Media and Public Relations: our core focus is on the creative economy connecting social and traditional media to promote artists, authors, consultants, and celebrities.
Saturday Carol Doane speaks to the Vancouver Writer's Mixer. She's got the internet wired for fun, for feedback and success! She's the doyenne of Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, and many other virtual publicity websites.
Carol will be demonstrating the basics of navigating these treacherous technical waters. Find out why you should dabble, even just a little, on-line. By the time we're finished, you'll be amazed and eager to get out there and start networking! It's so easy, even Smedley the bookstore cat tweets. Carol will touch on hot social media topics such as Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, YouTube, Plancast and blogging.
Learn quick tips, easy to use shortcuts and what to do if you hate the idea of marketing yourself.
Carol was a top finalist in the 2010 SoMe Awards (Social Media Awards of the Pacific Northwest) for her volunteer campaign for the Southwest Washington Blood Program. Winning campaigns awarded to Air New Zealand, Travelocity, PAX East, Mio Gelato, Portland Fit, Hotel Max, Mio Gelato, a worthy group to be included in!
Many, many thanks to Angst Gallery owner Leah Jackson for allowing Cover to Cover Books to hold their monthly mixer in the gallery. The bookstore remains closed due to smoke damage until renovations can be completed. Cover to Cover is taking special orders via email: mail@covertocoverbooks.net.
If you want to chat with Carol after the event we'll be taking over the couch in Niche Wine & Art next door.
Every two minutes someone in Western Washington needs a blood transfusion. Sean Debutts, Social Media Coordinator at Puget Sound Blood Center, sent a direct message to Twitter follower Carol Doane to secure Doane as a champion to spearhead a blood drive. Carol Doane, the Advertising Sales Manager and Social Media Strategist at The Columbian Newspaper in Vancouver, Washington, quickly agreed.
Doane's social media campaign and resulting blood donation event placed her as a top finalist for the Pacific Northwest Social Media Awards in The Scrappy & Engaged Award category. Winners will be announced after the Portland, Oregon InnoTech Conference. InnoTech is a business and technology innovation conference and expo sponsored by top brands IBM, Microsoft, Integra Telecom, Advanced Systems Group, Smarsh, MSI and others. Besides Portland, InnoTech conferences are also taking place in Austin, Texas; San Antonio, Texas; and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
The Scrappy & Engaged category salutes best brand awareness/user engagement for under $500. Doane dubbed her campaign, "Carol's Save A Life Birthday Party," and estimated the cost at $14.99, the cost of a birthday cake. As part of her submission she created a SlideShare to describe the event, http://www.slideshare.net/TheClassicCarol/carols-save-a-life-birthday-party. "A crew of social media enthusiasts in Texas and beyond were the SoMe Awards judges," reports Sean Lowery, Executive Director of the InnoTech Conference which is spotlighting the awards.
"Social media is very personal and this campaign struck a chord for me," says Carol Doane. "I have an innate curiosity to see if I can drive people out from behind their computers to share a cup of coffee and many will, but this project asked them to extend past surface conversation and participate in a needle-in-the-arm way."
Sean Debutts, the initiator of the direct message that launched Doane's participation notes, "Carol deserves the honor after all the hard work she put into her drive and all the visibility she gave the concept."
The Puget Sound Blood Center maintains eleven donation centers in Washington and continues to benefit from Doane's efforts. "For an hour the SlideShare I created to describe the campaign was Hot on Twitter and featured on SlideShare's Health and Medicine category," notes Carol Doane. "It's all these little wins that makes diving into social media fun."
What's next on the agenda for the Social Media Strategist? "The hardest part now," she muses, "Is explaining what a social media award is to my parents."
Social media is an all encompassing term for the mixing of technology and social interaction to add value to the community. The SoMe Awards honor the best social media projects, programs and campaigns in the Pacific Northwest. The SoMe event takes place at the prestigious Multnomah Athletic Club, 1849 SW Salmon Street, Portland, Oregon 97205, Thursday, May 7, 2010 from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM. Registration is $20 and includes two drinks and dessert. Event registrations are accepted online: http://ow.ly/1FZ1s
Contact us about a speaker for your next event. Topics include writing, editing, curating art, bicycling, starting a small business, and marketing that business via traditional and social media. Email: now@ActiveQu3st.com
Writing Carolyn J. Rose and Mike Nettleton, authors and writing teachers, present an audience-involvement session on the causes of writer’s block and strategies to cure “blinking cursor creative paralysis."
Rose and Nettleton write as a team an as individuals. They have seven published mysteries to their credit, including The Big Grabowski, a cozy set on the Oregon Coast, just out from Krill Press. Two more books will be published next year.
In addition to sharing their experiences with writer’s block, they’ll offer advice gleaned from other writers, and involve the group in exercises to diagnose the causes of creative paralysis and find ways to write with more ecstasy and less agony.
Critique Group Start-up Melanie Sherman has spent two years in an active and lively critique group. Learn how easy it is to start one (coerce strangers to read out loud to each other), the benefits of sharing the writing experience (smile through the criticism), and how her experience led to winning the 2009 Pacific Northwest Writers Association literary award in the mainstream category (a critique partner coerced her to enter).
Researching Historical Fiction Sharon Axlineis a computer programmer with the civil war always running in the background. Her historical fiction follows a woman whose adventures include enlisting in the cavalry (posing as a man) to protect a brother with a young family. She speaks about the process of starting her novel, the search for historical resources, finding a mentor and coach through the local college community education program, and how networking landed her a lucrative spot in the city's most sought after critique group.
Sharon gave the critique group a name, The Dead Bunny Club, taken from a salient scene of one of the member's coming of age manuscripts. Sharon is also a dog lover and boasts two active, in-training Lhasa Apsos who are learning barking is not the only way to greet a guest.
Social Media Strategies Carol Doane brings her years of expertise working for the largest daily newspaper in Southwest Washington to the podium. An avid Social Media fan, she's helped businesses harness the power of online as they build their sales strategies to generate revenue flow. Now discover how to incorporate social media with the larger audience venues offered by traditional media. How do you start? Where do you begin? When can you quit advertising?
Carol blogs on business issues at 360 Convos and on her fiction writing adventures at Pearl of Carol which includes the popular, "Celebrities Who've Met Me!" posts that are entertaining and embarrassing.
Find Carol on Twitter as @TheClassicCarol and @TheFirstCarol. Tweeters beware, either persona may claim to be the twin of the other at any time.
How Not To Start A Gallery Leah Jackson, founding director of Sixth Street Gallery, struck out on her own to open Angst Gallery in 2008. She's one of the founding members of Lower Columbia Alliance for Living Sustainably: LOCALS, keeps tabs on local politics, is active in the Portland metro area bicycling community, while searching for unique art offerings to feature in her gallery. Learn how collaboration with both local and state government offices led to quickly identifying and resolving issues as she ventured into expanding the gallery to the neighboring space for a strategic yet complimentary use.
Your Next Event Contact Active Qu3st about a speaker for your next event. Topics include writing, editing, curating art, bicycling, starting a small business, and marketing that business via traditional and social media.
