I’m not going to make excuses. I could and you’d see right through them. Fact is, I’ve been taking the evenings off. The new job has me screaming busy all day, and when I get home all I want to do is talk to the kids and chill. And, dog gone it, it feels really good.

And I miss it. I miss the brain dump of thoughts. There’s a whole notebook on Evernote of blog post ideas. I just haven’t turned them into anything coherent yet.

So, I’m back. And the best way to ensure I stay back is to make a commitment. So here it is – I’ll blog 1-2 times a week. I’ll keep you updated on what’s happening in my world and in the parts of the marketing world that touch me.

Updates – remember the Groupon Goods adventure we talked about in Sept? It’s still pending. The deal hasn’t been signed yet. I’ve got product on both coasts. I’ve got shipping cartons standing ready and return policies to insert. IT has worked their magic so the nightly sales file records the sale properly. But there’s no deal signed between Groupon and the brand. Hurry up and wait has pretty much been the mantra.

Ditto on the other two new programs scheduled for Nov. launch. The complexities are fascinating. The myriad of partners still dizzying: front end developers, membership management vendor, fulfillment vendor, banking partner, payment gateway vendor, brand team, call center leadership x 2. And those are just the pieces I have interaction with. I don’t have visibility to the media partners, creative teams, manufacturing or finance.

What I’ve learned is nothing is simple. An IT now runs the world. Or at least it seems that way. Each of the partners mentioned above has an IT component. All those systems have to talk to each other. When they don’t, stuff doesn’t show up. The shipment doesn’t land on the front porch. The revenue doesn’t get to the bank. The product doesn’t appear on the website. It’s no wonder there are 9 conference call days every week.

AND I love it. I’m pretty sure I’m an adrenaline junkie. I like running at 160 mph. And I’ve got a killer team. They are so smart and capable and take so much initiative. They astound me. I don’t have to micro manage,they self organize.

Pretty much, I’ve landed in a great place. Great clients, great team. Fantastic products.

And I’m blogging again. That feels good. I will see you later this week. Promise

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Oprah uses email marketing to engage with her fans even now that she’s not on TV.

What other media mogul do you know that gave out their personal email address on national TV? She gave it out during the very last show. The one where it was just her on stage for an hour saying goodbye after 25 years. Go ask your girlfriends, I bet they heard it, to.  I emailed her, that put me on her email list. Since then I’ve gotten a few emails from her. They read like Oprah talking, not like Oprah advertising.

O uses my email address judiciously. I have the sense she feels privileged to have it. She’s careful not to abuse the relationship.

There are 4 things Oprah does with email.

1. Takes interest in my world – she asks how things are going.
2. Updates on her – She tells me what she’s been up to
3. Asks about 1 thing – She’ll ask my opinion on 1 topic
4. No sell – She’s never asked me for money.

And BTW – she never uses a belittling Subject Line. There’s no “10 things you don’t know about X.” Her typical Subject line is “Happy 4th of July,” or “The next right decision.”  It’s respectful.

The opposite is true of another self-made millionaire who has an entrepreneur’s conference coming up in Dallas. I’m registered to go, but honestly I tuned out her emails 6 months ago. So much so, I can’t even tell you who the keynote speaker. Every email she sends is her trying to reach into my pocketbook to pad her own.  “Upgrade your registration for exclusive access” or “advertise my stuff to your friends.” It got old after email #2. She’s clearly only interested in how much money she can get out of me and my network.

Oprah has a lot to sell. Can you imagine trying to start a network? That’s a B-I-G job. In her email in August she said flat out it’s 10x harder than she thought it would be. And yet she’s never begged me to watch or asked me to buy an ad. She’s asked me what I think of a show. I mean, I know she’d like me to watch, sure. But she’s using my email the same way a girlfriend would – by asking my opinion and telling me a bit about her life.

I don’t have any friends who ask for money every time we talk.

