I challenge you to disagree with these reasons:

1. Women are detail-oriented: Especially when it comes to sharing details with one another, their children, their families, or their significant others. Even when it becomes painfully clear the first, second or third entity is no longer listening. Case in point—the last time I heard a man take a call announcing a new birth. The news when he got off the phone? A baby was born. No weight, sex, birth, or exciting/alarming labour stories. We women, we go mad-journalist for all those details. And then share lots of them on Facebook.
2. Not a lot of men in the scrapbooking store: And I’ve been in one. I have this odd fascination with the gorgeous patterned papers. Why is this relevant? Because Pinterest is a LOT like scrapbooking, and I shouldn’t have to prove Pinterest is more X than Y chromosone. Oh, you still want proof? Here’s one of many articles on the 82% female Pinterest stat.
3. Moms are more likely to friend their children’s friends on Facebook than dads: It’s very possible dads know this and leave it up to the moms to maintain these new-age social relations, but in my world I’m the “friender” while my daughter’s dad says “Gah!” with a disgusted hand wave when the word “Facebook” comes up in conversation.
4. THIS informative infographic! (Scroll down to the last stat about conversation and sharing.) Eh? Eh?
5. Women are more comfortable learning than men: My proof of this is myself, because I will Google, Tweet, or otherwise jump on my phone when I’m curious about something, want to make something work, or am wondering why something stopped working. The men I know will diagnose, try to fix, ignore me waving my iPhone Google results, re-diagnose, try to re-fix, and then read what I found. I’m not saying men don’t want to learn at all, I’m saying women do it more often.

What do you think—am I completely wrong, or do you smell some possible truth in this? Tell me!

Honestly, @metropolisatmet, I think almost everyone just calls your mall “Metrotown”

Last week I was at Metropolis at Metrotown, and realized…what a fantastic way to grow my Foursquare check-in points like crazy! When I checked in at a store I found this really cool special deal…look right>>

I admit, I used to think Foursquare was kind of lame. My phone was mainly for email and actually PHONING PEOPLE, and taking the time to check in everywhere seemed so tiring. But then I met a couple people who were using it, and as I was about to give a client some social media advice, I thought I’d better check it out.

Oh my goodness—HOOKED!

Foursquare and specials

As a user, I’m more driven to out-point my friends/competitors, but I really enjoy seeing the deals or offers businesses put together.

• Metropolis at Metrotown—As in the image above, if you become mayor of one of the trillion businesses in Metrotown (my abbreviation) you can get a $10 certificate for the mall. This definitely made me visit more stores, until I figured out that I’d need too many more days to actually become mayor. Sad face.

• Starbucks & (RED)—A three-day offer to donate $1 to AIDS charity called (RED)RUSH to Zero, which ended last week. I loved this, and purposefully went back in the timeframe to participate.

• Purdy’s Newbie offer—A Purdy’s shop in Burnaby offered a chocolate to a first-time Foursquare check-in. Decent, I say!

I’m interested in working with one of my clients to use Foursquare in an interesting way, especially if it can be tied in to charitable or community giving.

If your business or employer has used Foursquare in this way, please let me know in the comments. I’d love to learn more, and possibly give your business/charity a tiny bit more exposure.

Sing it! “Conditioner stands alone, conditioner stands alone…”

I’m in Burnaby, holed up in the Best Western Plus Kings Inn. Why am I here, you’re wondering? Well, my daughter Taylor is taking a two-day St. John’s Ambulance First Aid course, and it was a toss-up as to which was least expensive—driving from Chilliwack to Burnbaby two days and hanging out at Metrotown, or holing up in a hotel for two nights and working from the room.

Guess which won?

Because I know all three of my readers are dying to know, here’s the work I’m puzzling over these two days:

Getting organized in my personal social media—For someone who advises and writes social media content for businesses, I’m very unsocial in my personal life. So I’ve created a simple schedule for this blog (I’m thinking Tuesdays—so far, 100% successful!) as well as my social media channels.

Setting goals for my business—I created and manage http://www.freshbedandbreakfast.com, as well as http://www.iaaoblog.com (which links to its home at http://www.amusementoperators.org, part of the FEC Network Inc., one of my clients.) Part of my two days is devising a strategic growth plan for both entities.

Petting the monkey—No this isn’t a euphemism for THAT, it’s a shameful, attention-getting subhead that rhymes with the last two. I need to balance a full, consistent work schedule with spiritual and physical health. It’s called petting The Monkey’s Paw, without having to own it (click to find out what the H I mean by that reference.)

