the Zinfandel variety and steer them toward your store or restaurant. Consistency is the key. Daily posting is the key. But all the work can be pre-set, right now, and scheduled to go out when needed. Inside of one hour you’ll have your entire week’s marketing plan done.

Then, of course, go have a glass of wine. Zinfandel preferred.

Photo: JdMoar