Art or Vandalism? – A sad tour of graffiti in Tucson

My vote is that all of the graffiti I’ve seen has been vandalism.  The thing that I found most interesting about this Human Mosaic Project assignment is the amount of graffiti I was able to find around Tucson.  I honestly didn’t have to hunt at all.  It was found on nearly every corner of every street.  In many neighborhoods it had been poorly covered up, but had obviously been there before.

Very sad indeed.

Demo Free Daze?

Stupid Kid

This one is at least mildly artistic!

Pillars of the Community

Please Look (I need attention)

Is Google Plus the new Twitter?

With the launches of many platforms there is typically huge buzz!  The launch of Google Plus (G+) is no exception.  Some predict that G+ will die a quiet death similar to that of Google Buzz, while others believe it could spell the death of Facebook and/or Twitter.   From a small business perspective, should you spend time networking with potential customers on this new platform?  Yes, this well thought out strategic play between multiple Google properties will change social media forever!

Circles
There are quite a few reasons that so many people are raving about G+.  The first item that I feel is most important for business owners is the fine grained sharing control.  G+ has created the concept of circles that you can easily drag and drop customers into!  These circles give you the fine-grained ability to determine what gets shared with each group.

Can you imagine having a circle for each step in your sales funnel and sharing different content for each group?   Suppose for a moment that you were a local carpet installation company.  You now proceed to share a blog post titled “Should your carpet be professionally cleaned or replaced?” with all of your prospects.  A few moments later you send out a coupon for a discount on installation to all of your warm leads.  This type of control allows you to broadcast to specific groups very quickly and then follow-up 1 on 1.

Don’t forget that G+ allows you to share with other G+ users as well as with individuals via e-mail.  This means that the customers in the example above didn’t even need to be members of G+.  You simply add their email address to your G+ circle and voila you can share your blog or coupons with them too!

Sparks
The idea behind sparks are pretty simple: provide G+ users with interesting content for their interests.  You simply tell G+ which types of content you’re interested in and it will find content for you.  This functionality is useful for quickly finding useful content to share with your customers.  This means that you can share blogs and news items with your customers in 2 clicks.

I suspect that in the future Google will probably integrate this functionality right into your stream which means that it will require only 1 click to share!

Hangouts

There is a lot of new marketing ground to be broken using Google’s new concept of hangouts.  Hangouts are virtual rooms where up to 10 people can video chat simultaneously.  You simply choose which circles you’d like to allow into your hangout and they will all be notified that a hangout is available.  Because you want to be adding value to your network this could be a great opportunity to introduce members of your circles to each-other.  This is a perfect opportunity to learn more about your customers.  Additionally, by helping others connect you’ll be perceived as valuable and remain in the forefront of your customer’s minds.

Aside from the fact that I believe G+ will be a huge game changer, you need to ensure that it fits properly into your marketing strategy.  I suspect that all of the new capabilities G+ brings will allow it to fit into the strategies of many business owners, but not all.

Business Lessons From Mexico – Make Time For Family

This is the third post in my Business Lessons from Mexico series.  If you haven’t already done so, please go back and read the first and second posts on “Do One Thing Well” and “Make Sure You’re Protected” for additional context.

One area I personally struggle with, and am always striving to do better with, is making time for family.  Because I enjoy my work, I often find that I’ll try to grab an extra hour here, an additional 15 minutes there, and before I realize it’s time for bed.

This last trip to Mexico, I was unable to get phone or internet service on the beach.  The most advanced technology we used was an iPod to jam out while playing sequence on the beach and playing fart games with unsuspecting visitors.

My wife had the incredible idea to buy a little remote-controlled whoopee cushion.  You take the portion with the speaker and hide it somewhere and then use a remote which looks like a car keychain remote.  Whenever the remote is pressed you get a random and realistic fart sound from the other end.  As juvenile as it sounds, eventually EVERYONE was playing with the little machine.

From little chuckles to long, loud barrel laughs, everyone loved it!  Eventually, once everyone in our little camp had been tricked into believing that the person sitting next to them had no respect for anyone, we had to move on to the neighbors.  They would come over to visit, be invited to the kitchen where grandma would proceed to test their patience.

I don’t think I’ve laughed so much or so hard in a very long time!  The impacts of this 4 day break in Mexico has had on me personally are pretty amazing.  I came back to the United States and have been  hard at work, but things are flowing so naturally.

I don’t find that I’m distracted by Twitter and Facebook as much as I was before I left.  I’m able to whip out blog posts at record speed and I feel I can focus on the things that are most important.  I was able to move a couple of my personal projects forward by leaps and bounds in a matter of days.

I owe this to my family as they have ensured that in spite of a long list of to-dos waiting I always set aside some time with family to be able to recharge and keep from burning out.

Make sure you set aside time to recharge!