Creative Mind Consulting

Mashable's Social Media Guide for Small Businesses

via mashable.com

If you're looking for a year-end guide to social media, Mashable.com has a great list of links in this post.

Giving to Others - the Holiday Edition

In the spirit of the season, I thought I'd list as many ideas as I could think of for helping others this holiday season. There are many families and individuals struggling this year...sometimes reaching out to them with a kind word or thoughtful gesture is the most important thing you could possibly do this year.

And - if times are tough for you and your family, finding little ways to help others can lift some of the gloom and dark feelings. 

I'll add more as I think of them or find inspiration....

Feel free to add more good ideas in the Comments section!

Ways to Help Others

1.  Donate food to a local drive or food shelf

2. Buy a fresh wreath from the local Boy Scouts and give it a friend who's cutting back this year

3. Offer to drive an older neighbor to the doctor's office or Christmas service at church

4. So many ways to help your local schools....

• Call the administration and offer a scholarship to help kids who need help affording to play sports, go on overnight field trips to the state capitol, or choir concerts
• Offer to buy art supplies or band instruments
• Donate vintage clothing to the local college's theater department
• Offer to speak at the high school's career day

5. Band together with 5 other families or individuals, contribute $25 a month and help pay the utilities for a struggling friend or church member

6. Bake a yummy plate of slice 'n bake cookies for a friend who's feeling down or lonely

7. Load up a grocery store gift card with enough funds for a week (2 weeks, a month...) and have a local pastor or religious leader give it to a family who's struggling

8. Buy several bags of pet food and again, contact a religious leader to find out who could benefit

9. Partner up with colleagues and fill a Christmas wish list from a friend who's struggling

10. If your church, religious community or local shopping center offers a "giving tree" or "Angel tree", pick a tag for a teenager. Charity groups have the most trouble filling those gift requests.

11. Invite a friend, or another family to share Christmas dinner

12. Go it alone, or partner with friends, to make a car payment for someone in need

13. Take it a step further and help buy a used car for a family or single parent in need. There are a number of charities who offer such a thing, and it's a huge step for the person for whom lack of affordable transportation is a barrier. 

14. Offer to share rides to sports practices with the parents of your child's teammates

15. Purchase a membership in a local professional association for a colleague who wants to join (or renew), but can't afford the fees. Touch base with the chapter president or executive director to find out if there's a need.

16. Offer to trade services with friends. Trade professional services (accounting vs.computer help) or personal ones (change the car's air filter vs. house cleaning).

17. Buy a resume review for a friend, or offer to review it yourself if you have an eye for that sort of thing.

18. Help a colleague keep their professional edge - buy them a yearly subscription to a professional magazine or journal. 

19. Do people clamor for your famous holiday mint brownies, turkey spice rub or chocolate-dipped pretzels? Let your kitchen do the talking when it comes to holiday gifts. Package homemade creations with fun papers, ribbons or tags for a personal gift without spending lots of cash. Share the love with less fortunate friends, church members or colleagues. 

20. Offer to shovel the walk/snowblow the driveway of someone who's sick or older. Or - just get there first with snow blower for your neighbors and be their Secret Santa. 

There's 20 to get you started!

Incredibly Useful Free Tools to Maximize Your Training Mission

My presentation last week to the American Society for Training and Development, Twin Cities chapter (ASTD-TCC) is uploaded for your viewing pleasure (SlideShare made it extremely easy to post):

"Brainstorming for Business" ideas...Non-profit Grant Wrangler

If you work for a non-profit organization, no doubt you've contemplated writing grants to secure state or federal monies to advance your mission. And - there are many professional grant writers out there who can help.

They know how to locate grant opportunities, wade through the piles of regulations, and write a compelling narrative.

BUT - deciding to write a grant is only the start of the process. At the federal level, there are 26 different agencies who offer over 1,000 different grants...and each one has certain requirements that need to be fulfilled.

The non-profit needs to register with the appropriate federal agencies, coordinate grant status with congressional staffers, advise the staff on potential policy impacts of grant acceptance, file financial and progress reports, and complete grant closure paperwork.

Some non-profits are lucky enough to have staff members who take on the demanding role of grant administrator...others hire grant writers to help with the process.

However, many organizations could benefit from the services of a:

• Freelance Grant Wrangler

If you are a technical writer, non-profit staff member looking for consulting work, or just a person with a great eye for detail...."grant wangling" could be for you!

A "grant wrangler" not only writes the grant application, but advises non-profits on all aspects of grant "strategery", files the appropriate applications, ensures all the required paperwork is completed, talks with congressional staffers and provides expert advice on all aspects of the grant process.

