Grass Roots Marketing

What a week! When I last left you, I was preparing to leave for the Shorty Awards in New York. The fun began the moment I left Atascadero to Los Angeles to catch the red eye. Long 4 hour drive followed by a 6 hour flight.

Upon our arrival to New York, I found out that my interview with The Fred Cast had been posted. How did I know? Because orders were coming in one after the other and folks were kind enough to let me know they heard me on The Fred Cast. Thank you David, I had a blast doing the interview!!

Being on a very tight budget, my daughter, Bettina, and I braved the subway to our hotel near Time Square from JFK. I didn't think it was as scary as I've heard - the only thing that happened was what sounded like a gunshot and a flash of light as we passed through Queens. Everyone in our car just looked at each other with a knowing look, smiled and went about their business, so we did the same. However, Bettina looks up at a man standing in front of us reading the Metro only to see a headline that read "Tech universe prepares to honor top Twitterers" Sweeet! (They could have used a better tweet from me, but that's ok, just hope my son doesn't see it ;))

My plan for New York was to somehow get myself on The Today Show audience holding a sign. Grass roots marketing baby. So after scoping it out the first day, I decided to wait till Wednesday morning to attempt anything. Come Wednesday, I positioned myself where I was sure to be seen behind Matt Lauer, Meredith Vieira, Ann Curry and Al Roker. It worked! If you looked hard, you could see my head and scarf poking between them. However, I later positioned myself just a little closer and got directly behind Matt and was easily seen for a least 2 minutes.

With excitement, I sent a tweet from my Blackberry stating: "@todayshow - Tweetup tonight @ Shorty Awards." This got their attention and in turn, they "retweeted" my note to their 10,894 followers. Super, super cool! All this garnered calls, emails and comments from other Tweeps such as:

• @LEVEL_Ops to @OGILVY - Does a 140 character paper sign on TV and TwitPic count as new media? This looks like the "New PR"
• @scotttemplar to @MarthaVan That's awesome. Keep it simple - great example of integrating on-line/off-line PR at the most basic level
• @ErikBecerril to @marthavan http://twitpic.com/1fk55 - Hahaha, fantastic Martha!! You got to Tweet on National TV!

When The Shorty Awards finally arrived, we were exhausted. I didn't sleep at all the night before even though we had walked what seemed all of New York by then. However, I somehow found the energy and we made our way to the Galapagos Art Space. What a blast! It was fun meeting fellow tweeps in person, MC Hammer and of course, the press. Here are some articles for which I was interviewed: Wall Street Journal, Business Week and CNN.

The Shorty Awards were streamed live, but if you missed it, you can still watch them. Note that I was the last to be presented the award as I flaked and did not hear my name being called, but luckily, I made it down on time after my husband sent me a text asking what happened. And of course, made an entrance :)

Elizabeth Holmes of Wall Street Journal (@EHolmesWSJ) and my cool "iTweet" t-shirt from Off Line T-Shirts.

Mr. MC Hammer (@mchammer)