Here is what we awoke to this last Saturday….

This was only part of what irritated me.

Along with another tree and 5 sections of fencing, the major storms that rolled through the Twin Cities this last Saturday took its toll on our yard. We weren’t alone – many houses in our area had trees down. Thankfully, our house and family were safe.

But, we had cleanup to do. We called in family reinforcement to help with the kids and the day’s work ahead which needed to start with buying a chain saw. We hadn’t had a use for one in years so we hadn’t purchased one and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that they would be flying off store shelves.

So, we headed over to Home Depot to check out what they had and quickly saw they had a few left. I made a comment to one of the employees that business must be busy this morning – curious to hear if other frazzled home owners looking for tools to help with cleanup had come before me. He responded with pleasant surprise over how great business was that morning and how many saws they were selling. I was speechless – I figured that since a whole community was affected, there may be something more important than the bottom line. I handed him back his saw and walked out.

We drove over to our local Hardware Hank where we saw a different story. There wasn’t exactly a lower price, but the service was what it should be on a day like this. The store pulled in extra employees to help and no one was happy to be selling that much for this reason. They took our saw in back, filled it with all the necessary gas and oils, made sure it started, and gave us a rundown on how to use it.

When we got home, many of our neighbors who did not have damage were out helping those that did. The employee at the landfill where we took our chopped up tree actually apologized to me for having to take a small amount of money for us to dump the branches. She said they’re only charging enough to cover their expenses and wished me good luck with our cleanup.

The Hardware Hank, our neighbors, and the landfill employee had it figured out that day.

My point is that Home Depot – and other “Big Box” retailers – seem to really struggle integrating themselves into a community and Saturday was about community. I’m not declaring all of them evil or even saying that Home Depot is a bad store, but on this particular day they missed an opportunity to seem more community-oriented and less about pushing product.

Over the last few months, I’ve read about Google Alerts and listened to people tell me that it’s a great way to track topics in which you’re interested. Well, I’ve just recently woken up and taken people’s advice! Alerts is fantastic. If you’re like me and hadn’t started using this tool, here’s a quick overview and some suggested uses.

Here’s how to get started:

1. Go the the Google Alerts website.

2. Fill out the short form

3. Hit Create Alert and you’ll start receiving emails with your alerts! Simple.

It’s that simple. The Type dropdown let’s you choose from News, Blogs, Web, Google Groups, and Comprehensive. The Comprehensive option will search all options. You can also select How Often you wish to receive the alerts. Once a day, as-it-happens, and once a week are your options.

If you look closely, there is a link at the bottom left of the image above that you can click to manage your alerts. All of your alerts are listed there for you to edit or delete.

So, how am I using Google Alerts?

• For this blog, I track blog topics about which I write such as small business marketing. I’ve always liked learning from other bloggers in this niche and this allows posts to come to me in my email inbox.

• I also track my name and blog name to see what others have to say about me.

• For my company, I track our company name to see what news we make.

• I track our competitors to see what kind of news they’re making.

• I follow news on our core products and related technologies which makes doing market research that much easier.

And it all appears in my inbox once per day or once per week depending on the topic. How are you using Google Alerts? Any unique uses?

I met with part of our international team yesterday to discuss marketing activities for the rest of the year. After the meeting, I grabbed one last glance at my email and headed out the door for my long commute home. About 5 minutes into my drive that ugly feeling you get when you realize the calendar is moving quicker than you hit me. It’s almost June!

Yikes! That means you really need to take a step back and evaluate your marketing plan and make the necessary changes to make sure you’re still on course to meet your goals. Here are a few points to consider:

• Print Advertising: Are the markets in which you’re advertising still the markets that you thought you needed to be in last December? Have market shifts changed where you should be allocating your dollars?

• Online Advertising: You’ve designed custom landing pages for all of your online ad buys, right? Well, now is the time to be happy about that. Check your stats and see what kind of traffic is coming from you various online ads. Make sure you look at bounce rates, click paths, and conversions. Ditch the ads that aren’t getting you traffic.

• Paid Search: Keywords, keywords, keywords! Are you still bidding on the right ones? Which are leading to conversion and which are just wasting your money? Are your ads still focused and current with market trends?

• Sales Campaigns: What worked and what did not from the first half of the year? Now, think ahead to what you want to focus on for the second half and start laying the groundwork.

• Collateral: What’s hot in the market and how can you tailor a white paper, press release, brochure to tie in your products with the current trends?

• Branding: Are you taking measurements of how the market is perceiving your brand?

• Lead Generation: How have you done so far? What mediums have yielded the most leads? Are those leads leading to sales or dead ends? Now is the time to evaluate.

That should get you started. What else do you do mid-year to take stock of how you’re doing?

What happens if I leave my job today? No, I’m not ditching the Lonely Marketer (in fact, I have some milestones coming up…stay tuned). What I am talking about is my “paying” job. The job where I am part of a small marketing group that handles every aspect of marketing for a small tech company. Who would know, understand, and backfill my position?

A few years back I was working in marketing for a larger company. Other than where the going away happy hour would be, there was really no big issues with someone leaving the company. There were enough people that picking up the slack until a new hire came in was no problem.

The small company is a different story. Much different. There are no two people that do the same job in our marketing group…and I doubt we’re alone in that. We all focus on something different and rarely get the time to understand or learn what the other is doing. Plus, we all pick up tasks here and there that we become good at and the company depends on us to do.

No, the end of the world would not be upon us if someone left. In fact, it gives the rest of us a chance to learn. Once everything settles and a new person is hired, the rest of the group has a better understanding for that person’s role.
Now, the trick is to make everyone aware of each other’s role without the departure of a member of the team.

How does your company do that?