The Brains of the Outfit

Do you have a dime in your pocket, or in your purse? Or in the loose change in your car?

Send it to me. Seriously. (or not so seriously)

Think of some creative way to send me a dime. Snail mail (via Realize, 3249 Richwood Drive, Duluth, GA 30096), PayPal, air mail, parachuted in to my house, folded into some sort of origami, left on one of my office desks. I’ll take pictures as they come in and post them here.

All proceeds will benefit the Dream House for Kids, and I’ll present whatever money is raised at the Dream House 500 on October 2, 2010. As the donations arrive, I’ll also keep a running total here on the blog. (Classic thermometer gauge on right! )

I figure that pretty much all of us can spare a dime to help a medically fragile kid… Can you?

Entries!

Origami balloon with a dime in it!

The dime jar in my Alpharetta office

Someone left me two dimes and played off the Dream House 500 Twitter avatar (excuse the lousy phone pic):

Our first entry!

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Today, June 21 is Ride to Work day! In honor of that, I contacted Cousins Properties, Inc., who runs the office building in which I work. They reserved the first three visitor spaces closest to the building for motorcycles only, and allowed me to put up some Ride to Work signs. (Note: they have since rescinded that, saying it wasn’t approved by the right person, took down all my signage, and made me move my motorcycle.)

Did you ride to work today? If you did, I’d encourage you to comment on why you rode to work today, or why you ride, period!

(By the way, comments are moderated, so they won’t appear immediately. I’ll approve ‘em as fast as I can, though!)

Ride to Work provides this list on their pass-out cards:

• Riding to work is fun
• Riding to work reduces traffic and parking congestion
• Riding to work uses less fuel than an automobile
• Riding to work leaves me alert and energized
• Riding to work results in less pollution than commuting in a larger vehicle
• Riding to work is less destructive to road surfaces, bridges, etc.
• Riding to work gets me to work (and back home) faster
• Riding to work demonstrates motorcycling as a social good

By the way, not only did I ride to work today (which I usually do), but I’m riding to a speaking engagement this evening, too. Probably going to pass out a few Ride to Work pass out cards with my business cards.

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I love articles like this one. I think Kievman has missed the point of doing social media for business and of marketing in general.

Marketing is about ROI.

If companies haven’t been able to find the real-world results of their social media efforts, there are two distinct possibilities. Either they’re not doing social media effectively, or they’re not measuring it correctly.

I’d be willing to bet that DemingHill’s largest Fortune clients care about ROI as the first thing of importance, but they understand that all the activities that Kievman mentions in this article are tied to strategies that bring measurable ROI.

Relationship building creates ROI by creating brand equity and increasing net promoter score. Kievman mentions “creating communities of key constituents.” Why do you do that? Those key constituents are either going to be influencers or buyers. Another point Kievman misses is that customer service, brand monitoring, brand awareness, and crisis management can all be performed or influenced via social media.

This statement is really problematic to me: “…if you are not converting outside of social media, social media will not help you convert and improve your ROI.” If an activity has a net zero effect, that’s truly money for nothing. The whole raison d’etre of marketing is to increase conversion. Does it have to be direct? No – very few marketing activities are direct.

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It’s election time in lots of locales, and that has made for some interesting social media bedfellows, if you will.

I’ve heard more about local and state elections and referenda than I could imagine possible – or that I really care to know, to be honest. Some of the state issues are interesting, since they have bearing on the overall national agenda, but the local stuff isn’t quite so fascinating.

A case in point: I recently spoke to the Roswell, Georgia Kiwanis club on Using Social Media to Build your Business, a presentation I thought went very well, and it garnered me a few local Twitter followers, Facebook fans, and LinkedIn connections. Well, many of those folks work for the municipality, are running for public office, or are campaigning for someone who is running for public office.

I’ve heard more tweets about voting for various city council candidates in the last week than I can shake a stick at. I can’t vote for these folks. I don’t know their platforms. In many cases, I don’t know what party they represent.

I’m hoping that I’m the exception in these Tweeters follower group – but I doubt it.

One particular gentleman running for State House truly has missed the point of community-building, both off- and on-line. I met him in person at the Suwanee Business Alliance. (Great local business alliance, by the way). He came on really strong – classic politico – shaking hands, introducing himself, immediately launching into his pitch, starting with his party affiliation. I politely excused myself, letting him know that I’m not a voter in his district. I didn’t tell him that I was in general disagreement with his party’s politics. Maybe that was my mistake.

He somehow got hold of one of my business cards. I hand them out like water, so it’s not surprising. The next thing I knew I was getting his direct e-mail campaigns, he was following me on Twitter, I got a friend request from him on Facebook, he invited me to become a fan of his campaign on Facebook, and he asked to connect with me on LinkedIn. This from a guy who I politely blew off at a networking event!

