Web Business Woman

Archive for November, 2009

Over the past three years, this blog has connected me to many world-changing women. One of my favorites is Taiha Wagner who lives near Minneapolis. Like many of us, she’s tried on several business projects centered on helping women have better lives and found her biz-soul-match with www.Just One Bite.net. Even the Minneapolis Star Tribune recently took notice with this article including Taiha and other local women on the same track. Taiha’s a nurse by education and a caretaker by choice. Just One Bite is the blend between her profession, her mission and her passion – organic food. She’s seen…
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It is VERY important to properly store your tires, summer tires during the winter / and your winter tires during the summer.
If you don’t, you could potentially permanently damage the tire

To properly store your tires:
* Put each tire in it’s own storage bag. {At Auto Craftsmen we provide you with storage bags.}
* The perfect environment for [...]
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By Guest Blogger, Donna DeClemente, Donna's Promo Talk

Yesterday I helped plan and execute a breakfast event for RAMA, our local Rochester chapter of the AMA (American Marketing Association). Our speaker was David Berkowitz who came to share his insights on ways to measure social media. This is a question that most marketers and business owners are asking since we are now seeing a phenomenal growth from those of all ages engaging online in some form of social media. Not a black and white, easy thing to deliver at this time, but as Jeffrey Hayzlett, CMO of Kodak, said last week when he spoke about ROI he defines it as "Results on Ignoring".

David is the Director of Emerging Media and Client Strategy at 360i, a digital marketing agency located in New York City.  In his role David spearheads emerging media strategy, including social media and mobile marketing, for 360i's clients. He’s a frequent speaker that’s been on the conference circuit this year, a columnist for MediaPost’s Social Media Insider , appears frequently in Advertising Age and he blogs consistently on MarketersStudio as well as the 360i's Digital Connections, where he just posted this yesterday "100 ways to measure social media".

David shared with us the dashboard that his agency, 360i, uses to help “keep score” and measure the key conversation indicators across multiple social media platforms. This type of presentation can be a little daunting for a crowd at 8 a.m., but I could tell from the audience that some where highly engaged in the discussion while others where a bit lost and probably thought they were going to learn how to use Twitter and Facebook.

There are six questions that David reviewed with us that he recommends answering first in order to do proper measurement: 

1.    WHO?

Learn more about your audience. Who saw any of the campaign and engaged with it? What are their demographics and psychographic make-up? How many interacted as compared with how many where exposed?

2.    WHAT?

Create your own custom weighted scorecard based on your objectives to measure the engagement. Here’s an example:

        Action        Weighting

        Impression            1x

        View video            3x

        Click through        4x

        Rate video            4x

        Share video          10x

        Embed video        20x

        Create video        100x

3.    WHERE?

If your campaign ran on several platforms, did one engage the audience more than the others? This can tell you where your audience is congregating. Also, was the chatter brand-influenced (Facebook fan page or word of mouth campaign) or organic chatter? The brand-influenced conversations generally show a more positive sentiment lift.

4.    WHEN?

Are there other brand activities going on offline or any significant news or current events, such as the Super Bowl, that may heavily influence the outcome of your campaign? Sometimes a campaign can go viral after the program was supposed to end, so this is something to consider.

5.    WHY?

Try to understand what motivated the audience to engage with your brand. Measuring the volume, sentiment and sphere of influence can help determine the campaign’s success.

6.    HOW?

Benchmarking where you are before, during and after the campaign enable for you to see how it relates to your overall marketing initiatives. Adapting traditional research such as surveys and focus groups are great ways to do this. Incorporate answers to questions such as “from a blog, a friend online or a social network” can provide this.

I recall early in my career when I was doing media buying for some B2B clients there were no clear metrics used to compare trade publications (this is way before online). So we created a measurement tool similar to the score cards 360i developed that applied different weights to different metrics that all tied back to the client’s objectives. So this is not really new, it’s taking basic principles that many of us marketers know and applying it to today’s world. We just have to be really quick about it. 

David also shared with us some results from an analysis that his agency, 360i, conducted in September of 2009 of the social media landscape and found that Twitter represented the largest sources of mentions for the majority of their clients, 40%. Blogs came in second highest at 28% and forums third at 22%. Social networks only came in at 6% but that is mostly due to privacy restrictions since the content is not accessible to those outside the network.

