Why outsourcing makes sense in today’s economy.

Reaching, connecting and communicating with your target audience in today’s environment is harder than ever. You’re probably facing lots of challenges — limited internal resources, a small staff, a lack of social media expertise and management, a reduced budget — but at the same time lots of expectations from within your association.

On New Year’s Eve I crawled around an elaborate tunnel system, climbed through dark caves, barreled down a 7-story slide, dangled from 4-feet-wide wrought-iron slinkies and generally acted like a kid in a candy store. All this excitement came courtesy of St. Louis’ City Museum, a historic shoe factory turned bizarre and very fun playground. The creative folks at the museum have used random, found objects from all around the city to construct their own version of a funhouse. Stainless steel bread pans become wall decor, salvaged tile becomes a walkway, rebar linking abandoned planes become monkey bars, a fire engine and trolley car turn into super-secret hiding places. My knees are bruised up, I have a cut on my nose and a bump on my noggin, but neither I nor my friends wanted to leave this crazy place, where adults are actually encouraged to act like kids. Seriously, Charles, the friendly guy who kept everyone from knocking their heads on the umpteen slides, told us we were supposed to be laughing a lot and acting a little wired and demented and childish. So we obeyed.

It was the City Museum that inspired this year’s work resolution: SpArK My CrEaTiviTY. Like many of us, I have a tendency to get caught up in most pressing demands of my day and get sucked out of a creative mindset. This not only makes me grouchy, but a work mentality that stays head-down and inwardly focused detracts from newer, better, bolder ideas.

How will I add more creativity to my work life? For starters, I’m going to turn off my e-mail for extended periods to devote more time to writing. I’m going to research a little less predictably. I’m going to talk to my freelance writers on the phone more frequently. I’m going to take actual lunch breaks. In my out-of-work life, I’m going to devote more time to reading fiction, something I’ve always loved to do but which has taken a backseat as of late. I’m going to explore taking piano lessons again. I’m going to say yes to many different kinds of cultural events, especially the mind-bending ones. In short, I’m going to be more of an explorer and reflector so that creativity becomes more a part of my daily life, not something that I have to concentrate on and wish for at crunch times. And I’m open to other ideas if you have them!

P.S. Don’t you love these vague and unmeasurable kinds of resolutions? I can definitely see myself succeeding with this one.

Jan. 2, 2009, marks one year that Megan Pacella has been with Hammock Inc. full-time. So as is customary around here, we sat her down to ask a few questions about what she’s been reading, her favorite day so far at Hammock, and cartoons she enjoyed as a kid.

In 2009, I predict a lot of marketers will finally figure out that Twitter is much, much more than the confusing chaos of an online chat, forum, time-wasting thing they now believe it to be. I’m going to attempt to help them in that journey by using this blog to make simple suggestions on ways marketers at associations, companies or any organization can use Twitter and other conversational media (also called “social media”) tools to sell, promote and better serve customers, members, alumni, donors, backers, etc.

Lots of companies have already registered a Twitter username for their company. For example, I recently mentioned how Dell uses Twitter to promote special deals at its “outlet” . Dell has also registered many other Twitter accounts that are used in various ways.

Many savvy marketers have a designated individual or group of individuals who use Twitter Search to track any mention of their brand or product names appearing on Twitter. Unlike a typical search engine, Twitter Search is designed to provide “real time” results of a search query. Once a search results page appears, it continues to collect results as long as you keep the page open in a browser tab. It won’t automatically refresh, however, a message at the top of the page displays a tally of how may times users have included the search-term in a “tweet” since you last manually “refreshed” the page. Click on the refresh link, and the new tweets appear.

But don’t think of Twitter as merely a “tracking” tool or a “broadcasting” tool. It is a conversational tool. Here are a couple of examples (there are many) that I’ve personally encountered on Twitter during the past couple of days — days when many marketers who use Twitter had set up a “see you next week” message on their accounts.

The first example is an easy one for me to select, as it’s from a Nashville-based (my hometown) company, Griffin Techology , and the employee who maintains it is, separate from his job at Griffin, a highly visible member of the local blogosphere . I was trying to locate a place locally to purchase a Griffin product called the Clarifi that serves as a case or “skin” for an iPhone, but also includes a small lens filter you can slide over the phone’s camera lens for taking closeup photos of documents or business cards. (I want it to use it with what is quickly becoming the software I’m currently obsessing over, Evernotes — and thought it would make a good stocking-stuffer for, uh, Santa to give me).

