Connect with Your City

This morning I saw this photo posted on Facebook.

A little backstory, a local business person started a scavenger hunt in town a few weeks ago, the Royal City Coffee Hunt. Find the photo, take it to The Joint Cafe and redeem for a free coffee.

This morning's location was one I know quite well, even though I haven't spent time there since I was in secondary school. In fact, as I drove over there I was surprised to find the street I thought lead right to the spot actually stopped before it.

From the ages of 8 until 11 I lived on Peter Ave, and attended Waverley Drive School. Even after moving away from the area in grade five I continued at the same school for 3 more years.

This was my neighbourhood, I knew it well. Especially since I walked to school everyday, sometimes with different friends so we changed routes regularly.

So, I bundled up and headed out to get the photo since I wanted a coffee, and a treat. As I drove over the memories started, as they often do any time I drive through that neighbourhood. I always look down Peter Ave, to spy my old house. As I drove further down Delhi I thought about how far of a walk it must have seemed to me at 9 years old every day. I feel like kids don't walk so far on their own any more.  My parents stopped walking me to school sometime about grade one, or 6 years old. From then on I was on my own.

I recognized that spot in the photo, so completely because it is directly across from the intersection where I used to be a safety patrol, Waverley and Clive.

As I looked up and down the street I was overcome with a memory of walking down to Riverside Drive to watch the Olympic Torch go by in 1988. My and my friends walked the entire way from the school to the end of the street singing "Stand By Me" over and over again. Because of my enormous crushes on River Phoenix and Wil Wheaton that movie was on constantly.

I have lived in Guelph since I was 3 years old. And I mean lived! Not only did we move at least 7 or 8 times before I was 13 years old (thanks to my nomadic father), I went to at least 4 different schools and made new and different friends each time. My brother and I were active kids, always exploring neighbourhoods, some quite far from our home. As long as we could hear my mom's whistle we knew we were within range of home, and she has a loud whistle!

There are very few parts of this city that don't have memories attached for me, and there are very few "Guelph" experiences I haven't had. Guelph is very much more than the city I live in. It has shaped me and made me the person I am. To get really philosophical, Guelph is me and I am Guelph :-)

I've been lucky to live in the same city for so long, but anybody can start making memories and experiencing our city. Go out for walks. Today walk left out your door instead of right. Drive to the library branch at the opposite end of the city from your home, join a book club there. Shop in a different grocery store, or visit some schools public events, like fairs and performances.

Go to local events like Festival Italiano, the Multicultural Festival and Hillside Festival. Ask long time Guelphites to share stories of what the city was like before you arrived. I can tell you where streets stopped 15 or 20 years ago, and what it was like lining up for movies at the Odeon on Wyndham St.

Thanks to Rob Campbell for adding a quick and easy way to get to know Guelph every Monday. Take part. Watch for next week's photo and go looking for it.

Host a Busy Event with the help of Social Media

This article was originally published in The Defacto Group's Quarterly Newsletter.

Fall and spring are popular times for yearly conferences. You might be looking at an event slated for November and worrying about the ticket sales, or just starting to plan something for April and want to ensure its success. Either way, here are some suggestions for getting buzz around your big event, hopefully picking up more ticket sales, and attracting bigger and better speakers for you next one.

John Morgan captures the audience at the B2Conf

The Basics

Set up a Facebook page for the host organization as well as a Facebook event.

Set up a Twitter account with an exciting and interesting description of the event in the bio and a link to your web page or registration page.

Make sure your venue is listed on FourSquare, or add it.

Consider setting up an event in LinkedIn, especially if it is a business related event and you see a large community of your targeted audience there.

The Meat of it

So you have all your accounts set up, you've been sending out posts with links to your registration everyday but you have only 15 likes on Facebook, one person has RSVP’d to your event and it was mom, and all of your Twitter followers are named SydneySmyth706 and ask you daily if you've seen this funny photo of you on the internet.

You need to put out compelling, interesting stories to make anybody care about your big conference. You need to stop sending out the equivalent of 10 second radio ads, without even the great radio voice. You need to be a caring person reacting to the everyday happenings of your community.

You community is made up of your attendees, your speakers, your sponsors, your venue, you local business and social clubs, you local media. These are the people you should be following on Twitter, and liking on Facebook. Then talk to them!

