Settle down with me, cover me up, cuddle me in
Lie down with me, yeah, and hold me in your arms
And your heart’s against my chest, your lips pressed to my neck
I’m falling for your eyes but they don’t know me yet
And with a feeling I’ll forget, I’m in love now

Kiss me like you wanna be loved, you wanna be loved, you wanna be loved
This feels like falling in love, falling in love, falling in love

Settle down with me and I’ll be your safety, you’ll be my lady
I was made to keep your body warm but I’m cold as the wind blows
So hold me in your arms
My heart’s against your chest, your lips pressed to my neck
I’m falling for your eyes but they don’t know me yet
And with this feeling I’ll forget, I’m in love now

Kiss me like you wanna be loved, you wanna be loved, you wanna be loved
This feels like falling in love, falling in love, falling in love

Yeah I’ve been feeling everything
From hate to love from love to lust from lust to truth
I guess that’s how I know you
So hold you close to help you give it up

So kiss me like you wanna be loved, you wanna be loved, you wanna be loved
This feels like falling in love, falling in love, falling in love
Kiss me like you wanna be loved, you wanna be loved, you wanna be loved
This feels like falling in love, falling in love, falling in love

To my future husband…

October 9, 2012 JoJo Bayvel9 Comments

Dear You,

I will admit that sometimes I really do wonder if you exist.

There is a part of every little girl’s heart that envisions her prince charming. At age three, it is usually of a man who can save her from the wrath of an evil stepmother, wake her from eternal slumber or give her that true love’s kiss.

In primary school, he becomes the boy with the least cooties, the one who is willing to cross the playground to share his Smarties even if it makes him a target for the week of all the other boys.

Come high school, it’s that boy you stand with at your matric dance,who your father stared down at the door, who provided you with an experience complete with photos you will cringe at a decade later, a corsage that yellows in the refrigerator, and a faded memory of a night that seemed almost too magical to be real.

Thirty years into this life, however, and still wary of giving my heart away, I am still that same little girl who hopes for her prince charming. And although I wonder why it has taken you this long to sweep me off my feet and whisk me off to your palace on horseback, I know that it is probably because having you love me will be better than any fairytale I could’ve read as a kid.

I may already know you or may still meet you someday… i hope it is you..something I leave completely up to God because I’m pretty sure our story will be epic.

However, I can’t promise you that I’d make the world’s most perfect princess. In fact I’ll probably keep you on your toes and amuse you with my eccentricities…there are a lot of them. I’ll probably steal a bunch of your T-shirts and turn them into shirt dresses, or drive you slightly mad with my obsessive compulsivity and my need to fix your collar constantly.

I can promise to be your best friend however that person you can rant to after a rough day, the hand you can hold when you get sad, or the person you can text when situations and life get awkward.

I’ll probably mess up your hair sometimes and hug you for too long, but that will only be because I absolutely adore you. I will bury my head in your shoulder during scary movies and make you feel like superman when you kill those flying cockroaches that really should not exist. I will cook your favorite food on your birthday and try my best to make friends with your mom.

I will respect your nights-out with the boys and make you seem like the perfect guy to my girls. I will watch rugby or soccer games with you, and not complain when you cheer too loudly at the TV set, in fact I will be shouting louder.

I will know the difference between giving you space and being constantly there for you…even if it means sitting and reading a book playing a game of scrabble with you or taking hot chocolate runs when it rains.

I will listen to your music and we will go on epic adventures together,seeing the world, taking awesome pictures, eating awesome food, and never running out of things to tell each other along the way.

I won’t be waiting for you to sweep me off my feet and take me on a magic carpet ride, because I know I wont and maybe don’t need anything like that to fall for you… i will love you for you.

You will be that someone to make goofy faces with in pictures, to lace fingers with when I am lonely, and to take long walks under the stars with on the beach.

You will be the guy who takes me the way I am and will laugh as I burst into Disney song or pick out pink wallpaper or trip over a non existent rock…

You will be that someone I envision a future with us filling out visa forms as we travel the universe, picking out our first dog together and arguing about what to name it, or being snap-happy stage parents in our nursery schooler’s annual mini-plays. And I keep hoping that maybe someday when we find each other, you will become that someone whose smile I wake up to in the morning and the last one I speak to every night.

So to the man I know does exist, and who will help me maybe make sense of the world someday, this man I can’t wait to love. Please know that I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you. But for now, I wait. Fingers crossed and palms held together, I hope that you are waiting for me, too.

With the hope I will be yours for always until then I pray for you every night. That God will protect you and keep you safe in His arms for me ….

The Future Isn’t About Mobile; It’s About Mobility

October 9, 2012October 14, 2012 JoJo BayvelLeave a comment

While the globe grapples with uncertain economic realities, “mobile” appears to be gold.

