Meet Elise – October Baseball Beauty
Baseball Season here we come!!!
I had to bring the BLOG back to WordPress for the moment, because we’re having some major technical difficulties @ the MLBlogs š¦
I am going to keep this BLOG going too & am working on improving the look & adding some links. This will be more behind the scenes and personal stuff in the future.
For the past month and a half I have been working with our developers to get an āAlphaā version of the site up. And I finally succeeded because itās up!!! Yes, thatās right! If you got to www.baseballbeauties.com you will get the essence of what Baseball Beauties will be all about. No more nonsense & broken links. Donāt worry, you will be able to click around and āJoinā once the site launches at the end of April, for now just check it out and let me know what you think? I want feedback, negative or positive all is welcome! We want to make the site the best it can be for you, the āUserā so donāt hesitate to comment or write directly to:Ā baseballbeauties@gmail.com
Now that the site is looking much better, I planned and had a Photo shoot, which took place last Friday, March 27th
Not to give too much away, our featured Baseball Beauties name is Sarah, and she loves baseball =) She personalizes her baseball gears when she goes to games! We welcome Sarah to our team and Iām looking forward to working with her.Ā For the shoot we did a āSpring Themeā, so we used lots of bright spring dresses!
I just love spring! Followers are blooming, birds are singing, days are longer and the Baseball Season is starting what can be better than that =)
I will post a separate BLOG with all the Photo Shoot Detail next week =) & a sneak peak into the finished pictures!
We are working with 2 wonderful Vintage stores in Berkley: Dolled Up Vintage & Twisters Vintage, they share a website: http://www.twistersvintage.com/ these stores have such a generous selection of Vintage clothes, itās like a dream come true. They have a HUGE warehouse full of Vintage stuff ranging from the 1930 all the way up to the 80s! We are very lucky to have found them, and will be using their clothing for all of our shoots from now on. They are going to be at the Vintage Fashion Expo in San Francisco this weekend: http://www.vintageexpo.com/ anyone who has any fashion sense or interest should go and check out all the wonderful pieces, itās like having history unfolded in front of you from the past 100 years!Ā Baseball Beauties will be there =)
Another cool thing that happened to me, I won tickets to: http://www.web2expo.com/webexsf2009 Web 2.0 Expo going on in San Francisco March 31st āApril 3rd!
This was a HUGE surprise to me because I never win anything!Ā I get to go to all the 5 conferences and will guest star on the http://www.webgrrls.com/ BLOG and talk about my favorite one.Ā Thank you Webgrrls for giving me an opportunity to go! I will take great Video and Notes and promise to take as much out of this experience as I can =) I will be Blogging about this event on here too, so stay tuned!
I have been spending some time on Twitter and if you arenāt following me on there yet, you can find me http://twitter.com/annaanisin or @annaanisin I do Tweet updates on Baseball Beauties, so if you havenāt joined Twitter I suggest that you do, you can learn some great facts and meet some very knowledgeable individuals! And our Fan Page on Facebook has a new look: http://www.facebook.com/pages/wwwbaseballbeautiescom/123125730393?sid=ce7ae13037f2b1a7e753c4116fbf4a29&ref=s make sure to check it out and āJoinā if you havenāt already!
On to some Baseball!
I was very lucky to go to Spring Training this year =) Baseball Beauties are based in California, so I went to AZ (Cactus League) Even though I was there for 1 full day, I had an awesome time and came to a realization that Baseball Season is just around the corner! That means that Baseball Beauties is going to launch in less than a month!
I went to the Aās vs. LA Dodgers game on Monday, March 16th. We had great seats in the shade and I was enjoying a cold beer =) and eating a pretzel (my favorite ball park snack) At first the Aās were down and then by the 4th inning they picked back up and won by 2 points ending the game with 12 to 10 As! At the 7th inning stretch I went to the Aās store and bought a cool St Patrickās Aās tank top. Itās really neat that the Aās colors go so well with that Holiday!
It was really nice to get away and enjoy the 85F AZ weather! Baseball was in the air, people were wearing all sorts of baseball gear, representing their teams =) I downloaded the MLB app to my I-Phone and have been following Spring Training on there. Almost forgot to say! Weāre working on a Baseball Beauties I-Phone application, so look for that in the next few months.
