Using video to advertise your business

There may be a lot of jewelry stores in New York City, but I recently encountered one that's breaking out of the staid, conservative mold that the industry is known for and testing out new media tools. Located in New York's financial district, Greenwich Jewelers was founded back in 1976 by Carl and Milly Gandia. Six years ago their daughter Jennifer came on board, and her sister Christina followed four years later. The younger Gandias have been slowing modernizing every aspect of the business, adding a computerized inventory system, building e-commerce capabilities unto the website, and - the latest - creating the video ad on CitySearch.com (see below).




The girls hadn't meant to follow in their parents footsteps. Sure they helped out at the store during holidays and summers while growing up, but after majoring in marketing communications at FIT, Jennifer pursued a career in fashion, while Christina put her marketing degree from Fordham to work in the financial field.

However, 9/11 changed all that. The store was just blocks away from the World Trade Center but miraculously nothing was harmed. The building however, did retain some damage, and they were told they'd have to relocate. At that time Carl and Milly flirted with the idea of retiring early, but then they got a call from a client who had found space for them. "They felt a responsibility and a desire to help the neighborhood and stay and be of service to the people here that had been so loyal to them, so they decided to reopen," explains Jennifer.

A difficult 10 months followed, and the family came together to design and build the new store and get it back on its feet. After that Jennifer found herself at a crossroads. She had been working in fashion PR for Nars Cosmetics and knew she wasn't interested in continuing there. "I didn’t want want to get to a higher level in the cosmetics industry or in marketing for a large company, so I took time off to do something I'd been wanting to do, which is live abroad, and give myself some time to think," says Jennifer.

She spent a year in Spain but by the 3 or 4th month it hit her - after peering into countless windows and evaluating products in as many jewelry stores she knew what she was meant to do. "I realized I was very interested in the family business and I wanted to be a part of it, so as soon as I got back I started working at the store. The first couple of years was about learning the "ropes" and watching what was happening. I had some ideas I implemented right away - basic operational things like a computerized inventory system and getting slightly more aggressive with the marketing, though nothing sophisticated - just direct mail and local print ads," says Jennifer.

Little by little she started getting to know the clients and what they were looking for, and she formulated a vision for the business. Luckily she and her sister see eye to eye on this. After briefly working in a finance job Christina gravitated back to jewelry. She took a position at Temple St. Claire, a designer of fine jewelry, but soon after joined the family fold. Together the siblings are seeking out smaller artisan lines that have a point of view and are unique and of excellent quality. Last year after a year's worth of careful planning they revamped the website to accommodate e-commerce capabilities and show more products.

But according to Jennifer, their most effective marketing tool to date has been their ads on Citysearch. "That was a turning point for us. Before that most of our business was very local - it was just people in the area that knew about us. There was some word-of-mouth but not outside our immediate area. Citysearch was fairly new at the time and I noticed they were doing advertising so I looked into it. We started out at a small level - like $100 a month - for a listing with just a small blurb about us. Then people started leaving reviews about their experience with us, and it started a snowball effect. We had people coming from places that we’d never seen before - uptown, Harlem, Connecticut. It really expanded our reach. It showed us the power of the internet and what it could do for our business. That continues today - it's still our greatest source of marketing. And it works because it isn't anything we’re doing - it's the reviews that we get. Obviously we're giving people a good experience and they feel compelled to write about us, but it’s the forum aspect that brings people into our store.

When Citysearch launched the video service, Greenwich Jewelers was one of the first ones they contacted. There are a couple of options and price points to choose from - you can either shoot it yourself or have them send a crew and produce it. For the latter they'll send a cameraman over to your place of business to shoot for about an hour and you'll end up with a professionally edited 60-second clip. They also provide you with the HTML code so you can set it up on your website and/or other other sites like YouTube.

If you've been thinking of using video as a marketing tool but don't know quite how, this may spark some ideas. Gone are the days of the cheesy late night Crazy Eddie commercials. With the internet it's easier than ever to make and distribute video, and savvy businesses like Greenwich Jewelers are taking advantage of this.

By the way, they've just launched a new campaign where they're giving away a piece of jewelry every month. All you need to do is sign up - no purchase necessary! This month it's a pair of beautiful NuNu earrings (shown right). Deadline is May 31.

