Royal Jelly

Today and tomorrow, the world turns not only to the Super Bowl, but more conversationally to this year’s crop of Super Bowl ads. The premise of this blog is to share good and bad examples of marketing in action which I denote as Brilliant! or Daft! Of course, my denotation of these marketing examples are based solely on my opinion and experience as a marketing consultant. I believe all marketing should be measured solely on sales and nothing else. If it’s boring, but the phone is ringing – stick with it. If it is cool, new and exciting, but the phone is not ringing then what is the point. Businesses are after all in existence to make money.

That being said, the Super Bowl ads often highlight many Daft! advertising efforts. The most popular and most remembered Super Bowl ad of all time – the Mean Joe Green Coke ad – was pulled after just a few months because it did not result in an increase in sales.

A recent Ad Age article about holiday ads shows that while consumers like them, that doesn’t mean they’re influenced by them. A new survey has found that half of consumers say they’re not inspired to shop at the retailer whose holiday TV commercial or online promotion they liked best.

So enjoy the game and the commercials, but don’t model your small business campaigns on anything you see today.

I can give that question an unequivocal “yes”. This week I dropped my BlackBerry. If you read my last post about My Truly Virtual Office, you can see how vital the BlackBerry is to the whole operation.

From the time I dropped it, there was about 20 hours before I could get to a Verizon store. They will send me a new BlackBerry but it takes 2 days. However, I was smart enough to bring in an old phone to get activated in the meantime. That is why we keep our old phone lying around, right? 24 hours into it’s second tour of duty, my old smartphone blew a gasket. Complete crash – equivalent to a PC blue screen of death, but with no recovery option.

So here I sit, in a coffee shop between appointments, using the wifi and being completely out of touch with clients, friends and family. It will all be resolved this afternoon when the FedEx man brings me my new BlackBerry, but it did make me think about how much we take for granted due to technology.
Here are 3 thoughts for you to ponder:

Do you have a back up of your important phone data, including contacts? Luckily, I had synced my contacts with my Google account so with Internet access, I can access all my contact info and when I have my new BlackBerry, I just need to resync to Google to pull all my calendar and contact info back into my new phone. I also just luckily copied all the photos and videos from my phone last week because I wanted a backup after our trip to the White House.

With that in mind, do you have a backup of ALL your important data? I’ve had enough computer crashes in my career to know the importance of an automatic daily backup of my computers. I also regularly back up my clients’ web sites. I know the host has built in redundancy, but if that does in fact fail, isn’t it better for me to have a backup to reupload immediately or move to a new host.

Do you take the immediacy of our current technology for granted? Do you send an email to someone and assume that they got it and expect an immediate reply? I am usually quick to reply to email because of my BlackBerry but this week, I have only been able to check email a few times a day. And in looking at my Inbox, I have 2115 messages in the last two months. That is not spam and that is only one of my many email addresses. Of those messages, 1249 are unread. What that means is that I most likely saw it come over and read the subject, but I haven’t read it completely or responded to it. I don’t think my Inbox is much different from other professionals out there. My advice: if you send an email on an urgent matter, follow up with a phone call.

My office is now truly virtual. I have worked for myself from home since 2000. I used to say my office is Starbucks and now after many years of meetings at the coffee shop and working at home in my office, I can truly say that I have a virtual office.

In the past year, I have answered important emails while playing with my toddler at a favorite playground, updated a client web site at an internet café and gained emergency access to a difficult client website using a dial up connection at a friend’s house.

I’ve tried a lot of different things over the years including a USB cellular internet connection, using a Palm to display PowerPoint presentations and even a paper (gasp) calendar. Now, I truly feel virtual and organized based on advances in both the technology available and applications to work with that technology.

Here are the most important tools I’ve found in my new virtual office:

My BlackBerry. Without question, the ability to read and respond to emails anywhere, anytime allows me to stay on the grid wherever I am. The BlackBerry Facebook application lets me stay in touch with friends. I would LOVE a Linkedin application ASAP.

Google Calendar. With its Google Sync capabilities, I’ve solved many problems. Keeping calendars on all my devices – BlackBerry, laptops, desktops, Palm – in sync along with the ability to publish 2 different public calendars and keeping most of my appointments on a private calendar. My toddler even has a calendar of important play dates.

Various Social Media Apps. In a future post, I will explain how I have streamlined my social media process for myself and some of my clients. Since we are talking virtual office here, BlackPing has been a lifesaver in allowing me to post from wherever again through my BlackBerry.

Evernote. I think that Evernote was made for me. I am constantly thinking of ideas for my clients, my blog posts, and my other businesses. Evernote lets me keep my random thoughts organized and accessible from any internet connection (including, you guessed it, my BlackBerry).

PassPack. I have a ton of passwords like everyone, but add to that all my client passwords. Since I could be out of the office when a client emergency arises, I need access to all these passwords at all times. PassPack lets me do that and keeps them secure as well.