Now that the season is just around the corner Blogging will be a lot easier =)
Here is a little bit from my partner in crime Amy!
I agree with Anna it has been way too long since we updated our blog, and there is so much to talk about. Ā Being Anna’s “partner in crime” I was very very jealous that she was able to attend spring training in AZ while I sat at home in California…. I can only hope that next year that baseball beauties will be there in force.. ( with me very much included :))
So on to baseball, I knew that there wouldn’t be not much shortage of stuff to write about with spring training beginning and before that the trades that had been taking place, most notably, and ending with Manny’s circus act with the Dodgers….
But I just didn’t and can’t believe that A-rod would still be grabbing headlines after the Madonna debacle earlier this year….You think that the guy may have decided to lay low and maybe actually just focus on baseball, and not put himself on the covers of magazines that have nothing to do with sports.
But, I guess that was too much to ask for as he graces the cover of Details Magazine for the month of April…. One photo in particular inside
has A-rod practically kissing himself in the mirror., though I have to admit as a girl never thought A-Rod was one of the elite baseball players in terms of hotness factor, but his arms do look very very good.Ā Anyways, I will let you judge for yourself on the pics.
Now we count down to the opening day!
I’m moving my BLOG!!!
Just a quick not to everyone that has been reading and following my BLOG! Thank you for your support!
I will be moving to: http://baseballbeauties.mlblogs.com/ this way, we can get some recognition in the MLB community!
Amy and I will both be contributing to the BLOG content, she will be writing about the sport itself and I will continue to update you with the site progress.
Stay tuned!
Baseball Beauties, it was just an idea!
Now that I have a small following I thought that I will write about how I came up with Baseball Beauties. Like anything in life there were a few phases and lots of changes involved before Baseball Beauties evolved in to what it is today, and it will continue to evolve as all ideas do.
Last March I was working as an Executive Assistant at a small Investment Banking Firm and wasn’t too thrilled with my job or where it was going. I’m the kind of person who needs to be busy, creative, motivated and moving at all times, so a simple desk job is not for me (even if it involves having my own office) I need to be out and about, meet new people, etc… You get the point! Seeing how unhappy I was at my job my boyfriend decided to created a job for me. Being a BIG baseball fan he decided to take a risk and buy in to a bunch of MLBĀ tickets. His idea was that I can resell them and at the end we can make a profit. This way I will be busy selling, he will have access to all these games and I can learn a bit more about the game. We also thought that we may start offering people packages of some sort to go with their tickets.
At the beginning of the season I was OVERWHELMED! I had SO MANY tickets to sell every day, and it took a little while for me to come up with an efficient system where I could get rid of them quickly. I listed some on StubHub and the ones that didn’t sell on there, I sold on Craig’s List (in the city where those games took place) the tricky thing about that was, you can’t trust people which you meet on-line; in return I got stiffed out of payment a bunch of times and people didn’t trust me, lots of tickets did not sell… However after about the first 2 months I got a system down, and the tickets were selling easier and I gained some loyal customers in each city where we had tickets.
Last Year we had tickets to: Yankees, NY Mets, Seattle Mariners, Anaheim Angels, Minnesota Twins, Cleveland Indians, Detroit Tigers and Oakland A’s! (if you look at all the games that these teams had every day, it’s a lot! Sometimes I have 20 tickets to sell in one day!)
This year we cut it down and have: Premium & Regular Yankees tickets, Mets, Angels, Twins (looking forward to their new stadium in 2010) and Diamond Oakland A’s seats (anyone looking for any of those teams let me know, we have great tickets!)
I’m looking forward to the Pre-Season Cubs vs. Yankees games! This doesn’t happened often and will take place in the new Yankee stadium!
Mariners, Tigers and Indians weren’t good sellers last year and are also really easy tickets to come by, so we decided to cut them this year.
Going back to Baseball Beauties. At first we thought that we are going to start another only ticket website, but with big dog competitors like StubHub, we didn’t think we had a chance of success. I was already thinking of idea for my own website and having the baseball theme made me thinkĀ of Baseball Cheerleaders (Baseball is one of the only sports that doesn’t have cheerleaders!) So I thought that we can make a website for baseball cheerleaders, or something along those lines. After doing some research I found out that there really isn’t anything out there for women who love baseball. There are TONS of BLOGS but no specialized networks. I always enjoyed 50’sĀ pin-up photography and thought that we can incorporate that into this website. I had so many ideas floating around in my head, now I had to put them together!
