Marketing Java Blog: Blending traditional and social media marketing in Boulder, Colorado.

Why “Buy Local” Matters

Nov
2010

buy local by marketingjava.com It’s something we don’t always think about, but people throughout our cities and towns own and operate shops, businesses and restaurants all around us. They provide not only goods and services that we love to buy and consume; they employ people, and their sales add revenue to the local tax base. Know what else they provide? A sense of connectedness, pride, and yes, ownership. Let that last one sink in a bit…

These are the businesses that support fundraising activities at the local elementary school; they provide gift certificates for the raffle to help benefit a local shelter; they sponsor youth and adult sports teams. They are part of the fiber of our communities.

We may not “own” our favorite pizza joint, but some how it’s gotten way passed our collective pocketbook and gone straight into our hearts; it feels like our place. It’s the restaurant we always recommend and it’s the one we like sitting in with friends for any reason at all.

Can we cultivate such affinities for corporate-controlled, big box-type places? Sure. But it’s different some how. And you know it is.

We may not pay the rent at our favorite vintage store, but week after week, we find ourselves there being helped by our friend that knows the exact pair of boots we’ve been seeking. We feel a little special there. They make us feel welcome and wanted.

And that’s really the essence of the Buy Local movement. It’s the feeling that as consumers, we matter — and that we can return the favor by shopping or eating there.

So on your next shopping excursion, stop in a local independently-owned business. You might make a new friend or even see a neighbor. You’ll also be strengthening your own local micro-economy by keeping resources right in your community and you just might fall in love with a coffee shop you never knew existed.

Two local events my Colorado community should attend: BIBA’s Local and Loving it Fest and MHBA’s Buy Local Week Celebration.

Wining it up in Virginia

Oct
2010

Pearmund in Autumn 2010

I’ve just returned from vacation and have so many experiences to report, it’s a bit overwhelming. If you follow me on Yelp, you can see some of my personal reviews in coming days. Today’s post, though, is dedicated to my winetasting adventure in Virginia’s wine country. Yeah, I didn’t know they had one either, but they do, and I have the bottles of wine to prove it!

One thing that remained a constant: Surprises, both good and bad. Our journey took us through roughly 600 miles and 15 vineyards for winetasting. Because we were in Virginia, I must say they’re not all lined up side by side like Napa or other places. Instead, there could be 10-20 miles between them, tucked away on a meandering road that would take an hour to travel. A few times, we drove like crazy, only to find a place serving a day we weren’t visiting, or worse, closed down for good. Sadly, signage, brochures, placards, and websites were not always accurate and sometimes our wild goose chase resulted in parched throats.

Some things of note:

One vineyard employee acted like she was taking cheese from her own private stash in order to honor the Foursquare offer we checked in with.
At another vineyard, the lady pouring made every attempt to be rude, first by ignoring our arrival, and secondly, but leaving the room to talk shop (loudly) with a fellow employee, halfway through our tasting. Each wine she poured, she seemed entirely put out, bored and peeved. We ended up not even finishing the tasting, the experience was so awful and uncomfortable. Oddly, we were the only guests there. A tactical error to be sure, because up to this point, we had purchased wine at EVERY stop.
The very next vineyard went overboard in a great way: Pearmund Cellars made us feel right at home, welcome and special. They let us keep a glass at no charge, gave us their premium tasting for the price of their simple version, shared terrific recipes using their wines, and let us linger well past closing time. The experience between this place and the former was night and day. Oh, and he gave us dark chocolate with the port – oh my.
Of all the places we ventured, only one place shared cheese to pair with the wine. I believe the mouth is stronger than the mind in this capacity, so when the lady at Fox Meadow Winery brought little plates of cheese out for us, I was pretty happy. Most was local cheese, which REALLY made me happy.
Of all the places we visited, only two had offers through Foursquare, and in both cases, the counter people had no idea what Foursquare was, let alone how to comply with the offer. Talk to each other, people.
More than half were on Facebook, but upon looking them up, most were set up as personal pages instead of Fan Pages – oops!
Only a smidgen were on Twitter and not one “Yelp” sticker was spotted.

Overall, a great trip through the Virgina wine country and quite a few lessons learned. If you’re venturing into such an area, call ahead of time to make sure they’re open. It’s too bad these places aren’t using social media just a bit more because in many ways, it would be easier to tell this story if they were. If you’re a business like the ones mentioned, make sure you are using all points of social media that your guests might use. I was pretty surprised that nearly every checkin on Foursquare showed others before me, plus the location. I’m taking a stab here, but it seems the winetasting crowd has some tech savvy people with a little disposable income. Tap into that, and you could create quite a loyal base of wine purchasers from as far away as say, Boulder, Colorado

Oh, and if you don’t like people or are just a rude individual, do your business a favor and keep yourself away from customers. It’s bad form to do otherwise.

