Retweet “It’s a people driven economy, stupid.”
It’s the catch-phrase of social media marketing celebrity, Erik Qualman (@equalman), who has headed up social media initiatives for Cadillac & Pontiac, AT&T, Yahoo!, EarthLink, Travelzoo, and many more companies. Many of you may know him as the author of Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business, which topped Amazon’s #1 Best Selling List for the US, UK, Canada, and Germany.
And 3 Birds has some great news…. (more…)
Retweet During that week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, I thought about New Year’s Resolutions like many other people did and I thought about writing a blog post on the subject. While I think that there is some value to the exercise and I have certainly set resolutions for myself many times, writing about this topic seemed trite. I thought about how I might be able to craft a post that was about setting goals for the new year with a different spin or a take that didn’t sound like 90% of the other posts like it. But as the end of the first week of January approached and I had nothing innovative to say, I began to think that my window of opportunity for this type of a post was closing. My mind didn’t stop marinating on the subject though and it morphed into something bigger. So here goes… (more…)
Retweet The first installment of this post focused on the unique challenges I have encountered working with my husband.
3 Pros of Working With Your Spouse
She Said
I had to wait until I was in the right frame of mind to complete this part of the piece. In all seriousness however, these are the three best parts about working with my husband:
1. Observing Professional Strengths First Hand
Before Layton and I worked together, we attended events related to our respective careers as a couple from time to time. These get-togethers gave us each a glimpse into how the other person was regarded professionally. I knew that Layton had developed a reputation within the automobile industry as a straight shooter who was extremely knowledgeable about technology and online marketing with a vision for the future and an unparalleled commitment to customer service. Layton’s refusal to sugar coat, while refreshing to some, has also had a way of ruffling feathers. I didn’t really know what he did all day long other than that it involved a great deal of travel, countless hours on the telephone and lots of emails. Still, there is a difference between hearing praise for your husband from others and seeing him in action every day. (more…)
Retweet Layton and I are married and, together with the other members of our Management Committee, we run 3 Birds Marketing. At the risk of dating myself, I will disclose that, as of the end of October, Layton and I have been together for twenty years. We have only been working together since founding 3 Birds about fifteen months ago.
Spend an hour with us and you’ll see that Layton and I are opposites in almost every way. He is conservative and I am liberal. He likes to go out and I tend to be more of a homebody. I like to go for long bike rides or runs while he would rather watch a football game and smoke a cigar. He loves good steaks, ribs, Philly cheesesteaks and burgers and I am practically a vegetarian. I painstakingly ease my way into a cold pool while he jumps right into the deep end. I could go on and on identifying all of the ways that we are polar opposites, but it’s easier to just let you fill in the blanks. Given our differences, Layton and I both recognize that we will probably always have to work harder than other couples to be in sync with one another. (more…)
Retweet I learned an expression from one of our developers not long after we relocated to Chapel Hill. He told me that, with technology, you have to eat your own dog food, meaning, on the most basic level, that you have to use the software and applications you develop. It is the broader interpretation of this expression that really resonates with me though and that is the idea that it’s not good enough to just talk the talk, you have to walk the walk too. From this came the idea for what will now become a recurring blog post category that will be known as, “3 Birds Eats Its Own Bird Food” which is, of course a bird-centric take on the dog food expression.
The inaugural post in this category will relate to creating and posting video content. The popularity of You Tube, Vimeo and other video sharing sites is no secret, neither is the positive SEO value of video content or the simple fact that consumers gravitate toward the interactivity of rich media. We consistently urge our dealer clients to capture customer testimonials, vehicle walk arounds, dealership and community events and a variety of other material on video for these reasons. Even though I intellectually understand all of the reasons for creating video content, it’s a challenge for me to push past the discomfort I feel about putting myself on video. It is difficult for me to knowingly appear in a video without feeling incredibly awkward, nor can I watch a video of myself without being shocked to hear how my voice sounds to others or making any number of other self critical observations. If left to my own devices, I might scrutinize the recording like it was the Zapruder film, torturing myself by stopping, rewinding and playing it frame-by-frame and studying every fleeting, unflattering facial expression. Nevertheless, I decided to toughen up and take the bull by the horns, a technique that has worked well for me in the past. (more…)
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Home sweet home ... any time now
Anyone who knows me, even a little bit, is likely aware of my penchant for “To Do” lists. At any given time I have at least two lists going – a master task list and a daily version. The lists can become even more granular if I am in the midst of a big project with lots of moving pieces. In my never-ending quest to find the ultimate organizational tools, I have experimented with task management software and apps. I also know that I need to get with the program around here and start using Team Foundation Server for project planning and resource management since this is the system our team uses. [Note: We are very fortunate to have been selected to participate in Microsoft’s BizSpark program, a global program that helps innovative software startups to succeed by providing access to the Microsoft software stack and development tools, industry support and marketing visibility.] And I will, because I don’t want to be a salmon swimming upstream and I don’t expect others to conform to my old school ways.
Still, I doubt that I will ever completely give up my paper “To Do” lists. The feeling of using a red pen to cross an item off of my list once I have completed it is too satisfying to abandon. So satisfying in fact, that I have been known, from time to time, to jot down an item I have already completed just so I can mark it off! You’d be surprised how a little “cheat” like this can jump start productivity. (more…)
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Our company has undergone a big transition recently. We relocated from the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. There were many factors that influenced our decision to move, but we selected the Research Triangle in North Carolina, and Chapel Hill in particular, for its deep talent pool, progressive sensibility and the quality of life it offered for our family and the families of our staff members. (more…)
