Archive for December, 2008

Networking & Happy Holidays!

{ December 23, 2008 @ 8:01 am } · { Uncategorized }
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OK, so I haven’t written for over a week!

The Holiday Season puts the best of us behind schedule….

Last week was an eventful one! On Monday, I attended a Web 2.0 Christmas party with my friend Alexi.

web 2.0 treeShe works for Ask.com and gets all the invites to all these web events, which is GREAT for me and Baseball Beauties! This was my first time entering a Web 2.0 world… And it was as foreign to me as it was exciting, there were so many people there and they were speaking in foreign tongues! However I met some nice people who explained things to me and made things more clear. One of the things that I got our of the night was that I had to TWEET and do so IMMEDIATELY! (Because Tweeting is the new hype right now everyone who has anything to say at all is doing it!) As I mentioned before, I created a Twitter account: http://twitter.com/baseballbeauty a few weeks ago, and wasn’t sure what I should be doing with it. That hasn’t changed, I’m still not sure what to do! LOL But I am trying to keep up with my Tweets and hope that if I do at least 5 Tweets a day someone will notice… We’ll see… Nothing that’s worth doing is easy. I also ran into a pair who I met at the Webgrrls X-mas networking party, I guess that the more Networking events you attend the more of the same people you’re going to run into! This is great because this is how you create your network and find your connectors! I’m going to meet Cheryl, who I met a the Webgrrls event for coffee on Wednesday and she is going to help me organize the Baseball Beauties top page!

On Tuesday night Nick and I stopped by another Web 2.0 party, this one was hosted by none other then Microsoft itself! Microsoft BizSpark was the name of the team that was hosting this event http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/

The event took place in the Carnelian Room in San Francisco and was VERY crowded and LOTS of FUN! They were serving free alcohol and appetizers. I met a couple of interesting people there and once again ran into some regulars :)

networking

It is too bad that BizSpark only support start-ups that are involeved in software development. Baseball Beauties is definetly not a software developing kind of a company! But I am sure that there are other groups which support Web 2.0 start-ups which Baseball Beauties can be a part off.

Networking is what it’s all about when it comes to any business, it is the best way to meet people who can help you! It takes about 6-7 degrees of separation to get to any person. For example, if you’re looking to meet Obama, chances are that you will know someone, who will know someone who will be able to set up a meeting (of coarse there will be a few more degrees of separation than just 2, but you get the picture)

If you’re wondering what to wear to a networking party, I found this great sample outfit for us ladies!

networking-outfit-1It’s very stylish, but simple and elegant at the same time. You don’t want to look over dressed or under dressed. Dark denim jeans, heels, sweater and a bold necklace are OK too! A little more casual and/or dressy than a job interview. You never know who you’re going to run into, so be prepared and make sure that you stock up on those business cards!

On to the other topic. On Thursday I had my first meeting with Deographics and we went over all 40 + wire-frames that they created so far. There will be lots more to come! At least another 20… It was really helpful to talk to Nate and see what their vision was and input my ideas into the frames as well. I had some minor changes and we notices a few things missing, but overall everything looked great!

They added a really neat feature to the member’s pages (I can’t recall it’s name). When you need to update your info, you will not actually need to leave your home page. The “changes” screen will pop up and the home page turns Grey. All you have to do is change your info, click OK and it will desepear bringing you back to your home page. (Maybe this isn’t anything new, but I haven’t seen anything like it and it looked pretty cool :) ) They’re going to start designing the top page this week! YAY!  Im looking forward to seeing it and posting it on here for you to see!

Only 2 days left before Christmas!

christmas-snoopy-lights-tree

Happy Holidays and I will put something up between Christmas and New Years, and wait there is my Birthday too! SO MUCH going on!!!

RIP Betty Page

{ December 13, 2008 @ 11:41 am } · { Baseball Beauties News }
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I was very sad when I heard that the Queen of Pin-up passed away :( Arguably Betty Page laid the foundation of the sexual era in America.

betty-page-sitting-winking-on-the-beach1

She was one of the reasons why I got interested in pin-up style pictures. When thinking about Baseball Beauties, Betty was always in the back of my mind. She died at the ripe age of 85, she had a FULL and VERY EXCITING life and it will be remembered! She was one of the first Playboy centerfolds and a good friend of Hugh Hefner. He said: “Betty Page was one of Playboy Magazine’s early playmates and she became an iconic figure, influencing notions of beauty and fashion. Her passing is very sad.” Rest In Peace Betty! Her legend will never die, and I think that it’s awesome to be remembered as someone who was such a HUGE part of the American sexual era. Did I mention that Betty LOVED shoes?

betty_page_shoes

Yes, she had a shoes fetish :) don’t all women have that??? Oh wait, it’s probably just Betty, SJP and I… LOL I’m sad because I didn’t get a chance to meet her and listen to all the stories she had to tell. Ones Baseball Beauties is up and running we will do a Betty Page tribute in 2009.