Know your audience, folks. Targeting is the key, whether it’s on social media or anywhere else. You can very quickly make an enemy of someone who at worst was indifferent. I’d rather have someone not care at all about what I’m doing than actively discourage people from voting for me or buying my product.

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Yesterday evening was another big first for us – our first official Realize-sponsored event, ‘Food (& Wine!) for Thought’. Knowing that most businesses are in the swing of planning and budgeting for 2010, we wanted to gather a group of business owners and decision makers in the north Atlanta area to share our thoughts on marketing for the upcoming year.
We partnered with a fantastic restaurant in Flowery Branch, GA called Grapes & Hops Bar & Bistro, who was very welcoming and provided a wonderful facility along with great food and drink. Also, Salon Greco in Suwanee attended and very graciously provided all of our guests with gift certificates for free massages or facials.
After a bit of networking and introductions, we all settled in to watch John present a 20-minute slideshow on what we believe are the absolute ‘must-dos’ for marketing your business in 2010. After the slideshow, we all joined in and discussed the challenges of marketing in our current economy, how best to balance traditional and social marketing, brand authenticity, and what to plan for down the road.
We’ve already received quite a bit of favorable feedback from this inaugural event and hope you can join us for the next one! If you’d like to check out the presentation, we’ve also uploaded a PowerPoint version onto our website. Check it out and let us know what you think!

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Today I had the distinct pleasure of appearing before the Dahlonega Rotary to speak about Using Social Media to create Friendship and Goodwill. I know I had a great time, and I hope they enjoyed the presentation. If you’d like to see it, the video is below.

If you’re a Rotarian and would like to have me give this presentation to your Rotary club, just let me know.

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When John and I got serious about forming Realize, we spent quite a bit of time defining our core brand values – who we are and what we stand for. One thing we immediately agreed on was giving back to our community – both locally and globally. Our goal was to identify 2-3 charitable organizations that we felt truly passionate about and focus our philanthropic efforts on those.

Today, I’m very happy to announce the first of those three – Dream House for Medically Fragile Children. Dream House is a tireless champion for medically fragile children in Georgia. Dream House is unlike any other program in the US. Their unique transition care model provides the education, skills training, home modifications, equipment, and health care supplies that enable families and empower communities to care for their medically fragile children at home.

On October 3, John and I will be joining 50 others at the DreamHouse 500, a 500km motorcycle ride to raise money and awareness for Dream House. We ask that you help us, in any way possible, to support this wonderful organization. Donations of any amount are welcome and can be made via PayPal.

Check out our community page for a wrap-up of this event as well an announcements and information on the other two organizations we’ll be supporting!

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For a lot of people, there are two words that make us instantly cringe: TIME MANAGEMENT. We all know it’s critical for success, especially when many of us are spinning the plates of career, family, education, care of aging parents, and other important parts of our lives. But many of us are stuck on exactly how to begin.

For me, simultaneously helping grow a small business and working a PT job can leave me feeling like I’m in the middle of a whirlwind with no escape.

A few things to remember:

- No one system works for everyone. For every colleague who swears by Franklin Covey or who can’t live without her ‘Crackberry’, there’s another who only stays organized by going ‘old school’ with a composition notebook and a fountain pen. Try a few different methods, find what works best for you, and stick with it!

- I find it helpful to do whatever tasks I have the most energy for in the day. Example: I find it easiest to write in late afternoon/early evening, so this is ideally when my blogging or other writing gets done. Domestic stuff gets done when my physical energy level is highest, so early/mid morning.

- Email is a vampire of time. Who hasn’t gotten to the office, sat down to check e-mail, and soon realized it’s already noon? Don’t get sucked in! I’ve found I am most productive when I set very specific times to respond to e-mails. Period. I check once mid-morning, once mid-afternoon, and once about an hour before I close for business that day.

- Two more quick hints that work, at least for me. First: Make lists. Then prioritize, prioritize, prioritize.

And last…try our household rule of all computers being shut down by 8p every night. We sure aren’t perfect about it, but we’re trying. Then spend those quiet hours before bedtime spending face-to-face, non-digital time with your loved one(s).

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John was right. The more we thought about it, the more we became convinced that we could build a fantastic company. With his creative mind and marketing genius melded with my operations expertise, we could do what both of us had always wanted.

Armed with those skills, and determined to do things our way, we set forth on a formal branding effort. Core brand values, our mission, vision, fonts, logos, colors…..a name! After what seemed like a lifetime of scouring our brains for just the right one, we gave up in frustration one night and headed for a new sushi joint in town to relax. And BAM – before we even had a chance to dive into a spider roll, it popped out. Realize!

So here we are. Realizing our dreams, in our own way. As for my side of the business, there’s nothing quite like having to build the infrastructure for a fledgling company from the ground up. As much as I get teased that ‘operations keeps the creative people down!’, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy the fun of a rollercoaster or a screaming motorcycle with the engineer behind it. And so….here we are. Welcome to Realize.

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