Look for non-profit organizations who need help landing government grants - and are willing to pay for your help. If a non-profit needs $5,000 - they need to find a new donor! If they need $150,000 - now, it makes sense to potentially pursue a government grant.

"Brainstorming for Business" ideas...Cooking School in a Box

This innovative business idea popped into my head on the way home last night...as I was contemplating what to make for dinner (I'm feeding 4, 2 of them teens).

I'm not bad at the basics (casseroles, skillet dinners, broiled chicken, crock potc, etc.), and I'm very comfortable looking in the fridge or pantry and whipping up dinner with what I find there. I like spices and know a bit about how to use salt, sugar, sour, etc. to pump up the flavor of the food.

But - I would love to someday take a cooking course, and learn from the pros. How to chop, how to prepare more basics (steak eludes me), how to season, etc. Yes, I've been watching too many episodes of Top Chef and Chopped!

As a busy wife, mother and business person...finding the time (and the money) to step aside and go off to cooking fantasy school isn't in the near future.

However...why couldn't the cooking school come to me? And to my friends?

It's time for some enterprising young (well, age doesn't really matter, does it?) classically trained chef to step up to the plate and offer:

• Cooking School in a Box...group cooking classes at home

Some of my friends have wonderful gourmet kitchens with lots of room to chop, prep, mix and cook. I'd love to see a series of classes that they host, taught by the enterprising chef. The chef can buy all the ingredients, show up that night, teach us a new technique or two, let us practice, and then we all prepare and eat a meal/appetizer together. Repeat the following week, or two, or three, etc.

By meeting as a group, we can share the cost, receive relatively personal instruction, learn from the chef and each other, and have a great night out. Wine should be involved.

Churches could host such an event in their kitchens (wine probably optional in that case)...businesses could use this as a team building event...it's a great girls night out activity...restaurants could offer their kitchen on a slow night...etc. Many creative ways to play this one idea.

In a day and age when cooking at home is becoming increasingly important, lots of people need to prepare economical, nutritious, interesting, tasty dishes. I'm sure someone is doing this somewhere, but I haven't seen this idea in any of the groups I frequent.

Who's ready to run a small business teaching others to cook?

"Brainstorming for Business" ideas...Short run Magazine Publisher

Continuing our series about great business ideas for the times we live in....

I found a great link yesterday (credit: Lifehacker) to a web site called MagCloud. While the newspaper business is spiraling down, down, down...it doesn't mean the print industry is dead. Far from it - but personalization offers a new way to reinvigorate the publishing industry.

MagCloud takes magazine publishing to a whole new level...or down to the individual reader...depending on your perspective.

• Short run magazine publisher

If you've ever wanted to publish a magazine, MagCloud offers you that creative opportunity. You upload a PDF (so, you'll need to create the PDF in another program) to the site, and they take care of the rest. According to their web site, they don't charge anything to upload and create the magazine - payment comes when the copy is printed (or "purchased").

They use HP Indigo technology, so every magazine is a print-on-demand gem. You pay .20 per page, so a 20 page issue will set you back $4.00 plus shipping. You can have them shipped to you, or let your customers go to the site and order for themselves.

Some brainstormed ideas for using such a great concept....

• Job seekers - create a printed portfolio of past work, for networking, conversation-starting, or to showcase your experience as the final interview draws near
• Small businesses - have multiple product lines? Create one magazine per product. Use it to complement existing marketing materials, or use as a stand-alone tool. This would be a great reason to update your materials regularly ("a new issue every quarter")
• Musicians - create a "fan-zine" you pass out at concerts
• Schools - use as a resource for student projects
• Seminar leaders - use as a shiny marketing piece...or produce and sell to complement existing products

Want some more ideas on how to use this, or other cool web tools? Let's get together and schedule a Brainstorming for Business session for yourself or your team.

Innovation trickling up?

Now here's an interesting idea....

We typically think of "innovation" in product development as a "first world" tool or strategy used by big companies...which may in time trickle down to smaller populations or countries.

This article published recently in Business Week online (March 11, 2009) highlights a different phenomena - companies pioneering innovative efforts in smaller markets or emerging nations, and then moving those innovations to the larger, richer nations.

There is a great advantage to such a process - consumers and companies in the "first world" are hungry for bargains as the recession grinds on. Instead of starting development in an advanced nation and passing along "yesterday's models" to second and third world nations...this model turns that process on it's head.

Companies are turning product development upside down, and customers across the developmental spectrum benefit greatly by such an approach. Newer, lower cost products (and services, for that matter) with just the essential features - not all the bells and whistles.    

How can you apply such an approach to your company? What are the essentials your customers need, and how you can you provide it without the bells and whistles? What if you spin off the bells and whistles into individual products or services? If you as the question "what's the ONE thing my customer needs today?"...what is the answer?