I’d like to tell you about a truly gifted artist. Interestingly I met her at a tweet-up. IT seems I’ve given a lot business to people I’ve met at tweet-up’s lately but I can’t even begin to explain how happy I’ve been with the work from the talent I have met. I mentioned Chris Jordan my new insurance agent in a previous post. Chris has quickly become a friend. Havana my new graphic design artist and friend is also incredible. I had told Havana about my DADvocate Project,/a> and she was interested enough to really help me out and gave me an incredible price on work that is just truly priceless. They say a picture is worth a 1000 words so I’ll simply provide a few pictures.

Havana goes through an incredibly detailed process while creating her work and the outcome is simply amazing and as I said before simply priceless.

You can find Havana on line at her website Koko Graphix, on Twitter @havanatweets, or Facebook. Please connect with her next time you need some work done. Oh I almost forgot. I was a typical client who didn’t know what I wanted and when I asked Havana to go beyond what we agreed to she did. She provided me with extras, such as parts of the image, and directed me to web sites for color schemes and even produced a set of social media icons just for my site. Havana is awesome and you should use her if the need ever arises.

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I met @thechrisjordan at a tweet-up at @fuegomundo sponsored by @toddschnick and @stephaniealloyd. Chris is an insurance agent and I had already started following him on Twitter. After the social Part of the tweet-up a number of us stuck around for dinner and Chris and I sat next to each other. Chris is a really bright guy who is using Social Media as the fundamental backbone for his marketing process. I’d spend time writing about how well he is using social media but another friend @NotEasyToForget James Ball has already done a wonderful job and I’ll simply refer you to his article, Social Media: Selling Insurance from the Bathtub Since 2009.

What I’d like to do in this article is sell you on going to Chris’s site and requesting a quote. Fist let me say I am not being paid to do this article and Chris is not currently aware that I’m writing it. This article is consistent with this site’s main objective of promoting small businesses in Marietta and Roswell and I have recently become a Life Insurance customer of Chris’s and I will be switching my home and car insurance to Chris as well. Let me explain why.

Atlanta Insurance Live is Chris’s site and his business is based out of his home in Marietta. On the site he provides copious amounts of information about insurance and insurance issues. He begins to build trust through providing information about his industry and by giving the reader a sense of his personality. Chris is a friendly and funny guy as you’ll see in his entertaining video’s.

Another important point about Chris is his availability. I was working late one night and on Twitter. I saw Chris get on and said “hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you for a quote” This was at 12:00AM in the morning. He readily got on the phone with me, took my information and provided a quote by the next day. You can’t ask for better or quicker service than that. Additionally when I asked about my insurance needs he did not try to up sell me to a crappy whole life product I didn’t need and he was honest about how, when and where one might need a product like that.

I have a busy schedule. I work 40+ hours per week, I blog, I’m training for a 1/2 marathon and I have 3 kids and a wife. I’m busy! Chris actually when out of his way to come to my house on a Saturday afternoon and spent 2 hours with me going through paperwork and making sure I was comfortable with the transaction. Chris is the real deal. Many insurance agents spend all their time acquiring new customers but don’t do jack to service them. I have no doubt that Chris will continue to be excellent as an insurance agent.

So if you are here in Georgia and you need insurance, spend a few minutes asking Chris to help you out. He will make the process painless, ensure you get the services you need and most likely save you money. He saved me $40/month and increase the value of my Life Insurance plan by $250,000. Chris is a independent insurance agent and will be able to help you out. Go ask him for a quote. or Talk with him online live at Insurance Live.

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As I mentioned in my post The DADvocate Project Branding Contest – Win a free Twitter Background! I wanted to open up this branding process to the DADvocate community at large and and gain some feedback. Admittedly I also want to give my designer some exposure since I think she is AWESOME. So please leave some comments about your thoughts and you’ll have the opportunity to win a free twitter background designed by Havana. Check out her web site Kokographix.com

The design process starts with the interview:

Havana Interview – The DADvocate Project Branding from Kevin Metzger on Vimeo.

After the interview Havana spent some time drawling and brainstorming with me so she could be sure we were thinking along the same lines.

DADvocate Header Design Brainstorming Part 1 from Kevin Metzger on Vimeo.

One of neatest things about this process was her introduction of children into the design during her creative process. It was something I would never have thought of but I really like how she worked it in. What do you think?

DADvocate Header Design Brainstorming Part 1 from Kevin Metzger on Vimeo.

There is a third page of work shown here which i hav not posted video for.

All this work resulted in the four following ideas. What do you like about them? what would you change?

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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Okay maybe I’m just a tech geek but I want an iPad. I love apple and have even before the release of the Mac. My first computer was an Apple IIC and was this amazing thing that if manipulated properly allowed me to write my own games.

Today the iMac we own renewed my interest in computing and is still allowing me to define my own games. The release of the iPad will take defining your own game even further. You can now take the game with you. As a blogger and tech enthusiast I love the product.

As a blogger and tech enthusiast I wonder why a few things were left out: Here is what I would have liked to see in addition to the incredible technology that is there. I want an iSight built-in on both sides so I can do video or video chat. I want the computer to do flash – this is a common technology used on many web sites and for many video presentations. I want the iPad to run more than one application at a time. And I want the iPad to be able to make and receive calls with a blue tooth headset and voice commands.

All the above said I think it turns out that the tweet I sent out on Tuesday before anyone else was saying it is going to turn out to be true “Somehow I think Steve Jobs speech tomorrow will be more impactful than the State of the Union !” For some reason I was thinking the State of the Union Speech was Tuesday.

The reason I think I’m right is because we have seen, even with some missing pieces, the introduction of a complete change in computing!

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DADvocate – Internet Discussions from Kevin Metzger on Vimeo.

This is a video interview with Security Expert Ben Halpert. Ben has two daughters and a son on the way. When his first daughter was born he began thinking about the security risks for being on line with children and how and when that conversation should start to take place. Ben decided that we are probably reaching out to children too late in life to begin this conversation. Much like teaching your children to say please or thank you Internet behavior conversation needs to start when your children are young and still listen to you.

Ben has started the Non Profit Savvy Cyber Kids. This organization is dedicated to providing resources to parents and teachers that will help them in educating their children on internet safety. Currently Ben has a number of resources available on his site including:

• A Parent Child Agreement – Rules for Online Safety
• Adult Caregiver/Parent Checklist
• SafeOnline 101 Presentation
• Finally Ben has a children’s book that is still in the works but expected to be published later this spring.

To access all this information and keep up with Ben go to benhalpert.com

I’d also like to thank Jeff Sass for inspiring this interview with his post Having that conversation with your kids. You can find more on Jeff Sass at JefferySass.com

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