The 26-Hour Day

What defines a good day for you? For me, if I can say, “wow, I got a lot done today,” then it was a good day. So when we decided to do “nothing” for our second anniversary last weekend, I became restless by the thought. At first.

Since oh, say, mid 2008, I’ve been running around like a mad woman, adapting to the new rules, working smarter, working harder, working just to make it work. I look back at pre-2008 when business was easy, clients were spending money, they were referring other clients, and I was spending money.

I’d be booking travel to somewhere fabulous and romantic. We’d be rushing to pack, to catch a flight, rushing to have fun and relax.

Now, everything has changed. Adapting has been challenging, and manic, yet if I stop and think about it and stop feeling sorry for myself, I’m actually happy to rid my life and my business of the excess. Life just seems to be simplifying.

My husband and I are both self-employed and nurturing our businesses out of a tough economy. It is just not possible to take off on a getaway. When we made the decision to stay still I decided to be OK with it.

We live in the mountains after all. When I lived in Seattle I would have rented the house I live in now for a vacation and felt like I had died and gone to heaven. So why am I so anxious to escape it? Because I need a change of scenery. Because I’m restless, and because I have a travel bucket list and need to cross some of the items off. The solution: what are the things you have never done in your own town or city because given the time to do them, you’d be out of town?

My bike and I rest in the shade

We made our list: (yes, I still had to make a list, I couldn’t let it TOTALLY be. baby steps)

• Mountain bike to Lake Colburn
• Kayak the Pack River
• And we planned our meals (that’s right. I made a second list), and shopped beforehand so we had everything we needed.

And we went on vacation in our own house. I refuse. absolutely refuse to use the current buzzword. You know what I”m talking about.

The Rules:

• No chores
• No phones
• No computers
• No news
• The only reason the TV went on was to watch The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo. (really good!!!!)

Just like I am in business, I adapted to living smarter.

We stopped at Pack River General store, where I had never been and packed lunches in our kayaks that we rented from Outdoor Experience.

The second I pushed off the shore onto the stillness of the river, I felt everything plummet; heart rate, blood pressure, sensors. I honestly don’t think I can remember being so still, or so in the present. We paddled some, we floated a lot, and let the river take us. When do you do that? When do you just go with the flow, the path of least resistance? I spend so much time fighting gravity, climbing mountains, starting a business instead of staying in my job, aspiring….. striving for more.

As for the the brain, I let that flow too. With no stimuli to distract other than beautiful scenery, the creativity runneth over. We talked, and not talked. We planned and not planned.

We got back to the car, went home, made grilled pizza and margaritas and sat on our deck and I had never felt so refreshed and excited to get back to the business of running like a mad woman and fighting gravity.

When training for a marathon, it is important to take a rest day, all the more reason to do so when trying to take over the world.

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My last post on PR/Blogger Relations prompted this response from a client: “I don’t understand the value of bloggers from a business perspective.” He went on to say that it seems inexperienced bloggers can be extremely disruptive to businesses when they are misinformed or inaccurate. Anyone can be a blogger, how do I know blogger outreach will be beneficial to my business?

Excellent questions. The short answer is you can never be 100% sure it will be beneficial and that’s no different than traditional media relations. But blogger outreach should be a considerable component in your PR efforts and here is why:

Let’s start with the value of bloggers:

Blogs are growing in popularity and power (influence). This is a fact. A 2008 State of the Blogosphere study conducted by Technorati, the #1 Blog search engine reports that blogs had between 77.1 and 94.1 million unique visitors in the US alone. I didn’t take the time to find a more updated number. We can assume quite safely that this number has grown dramatically since then.

Bloggers blog to share expertise. Through their knowledge and influence, they become thought leaders in their subject matter, and garner a loyal following.  A loyal following subscribes to the posts (again, no different than a magazine or newspaper). My mom loves to cut news articles of interest and mail them to me. That allows her to share the article with an audience of ONE.

Now, subscribers share the posts with their individual audiences via social bookmarking sites such as delicious and stumble, and facebook and twitter. The audience has potential for exponential growth.

Let’s talk about travel blogs specifically. One of my favorite travel blogs is The Vacation Gals because they tell great stories and blog about a variety of wonderful destinations and adventures for families, girlfriend and romantic getaways.  Kara Williams is the Coloradogal. Here is what she had to say in response to my question, what value do my clients receive in working with bloggers?