Help your venue promote their other events, RT their tweets and share their Facebook posts. If your speaker sends out a tweet about a great or bad experience in a coffee shop that morning, celebrate or commiserate with them. When your local media posts a good news story about your local economy let them know you read it and it makes you proud to be hosting your event in that city.

Social media is the place for conversation and reciprocity; it’s not the place for advertising.

The Payoff

After you've built your network of friends, fans and followers through chatting with them, then it becomes easy for them to buy from you, easy to promote you, and easy to come again.

Choose a hashtag so that your Twitter followers (hashtags also work on LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram and Google+) can find join the conversation about your event, and connect with other people attending. Promote it everywhere, online and offline.

Post visual content. Information is abundant on the internet, help people out by making it easy for them. Post a photo instead.

Tell stories about your sponsors and speakers. Were they on the local news, or better yet Oprah? Share a video.

Include a link to your main page or registration page as much as possible.

Don’t be afraid to ask people specifically if they are coming to your event, as long as you've had some sort of interaction with them where you've showed them you care about them.

Remember that promoting your event should start as soon as you begin planning. Involve people right from the beginning and they will help you succeed and maybe even join the planning committee for next year’s event!

The crowd gathers early in Market Square for Fourth Friday

Twitter is your local pub

Or your local coffee shop, favourite breakfast place, golf or country club.

Just think of that place you go regularly that you feel comfortable in. You know all the staff, they have your drink ready for you before you even take your seat. You know the other regulars, there's the guy who comes to watch football games because his wife and three daughters don't like it, and the local artist who painted the amazing mural on the wall over there, the younger guy you didn't think you'd have anything in common with until the day you chatted over morning coffee about the ways the government is ruining the country.

You come to your local, your place, on a regular day at a regular time for different reasons. Sometimes it's to catch up with the other people, sometimes it's to just people watch while you work on a project, sometimes it's to watch the football game too.

Imagine one day you are sitting in your local with the server, and one or two of your people and a clean cut guy wearing a suit and tie, carrying a briefcase walks in. He sticks out immediately since he's over dressed for the atmosphere, but hey, maybe he's early for a meeting, or he's had a tough day and wants a quick break. So once he's ordered his coffee and asks if he can join you at your table, you and your friends give him the benefit of the doubt. There was a day not too long ago you walked in here for the first time.

Except, he's taken advantage of your friendly welcome, sat down and immediately opened his briefcase full of trinkets and baubles. Believe it or not he starts telling you guys about how great his baubles are and how you can save money or lose weight by using his trinkets. And when you quietly ignore him and turn your back, without asking him to leave the table, then he starts tapping on your shoulder, "Don't you want to buy my baubles?"

You just want to enjoy the company of some pals, relax and do business tomorrow. And this guy keeps trying to get you to buy from him right now. Some of his baubles might even be interesting to you... maybe tomorrow you will stop by the bauble store and buy a few, but not right now.

Nobody wants to be sold to when they are looking for friends, laughs, information or entertainment. There is a time and a place for that.

Don't be the bauble salesman. Don't post consistent advertising messages. Don't DM your followers with an offer to discount your services. Talk about the weather, the football game, the news. And when your new friend comes into your bauble store tomorrow, he's gonna be surprised and happy to see that his new friend, the guy he trusts, is the one selling them.

It's gonna be the easiest sale of your life.

On being busy and Lunch Up Guelph

September is such a hectic month for everyone, and I'm included.Personally for me, it's like waking up from a hibernation. Summer is a difficult, energy draining time for me. Come September I feel an rush of excitement come over me and I plow into tasks that have been on the back burner for months.

So far this time around I've started courses on deeper use of Google Analytics, I've attended at least half a dozen webinars on a variety of topics such as building better metrics retention systems, becoming more efficient in posting to online networks, creating content. I even attended my first virtual conference, which was intriguing, though I didn't take advantage of networking with any of the other attendees. Maybe the next time I jump into one.

For my own business I've had great meetings and headway on my website (which is something I've been neglecting for ages), I've started a Facebook page, and started setting more targets to measure what I'm doing.

