SEEING A BIG CORPORATE PR EVENT IN ACTION

Yesterday, I attended an open house at my husband's workplace. He works for Dow AgriSciences at the Davenport, Iowa, station. Officially, they had the open house to celebrate completing their new office construction project. Part of the celebration was to give a $10,000 donation to Habitat for Humanity. Now, please don't think I'm cynical or pessimistic, because I fully believe that one can simultaneously be giving, altruistic, and charitable while also serving their own business interests. So, yes this was a celebration and a good deed to the community, but it was also a public relations event.

The event had a good turnout - over 50 attended including one of the television news stations. And I speculated why that was so; here's what I came up with:

• Free food - a delicious lunch catered from a local restaurant, including dessert (peach cobbler - Yum!)
• Personal Invitations - several stakeholders in the company and community were personally invited and they were each invited to invite an additional guest
• Pre-printed name tags - they made it feel official and that you were truly an invited guest
• Promotional Swag - booklets and pamphlets about products plus pencils and notepads (which are pictured and I had to text my husband to grab me some because I forgot to do it)
• Charitable Donation - the above-mentioned check to Habitat, a large check was presented and pictures were taken

It was a nice event and, luckily for my husband and his colleagues (and probably the attendees), it was planned and attended by three employees from the corporate office who I assume were from the marketing (or at least a related) department. So, what's the lesson small businesses, particularly small service businesses, can take away from this big, corporate event?

First, if you're kind of an in-the-background company (my husband's company develops seed corn for farmers, not exactly something "out there" in the world too blatantly), you might need to get creative to find something to celebrate. My husband's work happened to have built a new building for the sole purpose of advancing the business - but it did create jobs for local construction professionals, has the potential to create new jobs for the company itself, and it added to the local economy - something valuable and worth celebrating. So, if you have a new development in your company, don't be afraid to brag about it a little. Even if you don't hold a party, you can send a press release and see if the media will cover it.

The second lesson is to partner. In essence, Dow AgriSciences partnered with Habitat for Humanity for the event by donating a check. But, it wasn't just a random donation - Habitat for Humanity is an organization which the employees (corporate and local) value and support so they could combine this genuine desire to help a worthy organization with having another organization help promote the event and give another reason for the media to cover it. So, if you have an organization or cause about which you feel strongly and want to help, do it under your business persona and let people know (again, it doesn't have to be an event but simply a press release or announcements on social media).

As a small business, you can learn from corporate America - it just takes some creativity. And if you are genuine and authentic in everything you do, you don't have to worry about feeling guilty because it helps your bottom line as well.

Happy Celebrating!
-the Wordsy Woman

RECONSIDER OUTSOURCING IF YOU'RE A SERVICE BUSINESS

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/44313045@N08/6290270129/

As a service business owner, especially a solo, micro, or small service business owner, you are busy. Swamped. You barely have enough time to perform your service, let alone do your own clerical tasks and marketing. So you hire someone to do it for you. Outsourcing work that drains you or is a weakness for you is a great idea in almost every aspect of your business, except for at least one: writing your social media posts.

There are so many different ways for small service businesses to get involved in social media, it can be overwhelming. You may find yourself thinking that there is no way on this Earth you could possibly have enough time to do all of this social media marketing adequately. And you'd be right. So don't. Don't try to be active on every social media platform. Instead, pick a few on which to focus. If you're totally new to social media for your business, pick one to start with, get really good at it, and then add another outlet.

You may be tempted to outsource your social media marketing; although it might be a good idea to get some help with your planning and strategizing for social media, I believe it is not a good idea to outsource the actual posting or writing. If you are a service business, your business is essentially all you. To attract, gain, and keep clients, you need to build a relationship with them through trust and mutual connections. To do this, you need to be genuine and authentic; i.e. you need to be yourself. If someone else is posting on your social media outlets for you, you are not being yourself, so any trust or connection you build will be false. Besides, how embarrassing would it be to have someone comment on something you posted when they see you in person, but you have no idea what they're talking about?

Outsource your taxes, your bookkeeping, your office cleaning, and even your website building, but try to avoid outsourcing writing your social media posts. It's better to be small and authentic in social media than to be prolific but fake.

Happy Socializing!
-The Wordsy Woman