Red Humpy

 It’s Sunday morning, 9:42 Mountain Time. My cup of Tazo soy chai tea is empty. (I lean to my right and peak in to check.) The paper is not here yet and probably won’t be for another hour. It is overcast, cold and windy outside. I have three projects that need to be worked on today – two that are on hold for technical reasons and one that I am not looking forward to. At noon, a friend is coming over and we will review some options for her social media projects and then choose a plan of action. I just checked my schedule and realized she’s not coming until one, which means I have an extra hour. 

My three finches, Huey, Dewey and Louie, are flying around the cage that is in front of the window to my left. I need to clean the seed husks, feathers and dust from below the cage. Two Beanie Baby stuffed animals, a leopard and a sea horse, are sitting on top of a USPS priority mail box that has not yet been made into a box and lays flat next to the lamp. My daughters grabbed the leopard on accident from the beach house we stayed at on spring break back in April. We found the leopard among their toys in May, and decided to send it back to the owner along with a new sea horse friend. Two weeks ago I remembered to pick up a shipping box when I was downtown at the post office for the first time in a few months. The stuffed animals have been sitting, waiting to be shipped since then. 

It’s 9:53 and I’m back from a short break where I read today’s goddess and contemplation in Julie Loar’s Goddesses for Every Day book. The November 28 goddess is Minerva, and the contemplation is “I clear my mind of judgment and see the chain of consequences that flows from each choice.” There is a tick-a, tick-a, tick-a sound in the background and then a DING to remind me my toast is done. I realize I don’t hear the tick of my kitchen clock and look up above the sink and see that I forgot to wind it again. The clock has stopped at 1:50. I will wait until that time this afternoon to get it going again since it will take some time standing on a chair to wait through seven hours and half hours of chiming to get to the current time. 

I feel empty today, and unmotivated. I wish there was snow outside so I could go for a cross country ski and get out of this funk.  I turn 40 in one week and was hoping to plan a big birthday party. Rather than the stress of getting my house cleaned up in time for a party, I was planning on renting a condo for the night. The condos are right down the street and I get a nice discount through my best friend. But the day I was getting ready to plan the party I learned that a long-time friend had died in an avalanche. He left behind a wife who was my son’s fifth-grade teacher, and two young boys, one of whom is in my daughter’s second-grade class. For the first 4 days after I  heard the news and learned more about the accident, I had a hard time getting to bed because I didn’t want to lay and think about what he went through and what his wife and family are going through. I would wake up in the morning and be thinking about him in the snow, about another friend who was the one who had to dig him out of the snow and attempt to revive him, about his wife who suddenly has no husband or father to her children. 

I ran in to a friend a few days ago whose own husband’s funeral I attended one year ago this week. He died suddenly from a heart attack. I spoke with another young friend who lost her husband to suicide 18 months ago. She is with someone new now, a man who loves her two children and helps her emotionally. She told me that their plans to have a baby together are now happening: she’s pregnant. 

My own kids have been with their dads all week so I’ve had a lot of quiet time to digest and contemplate and think. I feel so fortunate that I haven’t had to deal with what those three women have had to go through. Death by suicide, heart attack and avalanche; no death is easy, but having kids and being in a small town where everyone knows what happened can be a hard burden to bear. I wish my kids were here so I could give them a hug, but I suppose I’m glad they’re not so I can deal with this without putting the weight of my most recent sorrow on them. 

By Friday after Thanksgiving of this week (today is Sunday) I had thought about my 40th birthday party plans but then read in the local paper that a memorial for my friend who died in the avalanche was planned for the morning of Saturday, December 4th, which was the same day I was thinking of having my party. (My birthday is December 6th.) I knew I couldn’t emotionally celebrate the evening after attending that memorial, so I’ll either have no party at all, or maybe move it to the following weekend. But that next weekend is my best friend’s kid’s ballet performance of the Nutcracker in Durango and I couldn’t attend last year due to finances. I want to be there with my family to watch this year.

I don’t think my 40th birthday will be marked with a big celebration after all, but I’m okay with that. I reflect on today’s Minerva goddess contemplation: “I clear my mind of judgment and see the chain of consequences that flows from each choice.”

