I’ve recently begun tweeting for my employer, which is a supplier in the vast global travel industry.

Despite the fact that the travel industry is struggling along with the rest of the worldwide economy, there is no shortage of twitter fans among travel suppliers.  I feel safe saying there are thousands of airlines, cruise lines, hotel chains, resorts, tour companies, travel agents, destinations, experts, bloggers, journalists and pundits of every stripe tweeting on every aspect of the travel industry.

While my tweets are generally informative and my efforts still exploratory, I have found there are some lessons to be learned and opportunities to be exploited in the world of business tweeting.  Here’s what I’ve found:

Twitter is a great sales tool.  If you have prospects, see if they are on twitter.  You can follow their tweets, learn a lot about them and even create a relationship with them.

Listening is as important as tweeting.  I’ve learned a lot about my industry from reading the tweets of the many people I’m following.  Listening to tweets is just as valuable as sending them out.

Own a niche.  Tweeters who own some niche in the industry are seen as a valuable resource and have no trouble getting followers or having their tweets re-tweeted.

Twitter is a conversation.  Some people think Twitter is a publishing tool.  It’s actually a tool to hold conversations and build relationships.  Use it that way. 

Put some personality into your tweets.  I think there’s nothing worse than the corporate tweeter who just posts the occasional sterile information and offers no personality, no humor, no sign of being a human.  Don’t be that guy/gal.

Hashtags work.  Hashtags are search tools that help others find your tweets.  My favorites are #traveltuesday and #followfriday.  These hashtags are day specific and you can find people to follow and generate followers for yourself.  Most industries have a standard hashtag, ours is #travel.

Thanks for reading and happy Tweeting.

Access America has released its first ever Vacation Confidence Index (shameless plug: my idea) and has found that a significant number of Americans are suffering from a Vacation Deficit.  The “deficit” is caused by those Americans who strongly value a vacation, but for economic reasons have not taken a vacation this year.

The Vacation Deficit is very real.  Of those who feel that a vacation is important or very important, nearly one-quarter (23%) do not plan to take a vacation this year.  That’s a lot of missed vacations.

This fact made me think about the effect all of those missed vacations have on our country, our economy and our productivity.  It’s no secret that the travel industry has been having a tough year because travel is down across the board, including in leisure travel.  The travel industry contributes a lot of money and jobs to our economy.  The U.S. Travel Association predicts 450,000 U.S. travel jobs will be lost between 2008 and 2009.

But beside the pure economic impact, what is the impact on workers who don’t take time to get away because they don’t take their vacation?  No vacation means the batteries aren’t recharged and workers aren’t “tan, rested and ready.” One study found worker productivity up by 82% after a vacation.

Bottomline:  Take a vacation.  It’s good for you, it’s good for all of us.

John Paul DeJoria

I just started reading Entrepreneur Magazine again after a long hiatus.

Three articles in the July 2009 issue caught my eye.

The first article talks about learning how to alter customers buying habits in order to get your sales going again.  In this economy, customers must be jolted into buying again, not unlike the jolt one receives from a defibrillator in order to get the heart started again.  Customers have hunkered down and have learned a new pattern of buying behavior:  they aren’t buying.  This is causing a downward spiral that by now we know only too well.  To get them to buy, you have to do something drastic like offering them something that’s almost free, just to get them to learn how to say “yes” again.

Another article lists 5 ways to ramp up marketing in a downturn:

1. If your product is a great value, scream it from the rafters.
2. Use social media like your life depends on it.
3. Cause marketing can bring in new customers.
4. Take the fear away from buying by giving an iron-clad guarantee.
5. Give stuff away to generate some good PR

The last article tells the story of John Paul DeJoria, the entrepreneur who turned a $700 startup into Paul Mitchell Systems, a $900 million hair care empire.  Not yet done, he co-founded Patrón Tequila, accidentally creating the ultra premium tequila market and becoming rich in the process.  He’s worth an estimated $2.5 billion, making him one of the richest men in the U.S.

John hails from an immigrant heavy part of Los Angeles that I’m very familiar with. On his way to making his fortune, he sold Christmas cards when he was 9, delivered newspapers at 4am and sold encyclopedias.  John was homeless twice; he was sleeping in his car while getting Paul Mitchell off the ground.

John’s story is an amazing rags to riches story of determination.  He says the biggest hurdle in business is rejection.  The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is the ability to handle rejection and soldier on. Pretty good advice.

Richmond

Like a lot of others, I’ve tried to maintain my optimism about an economic turnaround. That was especially tough today when two friends and colleagues informed me they had lost their jobs.  One is a recruiter in Richmond, the other is a producer for an internet radio network in Portland, OR.

I’ve wondered for some time where all the folks in Richmond who have lost their jobs due to the demise of several of this small town’s major employers, will find new ones.  Richmond is a great place to live and work but employment opportunities are very limited, especially for people like me who work in advertising, marketing and public relations.

Fortunately, there are a lot of job search resources out there and Richmond’s networking community is one of the most diverse and vibrant I have ever seen. Richmond is fighting this recession with everything it has and job seekers have a plethora of career networking opportunities and professional organizations and special interest clubs where attendees can hone job finding skills and beat the bushes for their next opportunity.

The best advice:  Don’t give up.  That next great job may be right around the corner.

In a report issued on May 29th, the Global Humanitarian Forum estimates that 300,000 people die each year from disasters related to Climate Change.  The Forum, a think-tank led by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, also believes that Climate Change seriously affects 325 million people and causes $125 billion in damage every year.

Climate Change disproportionately affects the poorest countries and the poorest people.  The United Nations estimates that Africa will need $1 billion a year to help manage the effects of Climate Change, including the cost of relocating refugees.