Who else do you know who uses email really well?

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No one knows their audience like Oprah does. Nobody

They were a late start on social platforms and some people have picked on them for that. But, when you already recognize your audience members faces, why dive into “social” just because it’s new.

It struck me while watching O’s interview with MC Hammer, that until then she really wasn’t “getting” how to use social media. There was a moment in the interview when Hammer says to her (talking about Twitter) “If I were you, I’d just tweet “Watch this show, it’s on OWN right now.“”

Oprah put her hand on his arm, looked deep in his eyes and said, “We are going to talk more after the show.”

MC Hammer has his own social media company helping other companies do social well. She must have listened well.

The first weekend in April the Oprah Winfrey team started doing live tweets during “Behind the Scenes” episodes (#OprahLiveTweet). The first tweet I saw from her that day was something like “Ok, #OprahLiveTweet starts in 10 minutes. If nobody shows up by 9:15, I’m going home.”

The live tweets were a hit! And it’s been growing ever since. Twitter wasn’t new to Oprah. She’s been on Twitter for more than 2  years, but she didn’t really use Twitter. She was just there – with millions of followers.

But nobody is as good at relationships as Oprah. She and her team totally get it. My God, what other brand do you know that sent their 300 biggest fans on a trip to the other side of the world with a friend. Seriously. They get engagement, in spades. Actually, what other brand could TELL you who their 300 biggest fans are and why?

OK, back to their tweeting. Now her team is tweeting up a storm. And while some of it promotes specific shows and OWN (The Oprah Winfrey Network), they get that they have to earn the right to promote to people. Their tweets are natural, conversational and show genuine interest in learning from who ever engages with them.

To write this post I needed help remembering when the live tweets started. I tweeted @SheriSalata, executive producer for The Oprah Winfrey Show to ask. She sent me a note back mentioning one of the other staffers @mayawatson, to help her come up with the date. Simple.

Back to the tweets. Here’s six Live Tweet habits Oprah does well:

1. Keep it casual
2. Learn from who else is tweeting
3. Be helpful
4. Recognize people
5. Don’t go it alone
6. Have a goal – a classic Oprah thing “have an intention.” It works.

I’d love to know if O hired MC Hammer to help her team. @SheriSalata, if you read this, drop me a tweet and let me know

BTW-you should see how they are using email marketing. Killer good. But that’s another post. See you!

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Publicity does not equal immediate gratification.

There’s no doubt AmEx Open’s Facebook Big Break for Small Business gave finalist (and winner Distinctive Gardens gobs of publicity. And it was a ball (and a ton of work.) The nuts & bolts and bean-counter question is –  did it grow the business. Let’s take a look.

Lisa’s main goal was to use Big Break to drive brand awareness and measure results with some key metrics (read more about that here.)

More of the nitty-gritty is below, but first the big picture observations.

3 things the metrics taught us:

1. Watch for changes in untargeted categories
2. Metrics don’t measure psychological highs
3. Small business is a marathon

OK, numbers chicks

Here are the results. She compared year-to-date numbers during the pre-Big Break period to the 2 weeks of Big Break voting (July 5-19, 2011) in these categories:

• Foot traffic  – up 4.2%, and 20 people specifically mentioned Facebook
• Retail Sales (all numbers are year-to-date)
  • Nursery +3%
  • Annuals +.4%
  • Perennials +2.5%
• Facebook Fan count – + 2027
• Website traffic – hits were way up
• Design Inquiry count – 3
• Newsletter email count – not much change, only a couple new names

A couple notes:

• Foot traffic up 4% doesn’t sound like much. Until you mash-up foot traffic with weather. Dixon was in the midst of that brutal heat wave that crushed most of the country. In fact, July was the 6th warmest month on record for Illinois. Not many people wanted to be outside, let alone plant anything.
• Overall for 2011, Distinctive Gardens has had a challenging year. On average they’ve been down double digits year-to-date. So the upticks while small, were welcome.
• Website traffic was not just up, it went global. Typically their site gets hits from IL and the 4 surrounding states. With Big Break hits came from everywhere, including New Zealand. The map up top tells the tale (it’s from July 10.)

