The day I wrote the post on the Canon HFS100, I had the highest amount of readers in one day ever. However, the following days lead to a HUGE drop off. As you can see in the pic below this isn't normal.

The web traffic hasn’t been affected. Only the RSS readers. Anyone know what would cause such a drop after a over six months of consistent rising?

Okay, so the title is slightly misleading, considering this post is about bringing the Ilm Summit documentary to film festivals and there aren’t any tier 1 film festivals in Hollywood that I know of. However, there is a tier 2 film festival in LA!

– –

WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN NOW?

Imagine the names Sundance, SXSW, Cannes,  Toronto, Tribeca, or Berlin. Now that would be exciting.

Considering that I practically shot and edited a feature film because of Ilm Summit, I found myself asking,  “What’s keeping me from going all the way with this?”

– –

A question regularly being asked of the people who attended Ilm Summit was, “What will you bring back to your community?”

I believe the above question is at the core of the AlMaghrib business strategy.

After the tawfeeq of Allah it’s the internalization of this question combined with the systemization of its operations that has led AlMaghrib to grow at the exponential rate that it has.

I honestly believe an organization, company or brand becomes socially successful only when it becomes selfless. Making it’s existence for the betterment of community. Giving to the people before asking for their hand.

I believe what needs to be recognized by people who attend these seminars and are active participants is that initially people don’t care about the company, organization or brand.

Whether it be AlMaghrib, Bayyinah, etc, they initally only care about the potential benefit that can be brought to themselves and their community as a result of them being there.

Only after a relationship has been established will people become loyal.

– –

WHAT’S THAT GOT TO DO WITH FILM FESTIVALS?

In order for an organization or brand to be successful they must build solid relationships with their market.

One of the quickest ways to build a relationship with people is through stories and characters that pull your emotions. That’s why producing films with those elements can be a major asset to an organization’s marketing strategy.

– –

Imagine seeing the front page of your local entertainment section covering the screening of this Ilm Summit documentary.

The purpose of putting a film into the festival circuit is to give it exposure and to build its pedigree by getting as many media outlets that are covering the festivals to also do a story on the film.

One of my objectives is to recut the episodes and put them together to make a “feature film version” of the Ilm Summit 2009 experience.

It should be fun submitting this to film festivals and exposing AlMaghrib to an audience that would never have heard of it otherwise.

– –

How many more new people would be exposed to the dawah?

Think of people attending the film festivals, people in the documentary ending up on IMDB, as well the possibility of getting a distributor to buy the film and air it on television.

I ask again, How many more new people could be exposed to the dawah that would never have otherwise been exposed.

None of us are responsible for the outcome. Just sincere work. The rest is up to Allah.

Comments and criticisms are welcome

I’m sure a lot of us have heard of twitter, but most don’t have a clue what it is and what’s so great about it.

Twitter is the key that allows you to work you online social network in an automated fashion so that you can continuously build relationships and engage your people while not being chained to a desk or a computer.

Blogging, bookmarking, video, text, photo, and networking in a social sphere are all what we’re exposed to so much these days, yet many of us are resisting adopting and embracing these technologies.

I joined twitter back in April 2009 (see sidebar for my latest tweets). I knew of its existance since early 2008 but never joined because I was still getting my head around all these new social media technologies and figuring out what ways to use utilize them for marketing as well as general communication.

After having used twitter for about three months, I can confidently say it is a total Godsend! In all truth I wish I joined up sooner.

WHAT IS TWITTER?

• It’s a (micro)blog – “micro” because it’s got 140 character limitation.

• It’s public SMS – you can SMS people directly to their twitter accounts which ideally should be hooked up to their cell phones and they can respond to you. You can also follow the conversations of other who peak your interest and others can follow your conversations as well.

• It’s a networking tool - It allows you to follow and connect with new people you want to know more about through people you already know and it allows others the opportunity to connect with you. People you probably would never have connected with through normal circumstances.

• Most of all it’s a mobile synchronization tool for social media. - It allows the sharing of photo, video and text not only in the twitter crowd, but you can set it up to distribute to places like YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace – exponentially reaching out to a large network of people simultaneously just by simply pressing the “send” button on your cell phone!

