Housing Economy Views and News 2/24/2010 – Bob Zartarian
Most would agree that to get Housing and the Economy back on track we need more demand and spending brought about by consumers with jobs and disposable income. After all, that’s what all that stimulus spending was supposed to be about.
How is it then that allowing the “Bush” tax cuts to expire and instituting Health Care reform which will add taxes for years before benefits kick in can bring back jobs and grow the economy? Don’t taxes take disposable income away from consumers and slow job creation?
Bob Zartarian – These views are strictly my own
How should Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Use Twitter and Why?
CHOA – or Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta is a terrific organization. We recently spent a weekend there with our son when he had RSV. The hospital is amazing. They make you feel comfortable, they have hundreds of services, they offer room service to the parents, they have educational tv programs for adults, there is a computer lab, they have wifi, they do everything necessary to make a hard and scary time easy for the kids and the parents. Children’s is flat out an awesome organization.
While I was at the hospital I was on my computer and decide to see what kind of social media presence CHOA had. It turns out they really don’t have any social media presence at all. This is a true loss of opportunity for an organization such as Children’s because it is such a cheap and effective way to reach their target audiences both customers and donors. The day we were in the hospital happened to be the day of the Children’s parade in Atlanta. Seeing only five tweets mention the parade or CHOA amazed me and I posted one of them.
Children’s is way too valuable a resource to our community to have such little presence in one of the largest twitter markets in the country.
What would be the objective for Children’s to use Twitter. The number one thing to keep in mind is that social media of all kinds is meant for relationship building and to funnel leads into your sales funnel. So if I were positioning CHOA I would recommend focusing on a major goal of spreading the word for fundraisers and leverage the technology to inform and attract more people to charitable events.
The initial strategy and measurement for this type of work with twitter would be quite easy to implement. A landing page or blog post should be set up specifically for an event. Then a URL shorten-er that tracks click troughs could be used to send tweets about the campaign. That is the simple part, the larger part of the twitter effort would be to capture the brand image of service and provide users on-line the same service they get at the hospital. This strategy can be taken in many directions, such as providing nurses to respond to simple customer questions or having doctors tweet about the benifits of a particular surgery. The possibilities are truly endless.
Encouraging customers to tweet about their experience with CHOA would be another great objective and could be accomplished with a messaging campaing asking for feedback from parents. CHOA could choose to measure the success of this program simply by looking at the increase in tweets about CHOA from non CHOA accounts.
Ideally CHOA shouldn’t have to tweet about their parade on the day of the parade because their followers will do it for them but that won’t happen unless CHOA is out there actively interacting with the on-line social community.
Housing Economy Views and News 2/15/2010 – Bob Zartarian
“Well, if we just look at what’s happened and works, why do we need something new?” This quote is from Jonathan Krohn, one of Atlanta’s own as he criticized former Republican Governor Jeb Bush. At 14 years old this young man already understands that we need not try new ideas when we have the benefit of hindsight to see what’s worked before to bring housing and the economy back.
Time after time in the past when taxes were reduced and/or eliminated and entrepreneurs were incentivized by profit to take risks, the country’s coffers filled up as economic activity improved. Couple that with long term pro-growth policies and you have the formula for a fast recovery. Take away the impediments to doing business at home and abroad, let American business compete on the world stage without high tax rates and watch out! Every time it’s been done the result is the same. We recover.
A reduced tax burden along with spending reductions practically guarantees the chances for a robust recovery. Throw in a strong dose of waste and fraud elimination and America will once again see everyone in its rear view mirror. People who want a job will go back to work and we’ll have the revenue to bring down the crushing deficit. Do this and those “babes” will have a life at least as good as ours. We don’t need to “tinker” with make work programs, we need a plan that lets the world’s best do what it does best.
Bob Zartarian, – Marietta, Ga These views are strictly my own
Play – Roswell, Ga
This is an unsolicited w/o interview review of Play in Roswell Ga.
Overview
Play is an awesome facility where children have the opportunity to enjoy trampolines, ball pits, inflated moon walk type jumpies, playing with parachutes, slides and other gymnastic type equipment. They have play areas for little kids too; sand tables, trains, and more. Play is a great place to take the kids for a birthday and they even offer opportunities to drop your kids off on Saturday nights.
Play also has a parents lounge but it seems to need a little work at least on the weekends. I would suggest Internet access, coffee and perhaps playing something on the tv.
Experience
We visited Play last weekend for a birthday party. They always do a great job of getting the kids involved in the activities and the kids working the parties are well trained. They know how to interact with the children and are good about keeping to a schedule that keeps the kids interested.
We have not hosted a party there but based on how they organize it I would be willing to.
Online presence
Play’s online presence consists of a web site and a Facebook page. They also maintain a news letter.
