1. Who exactly is my target audience? What are their personal stories?
2. What is the problem I’m solving?
3. What solution(s) am I offering?
4. How can I communicate in a way that reaches the hearts, minds, and needs of my target audience?
5. What kind of information does my target audience find useful?
6. How does my target audience enjoy receiving information?
7. How can the people seeking my product or services find me?
8. Where does my target audience spend their time online? What about offline?
9. How much time each day/week can I dedicate to creating relevant content?
10. Why is it important to me to create content?
11. How much time can I dedicate to engaging with my target audience online? What about offline?
12. What’s the most important thing I need to learn next?

It’s never too early, or too late to create content. It does take time, consistency, and someone to be a driving force behind it.

Maybe blogging, facebook, and twitter isn’t for everyone. If it’s not something you enjoy, consider finding someone who can help you. Someone who’s passionate about your topic. Someone who can create fresh content. Someone who has a knack for centering the user experience. Someone who can add personality and creativity to content.

Whatever you do, take some time to map out your target audience. Make an old school brainstorming sketch if you need to. Who is your message for and why?

Have any useful Target Audience Questions? What questions do you ask yourself when thinking about your target audience? Please comment below!

Thanks for reading! Mindful Tech appreciates you.

1. Create a Content Marketing Schedule to for consistency (#NoteToSelf)
2. Make yourself accountable by regularly checking-in with someone. Also great to bounce ideas off of.
3. Make all your Google Cals viewable on one, then set your Google Calendar as your homepage
4. Use reminder apps like Due (syncs with Agenda, for iPhone/iPad), or TellMeLater for iPhone
5. Make a Daily Action List, to sort out top priorities from your perpetual To Do List. If your list is mostly supporting other people’s goals, make one supporting your personal goals too.
6. Selective Learning. Learn based on what is helpful to you right now.
7. Drink water in the morning. Before coffee. Seriously. I feel the difference.
8. Mindful deeper breathing. Most of us live in short breath zones, especially when we’re working on screens!

Do you have tools or habits that help you with productivity and accountability?
Add to this GIT list in the comments section below. Thanks for reading!

Top 2 Podcasts for Marketing Self-Education:

• Internet Marketing for Smart People (by copyblogger.com)
• Harvard Business Review’s HBR Ideacast

So what have I been learning? The recent take-aways stress the power of video. Video can add depth, emotion, humanization, intimacy, and a share-able link to an easily digested message. It takes certain skills, tools, and influence to create a “Likeable” video with high virality. Maybe that’s why there’s so much value in it. While it’s easy to make a video blog, it’s difficult to earn attention among the noise of internet information.

Now I’m no video expert, but YouTube is the second largest search engine. Strategically tag your video and add links to direct traffic to your landing page. Closed captioning is also important for accessibility and helps your video become more searchable.

Here’s my Top 8 Video Inspirations:

1. Fellow Brown Boi Micah Domingo documenting his transition
2. Educational animations like Tomboy (on bullying and gender stereotypes) and The Story of Stuff
3. Text-to-Voice animations like Adelina Anthony‘s performance promo “La Hocicona Live on CNN Network: Chisme News Network”
4. Online shows that make people LOL like Awkward Black Girl
5. Hulu videos like Fora.tv Technology channel’s  “The Future of Video Games: Jesse Schell’s Vision of the Gamepocolypse” which taught me that our future is made of incentives and screens (jump to 7:00)
6. 30 Second MBA featuring short interviews with business and marketing buffs
7. Yellow Apparel: When the Coolie Becomes Cool - One of my favorite films from undergrad
8. Anything by my friend Maya Santos

Mindful Tech :: Breathe Life Into It

My BFF’s mother makes cakes and desserts we all swoon over. People literally stopped dancing and the DJ skipped tracks at my big 30th birthday bash because Ms. Angie’s Amaretto Cake was a party in our mouths. I wanted to share my skills to help her because she could really kick off a lucrative business with her one-of-a-kind delicious creations. Facebook page, website, logo design, branding, social media marketing, putting a price tag to each made-with-Love cake she put her big toe in. 

When my friend Arturo spoke of starting his own business (Sound by Soma), I enthusiastically shared all my amateur marketing know-how again. 

Then there’s the social media marketing teletrainings (read phone + shared Google doc) I’ve done to suport fellow Brown Bois, Roy and Ryann with their respective causes (starting a non-profit, and bklyn boihood). 

There’s a couple more stories, but I want to share the Mindful Tech story because our stories are important when it comes to creating an online presence for your personal brand, small biz, side hustle, non-profit org, fundraiser, event, etc. 

I should mention I’m probably not an overnight marketing person. My knowledge base stems from being that person, in every job I’ve had, who does much of the graphic design for flyers, produces content for email newsletters, manages content on facebook, twitter (not to mention myspace and downelink), in addition to writing copy to outreach, publicize, and ultimately raise funds to sustain the work and expand capacity. And yes, sometimes it was just important to me to create things like Facebook profile pic campaigns to show solidarity, or raise awareness of injustices.

All the while I’ve been watching, studying, learning, and self-educating. What’s the compelling magic (and strategy) behind certain fundraising campaigns, like Mosquita y Mari’s community powered Kickstarter (888 Backers raising $82,468)? There’s a story there. (What’s your story?)

The truth is, I’m still learning. The truth is –I suck at blogging, my personal website needs a miracle, my graphic design skills are mediocre, and I don’t have many followers and “Likes”…. yet. But there’s a small flame inside me that believes I’m damn good at this. And if I keep learning and keep sharing, then I can make an impact by channeling my inner geek swag… and getting other people to channel theirs. Why? Because social media is here to stay. 

This is me asking you to help me Breathe Life into my own idea, so together we can all Breathe Life into our Beloved Communities! #SkillsForALL

Thanks for reading! Shout out to the 128 people who’ve “Liked” Mindful Tech on Facebook (especially those who’ve invited friends and reposted on their profiles), and the 135 people who’ve followed @mindfultech on Twitter. Thanks for believing in me, and believing in Mindful Tech!

I got off the Pinterest and Facebook Fan Page Timeline change geek buggy as quickly as I got on it. Why? Because pinning is making me crave an epic shopping spree and I’m window shopping for a better task management system. Nothing against ToodleDo, which (after much research), I found to be a decent cross-platform task management system (iPhone, Website, etc). I like you, but I don’t love you. It’s not you, it’s me. I need more than flat lists with single nested tasks. I need aesthetically pleasing and design candy. And a printout that doesn’t squeeze my task list into 7 point font. #justsayin

All this to say… I want to learn more about Freedcamp. Enough that I decided to blog about it without much of a review or report back. I’m blogging about it to share it as potential resource –a free online project management tool great for teamwork. There’s even a Wall for your team to write on. AND, I just saw that they posted a teaser of their mobile app. Loves.

Are you freedcamping yet? If you like it, or have other great tools to share, leave a comment!

Whether you’re goal is to:

• Breathe life into an idea
• Learn something new
• Sustain your livelihood with that small biz side-hustle
• Put up an online fundraiser for a great cause

• Social media marketing skills for all.

Follow this blog to stay updated on the latest Social Media Tips, How-To’s, Mindful Tech-niques, Best Practices, Interviews, Tech News, and more!

Thanks for your patience as seeds are planted for this project!