Knowbits
Knowbits: extra thoughts, ramblings, interesting tidbits shared by others.
Best Friends: Write a Blog, Help a Dog Campaign 2011
Written by Donna LehmanFeeding & Caring for Our Best Friends
@AdrielHampton of 'Adriel Nation/Wired to Share' invited his connections to participate in the "Write a Blog, Help a Dog" Campaign sponsored by Pedigree Foundation - a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. For every blog post that mentions them between now and this Saturday, September 3rd, Pedigree will donate 20 lbs. of dog food to an animal shelter.
What a fantastic way for an organization to:
- GIVE!
- Involve the community
- Build brand awareness through PR
As a life long pet owner I can attest to the joy my canine buddies bring to my life. I am currently the proud mother of seven year old Geordie, a loving over-sized Yorkie, and his hefty younger brother Marco, a nine month old, sixty pound Shar Pei. Every day I experience the hilarity, sometimes aggravation ('leave it!' means take your huge slobbery mouth off of my arm!), and always love of sharing our home and lives with our pups. Wouldn't have it any other way!
But we all know that not every dog is so lucky. Neglect, abandonment and abuse are the sad lot of many animals - and they are lucky if they find their way to a shelter to receive care. Let's help support those shelters in one small way. All you have to do is write! And pass this along.
More details and all the rules can be found on Felissa's Two Little Cavaliers blog. Thanks Felissa for sharing!
To quote Adriel, "I hope you'll join me and write a post this weekend. The goal is 500 posts and 10,000 lbs. of food."
Here's to 5 tons of meals for mutts!
--Donna
Photo used as the encouragement of the campaign
I'm going to stop apologizing. While I had every intention of being more self-disciplined about my own Blog contributions - life, and clients, just keep jumping in front of my intentions.
Now a couple months have again passed since the last post, and it seems impossible to me that May 26th turned into August 7th - but there's the reality. Family, friends and co-workers can attest to the more-than-usual hectic schedule plus a couple of unforeseen events that contributed to this time lapse. But in the end it is about me and my choices: where do I choose to focus my energy every day? The answer is clearly, "On client deliverables".
I'm lucky that client work is above normal for this time of year and I'm even luckier to be working with the calibre of clients we have! In fact, we are so swamped that I've finally been able to realize a long-hoped for collaboration with @KnealeMann; albeit a tiny one to start, but which I fully anticipate will grow and flourish. Having conversations with Kneale is like getting an injection of Red Bull intravenously. He's FULL of ideas and creative solutions to business challenges! I need to drink a full pot of coffee before picking up the phone to speak with him. (Peace, Kneale - you're great).
In the midst of all this controlled mayhem I did make the choice to escape for a much-needed vacation with my equally-driven husband to a beautiful Caribbean island. Great decision! Best recharging trip ever - I highly reommend this kind of action to everyone.
So here I sit on a Sunday (late) morning...still drinking part of that pot of coffee...and feel the writing bug hit me. Yes, I do in fact have some "client work" that needs to get finished, and I will be doing that a little later. But for the moment it's peaceful, I can think, I can share, and I'm moitivated enough to do so.
Not that I don't secretly wish I was still sitting on a beach terrace on an island...no apologies.
--Donna
{EAV_BLOG_VER:f453c0ed6e636006}
Interesting text string, no? I've been asked by Empire Avenue to place this in the first part of my blog post - so they can verify that my blog is written by a real person. Hmmm. I guess a bunch of robots are writing blogs that I have not yet uncovered.
I admit: I got sucked into this newish gamified social network...and I'm not the only one! Just got home from Blog World (#BWENY) and heard @chrispirillo confess that he is addicted to the site. His 'value' is certainly one indication of his high level of participation.
The topic of 'Game Mechanics: The Future of Loyalty' was discussed yesterday at the conference by @schneidermike, Chris, Dave Tyler, and @JasonKeath - as applied to business promotion.