I DON’T HAVE TIME TO LEARN THIS!

I’m a major advocate for social media and here’s why:

It’s a gold mine to meeting new people. Not just for the purposes of business but to enrich your social life as well.

Social media is a TOOL and specifically it’s a MAGNIFIER. Like money and power it will magnify what’s already inside of you. Truth is that social media is here to stay and you will be assimilated. Resistance is futile

I WANT TO PROTECT MY PRIVACY

I understand that there is a concern of having a balance of privacy and publicity. I also feel that people aren’t exercising comon sense when it comes to the issue of privacy and publicity online and this is where proper education and awareness needs to be brought into the fold.

I’m in the process of developing some material via MessageMastery.com which I’ll be putting out as a gift for all of you laying out the basics to get you going on using these amazing social media tools.

Using social media is just like real life – Its all about extending one’s influence through the building of relationships.

Fact of life: generally people don’t care about you, me or anyone. They care about themselves, and more importantly – what others think of THEM.

In order for us as entrepreneurs, organizational leaders, entertainers, or even as individuals to get people to do stuff, we need to touch a heart before we can ask for a hand. This is where leadership skills and compassion comes into play.

Everyone wants something. They’re trying to get somewhere. When we help someone get to where they want to go – a relationship forms.

When the heart is touched multiple times, those individuals make your their leader/celebrity/etc – obviously we as Muslims don’t attempt to touch the hearts of people to become their leader or celebrity – we do it for the sake of Allah-swt alone, but the natural process is that this is what happens.

The more hearts we touch – the greater our influence becomes – This is social media.

The tools that are out the like – YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, etc – are all there to do just that.

WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?

I want you to give some of these tools a try. Specifically twitter.

Go ahead to twitter.com and create an account, start following me and we can start sharing ideas with each other right away

I’m looking for people who have YouTube accounts (and who actually use them) to upload Message Mastery Videos inshaAllah.

Also, I’m requesting people make Stumble Upon accounts – http://www.stumbleupon.com – and Digg accounts – www.digg.com -That way when we submit our articles, our websites, etc. the more people who “digg” a page (or review a page on stumble upon), the more hits we’ll get.

Whoever has accounts on these sites already, please contact me. We’ll agree to “digg” or “review” your site if you do the same for us (provided there is no haram content.)

This marketing stuff is getting to be a lot, and so I’m also looking for more volunteers to split the work. I must say it’s a lot of fun, but I definitely need more help. The last people to volunteer turned out to be awesome and they are doing a great jog, mashaAllah (that’s why you guys see Br. Belal literally everywhere.)

We’ve made a Google Group for marketing and PR purposes (or as my mom with her accent calls it, “RP” lol), let me know if you want to be on team and i’ll add you to the group inshaAllah.

leave a comment, add me to your Facebook, or email me at media [at] leechon.com

Barak Allahu feekom,

Shirien

Dear Facebook,

If you were a person I’d heckle you. All of my hard work you destroyed. My 50 minutes of adding random people to my list is gone. I want my 50 minutes back. You disabled my account because in your opinion I was “Spamming too much.” But I disagree. I was not spamming too much, I was spamming just the right amount. What you call spam, I call dawah. You are a kaafir, and I call you to the oneness of Allah.

Love,

Shirien

—–

For all of you who want to use Facebook as a marketing tool, don’t try to add 100 people to your list in one day. Me and Facebook had our odds before. I’ve always hated it and it hates me. I had to start anew by creating a new account again for the public relations work for Leechon.

Anyway, I’m looking for as many people as possible willing to help me with some of the PR work. (this is pretty effortless work, so don’t think I’ll be asking you to do something hard or time consuming) If you support Leechon Films and (preferably) if you already have an account with Facebook or YouTube or Myspace, then you can either leave a message in the comments section saying you can help me or email me at media @ leechon.com or add me (Shirien Elamawy) to your Facebook friends list and send me a message.

So who’s going to help me?

(and no, I didn’t actually send that message )

If you have your own business or are working on a major project you must have a media kit. If you don’t have a media kit available to give members of the media, your business or project looks very amateur and hardly worth promoting in the news.

