Web Business Woman

professional blogging as a blogger with “an interest in a subject…” to the point that the professional blogger, “has an interest, a professional objective, and a plan to achieve it.”

We’ve discussed the idea of planning more than once, on this blog. I recommend a plan – not always a full-blown business plan to get you started, but a plan that includes what you want to do, how you will do it, and why it’s worth doing. That goes for being a professional blogger, also. Planning is vital to your success. Those who stumble along without a plan…will be trailing behind those who sit down and think it through.

Susan rightly notes that blogging isn’t for everyone. While it helps connect you to a bigger network, if you blog consistently, and it can help establish you as a thought-leader, a blog requires almost daily attention. It’s not an “either/or” task – either I write today or I do my bookkeeping. Either I answer comments or I make phone calls. You must do both. Professionals know how important that is. You do what needs to be done, and blogging/answering comments should be a daily event – IMHO.

Susan gets into the nitty-gritty, which I’m not going to do, here, today. You should read her book and take note of her advice. She gives GREAT examples of success stories and outlines some ways others have tripped into professional blogging, almost by accident. Today, the landscape is full of bloggers trying to make money with their blog – forgetting that it isn’t the blog people will pay for.

It’s you. Your blog is you. Treat it with the care and attention it deserves, and you, too, can move into the realm of paid, professional blogger. Which has different meanings to different people, btw. Starting with this book will give you a leg up on your competition. Check out a review of the book here, and you’ll begin to understand.

Read chapter one of Susan Getgood’s book, Professional Blogging for Dummies (Wiley) and come on back to share your thoughts on what it teaches.

Come on back next Tuesday and I’ll discuss Chapter 2 – Finding Your Niche in the Blogoshere.

 Random thoughts on a late summer afternoon. How do you define a "brand
experience?" 

It seems to me .. the traditional "brand experience" is evolving into what it might be more appropriate to call .. the
"human experience." It seems to me .. brand experience goes beyond the customer use of the product/service, ad messaging, PR spins or slick logos that are all wrapped up in a beautiful bow of consistency across all communication channels. 

It seems to me .. that while those elements may be
important to build the structure of a brand promise, they become part of the
new brand equation. Add to that a not so minor detail of peer-to-peer
influence.

Example: What makes Zappos a great brand? It's not so much its offering of a zillion different shoe options or even the free return policy. It's the commitment to customer care which begins with its trust in its own employees. Employees are encouraged to take good care of its customers, as well as, to build people-to-people not brand-to-people, relationships from call center exchanges to tweets.

How odd it seems in 2010, to build a relationship with an inanimate
object when people (employees & customers), who are really the heart of a
brand, are out from the shadows.

Your thoughts? 

 Sidebar: Zappo CEO Tony Hsieh's, book Delivering Happiness, is worth a read.

It’s the 90th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote. If you don’t know how hard Susan B. Anthony worked to bring this to pass, including her arrest for voting, you need to go back to school and brush up on your American History.

The good people of the Susan B. Anthony House in Rochester, NY have created a dynamic program to help her celebrate this outstanding achievement – as she did not live long enough to see the 19th Amendment passed.

Let’s promote this message: Bring Miss Anthony home! Click this link, or the picture of the Susan B. Anthony Dollar, and donate. OR, if you have dollars with her picture on them, send them home – in a symbolic gesture to send Miss Anthony back to her home, in Rochester.

Each dollar is matched, in the month of August – which only has 5 days left! Share with ALL your friends. Post on Facebook and Twitter. Keep her legacy alive – in honor of the enduring work she did – for us, all of us. Ladies (and gentlemen), it’s so easy to help – share and share alike.

Disclaimer: I was paid for links in this post. I was not directed what to write.

Not many people know that I used to be a telemarketer. Yes, it’s true. I got much of my business and sales experience talking on the phone. This was during a rough spot of my life and I will honestly tell you that, at the time, I considered the work I was doing as embarrassing and unfriendly.