Xmarks: Your Audience is Calling

Sep
2010

It’s nice when you have an app that works. You come to rely on the simple fact that it does so so you can gleefully get on with your work, while your good apps play quietly in the corner. This doesn’t always happen: there are plenty of garbage apps that were well-intended, but just give you fits and troubles. Xmarks is the good app, blending your bookmarks seamlessly from one computer to the next, so you’ll always have the right ones, regardless of which of your computers you’re on. Gone are the days of having to send links to your “other” computer, or backing up and dropping in bookmarks. Each session is backed and saved without any effort. It’s been an organizational dream…

Until we just got the news this week of them pulling the plug on their project. This update has their user base in a (supportive) uproar. The underlying theme of comments to their post? “Tell us how much and where to pay, and we’ll send the money to keep you rolling.” Let’s hope they’re listening, because in all reality, I’ve not seen such a well-built or maintained app in some time. They could set the example of how to keep an app financially supported, while keeping their doors open and appeasing a happy group of users. Or, they could duck and run. Let’s hope for their sake and the sake of their avid users, they choose the former. Pick up the phone, Xmarks. We want you to stay and we’ll pay to make it happen.

Say No To Bad Clients and Bad Shoes

Sep
2010

They seem awesome when you’re buying them (they’ll stretch out, right?), but once you start walking around in shoes that don’t fit, you begin to feel the misery of your investment in the soles of your feet. In running your business, it’s a similar scenario: you take on business you know isn’t a good fit, then lament the fact as you’re toiling over the project for that client. The better tack is to address things in the very beginning, during what I call the “courtship” stage. You need to formulate questions for yourself in order to really smoke out the “vampire” client when they appear on your radar:

Do you know what they need and can you provide it?
Are they sincere or just “tire-kicking” to get your ideas, then find a cheaper vendor?
Have they shared their budget? (If they don’t, this is always an immediate, glowing red flag for me.)
When do they want deliverables? Is it a reasonable timeline or pie-in-the-sky?
Have you had an exploratory talk to get things out in the open, leaving little room for surprises?
How’s the vibe in your conversation with this potential client and would you like working with them?

The last question for me is something that can make or break ANY working relationship. If you find you don’t even like the client or are opposed some how to them in ways that could make things sticky, back away. Fast. As business owners, we have it in our power to turn down caustic or troublesome people and our sanity will be preserved for it. Just like a good pair of shoes, if they fit, you’ll have them around for a long time and love having them around. (Photo Credit: Kevin H.)

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Do you have an experience, taking on a client you shouldn’t have? Please share it

Book Review: The New Social Learning

Sep
2010

Recently I finished reading a copy of the book from authors Tony Brigham and Marcia Connor entitled, The New Social Learning. For an avid and staunch user of social media tools like me, there might not be a heck of a lot of revelations in the book, but for the person just exploring or getting more familiar with these tools, it serves as a tremendous resource.

The book’s main theme centers around the notion of learning and how social media applications are bringing collaboration and useful tools to Internet users worldwide. It’s not just classrooms being impacted by the social web, but companies large and small. People can tap into their social networks for a host of information and deploy cloud-based tools that change completely the way businesses and organizations operate and even communicate. Users aren’t tethered to one computer and organizations are now afforded a collective intellect that’s only a few mouseclicks away, and people can work with one another from points all over the globe.

The book goes on to examine some of the criticisms non-adopters have expressed with regard to social media tools. Myths are dispelled and the read is rich with excellent examples of how the positive truly outweighs the negative when it comes to employees making use of the social web on work time. Rather than being a “waste of time’, ideas presented showed a real value, especially when employees were allowed to be a guiding voice for their company. Refreshingly absent from the book is a common fallacy that irks this blogger: the more followers you have, the better your reach. Instead, they reiterate time and again the importance of genuine conversation, help and support of your online community.

Finally, when users of the social web share with non-users the vast resources they encounter in a day, they’re often met with a glazed look of confusion. For people not familiar with using the social web as a learning or sharing space, the thought of this kind of activity can easily seem daunting. The New Social Learning takes some of that worry away and gives readers some simple ways to get started along with common-sense guidelines to be proficient and get the most from the experience. For a person that is a very curious and knowledge-thirsty, but not yet familiar with how social media tools can help in both your business and learning endeavors, this is a great primer. You can also follow the title on Twitter.