Goalsetting, or Tips on How Not to Blog

Forgive me readers, for I have sinned. I have broken the cardinal rule of blogging, which is, well, not blogging, or failing to blog. I could say that I've been busy with work (true), or I've had visitors (also true) but the reality is that it's mostly been plain 'ole writer's block (aka perfectionism/procrastination/paralysis). I find a million other things to do instead of putting my thoughts down on “digital paper”. They say we're our own worst critic but sometimes it’s like I have two TV sportscasters (let's call them Frank and Joe) in my head and instead of sports they're giving me instant replays and analysis and commentary on every little thing that I do or don't do. And if I can't do something perfectly, or exactly right, forget it. Drop it. Don't do it at all.

Luckily, since I started working for myself I've learned a few tools for when I get stuck like this (although sometimes it takes a while to get around to them – thanks Katie for nudging me!). First, I fire Frank and Joe (these little rascals tend to sneak back in when I'm not paying attention!). Second, I get out my bag of "tricks". These are little stunts I pull to "fool" my mind into doing things, like telling myself to forget about all the mistakes until the end and just write. Other times I'll need to bring in the big guns (multiple calls to my action partner). Setting a deadline or a specific date for me to post on my blog has also helped (not always). But every week it's like I'm starting from scratch. The pen feels like it weighs 800 pounds. The computer is covered in kryptonite, and I’m Superman.

When it comes to my business, the same thing happens. There are tasks that feel so easy to do (playing around with pictures and colors and fonts for my new, soon-to-be-released logo; web surfing in the name of "market research", checking email every 5 seconds) while others are frightening (usually the ones that lead to actually generating income, like making a list of target clients and writing marketing proposals). If I put things off long enough the anxiety will slowly rise, until all I want to do is run for the hills, or hide under the covers with a gallon of cookie dough ice cream. I could do that. But a better option is to break down my scary projects into small, manageable tasks and put each one in some sort of time line.

So for my blogging, I could break each post down into parts and give myself a deadline for each. And then put it all in my Outlook Calendar:
1-make a list of 3 possible topics (Monday)
2-research them to see which one works best (Tuesday)
3-make an outline of what the blog post will be about (Wednesday)
4-write the damn thing! (Thursday)
5-edit, and let it rip (Friday)

As I read this I'm already judging it, saying "oh no, it shouldn't take me that long!" And maybe it won't, but at least I have a little system in place to get me started.

The truth is, no one single tool works best. I need to have a number of systems in place. I need a lot of support, and I don't like doing things by myself. Which was the thinking behind the new Dream Project Intensive workshops I launched last month (see pictures). I wanted to offer support to other entrepreneurs that were suffering like me by forming a group that would make its members accountable for the tasks they wanted to accomplish. At the first one there were 9 people sharing their ideas for a business, and it was a total blast. So I decided to do a follow-up last week focused on setting goals then breaking them down into actions. This is no easy task, mostly because in our head we see things more complicated than they really are. So when someone got stuck during the meeting, the group came up with a slew of possibilities and suggestions, or simply asked additional questions to get more clarity around it.

We also used what I call the back-tracking method: we started out with the end goal and then backtracked from there, thinking about the steps we would need to take just before that, and then the ones just before that, and so on until we get to the present. It worked! Everyone ended up with a short list of actions to take until we meet again in a month.

Not to be left behind, I set some goals for this month as well. One of them is (you guessed it) to faithfully post at least one entry on my blog per week. Wish me luck!

Do you have a trick you use to get past perfectionism/procrastination/paralysis? Please share it!

Monetize Your Site With Sponsorship Deals

Have you thought about getting a sponsor or co-branding partner to help promote your product or service, and earn a few bucks while you're at it? The big guys do it alllll the time. I was watching the show GossipGirl tonight and checked out their website. They have deals with Sunsilk, Verizon, Old Navy, Second Life, Vogue and Rolling Stones magazines.

With tons of new sites and blogs being created by the nanosecond, getting a sponsor may be a one way to monetize your "digital assets". Even if you already sell your own products and services on your website, having an established brand buy ad space will give you more credibility. And yes, you can get Google AdSense pretty easily but unless you have humongous traffic, it won't pay. Cutting a deal directly with an advertiser can be much more lucrative. Think you don't have enough page views? Think again. One thousand unique visitors may not sound like much but there may be advertisers out there that are interested in even that small number of "eyeballs".

