studio J

This morning the Berkeley East Bay Humane Society experienced a devastating fire. In addition to their adoptions center, 15 cats were tragically lost. If you live in the area, please consider becoming a temporary foster home or volunteering your time at the cleanup efforts. Regardless of where you may live, you can make a financial contribution to help them rebuild and get back to the business of helping homeless animals.

Also please consider blogging, tweeting or Digging this article to help spread the word!

From the Examiner:

Following the fire early this morning at the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society that took the lives of 15 cats – all the dogs survived — and destroyed the shelter’s cat adoption center, the shelter is asking for the following help.
Monetary Donations: Any amount will help to pay vet bills and get the shelter up and running again. Hit any DONATE button on the website or mail donations to: BEBHS, 2700 9th St, Berkeley, CA 94710.
Foster Homes for dogs and cats: Please contact: foster@berkeleyhumane.org if you have temporary space for a dog or cat.
Volunteers: In the immediate future, the shelter will have major cleaning and repair tasks as well as animal care. Please contact: volunteer@berkeleyhumane.org if you can spare some time to help once the tasks are organized.

If you live in Marin, here’s another way to help

The Marin Humane Society announced it is going to donate a portion of the proceeds from its Paw Prints dog walk – scheduled for this Sunday, May 23 – to provide some assistance to the devastated shelter.
In an official announcement from MHS, Suzanne Golt, executive director said, “We are heartbroken to learn about the loss of destruction caused by the fire. Sunday’s Paw Prints dog walk offers the perfect opportunity for MHS and the Marin community to offer their support for our friends across the Bay.”

Paw Prints will take place from 9 am to Noon in Mill Valley. Pups and their people are invited to stroll along a one-mile course that begins and ends at scenic BayFront Dog Park, located at the end of Sycamore Avenue off Camino Alto. Agility demonstrations as well as vendors with fun stuff for canine companions will be available. The event fee is $25 for each registered dog.

Copyright © 2010 Jeanette DeHoff

I know that many people out there are ready to hang Facebook out to dry right next to other evil companies after their latest change, but I wish they would stop and think about it first. Not all ‘privacy changes’ are bad! Maybe it’s the tech geek in me; maybe it’s the marketing person in me; maybe it’s a bit of both.

Let’s say that the California Widget Company has a new advertising campaign on Facebook. They’re promoting their latest high-tech product, the Widgetizer3000. Through their Facebook affiliation they can poll the demographics and other profile information to look for things like ‘technology’ or ‘gadgets’ in your interests and if it finds it and you match their target demographics… BLAMO! You get an little ad on the side of your screen for the Widgetizer3000.

This is targeted marketing 101, folks. It isn’t new, it’s just the tools that are new. The same thing goes on in magazines (you don’t usually see an ad for toothpaste in a car magazine but you’ll probably see an oil ad) and newspapers (think about where the sports memorabilia ads are placed) and even billboards (compare ads in your Financial District to the ads in the suburbs).

Is there really all that much harm in others knowing what movies you like or what coffee shop you tend to frequent? Welcome to social living, folks. We asked for it and we got it. If you don’t want to participate, that’s cool too! Don’t share information like your address and phone number or your dog’s name on every website you visit. Practice common sense and guard your identity online just as you would offline.

If you want to know a little more in-depth about the back end stuff, PCWorld did a great article on how the new Likes and Connections work and what you can do to limit what information can be used.

Copyright © 2010 Jeanette DeHoff

It’s all about ME.

Isn’t that the message we tend to get from everyone these days? We all have a website, a blog, a Facebook page, a LinkedIn profile, a Twitter feed, a podcast… We customize our computers and our cell phones… All so that we can express ourselves and voice our opinions and hopefully people will hear what we have to say.

Of course if everyone is talking, who is left to listen?

Soon, all of our technology will not only be listening, but it will be paying attention:

You get home after work and start dinner. Your digital recipe box shows you recipes based on what foods you have in the house (no sugar, since it knows you used the last of that in your coffee this morning). It notices that you made something with garlic in it but knows from your home inventory that you don’t own a garlic press. It tells your TV, which later recommends a cooking show that has convenient product placement in it. When you log in to your email, your browser lists a few recommendations that might interest you. Among them is a website where you can order that Slap-Chop that you saw in the cooking show. Of course your digital recipe box in the kitchen will know when your order arrives and will download other meals you can make with that new Slap-Chop (and the free cheese grater that comes with it)!

While this may be a little over the top, I don’t think it’s too far off the mark. (Facebook is leaning that way with their latest customization, but there is a ton of backlash in the privacy department.) Technology is merging and combining. Look at computers and phones. It used to be that you had a home desktop computer and an on-the-go phone. Now, they’re interacting with each other, sharing information and soon may just merge into one device. Vizio is already marketing a TV that has internet apps to access Facebook and Twitter to tell people what you’re watching and gives you the weather report along the bottom while you watch Mythbusters.

