Laura's Winning Ideas

This week I’m noticing some great marketing. If your firm is in one of the industries affected by the downturn (who isn’t?) keeping a positive attitude can be hard, but very worthwhile:

Just got a robo call from the local Theatre. Now, I appreciate that sales are down and the Fine Arts are struggling. I’ve been called regularly by the Symphony the Ballet and almost every theatre to which I’ve ever purchased a ticket. This call was different.

After a blessedly quick intro, Scrooge came on the line, to tell me very quickly about a sale on tickets to the upcoming Christmas Carol that coin squeezers like us would appreciate. The sale is on Monday of next week, buy tickets online or by phone. Now, Get back to work! he barked, and the call was ended.

Perfect. I wouldn’t have otherwise gone to this performance, but I might now buy tickets just to support great marketing like this.

Here’s the other I noticed this week. Border’s Books closed in one of the nicest buildings downtown. We have our share of vacant space downtown, and most of it looks sad. Here’s some of the signs in the windows of this place:

First Lease sign to capture my imagination

Lease sign in storefront Milwaukee

Lease sign in retail window

Here's the Building being Leased. It fronts on the Milwaukee River and two major Downtown Streets.

And the typical Lease sign. Boring. Sad.

If you are looking for space, who are you going to call?

If you are a reviewer of proposals, which one are you going to pick up first? Which team do you want to work with?

I thought I’d talked about this on my blog, but evidently not yet. Business Cards asked me to write a post about best practices, and I didn’t realize I hadn’t already done this!

Business Cards as a marketing tool

Social media is growing, so some of the trendy industries are including lots of contact information on their business cards that aren’t the usual stuff. However, for many of us, this is not yet a common practice, partly because we don’t post to social media as a regular part of our work practice.

Here’s what I’d suggest you consider for the next round of business cards:

DELETE fax numbers. I have a fax line. It has been used to fax less than 10 times in the last year. No one needs to fax me unless we are working together already, or they are a Chinese restaurant sending out menus. Take it off.

ADD some kind of social media contact. You look old-fashioned if you don’t have something on your card. Use your LinkedIn profile address. It will satisfy the problem of not looking hip, without divulging that you aren’t tweeting or posting about business on a daily basis.

CONSIDER adding a QB code that goes to your website on the back of the card. Most first visits to your website are now made via smartphone. You can make this much easier by putting a QB code on one half of the back of your card. Keep the other half blank so a note can be made on your card. QB codes are trivial to produce. I did it on my first try. Search “How To make a QB code” and you’ll have your code in less than 45 seconds.

DO NOT use weird paper. Make sure the paper you use can be written on, and that there is space on the back for a note about where they met you, or what they want to follow up with you about later.

DO NOT use odd sizes or shapes of cards. Creative ad agencies can get away with this, especially if they spend $5.00 per card for some extravagant treatment. Unless you are that, don’t do this.

TEST your logo to see if it scans into OCR software. No one wants to bother typing in your company name into a database. If your company logo can’t be recognized by OCR technology, be sure to add the company name, maybe above your mailing address.

Now, all I have to do is hand out another few hundred business cards so I can update mine with my LinkedIn Profile too!

Photo from druzifer.livejournal.com. Druzifer's Journal

This weekend was another turning point for Social Media.

In Texas, months of drought set them up for wildfires throughout the central part of the state. In the end a few lives were lost, hundreds of homes were lost, and we don’t know yet how many pets and livestock perished or were lost.

It was hard to find information yesterday, chaotic earlier today, and now, things seem to be settling into a routine to manage news, evacuations, animals and begin figuring out where to go from here.

Television was worthless. I knew more about what was going on than friends who are social media illiterates in the areas threatened by the wildfires. They were glued to television, and I live in Milwaukee Wisconsin.

A few gals I know (Ruth, Bonnie and Betsy) in Texas  kept the posts flowing on Facebook until pages could get organized to coordinate news of evacuations and the large animal folks could get organized. Others were also posting, re-posting and tweeting to connect information to folks who needed/wanted to know what was going on. I stayed glued to the screen for the last two days.

Hopefully the local authorities were doing a great job on the ground and every person got the information they needed to evacuate or not.

I’m just a rubber-necker, eavesdropping on the crisis, but it seemed obvious that the large animals were overlooked in planning for such an emergency. The wildfires charred acres of ranch land where 70% of the horses in the US live, central Texas. However, evacuation of livestock wasn’t part of the game plan for the strapped emergency responders.

The evacuation of horses and large animals required some innovation which turned out to be self-organized on Facebook and Twitter. It was fascinating to watch, and should be lessons learned for every business uncertain whether they should be on social media and anyone who might be faced with a crisis that requires timely information in order to react appropriately.

What started out as limited options, slowly became organized evacuation.