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The Ugliness That Is Local-Washing

Aug
2010

It seems innocent enough: go head to head against your competitors by mimicking their campaigns, saying similar things and trying to evoke the same kind of sentiment from the unsuspecting consumer. But no, it’s not so innocent, and it’s happening right now, in small towns and cities across the country, even my own Boulder, Colorado. This sneaky assault is happening right under the very nose of each and every purchaser, shopper and diner nationwide. It’s called “local-washing”, and it basically means corporations dress and talk the language of “we’re doing it local”, but in essence, it’s just a ploy. You can read more about it here in an article by Stacy Mitchell in Indy.com, where she discusses how national corporations are co-opting the idea of “local” in an attempt to have consumers believe they are local in everything they do. Right. Sure they are. Tell that to the small businesses across America who have shuttered their windows when the Big Box chain rolled into town or the tiny downtown business districts that report record vacancies because their tenants couldn’t hang on during the worst recession of our generation.

The truth is when you spend your money in these establishments, some of that purchase will support workers there, but the profits go into the corporate coffers somewhere else, usually far away from your own community.

What will you do about it? I hope you’ll do what I do:

Shop local, independently owned businesses as much as possible and get to know your local shopkeepers and merchants.
Join the various “shop local” business coalitions that are active in your city. Mine are BIBA and MHBA, and I’ve an active participant with them both.
Encourage your friends and neighbors to do likewise and tell them about the great experience and service you have at any of the places you go.
Use social media tools like Foursquare, Yelp and Twitter to let people know where you are and share your experiences.

It’s your community, so think next time you shop and see if that purchase can be made with a small “Ma and Pa” shop. You might just be saving your town.

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Have you seen examples of local-washing in your community? Please share them here, so we shed more light on it. (Photo credit: Svenstorm)

Will Shopkick Dropkick Foursquare?

Aug
2010

There’s another neato geolocation player entering in the game very soon, and it’s easier for consumers to take advantage of the incentives merchants can set up. The standard has been for mobile app users to “check in” to receive perks and discounts, but Shopkick’s app works by subscribers simply walking through the door. Another added punch? They have forged some incentives with some partner stores and the model allows “kickbucks” to be used for Facebook credits and purchasing songs off Napster, to name a few. They’ve drummed up $15M in their recent round of financing and apparently Macy’s and Best Buy are interested in the potential; the latter hosted a preview in their San Francisco store, with more stores to follow soon. An Iphone app is poised to be ready by the end of August, with the Android app following shortly after.

Do you think apps like Foursquare have any need to be concerned? Moreover, do you think smaller or boutique merchants will get the hang of it? Even in my tech-savvy town of Boulder, Colorado, Foursquare has (sadly) only experienced luke-warm stickiness with them. Mobile users are running all over the city, checking in and rewarded with — silence. Why is that? My experience shows that some are *just* getting an idea of the power of Twitter and Facebook.

My advice to the folks at Shopkick: do a better job of talking with your audience and engaging the merchant community than Foursquare has. I’ve been waiting for months for window clings they said they’d send once I claimed my business, plus I did a presentation highlighting about their app and sent a request for stickers or something to give attending merchants: Not a peep from the Foursquare folks.

Why Buy the Cow?

Jul
2010

Today I was delighted to read a post that was a topic bouncing in my brain for some time. Karima-Catherine beat me to it , (and it’s all kind of awesome) but in essence, it relates to the plight social media professionals have when we get that email asking, “Can we grab some coffee so I pick your brain?”

How many times have you gotten that question? I believe this happens to all kinds of freelancers and other professionals. For me, it’s common, happening several times a week. For the price of a cup of coffee, the sender (maybe innocuously) thinks it would be great to sit and let me share my ideas, tools, and strategies. Suffice to say, I’ve gotten more tight-lipped and cautious about what I share, often just referring people back to the web. My insides want to jump about and share everything, but I can’t, or rather, I shouldn’t. Why? Because I have spent a small fortune in time and resources to become sharp and knowledgeable in the spheres in which I consult. As professionals, that’s our duty. If I share all I’ve learned in a free chit-chat, what would be left and what value have I placed on my work? Precious little.

Before you say, “What a selfish statement!”, first consider this: would a gift basket company tell you where to find the best baskets and goodies to fill it? How many franchise sellers share with you all the you the ins and outs of running your own franchise, without the hope of selling you said franchise? How many graphic designers will sit and give you their best ideas and concepts over a cup of joe — all for free? Precious few. Isn’t this really a form of spec work?