I signed up for the news letter the other day and did not receive an introduction news letter. I also signed up to be added as a friend on Facebook and have not yet been added. This is almost a week ago now. The web site is great and provides all the details about when they are open, when you can bring your kid in to Open Play and when they offer “Kids night out” or babby sitting. They also have classes and even free offerings such as story hour. It’s great that they list all this on their web site.
Recommendations
I believe Play is missing a few crucial opportunities to leverage their existing web site and electronic media for marketing purposes and to bring in additional business.
For a business like Play it makes sense to send an initial news letter/Autoresponder along with a coupon for signing up. Anybody who signs up for this news letter obviously is a potential, if not already a, customer. Since this customer went to the trouble to provide you an email address an is inviting you to stay in communication with them you should give them an incentive to come in and Play. The news letter is the perfect opportunity to do this.
Facebook – The Facebook page can be a real opportunity to create a community between all of your customers but it won’t work if you don’t get people interacting immediately. I would also move from the Friend page to more of a Fan page.
A Facebook fan page is searchable by the search engines and someone looking for Play type activities in Roswell might find the page and Bam New customer. In the fan page you can host conversations and get an interactive conversation going. You can also host pic’s and video that your customers might enjoy. The other major advantage to Facebook Fan pages are the ability to advertise on Facebook. Facebook PPC (pay per click) advertising is incredibly well targeted. You can advertise to women between the age of 27 and 40 who live in specific postal codes. The integrated Fan page gives an excellent place to direct those parents to. Also there is less administration because anybody who wants to can become a fan.
Finally if were examining Play’s online strategy I would consider a blog. The blog can be updated weekly with video testimonials, each week’s events, and even child safety or child care type tips. The blog could be linked from the existing web site which is excellent and provide parents a way of staying in touch with Play and other Play parents. Play might even consider video taping a Story Time or some other event to help bring the Play experience to parents on-line.
I don’t have any business suggestions for Play today as I’ve only been able to observe the operation and online strategies. I believe Play has an excellent operational strategy in place since all employees seem to be well trained and enjoy working with young kids.
All in all if you are a parent in North Atlanta you need to take your kids to Play and check it out. They are awesome.
Housing Economy Views and News 2/8/2010 – Bob Zartarian
How sad, less than two weeks of focusing on Job creation and were already back to Health Care Reform, something that has mistakenly had the limelight for a year. We’re also back to Tea Parties, the KSM trials and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” that dilute the focus on Job creation. Important no doubt but not the priority that Job creation can and must be.
If the economy was strong we could deal with issues we WANT to tackle but they are unnecessarily taking the emphasis away from the NEED to create Jobs. As a country we need to distinguish between Needs and Wants. I’m fine with Reforming Health Care and debating those other issues but they are WANTS and not NEEDS (yes, there is already a way for the uninsured to get health care).
The statistical anomaly that recently brought down the unemployment rate at the same time as unemployment rose must be ignored. What we should be more concerned about are the tax cuts that will be allowed to expire at year end and the elimination of the program to buy Mortgage Backed Securities by the Federal Reserve in less than two months. The Congress and the administration must increase demand which will ultimately put people to work. Forget targeted stimulus – it has no lasting effect and is rife with waste and abuse. There are plenty of examples from the past year to prove that. Stop the plan to take more taxes from the American people. It may create a double dip recession.
The solution: reduce payroll taxes, reduce corporate taxes, eliminate capital gains taxes, keep the “Bush” tax cuts, eliminate the “death” tax and watch the economy “SNAP” back. Tax revenues will rise, we’ll be able to balance the budget and pay down the deficit and the country will recover. Let’s strengthen the employer class, put people to work and then address our WANTS.
Bob Zartarian - These views are strictly my own
The future of Metzger Business
Metzger business has been used to keep track of my rambelings as an experienced Internet and ecommere business architect who is interested in social media. I am also very interested in small business and my community so I’ve decided to turn this endevor into an experminent. I’d like to help small businesses and my community by making this a platform for publishing. I’ve invited a number of small businesses jnthe community to start posting articles one a regular basis. I hanlve room for several additional business to post as well. On top of that I’ll be doing business reviews of businesses in the Marietta and Roswell comunities. I’ll continue to write about how I think social media can help both small and large business and how this site helps the businesses that participate on it.
You’ll see chAnges in the site Over the coming weeks and months but we are going to start slowly. So please enjoy drop us some comments and tell you friends in marietta and Roswell. If for a business and would like to contribute please feel free to reachout to me. Kevin [at] Metzgerbusiness [dot] com
Remote Control Your Computer
Remote Control Image
I recently found LogMeIn.com. This is a wonderful free remote control services that allows you to remotely control either a Mac or PC. It even works with smartphones. You can actually control your PC or Mac through a smartphone. This is a truly incredible service and if you are a small business and have used GoToMyPC this service can save you $30/month.
They also offer paid services such as tech support, virtual networking and an advanced version of remote control that allows you to transfer files and use remote resources to print copy past etc. It’s all very cool. Check it out! It’s free and Freeing.
Proud New member
Friend Me
