this woman’s work

Hurricane Ike knocked out Columbus. Like many of my neighbors, we’re without power and have been since Sunday when gale-force winds (gusting up to 65 mph) came through and threw down trees and powerlines. We sat on the front porch and watched the trees in the field behind the houses across the street whip up then slow as the trees closer in whipped up and slowed until finally our own trees were whipped into the wild frenzy. We watched it over and over and Madison, caught up in the energy of the storm, danced and sang and spun.

I’m at my mom’s trying to catch up on work on her computer. She doesn’t have wifi so my laptop (with all my needed passwords) is useless. I’m trying not to panic about all I have to do and can’t do. I’m trying (and not succeeding) in being zen. I mean, there’s not much I can do about it right?

Even though I’m frustrated, I’m grateful, too. Grateful that the weather is cool and sunny. That our water is clean. That reports say we’ll have power back by midnight Sunday at the latest. That my mom has power, a full ‘fridge and an open door policy for her kids. We’re luckier than most people in Ike’s (or Gustav’s) path and don’t I know it!! (Pennie hasn’t heard from her mom yet — she got her own power back last night.)

The kids think it’s a madcap adventure with M&Ms (Grandma has a full bubblegum machine and a tin of pennies at the ready) and unlimited wii. They’ll remember it fondly just like they remember the blizzard that took our electricity and sent us to spend Madison’s first Christmas at Brett’s parents and the way Noah remembers the ice storm a couple years back because we toasted marshmallows in the fireplace.

And the work, lord knows, will still be there when the power comes back. A week late maybe but folks understand especially the folks here in central Ohio with me.

Life happens. What can you do?

You may not know this but Columbus is a major blogging city. It’s true — according to Scarborough Research, we’re number eight on the list (a list topped by not-surprising entrants like Austin, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle) sharing with those cities a tech-friendly environment and lots of internet access. Likely we skew higher, too, because OSU is the largest university in the country, which means we have lots of young adults with the blogging and the twittering and the myspace-ing around here.

The local marketing world has been paying attention (as have I, note: Open Book Strategies) and the other night the good folks at Experience Columbus invited the central Ohio blogosphere to check out their new ad campaign.

Now just like you probably didn’t know that Columbus is so bloggy, there’s probably a whole lot of other stuff you don’t know about us like we’re artsy as hell and incredibly gay-friendly (I’ve been told we’re the San Fransisco of the midwest) and pretty darn diverse. We’re a nice city (minus the humidity) — affordable, great housing, low traffic — and lately lots of different powerful folks have been wrestling around trying to figure out how to make sure you all know that. I’ve been in on a number of different talks about it lately and everyone has their own take. It’ll be very interesting to see where we are in ten years.

(Mind you, I’ve lived here for 25 years (moved here when I was eight, five years in Portland, OR — a city that really knows how to work their brand) and I’ve heard this noise before. I think sometimes the newcomers with the unbridled enthusiasm about our fair city don’t know the fatigue of living through the AmeriFlora debacle or being the subject of a critical documentary on gentrification. Sometimes the recently relocated aren’t so patient with us but they gotta appreciate our caution.)

There is much to love here but sometimes it seems like the powers that be are the last to know it. No wonder Columbus Ohio ends up being an insider joke on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. (One of the writers hailing from Columbus brings his folks in for a tour. When they meet D. L. Hughley the mother stumbles, “We love Sidney Poitier.” Because we don’t have black people in Columbus. Right.)

So the Experience Columbus planners have their work cut out for them. How to get past our mundane, farm-centric, cowpoke reputation? Especially when what’s unique about us somehow doesn’t seem bold enough to grab attention? (We do have some great attention-grabbing stuff though, most notably the Short North, one of our few attractions that isn’t beholden to a big corporation. And we’re also well known in the gay community as a terrific city having been touted in gay magazines since at least the early eighties.)

Their answer was to start a campaign about what we don’t have. Like we don’t have the Eiffel Tower or mermaids or mountains. There’s a really terrible youtube channel — the vidoes will evoke snickers in those of us who live in Columbus and get the joke but aren’t funny enough to forward (and also don’t tell us what is here, which is the flip side the campaign needs to emphasize). And a myspace, which weirdly is run by an imaginary 22-year old male although the target audience of this campaign is ostensibly conference planners. Ok, maybe it’s a real 22-year old intern. Happily the campaign does boast some pretty awesome t-shirts.

So I’m not crazy about the campaign although I think it could grow legs with a little tweaking (I do love the t-shirts — full disclosure, they gave us coupons to get one free) only I’m confused about why they brought the bloggers along.

It makes sense for them to get us to blog the campaign because it’ll likely be controversial to the folks who love Columbus and are already pretty dang defensive what with the Aaron Sorkin types who dismiss us. Maybe those people won’t get the joke so good thing to bring on the bloggers, ply us with the goodness that is Jeni’s ice cream (seriously, that salty caramel? If you haven’t had it, you haven’t lived) and then set us loose in a sugar-infused haze to blog it.

But then what? The campaign doesn’t have a lot of social media around it. They haven’t really come up with many ways to let people grab it and run. Jennifer Laycock has given ‘em a ton of free ideas that could help things along a lot but there we all were, sitting with our twitter accounts and blogs and they didn’t really figure out a good way to use us.

We’re talking about the campaign but we’re not really a part of it. If they grab Jennifer Laycock’s list, they could bring us on board a little more. There’s a lot of central Ohio pride among Columbus bloggers and some of us walk around with our cameras around our necks all the time (Kristen!) and our iPods ready to twitter (umm, me) and a bunch of us have tons of readers NOT in Columbus. You know, that target market of people not here who maybe want to come here. People like Kristen (just check out her gorgeous ComFest pictures), who genuinely love and celebrate Columbus can do a lot to change people’s mindset about it. Rather than invite her to a campaign about NOT in Columbus, I’d invite her to one to give her insider view about what IS Columbus. And then ask her to share.

In short (ha!) lots of bloggers already are changing people’s point of view about what’s here — use us for good instead of snark.

This is what I’ve been working on for the past couple of weeks: Open Book Strategies

You can see I’m changing out my links to Smart Cookie Communications because we’re really going to focus on marketing this other business instead. Here’s how it came about:

• There are a lot of marketing communication professionals here in Central Ohio and I’ve been having a hard time figuring out how to market myself so I’d stand out.
• Even though I was reluctant to see this, what differentiates me from my marketing communications competition is my web 2.0 experience: I’ve managed email lists, enormous forums, and of course all the blogging I do. I understand virtual relationships and I know that web 2.0 content isn’t just regular old content with hyperlinks thrown in; I know it’s about relationships. So that’s what I ended up talking about with folks.
• Every time I said the word “blog” ears pricked up and that’s where people had questions. I did a lot of consulting on the side but kept brushing off requests to do more of it thinking I needed to focus on the writing.
• And yet the blog jobs kept coming.
• Finally one of my mentors said, “Take the leap!” She advised me to come up with blog service packages to make it easier for people to understand my services.
• So here we are.

My ideal client is a small to medium local business owner who’s a little nervous about web 2.0 and blogs. I like to work closely with people and I don’t mind doing a lot of hand holding. I’m pretty darn patient with people who have a lot of questions. (Ask Kristen!) And I understand narrative so I can help people find their most compelling bloggable stories. (This was my favorite part about this project — listening to them talk, asking lots of questions, and identifying blog entries in what they shared.)

Anyway! That’s what we’re doing and now the writing is on the side instead of the blog consulting.