GET CREATIVE THIS SUMMER!!!
Paperkite Creative Workshops for Kids

Paperkite Creative Summer Workshops are a fun and creative way to spend summer vacation. Workshops are available for grades 1-6 and offer a variety of activities from arts and crafts to creative writing and imagination workshops. All classes meet at the Smithy-Pioneer Gallery classroom, 55 Pioneer Street, Cooperstown, NY and include a healthy snack. All work will be exhibited and presented at an end of season celebration. Check out our schedule of classes.

Special Thanks to the Smithy-Pioneer Gallery for Sponsoring the Summer 2010 Season!

is not to spend your day reading about what other people are having or lunch or – MUCH WORSE – reading their self-aggrandizing micro-press releases.

Last week, I worked with a client to figure out whether Twitter is a good fit for them. This is an organization with a small, incredibly dynamic and energetic staff. On one hand, Twitter could be an excellent tool for connecting with their membership and further illustrating the face that is already on their organization. On the other hand – they have absolutely no time to waste on a tool that can, admittedly, be a time-suck if you just walk into it without a goal or strategy.

Like any form of communication, Twitter is a medium, and its value (or lack thereof) lies in how you employ it.

Many organizations have rushed into the medium without a plan or even a definition of success. Even the (largely self-proclaimed) experts, consultants, marketing agencies, etc., have been guilty of spreading the gospel of the technology without supporting it with a strategy.

That’s probably why more than half of CMOs surveyed in a report published last month by Marketing Profs* weren’t sure of the return on their investment in the social web.

Another full 50 percent didn’t even know how to measure the return of a business blog.

(*To access the full article, you’ll have to register for a free account. Go ahead – it’s a good resource.)

As The Brandbuilder himself, Olivier Blanchard, keenly asserts: ROI is always measured in $$$. Money goes in, money comes out, and a profit or loss can be calculated.

So, if you have to make money with this thing, you look at your participation a little differently. The question changes from whether you should be on it, to whether it solves a problem that effects the bottom line(s). (For those who honor the triple bottom line.)

When you create a new membership brochure, make your website easier to use or expand the stock on your shelves, you have a financial goal in mind. More members. More conversions on the site. More sales. More money.

Whether it’s Twitter or a blog or Facebook or any other mode of communication, you should go into it knowing what problem you want it to solve and how you will measure its success.

Brian Solis gives the following examples of some problems Twitter/the social web can help solve:

I believe this is the direct result of a disconnect between social media activity and a clearly defined end game. We must establish what we want to measure before we engage. By doing so, we can answer the questions, “what is it that we want to change, improve, accomplish, incite, etc?”

Defining a clear strategy can help us reach our social media goals, including:

- Sales
- Registrations
- Referrals
- Links (the currency of the social web)
- Votes
- Reduction in costs and processes
- Decrease in customer issues
- Lead generation
- Conversion
- Reduced sale cycles
- Inbound activity

Those are all things that can be measured, and they all impact the financial health of your business or organization.

Cooper the Fox, Mascot for Coop Kids

We are lucky enough to be part of a group of local organizations who have come together to create a community calendar hub called Coop Kids.

The page quietly launched last night after a few months of preparation and meetings and response was pretty swift. Within half an hour, we had enough fans to secure a user name for the page, so that we could give out an address that looks like this: www.facebook.com/coopkids rather than like this: http://www.facebook.com/#/pages/Cooperstown-NY/Paperkite-Creative-Workshops/183742475331. (PS – if you’re reading this, why don’t you slip over to the Creative Workshops page and fan us up so we can get our custom user name).

Today, it has twice that number, and I expect it will continue to grow as we begin publicizing it in earnest.

This is one of those grassroots projects that grew organically out of a sincere desire to do something useful for the community: Namely to provide a place where families could find comprehensive listings of kid-oriented events, and where all the various organizations in town who offer children’s programming can communicate to find greater strength in collaboration.

Paperkite was involved on two fronts, both as a programming provider (because of our creative workshops) and as a communications facilitator.