Facebook is expected to announce their uniquely targeted mobile advertising model before the end of the month. Amazon is talking to Chinese manufacturer Fox Conn with ambitions of building their own mobile device to serve as a complement to Amazon’s considerable digital ecosystem of products and services. China itself has surpassed the US as the world’s dominant smartphone market with over a billion subscribers and roughly 400 million mobile web users. Advisory firm IDC predicts that by 2014 there will have been over 76 billion mobile apps downloaded resulting in an app economy worth an estimated thirty five billion in the same year. Mobile business will become big business in the not so distant future.

However, there will be blood as the business world pursues the mobile gold rush.

We’ve seen this movie before. In the early days of the web, it was the website that created a browser-fueled gold rush — until organizations realized that maintaining a website that provided real value was more difficult than launching something quickly. The same story is now playing out in social — getting something launched on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest is easy, but building an engaged and meaningful following isn’t. And the same will happen in the rush to mobile if companies take a “channel” approach vs. a behavioral approach. In short, it’s not about mobile as much as it is about understanding mobility.

In the early days of digital, the core behavior we needed to understand was that people wanted information at their fingertips and the convenience that came with digital transactions. In the social era it was all these things plus social connectivity. Mobility means information, convenience, and social all served up on the go, across a variety of screen sizes and devices.

Mobility is radically different from the stationary “desktop” experience. In some cases, mobility is a “lean back” experience like sitting on a commuter train watching a video. In other cases it can be “lean forward” — like shopping for a gift while you take your lunch break at the park. And in many cases, it’s “lean free” when your body is in motion, or you’re standing in line scanning news headlines or photos from friends while you wait for your turn to be called.

Mobility trumps mobile. The difference between mobility and mobile is like the difference between hardware and software. Mobile is linked to devices — it is always one thing, wherever it is. But mobility changes with context: cultures incorporate mobile technologies differently. For example, in Africa, SMS technology helps farmers pay bills electronically. In America, it helps teenagers keep up with their friends — an average of 60 times a day. Mobile itself is the nuts, bolts, and infrastructure, while mobility is the context which determines if it all works together or doesn’t.

To avoid “bloodshed” in mobile, learn from past lessons in Web, digital and social. Improve your understanding of the nuances of mobility and mobile behaviors before you ramp up your investment in mobile. Resist the temptation to rely too much on a guru; hiring a guru will only take your organization so far. Many of the organizations who brought in “social media gurus” learned this lesson the hard way. A single individual cannot scale. However, if the organization is willing to put real teeth behind their mobile efforts, a single smart person can help form a center of excellence. Establishing a center of excellence that puts mobility at the core, and integrates it with other business initiatives, can get a business thinking about mobile more strategically.

Secondly, realize that going mobile is not the same thing as having an app. In fact, avoid the temptation to “app everything.” A lot of content — whether video or text-based — can easily be optimized for mobile consumption. Popular apps such as Flipboard or Pulse point to a future of consumer “appgregation” — using one app to aggregate many sources of content. Instead of creating a whole host of apps that few are likely to download, invest in making your “digital ecosystem” more mobile-friendly.

Lastly, don’t put mobile tactics in front of strategy. In the early days of the web, every site seemed to have an animated GIF or a clunky site-counter. In the early days of social, companies spent millions on costly Facebook apps with cute gimmicks but no real utility or sharing value. Today, companies are scrambling to come up with something “mobile” whether or not it makes sense for their long-term business goals, and whether or not users will actually want it. The outcome is the same in across all of these examples: a low number of visits/installs/downloads and ho-hum business results. Tomorrow’s winners of today’s mobile gold rush will boast significant (and sustainable) usage numbers due to the value of their content, whether it’s sheer utility or impossible-to-ignore entertainment value.

Today’s mobile realities are stark. Competition is fierce and users are demanding. If your company wants to put out a fitness app, you’re competing not just with Nike FuelBand or Run Keeper, but with dozens of other apps put out by scrappy start-ups.

Before doubling down on mobile, any business should first ask themselves if they really understand mobility as a behavior and lifestyle, followed by tough questions about the role mobile plays in their business. From there, a strategy for mobile, built on an understanding of mobility, can take root.

Build on the expensive lessons learned from past bubbles and there will be less “blood” all around.