However, blogs have the majority of reach when posts are weighted by impressions, 89% vs. just 4% for Twitter. Of all the online conversations, the majority are positive when people are giving and sharing advice. They become more negative and neutral as the discussions get closer to the purchasing decision.

There is so much more to share, but I can’t do it here all in one post which I consider one of those "highly positive" blogs posts where I’m "giving and sharing advice". So feel free to share some of yours with us. You can also download 360i’s full Social Media Playbook if you'd like to get the full course.

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OMG! OMG! OMG! WE'RE OFF! Today starts our week long road trip to Colorado. We'll be living near one daughter and one granddaughter (have two of the first but only one of the second). Will try to post and send pics, via the phone as we go along.

Many of you know that I have a 17 year old kitty (the Wabby Wibby, herself) who will be riding in the back and wailing all the way, methinks! She is already confused (and much displeased) over the interruption in her life as we pack everything away and empty the house.

Stay tuned for news from the road. And many bits of whining as we will arrive in our new home a full week AHEAD of the furniture!!!

We are using Wag World as our resource for pet friendly hotels to stop in, along the way.

Today we head to Buffalo for a last visit with daughter #2, and then on Wed. off to Chicago.

And so…off we go. To the mountains!

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by Guest Blogger, Lena West, Chief of Social Media Strategy at xynoMedia

Warning: This blog post is long, but worth it.

Last week, on November 8th at 12:26pm, I received a voice mail from Michelle Christie representing a group of local women who were getting together having some sort of event. They called themselves Motivators & Creators and they were having a Women's Expo on November 23rd, at a local hotel and wanted my help promoting the event.

As this was my first week back from being out of the office for a retreat, I asked my assistant to call her back and get the pertinent details. (I would have asked my assistant to call her back, retreat or no retreat, but my schedule was especially abundant due to my being out of the office the week prior.) I wanted to know the usual things:

• How did they hear of me? Did anyone refer them? If so, who?
• Do they want me to speak or just attend?
• How many people are they expecting?
• Who are the other businesswomen involved?
• How EXACTLY do they want me to help them?

I don't think these things are too unreasonable to know if you're fielding a request from someone whom you don't know to promote their event. Do you? I don't either.

So, my assistant tries for a week to get in touch with her and finally…

they speak. The synopsis of the conversation they had that I received from my assistant was horrible. Here's a sprinkling (written in my assistant's voice):

• When I called her, she had no idea who you were or why she would have
  called you. -I- had to remind HER of the event and what she said and
  such.
• It appears that they just search for women-owned businesses in your
  area to get them to promote this event for them. She essentially said that they
  would have thought you'd have lots of connections in the area, and they
  want you to use those connections to get people to attend the event.
• She said you're welcome to attend, but that it's a seminars-type event (and the seminars are full for speakers).
• The woman wasn't too interested in talking to me. She
  said she'd rather just talk to you instead of a "third party".

Let me start with a few things:

1. You should NEVER pick up the phone and cold call someone and ask them to help you promote your event. Asking someone to use their social juice needs to be based on having developed a relationship with that person — and because the two of you are women means nothing. I LOVE to support women business owners (in fact, 95% of our clients are women!), but I'm like Deitrich Bonhoeffer in this regard, I don't believe in cheap grace. Being a woman businessowner opens the door to a conversation with me, but you need to be serious about your business to get through to me. At the VERY LEAST, Michelle should have called and invited me to attend the event as her guest and then asked me to invite anyone else whom I thought would be a good fit.(As it turns out, NO ONE I know is a good fit for this kind of a shindig.)
2. When you call people to ask for their participation in your event, you need to keep track of whom you called and why. You look like a MORON when YOU don't know why YOU called someone.
3. She CLEARLY didn't do any research on me or my past speaking engagements — which are all readily available on my website and in my bio. If she did, she would know that events like this are not my forum.
4. If anyone is EVER rude to my assistant or refers to her as a "THIRD PARTY" (especially to her face), not only will I never attend one of their events, but I will NOT hesitate to throw them under the bus publicly. Doubt me? Ask Michelle Christie.

For those of you who are thinking why I chose to throw this group and Michelle under the bus by using their name and not keeping everything anonymous, I have two things to say. I am violently committed to helping women businessowners succeed and if I were to keep identifying details "under wraps", then there's a chance that this group will do this again to someone else. They need to learn that this is NOT the way to treat people with whom you want to connect. And, this, people, is what's called a teachable moment.