Things happen, not necessarily for a reason or because they are supposed to, but just because they happen. I am very thankful to be here, to be sitting in a warm house, typing on a nice laptop, using a fast internet connection, eating a piece of organic whole grain toasted bread with real butter after finishing a nice cup of chai tea. I have money in the bank to buy my children Christmas presents. At a cocktail party last night I learned that a musician friend is dying from inoperable brain cancer. Earlier this month I was told by a friend and mentor that he has a brain tumor and is losing his vision.

I’m here and I’m healthy. Many aren’t that fortunate.

And I have almost three more hours until my friend comes over and we have Dan-Dan noodles from the Chinese food restaurant downtown. If I can find the 3 left-over galvanized nails from my siding repair job last month, I will put on warm clothes, brave the wind and head out back to fix the pieces of siding that I noticed are not adequately attached next to my bedroom window. The pieces are at a height that I won’t need a ladder. Maybe by then the paper will be here and I can get lost in that for a while until my next project starts. For now, keeping my mind busy will help me stop thinking of Scott Kay. But then again, maybe I will think about Scott and how glad I am he was in my life.

It’s 10:23.

It is early July and my knee has healed enough to start playing tennis again and venture back out into the creeks. Although the San Juan river running through Pagosa Springs is running low and clear, the creek I visited up higher was still a bit high and cloudy due to the late afternoon rains we have been receiving.

the West Fork of the San Juan, running high, but there were still good pockets to hit with a dry fly.

I fished the West Fork of the San Juan, near the campground located off of highway 160 below Wolf Creek Pass. I couldn’t yet cross the creek in the spots I was at because the flow is still pretty high. Later in summer, the same spots are wadable, offering lots of still water to throw a dry fly into.

This past weekend, though, the water was high and I couldn’t get in much deeper than my thighs for fear of being swept away, but there were still pockets to be found. I started with dry flies and had some action, but it was difficult to get a good drift with my line being pulled so hard in the fast current. I could only do so much mending to get the fly to float naturally. I had a few hits on my Irresistable, but had too much slack in the line to be able to set a hook.

I had better luck with a stonefly nymph pattern. One with bright orange legs, a specialty at Pop’s Let It Fly shop in Pagosa Springs, did the trick and I landed a nice, beefy brown. Playing that fish on 6X tippet with a strong current to contend with was tricky, but my tippet knots held and I got the fish in my hand, only to have my dog Yoda get too close and cause the fish to snap loose with my fly and a piece of the tippet. I’ll have to try and catch the same fish to get my fly back!

The mosquitos were thick in the late afternoon air, but using the last of my bottle of Citronella oil kept them at bay.  I finished the evening with only one bite on my hand.

When the sun had set behind the high canyon walls where I was at, I turned to head away from the creek and was surprised to see two spin casters standing just downstream from where I was. It is always a shock to see other people on the creek when I think I am alone, and in all the years I’ve fished the West Fork, it was only the second time I’ve seen someone on this specific stretch.

I left the West Fork valley with enough light to allow me time to stop and fish the San Juan in downtown Pagosa Springs. I had several hit and misses on the dry fly I was throwing and tried tying on a few other patterns until it was too dark to get the tippet through the hook eye. I didn’t catch any fish there that night, but the water was so good that I’ll be back out to try again this coming weekend.

My perspective on social media and how it shapes business relationships with customers was formed from how I was raised and the places I have lived.

The Bubble Girl

The Southeast Heights of Albuquerque in the 70’s was an eclectic mix of diversity. My family was the youngest on the block, just down the street from Bandelier Elementary School and one row of houses away from Hyder Park. My parents arrived there when I was three after leaving the beaches of southern California via Route 66 with their two daughters. Their truck broke down in Albuquerque, they found a place to rent, had two more kids, and 14 years later I was graduating from Highland High School, located just off of Central Ave., the old Route 66.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but my parents were hippies. Bare feet or flip flops were the norm, my dad had several motorcycles and played loud music, my mom had a leather purse with tassles and long, brown hair. There were curtains of beads hanging in several of the doorways in the house, some wooden and some green and orange plastic. Burning incense was common. The bookcase that was made of bricks and pine boards offered interesting reading material, such as lyrics and artwork by the Beatles and various fiction and nonfiction paperbacks. I learned to roller skate, skateboard, hike, camp, box, change oil, spar and punch through half-inch pine boards. But overall, my dad was adept at sheltering his four daughters from the outside world, and I grew up under the auspice of believing that my dad’s views were all there was.