But before having a solid idea of what this website is going to do or be like I had to come up with a name. The name had to have Baseball in it and it took me a few days to come up with Beauties (sounds old school, and goes with my pin-up Babe Ruth theme) There it was! BASEBALL BEAUTIES was born!
This was my first idea for our logo. My friend Elena helped me bring it to life! Once I had the name down and a company logo, I started figuring out what thing website was going to be like. At first we thought that we were going to incorporate MLB ticket sales into Baseball Beauties somehow. We are still thinking about doing this down the road. We are on a budget and a solid ticket application was an additional 10K (so we’re holding off on that for now)
Initially, i wanted Baseball Beauties to be an educational website for women, where they can learn about baseball, and subscribe to our BLOG & I thought that we would pick women to be featured Beauties, who cheer for their favorite MLB teams.
I found a photographer and immediately started shooting pinup style pictures. While selling tickets, I ended up talking to lots of baseball fans and sharing my idea. It seemed to me that Baseball Fans needed a Network, a Social Network where they can meet other fans and well… simply talk about baseball. I know that we have MySpace and Facebook and hundreds of other Social Networks out there, but nothing for baseball fans. Baseball Beauties is a niche network targetingĀ people ONLY interested in Baseball. As I was deeply invested into the Baseball Season, I began to become fond of the game itself. A friend of our gave me an excellent book to read:
It is such a great read for anyone who wants to learn more about baseball. I ended up reading it twice (and will be reading it once again, before the season starts!) and I got copies for a bunch of my friends and even my Russian grandmother, who does not know anything about baseball. It Takes More Than Balls got me excited about baseball and I started working on more concepts for Baseball Beauties. I added a HIS/HERS BLOG, BASEBALL NEWS, Ball park food recommendations (you can rank your foods too) and most of all GROUPS (members will be able to created tons of groups and talk about whatever they like!) There is A LOT MORE ideas that I incorporated into the site, but you’ll just have to wait and see them when Baseball Beauties Launch in April!
It’s funny how something like MLB tickets can turn into something so different and BIG!
Happy New Year! Fresh new start….
So it’s been a while…. I know! I was supposed to BLOG at least once a week, however i god discouraged because I couldn’t figure out how to update my blog theme… I even went as far as learning some basic HTML! No luck š¦
But…. I am going to get help in the next week or two, so look for a new fancy “Theme” it will look more like a website then a BLOG š
Doing to my long absence from Blogging I have SO MUCH to write about and catch up on, it’s crazy!
We’re looking forward to the MLB Winter Meetings, which is a MLB even that takes place once a year in December. This year they’re going to take place in Indianapolis (too bad that we didn’t go this year, they were in Vegas!) I will writeĀ more about them once we get a little closer to the event!
Amy has been in close contact with Urban Vixen Clothing. UrbanVixen is a clothing line for females, geared to the board sports industry and female athletes! (that’s a good sales pitch) Not surprising that they were interested in Baseball Beauties and in the future we might just partner up with them and make cute Baseball clothes! Who knows what we decide to do. Once the website is up and running we’ll be able to tell what our focus points will be, and if a store is even worth having.
Another exciting event that we’re looking forward to is the HCP Show in Vegas this show is going on March 6-9 (right before Spring Training) Basically this is a HUGE costume party. People get together, wear costumes and have parties! And there is no better place for a party this big then Vegas! I hope that Amy and I will get to go (I’m having trouble gathering all the paper work that they require for their attendees, it’s not easy to get into one of these events, they’re pretty darn picky and exclusive…) If you’re wondering how we would benefit from attending an event of this caliber, well………. The plan is to sell “Baseball” themed costumes on the website. So we’re hoping to meet some costume whole sellers and manufacturers who can give us a good deal on their product. Plus, I’m sure that we’ll see every single “Baseball” costume available at this thing and we’ll be able to chose and pick the ones that are appropriate for our store. We will have lots of footage and pictures from this event, so stay tuned!