When a phone call to the Apple Store led to a dead-end (you can purchase it online, they said), I decided to tweet a request for help. Within moments, (again, this was Christmas Eve) Dave @ Twitter, the person who is the “@” at @griffintech posted a “tweet” suggesting I check Best Buy. He then tweeted to me a coupon-code for a “stocking stuffer” discount if I couldn’t find it there and needed to order it online. Sure enough, it had sold out at the Best Buy closest to my house, so I used the coupon code.

The other example is a product called EyeFi . It’s a rather amazing product as it looks like a regular memory card for a digital camera, but it has built-in wifi that automagically (without any wires or docking) uploads photos to your computer or via your home or office’s wi-fi, to a web-based photo hosting/sharing service like Flickr. Yesterday, on Christmas morning, I mentioned on a tweet that I’d received and EyeFi for Christmas and within moments, @eyeficard was following me. The service was a little clunky on Christmas morning, but whoever was responsible for maintaining the @eyeficard Twitter account was responding to any tweets for assistance. It was impressive.

For customer service, these companies also probably use forums, wikis, knowledge-bases and a lot of people answering phone-calls. But yesterday, a 30-second tweet reassured lots of customers that help was within 140 characters and a few seconds away.

[Note: The post also appears on RexBlog.com]

Meet Steve Sullivan, Hammock’s newest employee. A native Nashvillian, Steve has spent his career helping small businesses grow. A graduate of the University of Georgia, Steve is an avid sports fan, especially for his alma mater Bulldogs and local Tennessee Titans. Steve lives with his wife, Debbie; two children, Jeannie and Stephen; and two dogs.

Previously, I provided a practical way for retailers to use Twitter as a means to broadcast a text-message to customers. Another thing you can do with Twitter is tracking messages posted on the service by a specific group of people or on a specific topic.

To track people, you simply set up an account and “follow” the specific people’s Twitter accounts.

To follow a topic, you go to Twitter’s Search page and do a keyword search. After you land on the results page, you will have the URL to a page that will provide continuous updates to any message posted on that topic. But what if you want to track several terms, or want to narrow your search? Twitter Search allows you to use what are called “search operators” to accomplish that. Here is a page that explains how to use search operators like the one I used to set up a Twitter search with several terms about the Tennessee Titans that looked like this: titans OR “tennessee titans” OR “jeff fisher” OR “vince young” OR “LP Field” OR #titans.

You can make links to those two pages — the one where you are following a certain group of people and the one with results to the keywords search and be done with it.

Or, with a little bit of simple, simple work that any semi-geek (I can do it, so there) can accomplish, you can take the content from those two pages and display it on your own website or blog. (As these posts are intended to be “simple things,” I suggest you may want to enlist the help of someone who is familiar with how to use RSS feeds or the “API” of Twitter. You, personally, don’t need to know anything other than how to ask the question, “Can you help me hack the Twitter API to display something on my blog?” In this case, “hack” is something good.)

Here’s a great example of what I mean:

The group Sunlight Foundation has used the Twitter API to create a service called “Capitol Tweets” that collects and displays every new Twitter message shared by any member of Congress who uses Twitter.

So here’s an idea for you: Do you follow a specific group of lawmakers or public officials — say ones from a specific state or region? You can easily develop a version of what the Starlight Foundation is doing.

You can even develop a widget that allows other people to display what you’re doing on their sites — like the one above that is shared by the Sunlight Foundation, but that’s another post for another day.

[Also posted on RexBlog.com]

[via: Read Write Web]

This is a simple how-to:

1. First. Relax and clear your mind of what you think Twitter is.

2. While in your relaxed, open-state-of-mind, think of Twitter solely as a way you can broadcast text message alerts to customers when you have a sale.

3. Set up a Twitter account with a name that’s modeled on other companies that I’m borrowing this idea from, say: DellOutlet, the Twitter account Dell uses to do what I’m suggesting

4. Promote to your customers that you now offer special “text-message sales alerts” they can only get by signing up for the alerts at that Twitter account web address.

5. About once a week, post an incredible (and I mean something they’ll brag to their friends about) savings on some item

Will it work? Here’s a quote from a recent article on InternetNews.com that mentions how Dell uses Twitter:

Twitter has produced $1 million in revenue over the past year and a half through sale alerts. People who sign up to follow Dell on Twitter receive messages when discounted products are available the company’s Home Outlet Store.

Because I’m trying to keep this how-to post simple, I won’t even tell you about how customers can subscribe to your Twittered sales alerts lots of other ways like, say, via RSS. For now, just think of it as a way to send out a text-message blast to customers who really love to come to your store or website when they know they can purchase something on sale. (Sorry, this only works in countries where Twitter is available via text-message or SMS, as the techies call it.)