The Surprise

In crunching the numbers Lisa found another interesting up-tick — pavilion rentals.  At the beginning of July their pavilion rentals had equaled all bookings for 2010. In the hot, hot month of July they have never booked a pavilion rental.

That changed this year. During Big Break they booked 6 pavilion dates. (Revenue gets hit w/ deposit money) So not only are they ahead of last year, they’ve already knocked last year out of the park. It’s not their core business, but it’s a solid revenue stream that’s growing.

What’s all this mean long-term? No one knows. But common sense tells me this – when guests come to an event at Distinctive Gardens pavilion, it’s like advertising for the rest of the business.  It’s more eyeballs exposed to what they love – artful plantings.

What, dear reader, do you take away from these numbers?

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After 2 years of talking to people about their business and social media, the number 1 reason people don’t get started is fear. What are they scared of? Bad stuff. Bad stuff being said about them.

I get it, no one enjoys hearing criticism or harsh comments. I sure don’t like it. And that doesn’t mean it’s healthy or helpful to avoid it.

So, Laurie Bick and I have joined forces to do a seminar on dealing with negative posts. It’s called “Walking the Minefield.”  Laurie is a marketing communications consultant. She’s worked with companies like DuPont and Corning Glass. We’ve been working on a couple projects the last few months, and have developed a series of workshops based on things clients have been struggling with.

The goal of “Walking the Minefield” is to help people develop a plan for responding. When you’re armed with a plan, it’s a bit easier to stay calm and control knee-jerk reactions.

The session is next week, Friday August 12, 9:00 – 10:30 am. It is an in-person session at Brandywine Executive Center in Wilmington, DE. All the details are here on the registration page.

There are 6 sessions in the series. You can find the session descriptions here. If you or someone you know is struggling to get your head around social media take a look. We hope you’ll join us.

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Happy Vacation

Thanks for stopping by. This week I’m vacationing. Sun, sand, family and relaxing is the only thing on my mind. We have a whole crew imported from the Midwest, and we are going get ourselves tan and cousin-ed up.

Stop back next week for more stuff to keep your social biz efforts humming along.

If you need inspiration right now, wander through the archives here.

Here’s to sleeping late and bug-bites. Cheers!

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They won!!!

The waiting and secrecy is over. Distinctive Gardens is a Big Break winner!

At midnight on July 19 voting for AmEx OPEN’s Facebook Big Break for small business closed. Then the waiting began.

And when that ended the secrecy started. And the work for the next phase.  Finalists learned their fate within 24 hours of the last vote. They were sworn to secrecy, actually signed to secrecy.

Here’s some notes from the big phone call, as recalled by Bud:

“We at AmEx and FB were very impressed with all you did to get the votes”….  ”We know how hard you have worked”…..   “We’re so very happy you won.   We really really like what you are doing”…..     “Bud you’re a star”  (Bud’s response through the tears). “That’s what the kids say, but I’m just Bud.”

The hard work part is no joke. Here’s a taste of what they did to get out the vote:

