Pinky on Press

I have been negligent and lazy regarding my posting. I have been so entranced by the social media and networking world lately that I have not invoked my writing muse. For this ex-English major, the world of Facebook, Twitter, etc is a dangerous one. It affords my ego the opportunity to reactively and often pompously respond to the Web 2.0 world without the more careful consideration I give to more expansive writing. As I was opening a new document to capture some stream-of-consciousness around Twitter as a business tool this morning, I saw that Word now provides a blog post template, so I thought I would capture my thoughts this way as a test.

"Social Media and Networking" has become the newest buzz phrase for organizations and individuals who want to play with the cool kids. I have been working on building and exercise and a practice around how the various mechanisms in this arena can facilitate organizational customer relationships, service programs, branding, and marketing. I was Tweeting around several topics this morning and have been testing some of my theories about how Twitter in particular can be positioned as a B2B sales tool. Bear with these random thoughts and trust that I am going somewhere with this:

How a B2B sales and marketing departments can utilize Twitter:

1. Use applications such as Tweet Beep to create alerts around your company name, employees, topics relevant to your solution or your clients.
   
2. When you get notifications that somebody is following you, check out their profile and any accompanying url's (their website, personal blog, sites of interest to them) and determine whether they are a lead for your company.
   
3. Start following them and set up Tweet Beeps for their organization, name, etc.
   
4. Check out all those people that are following THEM!
   

Very quickly, by following just step number two, I identified five new leads for my company that are in the appropriate vertical and appear to be a good target for our solutions. Counter-intuitively, this did not take up much time!

Pinky on Middle-Age Mania

My dear friend Dianne from Mississippi sent me an update email that included a reference to new hail damage on her hindquarters as being a sign of aging. (Dianne was also present at one of my most humiliating Victoria Secret visits where I was told that they really didn’t carry anything in my size.) She knows things about me. This phrase contributed to a recent downward spiral in my own body image and the obvious, seemingly overnight signs of age for me. Get ready for full exposure here, it’s R-rated and inappropriate for those who are not middle-aged.
Hail damage: I have been slender, fit (running), and pretty toned my entire life. Dianne’s comment about hail pockmarks and the constant barrage of “Get rid of the cellulite” advertising inspired a couple of more detailed self-inspections recently. Here’s the R-rated part: Picture a naked 44 year old woman, trying out various combinations of contacts/reading glasses/bifocals and mirrors attempting to get an accurate assessment of the landscape of her own rear. It is next to impossible, results in tears, and very bizarre, raised eyebrow looks from the dog. No wonder the various creams are so successful. We can’t really assess what’s going on so as a security measure, we are willing to invest a small fortune in rubbing some bizarre smelling dehydrator on ourselves.
Facial landscaping: I have never been a fan of any kind of waxing. We’ll start at the eyebrows and perhaps stop there. I have been a self-maintainer most of adult life with the periodic visits to the torture chamber of hot wax. The issue now is that some of the little baby eyebrow hairs are white or translucent. First, refer to previous paragraph regarding the contacts/reading glasses/bifocals and mirrors exercise and you may glean the first layer of difficulty. Second, if I take the vitamins I am supposed to, the little baby whites and translucents grow like they’re on steroids and I still can’t see them so I run around with a low-grade paranoia that to others I might be looking like a Geico cavewoman. Third, this is exhausting.
Memory: The clichéd joke would be I can’t remember what I was going to write about this. Um.
I guess the more serious point would be that I think that most women of my age have some level of body dismorphic dysfunction. (Spell check tells me I muffed that one, but I’m told that it is a real disorder….get with it Microsoft, women need your new psychological dilemma support) Speaking for myself, I don’t think I really have any kind of appropriate view of how I look and I have found it is dangerous to rely on the opinions of others (except Dianne who has always been absolutely yet lovingly honest)

Pinky on "In this Economy"

What will you do differently?

The phrase, “In this economy” has become forbidden in my household. In a relatively short media span of time, it has become the catchall phrase for all the ills of the past three months, whether strictly economic woes or not and thus, has even passed joke and annoying status to become meaningless. As we have strived to indicate in previous posts, our approach to life over the past five years has been increasingly rooted in recognition and celebration of the moment and the gifts with which we are blessed every day, thus, the frailty of “this economy” and the fear factor of joblessness, meeting our financial obligations, and “what will I do when I grow up” has a somewhat weaker hold than it has had in the past. (Maybe this is early Alzheimer-like naiveté, but, let’s go with it for now).
I offer the thought that our laissez-faire approach to life is more at work here than Adam Smith’s doctrine that a self-correcting economic hand would correct any self-interest that drives capitalism (see, liberal arts education means something!). Is it possible that we have gone beyond the point of extreme self-interest in our engagement in the marketplace and in life that we don’t even recognize the give and take that is required for a balancing effect in the universe, much less in a capitalist economy? Is it possible that we are so removed from the fragility of survival that we do not engage in the basic instinctual combativeness on which our markets, and (I am reaching) our relationship with others is predicated? I am mixing so many biological, socio-economic, and metaphysical metaphors in my own brain right now that I am confusing myself, but it’s Pinky’s blog…so…back to the question: What will you do differently:

If your concern right now is solely how to survive this economic situation…what will you do differently?
If your thoughts run a little deeper, and think this “situation” is indicative of an “opportunity” to look at our complex and dynamic relationships with our world, economies, and populations in a radically new way….what will you do differently?
If you think Pinky just has too much time on her hands…. J

Pinky's Holiday Message - Part I

I am very fortunate to have been raised by two people who embody the spirit of the holidays as a daily practice. In standard etiquette fashion and in many anonymous ways, my parents have offered their hands and their hearts to many people. On Tuesday afternoon, my father had to be taken by ambulance from his doctor's office to the emergency room. As my mother and I waited for them to get a room for him after it was determined that he would be having surgery, we overheard a very disheartening conversation between a nurse and a patient's nursing home. Apparently the nursing home was unaware that one of their patients/residents had even been taken to the emergency room and it seemed (from the side of the conversation that we could hear) that they were reluctant to make any arrangements to take him back.

I believe that we have infinite capacity for love and care-taking of others. I do not believe that it is taxing in anyway for me to have concern for all people around me. I cannot help everyone: offer them shelter or money or support, but this does not mean that I cannot think and pray for all. My parents taught me this. I hope that celebration of those around me is never restricted to specific seasons or days. I hope that I can give unselfishly of my heart and my ears all the time. I hope that the holidays are just another way to demonstrate my deep love for my family and humanity rather than the only time I nod to tradition and humanistic values.