Top social media strategists put their time up for auction on eBay
May 12, 2009
Here's a golden chance to get two hours of consulting services from social media veterans Adriana Lukas and Chris Heuer for a bargain.
Adriana emails to say they are currently auctioning two hours of their time on eBay. I'm a bit late to this story as I've been on the road for a few days: the slot is for tomorrow, in London, but at the time of writing the only bid submitted is on $50 - so still possible to get an amazing deal.
"This is a low cost way for a smart company to take our minds for a test drive, to see if what we know, and to improve what you are doing with social media, marketing and web strategies to make your organization more succesfull in these effort," writes Adriana. Read more on why the two have decided to put their time up for auction, in what is a one time opportunity so far, on eBay here.
Now, at this point I should tell you that Adriana is the woman who kicked me into the blogosphere in the first place. After listening to her musings on social media, and reading the books she recommended, with fascination for years, but always blaming my deadlines for why it was never the right time to have a go at blogging myself, in the end she just set up this blog for me in 2005 and told me to get going.
It was a big white canvas for me, and I was quite surprised by how, after a few months, I revealed myself to be a media junkie... ;-) Of course, blogging changed my world, my focus and opened up new previously unthought of opportunities for me. Still, even after immersing myself in social media for years, had I been in London tomorrow and had I the time, this would have been an opportunity too good to miss....
Update 14:25 CET: Message from Chris Heuer on Twitter just now, saying "unfortunately I glitched & UK folks werent able to bid, so am taking it down :( #lessonlearned". Still, seems some lucky person might have secured those two hours with Adriana and Chris after notifying Chris about the glitch - see more in his comment on my post here.
timing is everything...
and my timing was bad, so was the timing of this important lesson learned, that if you set up an auction under certain parameters, as I did with eBay last week while in Hamburg late at night, using a US account, copying a prior template used for when I first tried this experiment in DC, it made the auction only available to US eBay accounts...
As it turned out, we may still have a deal because of this auction from someone who contacted us to let us know about the problem, so in fact, eventhough it ended up as a #lessonlearned instead of a #ragingsuccess I am ok with the outcome.
From a bizdev perspective, it really does make sense. We can spend so much effort in making a proposal, but when traveling as I have been to so many different places this past month, doing all that bizdev to just get a paid meeting doesn't make sense sometime. Especially when you do so many other community focused activities and care about more then just the money. For instance, my time in Cambridge yesterday for Amplified 09 East in Cambridge talking about Digital Britain was invaluable. Found some new colleagues, had a great walkabout (photos coming soon) and learned many great insights that will be carrying me forward for months to come...
Posted by: Chris Heuer | May 12, 2009 at 01:31 PM