A Droid vs. a Carrier Pigeon?

A BlackBerry, an iPhone, a Droid.

A smoke signal, a carrier pigeon, and a good, old-fashioned land line.

There are times that I would opt for the way things used to be in a nano second. Last week was one of those weeks. We were hit with a major technology disaster and in the words of the owner of our outsourced IT firm, “this is simply the worst hardware failure I have seen in twenty years. This I have never seen. This is like the 100-year flood – the one you don’t really plan for. We plan by having spare firewalls, spare hubs, spare servers, spare hard drives, documentation, MS Support, and backups – but never have I seen catastrophic failure of hard drives like this.”

For a small business, we invest in the tools and technology necessary for our team members to have the ability to work 24x7, should a client need arise. For good or bad, our agency has evolved into a state where we sleep next to our smartphones, Tweet from events, manage a crisis from a soccer field and respond to emails at a rapid pace before leaving the next parking lot. We aren’t unlike many other creative agencies. As a team, we rely heavily on email, cell phones, SharePoint and our disgruntled server, appropriately named “LaMonna”. When it all failed, we quickly remembered that technology is both a blessing and a curse.

While I wouldn’t wish this exercise upon any small business, we did learn a few valuable lessons. When it all goes quiet on the technology front, it's amazing the space it creates for the rest of the world to keep moving.

GroundFloor Media Gives Back - Announces Get Giving

If you know anything about GroundFloor Media, you know how passionate each of the staff members is about the organizations we support, either by volunteering as mentors, serving on boards, or making regular donations of goods or money. Last weekend, a handful of GFM team members got together in support of the Youth Opportunity Foundation’s annual Big Bowl event to benefit Colorado Youth at Risk and Byrne Urban Scholars. While there is little concern about any of us running off to join the Professional Bowlers Association, a good time was had by all and team spirit was running high – particularly with our very own Jim Licko whose bowling team won their fourth straight Spirit Award by dressing up as the members of music group Devo. Nice…

Even in these uncertain economic times, participants and supporters of the Big Bowl event dug deep and raised more than $16,000 (compared to just over $10,000 in 2009) to benefit the deserving youth from Colorado Youth at Risk and Byrne Urban Scholars. Youth Opportunity Foundation founder Tom Kimball drove the importance of the event and giving back home when he reminded all attendees that while we were cheering on bowlers in the grand finale “horse race,” enjoying drinks, food and good times, young people across Denver might not be so lucky – enduring the pressure of gangs, challenging home situations and struggling to help their families make ends meet.

Community giving and involvement is at the cornerstone of GroundFloor Media’s beliefs, and inspired by the events we attend and organizations we serve, the staff recently launched the Get Giving program. Through this new effort, each month we’ll select a new nonprofit organization that’s close to our hearts and collect needed items and donations for the organization in a collection box at the front of our office. Friends, family, colleagues, clients and vendors are welcome to donate items on the designated organization’s wish list – which will be prominently posted with the collection box each month.

In April, a generous basket of items was collected for Platte Forum, an organization for which Amanda Brannum sits on the board. This month, we’re collecting items for SafeHouse Denver, which recently welcomed Ramonna Tooley to its board. If you are interested in joining the GroundFloor Media team to Get Giving in the coming months, please contact us at getgiving@groundfloormedia.com and we’ll be happy to relay the latest Get Giving beneficiary and provide you with a wish list for that organization. By way of an example, SafeHouse Denver is requesting items as varied as mascara or dishwasher detergent to paper plates and coloring books – all of which would greatly benefit its residents. Thanks, in advance, for joining us in staying motivated to give back to the community that gives us so much!

Colorado’s Brightest Social Media Minds Talk Crisis At Boulder Chamber’s Annual Social Media Workshop

Last Friday GroundFloor Media was thrilled to once again serve as one of the main sponsors of the annual Boulder Chamber social media event. The panel and subsequent breakout sessions brought together many of the brightest social media minds in order to educate and counsel local business professionals on the latest evolution in the emerging media landscape. Building upon the “101” lessons of the Boulder Chamber’s 2009 social media event, topics at this year’s event ranged from how to build a social media strategy and best practices in corporate blogging, to getting started with SEO and geotagging for retail businesses.

The event was a true testament to how far social media has evolved in the past year. It was also evident just how important it has become for businesses to not only focus on unique content creation, but also plan for the day when a direct or industry-related crisis may threaten to tarnish a previously unblemished reputation.

Whether you’re just getting started in social media or have been entrenched in it for awhile, we wanted to share some of our favorite crisis and issues management planning tips based on the insightful real-world input of the event’s panel discussion.

Have a Crisis Plan—Large or small, comprehensive or merely top-line, it is imperative that a business of any size put pen to paper to create a social media crisis plan. For example, who will blog, tweet and post on behalf of your organization when a crisis hits? Is the person who mans the social media channels during a crisis the same person who is involved in social media on a day-to-day level? Derek Olson, vice president of Foraker, likened social media crisis training to that of a first responder—countless hours go into prepping emergency personnel and that same approach should not be overlooked when it comes to preparing those who will handle social media triage for your brand.

Listen Before Reacting—The crisis/issues management panelists all agreed that a vital planning step is to decide how you will monitor the Web for either a quick-spreading or slow-building crisis, and encouraged attendees to use a combination of free and paid tools depending on budget to listen and track buzz. The favorite monitoring tools among the group included Google Alerts, TweetScan, Radian 6 and Meltwater Buzz. A primary reason to listen and analyze what is being said before jumping in is to make sure you will be responding to the right issues. For example, it is probably not worth the time or resources it requires to respond to a few rogue forum comments. However, if an influential person on Twitter begins retweeting a damaging story or recurring theme and you determine the issue has significant “legs” based on the people who are pushing out the story, it is most likely in your best interest to put your response plan into action.

