A letter from the President of the National Association of Women Business Owners San Francisco Bay Area. Sent 5/6/10.

Changes are happening at NAWBO-SFBA!
Two upcoming events, including a new Board Induction

Please mark your calendar for two important upcoming events. On Thursday, May 13th we will have another mixer at the OMNI Hotel. Margaret Lukens will be our facilitator and will give us tips on how to be more effective and organized so we can follow through in our businesses – creating more success and more profits! Register here.

And on Thursday, June 10th we will have a terrific dinner meeting! On June 30th I will be stepping down as president and the new Board, with Jennifer Baum at the helm, will be stepping into place. Board Inductions will happen at the meeting on June 10th. Many of the Board members who have served over the past three years will remain on the Board, but we will be saying good-bye to some significant Board members. I will give them a special acknowledgment that night. Faleciai Favroth, whose business is demanding more of her attention, has decided not to take the Co-President role and will be turning over the membership chair position as well. May Pon, who has been on the Board for eight years, will be leaving and is moving to NAWBO-CA. Cynthia Fassler is revolving off the Board after several years of dedicated service to NAWBO-SFBA. Mary Janaitis has been a facilitator for the Walnut Creek Breakfast Meeting for several years and is now moving on. Mary will continue to facilitate the Leaders’ Circle Program along with her business partner Gussie Stewart. Register now!

I will also be acknowledging two of our long time vendors, Jennifer Donahue and Diana Kimbrell. Both Jennifer and Diana have served NAWBO-SFBA for several years and are moving on to other projects. We owe both of them a perpetual debt of gratitude for their dedication to NAWBO-SFBA.

And, if that is not enough – we will be welcoming back Dr. Mary O’Hara Devereaux, founder of Global Foresight, one of the world’s leading futurists and business forecasters, a sought-after keynote speaker, and the author of such best-selling books as Navigating the Badlands: Thriving in the Decade of Radical Transformation. Those of you who were here for Mary’s last talk will remember that we barely let her leave the room with all of our questions and desire for her knowledge and insight. Mary left us warned and prepared last time about the financial downturn and will update us this time about the future outlook and how to best launch ourselves into a prosperous future.

I look forward to seeing you all there!

Best regards,

Barbara Mark, Ph.D.
NAWBO®-SFBA President 2007-2010

I have recently received newsletters from fellow marketing and branding professionals suggesting our businesses, and perhaps our lives, would be better if we all stayed away from social media. One newsletter that I recently received stated that sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Tagged are overwhelmed and chaotic, and we should simply disconnect. Another suggests there are two types of people, “innies and outies.”  Those that are inner directed are deemed somehow better, and those that are outwardly directed, who use social media to build their business, are only filling a need for approval.

I couldn’t disagree more.

Building a brand and awareness around that brand can be handled in two very different ways.  It used to be widely perceived that interruption based marketing was the only way to reach your target audience. What is interruption based marketing? Think about the “direct mail marketing” you find in your mailbox that usually goes “direct” to your recycle bin. Or the TV commercials you can now fast forward through, or the pop-up and pop-under windows that turn you off to a brand faster than you can double-click.  This form of marketing is increasingly ineffective.

Today’s search and social media tools are a great way to get your target audience’s attention when they are looking for you. We are now more sophisticated buyers, and we prefer not to be inundated with meaningless advertising. When we want something, we want to be in control. This is why the Peridot team are big fans of social media for marketing purposes. Inbound marketing is when your ideal client finds you at the time they need your service or product. Through the use of social media tools, it becomes easier for your consumers to find your message, learn more about you, become a fan, and eventually, a customer.

Your online voice speaks volumes to those who are actively seeking your business.  We will not call you an approval seeker, rather, a smart business person more intimately connected to today’s smarter consumer.  So go ahead, be outgoing!

Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

It used to be that creating a marketing plan consisted of essentially knowing your product, your competition and your ideal client. You put an ad in the yellow pages, went to a rotary meeting, and made some phone calls.

Things are a great deal more complex now and it’s bigger than traditional versus Web 2.0. Who is your competition? Are they even in this country? Where is your ideal client? How do you reach them? Consumers are harder to reach than ever before. No one watches tv commercials, reads their direct or junk mail or uses the yellow pages anymore.