So what is a media kit? This is something usually put together by your PR person/firm working for you. It includes press releases, a backgrounder, a fact sheet, a bio, an image bank and more. And it’s getting to the point to where media kits are best done digitally. Make a kit and put it all on a CD, make sure you package it creatively and send it to media outlets.

I created a media kit a while ago for Leechon – and more specifically for Tufaan. The “Press Section” on Tufaan’s website is composed of a couple of things I included in the media kit, including the image bank. I plan to update the media kit and create a creative, graphically appealing digital version of it soon.

Also, it’s pretty important you get someone in public relations do to this for you. Why? Because if you want to send press releases to print media (like newspapers), then you have to write in AP style (associated press style) it was a pain to learn most of the AP Style book by heart. For example:

Wrong: Leechon gave 20% of their profits to charity.

Right: Leechon gave 20 percent of their profits to charity.

—

Wrong: She lived on Burbank Dr.

Right: She lived on Burbank Drive.

BUT

Wrong: She lived on 123 Burbank Drive

Right: She lived on 123 Burbank Dr.

There are a lot of subtle differences. If you don’t write it the correct way in your press releases, they will most likely be thrown in the garbage by the editor. Your job is to provide everything for them and make their lives easier so they willingly give you free publicity by writing about your business or project. Also, if your writing – particularly news writing- isn’t strong, make sure you hire a PR person.

If you want to know exactly what goes into a media kit, I’ll go into detail on my blog since it might get pretty lengthy. I also would like to do a series about each element in a media kit including how to write a good press release, fact sheet and backgrounder. And hopefully at the end you’ll be able to do your own PR work (well, some of it at least).

Finally, I plan in the near future to run my own PR firm for Muslims. Alhamdulillah it’s something I can do at the comfort of my own home and alhamdulillah it’s something I can do quite well, bi’fadhlillahi ta’ala. I’m currently compiling a Muslim Media Database (MMD) with the information of all media outlets and the preferred way they’d like to be reached.

If you are looking for someone to do PR for your business or project go ahead and send me an email @ media (at) leechon.com . I plan now – and in the future – to only accept a few clients at a time. And most of all, it has to be something halal and something worth promoting.

To learn more about how to make a media kit, check out my post.

~Shirien

*apparently I’m going to have to go back and talk about what exactly a press release is and why we send them out. What PR people do is still something a lot of people aren’t aware of. But until then, know that half the stuff you see on the news are things covered due to someone sending a press release. Reporters aren’t always just at the right place at the right time (or know what’s going on everywhere). PR has a lot to do with that.

“New Media” includes anything from blogs, podcasts and wikis to things such as RSS feeds and webinars (seminars on the web).

My first part of this series was about RSS feeds. If you are not familiar with RSS feeds then consider yourself behiiiind, baby- behind in technology. To catch up follow my tutorial. Subscribing to RSS feeds will save you so much time during the day and make things so much more convenient.

—–

Recently, I’ve stumbled upon something addictive – something that can be extremely beneficial for you in terms of marketing, but could also become an addiction that wastes your time. And I don’t want to be the one responsible on the Day of Judgment for people wasting their time and not doing beneficial things, so as a disclaimer: I waaarned you.

So what is this beneficial/non-beneficial thing, you ask? Stumble Upon, of course.

Stumble Upon is a tool that lets you “stumble upon” websites of your interest (Islamic websites, photography websites, media websites…etc). You can even submit your own website or blog as well as any other website you like to this system. People submit their pages so that other people can come across them randomly- with the hope that they will bookmark it, add it to their RSS feed or add it to their favorites and come back to it. This is a good tool for marketing, because you can reach out to (and are more accessible to) your target audiences.

So how does this baby work?A little tutorial I like to call: “Waddle Waddle Boom Bam Waa” <– that would be a little baby trying to walk…. stumbles upon a toy… and … well, you get the point. I know, therapy tomorrow inshaAllah. Sooo…

—–

Step 1: Go to www.stumbleupon.com, and create an account by clicking the “Join Stumble Upon” button.

Step 2: Download the “Stumble upon tool bar” by also clicking that button also on the front page. I have to admit I HATE extra tool bars, but this one really doesn’t bother me because I use it all the time.