Trust and Transparency is Vital—Daily Camera Executive Editor Kevin Kaufman did not mince words when asked about businesses responding to a crisis. It became clear that during times of strife, journalists tend to believe that PR consultants and company executives are speaking in carefully crafted talking points and statements. So, how do you ensure accurate, positive messaging about your brand or service is being shared during a crisis without being perceived as canned and rehearsed? While the president is conducting interviews with traditional media outlets, Kaufman and the other panelists agreed that you should activate your already engaged social media “community” to talk candidly about their experiences with your company. In addition, CBS4 assignment editor Misty Montano shared a first-person account of how fast the newsroom is moving to stay one step ahead of its competition during a crisis. She encouraged businesses to use all of their online resources to keep updated information flowing during a crisis, and stressed that smart companies post information—often in the form of a press release—to the company website during a situation so the media has access to the latest (and most accurate) details.

Even if you do not have a social media crisis plan in place today, spending just a few minutes thinking about a plan of attack is a step in the right direction. If you are curious on how your company stacks up, answer the poll question below to find out where you fall on the planning scale.

- Alexis 

As most of you are probably aware by now, KFC recently launched its “Buckets for the Cure” campaign – through which it hopes to raise $8.5 million for Susan G. Komen for the Cure®. This amount would be the largest single donation ever made in the fight against breast cancer. To date, KFC has already raised more than $2.3 million through the campaign. On the surface, it seems like a fantastic idea. Who can argue with joining in the fight against breast cancer? And yet, the campaign has spawned numerous critical articles and blog posts. Most of them argue that there is simply too much of a disconnect between KFC and Komen. As Joe Waters, author of the cause marketing-related blog “Selfish Giving,” points out in his April 20 post, “it’s like 'Deadliest Catch' sponsoring Sea World.” KFC is known primarily for selling high-calorie, high-in-fat fried chicken. In fact, the restaurant rolled out its newest offering, the “Double Down” sandwich, around the same time as its Buckets for the Cure campaign. The Double Down features two fried (or grilled) chicken breasts served in place of bread, with cheese and bacon serving as the “meat.” And yet, obesity is known to be a major risk factor when it comes to cancer.

So, as some suggest, is KFC trying to “buy” goodwill through this campaign without genuinely being committed to the cause? Or is the company truly well-intentioned but unfortunately a bit misguided in its cause marketing efforts? I choose to believe the latter…

Nevertheless, as “Rally the Cause” author Scott Henderson discusses in his April 16 blog post on the matter, the campaign is definitely a prime example of "cause dissonance." The contradiction between KFC’s product and Komen’s mission is just too great.

Looking at it purely from a cause marketing perspective, KFC could have found other causes to support that made more strategic sense. In my blog post from March 3 on the subject of cause marketing, I talked about various factors that companies should consider when determining which cause(s) to support. One of those is making sure the cause aligns with the company’s own product or mission. So, in the case of KFC, a couple of ideas come to mind. Many KFC restaurants are located in urban areas. Perhaps the company could have committed to building safe parks and green spaces in the neighborhoods it serves. Or, it already has a scholarship program, The KFC Colonel’s Scholars Program. Perhaps it would make sense to build on that foundation and raise funds related to improving public education.

We’d like to know what you think. Should KFC have chosen a cause that didn’t pose such a disconnect in light of its primary product? Or should it be lauded for its Buckets for the Cure?

-Amanda

Turning Opportunity into Entrepreneurship (part 2)

I guess I should start this post with lesson 5.5 – when starting your business, deadlines should be honored, but you should also be flexible enough to recognize when deadlines can be changed. That said, part 2 is going live today, Tuesday, as my original goal of Monday was sidelined by a “typical Monday.” Here is part 2 of the top 10 things I learned during the first year of entering this insane world of entrepreneurship:

6) Treat starting your new business the same way you would treat finding a new job. When I first dipped my toe in the entrepreneurial water, I knew very few people in Colorado. I made it a goal to set up at least three “coffee” meetings a week with people I didn’t know well and then asked them questions about their business, the community and the trends they were seeing in the economy. It never failed that from those meetings I was introduced to a few of their personal and professional contacts. I drank a lot of coffee (not that I minded) and heard some great stories. Many of the contacts I made in the first year are still confidants today.

7) Reduce overhead. Don’t move into a fancy office the first year or two, unless it’s absolutely critical to the business. Spend money wisely. I worked out of my basement the first two years and then rented a small house off of Pearl Street in Boulder. It was so small; that the kitchen doubled as the conference room. It still remains my favorite office.

8) Spend time with family and friends. Make sure you talk about your plans with your friends and family so they know that this venture into entrepreneurship will consume you in the near term. At the same time, schedule dinners where you leave your smartphone at home. Plan a vacation and make a goal to check in for an hour in the morning and an hour at night. It’s not reasonable to think you can be “off the grid” in the early years, but put some parameters around the time that you will take away from your family during your getaways. We fondly refer to this concept as the "work/life blend." The idea of achieving ‘work/life balance’ was thrown out with the bathwater early on.