Fun. The panel was - and the insistance by the speakers that 'fun' was an important component of any form of gamification. I agree. Other points mentioned:
- 'Earn and redeem' drives behaviour
- 'Step' people along a path of learning the game
- Make it contextually relevant
What's in a word? Plenty, if you write enough of them. After reading about Wordle on the Social Media Examiner blog, under ideas for generating content - I just had to try it out for myself. I plugged in the URL for my MarketUP Musings, and this is what came up. I spent a few minutes picking the fonts and colors - to coordinate with our site colors.
But equally interesting is seeing which words are picked out of my stream of writing to be empasized. 'Goldilocks' got major prominence, even though I wrote just one post with that title. However, I included several links with that name in them too - so it carried a lot of weight.
When you are writing copy for a website and want to know how well you are doing with keywords or phrases that you want your readers to find - run it by Wordle and see what comes up. It might surprise you.
--Donna
What an intriguing sort of title, and quite literal. I’ve spent the last few hours running search after search online in order to uncover precious market information for some of my clients. Fortunately, it’s something I usually enjoy - though as time passes, it seems to become more difficult to actually find what you’re searching for.
When I was a little girl, I used to ask my father - an amateur astronomer - how many stars were in the night sky. It’s the kind of question a parent has to dance around, make up a colorful myth, or flat out admit “I don’t know”. But today a similar line of difficult-to-answer questioning might run like this:
- ”How many websites are there?”
- ”How many pages are added every day?”
- ”How many can a search engine index?”
- ”Where do they all COME from??”
And the reason this matters... is the sheer volume of responses returned when running even a fairly detailed search. Maybe it’s my imagination, but the responses from my longtime trustworthy Google appear to be less relevant than I’m looking for.
It’s probably the fault of all those clever folks doing SEO. Yep, they’ve gummed up the engines with their vying for positioning.
Oops. Did I say that out loud?
-- Donna
Image source: NASA, Image of the Day Gallery from MPIA/NASA/Calar Alto Observatory
Like most people, I have a definite body clock and mind rhythm that influences how I work. My most productive work hours are early in the morning, from about 6:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., which seems to be the time when I need a physical break. Then I try to fit in yoga, elliptical or other running/walking activity to sort of recharge. After exercise I can focus again for a few more hours before the dreaded mid-afternoon crash. And boy, it's a real 'clunk' feeling. I'm pretty well useless for any creative thinking or critical decision making after 3:00 p.m. Until late in the night when everyone else is asleep - oh, around 10:00 p.m. or so.
Glitter in the Air: Multi-tasking with Breathtaking Results
Written by Donna Lehman
Pink's Grammy Performance - Singing upside down and spinning
If you didn't catch the Grammy's on the last day of January, and somehow missed various clips aired on the news of Pink's performance, "Glitter in the Air", take a few minutes to see it now. Even if this music is not in your blip.fm Playlist, there's something amazing in this performance that illustrates beautifully the power of layered communication and the results of muti-tasking when done awesomely well.
I promised myself starting March 1st I'd be more self-disciplined and write something in my blog - EVERY DAY.
Well, today is March 11th and I missed days 1-10.
Finding Your Way in the Woods (or Weeds...or Web...)
Written by Donna Lehman
Hard to accept that we're already in the second week of the year, and this is my first post. Have meant to write something every morning, and have done so, just not the blog. No slowdown going on here - as client requests have us rushing headlong into new territory - in multiple directions. Sounds like a frightening opportunity to get lost in the woods (or the weeds, depending on your POV and geography)...
It's that time of the year again - the END. For many days, even weeks, much has been written and verbally expressed about the demise of 2009 and the new millennium's 'aught' or 'nought' decade in general. (Pick your phrase, American or British). There are those who argue it isn't even the end of the decade, just as Jan 1, 2000 was not the beginning of it.
Donna Lehman
