First of all, Happy New Year to you all Hope 2012 is just as you have imagined it to be and then some! Now it’s back to business..

A while back I told a good friend of mine selling career and business related products and services that December will be an awesome month for him. He’d sell more, a lot more than in the previous months. He did not believe me, not entirely. He then told me December had been an amazingly pleasant surprise.

The truth is I drew a very obvious conclusion. Whenever a year ends and a new one starts, we start reviewing our lives and somehow see the negatives, then decide to do something about it. We start working on our resumes in December, we start planning, in our head or on paper, we buy products and services to help us achieve our goals, from business to weight loss and so on.

I suspect the seasonal extended family reunions play a decisive part, that’s why most of our planning effort happens between Christmas and New Year’s Eve! We go to face our loved ones who somehow are our biggest critics as well, tell them about our lives and have them point out where we went wrong. Or they don’t, but they start talking about their accomplishments and all we have to do is compare notes and figure where we need to improve.  Continue reading

Popularity: 2% [?]

2009 has definitely been a wonderful year. Twists and turns, drama and excitement, all for the better in the end. After a thorough review of what has happened in the past year and with a little inspiration from Chris Brogan, I’ve moved on to putting my 2010 wish list on paper. Virtual paper that is!

So after a lot of thinking, prioritizing and plotting (yes, I love the added evil touch), here is what I’ve come up with, in a more or less particular order.

1. I wish to help more companies in the IT filed to better communicate with customers, partners, the media and their employees and show these different audiences how their products and services manage to solve real issues and make their business or personal lives a little better.
2. I also wish to gain more customers from the tourism and travel sector. I have started with a hotel in 2009, but I want to expand my portfolio and work with other companies, be it hotels, online booking sites or travel agencies. I know my mixed knowledge of PR & Marketing and the travel industry (I’ve studied it for about 3 years) is perfect to help them attract more local or international customers.
3. For my PR blog, Words of a Broken Mirror, I wish to write more posts helping my readers with their PR and Marketing activities. More readers and subscribers would also be great I also wish to extend my article writing on my PR and Marketing agency’s website. I also wish to guest post more, so that I’m able to reach and help other audiences with my content.
4. I wish to help companies integrate social media tools into their overall PR and Marketing strategies. I really, really hope I’ll be able to and see at least a few companies switching from misuses to effective campaigns targeting online communities. As part of this effort, I plan to help them realize it’s not only new tools they are adapting to, but also a new way of doing their marketing. Although we kept talking about conversation, dialogues, engaging the customers, a lot of businesses are still perfectly happy with just broadcasting on new channels.
5. I wish to adopt a Romanian NGO, preferably one dealing with children/women/animals rights. I always complain I don’t do enough to make things a little better and doing what I’m good at for free seems like the best possible investment of my time. But this I plan to write more on in Romanian, on the PRwave Blog.
6. I’d like to participate, as a speaker, in more PR, Marketing and Social Media dedicated events. I feel I have a quite relevant experience worth sharing with other professionals in both my field and other industries. I’ve started doing this in late 2009, together with Loredana Pascal and it turned out pretty great!
7. I wish to turn my Travel Spells blog into a fun and profitable project. I have a few plans for it and I am sure I can make them work. Up to now it has made me about 25 euros so there definitely are a few possibilities.
8. I also want to work with my partners and turn the online magazine for women, Cenusa de trandafir, into a profitable one. It’s been 4 months since we’ve launched it, we have a great community supporting it, all the stats look good, so let the money pour in in 2010
9. I wish to be a published author by the end of the year. That’s the worst case scenario plan. The optimist view is that my vampire story will be published on my birthday, April 3rd. Either way, I’ll be extremely happy to see people reading and enjoying it.

These are the big things I plan to focus on in 2010 in what my business life is concerned. I hope I get to accomplish most of them and make new ones for the future.

Is your business wish list for 2010 ready? If it isn’t, hurry up, you’ve got a few hours left to put it all on paper

Popularity: 1% [?]

Among 2010 predictions, plans and strategies, I ran across a very interesting and explicit definition of what marketing is, what it does and what a marketing team is expected to do. It belongs to Linda Smith, one of the authors of Women on Business. I just loved her idea of explaining what her plans and predictions are all about. It helps put things into perspective, reconnect with your thoughts and values and only then act.

Her take on marketing will shortly follow. After reading it, please make sure you read her post to find out what she thinks 2010 will bring in this line of business.

Marketing is telling everyone, everywhere:

• what your business is, where it is, how to find it
• what your product/service is, what it can do for the consumer, why they need it, why they want it
• how your business differs from others that are similar – what your uniqueness’s are, what makes your business so very special
• why the consumer should/ought to exchange their precious dollars and cents for your product/service

Marketing is telling everyone, everywhere in every way that people can and do receive information:

• newspapers, magazines and direct mailers – the hard copy kind, the newsprint ink that smears on your fingers and the flyers, brochures and sales letters that come in the snail mail; AND the online versions: newspapers online, magazines online and email ads that come both solicited and unsolicited
• television ads, radio ads – both via traditional tv and radio vehicles and online versions
• internet banner ads, classified ad sites, display ad boxes on social media sites
• social media relationship building
• weblogs and forums and other self-publishing arenas where messages about anything and everything under the sun, moon and stars can be shared

A business’ marketing department is usually tasked with:

• designing the message
• crafting the message delivery system
• delivering the message
• measuring the results of both the message and the delivery system

Popularity: 1% [?]

2009 has been a year of many changes. It’s been a year of accomplishments and joy, as well as the year when a lot didn’t go according to plan, in both personal and business life. I would have wanted to skip the 2009 review and go straight to my 2010 plans. But that would have meant skipping some important steps of the process and make it less effective. So what happened in 2009?

On Words of a Broken Mirror, it’s been a year full of significant posts and essential lessons. I didn’t exactly meet my own plans of posting frequency, but I am extremely pleased with the quality of everything published here, as well as that of the guest posts I have written for other blogs.

2009 was also the year when I went from part time to full time business owner. Mirror Communications kept growing, I continued to work with IT companies and tackled other fields as well. I switched from spending part of my day in a client’s office to working fully on my own. This of course came with some organization and time management issues. It’s still fairly new but I’m getting better at it every day. Continue reading

Popularity: 1% [?]

There are two periods every year when I stop to analyze what has happened and figure out what I want to do next: the end of a year and beginning of a new one and my birthday. My birthday plays a more important role when it comes to personal resolutions, the new year comes with other tipes of goal settings and plans.

This year I want to state what I want to achieve in 2009, so that this post can act as a reminder, a resource to analyze 2009 when 2010 is close and as a way for me to have a clearer view of what I actually plan to do with my personal and professional life. Continue reading

Popularity: 10% [?]