9) Join professional organizations. But don’t just join – get involved – really involved. Try to pick the one or two groups that are most meaningful to you -- either personally or professionally. Once of my greatest experiences was joining EO Colorado http://www.eonetwork.org/Pages/default.aspx nearly five years ago. It is a global organization of more than 7,300 business owners in 42 countries that provides opportunities for entrepreneurs to learn and grow from each other. I served on the board for the past four years and recently completed my term as president of the chapter. While the time commitment was considerable, it has been rewarding on multiple levels. EO just launched a new program for emerging entrepreneurs called EO Accelerator. accelerator.eonetwork.org If you have the desire to connect with like-minded folks, this program is worth considering
10) Market yourself. You are fortunate. You are starting a business when it has never been easier to market your company. Social media is the least expensive and most powerful way to start conversations with potential customers, partners and employees. Use it wisely and you will gain far more traction (and spend far less money) than advertisements provided entrepreneurs in the 90s.

You will never catch me advising someone against starting his or her own business. I just wished someone had spent time telling me the pitfalls to avoid before I dove in headfirst. But, then again, I may not have gotten on the diving board at all.

Turning Opportunity into Entrepreneurship

On the surface, it doesn’t make a great deal of sense. One might assume that high unemployment rates equates to skilled individuals pounding the pavement and reaching out to their networks to secure a job that will provide them with the safety and security of a steady paycheck and benefits. The truth is that it’s times like these that many of us realize that very few things in life offer us security, and as scary as it might be, it is time to create our own sense of security.

The fact remains that during times of the greatest economic recessions, more and more of people are launching entrepreneurial ventures. In fact, Entrepreneur Magazine published results from Challenger, Gray & Christmas' job market index that showed that 8.7 percent of job seekers gained employment by starting their own companies in Q2 2009, compared to the record low of 2.7 percent during Q4 2008.

I can tell you that there is never a better time to go out on your own. I can also tell you it is not easy. It will cause many sleepless nights. It is certainly not for everyone but for those willing to make the leap of faith to become an entrepreneur, I can promise you it will never be boring.

GroundFloor Media celebrates its 9th anniversary this year and looking back, I thought it might be worthwhile to share with you the top 10 things (divided into a 2-part blog so you aren’t bored to tears) I learned during the first year of entering this insane world of entrepreneurship (note: I started GroundFloor Media during the dot-com bust of early 2001 where the "work-experience unemployment rate" was 10.4 percent) http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2002/dec/wk3/art02.htm

1) Hire a strong attorney and a solid CPA. It is not your specialty (unless you are starting a law firm or a CPA firm) to know the legal and financial implications behind starting and building a business. This is not to say you shouldn’t be armed and dangerous with enough information to ask the right questions and make sound decisions, but spend the money to hire professionals who specialize in building small companies. Do you have E&O insurance? Do you have a Buy/Sell? Are you filing the proper documents with the IRS? I hired Colson Quinn http://www.colsonquinn.com/ (do not laugh at that photo, please) who specialize in entrepreneurs and still rely on their counsel nearly a decade later.

2) Build a professional website. When I launched GFM, I hired a freelance designer I had worked with in two previous lives and offered him part trade and part cash in order to build a site that we used for nearly six years. Now is the time to work with creative, dedicated freelance designers that are looking to design a site they can be proud of and use to promote their own business. Do you have something you can offer them in trade? If so, consider getting creative with your compensation.

3) Get involved in community efforts. Give of your time. It will come back to you in ways you never imagined possible. If you have a service or a product that a non profit could benefit from, consider giving it away. It will help others and help you keep things in perspective.

4) Take time away to work on the business; not just in the business. Even if you are the only one actually working on building the business and you have yet to bring on your first employee, schedule an offsite with yourself and get out of your ‘office’ to think about the strategy and direction of the business.

5) Connect people. We all have contacts we have made through the years. There are people that can benefit from meeting other folks you know, both professionally and personally. Make the introductions that make sense. You never know where they can lead.

More to come Monday…

Getting to "Why"

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the Denver Press Club’s 16th Annual Damon Runyon Award Banquet with our friends at MolsonCoors. Talk of Colorado Native – the newly released amber lager featuring locally produced ingredients and packaging – eventually ceded to the evening’s honoree, political satirist, P.J. O’Rourke.

Channeling the spirit of Runyon – a celebrated journalist from the early 20^th century – O’Rourke delivered a humorous and provocative address about the history of journalism that dubbed early newspapermen as “paid rubber necks.” As the industry matured, the role of reporters evolved to uncover the full gamut of who, what, when, where and why for any given story.

Today, with the ubiquity of information available over the Internet, O’Rourke commented that the first four attributes of a news story – who, what, when, where – are widely available through any number of online channels with an immediacy that often threatens the value of traditional journalism. Therefore, to remain relevant and eclipse the current onslaught of content, the media must refocus on “why” and strive to explain the events, people and issues making news.

“The job of journalists is to explain – it’s the only job that we have left.”

- P.J. O’Rourke, April 9, 2010

This point is important, not only for reporters, but also for those of us who work with the news media and set out to create stories on behalf of our clients that are relevant to a larger audience. Yes, we’re continuing to engage social media to drive viral buzz and establish thought leadership, but if we want our news rise above the fray and deliver compelling stories via traditional media, we too must remember to consider the “why.”

Special thanks to the Denver Press Club for their ongoing leadership in highlighting quality journalism and bringing the national spotlight to Colorado for the annual Damon Runyon Award. O’Rourke joins a notable group of journalists to be honored with the Damon Runyon Award, including George Will, Bob Costas, Tim Russert and Rick Reilly.

Proceeds from the award banquet benefit the club’s scholarship fund and building maintenance. Six college journalists were awarded Damon Runyon scholarships in 2010.

GroundFloor Media is excited to include the Denver Press Club Damon Runyon scholarship program as a beneficiary of the GroundFloor Media Get Giving program. Get Giving is a way for GFM team members and our families, friends, clients and associates to contribute to local organizations in need of charitable donations.

