The cZone is a presentation and video created by Ruth Ann Barrett, July 20, 2014 to motivate the community to bring essential services into our neighborhood, Old Town/Chinatown, and particularly the New Chinatown Japantown Historical District.  The cZone is defined by three major buildings one adjacent to the district and two in the district.  The cZone gets its name from the initial focus of bringing a Chinese style produce market to the zone.  There is not a fresh carrot to buy. The "c" stands for carrot.



The principle is simple.

Ruth Ann Barrett, Sustainability Advocate, Portland, Oregon, 415-377-1835



The cZone by Ruth Ann Barrett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Based on a work at http://prezi.com/bng5ir7e6xuu/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share.

Catching Up

Apologies to all for not keeping up with this blog, The Whole Brand. Have been putting much of the ideas into practice and have found a couple of areas I want to update. One concerns using video to get top search rankings on YouTube which is the second most popular search engine and what happens here eventually begins to have an effect on your Google search results as well.

There are two case studies that will demonstrate what I am talking about. They are available from new coalition called SAM, Sustainable Action Media. SAM is a coalition of EarthSayers.tv, sustainabletv.org and Sustainable Today, a cable news show. Visit the site and download the case studies about the Green Meeting Industry Council (GMIC) and Sustainability and Costa Rica.

The second is about leveraging your participation at meetings and events to getting video coverage for your Website and, later, for a YouTube channel if you are someone who gives considerable presentations, speeches and or lectures. You will see in the two case studies examples of us using meetings for post meeting education. SAM can help with this too.

It's All About You

Twitter may be the most misunderstood tool in the social media toolbox. It clearly relies on a practice that relates to all of social media and is so hard to understand, especially by small business owners/partners. So here it is: be a person first and a company second.

One of the more successful groups to benefit from Twitter are mothers and the companies that market to them. It was @ameladramaticmommy who tweeted about being a person first and then offered @comcastcares or @babycenterPR as examples of "how a company representative can support a brand and allow their personality to shine through."

I can't add much to that except to continue to work with the owners of sustainability-oriented companies to convince them of how Twitter can be an effective educational channel to help move people through the buying or, if it is a cause, the learning cycle. The early adopters of Web 2.0 tools and techniques coupled with social media gives them a competitive advantage even in tough times like these.

What's in a Name?

The Whole Brand is a program of RED Direct, LLC. We have changed our name to Red Digital Marketing (RDM) as of April 9, 2009. Find us at www.reddigitalmarketing.com. We also added a slide presentation (Your Resume on Google) about the first level of The Whole Brand, the individual. Check it out: see top right column. Trust it is helpful.

Good News

“The good news is that those companies who are making an effort to build customer loyalty through exceptional customer service are finding themselves at least partially insulated against this economic backlash. In tough times, people like to deal with companies that genuinely care about them.We are more careful with what we spend and who we spend it with.Companies who have been mistreating, ignoring,or otherwise abusing their customers will suffer the most.” S. Belding.

Six Ways to Manage Your Reputation Online

In the presentation on the Whole Brand I point out some basic ways to track what is going on with your brand on the Web. Basic is Google Alerts and in an October 14th article by Dan Schawbel at MarketingProfs he covers Google Alerts and five other excellent resources to include (1) blog posts at Technorati, (2) blog comments at backtype.com, (4) discussion boards at boardtracker.com, and (5) twitter at search.twitter.com. Google alerts makes six.

What's an RSS Feed All About, Alfie?

If you have questions on how to add a subscribe or RSS feed to your blog, especially on Google's blogger, this whitepaper entitled "RSS Feeds" is a step-by-step description. If you want to have a better idea of how YOU can bring RSS feeds to your desktop and manage them, this is a simple, clear discussion of how to do just that. Download a copy. When you get to the file there is an arrow you need to click to the right of the title, "RSS Feeds."