Web Business Woman

By Guest Blogger, Donna DeClemente, Donna’s Promo Talk

It’s tax season again, the time of year that we all love to hate, especially us small business owners! I handed over all my papers to my accountant a couple of weeks ago which of course is the hardest part of the job. I have two daughters that are both in college now so I was excited to learn that I’d be getting some tax credits for this. My oldest daughter is in her second year, in what I believe to be the #3 most expensive college in the U.S. – NYU!

Anyhow I recently received an email advertisement from the Neat Company in which they invited me to “Tame the Paper Monster this Tax Season” and enter the “Paper Monster-Less Tax Day Giveaway”. So it got my attention and I clicked through to learn more. 

They’re promoting their NeatDesk scanner and digital filing system that digitizes and organizes documents, such as all those little receipts that you need for tax time. Their website has a brief, instructional video that demos the product and clearly states it’s features and benefits. I’m liking that more and more companies are using videos online to communicate their products or services. Very smart online marketing.

Also what I like is that this promotion is very simple. They’re giving away 10 of these little NeatDesk products with the intent to “spread a little organized, digital love this tax season”. So I clicked on the “Enter Now” button and was taken to this blog page which told me about the two ways I could enter the sweepstakes:

1. I could comment right on the blog post telling them how NeatDesk will help me reduce paper clutter and simplify my life at tax time. They reminded me to use a valid email address so they can contact me if I win!

2. Or I could follow The Neat Company on Twitter and re-tweet the contest by posting a pre-written tweet that includes a short url and the hashtag #papermonster. 

So I did both, entered through the blog promotion and through their Twitter promotion. The Neat Company currently has 1,245 followers, now including me. I did a search for #papermonster and found a whole page and more of others who “want to Tame the Paper Monster” as well.

Yesterday I attended a breakfast event in Rochester with guest speaker Peter Shankman on social media which I wrote about on my blog here. Peter’s advice was to keep it simple (so it can be retweeted) make it fun and make it relevant. This sweepstakes promotion does it all. Now I hope I win one of these little wonders. Will make my life in 2010 much simpler.

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The Car Care Council has launched a digital version of its popular Car Care Guide. I think it’s a ‘Must Have’ for all drivers. Great information!
The Car Care Guide uses easy-to-understand everyday language, instead of technical automotive jargon, and fits easily in a glove box. The guide covers the most common preventive maintenance occasions and [...]
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AccountingDegree.com has listed 100 Best Blogs for Women in Business.
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by Guest Blogger, Lena West, Chief of Social Media Strategy at xynoMedia

As you might know, last week was the first week of class for my 8-week, Real Women Do Social Media program. I am humbled to say that before class started, we sold out of the 25 available seats in the program (I wanted to keep the groups intimate). To say that I was proud and amazed is an understatement.

Stay with me now…

On Twitter, because you only have 140 characters, each word counts -
and to me, it counts that much more. There are no other words around
those 140 characters to place them in any sort of context. They're just
out there – hanging in air on their own – amplifying their importance. Words have unbelievable power.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I saw that someone had written a tweet

that said something to the effect of: "You ran out of seats for the #RWDSM program…" (the person went on to ask a question about the program).  When I read that, it immediately hit me in my chest. Ran out?? That phrase (and I know this very well may be me and my "stuff") made me sound ill-prepared and like I didn't have my act together in regards to the RWDSM program. It made it sound unfinished. Incomplete. Nah.

At first I thought to myself, "Lena, don't be petty. It's only Twitter. Get over yourself." And, then I thought better of it. I believe that when you have a success, a win, you need to honor that win as a way to show the Universe that you're grateful. (It's just like if you don't honor your ideas by writing them down and spending time vetting them, you'll stop getting ideas altogether.) Successes are like copyrights, you have to "defend" them across the board, or you may as well let the world have their way with them.

The question at this point was, what to do? DM the person and make the correction? No. I didn't want this "unprepared" energy wafting around out there. Not as relates to me and my brand.

Now, I should say that I've had interactions with this person on Twitter before and I'm sure they didn't mean it the way it sounded, but there was no way I couldn't respond. No way. I got the same feeling in the top of my head when people tell me I'm lucky; and we all know how I feel about that. 

The next issue was, it was Friday night. I felt like my response needed to be seen in the bright, early light of Monday morning. And, so I headed over to HootSuite to hook up a scheduled reply.

