Plant Your Fall Leads for the Fourth Quarter Bloom

The month of August is the perfect time to plant for fourth quarter rewards. Include subtle reminders in your communications with your client base and start to think of holiday ads to run. Most magazines ads have a deadline of October 1, so make sure you have a plan ready to take the lead during the holiday season.

Don’t Over-Do the Watering

Social media has become an overwhelming opportunity and business necessity, but once you have “likes” and “followers”, don’t over saturate them with fluff. Although social media is a perfect platform for reaching out, consumers want content; not communication. Make sure that your content reflects your expertise and reward your loyal followers with special discounts and value.

Weed Out What Isn’t Working

You know when something hasn’t worked: evaluate if it’s time to weed it out. More often than not, if your “garden” isn’t responding to your measures, you need to make a change. Talk with your valued and long-time customers. Touch base with them and ask them what their favorite experiences have been with your business and what they would like to see changed. Encourage honesty and make sure that your business is responsive to the needs of your valued customer base.

Go Back to Your Principles

It’s easy to get caught up in the flurry of e-mails and running around, but the principles that you initially set for yourself and your business will always guide you back to what’s right for both. Although gardening days are spent sweating in the sweltering sun, wrestling rocks from the Ice Age, and scraping dirt from your fingernails at the dinner table, the true reward of tending to a garden is the holistic feeling of accomplishment. What you do should be fundamentally rewarding. Reflect on what makes you love what you’re doing and find ways for those principles to play out in your business.

Evaluate Your Timeline

Stay in tune with the seasons! Every business has a different peak: make sure you know what season your business blooms. Prioritize what aspects of your company need to be focused on once that surge comes. Strengthen these aspects by highlighting specific examples of how they have created a winning strategy for clients who have taken advantage of your services. Show where and how your business is and has been a winner and your target market will react accordingly.

Editor’s Note: This blog post was written by our fabulous summer intern, Parker Allen. Parker is off to South Korea to teach English for a year. We’ll miss you Parker and wish you all good things ahead!

The newest social network is finally here and we’ve been playing with it for close to a week now. Here are our thoughts on what businesses and individuals need to watch out for.

Growth here is rapid.

Google+ is projected to reach more than 20 million users in less than three weeks. This rapid growth brings new follows and friends into the network, and like Quoara a few months ago, we expect most users to be overwhelmed. While Google+ offers ways to organize your friends (into circles), it will still take some time for users to get on top of things. Read Tara Hunt’s account of the torrent of follows she had to grapple with here.

It takes work to control the flood of information.

We agree with Robert Scoble who says Google+ needs a filtering mechanism before it goes mainstream.

One way to filter is by separating out your contacts into different circles and following only those circles you might be interested in at the moment. However, as Scoble points out, unlike Facebook Groups, where the associations are by interest, Google+ circles are ad hoc and there’s no guarantee that your circle of friends in the healthcare industry (for example) will talk about healthcare issues.

Friendship on Google+ is asynchronous.

On Google+ you can follow anyone you want to but unlike Facebook and Linkedin, the people you follow are under no obligation to follow you back. This makes Google+ more like Twitter, a fact noted my many, including GigaOm’s Matthew Ingram who points out that Google+ may be a bigger threat to Twitter than it is to Facebook.

Although Google+ adds a layer (circle) between the consumer and businesses, it boasts the Twitter-esq ability to network effectively with other businesses. And, like Twitter, Google+ will allow like-minded companies to engage each other without scaring off their consumers.

Google+ is real time.

Ingram’s article also points out that Google+ content sharing and interactions all take place in real-time, which creates a real threat towards the Twitter format. There is no ‘wall’ for you to share and archive. There is only the torrent of information you actively share in real-time with your various circles or with all of your friends.

The business experience is still unclear.

Some businesses have already signed up and created profiles. Google is promising a better user experience for business users and has asked businesses to hold off on signing up until it is ready.

