I am fascinated by marketing, especially global marketing. Nearly half of the photos I took while traveling in Israel last week were of labels, advertisements or packaging of International and American brands. Below are a few of my favorites:















...and my favorite, that always makes me laugh...

I recently became the mother of a sweet, adorable, 7-pound, 2-year old, Brussels Griffon. She was a stray and I fell in love with her the moment we met. We named her Penny.


I think Penny is the most perfect dog that ever walked the face of the earth, so naturally I want to tell other people about it. I have realized that other dog owners do not think to do this. They may post pictures on Facebook, but that's the extent of their dog's promotion. I, on the other hand, immediately posted Penny to The Daily Puppy, posting pictures, writing stories, and pitched her for Grown-up Dog of the Day. Within 24 hours, I received word that she had been accepted, and would be posted for the whole community to see.

Today she has been shared on Facebook over 60 times, received well over 1000 votes and more than 50 comments. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was doing PR for my dog. I realized that you belong in PR when it becomes as natural, and involuntary, as breathing. Please don't judge me. I love what I do (and I'm good at it too).

Last week I was invited to speak at the Professional Aerial Photographer's Association's International conference in Las Vegas. Aerial photography is probably one of the most fascinating jobs around, but is also one of the most unknown. Most of us see aerials in a newspaper, or in movies or TV shows, but rarely do we wonder where they came from. When I speak to clients about social media, a main focus is on content. What content do you have, what should we have, where can we get it, who are we targeting, and how do we share it? This industry has nothing but content! That was a main focus in my talk, Social Media: A How To Guide.

The below presentation was created for an audience of small business owners, 95% of which had little to no experience with social media. In addition to being an intro to Twitter, I also touched upon how to use it, specifically when working with the media.

I had a fantastic time, and my presentation went over really well! My goal was to convert 1 person in the crowd of 80. After all the buzz the talk got, I think that number went up to more like 30. And according to PAPA President, Patrick Belanger, my talk was one of the best of the weekend (according to the end of conference survey) and I'm already getting Twitter alerts from the attendees. Looking forward to the 2012 International conference cruise

Note: From 2006-2009 I managed the the PR/Marketing efforts for The 111th Group / ProAerialVideo.com, two ventures owned and run by Patrick and Julie Belanger.

MentionMap: Find Twitter users to follow based off your favorite users. The result is a very cool, informative and dynamic infographic. Harry McCracken, tech writer for Technologizer.com and TIME magazine, has a great map of relevant users in the tech community. See below.


TweetReach: How far does a tweet really go? This tool is perfect for businesses looking to determine ROI for their social media activities. Unfortunately, there aren't any benchmarks you can compare your results to. For example, my reach is 2,679 people with 14 tweets. Is that a good number? No clue. But it's higher than 1.


Twitter Symbols: I absolutely love this. Tired of standard tweets? Looking to express yourself with Webdings? Check out this site. Just copy and paste your favorite symbol into your tweet, and you're set. Twitter Tip: Only use one symbol at a time, and never more than once a day.

Tweepi: For the more experienced Twitter-er, Tweepi gives you a "database" view of multiple Twitter users at a time. Tweepi lets you create lists to view groups of people at once to compare their total tweets, followers, and Klout score. From Tweetpi.com, you can view their information, add them to an existing list, follow or unfollow them, @reply , etc. A great way of getting a larger view of your Twitter network.

Great example of how one small business connects with their customers/prospects monthly with beautiful, custom desktop backgrounds. Download the full file here. to add it to your computer. (Yes, it's on mine.)