As noted in this space many, many times, I’m a big fan of Gary Vaynerchuk and his book Crush It! My copy of the book is covered in as much self-applied ink as what the publisher printed.  As a man/dad blogger, I’ve really stepped up my social media presence in 2010 thanks to reading and re-reading Crush It! and other noted books, and the results are really beginning to show.

One of the primary points we’re trying to make to men/dad bloggers through the Modern Media Man Summit is that besides the great one like GaryVee, women and moms aren’t the only ones who can do social media and do it successfully.  And wisely, in the blog world we’re beginning to see brands begin to better recognize that we men/dads are out here wanting to do good things with our social media presence and do something quid pro quo as well.

@SnickersIceCrm

Last Thursday morning before Mom and I headed out the door to go to on our adventure trip for the Taste of Creede, CO for the weekend, I stumbled upon the mouth-watering taste at the thought of  Snicker’s Ice Cream brand’s Twitter account and sent them the following tweet:

@SnickersIceCrm: I’ll bet with lots of dry ice & some ingenuity I could sample some samples & tell the world how good your product is!

Their almost immediate response was simple and to the point:

Ha! How about I send you some coupons!

With a follow up DM of my mailing address, I smiled, told mom how cool that was and we walked out the door on our trip.

ONE WEEK LATER

Today, June 3, a week later, I received in the mail 6 coupons:  Three for $1 off the Snicker’s Ice Cream product lines and three coupons for FREE boxes of their product lines. 

Feast your mouth-watering eyes on this: The coupons are good for “Any one MULTI PACK: DOVEBAR Brand 3 Pack, DOVEBAR Miniatures, DOVE Brand Packaged Ice Cream, TWIX Ice Cream Bar 6 Pack, M&M’s Brand Cookie Ice Cream Cone 6 Pack, SNICKER’S Ice Cream Cone 6 Pack, SNICKER’S Ice Cream Bar 6 Pack, SNICKER’S Ice Cream Bar Miniatures.”

Until I just typed that, I didn’t know there was a Twix Ice Cream Bar, and to know that there are six of them in a pack, well, I’m all that about that. (Just don’t tell my EA SPORTS Active friends!)

You see, the other great thing about all this is that I did this as a man blogger/dad blogger!  Yes, even with testosterone in my system, I’m able to reach out to brands, make contacts, offer to do something positive for their company, and reap incredible rewards because of it.

Hey, and now I also get to enjoy SIX TWIX Ice Cream Bars that I won’t be telling my DDs that I have!  Sorry girls, I don’t know where they went…..

“YASEETIMMY”

If you ever watched the 1994 movie “Speechless” with Michael Keaton and Geena Davis, you will recall that Keaton said at the end of a good story, there’s a “YaSeeTimmy,” just like in Lassie when they always said, “You see Timmy ….” and passed on an important lesson from the episode.

The Ya See Tim,/Jim/Gary/Chuck/Don, of this lesson is two-fold:

1. Brands want to have relationships with men/dad bloggers. At the present, it’s sort of a challenge for them to find us.  Without parsing any words, it’s been a Mom Blogger World for far too long.  Moms do a lot of the buying in a household, but so do we men/dads. Reaching out to brands and connecting with them can be a positive experience.  There needs to be a system for helping brands find dads.  I know some peeps who are working on just that!
2. Men/Dads, we need to do a better job of reaching out to brands. They’re not going to come looking for us.  Well, they’re kind of having to, but it makes it a challenge for them when they can find 500 mom bloggers at the click of an enter button on Google and they can’t do that when they go looking for us.  We must step up our efforts to present ourselves to brands online, to build positive mutually-beneficial relationships with the brand managers, and then do honest and positive things to support that relationship.

There is an ever-increasing role in the blogosphere for men/dads.  There are some great pioneers in this field–e.g. Gary Vaynerchuk, etc.  but there are more of us still standing around on the shoulder of the information highway wishing we had the courage or knew the right way to stop a top brand coming down the expressway.

@GMTexas

I can’t give a better current example of the benefits of a quid pro quo men/dad blogger exchange than my relationship with Donna M. from @GMTexas. Our connectivity began through her own Twitter account and then through the corporate account.

I’ve been invited to three events with GM now in the past two months and been in town to enjoy two of them.  While I was savoring the thought of eating the Snicker’s Ice Cream bars, I received a phone call on behalf of GM.  From roughly noon June 21, 2010 to noon June 28, 2010, I’ll be the driver of a 2010 Chevy Traverse LTZ, complete with OnStar, XM Radio and free to go anywhere I want to with it during those seven days.

The girls and I are planning an adventure for that week.  As a matter of fact, you already can go to TRAVERSEADVENTURES.com and find yourself right back here at www.DaddyClaxton.com.  Just wait, in a few days, there will be a specific page set up just so you can find out great things about this new product from GM.

And that, my friends, makes all this even better than the convertible roadster Keaton was driving Davis around in Speechless.