My hippie dad who was a plumber and into computers and high-end stereo systems kept the family close to the house. I felt like a bubble girl, with no knowledge of what was outside of my small realm of reality. Yes there was school, swim team and riding the bus, but growing up I didn’t have close friends that I hung out with, we didn’t go to social events, and only my older sister ever once had a birthday party that included other kids.  So picture this tall, skinny, awkward teenager with prefect attendance and straight A’s, a member of the National Honor Society who didn’t go to parties or watch early 80’s television that her peers were seeing, and having her cultural influence being reruns like the Monkeys, the Avengers, the Munsters, the Addams Family, and Leave It To Beaver. I knew very little about popular culture and society around me because I wasn’t involved in it.

Natalie with the 1988 Albuquerque cover band, Puppies With Guns

The day I graduated from High School a naïve, sheltered, un-worldly teenage girl, my parents moved with my two little sisters back to southern California. I was suddenly on my own for the summer, renting the house I had grown up in and sharing the place with my older sister who was back from her first year in college. My best friend Carol was a woman I worked with at Wendy’s fast food while she finished her degree in Computer Science and interned at Sandia National Laboratories. Carol dated a guy in his early 30’s who had big hair and was a drummer in a late 80’s band called Puppies With Guns. Oh, the memories…

Discovering the world

Rather than let my new found freedom go to my head, I became simply an observer in the new world that I discovered around me. I was free to do what I wanted, when I wanted without my dad’s domineering, everything-is-my-way mentality hanging over me, I had a fake ID to get into bars and see live music that I had never heard on the radio. Carol’s boyfriend had an album that made a big impression on me. It was Depeche Mode’s Strangelove, the extended LP, and it was definitely not like the Madonna, Tiffany, Debbie Gibson, Top 40 music that I was listening to. I had never heard people discussing what Martin Gore was singing about in 1988, but I liked it and it spoke to me. Follow that with a discovery of Agent Orange, the Smiths, Steel Pulse and the Cure and it was as if I had entered a whole new world that I didn’t know existed, kind of like the internet, but that wouldn’t become mainstream for another 15 years.

After spending much time at the coast learning how to snorkel, scuba dive, sail, surf, play beach volleyball, canoe, kayak and enjoy the sounds of the waves crashing at sunset, I took a trip to a little town in southern Colorado. In the fall of 1993, Pagosa Springs had one stoplight, no fast food, and an anti-Californian sentiment. There was a long metal fence uptown where someone had spray-painted the words, “GO HOME CALIFORNIANS.”

But 17 years, five stoplights, three kids, two divorces and several dogs and a cat later, I am still here in this magnificent mountain town, and it is because of my years in this small town environment where I feel so at home that I have a greater understanding of how social media works.

Small town niche = Online community

Just as sitting through hours and hours of local town and county political meetings as an observer can help one grasp the political dynamics on a much grander scale at the national and international level, watching local social interactions between individuals and businesses has helped me to notice how social media interactions work on the grand scale of the World Wide Web.

Communication, openness, referrals, helping others, being able to take criticism, sharing, excellent customer service – these are all things that are essential to business survival in a small town, and these same traits will be essential to businesses as they exist in an online environment that exposes them to a world population.

Having the unique niche of growing up with technology and computers, living my adult life as an observer and active participant in the world around me, and being in a time with an availability of knowledge and teaching at my fingertips due to the world wide web, this niche as given me a insight on the growing world community that is found online, where everyone can be connected if they want to be.

With social media tools, anyone can reach out to the world to share their story and connect with others who can relate to them. Perhaps only fifty people will find this article, read it, and respond in some way. But that means that there are fifty people in the world who I have connected to, and that means that as different as I feel, I know I am not alone.