Representatives from the initial organizations met last fall to begin the dialogue. Everyone was enthusiastic about the project, although there were reservations about getting involved in something that would add another layer of responsibility on already busy schedules.

After collecting notes, ideas, concerns and other thoughts from the group, we explored different directions the project could go.

Should it be a print calendar? A combination print and online calendar? How would we handle costs and responsibilities? Could the whole thing live online? If so, who would administer the site? How would we build it? Who would pay for hosting and design and day-to-day maintenance of the site?

We quickly dismissed the idea of a print-only piece as being both too costly and labor intensive to be sustainable. And since the goal was to create a truly comprehensive resource, we acknowledged that we could never do that in print.

Instead, we would use small printed promotional fliers (design donated by one affiliate and copying donated by another) to publicize the online space.

We explored different logistics for getting online, and ultimately decided that Facebook was a good way to start, since a Facebook fan page had all the functionality we wanted (multiple admins, events calendar, discussion forum, interactivity with the audience), it was free and – this is the best reason of all – people are there already. We don’t have the challenge of instilling a new habit of checking a new website.

I hope that this idea grows over time and eventually perhaps even outgrows Facebook. For now, it’s an excellent example of grassroots collaboration that benefits both the collaborators and their audiences.

We would like to thank all of the collaborators who have made this happen:

The Farmers’ Museum

Fenimore Art Museum

National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

The Clark Sports Center

Cooperstown Art Association

Cooperstown PTO

The Brookwood School

The Smithy-Pioneer Gallery

Friends of the Village Library

Cooperstown Chamber Music Festival

Cooperstown Performing Arts

Paperkite Creative Workshops

Google Wave logo

My very, very first impression of Google Wave is that it called to mind a conversation I had back in 1994 or ‘95 about the difference between e-mail and the Internet. I was the one who wasn’t totally clear on the subject. This was back when the two things could be and often were separate. My brother was away at college, where he had access to e-mail, but not always access to the Internet.

My friend, who was one of those nerdy first-adopters (and an IT person at the company where I worked), explained the Internet to me in very technical terms that made it seem like a very closed system created for and populated by the technical elite. But I remember thinking, “well, sooner or later someone’s going to come up with a way that just anyone will be able to put things on the Internet just like creating a document, and the world will get a lot more interesting.”

I worked at a newspaper then. Things got a lot more interesting.

Anyway, I’ve been trying out Google Wave this week. I’m not going to give you a tutorial, because there are plenty of other places you’ll find that. And I’m not yet equipped to give it anyway. Try Lifehacker for a good overview. And for a little funny, try Pulp Wave Fiction. (via Chris Brogan.)

What struck me was the idea that Wave is an approach to online communication that asks the question, “How would e-mail be different if it were being created today, with all our current technical capability and emerging online culture?”

And the resounding, joyful answer is that it would be collaborative and nimble and conversational.

Good for you, Google Wave Team. And good for us.

I think this is going to make things interesting.

Not long ago, the prevailing wisdom about online strategy was to use your blogs, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc., to increase searchability and ultimately drive people back to your sales-machine of a website. It was kind of like dropping lines all over the lake so you could pull all the fish back to the boat.

In essence, the strategy was an online version of real-world strategies – a high-tech version of running an ad in a newspaper in hopes of drawing readers off their sofas and into your store.

The social web can work that way, but what happens when you make a point of going to your customers (clients, donors, etc.)?

Look at Best Buy’s Facebook page. They go beyond using it as a gateway to their home site. They even go beyond using it as a customer service tool.

With a custom “Shop + Share” tab, they invite fans to both shop and interact without ever leaving Facebook.

When you consider the growing number of people who use social sites like Facebook as their home pages, it behooves anyone with a social web presence to include this kind of engagement in their strategy.

What would your fans like to do on your Facebook page? What can you give them that they wouldn’t be able to resist sharing? Is there some way you could offer an authentic platform where your fans want to interact?

A few years ago, when I was in the market for a new digital camera, I went to Cnet to research my options, then I went to Pricegrabber to find the best deal. I found the camera I wanted for a good price (plus free shipping – woot) from an online retailer. I was so happy with the whole transaction that, a couple years later when I wanted a new camera, I went back to the same retailer.