There have already been reports of spammers and the early adopter community on Google+ has been quick to report any signs of brands trying to work their way into communities.

Careful …Google+ is not there yet. Start thinking outside of the box.

Our advice to businesses: be patient. It would be ill-advised to jump into the un-defined waters of this website before Google’s approval. Right now, people are looking for people and not for businesses.

However, prime your keyboards and get ready to join the network soon. Once the users become comfortable with the Google system, you can be sure that there will be an amazing amount of opportunity to be realized. Savvy consumers may even start building a “deals” or “coupons” circle, which could provide distance between consumers and their social life yet allow them to engage with businesses on their own terms. This will provide businesses a very real opportunity to be “polite” online (an increasingly difficult achievement through Facebook).

So, you’ll see us raving about Iblast Card, asking you to like the facebook page, telling you to run out and grab your 2011 card, and most importantly: Buy Local and Shop in Town!

The Los Alamitos Varsity Song are on their way to the UDA Nationals, February 6-7 in Orlando, FL!

“My Aunt Does the Best T-shirts”
Ah, the coveted 18-24 demographic. What if I told you that I have a lock on this slice of heaven on a micro-level, nationally! Shocked? Don’t be. I have honed these connections since their birth and now my notoriety is viral. I’m talking t-shirt designs! Sure, I’d like to be the go-to in brand marketing on the web, but in the 18-24 demo in my family, this is my rep. My nieces or nephews can’t resist to raise their hand and say: “My Aunt does the best t-shirts!” Hey, I’m not putting this all on them: give me a Peer Leader Group with the theme of super heroes and I’m all in!  We begin with a bit of brainstorming. As we sit around the table, we talk about their group and get to the heart of the look. I’ve been told this is considered a form of torture at times, but it produces great results.

Here’s how it usually rolls out:

• What’s their message,
• Why did they join,
• What type of members are there,
• Who is their audience,
• What is the outcome they would like from the new look.

Does this list look familiar to any of my clients?
That’s right. It’s my tried and true interview style to get to the answers I need to be effective in marketing. It’s such a simple list but so many will lunge into a project without answering these simple questions. People can envision their business thriving and successful, but they all too often forget to create and execute a plan to get themselves to the goal. With just a little brainstorming, planning and project management, the successful result will be all you hoped for!

Back to my thriving t-shirt business.
Last month, I undertook a long distance assignment for my niece in California. Her group is the Los Alamitos Varsity Song group. As I went through the paces, I could tell there was great passion to  creating this shirt. As a senior, she and her co-captain got to decide the look for this years shirt. Big doings. I could hear in her voice the excitement of how extra touches would be impact-ful, but most importantly, the group’s name needed to scream out. I thoroughly enjoyed the back and forth and, in the end, the look was connected and fun. The best part is I got a shirt! Go LOS AL!

Happy 2010 everyone!

LET THE HOLIDAYS BEGIN!

What is the beginning of the Holiday season for you? Is it the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in NYC? Is it the smell of a special recipe that changes your whole spirit? For me, it’s the sight of our very own, The Whitney Shop’s Holiday windows. What a surprise I got when I came into work yesterday with our new view of Elm Street. There, decked in full glory, was the most beautiful Whitney windows. I’m officially in the spirit! I am thankful for this view that will be with me for the next month.

This shot also holds a branding note, can’t resist. Check out how The Whitney Shop handles their children’s department: Little Whitney, or LW. So tasteful and so loyal to the original brand. Many comment that this is the epitome of New Canaan charm. Yes, I agree!

As I get ready to pack up the fresh banana bread, my contribution to Thanksgiving in Vinalhaven, Maine, I do want to offer thanks to all the amazing clients, friends and vendors who have been so supportive of our group this year. We are so blessed to work for some of the most passionate and exciting entrepreneurs. With a grateful heart I wish everyone the happiest of Thanksgivings!

Peace, BJ