Little Red's Big Ideas

Awesome Apps and Cool Tools 2012 - A Special Bonus for CALSAE

Currently my most popular workshop is called Awesome Apps and Cool Tools.  Sometimes I even sneak it in when my audience least expects it as a bonus!  This was the case at the California Society of Association Executives conference this week.  I feel so strongly about the workshop as I see so many people and organizaitons trying to balance social media and traditional marketing.  I try hard to make sure this workshop filters out the fluff and shines the light on very relevant, very effective resources.  

For those who attended my workshop at CALSAE called 50 Ways to Go GaGa for Google -- I'm happy to share these list of Awesome Apps and Cool Tools! Enjoy and happy Googling.  

 

Download Awesome Apps 1 page pmlb qrcode 2012

Addicted to Strangers

I must admit that I love strangers! I love learning about new people and hearing their stories.  I'm not afraid of asking questions.  But I also know that this is an unusual trait since most people don't love the idea of striking up conversations with complete strangers.  So when I read this story, Rules of the Road: The Quick Guide to Better Networking by Tom Searcy (an accomplished salesperson who admittedly hates face to face networking), I was curious about the ways Searcy has gotten more comfortable with the process.   

The article from CBS Moneywatch shared four specific rules for effective networking.  While I think I adhere to these roles pretty naturally, I thought others might benefit from the short list:

1. First and foremost, it's not all about you. Keith Ferrazzi's book, Never Eat Alone, taught me a lot about networking, and the most important point is that it's not about you. If you spend your time meeting people and trying to see if there is a way you can be of help to them, you put your mind in the right order, and it is easier. Why? Because you may not be a great networker, but you are a great problem solver. If you can help someone else with an issue, idea or contact, you are working in the sweet spot of your skills. Along the way, good things will happen for you, too.

 2. Set your goals. When I attend an event, I typically have between one to three people I specifically want to meet who I've picked out in advance. If they are not there, or they are completely encumbered, I go to my back-up goal. Set a number of new people, let's say five or 10, who you are going to meet, ask two questions, and swap cards with. Once you have hit your number, you are off the hook. You met your goal and you can go home, see a movie, catch the end of the game at the bar, it doesn't matter. You set a goal and you hit it. These networking events are not a prison-sentence if you don't make them one.

 3. Ask good questions. "What do you do?" "Tell me about your company" and "How long have you been with your company/this industry/this association?" are all typical openers and they get typical answers. Boring. Try a few other questions instead:

 -- "What business problem does your company solve? What is the best example you have of how you are doing that?"

-- "What has been the biggest win for you/your company in the last six months? What do you think it will be in the next six months?"

-- "What is the most interesting initiative you have planned at your company this year? How will that change your company the most?"

The point is that you want to pose questions that provoke and initiate conversation out of the normal routine. These questions should help you achieve that. Once people have answered your questions, you have just one more to ask: "That's great. Is there some way I can help you?"

 4. Exit gracefully. I watched a real pro work a room at a cocktail party the other night. She would introduce herself, ask a question or two, ask if she could help, and then she would simply put her hand out to shake and say, "It has been so nice to spend a few minutes getting to know you. I hope you have a great spring." She would smile graciously and just move on. She took the initiative to introduce herself, controlled the conversation with a few questions, and then she left. There is a courtesy to be observed at a networking event that involves not monopolizing someone's time. The rhythm she set was at just the right tempo to accomplish what a networking event should do.

Share your networking secrets below or share a story about a memorable networking experience!

Some Online Marketing Ideas to Improve your Fitness Business

Some Online Marketing Ideas to Improve your Fitness Business

Author:fitness studio
The fitness business is one of the best businesses ever created. Online marketing on the other hand is the best way to promote it because its owners could utilize actual visuals for anyone to see so to convince the public. Unlike local marketing that people will still speculate and in doubt to decide whether to buy the idea of enrolling in a fitness program or not because radio advertising, fliers or posters are not hundred convincing. As busy as we are today, people may forget after a while though interested and have plans to involve themselves in a healthy program.

In online marketing, owners could post or show videos of their establishment and what it could offer. Other than the actual program, they invest by hiring models demonstrating parts of the fitness program with the use of their facilities. In reality, people can be deceived by what they see, especially when they hire video editors to edit, creating a more convincing visual effects. They should give the idea that their business is open to all yet give more emphasis to those having bigger physical problems.

Moreover, their target emphasis are to those who seem to be hopeless physically and morally. Their ad should be subtly showing sympathy and understanding of their emotions like self-pity, the longings for the best things and experiences, and then give the assurance that what used to be an obese person’s dream is not impossible to attain but can surely come true in their in establishment, and add that these individuals can still continue their decadent cravings reassuring them further that their freedom will not be jeopardized.

Being soft-hearted to the “fat” people and trying to give the idea that you are the humble solution, that yours is the place where they could freely open up and discuss their problems and/or fantasies, and what they will do is to give the simplest effort of putting their foot forward towards the fitness establishment and start to make their dreams come true.