This is a topic I'm very interested in so I attended a workshop recently at the NY Women's Chamber of Commerce on how to get sponsors and brought back a few good tips:

There are two types of sponsorships:
1- grants from foundations or city, state and federal agencies, and
2-corporate money

Of the two, corporate dollars are easier to get a hold of. Start by inquiring at your target company's community relations division or their public relations office. If they don't have such a thing then keep asking until you get to the right person. And you don't have to stray too far away from your "hood" - look for businesses near you. For an event I was organizing last week I went after The Container Store located a few blocks away from my venue. Unfortunately they never got back to me, but now I know where to go and I'll try them again for another event in the future.

Sponsors have deadlines and they usually run out of money by June, some, like American Express Open, even as early as April. You'll be competing with others for the same sponsorship dollars so start early in the year. Build a relationship - invite them to your functions, take them out to lunch, send them information about what you do, take pictures of the event and send them copies. Keep them involved in the process. Find ways to always be on their mind. Research and see what kind of events they like to sponsor. For example, banks are now big on financial literacy.

Pick sponsors that fit in with your business. The closer you are aligned with their goals, the better chance you'll have of hooking up with them. Tell them about the demographics of the people attending your event or visiting your website. How many people do you expect at your event? How much traffic do you get? These are things they'll want to know.

Give them different sponsorship levels to choose from, and tell them specifically what they'll get. Like the "Gold Sponsor" will get their logo on your fliers and website, but a "Platinum Sponsor" will get that plus time to do a presentation, or be introduced to the audience, and will allow them to distribute marketing materials at their own table.

Corporations also have foundations (it's a tax break for them) for specific causes they sponsor. Foundations only give grants but they're very easy to apply to.

Set up advisory boards and court people that work in organizations you'd like to get money from. Another idea is to attach yourself to a non-profit organization and ask them to be a partner of your event (think of all the companies that have the pink ribbon for breast cancer awareness!). Corporations like it when you do this. It's like a "Good Housekeeping seal of approval".

It's like you have to think of yourself as the head of a media business, and do what they do to make money.

Do you have any good/bad experiences with sponsors? Please share!

Outlook for Startups in NYC

Last night I attended another great meeting put together by the folks at the NY Software Industry Association (NYSIA). I'm a total new media geek and software is what it's all about, so I've gone to a few of their events and I usually come out with good contacts and new ideas. It was held was the posh Park Avenue offices of JP Morgan/Chase, who generously donated the space and I believe were also responsible for the yummy sandwiches and soft drinks. After a bit of nibbling and networking we all sat down inside a comfy auditorium (left) and Howard Greenstein, the evening's host, gave the introduction. The four panelists participating in the discussion (below right) were all venture capitalists and angel investors, and the topic of the evening was "Running a Tech Business in NY: Challenges & Payoffs".

When Howard asked about the downsides of NYC, Jason Olim, founder of CDNow broke the ice and said that finding entrepreneurs to co-venture with is hard in the city. "New York doesn't have the startup optimism you see elsewhere. The "gold rush" mentality that allows people to walk away from great salaries to join startups isn't present here. There's an optimism deficit," he added.

He also pointed out that NY is all about media, advertising, and financial services, but there's no real tech culture. "There's no MIT or big name tech school here. Unless that happens you won't see it."

Roger Krakoff of Boston and California-based venture capital firm Sigma Partners thinks there is a lack of support networks here so lawyers end up taking a bigger piece of the pie.

Hank Williams, Founder and CEO, Kloudshare, remarked that if you're willing to go across the Hudson, the number of engineers expands substantially. For many tech startups the question is, is it worth it to set up a development office outside of NYC? Taking it a bit further, Jeffrey Stewart, Founder of Mimeo.com said that he has recruited people from Ohio and other places, including outside the US, like China and Argentina.

On the plus side, Roger added that there is a growing number of entrepreneurs supporting the community now and that ideas coming out of New York are amazing. "If you're going to be in the marketing business you need to be in New York."

The focus then moved to "hot" industries. For Roger it depends on the time frame. He likes green technology, though that may take longer than 6 - 12 months to take hold. Other areas he sees becoming popular are things having to do with re-inventing data centers, like virtualization and green data centers. Precision marketing and social media were also on his list. Hank thinks interdisciplinary stuff will start picking up steam, like taking software to non-digital spaces. Jeffery believes that there is an overcapacity of technology out there that hasn't been product-ized, so he's keen on companies that can do this.