Here are a few things that I hope will come of this:

• Comcast DVRs will get a recommendation engine that looks at what programs I watch (both on TV and online of course) and suggest other shows or movies that I might like.
• My refrigerator will recognize that I’m low on milk and put it on my grocery list. When I head to the checkout lane, my phone will text me, reminding me that I forgot to get said milk, thus saving me a trip the next day when I finally remember.
• Next time I’m watching Rachel Ray whip up a batch of amazing-looking potatoes and steak sandwiches, I will be pleasantly surprised to find those recipes in my suggestion box when I next check out the Food Network website.

What’s your wish list for this connected and personalized future?

Copyright © 2010 Jeanette DeHoff

I’m going to take a break from talking about social media today. I’m so proud of my latest home project that I had to share!

Before:

This was our sad, strained TV stand before. In addition to the TV, there is a computer and printer off to the side (for watching movies/shows online), our DVR/Cable box, the XBox360, router, cable modem and power strip loaded onto this poor thing. In the large oversized closet is a mishmash of my clothes/junk plus several unsorted boxes of stuff that never got unpacked after the move (2 years ago…).

Since we never use the downstairs formal living room, I decided to turn half of it into my home office, freeing up tons of space in the TV room mentioned above. Things snowballed from there and we decided to empty out the closet and make it into a media center for our multitudes of tech toys.

During:

I call this ‘during’ because it is far from complete. I still want to paint the inside a different color (likely a darker shade of whatever we end up painting the room itself), find a way to conceal the multitudes of cords, take out the cheap-o existing shelf and install a couple of dark wood floating shelves. However, things are far more spread out now and ventilated AND I was able to get the surround sound system hooked up finally. All in all, it’s fantastic so far! The TV room feels much bigger and while the new seating arrangements will take some getting used to, I think it will win us over in time.

Copyright © 2010 Jeanette DeHoff

A few months ago, while having dinner with a friend, we got to talking about Google. Personally, I am a Google nut. I have an Android phone, I use Gmail and many of the other tools that go along with it, I often use the Chrome browser and I’m super excited to see Chrome OS and the possibility of a tablet running either Chrome or Android. Then, we touched upon one of Google’s latest creations, Google Translate, which apparently hit a nerve with my good friend; you see, she is a college educated French Translator.

Google Translate is a very powerful tool that can interpret typed conversation almost instantly. Select your ‘from’ and ‘to’ languages, type text in the box and as you type, it will provide a real-time translation. To go the extra mile, it also allows you to listen to the translation in audio format.

Is Google an evil corporation that will eventually put translators out of business? Here’s where my friend and I had to agree to disagree. She said yes, but I firmly believe that this could be the future of communications. The study of language will, over the next decade or so, be forced to evolve. Instead of translators and interpreters, the world will need linguists that understand how languages have come about, branched off into various dialects,etc. Basic etymology will become the new hotness for communications. These folk will be at the front lines.

Now imagine tools such as Google Translate integrated into social media and being widely available to anyone with an internet connection. I could make friends on Facebook with a woman in a third-world country who wants to learn about starting her own business. Non-profits can get real time information from war-torn countries in order to better provide aid to those in need. Going with the trends of recent years, information will flow even more freely across international borders as easily as it does across state borders now. The world will continue to shrink, and soon the family of five in Congo will be able to carry on a conversation with their pals in Arkansas as easily as picking up a phone.

How long does it take to become known as an ‘expert’? Well, Google it and you can find countless articles, blog posts and books about how to become an expert. Funny thing is, no one can seem to agree on the definition of an expert. Even the word starts to look and sound strange when I type it so many times.

I read ‘Freakonomics’ a few months back and they had some interesting things to say about these so-called experts. Sure, they have tons of knowledge about their particular field, but look carefully and you’ll find two things fairly commonly: 1-They use their ‘informational advantage’ to serve their own interests and 2-They will fudge facts and numbers to give their point more impact knowing that most people will simply believe them. Now I’m not saying that you should never trust someone who calls themselves an expert, but a healthy dose of skepticism serves one well in this world.

My friends over at bluepint (despite their amusing refusal to capitalize anything) made an interesting point in a recent article about social media. Their topic was how to get a job in the social media field and their top advice was:

please don’t refer to yourself as a social media guru, ninja or rockstar

How easy it is to let the success of a few clients go to our heads, eh? It’s just not possible to be an expert in a field that is so young and changing day by day and minute by minute.

I have shied away from calling myself anything of the sort and have stuck with ‘consultant’. I believe that it encompasses what I do and how I approach it in a very broad sense. Each of my clients provides me with a new challenge and a new opportunity to learn something. It could be that I’m learning more about how media can be used for marketing or picking up a new software skill. I’m never afraid to tell a client, “I don’t know the answer to that, but I will certainly find out.”

Would you rather hire an expert who uses what he learned in the past or hire a consultant who will find the answers you need and put them to work for your brand? If I’m not learning, then I’m not doing my job.