The Social Media Cinderella Story

Our office recently caught a wicked case of basketball fever, mainly because GroundFloor Media Vice President Ramonna Tooley’s Alma Mater, Butler University, continued to take down larger and higher-ranked opponents during the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament.

After Butler secured a spot in the Final Four, one question from a co-worker caught my attention, “Is this normal? How does this smaller team keep beating these high-profile teams?” In hindsight the answer is very similar to describing how smaller companies can utilize social media to compete with much larger companies:

1) A Cohesive Team
Butler may not have the same caliber of players as a Syracuse or a Duke, but their athletes play really well together, and everyone knows their role – they follow The Butler Way. Similarly, many larger companies have issues with how to manage social media. Some of the most effective social media outreach comes from those companies who understand that social media should be as organic as possible. For some companies like Seattle’s Discovery Wellness Center, that means allowing one or two individuals to serve as the “voice” of the company, and all messages are filtered accordingly (in their case, it’s the CEO). Others like Zappos understand that all employees should have voice, and everyone can contribute equally. The first step is ensuring that everyone is on the same page, and then ensuring that everyone knows their role and executes flawlessly. This can sometimes be much easier to accomplish with a smaller staff or fewer departments.

2) A Solid Game Plan
You’re going to have a hard time winning if you don’t have a good plan in place. Butler’s players knew their match-ups, recognized strengths and weaknesses, and everyone knew where they should be on each play. Companies who integrate their social media plans into their traditional marketing and public relations programs are going to have a larger opportunity for success. Similarly, does your company have a social media response/crisis plan? Does everyone on your social media team know what constitutes a proper response or the best way to take a customer issue offline? There are a few recent examples of how things can turn bad quickly for companies if you don’t have that plan in place.

3) Talent
Butler may not have six former McDonald’s All-Americans on their team (as Duke does), but they do have several players who can be relied upon to step up and play to that level. It’s just as important for companies to bring their social media talent to the forefront. I’m personally not a proponent of Twinterns, but “social media experts” will only have 4-5 years of experience with social media due to its newness compared to other components within the public relations discipline. That might be the 15-year veteran who was an early adopter, or it could be the 24-year-old who also has a keen sense for overall communications. Regardless, make sure you’re putting your best players in the game.

4) A Little Luck
A couple of inches were all it would have taken for that half-court, last-second shot to go in and change the National Championship game. And maybe the timing of a Tweet or the right influencer seeing your blog post at the right time could make all of the difference in your social media efforts. But putting the right tools in place and having a solid plan put mid-major Butler in the same company as Duke, West Virginia and Michigan State, all powerhouse programs from the “Big 5” athletic conferences. Social media offers the same type of opportunities for smaller companies trying to compete with much larger marketing and public relations budgets.

Jim

Perfection of the basics and windows of opportunity

While skimming the headlines of Ragan’s PR Daily news feed yesterday, I quickly scanned over an article from Advertising Age titled “What PR pros and marketers can learn from the movie Hoosiers”. At first, I wasn’t going to read it, but then how could I resist – the movie “Hoosiers” provides a powerful message, and NCAA Men’s Final Four is just around the corner.

The author, Tom Denari, provided an excellent analogy about the similarities between a company’s brand strategy and the lessons from Norman Dale (aka Gene Hackman), coach of the Hickory Huskers, from the movie "Hoosiers." For me, the biggest takeaways were to ensure you establish the basics/fundamentals and be willing to take calculated risks.

Similar to the work GroundFloor Media does, we tell our clients to establish the fundamentals of any public relations campaign – develop the message, build the right background materials, media train your spokespeople, etc. – before launching your campaign/program. And secondly, don’t miss a window of opportunity – whether it’s a planned activity or a trend that you take advantage of in a very short timeframe. So go ahead, expand your marketing and public relations efforts by launching a Facebook page for your company, developing an integrated campaign across all your marketing vehicles, or enhancing your SEO to generate new ways to reach a key target market and support greater ROI.

If you haven’t read the article, I would encourage you to do so. What might be even more exciting is that we are living the “Hoosiers” dream – Butler (whose Hinkle Fieldhouse is featured in the movie, “Hoosiers”) is in the Final Four! Oh, and Butler is near and dear to one of our very own... it is Ramonna Tooley’s alma mater. Go Dawgs!

~ Jen Wills

Change

Speaker Karen Kaiser Clark is credited with having said, “Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.” At GroundFloor Media change is afoot and we couldn’t be happier with all of the growth opportunities. From personal changes – such as weddings, babies, new smart phones, MacBook Pros (hey – change is change!) – to professional changes – like new team members, clients, exciting opportunities with long-term clients we are proud to call friends – we’re growing and changing in new ways every day.

The world of public relations has been forced to grow in recent years, too – morphing from an industry based upon hard copy press kits and traditional media relations to an industry whose contacts change daily with the reduction of traditional newsroom staff, the advent of new social media outlets and the meteoric rise of new influencers one might never have guessed just a month earlier. Seth Godin recently wrote a great blog post titled “First and Never” in which he addressed the joys and excitement around “firsts” and the inevitable change that comes with “nevers.” While PR will never be the same as it was when I first entered the field (ah – the days of one computer for the whole office to check e-mail and no BlackBerry to follow me home at night…), the reason I fell in love with this industry is still the same – the opportunity to share great stories with interested audiences whose lives might just change thanks for the stories my clients have to tell.

I like how dictionary.com defines change : “to make the form, nature, content, future course, etc., of (something) different from what it is or from what it would be if left alone.” At GroundFloor Media we embrace change, and while growth might be optional, if you know our team well you can be certain that when given the option we’re always up for the challenge.