Then came the question on everyone's mind: how will an economic slowdown affect new companies? The panel seemed very upbeat about the prospects. Jason indicated that if this environment creates job seekers it's great for startups. If you're in a high growth business, a bad economy will help you gather your resources, according to him. Hank explained that when you're a small company going from $0 to $500K, macro economic trends won't affect you, except if you're raising money. For Roger the question is, how do you create the highest demand for your product? He sees ad markets getting bumpy during these hard times. Jeffrey thinks a slowdown is the best time to start a business.

I guess that's good news for those of us starting out! Have you been affected by the economic downturn? How are you coping? Please send in your thoughts!

Interview with Web Entrepreneur Michelle Madhok

When Michelle Madhok, founder of shefinds.com, pitched her idea for an online shopping site to AOL, Lucky and Shop Etc. back in 2004, she got shot down by all three of them. At the time she had just ended a 5 year stint at AOL, where she spent 5 years overseeing women’s content. “AOL was a great place to find out what women wanted, with 35 million subscribers, 52% of which are women, says Michelle, who is also founder of Momfinds.com.

For Michelle, the online shopping bug started out as a pastime, doing personal shopping for colleagues and co-workers when they didn’t have time, or didn’t know what to buy. Then she graduated on to sending links of shopping sites to her friends. That’s when she got the idea to do it on a larger scale. But none of the established internet sites she contacted seemed interested, so she decided to do it on her own.

“On Craigslist I found a crazy Ukrainian to build the site. I bought the domain name “shefinds.com” from a porn site that wasn’t using it anymore (love it). AOL had given me a severance so I was bootstrapping, working out of my home with one full-time person, putting together an email newsletter and a blog. It slowly started picking up steam. We got requests from people who wanted to write for us. The more money we'd make the more people I would hire (she now has 40 writers). I then hired an editor and a web designer to produce the newsletters.”

Michelle looked for sponsors right away. She joined affiliate programs like Linkshare and cj.com. Then Bare Necessities offered to sponsor her newsletters and paid her $200 the first time - she was thrilled!

About three months later, smaller businesses like jewelry designers and handbag designers that couldn’t afford to advertise on sites with big female audiences like iVillage contacted her directly and asked to place ads.

When I asked how she promoted her site, Michelle said that she hired someone to help with SEO (search engine optimization), but word about her shopping site spread virally. Now they do weekly “ad swapping” with other sites, and they have deals with MSN, Yahoo!, Real Simple and Lifetime to syndicate their content.

Michelle started out by investing $20,000 of her own money in 2004, and last year made $400,000 in revenues. “I worked hard for it”, she says. “I wrote 600 invoices last year! But it’s nice to work for myself.”

Right now her margins are over 30% but her goal is to increase them to 55%. “We’re still ramping up to get there. I don’t go out trying to sell ads - people come to us, so I need to hire an ad sales person.”

I asked her what advice she had for others that are starting out and here’s what she had to say: “At the beginning I did everything really cheap. I didn’t touch my savings very much. Your first attempt should be a test. Try to find inexpensive legal advice. Always barter or negotiate on price – I got my head shots for free because I exchanged them for free ads.”

She also believes in making your mistakes on someone else’s time/dime. Michelle found consulting gigs through The Hired Guns at first (they place people in specialty positions). She worked on an email marketing campaign for Pfizer which really helped her with her own business.
In addition to her two sites, she's got more in the works. “We want one for brides and then one for the home, and one for food. We want to be the hip consumer reports for shopping online in different vertical markets,” explains Michelle.

That's me and Michelle chatting at a recent Forrester networking event for the new book, Groundswell (a great read for anyone interested in social media). More pictures in my Facebook page.

Bounce Your Way to Success

Failure - a word that's been in the news quite often recently. In the last 3 weeks we’ve seen Eliot Spitzer step down as governor of New York State – in one of the most high profile scandals of all time - and Bear Stearns, the 6th largest investment bank in the US collapsed after 85 years as a financial powerhouse.

As a business owner, I dread the prospect of failure, especially when I hear statistics like 1/3 of new businesses fail in the first 2 years, and then there's all that talk of our economy going into recession.

On any given day I make at least 2-3 decisions – some of them work some of them don’t. But according to Barry Moltz, author of Bounce, The True Path To Business Confidence, what's important is that you let go of the successes and failures, and just keep moving forward. It's not about bouncing back, because sometimes you don't come back to the same place. It's just bouncing - being flexible and not getting stuck analyzing what happened to death.