My reply went something like:

"Thanks for asking. Ran out of seats? No, we SOLD OUT. Two different things …" and then I went on to answer the person's question. I added the smiley face to show that I wasn't angry, but rather that I was intentionally setting the record straight.

Unlike many times when I've responded with an emotional reaction, even after I scheduled the Tweet, setting the record straight still felt like the right thing to do.

But, I can't take the credit for this course of action all on my own. I learned how to do this from my past client and mentor-in-my-head, Jane Pollak. In her book, Soul Proprietor: 101 Lessons from a Lifestyle Entrepreneur, Jane tells the story of a colleague who after delivering a great presentation was told by someone, "That was a nice little presentation you just gave." To her credit, that person (whomever she was) had the ovaries to reply, "Oh, that? That was my BIG presentation." And, that friends, is what I'm talking about.

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I'm happy to know the folks at Hoffman York. They're tuned in to the women's market like few others. Regular Lip-sticking readers will know that I have no patience for marketing to women that is dominated by men. Yes, men can "get it" and many do. Yes, men who take the time to stop, look and listen, provide valuable marketing ideas for the women's market. But, for the most part, if you pitch marketing to women articles, ads, or books to me…there better be a woman involved, somewhere.

At Hoffman York, there is. At Hoffman York I see the men and women working together. What concept! Their info on this market, brought to us from The Kaleidoscope Group, shows real stats, powerful results, and insight into what I like to call "real women" marketing.

Not the kind of information you get from e-marketer (which is valuable in its own way, but it's really just stats), or other marketing professionals who cater to big brands and, IMHO, often forget about us, the gals who really do the buying. Not so with The Kaliedoscope Group.

I called them out in my last note, about info they sent me on the superbowl , and they took the challenge and threw it back my way. Today, I can quote a Senior VP at the group, and proudly so (as opposed to Tom Jordan, Creative Director – smart in his own right and author of the book, Re-render the Gender, which I'll write about another time). Elissa Polston, Senior VP, Co-Director of Planning for Kaleidoscope, says, "With research showing that women control 80 percent of all purchase decisions [well, more than 80, truly...but 80 is safe], it will be interesting to see if Academy Awards Show advertisers pay closer attention to women than they did with the Super Bowl." Indeed!

It's so true, as the press release says, that twitter and blogs have turned TV events into "media experiences for viewers on a variety of levels." We're the "real-time barometers" of any brand's commercial success on TV and the web, IMHO. WE – the women who control or influence most of the spending in this country (if you sell it and we don't buy it, we know the people who do buy it; it's just that simple), are sitting up and realizing our power, via our blogs and twitter – and the huge networks we're forming, to support each other. When those commercials air, on Sunday, we'll be tweeting and blogging about the ones we love, and the ones we hate. Millions of us.

Hence, this attention on us, on our activities both online and off, and the need for more advertising agencies to, as Tom Jordan says, re-render the gender. I'll report on the findings next week…when the The Kaliedoscope Group publishes their results of which commercials have the best "purse quotient" as they say. Stay tuned. 

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By Guest Blogger, Mary Schmidt, Marketing Troubleshooter

I just got back from a huge trade event, HIMSS 10 (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society). Lots and lots of exhibitors, 30,000 people…and – to HIMSS' credit – a "social media" education area and two panel discussion sessions with bloggers who focus on health care. 

Unfortunately I was only able to attend one of the sessions, but it was worthwhile if only because I got to chat with Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, who writes the HealthPopuli blog (you may have heard her being interviewed on NPR.)  The guys on the panel were also fun, engaging and real (John Halamka, Dr. Joseph Kim, Brian Ahier, and Keith Boone ["motorcyle guy" writing about standards, how cool is that?]) but – yep – they're guys. As Jane noted, "Where are the women in health care blogging?" 

Well, we've been asking some form of that question for a while now at Lip-sticking, haven't we?  Even in more "female-friendly" industry sectors such as marketing, women remain outnumbered by men (or are we?  Is it that we simply don't get the notice from the other guys?  Hmmm…) 

It's not that women don't have something to say (ah-yah, yah, yah!!) or that we don't understand the technology…or that we're "too old" (I was surrounded by 50+ women typing, tweeting and texting). 