1. Developed 4 sets of web and Facebook Page graphics to keep people interested (the graphic above, for the win is #5)
2. Created press release, posters and invites  for the Big Surprise Bash, and for the Finalist announcement
3. Walked the town in Dixon and Sterling before voting started, inviting people to the Big Surprise Bash
4. Made a Prezi trailer for the Big Surprise Bash
5. Learned to use Twitter
6. Created an Our Story Prezi to show at the bash
7. Passed our “Vote for Us” cards at every bar in town and a local music fest
8. Thanked every person who fanned their web page, usually a 12 hour/day job
9. Fed blog content on the experience to SocialPie
10. Bud’s son and a buddy hit the street to pass out “Vote for Us” cards
11. The kids also share to all their Facebook friends continually
12. 13 TV and Radio appearances (either before or after landscape jobs)
13. Walked town (Dixon, Sterling, Subula) in late afternoon passing out vote cards
14. Posted every compliment, photo, blog and news mention possible to Distinctive Gardens Facebook Page.
15. Announced TV and radio appearances to Twitter and Facebook, by now nicknamed DiGgers at the suggestion of a fan.
16. Created an event on Facebook inviting people to vote and invite their friends to vote. It spawned upwards of 15,000 invitations.
17. The community was incredibly supportive. There were at least 5 personal friends who posted to their Facebook Pages everyday, the local florist used their sign, “Vote Distinctive Gardens on Facebook;” other businesses supported DG in their ad space and with in-store signage.

Overall it was an incredible experience. Just watching it from 800 miles away I was exhausted and impressed.

They are celebrating today for sure. And I couldn’t be more pleased to have played a tiny role in the whole thing.

BTW – Party at their place Friday night, Ravinia style

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Invite Friends to your Page

The Invite Friends button has reappeared on Facebook Pages. (only admins can see it)

• What it does -helps you spread the word about your Page to people you know.

• How it works – it sends an invite to the friends you select.

• Who’s it for – especially handy for new Pages, or those who started a personal profile for their business and now want to convert over to a Page.

• What it doesn’t do – your buddies still have to hit the Like button when they get to your Page.

• What I don’t know – if each Admin on a page can invite their own friends or if it defaults to the friend list of the page creator. (The old button worked this way.)

Is it showing on your view? And if you have multiple admins, can they each invite their own friends? Drop me a note in Comments if you experiment.

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Well, the voting (for 2011 AmeEx OPEN’s Facebook Big Break for Small Biz) is over. What a ride for all the finalists. Winners are announced on July 25, so we have to wait to see who won. Bummer. BUT…impact long term to the businesses that made the Top 10 is happening anyway. All that effort and all the website hits video view should help the businesses, even if they don’t win the contest.

What will the exposure created by the Facebook Big Break do for Distinctive Gardens business? Even if they don’t win, the publicity and exposure from being a finalist is nothing to sneeze at. Lisa and I tried to figure out how to measure the impact.

Overall we decided that beyond than winning the contest ($20k is a BIG deal) the goal is to drive brand awareness of Distinctive Gardens which could be leveraged to drive revenue growth long term.

The real challenge was deciding what we could track that would measure that.

We decided to on revenue, and a group of stats that indicate an increase in interest in the garden center that could be precursors to revenue.

• Foot traffic
• Retail Sales * – excluding landscaping and maintenance revenues.
• Facebook Fan count
• Website traffic
• Design Inquiry count
• Newsletter email count

“How do we isolate and attribute shifts in foot traffic, sales, design inquiries etc.to the BB (Big Break) exposure?”

This is tough. And it’s tough for any form of advertising or promotion. Does Coors Light really know how many more cases of beer they sell specifically because someone saw a Superbowl commercial? No. The ad team takes credit for any increase in sales, sure. But it could be because they also started distributing in a bunch of new stores, or in a county that had been dry.  Or because it was unusually warm in January so people were in  “warm weather, let’s have a beer” mood. Or maybe they got their tax return arrived and they celebrated. There are always plenty of uncontrollable and uncorroborate-able factors.

Can you think of any other factors she could measure? Leave us a note in comments.

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There's nothing better than community.

Today is the final day of voting for American Express Open’s Facebook Big Break for Small Business. The clock stops ticking at midnight eastern time.

The tiny community of Dixon, Il and their neighbors are pulling out all the stops to help Bud and Jim at Distinctive Gardens win. You can vote here, if you haven’t already.

Here’s the comment stream on the pic. Would your neighbors do this for you? Just fantastic.

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