Other important questions we need to ask ourselves is where will our industry be in a year, or even six months? Will the economy improve? Will there be another dreaded wave of foreclosures, a credit crisis, severe inflation? What is happening in your industry?

On September 11, I will be hosting a workshop in downtown San Francisco, close to BART, entitled, “Gaining Marketing Momentum for Growth in 2010.” This is an opportunity to witness how Peridot’s evolutionary model can help your company, regardless of what is happening in your industry. Because what they say is true – businesses that keep pushing forward on building their brand and reaching their ideal client will be the ones that shoot ahead when the economy recovers.

Here are a few of the questions I will be covering at the workshop.

Who is your target client?

Answer this as detailed as you can.  How old are they? Where are they when they are looking for you?

What is your business name, and Why?

Does your name fit your niche? Is it memorable? Does it appeal to your target audience?

Who are your competitors?

Where are they? What are they called? What makes them different and the same as your business?

What is your market differentiator?

What separates you from the competition? Why buy from your business?

Are you a NAWBO or BNI member interested in attending the workshop? Contact me for a coupon code valued at $100!

San Francisco, California – April 10, 2009 – Peridot Productions, Inc. of Oakland, California received an award for outstanding achievement in Print/Design Excellence at the annual 2009 Showcase of Print Excellence Awards. The Showcase of Print Excellence is a printing competition covering Northern California and Northern Nevada, hosted by the Printing Industries of Northern California.

Competing against nearly 450 entries from printing and graphics arts firms, Peridot received a bronze. The company’s winning submission was Northern California Grantmakers 2007 Annual Report.

We are proud of our winning team! It’s an honor to be recognized by the industry as a company that produces top quality, award winning materials. Dan Nelson, PINC President agrees. “This was a great competition with a very impressive standard of entries. Peridot should be very proud of their company’s achievement and the excellent work done by their employees.”

The Showcase of Print Excellence recognizes those responsible for the creation and production of print communications in Northern California and Northern Nevada. The competition promotes excellence in print communications and rewards companies and individuals who produce the best in print media.

In a recent issue of Wired magazine, BLOGS were declared dead, thanks to tools like Facebook and Twitter.

What do you think?

We’ll comment next week, but first we want to hear from you, our readers.

Are you ready to make the most of those business cards you have dutifully collected that are gathering dust in a shoe box? We’ve got some great suggestions for you. Email marketing is a fantastic way to reach out to people you have met.

1.  Follow up! Once you receive the card, review it and decide if this is a person you want on your list. If it is, pick up the phone! It’s rare to receive a phone call these days and it really makes a difference.

2. People love to hear their name. So make sure your email marketing is set up to  address the recipients by first name.

3.  Use white space. It’s true that you have about seven seconds to capture your reader’s attention on a webpage. Considering how much email we all receive, it’s even less in email campaigns. Write clearly and concisely, and be sure not to fill up the page with too much information. The more white space you have the better your chances are that your message will be read.

4. Be careful of certain words that catch spam filters. Just because you are offering a gift doesn’t mean you should write the word “free” in all caps at the top of your email. We’ve seen it spelled F.REE, for example.  Eventually, spam filter will catch onto this, too, so be creative.

5. Finally,  use the reports from your current campaign to get the most out of your next campaign. We partner with Constant Contact and highly recommend them for their great reports. Our clients like knowing who clicked on what articles, what percentage forwarded them to colleagues, and so on.

There is more…so much more. Stay tuned!

Online social networking can be a great way to keep in touch with old friends. Sure, we all know that. In fact, thanks to Facebook, I recently introduced my husband and children to one of my closest friends in high school whom I had lost touch with nearly 20 years ago. It was an amazing experience!

Of course, we all want our time spent to pay off professionally, as well. The trick is to keep your profile professional. Your profile will get a lot more traffic than your own website! Yes, it can be tempting to post that photo with the lampshade on your head from last Saturday night, but who’s watching? It could be a current client, an interested prospect, or even a member of the media. Here are a few things to remember:

• Use a professional head shot

• Keep the photos clean and “appropriate”

• No personal “in-jokes”

• Remember that you may be just 1 degree away from your next big client. They may be seeing every status update you make. Use your status updates wisely and let them see what you are working on.

In general, our advice is to treat your online social networking profile as you would a bio in your local Business Times. If you are just getting started, have some questions, or simply don’t have the time to manage it all, contact us. We’re happy to schedule a 30 minute free consultation.