Being involved in a business that deals in what I call 'intensely local' websites (many of our customers pull from a radius of less than 20 miles, some have business jurisdictions that are fractions of that). When you look at the accuracy of your average Google Local or Superpages search, it's not bad, but I'm amazed on a daily basis how many businesses simply haven't taken advantage of putting their URL, or even correcting their business information in Google or any of the other online directories.

Imagine my surprise when I was doing some research for an upcoming seminar, trying to highlight our local Internet prowess, only to find out that our own Chamber of Commerce has one major flaw with it's Google Local listing... It's LINKED TO ANOTHER WEBSITE! Now, it's not all bad, at least the link goes to the local newspaper, and the chamber listing does show up in the organic search as the first listing (one would hope that it should), but nonetheless, the URL is wrong in the listing.

Don't bother contacting them, I already have. However, it will be interesting to see how long it takes them to correct it. This reminds me of a presentation I saw recently over at MarketingProfs where Stephan Spencer and Brian Klais of NetConcepts mentioned a local hospital which has some material that was commented out which said something like "Jack designed this website with a swiss-army knife and a pack of gum" or something like that... The point is, you can't put your 'stuff' out on the Internet and then go on vacation.

ACTION ITEM: Go Google yourself. Then, check the local directories. If anything about your information is incorrect or incomplete, get it corrected. If your URL is not listed, but it could be, get it in there...
> Google Local
> Superpages.com
> Yellowpages.com
> Yahoo Local
> Your listing on websites in your local area...

The fall and winter reading season is upon us once again in Green Bay. The Green Bay Chamber of Commerce has renamed our 'young professionals' reading group to a more appropriate title, Read to Lead. (now, all we need a is a cool Read to Lead logo!)

Rather than travelling around this year to different locations, it looks like we've secured a permenant perch at St. Brendan's Inn in the fireplace snug just off the bar. Discussion begins at 5:30, but come early to order food/drink.

The book for September is The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell and our disuccsion leader for the evening is Mike Devereux, CFO with Enzymatic Therapy. We will meet on Monday night, September 25.

The schedule for the rest of the year shapes up like this:

September 25, 2006
Mike Devereux, CFO, Enzymatic Therapy
The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell

October 30, 2006
Don Carmichael, general manager, WBAY
The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman

November 27, 2006
Phil Enscore, chair, TEC and Executive Agenda
Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham, Donald O. Clifton

The November session will be especially cool. Now Discover Your Strengths is one of my all time favorite books. You have to buy a new book, however, as you need to access the code in the book to do the Strengths Finder test, which is a good 'get to know yourself' type of device.

Sorry I'm late on this announcement, but the Fox River Ad Club (full disclosure - I'm a board member) is offering two (2) $500 scholarships to qualified marketing & advertising students who submit an application!

This something we've done in the past, and we'd like to reinvigorate the process this year to give credit where credit is due - namely, to those students pursuing studies in the fields related to advertising & marketing at any of the following schools in the Fox River Valley.

DOWNLOAD THE APPLICATION HERE:

From the official press release:

A friend of mine at a local medical center has arranged for a live surgery via webcast! Wild!!

A spinal surgery known as anterior cervical fusion will be the focus of a live webcast from 4 to 5 p.m. on Thursday, May 4, at Aurora BayCare Medical Center.

Neurosurgeon Steven S. Weinshel, M.D., will perform the procedure, with expert commentary throughout the broadcast provided by fellow BayCare Clinic neurosurgeons Max Ots, M.D., Richard Harrison, M.D., Mark Gardon, M.D., and Paul Baek, M.D.

The web broadcast also will include a pre-taped segment demonstrating the anterior cervical fusion procedure and will feature internet audience participation through a live question-and-answer session. Aurora BayCare Medical Center has selected live web casting as a strategic medium to build its platform for regional and national education of clinicians, patients, students and consumers.

For more information, you can also visit www.aurorabaycare.com or www.aurora.org

Or visit:
http://www.or-live.com/global/bulletin/index.cfm?broadcastID=287&r=orlive

Some of my favorite places in Green Bay have had Wi-Fi for some time now, and more are on the way, so says our humble hometown paper, The Green Bay Press-Gazette.

Personal Favorites:

- Kavarna
- Luna Coffee
- Jitter Bean Cafe

Oh, and a cool photo of Luna with Mark Garrigan of randmstudio - also of the Green Bay area and also blogging!

Looking for free Wi-Fi in the Green Bay area?