This way, owners need not slash down price rates but convince the public further by with “gimmick” promotions like discounts on the first 10 clients. Other concepts would be like a valentine promo price good for two, summer promos and so on. Another very effective ad are those having actual experience. These are clients who were once in bad shape but can now attest to the business’ effectiveness.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/advertising-articles/some-online-marketing-ideas-to-improve-your-fitness-business-4534821.html

About the Author
Dominate Your Market and <a href='http://www.fitnessstudiodomination.com/';>Grow Your Business</a> the Right Way.
Fitness Studio Domination will teach you how to grow your Fitness Studio. We do not wish to pass out fish, we are interested in creating fisherman.Some Online Marketing Ideas to Improve your Fitness Business.

What are Your Facebook Fans Really Worth?

The headline caught my eye (a big accomplishment these day!).  When I clicked and browsed the article, What are Your Facebook Fans Really Worth, I was not disappointed.  B-net (The CBS Interactive Business Network) continually posts good and varied articles; and this one about the value of Facebook fans is worth a read.  Further, by taking the steps outlines in the article you'll be able to better determine how much time and energy you and your agency should be spending on Facebook marketing.

 

Facebook Adds Email; Look out Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail

Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, announced yesterday that Facebook has added a new feature to its comprehensive communications portal which is causing quite a stir in the media world.  According to AdAge.com "Facebook is giving its half billion users an email address -- @facebook.com -- and another reason not to leave the service for Google, Yahoo, Microsoft or Apple. The article continues to explain that "this is a bold attempt to bring email into the Facebook network and unify the way people communicate online into one social inbox. Texting, emailing and chat can now be done as one, united by the big brother of your social graph."

Facebook is not bashful about its desire to take over all aspects of your online and wireless communications.  According to Andrew Bosworth, Facebook's director of engineering, "We are more connected today than at any time previous in history, but our communication is fragmented," said  "In this new system, we would feel a lot like we're more in constant conversation with those that we care about instead of fragmented messages."

More importantly -- in the perfect Facebook world, users will never have to leave to check their email on other sites giving Facebook a "stickyness" like never before.  Read the entire article here to learn about privacy concerns and other aspects of this enhancement.

Look for me soon at jodirudick@facebook.com.  In the meantime, let me know how you feel about this new addition to the Facebook utility.  I think I'm going to like it. 

We laughed, we learned... NRPA Followup: Brilliance of Branding, Digital Marketing

Minneapolis is such an incredible city with it's parks, lakes, sporting events and above ground, fully enclosed (and heated) Skyway System.  Further, the Minnesota weather never fails to spark conversation whether it be heat and humidity (otherwise knows as mosquito season), freezing temperatures (otherwise known as the rest of the year -- just kidding) or hurricane force winds -- like those experienced by this year's NRPA Congress Delegates. 

We didn't come for the weather afterall.  Rather we came together to share ideas, become inspired and learn new strategies and techniques for solving ongoing and emerging challenges.  I was honored to present two workshops this year to hundreds of park and recreation professionals from around the globe.  As promised I'm happy to post handouts from both sessions for attendees and blog readers to review and download.

Feel free to use these handouts to share information with your own staff or group.  Of course, if you prefer, I'd love to come to YOUR town or community to present these (or any of my other 70+ workshops) in my signature high-energy style. 

Ok -- enough with the sales pitch.  Here are the handouts ---

The Brilliance of Branding

Download Brands 2010

Marketing Goes Digital 2010 (This handout contains a quiz to test your knowlege of today's on-line usage.  The second handout includes the answers to the quiz.)

Download Digital Marketing 2010[1]

Download Digital Marketing 2010[1] with answers

If you attended my session, feel free to leave a comment or suggestion below.  If you DO know of a speaking opportunity, please get in touch at littleredsbigideas@gmail.com

Best Examples of Social Networking Strategies

I try not to add too much stuff to my delicious account (the bookmarketing service I use to dump all my "I gotta read this later file."  Today, after two weeks of nonstop travel and speaking at conferences -- I reviewed some of the articles and sites I've marked over the past few weeks and HAD to share a real gem with you posted at Mashable/Business!  

This list, compiled by social networking blogger Peter Kim, who blogs about social computing and marketing, contains 22 social networking tactics (from blogs to wikis) and a couple of companies that are using this tactic really, REALLY well.  I promise this list will save you hours and hours of time looking for the best of the best social networking tactics.

I've said it hundreds of times and I'll say it again... The only way to learn about social networking is to spend some dedicated time looking at what others are doing.  Spend an hour a week over the next few week exploring Kim's examples as you begin to (or continue to) dabble or dive into social networking as a marketing tool for your park, recreation agency or camp. 

If you can't access these sites from work -- grab a sandwich and take a long lunch at your public library which almost, surely, allows free access to the entire Internet (God Bless Libraries and the First Ammendment!).