Traditionally, horses are let loose to fend for themselves in a wildfire. It’s a nasty option. You are uncertain you’ll ever see your horse again, and certain the sensitive creatures will never be the same again. But getting horses into a trailer takes time you can’t afford. And they can out-run cars and trucks, so traditionally it has been the only possible option when fire was headed your direction.

One friend was out of town when her husband got the call to evacuate. He had no choice and let the horses out to fend for themselves. Luckily, by 2AM he got an opportunity for another run home, and he had the chance to catch and trailer out his wife’s favorite horse. By morning, he got another chance to return and corral and trailer out the others.

However, there were at least 12 hours of no options for folks with livestock in the path of the wildfires. But by the end of just 12 hours, folks with ranch land, water, food or trailers were organizing to fetch horses and other livestock in harm’s way. Everything took place in plain view on Facebook and Twitter.

A zoo was evacuated in just a few hours when things started to look dicey.

The right (or maybe “good enough”) equipment arrived and new safe havens were arranged so exotic animals could be moved. Cell phones were helpful, but overwhelmed as the emergency spread. However, a single call was amplified when posted to Facebook looking for “enclosed heavy metal trailers of at least X’ x X’ and able to travel at least XX miles to deliver drugged lion and two drugged tigers. Three additional enclosed trailers able to carry at least XXXX lbs. each for transport of exotic animals in heavy cages.etc. ” (paraphrased from my own memory of the post)

Veterinarians running low on supplies put out the word for replenishment so they could stay in place while volunteers picked up and delivered.

When the wind shifted, a safe haven for 43 evacuated horses faced fires coming their way. In less than 3 hours the horses were on their way again. If you’ve ever watched horses being loaded to trailers in a calm setting, you know loading this many horses in an emergency is a miracle.

I especially loved seeing University of California at Davis Veterinary School piping in. They offered suggestions. “If you must release horses into the wild when evacuation can’t be arranged spray paint your phone number on their side.” I sent this suggestion along to one of my social media illiterates with my insistence that they sign up for Facebook immediately since this ain’t the last of the wildfires in Texas this season.

There were a few moments of levity. Everyone tuned in to one of the several sites serving up radar with fire postings. By using radar, they showed the smoke plumes so folks with respiratory problems could plan their response. Around dusk on Monday, a new large plume showed up on the radar. For a few minutes panicky posts came over asking whether this new area was yet evacuated. Turns out the colonies of free-tail bats come out in swarms each evening. They mass so tightly and in such great numbers, that radar picks them up and they look like a smoke cloud.

Don’t let the lesson be lost. Make sure your company hears about how Social Media got information flowing so people didn’t have to panic, working without enough information. How might this be used by your clients/firm?

http://goo.gl/tjr4A

Here’s a great idea to make presentations more mobile.

In most meetings, folks are carrying smart phones,  iPads or laptops. Why not use that feature to expand your ability to present anywhere you meet?

Here’s how it works:

1) Post your presentation slides to SlideShare.net

2) Create a short URL for your presentation slides.

Search “short URL” for sites that convert long URLs to a tiny URL all free. If you use Google’s service, you can save yourself a step below.

3) Create a QR code that points to your slides on Slideshare.net

Search “QR code create” for sites that create a QR code from a URL. If you used Google’s service above, just add “.qr” to the end of your short URL and click to get your QR code.

4) provide the QR code and short URL to your meeting members.

If they are on a smart phone, they’ll scan the URL and be instantly looking at your slideshow. If they are on a laptop, they’ll type in your URL and be instantly looking at your slideshow. If they are on a tablet, they’ll do either, depending on whether they have a camera or browser.

You could print these on businesscards you hand out, you could offer the scan from your phone, you could email the short URL with QR code.

I didn’t think of this, but I wish I had. Todd Ogasawara at SocialTimes thought of this when he was asked to speak to a group, but they met in a restaurant without AV support. His commenters added the suggestion of having a URL alongside, so folks without cameras could also join in.

Proposals can use this idea: Think about building a set of pages with additional detail/illustrations/animation for which QR codes could be created and printed in your proposal. Do you honestly think a technical reviewer will pass by the opportunity to check out what is behind the QR code?

Is huddling around a big laptop to show a presentation more professional than allowing each person to see the presentation on their own device? I’ve seen folks lugging in laptops for meeting presentations, but that limits the audience to one person or maybe two if they are comfortable snuggling up to one another.

For confidential materials, you can get a short URL that is time limited. Search for “URL shortener temporary time limit” which allows you to reach pages you don’t want them seeing again after you are out of the room.

Would it help if you knew whether they were showing the materials to others? Many of the short URL sites provide tracking so you can see how many folks visit the link.

All the examples here are free services, so you have no excuse not to try it out and noodle about how it might help your organization.

I’ll stop here. Lot’s of interesting opportunity to expand your ability to reach prospects. Go get’em!