Here’s the bold faced truth - working in a successful outsource call center, yes, the one I worked in was one of the best in the country, taught me so much about how business works and how to be good at customer service, I think it’s a great way for entrepreneurs to get some valuable insights into building a business of their own.

Call centers are tough places to work, unless you drop your preconceived notions that they’re one step above cockroaches. Good call centers work with the brands that hire them to reach the right people, and they train their workers well. I was trained extremely well. I learned how to be polite when my call was unwelcome. I learned how to gently ask the right questions to move the conversation forward. I learned to be professional, on the phone. And, I was taught the value of respecting clients.

It’s a skill not many people have, today. We’ve lost our ability to reach out and touch someone – in a way that they find acceptable. Texting is all the rage now - and social media. Impersonal connections. Using a phone brings a truly human quality to the forefront. When you’re hoping for a truly Global Response, as the good folks who prompted this post no doubt are, it stands to reason that you will put the time and energy into training your staff properly. 

When I get a call from a telemarketing company, and it’s clearly someone in a call center, I try to be gentle. Often, I discover that the person calling has information that’s useful to me. I discover that the voice at the other end is a real person and he or she is doing her job. The ones who do it well will go on to become successful business professionals if their company has a good product, trains them to represent that product well, and has researched the database the caller will be calling in to.

The business world is full of the concept of “innovation” today. It’s “innovate this” and “innovate that” in articles, reports, and studies on what innovation is, as well as how to implement it in your organization.

Here’s the truth of the matter about innovation -it exists in another dimension. It exists in the most secret corners of our consciousness. It pulses with every heartbeat and lingers on the edges of every waking thought. It’s the ethereal part of our dreams. It’s the shining aura of our hopes. It’s a part of us that we adults ignore because we’ve forgotten that it exists. We lost it when we turned in our crayons for ball point pens and smart phones.

Last week, on Sunday the 15th of August, I experienced an awakening of innovation in my soul. I was at an original live performance held in a small warehouse in Denver. The dancers, muscians, poets, and narrators were everyday people, like you and me. And, they were not everyday people, like you and me. They were beings from another dimension – crafted to look human, but endowed with such talent, energy, and originality in movement, that I was in awe throughout the afternoon performance.

The title of the show was “Holding Pattern.” The embodiment of everyday life. We all exist within a holding pattern, don’t we? A world that promises a better tomorrow, and rewards us with a stale, grainy today – seldom living up to expectations? The performers on Sunday last danced and narrated their way out of the holding patterns they were in, including those associated with “motherhood.”

[Art shown in this post are from photographer Felicia Ohnmacht's photostream.]

The pictures here are a sprinkling of the performances.  As artistic as they are, they provide a mere glimpse into the world of fascination that filled the small, hot warehouse last Sunday.

Within the bodies of these performers – young women (women of all ages), young men (men of all ages), dancers, poets, narrators, seers of the soul – exist the most innovative moves and thoughts I have ever experienced. No, I am not new to the arts. No, I am not easily impressed by true-life action. No, I am not saying these things because one of the performers is my daughter.

I was so moved, during those performances, I felt as if I stood outside of my body and entered a new place of existence. It was a world that did not trap me with gravity, or burden me with the usual limitations of movement and thought. It was a world where arms and legs were props, where the only reality was in being alive. I became someone else – fully aware of who I was. I watched the dances, listened to the poetry, enjoyed the music, and lost myself in the narrations, with complete abandon. The me I knew, was gone. The me I became, pulsed like a beacon of light, within me.  

Oh, not because I was eager to abandon the solid presence of my being, although, in hindsight, perhaps that was an influence. I often feel that this body is more trouble than it’s worth.

But, that day, it was because the performers invited me into their world – they offered the entire audience a place onstage, a way to participate in the shock and awe that is art. The contraints of the day, where a world of limitations and ennui exist, were left outside in the blistering August sun. Inside, these astonishingly talented performers breathed life into the day, and shared their collective exuberance – inviting us to join them. There was an aura of freedom there. Real freedom – not the kind invented in political commercials.

