Musings of a Marketing Maven

Christine Thompson> What's on my mind: life and work

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Responding to Guest Blogger Requests

March 9th, 2010 · Marketing, Social Media for Business

It’s been a curious 24 hours. First, snow falling on daffodils and cherry blossoms (our first of the season, here in Seattle). Then, 2 people emailed me, having found my blogs, to inquire about contributing posts for this blog and my professional blog.

The requests, while flattering, caught me off guard. They made me realize I hadn’t thought about a policy or guidelines that would make it easy to know when to say yes or no to such requests. And because I blog for love, not money, the answers aren’t necessarily as straightforward as they are for people who monetize their blogs.

Given that blogging (to me) is all about the authentic voice, or sharing thoughts, personal reactions and feelings, how best to respond when someone else — particularly someone you don’t know personally — asks to step in and guide a conversation? For the moment I’m thinking about this like a dinner party. Why not allow other people, if the conversational topic seems appropriate, to share their voices from time to time?

I’m leaning toward an experiment or two. We’ll see what happens as this unfolds.

Meanwhile I’ve replied to the requesters that I’m not interested in showcasing overt commercial pitches of someone’s product or services. It’s possible that this response may have discouraged one or both of the people who contacted me yesterday. We’ll see…

If I decide to experiment, I’m relieved to note that my WordPress installation enables me to accommodate people with roles as author or contributor… What’s unknown is how much effort will be required on my behalf to ensure the contributed post is appropriate for this blog.

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Information Junkies Wanna Know… More

February 5th, 2010 · Marketing, Yoga

Interesting factoids, like how many Americans practice yoga, spread like wildfire across the Web and blogosphere. But getting any perspective on those factoids can be much harder to find, and in some cases, impossible.

This morning I uncovered a web-based information vortex when I tried to find out how many Americans currently practice yoga. I fell into a circular spiral, [Read more →]

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SoHo Charms

February 4th, 2010 · Back to Basics

If you like diversity during your day, operating a small business out of your home can have its charms. Today has been one of those days that mixes business and pleasure in delightful ways.

While awaiting replies to outstanding client proposals, I’ve been able to juggle a variety of tasks:

Birds, bread making, Bootcamp and TCP/IP

  • reaching out to former colleagues (and testing a new USB headset with Skype while doing so)
  • answering questions of the loan processing agent who is helping with our refi
  • updating LinkedIn contacts and some project wikis
  • successfully installing Bootcamp to run Windows 7 on my MacBook Pro
  • playing fetch with 2 kitties
  • preparing Anadama bread so the smell of fresh-baked bread will greet my husband when he arrives home from work
  • catching up on blogging, replying to comments, etc.

I also spent 45 minutes on the phone with a Mac specialist who’s a network geek. He was able to reconfigure my Apple Server to fix some DNS issues, and thanks to remote access, was able to do from his home office. Hooray!

So while I await follow-up on biz dev, I sit here at my office window enjoying the birds in the maple tree, the promise of spring flowers, and the purring kitty by my mouse pad. (There must be a reason they call it a “mouse.”)

It’s a lovely work-life balance.

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“Open Table” for Yoga Bookings?

February 3rd, 2010 · Tools & Technology, Yoga

As a busy yoga enthusiast, I sometimes wonder what would happen if yoga studios within a given metro area agreed to an “Open Table” model for class bookings. (Open Table is a centralized reservation service for restaurants that operates in major cities, including iPhone and other smartphone apps.)

In an ideal world I’d take 6-8 weekly classes in succession from the same teacher at the same studio, to benefit from her careful class planning and sequencing. But in 2 years of taking classes I’ve never been able to attend all 8 classes due to family or work-related schedule conflicts. As a result I’ve joined a second local studio to have an alternate place where I can take classes when I face a conflict with my primary studio. Each one uses MindBody for booking purposes, so I have two separate accounts now.