Also, women businessowners don't have time to futz around with people who don't respect them or other women businessowners. Consider this time saved — at least with this organization.Keeping the identifying details a secret would in some way reward this company and they clearly are not deserving of that. This wasn't just an error made on their part — they were RUDE to my team.

Am I posting this on Lipsticking in hopes that more than likely more businesswomen will see this post and deal with this group accordingly? You bet.

There…TOTAL transparency.

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Raise your hand if you: a. are over 50. b. are happily single; c. weren't born a female; d. aren't a mother; e. aren't heterosexual; f. some combo of a-e. Oops! You're invisible (right along with me and most of my friends.)

By Guest Blogger, Mary Schmidt, Marketing Troubleshooter

I've designed and conducted quite a bit of market research and analysis over the past three decades.  And, here's an inherent problem with any kind of research: no matter how objective you want to be – you tend to skew research to fit your world view and interpret any findings via that same view. (Eating a lot of butter has to be bad for you, right? I mean, it's so fat…;-) 

That's why The Shriver Report, A Woman's Nation Changes Everything ended up being more about Mommies than women…and telling us things that many have known for years (However, I was taken aback to find out the battle of the sexes is over. ?! Really? Does Lilly Ledbetter agree?)  

Granted, I've not read the whole thing, but overall, it's way skewed toward women with children.  As Melanie Notkin noted, (listen to her podcast with Yvonne here),

…it might as well be called A Mother's Nation Changes Everything….

Nearly 50% of American women are actually not mothers. Which does not
mean they never will be. But today, 45.1% of American women through the
age 44 do not have children. This US Census data does not account for
the women 45 and over, so we estimate that nearly 50% of women are not
moms.

Then there's this from the report's executive summary, "Shriver connects this overarching social shift to the most consistent
roles of her life and of most women’s lives—the roles of daughter and
mother." 

See? We're back at the traditional roles of women.  And while most of us are daughters (some of us started out as sons…to throw another spanner in the research work), about 50% of us aren't mothers.  (Many never wanted to be.  I'm like the New Yorker cartoon showing a couple admiring another couple's child, with the caption, "It's so cute! What do you do with it?" Or, as an older friend once admitted, "If I had it to do over, I wouldn't have children, but that's what we did back then.")

And, while I'm all for celebrities stepping up to help other women – they are also viewing "our shared challenges" through a prism of privilege (See above about the battle of the sexes being over.  Sure, if you're already a CEO or mega-star married to a mega-millionaire, you're probably not doing much battling for status or money…)

Lots of (real and virtual) group hugging and Kumbaya singing ensues…real change not so much. After the klieg lights are turned off and the conference floor is emptied…the stars go back to their mansions and personal assistants and the rest of us go back to real life.  Further, the women who could really use some help right now can't afford to go to conferences and don't have time to read feel-good texts. The "working Mom" may be digging in the sofa cushions for school lunch money, so she's probably not going to buy anything from Shriver's Women's Conference online store.   And even if she did – she probably can't wear the "empowered' t-shirt to her minimum wage job. (Oh, sure – startling revelation from the report – we've got more women in the workforce [whoopee? progress?]…still working for far less than men in many cases.) 

Now, don't get me wrong – I'm all for anything that raises people's awareness of existing conditions. However, sadly, many of the people who most need to be woken up avoid it at all costs. So, to a certain extent, we're all singing Kumbaya to the choir when we talk about "women's issues."  And, in fact, many turn off completely when they hear the words.  Personally, I'm sick of of the victim speak that pervades so much of the discussion of "women's issues."  

However, I didn't glean any startling new info from the report (But then as another women blogger noted, "we live it.") And, I wouldn't base any "marketing to women" strategy on it, either.

Read More: 

Linda Lowen: The Shriver Report – A "Woman's Nation" Still Has Far To Go

Gail Collins' Forbes interview re her new book, "When Everything Changed." (Which I can't wait to read.) Note her response re Hillary Clinton and Palin (They're not victims of sexism, btw.)
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Rochester was home to a new conference yesterday. The Social Media Club hosted a group of business professionals at the Memorial Art Gallery for "Social Media Today…and Harvest Tomorrow."

I had the distinct pleasure of being on a panel with Jenny Cisney, Chief Blogger for Kodak (the pics on their blog are outstanding – you'll spend an entire day there, just clicking around); Donna DeClemente, one of our own here at Lip-sticking (she's an online promotions professional, and moderated the panel); and John Marianetti from Martino-Flynn. Our topic was "Corporate Blogging."

