People Can say the nicest things

In our recent "Social Media for Exectuvies" seminar sponsored by the Columbia Tower Club, one of our attendees literally raced out of the seminar and posted the following on her blog. We appreciate those who "get the message". And we appreciate it even more when they put the message to work. Social Media is about spreading the word.

GET TO THIS CLASS AND LEARN MORE ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA AND HOW IT ALL WORKS!

For those of you who really want an opportunity to unpack all these confusing terms and issues, I urge you to consider taking Blaine and Clay's class. It's only a few hours of your time, it's reasonable in price and well worth the effort to drag yourself out of the office to learn something that might make all this Social Media world a little less overwhelming.

CHANGE IS COMING WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOTChange is coming.

A new way of communicating and reaching your audience through all the various choices of Social Media is here now. We all need to learn to begin to "bridge the gap" between the way things used to be done and work and how they are evolving and working now. This knowledge will help us all in how we promote and leverage our individual brands using all these Social Media tools!In fact, I would say Blaine and Clay's class a really terrific opportunity to get out in front of this Social Media trend that is coming whether you like it, understand it, want it to happen or not!

We appreciate these kind words. If you would like to read even more of Mary Anne's take-aways from "Social Media for Executives", you can read her complete posting at http://bit.ly/Cswx1

We encourage you to share this information with friends who haven't seen the future of business communications -- more information on our seminars and coaching services can be found at: http://bit.ly/BJNk

Great group at Columbia Tower Club

We presented to a great group of executives at the Columbia Tower Club today. One of the companies attending was Speaking to Win and owner, Mary Anne Dorward is shown discussing some great ideas about how to use this with her Blog Talk Radio show.

Blaine

Thurston County Chamber of Commerce packs St. Martins…

Lunchtime on Wednesday represented a significant milestone for the Thurston County Chamber of Commerce. They packed the event center on the campus of St. Martin’s University with over 200 people, their largest crowd ever – all to learn about “how Social Media could help them differentiate and build revenues” for their businesses. We were graciously hosted by the new incoming chairman, Casey Cochrane, who had the house laughing while focusing on many different topics.

The diverse audience created an electric environment by having a range from small businesses – some of whom we had a chance to talk with - such as Cabinets by Trivonna, Puget Sound Health Partners, HarleQuin Productions and Cascade Mini Excavating (to name a few), to the Business Examiner and even Puget Sound Energy. There were also more bankers in one room than I have seen in a very long time, including Frontier Bank, Heritage Bank, Key Bank, Olympia Federal Savings and Thurston First Bank, just to name a few. They even did a “bankers raffle” to recognize all the support the bankers have given to the chamber – don’t ask me how that worked – still trying to figure that one out myself.

Our message was simple – Social Media is the next tsunami in communications – Faster, Deeper and Cheaper than any form of “traditional media” they are using today. This is a “dream come true” for small and middle market businesses as the cost for all the Social Media tools is exactly the same for them as it is for Proctor and Gamble – FREE! The crowd was stunned by some of the stats and the rapid growth of Social Media in the business world. All in all, a great experience for us and one that opened the eyes of the majority of people attending – Thurston County, you are now ENGAGED…

Blaine

Record Attendance at Thurston Country Chamber Forum

2 Suits, No TATs, all business...

We had the opportunity to speak to a fantastic group this past week - the Washington Restaurant Association Board of Directors - thanks Anthony for being a leading edge thinker. This group represented some of the best known names in the restaurant business, such as Restaurants Unlimited, Schwartz Brothers, the Washington Athletic Club, Boundary Bay Brewery and many others. What a great gathering of who's who in the restaurant and hospitality industry!

So we did a speech, "What Executives should know about Social Media and its role in Business", and then followed with a hands-on workshop. These executives were "engaged" and really took the information to heart and jumped right in - very impressive.

So where does the "2 Suits, No TATs, all business" fit into this story? On our way out we had a fascinating conversation with Janet Lightner, GM and co-founder of Boundary Bay Brewing Company. If you ever get to Bellingham, this is a MUST stop on your trip. These people do it right - both as a brewery/restaurant and in social media. So during our conversation, Janet mentioned that when she heard there was going to be a talk on Social Media, she pictured a couple of marketing or tech guys in t-shirts with tattoos. What she found were two guys (over 35) in suits, no tattoos and focused on how this can help their businesses.

She told us she was shocked to see. This surprised everyone. Here were two "business guys" talking about things like "strategy" and "integration to avoid brand erosion" and "how to use the tools in a way that won't embarrass you or your business" and "how to make money using Social Media" - not what they were expecting. It was worth a good laugh for sure. Thanks to Janet, now we know what our "competition" looks like...

Blaine

Blaine Millet

Customer Experiences Inc.

twitter: @BlaineMillet