Those of you on Twitter will understand the prolific Fail Whale that tells us that Twitter is overloaded. For those of you not on Twitter, get to it and sign up here! Drink this martini while you’re setting up your profile. You may be much more charming and intelligent.
This martini is featured in our February e-newsletter, The Gibson. If you don’t receive The Gibson, click here to sign up!
Ingredients:
1.5 ounce vodka (top shelf)
1.5 ounce Cointreau
1.5 ounce Blue Curacao
Lime slice
Preparation:
Chill martini glass.
In a large cocktail shaker, combine the ingredients with ice. Shake until mixed and chilled.
Strain the cocktail into the chilled glass and garnish with the lime.
We will be working with Ondine on spreading her great design and personality even further through the beauties of social media and online PR.
As part of the 20 Young Designers feature from Traditional Home, the magazine is holding a Reader’s Choice contest. Please support Ondine and support us by voting for her!
Note: Make sure that you click on the “Vote!” button and not just the “Like” button to vote!
Also, by voting you are automatically entered to win a complete room design and $5,000 in fabric to outfit the room so there’s some extra incentive…besides your undying love for us.
For those of you who think that you just need to have a Facebook page, tweet, and do some blogging, think again. You actually need to use them as tools to get results. Ramon DeLeon, owner of 7 Domino’s Pizzas, is the king of monitoring what people are saying about his brand. He doesn’t just listen though, he answers and he makes things right if they’re not already, often in very memorable ways.
For a limited time, we are offering our Social Media Launch Pad at a discounted price. Don’t miss out!
Our Social Media Launch Pad sets up your firm’s presence on all appropriate social media platforms. This starting point allows your company to jump into social media and learn along the way.
The Launch Pad includes:
Kick-off call to explain the different tools and briefly discuss strategy
Adding photos, information, and all other necessary details to the above platforms to create pages that will show that you not only have a presence, but have a robust presence and want to encourage engagement
Creating a blog for your firm, using one of hundreds of wordpress.com templates that work aesthetically with your current web site
1 month of “co-piloting” to ensure that you have a resource for questions as you begin using the different tools
6 months of unlimited Flight School classes that teach you about how to use Facebook, Twitter, Ava Living, blogging, and LinkedIn for business
Special Discount from December 11-December 31, 2009!
We are excited to continue our new Flight School classes on the following social media tools’ uses for business: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Ava Living, and blogging.
Our next Flight School class will be offered on Twitter 101 for Business. The class will be held on:
Twitter Lingo: “tweet”, @replies, DMs, “follow”, and more.
Twitter tips to get you started.
How Twitter keeps you connected to your customers.
How Twitter can keep you updated in the Interior Design industry.
How Twitter helps you to build relationships within your industry.
Each online Flight School class will be limited to 12 participants. This will ensure that people can ask questions and there is interaction between you and your Social Media Flight Instructor. Register below and you will receive a confirmation within 24-48 hours. Classes are 60-90 minutes and include a Q&A session.
Social media and non-traditional marketing to supplement and enhance your marketing plan can be the best way to increase your return on investment. However, do you really have time to tweet, post, blog, fan, follow, or even figure out what all of these things mean? Furthermore, do you have time to commit to actually doing these things well? Shouldn’t you be spending more time designing? After watching many design firms use our Social Media Launchpad to get their firms set up on Twitter, Facebook, Ava Living, LinkedIn, and blogging, and then not have the time to properly tend to those social media tools, Gibson Design Management has launched its Online Community Co-Pilot program.
Your Co-Pilot is experienced and knowledgeable; she will help you not only navigate the social media world but will also work to fly your business to an even higher level.
Navigation plans: Your Co-Pilot will lead twice monthly calls to learn about what is going on within your business and how your marketing objectives can be better achieved through using online tools. We will work with you to develop strategies to make your offline marketing objectives more efficacious by using these instruments.
Jet maintenance: Your Co-Pilot will ensure that all of your instruments are up to snuff and safe for rocket flight. By working with you and by managing all of your online tools, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ava Living, and your blog (blog copywriting additional), your business will be equipped for the steep trajectory. After your Social Media LaunchPad, you don’t want your tools to sit idle and unwatched.