"We are taught that there is always something to learn from failure. We are told that the only reason failure “comes” is to teach us something. Sometimes when we fail there is nothing to learn- it just stinks. Failure is only valuable when we see it as part of the entire learning cycle even when there is not always something to learn," explains Barry.

When I asked him recently what the motivation was behind the book, he said he was tired of all those business books that promise "5 steps to success" and push us into a quest for that "magic formula". He says that true business confidence comes from riding success and failures, and developing resiliency.

Here are three tips he gives in his book:

Strive For Minimal Achievement
There is incredible power we can get in business by striving for minimal achievement—focusing on being great at a few things at a time. This is becoming increasingly difficult as we are raising a generation of attention deficit individuals. When was the last time you did one thing at a time? Focus gives power. This does mean that if our customers ask us to shift our business and it is profitable, we should not try to accomplish this. Many businesses start out providing one product or service and morph into a different business. We need to remain focused on doing a few things well but always be open to new ways that our business can change and grow.

Downsize Your Dreams
In business, we are always told to conquer that mountain. Do what you love and the money will follow. Have No Fear. Failure is not an option. Success will breed more success. And we start to believe it. But we are many times disappointed because we don’t get there. We feel let down. We feel like a failure. We feel that maybe we are not working hard enough! We get frozen and paralyzed. To move past this, we need to downsize our dreams. We need to realize the successful companies are built one customer at a time and one employee at a time. Speed kills. Figure out what success looks like for us in addition to money. What is our "money plus" goal? What will make us happily successful?

Too Much Money Makes You Stupid
Everyone must eventually deal with limited resources. Accept it—limited resources are a fact of life. Sometimes we get into the “if only we had” game, where we decide that if we only had this resource—skills, training, the right people, new intellectual property, or (the big one) more money, then our success would be guaranteed.
This is delusional. There will always be something you lack in your business.
Making a go of it with whatever resources you have at a particular point in time is the nature of business; scarcity can be a competitive advantage and the barrier to entry that makes you more successful as you learn to operate lean and mean.

Will Eliot Spitzer bounce? What about Bear Stearns? Barry, veteran of a few bounces himself, says yes. "Most people do if they keep taking action. Martha Stewart did. Spitzer will reincarnate in another form and the people of Bears Stearns will find other jobs and will be pushed to other opportunities they may not have looked at before," he adds.

Are you ready to bounce? Check out Barry's "Bounce Video Challenge" - he's giving away $1000 to the winning entry. I'd love to see one from Eliot!

Beating the Lonely Entrepreneur Syndrome

Laurel Touby, who I've written about before (Mediabistro: Timeline to Success) built a multi-million dollar empire to counter the loneliness she felt as a freelance writer. She organized parties for journalists - other lonely people like her - and made a huge business out of it (Laurel's featured in this month's Inc. Magazine: "How I Did It").

Marci Alboher recently wrote a blog post about how it's so much better to have someone teach you things than to learn them by yourself (see My Technology Training Program). Business tasks (or anything, really) are definitely more fun if you're sharing them with someone else.

In addition to learning or companionship, I also need "peeps" for guidance and support. As a new entrepreneur I have to make decisions every day, and am faced with the prospect of taking actions that seem incredibly scary in my distorted mind. So aside from my weekly meetings with action partners (which I wrote about last week), I also check in every other day with my friend Andrew Deutsch (right).

Andrew has worked in sales for over twenty years (he also plays a mean jazz guitar and can shoot out jokes like it's open mike night at the Comedy Strip), and is now creating a training program for salespeople that he wants to "take on the road".

We help each other with the more general tasks of running our businesses, aka our "to do" lists. I've asked him for feedback on handling clients, and on venues for a workshop I'm giving next month. He patiently listens when I keep bringing up tasks (over and over again) that were supposed to have been completed (I'm happy to say I finally hired an accountant!).

In turn he's asked me to edit pitches, pick photos for his website and comment on his target market profile (I've also handled his occasional non-business-related dating dilemmas). My thinking can sometimes get faulty and I've been ready to toss out perfectly good ideas until he points out some benefit that I overlooked. And it's great to share my successes with someone I don't have to explain the whole story to.