Again, I got the camera I wanted at a very good price. I also started getting about four marketing e-mails a day from the retailer. Yes, I had opted in to receive news of special promotions, etc., but I had no idea that meant signing on for a deluge of irrelevant noise.

Making matters worse, when the second camera malfunctioned within the warranty period, and I e-mailed the customer service address at the retailer with a question, I never got a response. That afternoon, I did get a handful of “special” promotions for products that weren’t related to photography or cameras in any way.

I unsubscribed. And I decided that my next camera will come from another retailer.

I’m not alone, either. A recent study by the CMO Council and InfoPrint Solutions Company found that 41 percent of consumers say they would consider ending a brand relationship due to irrelevant promotions, and an additional 22 percent say they would definitely defect from the brand.

E-mail marketing efforts can be enormously powerful. When approached correctly, they have the power to engage your constituents in a lasting and personal way. Done incorrectly, however, they have the power to actually repel the very people you’re trying to attract.

The key is relevance and valuable content. Sometimes that means a coupon or sale promotion, but not necessarily. In the case of my online electronics retailer, no amount of screaming e-mail promotions would convince me that I needed to order a 46-inch LCD television.

Why couldn’t they send me real information that I could have used, such as tips and tricks for using my new camera, links to amateur photography contests, an invitation to share photos I have taken with my camera … the options are limitless.

When brands deliver that kind of value, they create more than repeat customers – they start building a community of fans.

The first of our Summer 09 Creative Workshops begins Monday. I feel just like the students must feel – excited and a little nervous. I can’t wait to see what we create together.

I’ve collected a dozen or so cool stories that we’re going to read, and some activities to get all the creative juices flowing. Who knows what magic is going to happen?

Milling about before a day full of presentations and workshops on technology and museums, John and I told our hosts about the weekend of museum hopping we had already accomplished. See, the presentation was Monday at Wellesley, just about 15 minutes from my brother and sister-in-law’s house. We had decided t make a full weekend of it, driving over Friday and taking in Boston on Saturday and Sunday.

The workshop organizer smiled and said, “So you’re the kind of people who go to museums in your time off, too.”

Yes. Yes we are.

Maybe it’s because our professional lives didn’t begin in museums. Or maybe it’s because we are thieves and plagiarists at heart, always looking for someone who is doing something really cool that we can steal, erm, adapt. But we do go to museums everywhere we travel. And this weekend in Boston was no exception.

On Saturday, we visited the Paul Revere House in Boston’s North End. It was a perfect day. Sunny, but not too hot. The traffic wasn’t unbearable. We parked and walked a couple blocks to the Revere House, stopping momentarily across the street to admire it. It’s much smaller than I would have imagined, although I’m not sure why my imagination would have veered toward something larger. Perhaps it was that, somewhere in my history student past, I remember hearing something about Revere’s children numbering in the double digits.

My 3-year-old daughter cavalierly tried to cross the street alone, and could not understand why we pulled her back.

“What? It’s not a street. It’s just bricks.”

We toured the house in the typical fashion of a family with children who are at varying stages of attentiveness and ability to grasp content. Posey, our 3-year-old, was most impressed by the opportunity to stand completely inside the large (reproduction) fireplace in the dining room. Meanwhile, Bee, who is 6, was more impressed by the objects in the museum: a rocking bassinet in the kitchen, the fake food in the dining room the furniture in the upstairs bedrooms, the fact that there was no bathroom in the house.

For Posey, she was more engaged by the game of make-believe she played in the brick courtyard than by the museum itself. She is 3. Historical perspective isn’t yet her thing.

But for Bee, I wanted to make it more meaningful than just a zip through an old house with no bathroom. We talked about domestic things. Cooking over an open hearth, living without electricity, the logistics of many people sleeping in what amounts to a 2-bedroom/0-bath colonial.