Copyright © 2010 Jeanette DeHoff

Social media has done a lot for business communication in the past few years. Businesses can talk to their customers in real time, offering deals and specials for those ‘exclusive’ few. We can hear what customers (as well as ex-customers and non-customers at times) are thinking and what is being said about our brands. We can get instant feedback on how to make a product or service better and it can be used for customer service to improve the experience after the sale. All in all, social media can be a powerful marketing tool if done right.

But what about internal communication? In the past 10 years we have seen the emergence of company intranets where information can be shared company-wide, even crossing state and international borders just a easily as across the hall. For the most part, however, this is a one-way communication. Now we are faced with this strange new tool called social media, which allows employees not only to get information, but to give information as well; and all of this is taking place in real time. I’m interested in hearing what your business is doing, if anything, with this new frontier:

• How is your company using social media internally?
• Are the ‘Big 3′ being used or are new platforms being created just for this purpose?
• What are the benefits and pitfalls of using real-time communication in the workplace?

I’m not sure exactly what flavor my blog would be to be honest (maybe blueberry? tutti frutti?) but it’s tasty! Having no idea what that means, I should move on to something that makes sense:

You may have noticed that I’ve gotten rid of the ‘Random aMusings’ title for my blog. Why, you ask? Well, I am proud to announce that I am returning to consulting under the studio J name. In light of this, I wanted to eliminate confusion by sticking with a single image and a single brand:

While my main focus is marketing design and social media, I offer overall strategic advice (including market research) as well as basic web development and other related services. You can view some of my past work or my resume right here on this site and contact me for more information and a consultation. If you’re already familiar with my work, I encourage you to share the good word and feel free to direct others to my portfolio!

Copyright © 2010 Jeanette DeHoff

I’ve finally compiled my own personal 5 Commandments of social media for businesses. There are many other rules of the road out there (using RSS Feeds, hashtags, following others to get followers, using lists and mentions, improving Klout, etc) but the Commandments here are all about the message.

1. Question the medium – First and foremost, evaluate each medium (there’s more than Facebook and Twitter!) for your business. If you are a customer-facing, packaged goods or entertainment type of company than most likely Twitter and Facebook will benefit your efforts. On the other hand if you sell office supplies to large corporations, your tweets will probably go unnoticed by your audience, but perhaps LinkedIn or a company blog would be useful for your salespeople.
2. Know your audience – At this point, I would hope that your company has determined who their customer is (otherwise please go back to Business 101 – do not pass Go – do not collect $200) and how to reach them. Now, listen to them! Find people who are talking about similar products and services, competition and other brands. Not only will you find out how to talk TO them, you may get some better insight into your own brand and product, ideas for new offerings or ways to improve the existing ones.
3. Don’t throw away the rules – Social media is, at it’s most basic form, just another means of communication. Don’t try to get cute and be more like the kids. Keep the rules of grammar, spelling and professionalism that you use in any other marketing message. Exceptions to this rule are mostly for Twitter, where phrases must be shortened at times (& instead of and; / instead of or, etc). Consider less wordy ways of getting your message across as well – brevity is your friend.
4. Be relevant – few things are more annoying than a company who simply tweets “Check us out!” or “Tell a friend!” and links to their homepage. Build on the idea of knowing your audience – what news and issues are important to them? Are your customers tech-heads? Keep an eye on the big blogs (Ars, TC, Giz) and tweet or FaceBook those out to your followers and fans. Don’t just copy and paste, though. Give your own two cents.
5. Establish a voice – This sort of encompasses all of the rules above. Don’t be an anonymous announcer-type. Whether you have an individual or a team managing your social media, be sure that all of your messages have a unified voice and a tangible personality. Don’t be afraid to make (tasteful) jokes now and then or stand up for a cause that benefits your company to show your customers that your business isn’t all business.

Copyright © 2010 Jeanette DeHoff

I didn’t have much else to write about currently, so I thought I would share an AMAZING recipe that I found last night. You know when you make some really good brownies and the edges get perfectly crunchy-chewy? And you know how everyone always fights for the side pieces then? Well, fight no more! These come out JUST like that but in perfect cookie form:
Note: If you want to do a half batch like I did, just use 1 egg and half all the other ingredients!

Ingredients
- 2 cups flour
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 cup butter, melted
- 3 large eggs
- 1/2 cup cocoa

Directions
1. Add all ingredients in a mixing bowl. Mix until all ingredients are moist and blended.
2. Let the batter rest for about 10 minutes.
3. Drop by the teaspoonful onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet about 1 1/2 inches apart.
4. Bake in a preheated oven at 375 for 7-9 minutes. (They will look and feel still very soft but they are done!)
4. Transfer parchment and cookies to cooling rack to cool completely. (They will firm up when cool.)

The parchment paper in this case is VITAL! The one cookie that slipped off and baked right on the cookie sheet was burnt to a crisp and I had to (gasp!) throw that one away.