Jimmy Seas Bar, Pub and Fenders — 1330 Marine St.
Kavarna Café — 112 South Broadway
Yikes! Salon — 114 South Broadway
Atlanta Bread Co. — 1481 W Mason St.
Hanrahan's Pub & Grill — Howard Johnson Inn and Conference Center — 2580 S Ashland Ave.
Oxford's Café and Pub — 217 N. Washington Street
Titletown Brewing Company — 200 Dousman St.
Piazza's Grill and Deli — 154 N. Broadway
Marco's Seafood Club — 1350 Marine St.
The Bar - Lime Kiln — 606 Lime Kiln Road
The Bar - Holmgren Way — 2001 Holmgren Way
Northeast Wisconsin Technical College — 2740 West Mason St.
East Town Mall — 2350 East Mason St.
Austin Straubel Airport — Ashwaubenon
Airport Settle Inn — 2620 S. Packerland Drive
Freddie's Coffee House — 1620 Lawrence Dr.
Luna Café — 330 Main Ave.
Jitter Bean Coffee & Ice Cream Café — 2680 Monroe Road (Brown County GV)
[Source: wififreespot.com]

More on Wi-Fi all over Wisconsin...

Technorati Tags: Green Bay, wi-fi

I love books and I love reading. So it's only natural that I'm geeked about the new book discussion group that's forming within the Green Bay Young Professionals Network, Current.

Each month, we'll have a different book to review. On Monday, Oct. 24th, we'll be discussing Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi. It's a great read and is really the kind of book that begs to be discussed in a group setting. More to the point, the book is about networking and relationships, so it's only fitting that a social setting is where you might get the most value from the book.

Not being one to sit idly by, I'll be discussing Improv Wisdom : Don't Prepare, Just Show Up by Patricia Ryan Madson on April 25th, 2006

Links:

• Current
  
• Current Reading Group
  

Last night our Fox River Ad Club brought in Karen Post, the branding diva, as our monthly speaker. As a speaker myself, I'm always keen to go see others speak to get ideas, judge their style and so on. Karen was dynamite. She did the one thing that so few speakers fail to do - tell a compelling story.

Of course, I bought her book, Brain Tattoos: Creating Unique Brands That Stick In Your Customer's Minds, which is about 'tatooing your brand on the brain of your cusotmers.' I'm really looking forward to digging into it, actually. It's one of those 'hands on' books where there's worksheets and all kinds of fun 'exercise' type stuff. She's got the practical execution thing down to a science, at least from what I can tell from my first few leaf throughs of the book.

Her presentation was wonderful, and she laid out some excellent action items & bullet points on 'brain tattoo' branding, which I'll get to, but I couldn't help but think how much her presentation read like Purple Cow and The Big Moo. Bottom line of Karen's presentation and the aforementioned books is to be remarkable at something and do it consistently. No offense to the group of 33 who wrote The Big Moo, which is a very worthy read, but at the end of book, just like at the end of Karen's presentation, all you have in your head is "man, we need to take more risks, try to be remarkable, and do a way better job of telling our story."

According to Karen, these are her 7 key points for Brain Tattooing your brand:

1) Tattoo test regularly - research, ride along and all out get the sentiments that your customers have about your brand. Rinse, repeat.
2) Define your essence. Be able to boil it down to a bumper sticker - blah blah elevator pitch from sales training 101 blah blah if you don't have this you're screwed, call Karen for help
3) Take more chances. No risk. No brand. Period - Karen told a story about getting on an airplane in a halloween costume. Very funny. People bought her lots of drinks on the plane. Hell, thats enough reward for me.
4) Be a great storyteller
5) Be hugely different - ala purple cow
6) Make every experience count
7) Timing is as important as research. Stick with it. Start today. - No time like the present to do something different.

Karen's obviously bought into the 'napsterize your knowledge' philosophy; her website is FULL of great articles & such. Check it out.

There was one disappointing element in an otherwise perfect evening. The event was held at St. Norbert College, so the Ad Club graciously allowed students to participate in the presentation for free. While I did see a handful of students, I saw no faculty from the marketing, comm, business or art departments. What the hell people? This is a freebie. A great chance for your students to see a national speaker and for you to bring those lessons back to the classroom. I'm sure there's a perfectly logical reason why the entire SNC marketing student body didn't show up en masse, but I sure as hell don't know what that reason is. Bottom line - as a college student, you need all the good input you can get. This was a missed opportunity for those students who were not at Karen's presentation.