Celebrate National Nutrition Month with a Healthy Snack

Time to talk chocolate, one of my favorite subjects, as it’s National Nutrition Month. It may seem like a strange pairing but ‘tis true. Mars Chocolate North America has chosen the Boulder/Denver market for the launch its new goodnessKnows™ luscious snacksquares. The thinking behind this is that our market is a hub for healthy living and health-conscious consumers. Trending is showing us that consumers are also gravitating back toward healthy snacks and nutrition bars. Indulgence without guilt is what Pierre Buisson, Standard Functional Foods Group, says consumers are looking for and nutrition companies are trying to achieve. He also adds that food companies are making nutritional options taste good without adding numbers to the scale. Add chocolate to this and you have a winning combination in my book.

What sets goodnessKnows snacksquares apart from other chocolate products and/or healthy snacks is the fact that they are made from cocoa beans specially selected and handled to retain cocoa flavanols, which help support healthy circulation for a free flow of oxygen and nutrients throughout the body. The consumption of flavonoids has been positively linked to a number of human health benefits and all goodnessKnows products are guaranteed to contain at least 200 mg of bio-available cocoa flavanols in every four-square serving. I got that explanation from Catherine Kwik-Uribe, PhD., applied cocoa flavanols research manager at Mars, Inc., who examines the potential role of specific cocoa-derived compounds (i.e., cocoa flavanols) in human health. Want to know about all things chocolate, she’s your gal.

So why Boulder? Now that would make a fun headline and banter on Leno. A recent Gallup Poll named Boulder as the Happiest, Healthy City in the United States. I couldn’t agree more but then again, I’m a bit biased. No matter what you think of Boulder, it is a great test market for healthy natural foods. We have some tough critics from moms to athletes to media to community leaders to professors at the University of Colorado, just to name a few. According to Kwik-Uribe, they could have chosen anywhere but chose Boulder because the community is quite aware of what it means to be healthy and have good snack options. She also mentioned that Mars is committed to cocoa sustainability and is focused on improving the planet and lives of cocoa farmers through responsible agricultural practices. Something Boulder can appreciate, too.

Denver you’ll have your chance in a few more weeks. So go ahead and celebrate this month with a healthy new snack. Give goodnessKnows a try and let us know what you think.

~ Amy

Corporate Giving - Are You Committed?

Corporate giving, corporate social responsibility, community relations – we hear about these important issues all the time. It’s supposedly essential for companies to give back to their communities – to help solve the ills that plague society. But is it really the role of business to address issues like hunger, natural disasters and poverty – or to support causes such as higher education or the arts? Shouldn’t business just be about customers, revenues and the bottom line? Considering that I personally spent six years in an organization dedicated largely to encouraging corporate philanthropy, I have to say that forward-thinking businesses should do more than care about their bottom line. And I’m happy to report that Denver – and our nation – is chock full of business leaders and employees who truly care about their community.

According to the 2009 State of Corporate Citizenship in the United States survey from the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship and The Hitachi Foundation, “In a strong signal that corporate social responsibility has earned a place alongside the bottom line, a survey of nearly 800 companies found most senior executives believe business should take a greater role solving problems in health care, product safety, education and climate change.” The survey results go on to show that “corporate citizenship is weathering the recession and is increasingly being integrated into business strategy and operations.”

I am proud to report that even though we are a small business, we believe in walking the proverbial walk. In addition to helping clients identify nonprofit partners and develop strategic corporate giving plans, GroundFloor Media donates up to 15% each year to nonprofits. Several years ago, GroundFloor Media chose Tennyson Center for Children, one of the Rocky Mountain region’s leading treatment and education centers for abused, neglected and at-risk youth, as its nonprofit partner and began providing pro bono PR services to the organization. Through its Get Grounded program, GroundFloor Media also allows its employees to get paid time off for volunteering and provides matching grants to organizations about which employees feel passionate.

And, GroundFloor Media is not alone. For instance, in 2008 Qdoba Mexican Grill adopted Starlight Children’s Foundation as its national charity partner, to which it donates funds, employee volunteer hours and food. Denver-based St. Mary Land & Exploration Company has sponsored the building of a Habitat for Humanity house each year for the past several years, sending employee volunteers to help with the construction, and in 2009, Pinnacol Assurance awarded more than $250,000 in scholarships to students through its foundation. And this is just a small sample of the many businesses doing great things in their communities and around the world.

But with all of the potential causes and issues out there, how does a company know which one (or ones) to support? A couple of tips to keep in mind:

• In order to ensure buy-in – and even enthusiasm – for the program among employees, it’s a good idea to survey them to identify causes that matter them. If a majority of your employees believe strongly in the need to help bolster public education, then that might be the way to go.
• It can also help give a company direction to consider what causes are most closely related to their product or mission. What can your company offer that others can’t? Take Tide’s Loads of Hope campaign for instance – by providing mobile laundry services to victims of natural disasters, they are building incredible good will through a very unique offering.
• And don’t forget to give employees ways to support their own personal causes, in addition to an overall cause for the corporation. This is a wonderful way to build employee morale and help ensure employee retention.

And, finally – because we would be remiss as a corporate citizen if we didn’t include a plug for our nonprofit partner in a blog post about corporate giving… For more information on how you can help Tennyson Center, be sure to tune in to 9NEWS in Denver on Thursday morning, March 4. Tennyson Center’s president and CEO will be on the 5:30 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. newscasts, and members of the Tennyson Center team will be taking calls about how individuals and groups can get involved.

Is There Such Thing as Work/Life Balance for Entrepreneurs?