New clients have been contacting me regularly this month. I suspect they are all in the same headspace as I am... new year, gotta get moving on these goals. And people I've been working with over the summer are now ready to move forward with projects we've been talking about for months.

All this to say, September is a busy month for me. And it always has been. Looking back to last year I was so busy in September that I hadn't gotten a chance to relax with any of my Twitter friends all month. Such a change from the slower days of summer when everyone seems able to grab a quick coffee anytime during the day, or take a long lunch and chat for hours.

On this day last year, I reached a wall where I realized I was going like crazy and wanted, needed, to spend some time with friends that had nothing to do with business and was purely social. So I tweeted out an invitation to get together for lunch, thus starting Lunch Up Guelph unexpectedly.

This month would be the anniversary of Lunch Up. That is if I had planned anything. Which I haven't.

It takes me roughly 6 - 10 hours of planning, organizing, and spreading the word each month to host Lunch Up. The most difficult part of planning is dealing with the restaurants, deciding which one, getting in touch with the owners, convincing them to host our event, organizing the menu etc. And the reality is that's just not a 2 person job. Involving more people would actually make it take longer. I know because I've tried 3 - 4 times to conscript help with the planning.

In short, I don't have 6 - 10 free hours in September. If I did, Lunch Up would probably never have started to begin with!

So, based on the first year of having Lunch Up monthly, I realize that instead of trying to plan and host events for July and August, which had very small attendance, that time might better be used planning September and October's lunches and then having a great handle on the entire years worth of lunching with friends!

Always learning, that's me!

Bits of Wisdom From Books - Return on Influence

Gini Dietrich on using video and being personal in her marketing

The thing I like about this kind of content is that you either love me or hate me. And if you hate me, you save both you and me a lot of hassle because you already know you don't want to work with us. It's a fantastic qualifier for new clients.

Warning - A Personal Post

So, there's a thing called Baby Fever which supposedly happens to women about my age, particularly when all the other women around her start having babies, which my friends are.

I do not have Baby Fever. I have always loved kids, certainly want to raise children, but have wanted to adopt them since about the age of 10 or so. Recently I've watched close friends and family members go through pregnancies and birth... still do not want.

I do however have House Fever. 

Unlike getting married or having kids, having my own home has been something I've dreamt about for as long as I can remember. Growing up I used to read all those House and Home style magazines. We had lots of home builder catalogues at our place as well so I would pour through them choosing the best log cabins to live in and the best suburban 3 bedroom bungalows.

It has reached a fevered pitch however. I find myself doing double takes at every For Sale sign I see on lawns in the city and then when I get home checking out the listing online. 

Almost 10 years ago, I made a decision to own my own retail store and started working towards that goal. I knew it was essentially a choice not to own a home, but it was the decision I made at that time. And I don't regret it. When I did get my store opened officially in 2005 I defined success for me and my business when I could afford to own a home. Unfortunately that time never came and I chose to close the business in 2009.

Well now, 3 years later I'm making a choice to buy a home, soon. The financial mess a failed business makes is a unique challenge I will overcome to get to the place I want to be.

While I have enjoyed, and sometimes loved all of the places I have lived in and rented over the last 15 years, none of them have completely satisfied me, none have felt truly mine. And I'm at a point where I'm realizing how much of an emptiness that has left me with.

So, time to sort out my financial affairs and get me my house. Like maybe this cute little bungalow on a huge lot! Or this place right on the river, which has been a dream of mine since I moved to Guelph.

I'm stranded on an island!!

And by stranded I mean please don't come help me!

I'm heading to my family cottage on Lake Nipissing for the first time in 2 years. While I will have cell phone service, thus some connection to the internet, I really don't plan on using it except to show off pictures and videos of my time there.

I'm also going to attempt to read a book on basic HTML coding on the beach. This will either go great and the surroundings will make it that much more possible for me to comprehend it, or it will go horribly as I won't have a computer to try things out on and I will simply need to re-read the book when I get home. I'll keep you posted.

Otherwise, I also plan to spend time with family as two sets of aunts and uncles, my grandmother, and the many family friends we've made over the decades of vacationing at the same spot are all on the island as well.

Keep an eye on my Instagram account and my Viddy account (username cinn48 on both) to follow all the fun I'm having, along with the occasional tweet letting people know who won cribbage, or horseshoes that afternoon.