Similarly, the International Organization for Migration claims that Climate Change will produce more than 200 million refugees by 2050.  Many of these refugees will come from island nations that disappear due to rising oceans.

The affects of Climate Change are real.  How many people will be forced to suffer before we make the serious changes needed to combat Global Warming?

I was judging scholarship applications over the weekend for the Hispanic College Fund and I thought it might be useful to pass along these observations and tips.

1.  Write for your audience.  This is basic advice for most business writers, but for some reason it is lost on many applicants.  Think about your audience and what will move them to give you a good score.

2.  Spelling and grammar count.  I was amazed at how many spelling and grammar errors I found in the applications I was judging.   I try not to judge others harshly for their errors (I’m not perfect either) but this is a highly competitive scholarship process and spelling counts.

3.  Answer the questions.  Community service was a big part of the application but several people didn’t address this in their essay.  They might have had a great record in community service, but I couldn’t tell from their application.

4.  Sell yourself.  There’s a fine line between selling yourself and bragging, but successful applicants will walk that line and sell the attributes that make them stand out from the rest.

5.  Tell me a story.  Everyone loves a good story.  Everyone hates reading “dry” applications.  Make it a good read.  Tell me your story, evoke some emotion, make me identify with you.

6.  Use the letter of recommendation to add to and amplify your application.  It seemed that a lot of applicants asked someone to write a letter and were happy to include anything they received.  Make sure your recommender reads your application before they write their letter and ask them to amplify and confirm what you’re telling me.  If you’ve done a good job in the application, this will be easy for them.

7.  Ask several people who are knowledgeable about scholarship applications to read your application and make suggestions on how you can make it better.  Expect to write several drafts until you feel it is perfect.  

Good luck to all scholarship applicants and I wish you the best in all of your endeavors.

S&K Menswear took another step toward extinction this week when it inked a deal with liquidation firm Hilco Merchant Resources to sell the firm for at least $7.9 million.  Hilco has the option to keep S&K running, but I think that is unlikely.  If you’re going to keep the company going, you don’t sell to Hilco, who is best known for liquidating the likes of The Sharper Image and The Bombay Company.

While Hilco has the option of continuing to operate any or all of the approximately 100 stores that are left in the chain, Hilco hasn’t elected to continue operating any of the 30 stores they were handed in February and are in the process of liquidating.  To keep S&K running as a going concern, the company must file a new sales plan with the court by this Friday, 5/15.

As I wrote in my last post about S&K, I think S&K Menswear is done and these latest developments only help to confirm that conclusion.

Here’s an image that I can’t get out of my head:  I’m in the gym watching the local news on the big TV, and on the screen appears a gaunt and pale Joe Oliver.  He is wearing a bizarre looking shirt and vest combination that I wouldn’t wear on a dare.  I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I was thinking, here is the president of a company that built its brand on business suits, modeling an outfit that is totally out of sync with its core customer.  I thought,  “What is he wearing?!”

In my opinion, S&K got crushed by a perfect storm of a horrible economy, changing workplace fashion and an inability to reinvent itself.  Being unwilling or unable to change a failing business model will never end well.

UPDATE: During a hearing on Tuesday in bankruptcy court, S&K indicated it could run out of money by the middle of June, as it has less than $1 million in cash on hand.  The company’s chief restructuring officer, Jonathan Tibus, says the stores are also running out of inventory.  Look for a liquidation sale to start by Memorial Day.

The New Richmond.com

I was lunching today with Dave Saunders, the mastermind behind the new Richmond.com ad campaign.

While wolfing down Fish and Chips at Penny Lane, the topic of conversation turned in a familiar direction.  The discussion of the future viability of newspapers raised its hand, asking to be recognized yet again.  This subject matter is far from academic in a market where the fate of a venerable 150 year old newspaper is far from certain.

The conversation reminded me of a recent article I had read about The Bakersfield Californian, which continues to lead in the nascent field of newspaper innovation.  The Californian is experimenting with web-based niche publications.  The paper launched Bakotopia.com, a local social media network designed to reach non-readers.  The network has launched Bakotopia-The Magazine, published twice monthly and distributed to 20,000.  The Californian has also launched Printcasting.com, which allows locals to publish their own on-line magazines.  Other media companies are aggregating local content from a variety of sources and selling ads against that content.

Whether or not these efforts succeed is not the point.  The fact that newspapers are trying to find new business models speaks volumes to their struggle to survive.  Newspapers have been the poster child for how arrogance and inertia can kill a pillar of the community. There is a window of opportunity for change and innovation, but that window is closing.

I’ve blogged on this topic before and I believe that like the strategy adopted by The Californian, newspapers are in the best possible position to create social networks based on geography and they should attack this opportunity with gusto.  There is a ton of local content available from websites and bloggers, just waiting to be aggregated and monetized.

I think that daily newsprint is short-lived and that dailies will go web-only, publishing and distributing paper versions a couple of times a week to accommodate advertisers who need physical delivery of their ads.  Web-based papers should morph into news and social networking sites, creating conversations between the paper, advertisers and readers.

Conversations create relationships and building relationships is what media does best.

A Brave New World

There is a great article in the New York Times about the future of journalism.

I was excited to read about how the journalism school at Arizona State University and other top j-school meccas have been leading the charge into a brave new world of the unknown.  It’s a poorly kept secret that the newspaper business model is badly broken and that publishers around the country are fighting for their survival as they thrash about trying to find a new model that will work in this digital age.

It’s refreshing then to know that academia is taking the lead in cross training journalists to transcend all existing media platforms and to report the news regardless of the medium.

Perhaps journalism is not dead.  It’s just waiting for a new Champion.