Month: November 2010

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The Birthday Party Cupcakes

I am feeling sentimental today and so I want to share with you one of my memories. It was not so fond of a memory the day it happened but over the years it has morphed into a hilarious episode that makes the entire family laugh.

My husband and I have triplets, they are thirteen now, but I remember their first birthday. I proudly had a special decorated cupcake for each kid. All chocolate cupcakes as we are the chocolate lovers family.

I had this dream of this wonderful Kodak moment of our triplets picking up the cupcake so cutely by our son and so daintily by the girls and then snapping some great photos to remember forever.

What I go instead was this. I set each cupcake on each high chair tray. My husband I turned around for a millisecond (and I mean less than a heartbeat) to grab our cameras and when we turned around it was as if a cupcake bomb had gone off on each child. I’m telling you it was shocking. There was cupcake all over each kid top to bottom hair included. We had turned around for a second. There was cake smeared and rubbed in hair and all over the faces. They somehow it was all over their clothes too! Unbelievable!

In fact, the mess was so bad that I had to get a bucket of water and stand up each kid and wipe them down. I used a whole roll of paper towels. I still can’t believe the speed and cupcake devastation. We do have pictures to prove it!

The next year we did not do cupcakes but rather one cake placed far away from the kids with us fork feeding them.

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Black Friday Celebration

I am not blogging today as I am in Ohio celebrating my Mom’s 85th birthday this weekend, but I am hoping that my husband is already in line at Best Buy before 4:00 AM to grab the technology gifts for our kids. I will be on the road all day and so I am just hoping that the early bird will get the DSiXL this year times three!

I hate Black Friday! It seems like the stores are opening earlier and earlier this year to get the shoppers first and then hold them captive for hours in lines to check out. Here was my killer Black Friday experience.

Several years ago, we didn’t have a ton of money to spend for the kids and according to them, they were the only 11 year olds on the entire planet that did not have a Game Boy Advanced Game System. Sigh… Circuit City had a really deep discount and we needed three for our triplets. I convinced my husband we should get up before dawn and go to Circuit City and buy them. They were about $80 each so nearly a $40 each discount. We go there at 4:30 AM thinking about how smart we were and when we turned the corner of the building and saw the line wrapping all the way around the store with other parents who were smarter and got up earlier we were shocked.

We still had to wait an hour in line just for the store to open. (Note to self take a coffee mug and food next time.) We got into the store, had to wait again as they were over the Fire Marshall limit and got our three Game Boys. Then we waited in line four – yes that is right four hours to check out!

The key to Black Friday shopping is to do the following:

  1. Stay up all night why even go to bed?
  2. Better yet, sleep in your clothes in the parking lot or have an all night tailgate party.
  3. Take tons of food with you. You may even be able to sell some in line and make money.
  4. Choose your store carefully. You may never get out!
  5. Make sure the discount is really, really big to make it seem like it is worth your while.
  6. Better yet see if you can buy it online and sleep in!

Although I won’t be in Waldorf on Black Friday, rest assured I will go to the mall at night in Columbus, Ohio – see you there!

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HootSuite Moves To A Paid Model

If you are serious about social networking and social media then you are probably using HootSuite already. If you are not, HootSuite is our application of choice for our various writers and to house our myriad of client accounts.

HootSuite has been free for the last two years and we have enjoyed and really used the service. In fact is wasn’t until Facebook chopped Fan Page posting by third parties that we really found out just how much we depend on the application to manage our growing social media enterprise.

In the next seven days if you use HootSuite, you will be forced to choose either the free restricted use option or will have to move to the Pro paid option that is based on a pricey fee structure for team members. You get yourself free and four more team members for $15 each. Add another member and it is $30 per member up to a cap. Ouch that can get expensive for certain businesses ours included.

Social media is here to stay and our service offerings and number of clients is steadily growing with HootSuite, even the paid Pro version we can quickly and effectively do the work we need to do. I consider HootSuite and integral part of our service offerings.

Please note HootSuite will pay me a small commission if you sign up for a Pro account, but that is not my reason for writing this post.

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Google Places Tags Do They Work?

So does that little yellow icon that you just bought for $25 for the month that Google will show next to your Google Places aka Google Maps listing work to drive traffic?

Interesting question and here is the statistical data from one client that shows it is not worth the money.

Before the Tag: 14,150 impressions with 1400 actions

After the Tag: 10.351 impressions with 1001 actions

So traffic did not increase nor did actions. Additionally the clicks into the website also decreased.

So why would anyone want to pay $25 for the Tag icon? Well I can think of several times when the Tag may actually help. If you put a discount or special offer in the wording of your Tag, you may have terrific results. In our test case the client did not want to use a promotion and only wanted to highlight his web address.

As Google offers 30 days of the Tag free it may be worth it to your business to test the use of a Tag, but only with a promotional offer. Make sure if you do this that you print the page of your 30 day results in the control panel to use as your benchmark as there is no way to sort data and review old figures if you forget. The control panel will only show the most current 30 day results.

Then make a note on your calendar to review your After figures and compare the two; doing your own statistical test. Make sure you deactivate your tag is you didn’t like your results by clicking the billing tab and then deactivate or you will get billed for the next 30 days of service.

If you find out Tags have worked for you, make sure to leave a comment and your before and after stats to help us all out!