Social Media Marketing Won’t Work For You… Unless

October 3, 2012October 14, 2012 JoJo BayvelLeave a comment

Social Media Marketing is the answer to all of your marketing woes. Just add a little fan page here and a tweet there and watch the money roll in! Right? Not likely.
We’ve been building websites and developing online marketing strategies for 10+ years. During this time, there’s been one thing we can always count on… the eternal quest for the easy button – Thanks, Staples!
Let’s face it, social media marketing is a complete and utter waste of time. Seriously. It will not work for you, unless…
You have a strong web presence
You know your audience
You have a content strategy
Yes, there is hope. There is a clear way forward in this sea of social chaos. It’s called a plan!
Step One for your Social Media Marketing Plan: Have a strong web presence

Social media channels are generally considered what social media expert Chris Brogan calls your marketing “outposts.” These are the channels where you distribute your content to increase its reach and effectiveness.
Your website is your home base.
Your website should be the source for the original content you intend to distribute. It should be well organized and ready for visitors from your outposts at any time. After all, the goal of those outposts is to drive targeted traffic back to your site.
A good home base should consist of the following:
A CMS (Content Management System) – usually something like WordPress, Joomla or a proprietary CMS. These allow you to manage your content without any technical skills. Keeping your content fresh means that repeat visitors (including Google) will always find something new and interesting. And new visitors won’t see a bunch of stale old content.
A Blog – business blogging is incredibly effective when it comes to giving visitors the content they want. You can blog about industry trends, news, tips, etc. This is the original content that you’ll use on your social media outposts to connect with the audience there.
A Good Site Design – your website should be easy to use and look at. Use design to guide the outpost visitors where you want them to go. User friendly navigation and targeted landing pages will lead visitors to do something while they are there.
Calls to Action – when someone lands on your site, they are lost for a moment. It’s a new place, they are disoriented. Use a call to action, designed for attention and ease of use, to guide them along and tell them the something you want them to do.
It’s your home, make it nice and inviting!

Step Two for your Social Media Marketing Plan: Know your audience

I give lots of talks on marketing – social, mobile, search engine and online marketing. If I was only allowed to make one statement in any of these talks, it would be this…
Know your target audience!
It is that important. If you don’t know who your target audience is, how do you expect to connect with them on social media?
What’s the first thing you do when you meet someone? You get to know them. Why? So, you can have a more meaningful conversation. So you don’t stand there awkwardly talking about the weather waiting for a reason to leave.
In all of your online properties – owned and borrowed – you need a consistent message. Knowing your audience helps you to craft this message and target it towards them.
Take some time and really get to know your target audience – also known as your buyer personas.
Even if you think you know them, take some time to really understand their “story.” It will pay off in the long run. Not just with social media, but with all of your online and offline marketing efforts.
Step Three for your Social Media Marketing Plan: Have a content strategy

Effective content takes time, research and planning. If your plan for social media is to just post some stuff, you’ve already failed.
If you’ve worked on steps one and two, then step three should come easy. Since you already know your audience, then you should have a good idea of the content they want.
Determine where you can get this content for them…
Original Content – can you write blogs posts or produce webinars, white papers or videos on these topics?
Blogs – what blogs out there are full of great posts on these topics? Set up some Google Alerts and start reading different blogs to find great content. Then share it with your target audience.
Life – every day you are given great sources for content you can share with your target audience. Tune into these by listening with your target audience in mind. Check out this post on content marketing for more on this.
Once you’ve identified some sources of great content – both original and shared – you will want to develop a plan to organize and deliver this content.
The best way to map out your content strategy is with an editorial calendar. An editorial calendar can come in many shapes and sizes; whatever works best for you.
Typically, it tends to look most like a chart…

The point is to map these out ahead of time and do it strategically. The more you plan ahead, the less overwhelmed you will be. The better your content will turn out.
Even if you are the only author, having a plan will still help you keep your sanity.
With your content strategy mapped out, you’ll know how you’ll be using your social channels in the future. These efforts will be thought out, well crafted and strategically targeted to your audience.
And if you map out your content well enough you might even end up with enough for an eBook or full length book. But, that’s another topic for another post.
Now, I’m not saying that social media isn’t a place for fun and spontaneity. Certainly let your personality shine through. Create real relationships with people on social media. Don’t just be a content shilling machine.
But, when you have a plan, and you produce and share content that is of value to your target audience, you will attract those people to your social channels. Your connections and successes will grow from there.
What do you think about social? Do you think a free for all is the best approach or do you prefer to have a plan? Let me know in the comments section below.

Sometimes I just like to say thank you to the greatest mom in the world… Mine

October 3, 2012 JoJo BayvelLeave a comment

You are the sunlight in my day,
You are the moon I see far away.
You are the tree I lean upon,
You are the one that makes troubles be gone.
You are the one who taught me life,
How not to fight, and what is right.
You are the words inside my song,
You are my love, my life, my mom.
You are the one who cares for me,
You are the eyes that help me see.
You are the one who knows me best,
When it’s time to have fun and time to rest.
You are the one who has helped me to dream,
You hear my heart and you hear my screams.
Afraid of life but looking for love,
I’m blessed for God sent you from above.
You are my friend, my heart, and my soul
You are the greatest friend I know.
You are the words inside my song,
You are my love, my life, my Mom.