They intoxicate themselves with work so they won't see how they really are. —Aldous Huxley

When I first started GroundFloor Media in my basement in April 2001, I am fairly confident that I had absolutely no idea what it meant to have balance in my life. I was newly married, expecting our first child and had just received news that the company I had moved to Colorado to work for was closing its doors. I opened the agency (I use this term very loosely, as I was pretty much the janitor, the CPA and the PR account manager) the next day knowing that in the midst of the dot-com bust, I needed to create a professional opportunity and not wait for something to come my way. The funny thing was that although my bout as an entrepreneur began out of quiet desperation, I loved every minute of it. I had caught the proverbial entrepreneurial bug and I was sick.

To some of my friends and nearly all of my family, I quickly became a work-a-holic. To others, I was simply living the life of an entrepreneur. It has been said “that those who are passionate about what they do, do it to extremes.”

If you haven’t read The E-Myth, it is a must-read for any entrepreneur. The author, Michael Gerber, describes the tipping point as this, “It could have been anything; it doesn't matter what. But one day, for apparently no reason, you were suddenly stricken with an Entrepreneurial Seizure. And from that day on your life was never to be the same.”

I couldn’t agree more. I also have to say that there is a point that is crossed in which the thing you are most passionate about becomes an addiction. Workaholism has become embedded in our culture. There are some that learn to balance and create space for the things they are most passionate about – be it their family, friends, charity work or travel. It took me a long, long time to realize that I was not solely responsible for the success and failure of the agency – that the amount of hours worked was not a direct correlation to the growth of the agency. To be brutally honest, I only recently allowed myself to work toward this ‘work/life blend’ because of the team I was surrounded by at GroundFloor Media. As a senior-level bunch, we all have to juggle family and work life. We termed our struggle as the ‘work/life blend’ because balance was simply out of the question. The bottom line is that I trusted the team was suffering from a similar type of 'seizure’ and that we would all hold each other up as a group. It didn’t hurt that we gravitate toward working with some pretty amazing client partners that hold similar values.

Honestly, I think this point of achieving a ‘work/life blend’ is different for each business and ultimately that the life of an entrepreneur will always be challenging. For me, I always appear to be one step away from having a life where work isn’t always in the back of my mind. I know this isn’t ideal, but it’s difficult not to be working on something that you want to see grow and succeed. I compare it – in the most simple terms – to parenthood.

What do you do to handle work/life balance? Is there balance in your life? Is there a blend in your life? What techniques do you find useful for adding more balance or blending all of the important components of your life?

Content is Still King, Especially at the Olympics

Every other year I get completely caught up in the Olympics, and although I’m a huge sports fan, I really don’t have much knowledge of most of the sports involved. But still, there I sit for roughly two weeks, transfixed on short track speed skating , snowboard cross , and curling (to name a few), yelling at the television as if I have a personal connection to each sport and to each athlete.

During a particularly tense moment in the men’s freestyle moguls , I started thinking about why people feel so connected to The Games. I can watch and enjoy just about any sport, but what makes the Olympics different are the stories behind many of the athletes. The stories that give us a personal connection to the athletes, what they’re trying to accomplish, and the road they had to take to get to get where they are.

It’s the same type of personal connection that draws people to social media. Think about the Twitter feeds or Flickr accounts that you enjoy most. Most likely they are the ones that surprise you with a couple posts or photos that let you know a little more about the user’s personality. They provide something that connects you to them beyond being just “a good source for industry information” or “the coffee shop that gives out coupons from time-to-time.” Successful social media content is appealing not because the owner calculates what people want to hear, but because it’s real. Great content has the ability to, for instance, make an average sports fan become inexplicably invested in the outcome of a sport he’s never actually watched.

As my eyes got a little misty when Canadian Alexandre Bilodeau hugged his brother (who has Cerebral paulsy and who Bilodeau called his inspiration) and became the first from his country to win a gold medal on Canadian soil, and later as the U.S. National Anthem played for Hannah Kearney (who was favored to win in ’06, but failed to make it out of the qualification round in Torino), it didn’t seem strange at all that I was up an hour later than usual and checking the TV listings for what was in store the following evening. Its amazing how good content and personal connections can move people to take action on any number of levels.

Media relations is all about the “relations”

With the Colorado Garden & Home Show kicking off this Saturday (Feb. 13 at 10 a.m.), it only seems appropriate to give a shout out to Denver’s media outlets. Recently, much of my work at GroundFloor Media has been handling crisis communication, social media and national media relations. But, I must admit that I have enjoyed rekindling my relationships with some of Denver’s long-time reporters and producers. In January, PRSA Colorado hosted an event called “A Media Roundtable: Breaking the News in 2010.” It was the perfect event to kick off 2010 and really helped our team get a jump start on the local media relations opportunities for this show. If you missed the event and are interested in learning “the most important thing PR people need to know about the media in 2010,” watch these videos.

We all witnessed social media hitting the mainstream in 2009; however, traditional media still plays an important role in communicating our clients’ news and events. While we developed a Twitter and Facebook strategy for the show and created a hashtag (#garden2010), we knew we needed to execute a strong local media relations campaign. Even with all the changes we have read about at The Denver Post and the merging of KDVR FOX31 and KWGN The Deuce, it was very refreshing to work with reporters/producers who are passionate about their work and most importantly, are committed to our community – as I have witnessed in working with so many of them over the years.

As the media landscape continues to change, my advice to any local business is to read and watch your local media. Follow the news outlet on Twitter. Become a fan on Facebook. Listen to the reporters/producers. Invite them to coffee for a “get to know you” session. Understand their interests and passions. And be aware of the beats/topics they like to cover. Then pitch story ideas that you know they will want to report on because it is the perfect fit. Media relations is all about the “relations” part. Start here and you are sure to have better success at garnering media coverage!

~ Jennifer Wills

Cheers to the Chamber!