Businesses who use online social media tools to share their own unique stories will find that they are the ones who will make it through the long term. Tools that allow customers and clients to feel connected to a business will generate the same result as a business who builds their personal connections through one-on-one interactions and referrals in a small town. The average business comes and goes, but those who find their niche in a little corner of the internet and offer something honest and unique will indeed find their audience.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts.
-natalie

Keeping it simple with social media goes a long way towards achieving the end result. And knowing what your end result actually is goes a long way in making sure you stay on track.

The Red Humpy REACH acronym reminds me to keep my eyes on the end result when using social media tools:

• Read
• Engage
• Attract
• Communicate
• Harness

When I REACH with social media, I am extending my real-world networking practices out into the online world, using social media resources as the tools of my trade. I can only reach so far in my little town of Pagosa Springs, but I can use my REACH to create an online community that extends around the globe.  And while I’m REACHing, I remind myself to focus on who I am and what it is I have to offer the people in my network.

Social Media Today has a June 15 article by Sarah Hartshorn  that outlines how someone can use social media to build their personal brand. She lists 6 ways to gain exposure and a loyal following online, including:

1. Be friendly and approachable
2. Share what you do best with others
3. Be authentic
4. Don’t try and be everything to everyone
5. Collect feedback as endorsements
6. Associate yourself with others in your network

In the article, Sarah takes a lot of confusion out of the jumble of social media by condensing it into 6 points to keep in mind as you build your personal brand. The tools you use to reach your end goal will vary from person to person. While Twitter and blogging might work for you, Flickr and YouTube will work just as well for someone else.

If you are taking the first steps at using social media for your business or to create a name for yourself online, remember to REACH, and keep Sarah’s 6 points in mind.

But wait, there's more!

I sat through a one hour, $5 social media class this afternoon. I attended because it was sponsored by the local Chamber of Commerce and was just $5. Since the social media workshop that I teach is $60, I wanted to see what was being offered for so much less, and I hoped I could learn something new.

What I learned: you get what you pay for.

The company that sponsored the class mentioned several times that they weren’t there to do a sales pitch. I made a note of that on the company notepad I was handed, with the company pen, next to the company gum, while viewing the Powerpoint presentation with the company name plastered all over it, presented by the guy in the company shirt. After the fourth or fifth time he said he wasn’t doing a sales pitch to us, but mentioned again how his “university” offers classes to further explain the fast talking he just threw at the audience, I stopped believing him.

At the end of the hour, one of the two dozen ladies who listened to the presentation said that she didn’t learn what she thought she would, and how could she learn more?  The presenter offered to answer all of her questions after he was through, and she was still there chatting with him when I left five minutes later.

Our local Chamber of Commerce in Pagosa Springs is offering monthly classes this quarter on the topic of social media. I thought about what I could teach in a one hour luncheon that wouldn’t be just a teaser to get people to attend more classes, and I am still having a hard time deciding that. There are many things I have learned about social media, and one of them is that there is a lot more to learn about social media. Even the so-called “experts” in social media are called “experts” in quotes because there really are no experts. The people that I refer to for cutting edge information work for companies that have thousands of clients and use them as models and experiments for what works, and what doesn’t work.

One example of such a company is Hubspot. Hubspot offers website Content Management Systems (CMS), as well as great social media tracking tools, all for a pretty price tag. Where does that leave those small businesses that are seeking social media help but don’t have a big budget to pay for it? It leaves them seeking education from people that are indeed learning the ins and outs of what social media is, what it isn’t, how it works, why it works, and what options will work best for their individual circumstances.

I am having a hard time finding those people, except for a handful of bloggers who offer valid and current information based on case studies, as well as great online webinars from representatives of Hubspot who are also pitching their services.

But those Hubspot educators really do know their stuff, and it is their content that is the most cutting edge and relevant to the changes that are happening so fast in the world of online social media. I use many examples and references to the Hubspot founders, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah when I talk about social media because their work with clients is helping all of us to understand more about how this phenomenon is changing the face of the world wide web.

What I do not do in my social media talks, however, is pitch myself as an expert. I am available to offer help and advice based on what I have studied and done myself and with my clients, but my main role is as an educator to share the information I have learned and teach other businesses how wonderful  free social media tools are when they are used correctly.

