Selling beautiful crafts to support the artisans who create them makes everyone feel good. But are these businesses truly sustainable?   

This is a good question.  As Viva! Consult continues to link caring businesses and people with NGO projects worldwide, the sustainability factor should always be the focus.

World Pulse Magazine by Whitney Joiner  |  October 28, 2009

One day, halfway into a trip to Uganda, Colorado psychologist Torkin Wakefield took an afternoon walk with her daughter and a family friend. They stopped to talk with a local woman who was sitting by the road crafting necklaces. The woman told them that to support herself she crushed rocks by hand in a quarry nearby for a dollar a day; in her spare time, she and her friends made necklaces by rolling brightly colored paper—trash that they’d recovered—into beads and stringing the beads into necklaces. “Why aren’t you selling these?” Wakefield asked, after convincing the woman to let her buy a handful. “There’s no market for them,” the woman answered.  read more…

Planning Your Work

For a small business, a strategic plan is essentially a step by step guide to map out how it will reach goals and objectives. It starts with a vision of what the business will be and how it will function in the near future, typically 3 to 5 years out. The plan also serves as a systematic management tool for implementing the strategies. The goal is to integrate every aspect of the business into a systemic approach for achieving the vision of the business.

Although individual strategic plans may differ in some of the details, here are 10 basic elements that should be part of every plan:

• Define your mission, your vision and your values
• Conduct an analysis and resource assessment
• Establish your goals and objectives
• Determine your strategies for accomplishing your objectives
• Conduct your action planning
• Create your organization and staffing plan
• Develop an operating budget
• Create strategic tools to measure and quantify progress
• Identify the support needed to accomplish your mission
• Communicate your strategic plan to the entire organization

One of the keys to successful strategic planning is to involve everyone in the business, to some degree, in the planning process. Employees are vital to the strength and success of any business enterprise, and the business owner alone cannot effectively run the business – nor carry out the strategic plan.

Source: http://www.e-myth.com/blog/

With all the hype of twitter, I thought I would give it a try and see how it could provide a platform to infuse business and personal.  With only 140 characters, tweeting is a nice quick efficient way to communicate ideas and connect people.   I really like the ability to send a quick tweet from my PC or crackberry and get right back to what I was doing. 

Don’t get sucked into all the people and organizations that want to follow you.  I choose to keep a tight control on what and who I follow.

http://twitter.com/DeniseKer

Reach out to me on Twitter and let’s tweet away….

Denise Ker, Viva! Consult

I thought the way David Letterman handled the extortion drama last night was a solid PR move…certainly not ground-breaking, but a valuable lesson for celebs and politicians alike.

1)  He told the truth.  This eliminates media speculation and, though there will still be much interest in uncovering who these ladies are, we won’t to see the situation played out in tabloids as we would have otherwise.  In public relations, honesty is ALWAYS the best policy.  Period.

2)  He stated the facts, spared the details.  I particularly liked how he ended the segment, noting he didn’t plan to say much more publicly regarding the situation.  Basically, he won’t be on The Early Show or Larry King Live defending himself.  This is the story – erred, admitted to it.  Deal.  I have a feeling that in a month’s time, this will be old news…compared to the ongoing and distastefully handled (at least from a PR perspective) Jon & Kate drama.

 3)  He communicated his message in a safe environment.  The risk of booing and taunting was low in an audience of fans.  He used his own outlet to BRIEFLY tell his side of the story.  Backlash from fans will be minimal, because regardless of what he did, people still feel they can trust him.  He broke the news, not Page Six.

 By no means do I condone Letterman’s behavior, but I do feel it was handled well professionally.  There will still be negative press, particularly from those who have kept mental tabs on his political and sexual commentary, but he minimized risk as best he could.  That’s what good PR is all about.

David Letterman’s Drama

Leigh Havelick, Viva! Consult

Some of our clients seem completely overwhelmed trying to figure out how to use Twitter, Facebook and blogging as a marketing strategy.   Then by contrast, most of our GenY freelancers seem to think of social media as this enjoyable trip to the playground to hang out in the sand box and play.

Our advice, unless you are thrilled to go play in that social media sandbox…outsource your social media.  We continue to surround our clients with talented freelancers, community managers and designers that can create, design and manage your social media community.  What a relief to have your Twitter, blog and Facebook accounts feeding into an open-source website with keyword optimization, search engine optimization SEO that drives business to your site. 