I have two opportunities on my calendar later this week that wouldn’t be there had I not participated in Leadership Denver, so I thought this would be a good time to give a shout out to the Denver Metro Chamber Leadership Foundation.

I had the privilege last year of being part of the Leadership Denver Class of 2009 – the most fun class ever. Amidst the fun, we learned valuable lessons about our community and how we can make a difference. This Friday, I get to escort members of the class of 2010 to their school visit during Education Day. Since so many of our communities’ challenges stem from challenges faced by the education community, I found Education Day to be one of the most enlightening. Therefore, I’m excited to escort this year’s class to Arrupe Jesuit High School in northwest Denver. I am personally intrigued by Arrupe Jesuit’s innovative Corporate Work Study Program, and I look forward to learning more on Friday.

On Saturday, the class of 2009 will head to Tennyson Center for Children to complete another Home Makeover Day, during which we will paint and provide some TLC to the cottages in which the kids live. These days are extremely rewarding because of the service we’re able to provide to Tennyson Center and also because they allow our classmates to reconnect and remain in touch long after graduation from Leadership Denver.

I think most of us agree that it’s important to be involved in and give back to our community. Sometimes, though, it’s difficult to know where to start. If you’re in the Denver metro area and you feel like you need more information on how to get involved or more education about what areas need help, please consider signing up for one of the Metro Denver Chamber Leadership Foundation’s many programs, including Access Denver, Impact Denver or Leadership Denver, or the Downtown Denver Partnership’s Leadership Program. If you’re in the Boulder area, check out the Boulder Chamber’s Leadership Boulder County.

I promise you’ll find more ways to get involved and help out than you can count. Then it will be up to you to decide how to make the biggest impact!

The Human Element

As the emergence of the Internet, social media and mobile communication continue to steal attention from standbys like newspapers and magazines, I find more and more that the subsequent fast pace of our lives also begins to edge out basic people skills like having a conversation face-to-face or even picking up the phone. A recent Inc. article listing the Top 30 tips for using social media listed “interact with visitors – really” as their No. 7 tip and when social media is the option of choice, I definitely agree. In just the last week I’ve been faced with a number of situations that drove home the importance of the human element – and I wanted to share them here.

Last week I pitched some client news and spent the end of the week making follow-up calls. I was delighted to connect with a reporter who I hadn’t spoken with since her maternity leave, and we quickly jumped into a conversation about her baby and the fact that I am expecting in May. It was a delightful conversation that naturally flowed into the business at hand (the pitch) and wrapped up with a really nice, “I hope to be in touch again soon!” The human connection made all the difference and will be a strong element next time we speak.

In pitching the same news I was researching a blogger in Louisville, Kentucky who has a “pitch policy” on her blog site. The blogger had a section in the policy titled, “I’m a Person, You’re a Person” and went on to say, “Since I’m a real person and you’re a real person, I’d encourage you to make our interaction a person-to-person conversation instead of an e-mail blast to a marketing list. I like people, I don’t like e-mail marketing blasts.” I loved that! While a phone call or face-to-face meeting wasn’t the right way to kickoff a relationship with this blogger, she made it clear that if you do a little research, know who she is, treat her like a person and reveal your human side – your chances of being heard go way up. Her simple statement made a strong statement.

At GroundFloor Media we’re lucky to have a variety of clients from across verticals. At the end of the day, it’s really the relationships we form with clients – and prospective clients – that keep our interactions strong and drive the success we’re able to create for our clients and their brands. The Wall Street Journal, reporting from the National Retail Federation’s annual convention earlier this month, emphasized in this article that retailers not become so dependent on the Internet, social media or whatever else may develop that they lose touch with consumers. While we maintain friendships with our clients via Facebook, follow one another on Twitter and appreciate the occasional quick connection via text message, we also make it a point to meet face-to-face as often as possible to get to the heart of the relationship – the human element.

So, if you haven’t already done so today, make time this week to grab coffee with someone you haven’t seen face-to-face in awhile, or even pick up the phone to have a real conversation with someone who matters to you. If you’re like me, every day there are subtle reminders that the human element will make a difference!

First Responders: How Businesses Take Smart Action During Times of Crisis

Who hasn’t been impacted by the devastation of the massive earthquake that hit Haiti last week? The outpouring of relief efforts from individuals, communities and organizations has been praiseworthy. We learned many valuable lessons from Katrina, the most important being how to mobilize quickly and respond to a crisis in an appropriate manner. For businesses, there is a fine line between how to activate relief efforts that are not only good for their business, but are also good for the community, and how to not take advantage of a crisis in order to gain publicity. Most importantly, it has to fit the brand and make sense. Take Whole Foods, for example . The natural foods store created a Haitian Fund late last week to collect donations from all 289 stores nationwide. They are encouraging their staff and customers to make donations through the end of this month during checkout that will go directly to several organizations leading relief efforts in Haiti. Whole Foods is also working with vendors to deliver additional food and water to the country. I look forward to seeing their financial results, as I know it will be tremendous.

I’d be remiss to not mention one of my favorite businesses, TOMS Shoes. They kicked off a campaign within hours of the earthquake to donate $5 from every One for One purchase /content.asp?tid=510 to the relief in Haiti through Partners in Health for the first 48 hours after the crisis. And if you are a fan on Facebook, you received this information real time. In addition to their monetary donations for immediate disaster relief, they have more than 30,000 shoes scheduled to be distributed in Haiti in February to help with rebuilding efforts. You can’t get any smarter than TOMS Shoes. I’d love to sit in on one of their brainstorm meetings. Can you imagine the conversation: ”Hey, I know, how about we send 10,000 pairs of shoes to Haiti? No, make that 30,000.” And then not having someone say they couldn’t afford it. They are brilliant and true to their core. No marketing campaign could possibly impact shoe sales and create more loyal customers. In fact, I’m off to order my next pair online now.