Baseball Beauties are based in California, so we usually attend the Spring Training that takes place inĀ AZ. This is the official home of the Cactus League. And the Grapefruit League’s Spring Training takes place in Florida. You can read more about the teams and who fits under what league by clicking the link bellow. I also found a good summary of the Spring Training history which you can read bellow as well.
Spring Training History
There is nothing as magical as spring training for a northern baseball fan: that sudden rush of warm air when departing from the three-hour airplane ride, the realization for the carbound that the snowline is firmly in the rear-view mirror and the outside temperature is fast approaching short-sleeve territory.
Spring training is almost as old as baseball itself. The best evidence points to spring training first taking place in 1870, when the Cincinnati Red Stockings and the Chicago White Stockings held organized baseball camps in New Orleans. Other baseball historians argue that the Washington Capitals of the National League pioneered spring training in 1888, holding a four-day camp in Jacksonville.
The specific origins really don’t matter. By 1900, spring-training was firmly established as a baseball ritual, with most American and National League teams heading out of town so players could train and managers could evaluate. Small Florida and Arizona communities were suddenly known across the nation because of the allure provided by major-league baseball. St. Petersburg. Fort Lauderdale. Tucson. Sarasota. Bradenton.
The history of spring training can be broken into three distinct eras:
Many former spring training sites are still around:
- Spring-training sites of the past: Tinker Field
- Spring-training sites of the past: Baseball City
- Spring-training sites of the past: Francisco Casa Grande
Last year was my first time at Spring Training and I had a great time. The stadiums are smaller and the vibe is a lot more laid back at the games. Lots of baseball players sort of blend in with the crowds and you can see them walking around town, eating in restaurants and playing golf. The weather is usually really nice and it feels like Spring š it’s not too hot (AZ is literally in the desert) and not too cold. I really hope that this year Amy can join me and we can promote Baseball Beauties together. This is the best place to do it and with the website Launch being just around the corner, it will be VERY EXCITING! We will take lots of pictures, interview plenty of Baseball groupies, record a bunch of video and post in up daily. And once the site is up Spring Training will be a big part of our off-season preparations for the Baseball Season!
Networking & Happy Holidays!
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.
She 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 š
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!
It’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!Ā Im looking forward to seeing it and posting it on here for you to see!
Only 2 days left before Christmas!
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
I was very sad when I heard that the Queen of Pin-up passed away š¦ Arguably Betty Page laid the foundation of the sexual era in America.
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?
Yes, she had a shoes fetish š 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 š
I even bout a Flip MinoHD Camcorder to use for taping and just taking it with us when we go to different events.
It’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)
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 š
This week I finally joined Webgrrls, I payed their $150 yearly fee and got a membership card. I’m looking forward to going to all of their Networking events! Nelly, who runs their NYC chapter is such a sweet person, she posted some pictures up on Facebook and tagged me in some of them. I also thought that it was cool that they chose to use my quote on their even page on top: http://www.webgrrls.com/sanfrancisco-ca/articles/2008-12-03_287.php
It says that I’m the “Founder” of Baseball Beauties, which I thought was kinda coolĀ š I am indeed the founder, seeing it in print sort of puts a stamp on it and makes it OFFICIAL.
This week I also attended the FIDM Alumni event with Elena. That was fun! I met a real nice lady named Hanzel, who does social networking consulting and is also a big part of http://www.ladieswholaunch.com/ This is a great website for women with businesses. So I am going to look into it further this coming week.
FIDM Alumni did a great job putting this event together. They served all ORGANIC food (which was Yummy) donated 2$ 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….
I always find myself procrastinating on Mondays… Even to start writing my BLOG! And I love blogging š
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)
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 š I think that I’m almost ready to share!
This week I am going to finish the Business Carer Plan that I have been dreadingĀ 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 š 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 š
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 š 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…
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! š
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.Ā Check out what a sample Baseball Beauties Member’s Page will look like bellow:
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 š¦Ā 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 http://www.baseballbeauties.com part. They come on real nice vintage looking paper š Thank you Elena for designing them!
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 š 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!
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 š 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 š
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:
What would we do without Google? No one will even know…..
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.Ā 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 š LOL
Here 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 SalesDogĀ® 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 SalesDogĀ® 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!
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