If these bus tours aren’t on your radar yet, they should be. There’s no better way to learn about our community and the issues it faces than to share a 2-hour bus ride with the people who have their fingers on its pulse.
This bus tour was significantly different than the previous bus tour I participated in. This was the first tour completely outside of Des Moines city limits, but still within Polk County. Most of their bus tours in the past have highlighted issues affecting affordable housing in Des Moines’ urban core. Their goal with this tour was to demonstrate that affordable housing is an issue that affects all communities.
Join PCHTF on one of its next tours: April 18, 2014, July 18, 2014 and October 17, 2014. Each tour showcases different properties and different issues. You can register by calling their office at 515-282-3233 or sending an email to cduncan@pchtf.org.
I received a suggestion for a blog post via the Skribit widget on my website:
What Should I Write About? RSS Feeds from Social Networking
So here goes:
First, let’s define RSS Feeds, so we’re all on the same page:
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Over the past year of being in business, I’ve written one blog post a week. That’s my goal. That’s what I do.
Others out there in the blogging community blog once/day. Several businesses in town have 4 or 5 bloggers who contribute to their business’ blog – now they can really churn out content!
Below are a few exercises I go through to generate blog post ideas:
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During my discussions with small business owners, I would mention the term “drip marketing” and 9 times out of 10 I would get the confused look. Let’s fix that:
Definition from Wikipedia
Drip Marketing is a communication strategy that sends, or “drips,” a pre-written set of messages to customers or prospects over time. These messages often take the form of E-mail marketing, although other media can also be used. Drip marketing is unique from other database marketing in two ways: (1) the timing of the messages follow a pre-determined course; (2) the messages are dripped in a series applicable to a specific behavior or status of the recipient.
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Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social networks around right now and I get a lot of businesses asking me if it’s where they should be.
After four years, Pinterest users are consuming more and more content on their mobile devices. They’re going to start offering businesses the ability to pay to promote pins in an effort to show its users that it is a social network that plans on being around for quite some time. Paid promotion is also currently being used on Facebook and Twitter to let businesses increase their reach.
Right now, Pinterest is working with a select group of brands to pilot its ad experiment which mean paid ads are several months off for our local brands.
When Pinterest ads do become available to all brand pages, do you plan on participating?
While the new Gmail inbox tabs aren’t “new”, I still find individuals experiencing issues receiving emails AND making sure that their emails are received.
This change affects everyone who uses Gmail as their email Client (for example, I have a copy of suzanne@contemporary-business-solutions.com send to my Gmail account so I can read my email there versus reading my email via my website host’s webmail system). Most businesses use Outlook as their standard email Client, but you’d be surprised the number of organizations that have moved to Gmail while still maintaining their @yourbusiness.com email address structure.
Here’s the scoop:
At the end of May, Gmail announced a new layout where email messages are automatically filtered into (at most) five different categories. One of the stock categories is “social”. Messages from social networks, media-sharing sites, online dating services, gaming platforms, and other social websites including MailChimp (which a lot of organizations use to send their e-newsletters) are filed under this category.
HubSpot customers saw an average of 58.9% more email opens and 63% more unique email opens in June than May after the new feature was rolled out. On the other hand, MailChimp found that open rates decreased three weeks in a row after the new layout was launched … so it’s pretty much up in the air whether this new layout helps, hurts, or doesn’t affect email marketers at all.
To make sure that you’re receiving ALL of the emails you want to, be sure to check your tabs across the top often. You can also get rid of the tabs so all your emails are sent to your Inbox by opening Gmail, clicking the + icon to the right of your tabs. Choose to hide all tabs. Primary will stay checked, but you won’t see the tab above your inbox.
People do business with others that they know, like and trust. What better way to market yourself than to give something 
away for free that lets others get to know you and your business.
- White Papers for Download
- E-Book
- Workshop
- Free 30-minute Consultation – This is a tool I employ…
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The holiday season, typically beginning the week of Thanksgiving and lasting through the first week of the New Year, is a difficult time to generate new business. There are fewer networking events which are attended by fewer people. A lot of decision-makers take vacation. Budgets are being generated for the next year. We’re busy getting all of the shopping done, houses cleaned, parties attended and traveling to be with relatives. I get it.
The Get It Done Girl doesn’t do “down time” well. It’s just not who I am. So this is what I’m going to tackle during this 7-week slowdown:
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Any good social media marketing plan always starts with a traditional marketing plan. Social media is a tool, or set of tools, used to execute your marketing plan.
If you own a small business or are a solopreneur and don’t have a marketing plan, here’s a great document I found that walks you through the steps of putting one together.
An excerpt from “7 Steps for Creating a Social Media Marketing Plan” from Social Media Today:
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