MarketingMel

Two years ago Tim Story and I sat at Panera Bread sipping coffee and planning our futures.  Both of us had recently been laid off from an interactive agency that was hit hard by the recession. I did not even own my own laptop yet and I think Tim was using a borrowed one. Tim knew I was an entrepreneur at heart who wanted to start my own public relations firm, so he volunteered to register my domain name. In betweeen sips, he looked up from his machine and asked for the name of my new company. I said without hesitating, “MarketingMel.” I had already established the name on twitter and when you googled “MarketingMel” it soared to the top of the page, far ahead of a well known actor whose name I share. Who could argue with that? A company was born.

Tim has gone onto success in his new career and he has helped me as a freelancer with SEO work for some of my clients. For two years I’ve had the privilege of working with fantastic business professionals, guiding them with their communications and awareness efforts including marketing, public relations and social media strategies. I’ve had the opportunity to work with some outstanding vendors as well, extremely talented web designers, photographers and videographers.

When I tell people I’ve been in business two years they generally congratulate me and comment that many entrepreneurs don’t make it past the first year.  Shortly after that groundbreaking cup of coffee I attended two workshops at the Tennessee Small Business Development Center at ETSU including one on writing a business plan.  For those of you who may be thinking of starting your own business, here are some pitfalls to avoid and tips on starting a small business. Chief among those, writing and then working your business plan. And as for your business’ name, well, I recommend something with staying power. See you here next year!

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What will Facebook business page changes mean to you?

So far I like (pardon the pun) the new Facebook business page changes. Here are my three key takeaways as someone who is administrator for several pages.
1- Greater emphasis on photos- For me this is a good thing. My “products” are generally professional business people whom I help to build their personal brand. (The most recent is Marcy Walker who will launch her re-election campaign for Johnson City city commission Wednesday.) People love to look at photos of other people so for MarketingMel (and politicians everywhere) this is a positive change.

2- Getting e-mail alerts from Facebook-I think every Facebook admin found it a bit squirrelly that Facebook could alert us of changes and comments on our personal pages but never on the sites we admin. Hooray. Those days are over.

3- You get to be yourself- In the past we could only comment and “be” the admin of the business page. We could not be ourselves. Once again Facebook has listened to its users and is allowing us to switch identities back and forth as needed.

For a great step by step video walk through of the changes please check out Social Fresh’s Jason Keath’s excellent demonstration. You can also add to an excellent conversation on the subject at MarketingMelPR. Please comment here to tell us what you think of the changes. I’d love to hear from you.

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What’s a short, effective form of Valentine’s Day communication that pre-dated twitter by more than 100 years? The candy heart of course. The limited space on those little hearts packs a powerful message in significantly less than 140 characters. Our personal brand – communicated in one savory morsel. A quick bit of research found marketing exec’s at twitter and Sweethearts candy thinking along the same lines. This year the candy hearts will feature a “tweet me” slogan along with 79 other tasty tid-bites. Yet another great way to get out a brand message in a short, concise and delicious marketing channel. Happy eating, er, tweeting.

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