Don Corleone had his consigliere, I have Andrew. Which is fortunate because I have a lot on my plate for this week, so I'm glad I don't have to do it alone!

A Plug for Action Partners

Remember back when we had to do homework in school? It would go something like this: We'd attend a class where the teacher would lecture on a specific topic, (ah, how I miss Biology and Accounting - not!) then there would be several chapters of new material to read followed by an exercise related to it. By the end of the semester - whether we liked it or not - we would have gained knowledge on a whole new subject matter.

That's kind of what I'm experiencing with my action partner, Nicole Rose (that's her below, photo credit: David Garvey, www.dgimagesltd.com). What's an action partner, you might ask. Well, before I go into that, let me give you a little background.

I met Nicole about 4 1/2 years ago when we both attended a course for entrepreneurs. She was just launching ODM, her graphic design and web development company, and I was in the initial stages of exploring the possibility of working for myself. It would take me a few more attempts before I took the plunge, but Nicole has had her business up and running since then. We've bumped into each other through the years at various networking events, but when I saw her in January I was going through a bad case of "generalized business plan preparation anxiety", so I asked her for a little guidance. She pointed out that she was actually in the process of revising her own plan, so why not work on them together?

We immediately agreed to meet the following week. After our first session, however, doubts started popping up. Was I ready to divulge every little detail of my master plan to someone else? Were our businesses too similar? Wouldn't we be going after the same clients? Wouldn't that be a conflict? Trust has always been an issue for me - it took me years and a few painful market downturns to finally admit I needed to hire someone to assist me with my investments. I do my own manicures and pedicures because "no one can do them better them me" (yeah right). And I could have avoided one or two painful heartbreaks had I listened to my friends' dating advice. But I am getting better at it. I brought up my concerns to my new action partner, and Nicole, so much the wiser, confidently allayed my fears. She didn't see conflicts, and, realizing I had much more to gain than to lose, I jumped on the bandwagon.

Little did I know how effective our arrangement would be. We've had about 7 meetings so far, each time tackling a different section of our business plans, sharing our "homework" and giving each other feedback. If we feel stuck on something we ask for help and usually find a solution between the two of us. Then we plan our assignments for next time. Having that task in mind helps to spark ideas during the week, and even more stuff pops up when I'm doing the research and writing it down, so it's like my brain is on steroids. This week I came up with a novel approach for art galleries to promote their openings, which will help me target them as clients, and I've added a few more elements to a proposal I have for a magazine I'd like to prospect. Sometimes these new ideas seem too big for me, like a beautiful gown that doesn't quite fit. But I'm not judging them. My task is to put them down on paper and then let the Universe conspire to help me "grow into" my fancy dress.

Nicole and I have also decided to swap some services, like she'll help me with the design of my logo and signature, and I'll help her with her e-newsletter and online social networking strategy. We're doing this as if we were each other's clients, so we get to test out our services and give ourselves feedback on the process. Nicole, for example, has amazing customer service - from her follow-up communications to her proposals - even the recording on her voice mail makes her look and sound professional.

On my own, working on my business plan felt like lifting an 800 pound gorilla. But together with Nicole and our weekly meetings I'm making major progress. In fact, it's been such a positive experience that I've taken on another action partner (yes, I admit it, when it comes to business, I've become a polygamist!). Constance Gustke is a writer and journalist who, like me, got her start in Wall Street but has since moved on to cover design, technology and the luxury lifestyle market. We both have separate web business concepts that we'd like to develop, so for the past three sessions we've brainstormed and plotted and mapped out ways to make things happen for us. Constance calls us the "Laverne and Shirley of the 21st century."

So if you want to get things done, my advice is don't do it alone! Find someone you have something in common with and then, buckle up for the ride! Do you have structures in place to help you with your projects? Please share them!

Schools Using Facebook to Track Alumni

Talk about blast from the past. In the last few weeks I have met or corresponded with a handful of old high school chums I haven't seen in, well 30 years. And a lot of it is due to Facebook.

My old alma mater, Dana Hall School, a very traditional, conservative New England all-girls boarding school, got hip to new media last year by launching a Facebook page for alumnae. Corinne Corrigan, who is their Director of Alumnae Relations and a fellow member of the class of '77, was behind the effort. She told me she was anxious to get it going but faced delays as the school was in the midst of setting a policy for Facebook. It turns out that they had to limit student's use of the social networking site because it was interfering with their studies (surprise surprise). But once that was addressed they gave her the go ahead.