Here’s a framework of 22 tools to consider with notable brand examples:

1. Blogs (Johnson & Johnson, Delta Air Lines)
2. Bookmarking/Tagging (Adobe(), Kodak)
3. Brand monitoring (Dell, MINI)
4. Content aggregation (Alltop, EMC)
5. Crowdsourcing/Voting (Oracle, Starbucks)
6. Discussion boards and forums (IBM, Mountain Dew)
7. Events and meetups (Molson, Pampers)
8. Mashups (Fidelity Investments, Nike)
9. Microblogging (method, Whole Foods)
10. Online video (Eukanuba, Home Depot)
11. Organization and staffing (Ford, Pepsi)
12. Outreach programs (Nokia, Yum Brands)
13. Photosharing (Rubbermaid, UK Government)
14. Podcasting (Ericsson, McDonalds)
15. Presentation sharing (CapGemini, Daimler AG)
16. Public Relations – social media releases (Avon, Intel)
17. Ratings and reviews (Loblaws, TurboTax)
18. Social networks: applications, fan pages, groups, and personalities (British Airways, Saturn)
19. Sponsorships (Coca-Cola, Whirlpool)
20. Virtual worlds (National Geographic, Toyota)
21. Widgets (Southwest Airlines, Target)
22. Wikis (Second Life, T-Mobile Sidekick)

And use this username check tool to see if your brands/preferred handles are still available.

If you know of Park and Recreation Agencies or Camps that should be added to the list -- please coment below!

AdAge names the stars of YouTube

Advertisers looking to connect to today's youth are increasingly looking to viral marketing to create brand loyalty.   In this era of social networking stardom in which everyone seems to be looking for their 15 minutes of fame -- a few diverse personalities have risen above the rest giving traditional children's and teen onair personalities cause to sit up, click on and take notice. 

In an article posted by AdAge.com(Meet YouTube's Most Indemand Stars) readers can get a taste of who and what have grabbed  -- not just millions of views on YouTube -- but tens of millions of hits.  Quirky, creative, outrageous, funny and shocking are words that come to mind after quickly watching a few of these videos stars including Michael Buckley (right) who has been the online pitchman, of sorts, for several family-friendly brands such as Nickolodeon, Te Teen Choice Awards and the Discovery Channel.

What continues to strike me about do-it-yourself broadcasting is that ANYONE can do it for FREE.  Those of you who feel like your continually wrestling with budget issues have no excuse when it comes to marketing your programs.  Children, teens and adults all watch YouTube.  While you might not be the next start attracting bazillions of hits -- WHO CARES?  What you care about is getting people in your target audience to watch and post videos that promote your programs, services and agency.  Anyone with a cell phone can take a video these days. Most can instantly post these videos (photos, too, of course) directly to FaceBook and YouTube with a click and a signal. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Why not video customer testimonials after a successful class, game or event.
• Consider posting videos of coaches talking about their love of the game.
• How about talking to business and community leaders about how important sports, recreation and summer camp have been to their lives.

Do you know of park and recreation agencies who are using YouTube in innovate ways?  Comment below!

The Internet by the Numbers

While doing some research for an upcoming workshop I came across an article posted by Pingdom.com which listed statistics related to Internet usage.  According to the site (which includes data through the end of 2009 there are more than 1.73 billion Internet users worldwide (with 18% coming on line in the previous 12 months).

With more than 234 million websites, 126 million blogs, 500 million people on Facebook; it's hard to imagine anyone has time to do anything other than stare at their screens. 

But the really, REALLY big numbers involved email:

• 90 trillion – The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2009.
• 247 billion – Average number of email messages per day.
• 1.4 billion – The number of email users worldwide.
• 100 million – New email users since the year before.
• 81% – The percentage of emails that were spam.
• 24% – Increase in spam since last year.
• 200 billion – The number of spam emails per day (assuming 81% are spam).

I don't doubt the validity of these numbers.  After all, some days I feel as if I get 200 billion spam emails each day from barristers in Nigeria begging to give me millions of dollars from a long lost relative. 

The scary part of these statistics is that they don't even include text messages.  But have no fear -- those statistics are only a few days away.  So stay tuned (as if you could tear yourself away from your screen.)

The (Surprising) Top 50 Websites 2010

I love lists.  I love that someone is out there spending hours and hours figuring out what's in and what's out on my behalf.  Of course, I don't trust everything I read or see or hear in a list -- but it can be a good place to start.  For example Pingdom estimates that as of December 2009 there were 234 million websites with 47 million of those being added in the previous year.  Add to that the estimated 186 million blogs, the 500 million people on FaceBook and you can see how keeping track of all this media is an impossible task. 

While I try to stay current - I sure don't have time to review them all so I'm always thrilled when a reputable source pays their writers and researchers to filter the countless options into a finite list I can tackle. 

Further, when TIME Magazine publishes a list I feel good about its credibility, objectivity and mainstream perspective.  It's never Make sure you set aside some time to take a look at the list (and feel free to share YOUR favorite sites -- especially those that pertain to parks, recreation and camps). 

TIME says their list ranges from "the helpful to the distracting, the big hitters to the unknowns."  The list is NOT the most popular or most visited sites, but the "best" according to the TIME researchers.  For instance, Vimeo is on the list; YouTube is not. 

Click here to see the complete list.  And get ready for some surprises.