I have been mentioning that Amy and I are going to start recording our weekly Baseball Beauties Viriety Show. And yesterday we finally went into details and figured out out how to start our first show. Its always the most difficult to start something, no matter what it is (a paper or an exercise program) but once you get into it, things flow smoothly after you get over that initial HUMP. We are going to record our first show this coming week. The show is going to be only 2 minutes in length (because MOST people won’t watch anything longer than 2 minutes!) and in our first segment we’re going to introduce ourselves and talk a little bit about the show and what it’s going to be about. Sounds SIMPLE right? Not really, because it’s going to take sometime to figure out what exactly we’re going to say in those 2 minutes, which is barely any time at all!!! Ahhhhhhhhh! Maybe we’ll increase it to 5 minutes and those of you who REALLY want to see it will watch our show till the end and the rest of you lazy people who can’t get through more than 2 minutes of film shouldn’t be watching it anyways! There….

Eventually, we’re going to have local guests and friends and Beauties themselves come on our show, we will primarily talk about baseball and what’s going on with Baseball Beauties in general (highlights from this BLOG) Once our cartoon artist is finished with an int-ro and out-ro for out show it will be up :)

I even bout a Flip MinoHD Camcorder to use for taping and just taking it with us when we go to different events.

upload_photoIt’s pretty cool because they let you decorate your Camcorder. So, I decorated ours with one of the Baseball Beauties Logos (the one with a red heel stepping on a baseball)

logoCS

Its going to be great to be able to get HD footage on such a tiny device. Although it only holds 60 minutes of footage on it’s hard drive that should be plenty for clips and memos. Look for more videos in my BLOG soon :)

This week I finally joined Webgrrls, I payed their $150 yearly fee and got a membership card. I’m looking forward to going to all of their Networking events! Nelly, who runs their NYC chapter is such a sweet person, she posted some pictures up on Facebook and tagged me in some of them. I also thought that it was cool that they chose to use my quote on their even page on top: http://www.webgrrls.com/sanfrancisco-ca/articles/2008-12-03_287.php

It says that I’m the “Founder” of Baseball Beauties, which I thought was kinda cool  :) I am indeed the founder, seeing it in print sort of puts a stamp on it and makes it OFFICIAL.

This week I also attended the FIDM Alumni event with Elena. That was fun! I met a real nice lady named Hanzel, who does social networking consulting and is also a big part of http://www.ladieswholaunch.com/ This is a great website for women with businesses. So I am going to look into it further this coming week.

FIDM Networking EventFIDM Alumni did a great job putting this event together. They served all ORGANIC food (which was Yummy) donated 2$ from every drink to charity and had a Christmas tree which was going to charity too. It was a pleasant evening and it was nice to spend some time with my friends. Lets see what this next week brings to the Baseball Beauties table!

LinkedIn, Google and Monday….

{ December 8, 2008 @ 1:11 pm } · { Baseball Beauties News }
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I always find myself procrastinating on Mondays… Even to start writing my BLOG! And I love blogging :)

Anyways, Saturday night I went out with some friends in hopes of meeting some cool new people and to my disappointment we failed… We got to see some good friends and had a GRAND OLD time, but did not meet anyone worth mentioning. (Bellow from left to right: Amy, ME, Sandi and Alexi)

friends

I was just replying to an e-mail, I am going to meet up with a local Photographer, he wants to learn about Baseball Beauties. I’ve done a shoot with him once before (NOT TO WORRY ROSALYN!) this is just a networking opportunity meeting! I found him on LinkedIn, YES! I finally joined and it seems like a useful website. I had no idea that they have a pay version, it seems like that may be useful once I have more contacts, but for now I just have the simple FREE account.

You can also post your WordPress BLOG on your profile which I did, I hope that will bring in more readers! I’ve done about a 2 in marketing for this BLOG on a scale from 1 to 10. At first I wanted to get comfortable with writing and THEN let the world take a peak :) I think that I’m almost ready to share!

This week I am going to finish the Business Carer Plan that I have been dreading  to work on… I know that it’s going to be a BIG PART of Baseball Beauties, but I still have to answer all the 200 questions in detail, not to mention I have to research many of the answers. I know all this is going to pay off in the end :) The toughest question to answer has been:

How does a Social Network become successful? or What steps do you take to grow?