One of the best things about being a member of the AMA is participating in the SIGS (special interest group email listservs) where you can ping 3000 of your best friends for some marketing advice. Today, someone asked the following question, to which I responded. Which got me thinking--it would really be fun to own a clothing store at some point. I love clothes, shoes, and stuff like that. Not so sure I like retail though...

We have a similar high-end single-store retail clothing store here in Green Bay. They do a couple of things very well.

1. They are diligent about collecting addresses and emails to do regular 'preferred customer' promotions. They could do even more if they did a "bring a friend and get an extra x% for yourself and pass your discount on to them" to make the promotions more impactful.

2. They provide clothing for the evening newscasters on one of the local TV stations, which, in turn, nets them a mention each and every night on the program.

3. They have a 'tent sale' every so often, which again draws on their loyal clients. We get postcards 3 weeks before the event telling us about a special pre-event sale..before the general public gets wind of it.

4. As the clothier of record for many of the movers & shakers in the Green Bay area, they've become an informal networking venue to learn more about what's going on with peers & other influentials in the area. If they were to take it further, they'd be more aggressive in playing 'master networker' & becoming purveyors of information, not just fine clothing.

I'd also recommend reading a couple of books that might fit the bill here. Creating Customer Evangelists by Ben McConnell & Jackie Huba - Your client likely has a good roster of high-end customers and it pays to turn these influencers into evangelists. Another is The Virtual Handshake by Scott Allen & David Teten. This might be something of interest if you consider your client to be a 'hive' for the network of clients that they have. IMHO, it's the books that aren't "about" retail that give you the best insights on what do to at retail...

"It would hardly be fish who discovered the existence of water" once wrote Kluckhohn.

If you were to look at their business as 'providing high quality clothing to the greater metro area', I think that there's some missed opportunity. However, if you were to elevate the purpose of their business to 'Ensuring the continued success of XYZ area professionals' (by making them 'look good' in the professional endeavors with quality clothing), then I think you could really have some fun with building their business.

Just some thoughts & observations.

[UPDATE: Maybe there's even room to add the 'social shopping experience' to this list.]

Here’s a pop quiz only an economist would love: Wisconsin metropolitan areas showing robust growth between July 2003 and July 2004 were (a) Madison (b) Green Bay (c) La Crosse or (d) Milwaukee-Waukesha.

Statistically speaking, the only wrong answer is (a) Madison. Although the unemployment rate in Wisconsin’s capital city remains the lowest in the state at 2.4 percent, the year-to-year growth rate in the Madison area was barely a blip on the screen. Why? As many government jobs disappeared in the Madison area as the private sector was able to create.

Meanwhile, Green Bay has emerged as a national leader in job growth, and the Milwaukee-Waukesha and La Crosse areas showed renewed strength, as well.

Green Bay weighed in 32nd overall in creating jobs – and 5th in percentage growth at 4.1 percent. Go Green Bay!

[via Wisconsin Technology Network]

What is the ROI on your city's redevelopment program office? Do you add value or are they a sinkhole of money that does little for the community? If you do feel they are of value, how do you fund them?

These are some of the questions that Green Bay's OnBroadway city redevelopment office is struggling with now. With a shortfall of funds, as highlighted in this article by the Green Bay Press-Gazette, OnBroadway is facing the possibility of closing its doors if they can't find a better way to fund themselves. City loans and gratuities cannot last forever, at least not if they don't feel that there is value and return on their investment.

I wonder what you all think about funding your city's urban redev. efforts and how your redevelopment office, if you have one, stays afloat. While I'm not on the "inside" of what's going on at OnBroadway, I would venture a guess that they need to have a serious look at their 'business model' and consider themselves as a company that needs to make money. Like I said yesterday, there are some pretty unique ways to advertise in all of the vacant storefronts in your city, maybe they need to develop multiple revenue streams to keep the organization in check and above water?

Any thoughts? Please comment.

The Green Bay YPN Presents:

Networking for a Living

To be held Wednesday, January 28, 5:00 – 9:00 PM at the Sports Corner.

The event will feature Marilyn Robinson from Dale Carnegie Systems providing techniques to enhance your YPN experience.

Details
Date: Wednesday, January 28, 2004.
Time: 5:00 – 9:00 PM Program starts at 6:00 PM.
Place: The Sports Corner (500 Grant St., De Pere).
Program: Learn the Dale Carnegie techniques for
networking with fun and ease.
Cost: $5 Members / $15 Non-Members.

Download the PDF invite here.