Favorite Social Media Guru:  Matthew Tommasi from down under in Australia

Twitter: @matthewtommasi

http://thesocialmediaguide.com.au/

Find Viva Diva…Denise Ker tweeting @deniseker

 
The touchstone of Viva! Consult is to leverage projects and events as a platform to connect our world and inspire compassion.  Jensine Larsen, founder of World Pulse  magazine based in Portland, Oregon, is this extraordinary women and world change agent that is creating the roadmap to bring a voice to women around the world. 

World Pulse Twitter

 From Jensine Larsen…

The Fastest Engine for Women’s Empowerment:
Women Speaking for Themselves

Over the past week we’ve witnessed media buzzing about the enormous potential of women of girls.

Between last week’s release of The New York Times Magazine’s special issue dedicated to women, and next week’s release of Nicholas Kristof’s and Sheryl WuDunn’s book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, the world is increasingly waking up to the fact that empowering women is the solution to today’s most pressing problems.

This growing awareness could not come at a better time. World Pulse is proud to be recommended in Half the Sky as an important media source for the women’s empowerment movement.

At World Pulse we know that one of the greatest engines for women’s empowerment goes beyond traditional humanitarian work. We believe that women speaking for themselves is key to setting in motion a true system-changing revolution. Thanks to the power of new media and communications technology, we are at a historic moment where women worldwide even those from rural villages can at last speak in their own words to the global public, connect to each other, and drive their own development and the development of their nations.

Women’s voices are still the most unheard in the world. Governments, businesses, NGOs, and even journalists continue to speak for women and define their causes.

That’s why World Pulse is committed to providing a media platform where women can speak for themselves, connect, and have a voice in the issues affecting their lives. Whether through our print magazine, our web 2.0 global women’s newswire, or our grassroots women’s citizen journalism network you can be a part of the “pulse” of women’s voices rising everywhere.

“The pulse has come alive in me and I can feel it beating strongly. I want to be a part of this movement, this global movement called World Pulse that has already begun to change my life, and make it change the lives of many others for the better. Together we will improve the future of women all over the world.”
Ada Helen Ngoh, 22-year old citizen journalist | Cameroon

Join us in the revolution. When you donate to World Pulse, you ensure that women everywhere have a space for their voices to rise from the ground up.

Recently I attend a NedSpace event featuring some starts up demoing their products and thought this would have been useful information for some of the presenters…

1. Show your product within the first 60 seconds
2. The best products take less than five minutes to demo
3. Leave people wanting more
4. Talk about what you’ve done, not what you’re going to do
5. Understand your competitive landscape–current and historical
6. Short answers are best
7. PowerPoint bullet slides are death
8. How to use this new device called the phone
9. How to handle questions you don’t know the answer to
10. Always confirm the time of your meeting/call, and always be 15
minutes early

Link to Jason Calacanis’ complete article…

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/09/how-to-demo-your-startup/

I thought this was great advice Leigh Havelick on our team emailed one of our clients today regarding the importance of social media and how it will enhance their product launch media exposure.

Leigh’s comments below…

I know I’ve spent some time talking about the importance of a social media campaign.  If you’re not familiar with how social media works, it can seem overwhelming.  Part of the problem is that it’s ever-changing and ever-evolving.  Even the industry “experts” are learning every day about social media’s influence on perceptions, buying habits, customer adoption, etc.  There’s a great place to read about social meda at www.twitter.com/mashable.  I encourage you to check it out in your “extra” time.   The great thing about Twitter posts is they’re short and you can choose what articles to read, based on what you feel is relevant to your business.

Leigh Havelick,
PR and Social Media Outreach
Viva! Consult

Kathy Jones and I spent the afternoon of Saturday, July 25 at the 4th Annual Dogs Days in the Heights benefiting the Oregon Humane Society.  I was able to raise  over $300 selling scarves for one of the NGO’s Viva! Consult supports and Kathy featured her photography and vintage jewlery talents.  All vendors donated 10% of our proceeds to the Oregon Humane Society which raised over $3,000 at the event.

Viva Divas – Denise Ker and Kathy Jones fundraising for Oregon Humane Society and Vulnerable Children of Cambodia