After doing a bunch of research I haven’t been able to come up with a concrete answer, all the information out there is partial (These companies aren’t going to tell you how they got BIG! They don’t want you to know that information!) So I have to go by a bunch of different articles and piece together the information, it’s out there just not in simple ENGLISH! You can see my procrastination and struggle to finish this project…

I have mentioned earlier that I have been working on some Google Adwords for my FINAL Search Engine Optimization Project. So far I came up with 2 good ones:

1. “HOT Chicks Know Baseball! Don’t believe it? See for yourself”

(What can I say sex sells, every straight male baseball fan wants to see HOT Chicks who know about baseball!)

2. “Network for Baseball FANS! Find out how to JOIN”

(This one isn’t as spicy as the first one, but it clearly gets the point across) I tried to say “MySpace for Baseball” but Google wouldn’t let me! Google is SMART! Copy- write violation, that’s what it said….

I am still working on one more AD, Ill have it ready by the end of the week. Even though I learned SO MUCH in that class, I am glad that it’s finally coming to an end…. I will probably take it again next year (technology changes fast and you need to take classes at least once a year to keep up!) I am looking forward to having a little free time :)

My friend invited me to a networking event this Thursday night for FIDM SF Alumni, she could only invite 1 person and Im so glad that she chose to invote me :) Thank you Lena! We are going to get goody bags and will be bringing an ornament to put up on their tree. Im looking forward to it, I will make sure that I have enough business cards this time!

Baseball Beauties News… Friday Blues…

{ December 5, 2008 @ 10:19 am } · { Baseball Beauties News }
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I just read that WordPress updated their look, but I didn’t expect it to look so different! I’m a bit overwhelmed and hope that I’ll be able to figure out how to use these new features….

Since writing a little bit on Tuesday, I have lots of exciting Baseball Beauties news to tell! :)

One very important thing that I learned this week was that “Less is MORE”. I’m talking about the overall design of the members pages of our website. They are going to be very simple and easy to use. I mean, look at Twitter! It’s as simple as they come and extremely popular and fun to use. And a BIG part of the reason for Twitter’s popularity is it’s “Less is MORE” design concept. I buy it!

I just received the Members wire-frames, all 20 of them! That is actually not that many considering. I wouldn’t be surprised if MySpace had about 500-1000 wire-frames for their members section, but as I said before, “Less is MORE” in our book.  Check out what a sample Baseball Beauties Member’s Page will look like bellow:

members-profile-visitor2

It’s tough to imagine what it’s REALLY going to look like, but this gives you a rough idea. Member’s picture is going to be round like a baseball and will be on the left hand side. Member’s favorite teams (you will be able to pick up to 3 of your favorite MLB teams to be displayed on your top page) will be bellow and that is where you will find your 9 top friends (inspired by the 9 innings of the baseball game!) Groups and photos will be bellow on the left hand side and all your comments will be on the right hand side right bellow your info.

A little different from Facebook and Myspace but a typical social network layout. Again, this is just a wire-frame and we will be adjusting it as we test it and go along with the rest of the site.

I will be adding more sample wire-frames along with some sample design layouts as we go along, until the LAUNCH in April 2009.

My partner in crime Amy and I attended the Webgrrls Networking Christmas Party this Wednesday night. We had such a great time! We met so many nice people and got lots of new ideas about new Marketing platforms. The food was yummy and we got some nice wine to along with it. I would defiantly recommend going, if you haven’t already! Networking is the BEST way to stay connected and meet people that can help you out with your business. They also had some giveaways, but of course we didn’t win anything :(   I never win anything and Amy said that she doesn’t either… Oh Well!

We collected a good amount of business cards and by the end of the night, I ran out of Business Cards! Oh NO! I will be more prepared next time. Speaking of business cards, I just ordered some for Amy (she is going to be a permanent member of our team, and needs some pretty business cards to give out) I always get complements on how cute our business cards are.

They look like one of our Logos with information bellow the www.baseballbeauties.com part. They come on real nice vintage looking paper :) Thank you Elena for designing them!

sticker-2

I think that a business card tell a lot about your business, it’s an old school way to stay connected. The morning after the party I went on Facebook and found most of the people who we met the night before and befriended them :) The WEB, what a wonderful way to stay connected!

On a final note, Nick started a Baseball Beauties Mens BLOG yesterday: http://baseballbeautiesmen.wordpress.com/

After exchanging several e-mails with his buddies, Nick decided that they have to change the name to GUYS from MEN, I guess that MEN sounds way too stiff…. I thought that it was perfect for the pin-up 40s-50s era, there were no GUYS back then, there were MEN!!! MEN!! MEN!! Highly mannered ones at that!

Never the less, check out the BLOG, it’s highly technical and too advanced for my knowledge of baseball, but MEN usually follow that technical stuff, while WOMEN love the game itself.

Smells like Monday!