Let’s not forget the American Red Cross . The organization pulled in major star power to encourage text-message donations for earthquake relief in Haiti last week. The Red Cross is the biggest relief organization with a system in place to receive such donations, which are sent by cell phone to 90999 and billed at $10 each to the cellphone account. According to a recent NY Times article the total raised, a small portion of which will be shared with other members of the Red Cross federation, puts the organization well ahead of other relief groups in fund-raising for operations in Haiti. As of late Sunday, the organization had collected pledges of $103 million, about $22 million of which came through the text-messaging program. However, lessons are already being learned because apparently the funds are only pledged (and therefore tied up) until people pay their cell phone bills. It will be interesting to see how this emerging form of new media evolves with regard to cause marketing efforts.

These are only a few examples out of many admirable businesses making a difference. Hopefully there will be hundreds more jumping in to help support organizations like the American Red Cross and others who have given their time, money and products to help the people of Haiti not only in the coming weeks but months ahead as they rebuild and rise above this catastrophe. Follow us on Twitter @GroundFloorPR to hear the latest on our clients who are joining the Haiti relief efforts. Challenge: how can your business help?

~ Amy

"Slacktivists": A perspective

For the record, I am a big believer in the power of activism and supporting causes that resonate with your beliefs and values. When friends and colleagues are passionate about the non-profits they support, I am the first to jump on the bandwagon and do what I can to help get the word out, get other volunteers motivated or offer some financial support. I am sure I am not alone in noticing that with the rise of social media, there has also been an influx of passionate ‘friends’ promoting their causes in the virtual world. This influx of doing good has forced me to ask myself if “by doing good, are we also doing well?”

This point was well documented last week. If you are a Facebook user, there is a good chance that last Wednesday you saw a friend posting a color as their status update. This latest craze came after female Facebookers began receiving messages from a very prominent non-profit in their inbox. “We are playing a game for Breast Cancer Awareness,” said one message that hit an inbox in our office. “Write the color of your bra as your status — just the color, nothing else!! Copy this and pass it on to all girls — NO MEN!! This will be fun to see how it spreads.”

Spread is an understatement. While the count keeps ticking, it appears that the Susan G. Komen Foundation, who is synonymous with Breast Cancer, recruited more than 157,000 new Facebook fans as a result of this simple request to post colors on their walls — whether they received the inbox message or not.

But, is the act of simply posting ‘red’ or ‘cream with daisies’ enough to make a difference? Did it really spread the message and help educate women about breast self-exams? Or is it simply a case of slacktivism — feel-good online activism that has less-than-stellar political or social impact?

Before I dive into the pros and cons of this kind of campaign, I think its important to describe where this term actually came from (I had no idea when I set out to write this post). Apparently, back in 1995, Dwight Ozard referred to it in a slightly different way. He used it to describe the activities that had to be done individually (such as recycling, as opposed to participating in a 78,000-person 5k). Most recently, "slacktivist" have been used to describe those that signed petitions, wore wristbands (think LiveStrong), put bumper stickers on their cars, or joined a Cause on Facebook.

The question is… does slacktivism really hurt? You can’t argue with the brand awareness that last week’s example created. Before the launch of this online craze, Komen had a mere 135 fans. These fans are the viral community that Komen is hoping will help spread the word about the vital importance of screenings and early detection, lobby for research and insurance coverage, participate in the infamous Race for the Cure, and donate online to support local breast cancer research.

Some say that virtual communities are simply not enough. They argue that unless these same 157,000 fans pick up the phone and encourage their friends and family members to get that mammogram or perform monthly exams, it doesn’t save lives. It’s simply a slacktivist campaign that has little or no lasting effect other than to make the person doing it feel satisfaction.

The bottom line – in my humble opinion – is that most slacktivists are genuinely well-meaning folks who want to do well by doing good. As long as we all remember that simply clicking a “Become a Fan” link is not enough to truly be a catalyst for change, it never hurts to slack a little while you act.

A New Year and the New Media

As I was reading the first of the always entertaining and informational Denver PR Blog public relations predictions it got me thinking about how much our profession has changed in the past few years and how the media will continue to evolve.

I’ve seen several different numbers regarding the amount of newspapers that closed in 2009, but it’s safe to say the number is well into the hundreds. Magazines had a similar experience, and while broadcast outlets haven’t closed at the same rate, layoffs and consolidation have been well documented.

In the same 365 days, social media, online news outlets, citizen journalists and the like have flourished. And while I consider myself somewhat of a social media junkie, I don’t think traditional journalism is on the brink of extinction. New York Magazine recently conducted an interesting experiment where it uncovered the actual “source” of news stories over the course of a single day. It is by no means scientific, but the results highlighted how often traditional journalists are primarily responsible for creating the news of the day – including the news on social mediums. That said most of us realize that its often easier and many times more entertaining to use social media to find the niche news we’re interested in (@snowdotcom, @aboutflyfishing and @fodorstravel, to name a few for me).

As the U.S. Senate attempts to define “journalist” through the U.S. Media Shield Bill this year, 2010 most likely won’t be the year we discover “what happens” to traditional media or what exactly the future of social media looks like. What I do think will happen is this: The amount of news outlets, formats and niche audiences that exist will continue to evolve and provide a lot of opportunities for effective communicators to share their stories with the masses. As someone who works to tell his clients’ stories to a variety of influential, interested audiences, but still enjoys a cup of coffee and a newspaper every morning, I’m optimistic about 2010.

- Jim