1. We usually write for more than one online outlet :: more links for your client, higher search engine ranking results. (i.e. travel bloggers often guest post on others’ blogs, even if they are not actively pitching other sites for paid assignments).
2. We’re de facto travel agents for our readers (and our friends/family). At The Vacation Gals, we often get, “Where should I go for my honeymoon in Florida” or “What’s the best theme park for preschoolers in California?” If your clients are top of mind (if we’ve visited) we often recommend.
3. We’re blogging as we go – instantaneous coverage (no six-month lead time for print magazines)
4. We share the same goal as you and your clients – we want eyeballs to our blog (more page views=more we can charge for advertising); you want eyeballs to the coverage of your hotel/resort/destination. (LG comment: I love this part – it goes back to our relationship of collaboration. it’s about helping each other, it’s not a one-way relationship)

Tom Johansmeyer echoes Kara’s Number 1 above via twitter. Clicks for the client. You have very measurable impact via clicks to your website, retweets, and the level of interaction. You can see his blogging genius at top travel blogs Gadling and Luxist (to name a few).

I’ll add a few things here: Blogs have very real and large readerships, the stories stay on the web forever driving traffic to your site and coming up in searches.

Vetting the bloggers. Now to part two of the question and making sure the blog and the blogger are the right fit for you as the business owner.

Reading recommendation: The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web. In this book by Tamar Weinberg, she tells a story that not only illustrates the influence of bloggers, but also the power they have if they are inaccurate or misinformed. In a nutshell, Engadget (an influential gadget blog) reported (falsely, it later turned out) in 2007 that Apple was delaying the launch of some new products. Engadget was the only news source to report this, and Apple’s stock plummeted, costing the company a reported $4 billion.

It can happen to the best of us, and certainly this is a real and valid concern. Here is where you rely on your ever competent and knowledgeable PR lady (shameless plug) to ensure you are entering a mutually beneficial relationship. (See PR/blogger Relations Manifesto).

Your goal in media outreach (whatever that media format may be) is to find influencers who have the power to drive their audience to take action and purchase your product.

Steps to do this include:

• Subject matter and fit with audience
• Level of audience interactivity on blog, twitter and facebook (if appropriate)
• Reputation, quoted in other news sources? guest blogging elsewhere? (means exposure to new audiences)
• Important: it’s not the job of the blogger to give you exposure. You are helping them with content for a story that is of interest to their readers. No one wants to feel like a pawn in your marketing scheme.

Some of you have asked me for links to other top and favorite travel blogs. Here are a few:
Deliciousbaby
WorldHum
National Geographic’s Intelligent Travel Blog
Elliot – (Chris Elliot’s blog)
BrooklynNomad

There are way too many great ones to list here, and I hate to leave out friends and colleagues, so please add your favorite to the comments section.
Any additional value points to add regarding bloggers?

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Luxury sport utility vehicles loaded with three thousand dollar mountain bikes pulled into Phil’s Trailhead outside of Bend, Oregon as we geared up for our ride one early May Friday morning. As I looked around, I couldn’t help but wonder what all this mountain bike tourism would do for my own town, Sandpoint, Idaho.

Managed properly, tourism is a very eco-friendly industry on which to hang your economic development hat. I benefit directly from it, and I’d be hard pressed to find anyone in this community who wouldn’t be affected if tourism went away altogether.

Managed properly. That means having a plan, and clarifying the brand. The brand is the product and the overall experience. It is not a logo and a tagline. The brand is how we are perceived by our visitors. We can try to put makeup on it (logo and tagline) by people tend to be resistant to the influence of marketing language. Our visitors are going to think what they want once they come and experience it.

So let’s develop the product, the infrastructure, the experience. Let’s give our visitors exactly what they want.

What type of destination are we? Everyone will have different opinions on what a particular destination is (art, outdoor recreation, mountain biking, skiing, semi-retirement ….) because we are many things to many people. No single tagline will be able to capture that. Our job as a tourist destination is to make it easy for a visitor to come and experience their personal experience.

Back to my mountain biking example: Look at Moab, Fruita, Durango, Bend. I am not aware of a logo, a tagline, or a commercial for any of these towns. Who knows? Maybe they have one, but it doesn’t have any influence over my travel decision. If you don’t mountain bike, you may not have heard of them. And that’s ok. Anyone who does, has. And we all spend our working lives plotting our next trip to these destinations. Why? Simply because they have exactly what we want: great trails with beautiful scenery, a few good restaurants and bars, a good bike shop(s) to help us with local info and supplies, and other shopping and entertainment. I will spend my money in all those places. (Contrary to what many think, mountain bikers have cash to spend, thus my observation earlier at the trailhead)

Build trails, and people will come. Map them, get the word out, invite the media, collaborate with the bike shops and the local businesses. People will come. Get sponsorship money, build more trails and related amenities. More people come. Hotels will see their bicycle occupancy increase, and they will do more to accommodate this audience. More businesses will move to the area to cater to the audience. Even more people will come.

The experience will continue to improve. Visitors will go home and post their pictures on their social media networks. We’ll be sure and make it easy for them to post them on our social network pages. More people will come.

Now that is great branding and it brings tears to my eyes. Apply this technique to the other categories listed above and repeat. Help manage the logo population.