I can't really report on the panel – Jenny was fabulous and obviously knows her social media – Kodak is lucky to have her; and John clearly showed that Martino Flynn is ahead of the curve with their blog, blip. I was honored to be on the panel with them, as my experiences with corporations mostly involves my Scratchings and Sniffings blog, sponsored by Purina (as well as contributing to their pet health insurance blog), and my work with the Simon Graduate School of Business, if we can call them a "corporation." 

I hope some of my experiences helped the audience understand why blogs and social media should not be ignored, and that yes, they are manageable… but, the real content, the real power, the real benefit of this conference came in three ways: one was from Jeff Hazelett (Kodak), Chris Brogan (really, do I need to tell you who he is?) and…someone else. Someone who made the day the best day of the entire year, for me.

First, let me share just a tidbit of what Jeff said: basically, he told the audience, "If you're not doing social media now…you won't be in business next year." He advises open, honest, authentic conversation. He doesn't tolerate people who spam (especially on twitter – and oh my goodness, twitter has lately become a gigantic spambot, if you ask me!), and he did something else that I'm not sure was planned. He showed everyone that Kodak is NOT dead, and that Kodak is a people-person-public-facing company.

When you hear Jeff Hazelett speak, you hear a real person, talking in every day language, and sharing some stories about his job, his work, his company that are grounded in the people-approach of social media. It creates expectation that Kodak gets it. They get "us."

Besides, he's really funny. I'd drive hours cross country to hear Jeff speak.

After Jeff, Chris Brogan spoke. Here's something others might not note but that really struck me…Chris spoke from notes held in his hand. No powerpoint. No projector behind him. No video. No anything but Chris. OMG! How can anyone get up in front of a crowd at a conference and not use PP???????

Here's how: you know your subject matter well enough, and you scout out the audience ahead of time, so you can speak to them about the topics that matter, relative to the conference you're at. Chris was outstanding. He discussed his background (not in marketing or social media), he mentioned his daughter (who recently attended a Miley Cyrus concert), and he just basically shared some truths about social media that I'm sure the audience was not aware of. Truths like, "you have to do it because it's about the customer, not about the brand." He said, and all of this is paraphrasing as Tom was tweeting it so I did not take notes (my bad), "…I've learned that planning doesn't work. Instead of using a plan, use what I call the OODA loop."

What's that? It's from Alan Webber's book, Rules of Thumb, and it means, "Observe, Orient, Decide, and then Act." I like to use this quote, "Do what you can, where you are, with what you have." Do it now.

I did get one of Chris' books (already had one at home and forgot to bring it for him to sign!), Trust Agents, and Tom and I stood in line at lunch to have it signed, and Chris was so friendly, so personable, he made me feel so important after Tom took our picture together, I . HE made ME feel important because I was asking him to sign his book. He lives and breathes his own advice. "Work on content," he says on his blog, "but focus on relationships."

I like him so much because he echoes much of what I tell you here. It's not about the tool. It's not about you. It's about the customer and it's about the people and if you don't allow the people to rub shoulders with you and your executive team, your employees, your other customers – they will opt for rubbing shoulders with your competitor.

Now…to the VERY BEST PART of being at this conference. One always saves the best for last, right? As I sat on stage answering questions, one woman's hand rose and she looked at me and said, "Yvonne, I'm Mary Baby Steps."

OMG!!!! If you do not know who @Marybabysteps is…get to know her now! She is one of my bestest twitter friends, she is a fantastic writer, and she is a delightful result of my use of social media. Because I was at that conference, I got to meet one of the best twitter folk online. Not someone famous (though I talked with Jeff and Chris and I guess they're pretty famous) but someone precious. Someone who took time to drive in from her hometown (not Rochester) to attend the conference where we could meet F2F! Mary, I have not been so delighted in many weeks!

Truly, she made the year better yesterday. Mary Davis, freelance writer and blogger, proved that social media really is all about being social. Chris said it. Jeff said it. Other speakers said it. But, Mary lived it. Wow! It doesn't get better than that. @marybabysteps you are my heroine. Thank you so much for being there. And, please, let's talk soon. I was devastated that I could not stay…

What else is there to say? Social media is about doing things now, meeting people now, remembering that people are the highest common denominator and if you choose NOT to connect with the people who want to connect with you, they are welcome to write to me…I'll write back. And, I might drive 200 miles to meet them, too.

It's the way business is done today. Socially.

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