Step 3: Pick the category of websites you want to “Stumble Upon.” I suggest cats, “Meow.”

Step 4: If you want to start randomly coming upon websites, click the “Stumble!” button on your tool bar. And you if you like or dislike the website, click the “I like it!” button or the thumbs down button.

Step 5: If you would like to submit your own site or another website you like, then simply press the “I like it!” button, and if it was not already submitted to Stumble Upon, a new window will pop up asking some basic info on the site you are submitting.

I don’t recommend always stumbling upon sites for a couple of reasons: some of those sites have music that automatically start playing when you come across it and some have bad advertisements or images. So It’s best to use it for your advantage without going into something haram. Wallahu ta’ala alem.

But this was by far the funniest thing I’ve ever stumbled upon: (I told you to add the cat category, )

Click here to view the embedded video.

Enjoy,

Shirien

I just recently joined a membership based video mastermind group. as part of the introduction process and breaking the ice, everyone in the group was requested to submit a short video about themselves. I figured I'll have some fun with it.

Check it out:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Remember the movie “Cast Away” with Tom Hanks? If you’ve seen the movie you may think the hero of the movie is Tom Hanks or even Helen Hunt. But oh no, what’s this…? The hero was… who?! Yup, that’s right. The hero was none other than Fed Ex. (and Wilson too <– major product placement)

A Fed Ex employee ends up stranded on an Island. The packages that were washed ashore with him save his life. In one package he even finds his best friend Wilson. And if you remember at the very end of the movie when he gets rescued and flown home, you have the Fed Ex headquarters throw him a welcome home party and there is confetti and you feel all happy and warm inside.

Fed Ex might as well have paid for the whole movie, because the whole movie was basically an advertisement for them.

For product placement to be really successful,  it has to be seamless. If it’s not seamless, it’s no good. Or is it? We had a big discussion about this in one of my Mass Comm classes. We sat there watching clips trying to count how many times we could see product placement. We looked for everything from people picking up a Coke to drink in the middle of their conversation to basically whole plots of episodes revolving around one product.

CAN YOU FIND THE PRODUCT PLACEMENT? This is a clip from the movie “The Mummy.” Watch verrrrrrrrry closely:

Click here to view the embedded video.

ok.. but seriously, the next time you sit down to watch something (clean) see how much product placement you can find.

Why are most people now switching to product placement in shows and movies? One word: TiVo. Tivo is an advertiser’s worst nightmare. People can zap past commericials and the number of households that are switching to TiVo is growing at a rapid rate . Oh yeah, and advertisers HATE you. Why? Because you’re a channel switcher. When commercials come on, you switch the channels until they’re over. That’s why they have to put their product in the show itself.

The question posed to you is, “Do YOU mind when you see product placement?” What if it’s obvious? Do you get mad? Or is it so long as the plot is good(and halal), you don’t care? Part of the argument is the fact that we are subconsciously being bombarded with all this advertisement and we don’t even realize.

Watch this clip of Darren Brown (subliminal Advertising) and see the genius (and scariness) of advertisements and their impact on our subconscious minds:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Again, I don’t advocate or support watching TV or anything that might have haram content.What other Movies or Shows, (or examples) can you find with obvious (or seamless) product placement?

~Shirien

Assalamu Alaikum wa rahmitullahi wa barakatuh,

Become a fan of “Tufaan” on the new group on Facebook! Webops@leechonfilms [dot] com is in charge of the group. So if you guys have any questions or suggestions for the group go ahead and email at the email above.

Actually, I will be the first to admit I’m not normally on facebook. I disabled my account longgg ago. I created this account for PR/Marketing purposes for Tufaan. So me and Mr. Facebook here haven’t been getting along.

I started to add random people to my friends list (if you’re on there.. know you’re esbecial and not ummm random?….. yeah… ) So after doing that for a while Facebook thought I was spam, soooo they told me my option of adding people to my friends list is now temporarily disabled . But feel free to add me if you like!

Anyway, for all of you who read the blog and are awaiting the release of the movie, go ahead and join the group. We’ll be posting “featurette” videos of each “Hero” in the documentary up soon on the site, so look out for that inshaAllah.

Barak Allahu feekom all,

wassalam,

Umm Ayoub.