Technorati Tags: tourism, National Tourism Week, mountain biking, Sandpoint, Idaho, Moab, Fruita, Bend, Durango, branding

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Millions of people are active on Twitter daily to learn, teach and network. If you, as an organization, are on Twitter to broadcast your news, sales and promotions alone, then you have likely been frustrated about “getting it”.

Following are some tips to help you build your community, and deepen relationships with your current and potential customers. This should be your primary goal for being there. Sales growth is the objective.

But first, some fundamentals. What is your strategy? Who is your target audience, and what do you want to accomplish? When I ask that, I don’t just mean “to increase sales”. That’s a given. Make a plan for what type of information you want to share with your audience. How can you be of help to your customers so they will purchase your service or product?

Secondly, a great profile pic (avatar) and a compelling online bio along with a link to your website or blog are a must.

A quick look at an organization’s twitter page and I can make a snap decision if I want to be following their stream or not.

Here is how I decide if I want to follow you:

• Is there relevant content in your twitter stream? Content that interests me, educates me, and/or entertains me?
• Are there any @ symbols in your twitter stream? This shows me you are interacting with us as individuals – answering our questions, engaging with us. If there are none, you are what I call Output Only. The boring guy at the cocktail party that talks non-stop about himself and then walks away. Sometimes I make an exception and follow these twitter streams, but with rare exceptions – like @breakingnews, for example.
• Who is tweeting on behalf of the organization? There should be a person behind the brand. I don’t want to tweet with a thing, I want a person and a personality to go with it.
• Is your feed full of links to your blog and YouTube videos? There’s a fine line between sharing your blog and videos, and again, mixing it with interaction. If you are using twitter simply to drive traffic to your blog, etc, you’ve lost my interest. If I want to subscribe to your blog, I’ll do that.

Are you harnessing the power of Twitter?

• If you’re using the web-based Twitter application, you’re missing out on many powerful features to help you reach your goals. Download tweetdeck or hootsuite. I promise you, you’ll start to get it now.
• Set up search columns for key words to your organization and industry. This will help you to respond to questions directly related to your business by people you are likely not following. I’ve seen a number of questions go unanswered locally, including my own, because you aren’t paying attention to the twitterverse.
• Watch what your competitors are doing on twitter. Set up a column pertaining to them, and their keywords.
• Go out and actively follow people. Use a directory such as twellow and search people to follow based on geographic location, or key words in your potential customers’ bios.
• Conduct market research: once you have a decent, loyal following. Ask them questions that help you understand your customer better.

Lastly, and I can’t say it enough: Don’t just talk about yourself. Balance with the following: Ask me what I’m doing, share news from your industry that I might find interesting. Retweet what others are talking about. Tell me something personal but not mundane – I love a good story.

Does this help?

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train wreck

Originally uploaded by woodleywonderworks

Is it over yet? Can I open my eyes? Sure, a lot of you did well in 2009, but I’ll be honest, the year was a train wreck for me and I am pretty happy to ring in a new year with some good lessons learned and a strong action plan in place.

I thought I’d share some of those lessons learned, and what I intend to be my recipe for success as I focus on my 2010 planning these last two weeks of December. They apply to any organization or sole proprietor, really.

Please add your ideas in the comments.

• Work ON my business: not just in it. I’ve increased the percentage of hours I spend working ON my business to about 25% of my time. It turns out this wasn’t hard to do since I lost a lot of client work!

• What is my vision? What do I want my business to look like in five years? I’m talking big picture stuff here, not the details. What type of clients do I want? Who specifically do I want on my client list? Where do I want to be geographically and do I want to add staff?

• Revisit and refine my positioning: I pulled out that business plan and walked myself through the exercise again. Where are the opportunities and threats? What markets are doing well right now? What industries? Why would someone choose me over everyone else? In other words, what is my positioning statement?

Based on that, I asked myself:

• Where are the Weak Spots? I love doing business development, and writing proposals. But I realize I haven’t been winning new business from those with whom I don’t have an established relationship. I am not winning trust from new contacts. Ok, then what’s wrong with my pitch documents? I’ve asked a few people I know and respect to critique them for me. It’s not easy to ask people for help. I worry about putting them out. But I’m honored when someone asks me, so I’m guessing they feel the same way.

• Expand my credibility and my exposure: I’ve defined my goals, my specialties and my target clients. Now it’s time to demonstrate my expertise. I am actively seeking speaking positions on pr and social media. I’m in the process of rewriting the copy on my website. I finally launched this blog.

• Tools in place, now lets actively use my networks to find that business. I can use all my efforts to drive traffic to my blog and my website. I’m finding strategic partners, and I’m reconnecting with old colleagues via traditional and social media outlets.

So I guess there is a bright side to this. 2009 has taught me to work smarter.

Please weigh in below in the comments section. What are some of the lessons you learned in 2009? What are you doing to turn it around? What advice do you have to share with me, and others in a similar situation?

Happy New Year!

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