Tell me what you’re working on today, OR ask me why we need so much shampoo…go ahead, just leave a comment. Thanks.

Today I discovered I knew how to spell acoustically. Why do we sometimes know these things? When I first saw the word–it had two ‘c’s–it just looked wrong. That extra c…just didn’t feel right. I dont use the word that much, have never written it or recall when I ever saw it. But I must have, because otherwise how did I get the feeling that it was misspelled?

These are the things I ponder on sunny drives from Richmond to Chilliwack.

Blog planning wall poster

As a blog writer (100% of my income comes from this) I use the above poster mainly for invoicing purposes—it’s a look at the past. But I SHOULD use it for planning—and then as an agenda or to-do list for the month. I’ve tried to-do lists on my computer, but because that’s my main business tool, I never adhere to those lists. I have to separate the planning from the doing in a more concrete way.

Enter the wall poster!

Right now, the colours signify the different “voices” I use for my main client and whether the blog post is written or video. It shows me at a glance how productive and consistent I’ve been in content production for the month.

For those responsible for producing online content, what have you had success with?

I watch the movie, and I hear a Beach Boys song I love, “God Only Knows.” Then I realize I heard a few songs I liked. I check out the DVD extras and see something in there about the musical score. I watch it, and the dude narrating (maybe the director?) says you HAVE to go buy a particular XTC song right now, even though it didn’t work in the movie and he ended up using the Beach Boys “God Only Knows.”

Off I go to iTunes to preview this XTC song I “HAVE to buy right now” to find…meh. However, I buy two others which are an absolute blast from my past—”Senses Working Overtime” and “Generals and Majors.” Sorry, but “Making Plans for Nigel” must have been one of those over-played songs that ended up annoying me.

Let’s remember together, hm?

Four of the e-newsletters I produce for various clients.

These days, third party suppliers make creating hot-looking e-newsletters easy. I use MailChimp (mailchimp.com, @mailchimp) which I LOVE! Easy to use, fun and professional. Awesome stats that I can check quickly on my phone when I’m out and about, so I know exactly how my client’s projects are performing.

E-newsletters work if you have a clear goal of what you want out of them, and work diligently to build an engaged list. Engaged means;

1. Your readers don’t complain (MailChimp and other suppliers will let you know)
2. Recipients open your email higher than your industry’s average (again, MailChimp tells you this in their reports)
3. Recipients click your links

If your readers aren’t doing the above but they also aren’t unsubscribing, you need to give them better content. Better content is;

1. Not what YOU want to tell them about your product or service
2. More of what resulted in your highest opens (your subject line is the clue)
3. More of what they clicked on

Two of my four examples consistently perform 25% and better than the industry average and get 15% click-through rate.

One of the examples gets close to 60% open rates because it’s a very small list and incredibly targeted. My goal for 1st quarter 2012 is to very slowly grow this list and  2nd quarter add advertising to some of the issues to convert—probably a simple banner ad/link. I feel good about this because what I want to offer is exactly what I know this group is looking for.

There’s my two cents on e-newsletters. What have your e-newsletter challenges/successes been?

Communication isn’t as much about putting words on a page, but creating and sharing an idea that readers can relate to. In a recent blog post for London Drugs, I opted to talk about a few products in a way that moms and dads could relate to—with a little bit of a twist. It’s not just about buying things for school, it’s about stocking your kids with essential things in a way that’s easy for them to access—a backpack.

Click the image to read the full blog post—and please leave a comment on the LD blog

There’s an image for a teenage boy as well (tripled up on the food shots!) if you click the above image and read the full post. To get the shots of the book bag and backpack I found the room with the best natural light and shot them on the rug. For the inset products, I shot them on my desk. I’m lucky that I love the light my office gets, and the faux woodgrain surface gives the shots a nice warmth.

I did the standard clean-up in Photoshop (at a minimum, everyone should be adjusting for white levels), and constructed the final two images in InDesign. Once I fit the first inset shot into the circle, I could duplicate and re-import the next image and the image would fit exactly the same. Sweeeee-tuh!

Was this a lot more work than just showcasing 3-4 products shots throughout the blog post? Hells yes! Is it a much more interesting and attractive blog post to read. Double hells yes!

Click the image to go watch my Portal 2 review.

Nala