PayPal. Strange to find on this list? PayPal allows me to bill clients if necessary when I am out of the office, receive payments and transfer to my bank account. This is crucial on long vacations.

Starbucks. The coffee chain stays on my list for not only offering a place to meet with warm, toasty beverages, but the free 2 hours of WIFI a day saves me the $30/month I was paying for cellular internet service.

All of these tools have also allowed me to downsize my laptop, removing applications I am unlikely to use when I’m out and about (read Illustrator and Photoshop), and leave me with a laptop that is super fast.

Honorable Mention goes to my wireless all in one printer which allows me to print from any computer, anywhere in my house.

All that being said, I do have a wish list: a BlackBerry app for Linkedin and Constant Contact. Please, please, please. The playground is calling.

You’ve heard about the sites: Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter. Everyone says “You need to be on there“, but you have no idea what they are or how to leverage them to increase business. You may have even joined one of two of these Social Media sites but you haven’t seen a difference in your business. If any of the above apply, then this seminar series is for you.

Social Media Marketing Seminar Series

Laura presents on integrating social media with email marketing

There’s never been a better time to stay connected with your business network than right now. Business tends to slow down over the holidays and sometimes sooner if you are like me and snowed in a week before Christmas. This is a great time to take advantage of social networking sites to stay in touch and build your network. Over the next few posts we will examine how to do that effectively using some of the top social media sites. Today we start with the #1 business networking site – Linkedin.

5 Ways to Build Your Network on Linkedin

1. Check out your Linkedin Inbox for Requests to Connect.
2. Are you connected to all your current customers and vendors?
3. Peruse the connections of your connections to see who you should be connected to but you aren’t yet – both people you know and people you want to know. Send requests to connect and don’t forget to personalize the message.
4. Are you a member of a lead share group, BNI, committee, board of directors? Are you connected to all of your colleagues from these groups? This extends to charity work as well.
5. Scan the membership of any groups you have joined on Linkedin. Are there people in these groups that you need to connect with?
6. Scan the groups your connections are in. Are there groups you need to join? These can be alumni groups, trade associations, or networking groups. If you find new groups to join, return to 5.

I hope these tips will get you started on building your network while drinking hot cocoa or eggnog or hot cider.

If you want some guidelines on who to connect with, see my post Deciding on Linkedin Invitations.

I had two great experiences this week of receiving immediate communication regarding something I was interested in. First of all, my child’s pediatrician is using Twitter to update interested parents on the status of their flu vaccine shipments. This is great for me who is in desperate need of an injectable vaccine for my little one. I am sure it also alleviates a ton of calls into the office. Result? I will be really pleased when they tweet the vaccine has arrived and will be able to call for an appointment right away ensuring that my child gets this much needed vaccine.

I also received an email Tuesday evening from the Pro Football Hall of Fame informing me that tickets to the 2010 Enshrinement Ceremony would go on sale Wednesday morning at 9:00am. The web site still said that ticket information would be available soon, but those on their email list were ready to place their order as soon as the tickets were released. The result? I will be sitting in Canton on August 7 watching, among others, Emmitt Smith get his yellow jacket.

Lastly, I was disappointed to find no such option on the National Park Service web site. I am very interested in attending the lighting of the National Christmas Tree in Washington, DC this year which will likely be the first week of December. However, the site only says “Details for the 2009 National Christmas Tree Program have not been announced. Please check the website regularly for updated information.” Imagine the phone calls avoided and happy citizens if they offered some time of communication option to receive the date and time of the event as soon as it is announced.

How can your business effectively use these communications tools to keep your attentive audience informed and relieve routine questions into your business?

You’ve heard about the sites: Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter. Everyone says “You need to be on there“, but you have no idea what they are or how to leverage them to increase business. You may have even joined one of two of these Social Media sites but you haven’t seen a difference in your business. If any of the above apply, then this seminar series is for you.

Social Media Marketing Seminar Series

I just posted my business card at thecardboard.net – a free listing service. Check it out and upload your card! There is also space for a profile of your business. Visitors to the site can contact you, email your card to others, map to your location, or add your card to their collection. There is also a search feature based on industry, location, or keyword.

Here is mine: http://www.thecardboard.net/card-detail/show/707

Converting files can be one of the most challenging tasks I have as a web designer. Today, I had to post a video to a client site. The video came to me on a DVD in a format not suited for the web. I don’t have high end video editing software so I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. A little time on Google and some discussion boards and I discovered http://media-convert.com/. This great FREE site guides you through a conversion process for just about any need you may have: movie, sound, images, vector files, compressed formats, presentation. Well, you get the idea. On top of that, you can convert files from your computer or from a URL; grab a screenshot of any URL you need and convert a file to send to your mobile device.

You may not need it today, but keep this site in mind for the future. I am sure I will be using it alot.