From a busy student’s perspective, it would be really great if I could book classes using a centralized reservation system that showed me all the classes available today (or at later dates) within, say, a 20-mile radius. For each class on offer I’d want to see information about the yoga style or tradition, the teacher, the relative difficulty of the class, prerequisites (if any), time, location, pricing, etc. Like the Open Table restaurant model it would be nice to see something comparable to menus and photographs of the venue, if it’s a studio I’m unfamiliar with. I’d also want to be able to filter the class listings by teacher name, yoga tradition (such as Anusara), difficulty level, etc.

This raises a larger question of the business model. Would I pay the central booking service, and have it disburse funds to the studio? (My personal preference as a student.) Would there be a finder’s fee paid by the booking service to the studio, with students paying for the class directly to the studio? I don’t know. Certainly from the student’s perspective, being able to book and pay online in a single transaction is the most convenient approach.

What I do know is, I’d take more classes if such a booking system were available, one that allowed me to book and take classes on the spur of the moment, as time permits. Such an approach could be financially beneficial to the studio owners, if they could fill up more classes… They might even offer specials on classes that are generally sparsely attended.

Perhaps this is something that Mindbody could explore.

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Mortgage Refinancing: A Brave New World

February 3rd, 2010 · Back to Basics, Tools & Technology

We’re in the midst of refinancing our home, to take advantage of the current attractive rates. It’s been an eye-opening experience to see how the process has evolved since we last refinanced 5-8 years ago.

The lenders’ reliance upon web-based data collection services has certainly eased our burden, [Read more →]

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My Phone Company Is Stupid and Wasteful

January 13th, 2010 · Brand Matters, Marketing

I wish some agency that specializes in intelligent database mining and direct marketing would help my local phone company stop wasting trees on fruitless direct mail pieces.

Here’s the deal: my recycle bin now contains somewhere between 5 and 10 pieces of unopened direct mail offers from Qwest, [Read more →]

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Know Your Audience

January 12th, 2010 · Bookshelf, Marketing

Seattle is well known for lots of things. Besides the rainy climate, dead rock stars, environmental activists, micro-brews and mediocre sports teams, we’re home to more than our share of global brands — Amazon, Starbucks, Microsoft and Boeing among others. Innovation and creativity thrive here. Perhaps fueled by all those lattes we drink. Not to mention [Read more →]

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What Matters Now

January 6th, 2010 · Back to Basics, Bookshelf, Creativity

Every now and then you come across a gem to share broadly with others: What Matters Now, a compilation of great ideas by brilliant thinkers and change agents. Agent provocateur Seth Godin has produced this compilation and offers it as a free downloadable ebook from his blog. He encourages like-minded folk who are sick and tired of the status quo to do likewise.

Each of these big thinkers has offered up pearls of wisdom from their life’s experience or their professional adventures — and some of their notions will resonate for days after in your mind. It’s easy to consume: one big idea per page.

big-thinkers

For example, consider this gem [Read more →]

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The Company You Keep

January 1st, 2010 · Back to Basics, Social Media for Business

Reflecting back on 2009 and looking ahead to 2010, I came across a great quote that got me thinking:

You are the same today as you are going to be five years from now, except for two things: the people with whom you associate and the books you read.

— Source: Charles Jones, cited in Attracting Perfect Customers

What a wonderful thought. It’s an inspiration for being more mindful in 2010. [Read more →]

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Following Through on New Year’s Resolutions

December 30th, 2009 · Back to Basics, Creativity, Tools & Technology

It’s that time of year again, time to review what worked (and what didn’t) in 2009, imagine new possibilities, dream, and set intentions for the coming year. I’ve been enjoying the process of setting some actionable goals for 2010, while identifying some larger aspirations that I’d like to translate into action.

To prepare my plan for 2010 I’ve been reading a bunch of books, magazines and online resources.

The challenge, of course, is how to make sure you follow through on the New Year’s resolutions, once past the early enthusiasm and first few weeks of good intentions… [Read more →]

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