Sidenote: I discourage individuals who use Twitter as a personal forum for sharing random thoughts with friends about what they’re doing each moment of the day from trying to “monetize” it by participating in any of the schemes that are emerging that will pay them to insert an ad in their Twitter stream. However, when you say to customers, start following this specific username for the stated purpose of receiving alerts when there are real deals, that’s the opposite of spam. I guess that’s something we should call Twitter Bacn. Note to self: explain bacn in a 2009 post.

[Also posted on RexBlog.com]

(Hat tip: VentureBeat.com.)

We have several traditions here at Hammock and one of our favorites is our annual company T-shirt. For the past 17 years, we’ve shared an annual edition T-shirt with the friends we work with throughout the year. You can see a gallery of our past T-shirts here.
Each year we experiment with something new. Last year we encouraged all recipients to upload a photo of themselves wearing their T-shirt and from those, created a world map of all of the photos.

Last week, I attended the annual American Business Media Top Management Meeting in Chicago. Rather than its typical multi-topic conference approach, the meeting focused primarily on presenting the results from a major industry study and recommendations from the consulting firm Booz & Co.

I found the approach refreshing, more like a deep-dive seminar than the typical panel-led sessions of most conferences (did I just telegraph my opinion of most conferences?). The Booz & Co. study (as reported by Hamsa Ramesha for Northwestern University’s Medill News Service) focused on “pathways to profitability” for B2B media companies in a period when traditional media is shrinking and digital media is expanding.

As ABM member companies are fully involved in events, digital and print media, it was not a Print vs. Web thing — most companies are way past that. This study was more focused on the question: “Based on the reality we’re living in, what must your company become to be successful in five years?”

Perhaps one of the reasons I really enjoyed the study results may be the way in which the findings and recommendations so closely correspond to much of what we at Hammock have been focused on during the past couple of years.

While I plan to write much more about this in the coming weeks, let me preview it by saying that the Booz & Co. study finds that for business-to-business media companies to succeed, they must focus on one of two pathways: Being a company that serves end-users (subscribers, attendees, etc.) or being a company that serves marketers (custom media, marketing services, etc.). While companies can offer services that target both end-users and marketers, Booz & Co. have not yet found an example of how a company has become a leader in both strategies.

It makes sense to me why they have not, but the reasons why that is so are going to be a part of my follow-up posts on the topic. (How’s that for a tease?)

In the meantime, let me say, we at Hammock know exactly what our pathway is: We are going to continue to serve savvy marketers in their efforts to generate more profitable relationships with their customers or members.

Our services will grow to include even more ways to help marketers accomplish that goal via print and all forms of digital and online media. Our services will also grow in ways that will offer marketers the means to measure and manage such programs in ways that clearly provide tangible business benefits to our clients.

We look forward to the continuation of this journey. And I look forward to posting more about it over the coming weeks.

Most of the time when I’m designing for our publications I don’t have a literal connection to the people and places profiled in the articles. Do I find them fascinating, interesting, inspiring? Absolutely. I love being a part of the storytelling process. But I’ve often thought that it would be nice to occasionally have more of a connection.

Our current issue of American Spirit, the magazine Hammock publishes for the Daughters of the American Revolution, features an article on using cemetery icons as a genealogy research tool. Tasked with designing the layout, I decided to couple a work-related scouting trip with a personal genealogy interest. One Sunday afternoon, I accompanied my photographer husband as he loaded up his camera gear and our reluctant 7-year-old son and drove south to Franklin, Tenn. Our destination was the old Franklin City Cemetery and Rest Haven, a slightly newer cemetery adjacent to it. The city of Franklin was founded in 1799 and is named after Benjamin Franklin. It’s also my birthplace.

As the final resting place of four Revolutionary War patriots, the Franklin City Cemetery has an obvious tie-in for our DAR readers. Plus, I had a hunch we would find the icons needed for the article—and I wasn’t disappointed. Angels, wheat, willow trees, doves and other icons were all represented, and they helped illustrate our story of how these markers can give us clues to the lives of our ancestors.

As far as the personal genealogy connection, my great-great-great grandfather, Joseph Coleman, is buried in Rest Haven Cemetery. He was an early inhabitant of the area. In our two-hour scout through the cemetery, I finally found his headstone. I had hoped we might be able to use his marker in the layout, but it’s plain and hard to read, so it visually wasn’t a good fit for the article.

Nevertheless, our walk through the cemetery made me curious to learn more about this ancestor on my Dad’s side. My Mom is the real genealogist of the family, and she was able to share some of his story with me. I love imagining that Joseph Coleman might have crossed paths with those four Revolutionary War patriots buried in the City Cemetery.

Image research is something I do every for every issue of American Spirit, but this assignment was much more hands-on and personal. It made me feel connected.