As our social media and marketing division has grown over the last six months, we have been asked increasingly if we offer classes about how to use the different social media tools for business. We didn’t…until now!
Our latest structuring of packages for our social media clients has taken on an aeronautical theme. Coming soon will be the announcement of our Marketing Jetpack, Social Media LaunchPad, Online Community Co-Pilot, and more. What better name for our new webinars than Flight School!
In the near future, we will offer Flight School classes on the following social media tools’ uses for business: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Ava Living, and blogging. Our first two Flight School classes will be offered on Facebook 101 for Business.
Agenda will include:
- Why your business needs a Facebook page
- How your personal profile and your business page are different
- The difference between Facebook groups and pages
After watching these two videos (which have similar content), I hope that you realize that you will quickly become a dinosaur if you are not embracing social media as a direction for your business’s marketing.
SmartBlog on Social Media posted a great article last week about the importance of your subject line when sending emails to your lists. They list a few tangible suggestions to greatly increase the value that you bring to your community as well as the increase that you can get in your open rates.
(article below)
After Stephanie Miller’s recent guest post about optimizing the deliverability of e-mail marketing messages, we received several requests for more information about e-mail marketing best practices. With 10 years of e-mail marketing experience under our belt, we’ve learned a few things. Now it’s time for us to share with you.
The golden rule: Do unto others …
My No. 1 tip for e-mail marketing success is actually what not to do: Do not send too many e-mails to your list. The value of your list decreases the more you send e-mails that recipients don’t want/need.
As small companies, our most limited resource is our time. Therefore, it is not surprising that the question arises, “Why should my business be on Twitter?”
1. It’s one of the least expensive ways to perform research and development. Once you have even a few hundred followers, you have a great sample size to extend business questions. Wondering whether people would be interested in a certain new service? Put it out to the Twitterverse. The worst thing that can happen is that no one answers. The best thing that can happen is that you receive several responses and have valuable information about how to proceed. This could save you a tremendous amount of time and money.
2. Someone may be talking about you. Whether it be positive or negative, someone on Twitter may be talking about your business. How will you respond if you are not there to listen? I recently tweeted that a restaurant I frequent in Charlottesville always has terrible service. This received a huge response from my Charlottesville following (15+ tweets back and forth about the pros and cons of the restaurant). Crickets from the restaurant (even though they are on Twitter- this actually makes the silence worse). This could have been a perfect opportunity for the restaurant to make happy customers. [See a video here about how P.F. Chang's is on the cutting edge of using Twitter to make customers happy].
3. You are able to show your company’s true personality. By showing your true personality, you will attract more of your ideal clients.
4. You never know who you are going to meet. Just like you can’t expect your phone to ring if you never leave the house and network, Twitter is an opportunity to network and engage with people on an even broader scale. I have not only met people across the world (we seem to click well with Toronto twitterers for some reason) but have also met some great people in our area who I may never have met otherwise. This has translated to real life connections and business referrals.
5. Become a better educated businessperson. Twitter is full of tweets with resources for business. It is also a great place to pose a question like, “Are there less expensive alternatives to Photoshop?” Then just wait for your following to chime in on its experiences and knowledge.
This would not be a complete blog post if I did not mention that I posed this question to my Twitter following and received the following responses.
Question:
Received these answers from some of my great followers:
If your business is already on Twitter, what are some of your success stories? What have you found to be the greatest benefit of Twitter?
For a limited time, we are offering our Social Media Launch Pad at a discounted price. Don’t miss out!
We are excited to continue our new Flight School classes on the following social media tools’ uses for business: 
Social media and non-traditional marketing to supplement and enhance your marketing plan can be the best way to increase your return on investment. However, do you really have time to tweet, post, blog, fan, follow, or even figure out what all of these things mean? Furthermore, do you have time to commit to actually doing these things well? Shouldn’t you be spending more time designing? After watching many design firms use our Social Media Launchpad to get their firms set up on Twitter, Facebook, Ava Living, LinkedIn, and blogging, and then not have the time to properly tend to those social media tools, Gibson Design Management has launched its Online Community Co-Pilot program.
As small companies, our most limited resource is our time. Therefore, it is not surprising that the question arises, “Why should my business be on 