In one of my early posts, Social Media Snake Oil, I caution against paying money to a ‘social media consultant’ who offers to sign you up for many free online tools but neglects to spend several hours discussing your goals, a plan, and a strategy for implementation. The more I listen to presentations that talk about the tools but don’t offer real strategies for how to use them, the more I see the need for businesses to educate themselves on what social media really is.

But when there is so much information floating around, and so many classes being offered that really offer nothing, a person is pretty much left to their own devices. As you are searching the web for articles about social media, see if the site you come across is offering information to help you, or is just one big sales pitch to get you to hire them to do your social media for you. I’ve found that the best social media advice comes not from ‘social media consultants’, but from other business owners who have used social media successfully and are taking the time to write about it  and share their experience with you. Leslie McLellan in Lake Arrowhead is a good example. Leslie blogs about how she has successfully used social media for tourism in her town. She’s not selling anything, just sharing her information.

I’d better stop now, before I end up sounding like one long commercial myself. Thanks for listening, and please feel free to comment.

If you are confused by the many social media references and resources and unsure how it should all be used, you are not alone. In a recent survey conducted by a trio of social media and marketing leaders, almost 40% of respondents with no social media campaign indicated they “didn’t understand the concept.” The full story on PRWeb is here.

From conversations with small business owners and individuals in Pagosa Springs and Denver, I would think that the number could be even higher.

When I excitedly mention to my clients that they should consider implementing these great new tools that are free and can bring in customers in ways that outbound marketing techniques can’t touch, their eyes get glazed over, or roll back in their head as they recount their woes with social media experiments.

Some business owners say they wouldn’t even consider using social media because they can barely figure out how to use the internet or place an online order. Other clients say they don’t need to do any social media marketing because they’re doing just fine. A writer commented that he is about to retire so he didn’t feel a need to deal with blogging or Facebook.

But most of my clients who are small business owners or self-employed artists, builders, musicians or craftsmen express interest in social media but lack the knowledge to implement a good plan. Some are already using Facebook and blogging, but don’t understand how to link those tools to their website. And after spending the last 8 months intensively reading, listening and studying marketing and social media, it is apparent that with how much buzz is going on about the topic, real explanations are hard to come by.

I can find post after post of the same information about how important it is for businesses to start using social media sites. Statistics abound! There are hundreds of pages that explain how to set up your Facebook page, how to use Tweets, and how to share your blog posts. But the ‘why’ behind all of it has been very difficult to find and sift through. I am thankful that I discovered Vaynerchuk’s ‘Crush It’ and Shah and Halligan’s ‘Inbound Marketing’ books, and I have mentioned them so often on my blog that I don’t even have to pick up the books to check their name spelling anymore!

HubSpot.com is a great resource for social media information and updates, and they even host free webinars on the subject if you are interested in training. To share information that I have learned in the past 8 months, I will be hosting my first workshop in Pagosa Springs on May 12th! I am excited to educate people about social media and to help them understand the concepts that are missing from so many of the posts I am reading.

To that 40% (or more) of you that don’t use social media because it’s hard to understand, I say be patient just a little longer, seek out those who can offer you real advice, and eventually the dust will settle to reveal the inner workings of inbound marketing strategies. 

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to do what I can to shed light on those topics here.

According to an interesting article on MediaPost.com, research by HubSpot.com shows that businesses are starting to use more resources for Inbound Marketing, while traditional outbound marketing budgets are remaining flat or even dropping.

As I continue to tell my clients who are small business owners in my little town of Pagosa Springs, Colorado, Inbound Marketing is slowly but surely becoming the standard in marketing to customers who are savvy at seeking out their services. Because many businesses still do not understand how inbound marketing works, or the importance of setting up a successful inbound marketing plan, they are lagging behind and letting the competition get a jump on them.

In Gary Vaynerchuk’s ‘Crush It’, he explains why right now is the time to start using the social networking tools available to create an inbound marketing plan, and by ‘now’, he means yesterday! It is obvious from studying how inbound marketing works that it takes time to setup and implement the strategies, and the longer you wait, the longer it will take to enter that market niche.

crows in a winter willow tree

The trees in Pagosa Springs are much different in the winter than in summer.

This willow tree on South 8th Street hangs with long, graceful, green boughs in the summer. I took this shot in the winter with my moon roof open. The empty branches against the grey sky showed off the crow silouhettes.