Once we were back in the car, I tried to brooch the subject of Paul Revere’s role in American history, but quickly found that it is difficult to explain Paul Revere without first explaining colonialism, imperialism and revolution. Add in the further complications that my daughters are Chinese immigrants, and therefore not – as I was when I was a very young American history student – looking at history through a lens of white privilege and a Eurocentric sense of manifest destiny. (Not that I was doing that on purpose, mind you.)

So I went with the fairness explanation, something that inspires great passion from sisters who are close in age. 

“For a long time, the English people in this part of the world had a leader who didn’t treat them fairly. So they decided that he wasn’t a good leader. They figured they could lead themselves more fairly, so that’s what they did. And the man who lived in this house was one of the ordinary people who helped to start that new country.”

To be honest, she wasn’t all that impressed, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s just a matter of time before she decides to make her own declaration of independence from the tyranny of her little sister. I better hide the tea.

It struck me

In 2004, I was living in Pensacola, Florida, when Hurricane Ivan struck and swept extensive damage through the city. The storm cut off vital transportation routes, left the entire community without electricity and showed all of us just how fragile our homes were. It also showed us how strong our community was.

As Red Cross food & water distribution station cropped up all over town, people opened their doors to neighbors and shared whatever excess they had.

Frances Moore Lappe is an inspiration to many people who are passionate about issues of food security, sustainable farming and organic food production.

If you’re not familiar with the work that she and her daughter Anna Lappe do, you should visit their site immediately. Visit, learn and contribute.

One of the first things you’ll learn about this world in which children still starve to death is that (this is important) there is more than enough. There is more than enough food to go around. No one needs to be hungry. And certainly, no one needs to starve.

A friend emailed me today because she is exploring Twitter and how her museum might use it to connect with fans. She wanted to know my thoughts on using a real person’s name versus an organizational name. In other words, should individuals employed by the museum post to Twitter under their own names or under the organization’s name.

There are pros and cons no matter how to do it. <!–more–>

Twitter is the very essence of social media, and the primary thing about social media is that it’s social. People don’t socialize with brands. They may use brands in order to further their social status, but they don’t socialize with them. It’s the difference between getting email blasts from Microsoft and getting handwritten notes from Bill Gates.

A lot of organizations are on Twitter under their organization’s name. Not coincidentally, many of them seem to Twitter fairly institutional type content. They post about upcoming events, big news and all your basic press release type material.

It makes sense – how much more personality can an institution or a brand have? It can’t make friends, start or join conversations or express any kind of opinion on anything but the most narrow subject matter. I mean, sure, some brands have plenty of “personality,” but I wouldn’t follow @hottopic or @anthropologie or @windex or @sevethgeneration (all names made up – no idea if they’re really Twittering) in an effort to connect to real-live people. In fact, I would only follow if I were already sold on the brand.

There’s a logic in doing that, though, because only your biggest fans will follow you. It doesn’t matter how many there are. If they’re following you and you give them something valuable, they’ll spread your message.The big catch here is that you have to already have some fans who will be happy to connect with you. Probably easier for brands like Seventh Generation or Anthropologie than brands like Windex or Kentucky Fried Chicken. This is where you have to know your audience’s technographics.

(Ironically, nearly all individual politicians on Twitter fall into the category of Twittering as a brand. @algore is a brand in most people’s minds, not a human being. Fodder for another post)

Then there are people who are on Twitter with their own personal brand first and foremost, with their company connection secondary. We all know that @ev and @bizstone are the Twitter founders.

Then there is the middle road, where your Twitter name is both human and corporate. @richardatdell is a famous example.

So what’s the best way to go?

As with all other social media tools, I think it totally depends on how you plan to use it. What’s your goal? What will = success? Start there, and work backwards.

Want to be more human and accessible? Maybe @name_at_yourbrand works best. Already have a good fan base that you want to empower, @yourbrand could work well.

Do you trust the people who work for you to build your brand with the skills they already have? Let them use their real names.

You can probably answer a lot of these questions for yourself by hanging out on Twitter, perusing posts via search.twitter.com and getting familiar with the etiquette and mores of the medium.

What’s your experience? What works for you? What engages you or turns you off? What would make you click that Follow button?

PS – If you are on Twitter, go on over and follow @KasjaSabatke, who has gone with her real name.