{ December 1, 2008 @ 3:00 pm } · { Baseball Beauties News }
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As I said before, Mondays are really tough for me… I’m not exactly sure why that is, but I just can’t get things done! Wish things were easier on Mondays… (At least I got to mail all of my X-mas card out today, HUGE weight off my shoulders!)

Anyways, I have been really good today and have not even looked at any of my favorite shopping websites :) Cyber Monday is here and I don’t really care… Ha ha ha! My new philosophy is to try things on before buying them, and going shopping is good exercise, so for the next few months I’ll stick to the Mall, Nordstrom Rack and Loehmann’s (you can’t get better deals anywhere else!) And if I lived in NY, I would also visit Century 21. I’m all about bargain shopping, it’s just more fun :)

Enough with the shopping, and on to business!

I am almost done with my Business Carer Plan! YAY! That thing has taken a long while to finish and will be very valuable to look back on once Baseball Beauties is up and running. This Plan will allow me to see what’s working and what isn’t, and how I can improve our web-site’s performance. Once Baseball Beauties is up, I will be using Google Analytics to track all the trends like, where people are coming from, what links they’re clicking on, what pages they like the most and a bunch of other useful STATS!

Check out this really useful article about Google Analytics:

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/05/google-analytics-is-re-launched-do-these-five-things-first-in-v2.html

What would we do without Google? No one will even know…..

google

For my Final Project in my Search Engine Optimization class, I have to use Google Adwords and make 3 dummy ads for 3 different Baseball Beauties pages. There is a letter restriction, so it’s going to be tough to create a catchy ad using a handful of words, but this will be great practice, because who knows I may want to use these dummy ads in the near future. This SEO class has been very helpful and I have gotten A LOT out of it, I think that I will take it again next year (it’s only offered every other semester). Without properly optimizing your website you will not show up in any of the Major Search Engines, it’s a HOT trend right now and I think that more and more Colleges will be teaching SEO in the near future. If you have a website TAKE THE CLASS!

Along with all the web stuff that I have been doing, I am slowly but surely going through the Sales Dogs Sales training kit. The way this program works is, it first breaks you down into a specific dog bread. You take a test on their website to find out what kind of Sales Dog you are: http://www.salesdogs.com/pages/diags/breed/breed_diag_intro.html

Once you know your breed (or you can be more than one) you can read about your strengths and weaknesses as a Sales Person.  I’m about 75% of the way through the program and have learned so MUCH already! First of all I learned that I’m a Poodle :) LOL

poodle_toonHere are some Poodle Characteristics according to Sales Dogs:

On the more sophisticated side, there is the Poodle. They are highly intelligent albeit a bit highly-strung and very conscious of their presentation. These are the salespeople who tend to have the flash and the class. They wear the sharp suits, buffed out shoes or stiletto pumps, and like to drive cool cars. But they don’t consider clothes, cars and jewelry to be luxury items. They are simply tools of the Poodle trade.

The Poodle struts! While other dogs tramp, romp and roll through their territories, the Poodle prances head high, as it peruses the neighborhood. They know the latest trends and where all the sales opportunities are. If appearance and first impression are important, the Poodle is the prize pooch. They are incredibly well connected and probably have the most extensive and exclusive network of any of the breeds. They know who’s who and they want you to know it!

Because of the Poodles’ trainability and natural desire to be the center of attention they have been a favorite performer for centuries. And the Poodle SalesDog® is no different. Most dogs bark and whine, but the Poodle’s comments can be guaranteed to spark of wit, wisdom and even dry humor. They love to speak in front of groups and be the center of attention, indeed a Poodle’s sales pitch is delivered with such style and panache that even the ones without a shred of logic sound visionary!

This breed of SalesDog® is constantly looking for ways to reach the most people in the simplest way. They are the Ultimate Marketing Dog! Their abilities to market and to articulate a message can make Poodles large sums of money.

Poodles are great for selling big-ticket items when they can use their regal bearing to impress clients. Just don’t ask them to rescue a fallen duck in the swamp, jump into a cold stream or be caught dead in a dark alley in an unsavory part of town! They will be socializing in more civilized circles, besides their Tag Heuer watches might get dirty.

Poodles beware! Your strengths can also be your weakness. If, as a Poodle you can learn to thoroughly understand your breed, play to your obvious and impressive talents and curb your weaknesses you can make a fortune.

I thought that this description fit me perfectly and now I know what my strengths and weaknesses are! How AWESOME is that! Well… The tough part is working on my weaknesses, a major one for me is taking things personally….:(

Ill start talking about Sales Dogs more from now on, because it is a BIG part of my Marketing Plan for Baseball Beauties. I am also working on putting together a sample presentation for our “Services” product, and that’s a whole new story on it’s own!

So MUCH to DO and SO little time!