Here's why I think we don't see more women bloggers. 

We're still too nice.   "Nice girls don't"  still lingers back there somewhere in our hard-wired synapses.  And, if we're successful in our field, it's because we're lucky, not because we're good (wouldn't want to take undue, unseemly credit, now would we?)  For example, at the conference one "C-level" woman – at one of the top medical facilities in the country – noted in her introductory remarks that she was "lucky."  They  had done a nationwide search for her position, talked to ten candidates and "somehow" she had gotten the position.  Ouch!  And, I'd bet she wasn't even aware of what she was doing.

Men on the other hand, have internalized "nice guys finish last."

P.S. Another difference? I did it right in this post.  A man would write, "Here's why we don't see more women bloggers." I wrote, "I think" which is – differences in sexes aside, actually more appropriate in a blog, since I'm giving my opinion.  However, that wouldn't stop a man from stating his opinion as fact.

Nothing wrong with being nice – but you also have to know when to not be nice.  If you've got something to say, say it.  You can start with a comment right here.

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By Guest Blogger, Donna DeClemente, Donna's Promo Talk

We're just a little over a month away now from getting together in Columbus, Ohio with a large group of pet bloggers, online pet enthusiasts and pet brands for BlogPaws 2010. Yvonne has mentioned BlogPaws several times here on Lip-sticking and I believe first announced it in this post back in January. Yvonne and her partner, Tom , who work together on the Scratchings & Sniffings pet blog, together with Caroline Golon of Romeo the Cat, came up with the idea of BlogPaws last year. Since then they've been very busy turning it into reality.

Now you should check out the BlogPaws website and learn all about it. I am one of several committee members, most who are pet bloggers, helping to organize the event. Now while I am a blogger, I am not a pet blogger. I do have several pets though…2 dogs, 2 cats and a chinchilla who my daughter left in the care of my husband and I while she's away at her first year in college. My blog is focused on marketing with an emphasis on promotional and social media marketing, which is what I primarily blog about here as well. So while I'm excited to be on the ground floor of this great new online community as a committee volunteer, I am also really looking forward to being a speaker as well. I'll be part of the Contests, Sweepstakes, Promotions – Nuts & Bolts panel along with Jenny Cisney, Chief blogger for Kodak, Hollis Thomases, Web Ad.vantage Blog and Jane Couto, MomGenerations.com.

So in light of my promotional marketing background, and as a way to promote the event,  we've developed the BlogPaws or Bust Sweepstakes which we just launched on Monday. We're giving away two grand prize travel packages to Columbus which include round-trip airfare from anywhere in the continental U.S., two nights hotel accommodations at the Westin Columbus (where the event is taking place) and a pass to attend BlogPaws 2010. We've also thrown in three second place prizes which are free passes to the event.

Now we're using a web-based application tool to run the BlogPaws or Bust Sweepstakes which enables us to launch the campaign simultaneously on our website, on our Facebook Fan page and on Twitter all at once. This app creates a micro-site that can be either embedded or linked to a website or blog and added to any Facebook
fan page. The Twitter option gives extra entries to people who tweet
about the sweepstakes and are successful in getting their followers to
enter. I've now used this app several times for a few of my clients and have been happy with the results, but this is the first time I've used the Twitter option.

The application, called Wildfire, is included on Facebook’s Preferred Developer list and is in compliance with Facebook’s promotional guidelines that they recently released in December. Facebook now states that you need prior approval to run a sweepstakes or contest on their platform, however, by utilizing this app prior approval is not necessary.

So this is a very cost-effective way to get a promotion up and running on multiple platforms quickly and fairly easily. This makes it a great tool for anyone who wants to integrate a promotion with their social media efforts, what I call Social Sweeps promotions. The app offers a premium or standard version that helps to fit within most budgets. We're utilizing the standard version for the BlogPaws or Bust Sweepstakes.

So whether or not you want to join us pet enthusiasts in Columbus, please check out the sweepstakes and go ahead and enter and please let us know what you think about the promotion. Follow any of links above to get to the entry form.

Oh yeah, we're also having a Twitter Party tomorrow night where we're giving away some great prizes. Please join the fun if you can for a #blogpawspawty on Thursday, March 4  @ 7 pm EST. You can get more info on this here.

Hope to meet some of you in Columbus!

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