I found all this out at a reception the school held here in Manhattan last week (which I got invited to thru Facebook), where I also caught up with some of my former classmates. They're all doing such interesting stuff! That's me in the picture with the white turtleneck, and to my left is Nancy Kelting, who is an investment banker at JP Morgan. Xanda McCagg (to my right) is an artist and entrepreneur (she just launched Art Introductions), Linda Kimbrell owns a tropical resort hotel along with her husband called Casa Cayuco in a small island off Panama's coast, that's Corinne with the "I Love NY" t-shirt, and Susana Copperman who works for HSM, a company that puts together business forums with world leaders. But the biggest surprise of all came when I found out that Joy Haywood, who was not in attendance, just moved to South Africa as interim head at Oprah Winfrey's Leadership Academy for Girls. Way to go Joy!

Getting back to Facebook, when I asked Corinne why they decided to create a page on the site she explained that it was mostly to reach the more recently graduated students. "Our target is the young alumnae, 10 years out. After college they tend to move around a lot and don't respond to traditional modes of communication, so we'd lose track of them", explains Corinne. "Their home address is unknown, there's no email address or phone number so we'd have no way of getting in touch with them." But the one place you can be sure to find them is on Facebook.

Fundraising is crucial to private schools - at Dana Hall 30% of operating funds come from alumnae and other gifts - so tracking down former students is important in that effort. "We use Facebook to invite people to events and ask questions. When the Class of '03 had their 5th year reunion we sent out a post to find out where people wanted to eat dinner. We also use it to ask others "do you know where so-and-so is?" It's a great way to use the collective memory pool and generate Dana memories," adds Corinne. For alumni it's fun to see pictures and find out what everyone is up to. The group has grown to 597 members, and now the individual alumni classes are setting up their own Facebook pages, like there's one for the Class of '86, and '98 and '03.

Schools are finally following in their student's footsteps and finding clever ways to use Facebook for their own purposes. Seems like the tables have turned, with the teachers learning from the students!

Does your alma mater have a Facebook page?

What's your widget strategy?

Dan Greenfield of the "Bearnaise Source" wrote a post recently (Putting a Face on Social Networks: Corporate Facebook Pages) about how major corporations are using widgets especially made for Facebook to send traffic back to their own sites. Blockbuster lets Facebook users create their movie "wish list" and get updates on upcoming films; with Verizon they can download music videos to their cellphone and send them to their friends; Sprite lets them create a character, add features to it and interact with others. Why are all these companies jumping into the widget bandwagon, and more importantly, should you also jump in?

First of all, widgets are not thinga-ma-gigs, doo-hickeys, or chachkas, as my friend Andrew suggested when I brought up the topic. They are mini applications that allow users to do a particular thing. Also known as gadgets, add ons or plugins, they are short pieces of HTML code (relax...it's not as geeky as it sounds!) that you can easily add to your website. With blogging software like the one I use you just cut and paste the code into a page element and presto! It appears as if by magic (and if I can do it so can you!).

Back in October I briefly touched on how startups are using widgets to drive traffic to their sites (Startup Camp and Conference) but it's definitely worth revisiting because these little "apps" have big benefits. They make your website "stickier" by making it more dynamic and interactive. Widgets can be entertaining, informative or engaging (or all of the above) but the bottom line is they give your readers a little somethin'-somethin' for spending time on your site.

While I'm still searching for that "killer app" that's going to shoot my page views into the stratosphere, I've slowly been adding a few here and there. If you scroll down my sidebar you'll see them: "Subscribe to this blog", "Subscribe to my RSS feed", "Latest News: WomenEntrepreneur.com", "Search This Blog", "Mogulific Books", "Amazon Deals" and the "Meetup Link" - those are all widgets. And I'm no web developer...

But please be warned: Some widgets are addictive! I could have easily spent the afternoon on Widgetbox's Take A Shark Break, where you get to choose from four different sharks and four different ocean environments. The shark will follow your mouse as if it were its next meal - I could play shark & mouse forever! And that's great news if you want visitors to spend more time on your site.

Here's a few websites that have plenty of widgets to choose from, and they even allow you to customize them. By the way, they're all free:
Google Gadgets
Widgetbox
Yahoo Widgets

Do you have any favorite widgets you'd like to share with us? Please do!