Experience has taught me two things: when someone is feverishly taking notes, asking you question after question and “How do you do this?” or “What would you recommend I do for this?”, you can bet one (if not both) of the following will happen afterward: they will either try to do it themselves, pelting you with emails and calls for more “guidance” or worse, they’ll hire someone cheaper than you, fueling them with your ideas.

Don’t get me wrong, I do LOVE supporting, sharing, and the lovefest small businesses can create using tools like social media. That’s not the point. The point is how much of your own intellectual property are you willing to give away? How much value are you placing on your craft, no matter what that craft is? What is your end goal in doing so?

A casual chat is one thing, but a fact-finding expedition is quite another. For the sake of your business, learn the difference and think about this next time someone wants to “buy you coffee.” It could be an innocent enough request, but it could also be a brain-picking session where you come away exhausted and poorer for the experience. I believe in helping people (and do it every single day), but I also believe that if people really want expertise, they need to be prepared to pay for it. If they want a little help, but don’t want to pay, there is an enormous resource in the Internet, and as we like to say, Google is Your Friend. My legwork and experience makes things easier for paying clients, not people unwilling to do the legwork themselves.

I want to leave you with a couple of solutions to manage the scenario, should it come your way. Solution one: have the meeting, buy your own coffee, and see just how much they want from you. If for one moment you feel uncomfortable about the questions (your conscience says “Hello! We normally charge for that information!”), you can reply, “I completely get your question, and that’s the kind of consulting my clients hire me for. Maybe we need to set a time for an actual consult.”

The other solution: Reply with an email and ask what questions they have. Find out beforehand if this is indeed just a chat or if they’re really wanting an hour’s worth (or more) of your time — gratis. If it’s the latter, tell them you can talk by phone briefly, that way you can control the tempo, direction, and temptation to give out more information than you wish. It should reveal enough for you to decide whether or not you want to proceed or set a time for a real (read: paid) meeting.

Helping people is really a beautiful thing, so don’t stop doing that. Just learn the difference between helping and giving away so much that you run drastically short on billable hours at the end of the month. You do have a business to run.

Free Wi-fi? Starbucks, That’s So Yesterday

Jun
2010

The coffee lover in me has a hard time resisting news about, well, coffee shops in the news. It appears Starbucks has bitten the java bean and will finally offer free Wi-Fi in their some 6,700 stores around the U.S. For any of you that have gone before, you know the big pain getting online can be at their shops. The question though: how many years have the corner coffee shops already been doing this? When will the copy-catting end? Does this mean their coffee will get better, too? Okay, one mountain at a time.

Now, the true test in serving customers will be when they cease with the coffee lingo snobbery and stop correcting the way I order my coffee, or at least keep said correction to themselves.

“I’ll have a medium sugar-free vanilla latte with skim milk.”

“So that’s grande skinny vanilla latte.”

“Never mind.”

Is it any wonder I drink at local coffee shops whenever possible?
Photo Credit: Bionic teaching

Good Vibrations: Two Cause-Marketing Tools

Jun
2010

Everyone and their mom has beat a path down the social media path, and for what it’s worth, we’re still in the process of laying the groundwork. This medium’s mortar has not even dried, and new applications are being built every day to help tap into the minds, hearts and pocketbooks of people all over the world. Cause-marketers are seeing these spaces as very useful tools for getting their message out and garnering attention for their projects. Entry is simple and the tools are easy enough to manage, so the notion is getting funds into the piggy bank can be made easier, too.

Fight With Tools
Some companies are emerging with applications that make it easier than ever to support causes you believe and want to support monetarily. In the earlier days, it was clever enough to put a link that went to a PayPal account and have people donate, but things are getting more refined, and donors need to avoid being bamboozled. If you’re a nonprofit and interested in upping the credibility of your cause through social media channels, here are two applications you should consider:

Made right here in Boulder, Colorado, Giveo has hit the market and once again changed the landscape for fundraising. They offer different platforms for nonprofits and foundations, and let you craft the perfect campaigns for your needs and audience, using crowdsourcing and donation solutions.
San Franciso-based Tivix offers plans to help with advocacy and fundraising, highlighting several clever tools and terrific price points for entry.

These are two of the best I’ve seen and I’m sure there are others. Please do you part share them here and spread the word, because it can only help.

Photo credit: Jon Juan

Why “Buy Local” Matters

Wining it up in Virginia

Xmarks: Your Audience is Calling

Say No To Bad Clients and Bad Shoes

Free Wi-fi? Starbucks, That’s So Yesterday

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