It was, to me, an awakening. I couldn’t help but wonder, “If this is true innovation [and it is]… what is happening in boardrooms around the country? The world? Not this! This kind of creativity, this ability to bend reality, is what innovation is really about. It’s not about the next ‘new’ thing, or the next ‘big’ thing… it’s about letting go of the ordinary, embracing the extraordinary. It’s stepping out of yourself into the unknown… with eagerness and anticipation. It’s the suspense of not knowing, of being happy not to know. It’s…artivism…art as action.”

I challenge you, those of you tasked with creating innovation in your business, your life, or your home, to get in touch with your inner performer. The performers of Art as Action, in Holding Pattern, know what innovation is made of. It’s made of action, purpose, and knowing reality is bendable, if you believe. Just ask Sarah Leversee – the Artistic Directior of Art is Action. She’s the person in charge of creating the ”artivist movement” – as explained on her website. No, I’m not going to tell you what it is. You have to go to the website and find out.

If you live in the Denver area, be prepared – they’ll be working on next year’s event soon.

I ask you…do you prefer to linger in a world of limitations? Or, will you join Art as Action and invite innovation into your world?

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

Tomorrow my younger daughter, Alex, is heading back to college to start her sophomore year at the University of Buffalo. She’ll only be 70 miles west of us, so we’ll still see her occasionally on the weekends. Our older daughter, Kelsey, will be leaving on Monday to start her study abroad semester at NYU’s campus in Florence, Italy. So we definitely won’t be seeing her on the weekends. Soon it will be just my husband and I again in our house with our two dogs and two cats…..ahhhh!

Last week I wrote this post, Back-to-school time is here – Sears connects with students on Facebook with their Campus 2010 Program. The back-to-school shopping season how become a big part of many retailer’s and brand’s marketing efforts. Web measurement company Compete recently released some data which stated that nearly 1/3 (30%) of back-to-school shoppers surveyed by the firm said they plan to do at least half of their purchasing online, most of them moms shopping for their kids. The study also showed that overall most people expect to spend as much or more than last year despite the lagging economic recovery.

The back-to-school season is bigger than the holiday season for some retailers such as OfficeMax and Payless who are partnering for the second year in a row. They have developed a cross-promotion between school supplies and shoes.

How it works is that shoppers at either retailer will receive a coupon at checkout to use at the other respective store. The incentive is a cash savings.Through Sept. 6, OfficeMax stores will print a coupon for $5 off a $25 purchase at Payless valid until Sept. 27. Alternatively, through Sept. 11, Payless retail stores will print a coupon for $10 off a $30 purchase at OfficeMax valid until Sept. 18.

Besides the cross promotion with Payless, OfficeMax has launched a fully integrated marketing campaign which includes this new back-to-school supplies website. It is a great way to market to women online since it offers a zip code tool to help search for weekly local promotions and includes a recommended school supply lists for each grade level. To assist shoppers in-store, OfficeMax features school-supply lists on free-standing displays.

To further create awareness they are also running national TV ads that highlight the emotion around the back-to-school season as well as feature the local promotions.

OfficeMax also has included social media in the mix and has created a special BTS “Fun Stuff” tab on its Facebook fan page that includes a “Can you make the grade?” quiz which allows fans to test their grade school knowledge or Paparazzi Status Stickers which they can give to friends to match their status updates. Plus if you “Like” the page, OfficeMax will donate $1.00 to Adopt-a-Classroom which supports teachers buying classroom supplies. As of noon today they have raised $1,315.

To top it all off, OfficeMax is sponsoring the Jonas Brothers’ 2010 “Live in Concert” Tour and has launched the “Winning the Dream” sweepstakes to give five fans the chance to see the Jonas Brothers live in San Francisco with three friends. The sweepstakes runs through Sept. 4.

OfficeMax is the same company that has brought us the cute and clever “Elf Yourself” campaign for the past four holiday seasons. So their marketing team sure has been busy little elves themselves and a model for the rest of us marketers.