Self employed workers have their hands full juggling multiple roles every day, so keeping a professional appearance can be challenging at times. Freelancers and so-called “one man bands” already struggle when it comes to competing with large corporations. It is hard to answer the phones, take out the trash and still create awesome presentations and competitive proposals. To win contracts and jobs from corporations that are accustomed to dealing with other large companies, solo workers need all the help they can get. Here are 8 subtle ways to make yourself look more professional when selling yourself and your business to corporate customers.

1. Take the initiative by shaking hands first: By seizing the opportunity you exude confidence and the energy that only big players have.

2. Dress for the seasons: You may be working on your own and operating on a shoestring, but you can look professional by showing an awareness of appropriate attire. Keep your accessories to appropriate levels and wear appropriate colors. By showing that you have fashion sense you will silently communicate that you have the class and sophistication to compete with the big players in your field.

3. Create brand definition: As a freelancer or contractor you need to learn from your corporate competitors: let your brand drive everything you do. Create a succinct mission statement; keep your fonts and images consistent in everything from your correspondence to your website. Develop your brand this way and you will shed the “Mom and Pop” look and level the playing field in a dramatic way.

4. Get the fax: The online age has left many small players with IP and mobile phones that make it difficult to use with fax machines. Your corporate competitors have expensive phone systems that keep them sending and receiving faxes at will. Don’t be caught having your faxes sent to or from the local office store: subscribe to an online fax service that gives you a toll free fax number that you can use to receive faxes. These services also allow you to upload files to be faxed, so you can avoid the embarrassment of being unable to use fax services.

5. Alternative PDFs: Many freelancers lack the resources to purchase luxuries such as Adobe PDF software. Don’t let that stop you from sending professional grade PDF documents. Free alternatives such as PrimoPDF let you compile everything from invoices to proposals just like your larger competitors do.

6. Video conferencing: A subtle way to make yourself look more professional is doing business by video. Large corporations have cut back on travel to save money and to be environmentally conscious: you can do the same even if you’re low on cash. Dimdim offers a great free service that allows you to set up meetings with up to twenty people using a browser-based application. Show that you have a green company too.

7. Get your brand online: Small players like you can really look bad if a potential customer searches for you online and you cannot be found. Get to work on your online brand. Hire a professional to build your site. Create a blog that supports your niche and get on LinkedIn and other social sites. Let yourself shine online where you can look as professional as you like without much expense.

8. Chit chat: Those who spend most of their time working alone may start slipping in their social skills. Make it a point to develop or maintain the ability to strike up conversations with strangers so you can use small talk to your advantage at your next presentation. Develop an awareness of what potential clients want you to say and do not disappoint them. Focus attention on them: most people love talking about themselves.

These 8 subtle ways to make yourself look more professional only touch the tip of the iceberg. Literally, there are hundreds of small things you can do to make yourself appear professional, capable, and ready to compete. Don’t let the fact that you work on your own hold you back. Get a more professional appearance starting today.

This is a guest post from James Adams, a UK-based writer for a leading ink supplies specialist where he covers developments in tech, analyses and reviews products such as the T0715 and, when time permits, occasionally manages to post their blog.

So I took assessment of my personal communication models  to do some research on reach. In the process I decided to reverse engineer my path to 2010. I looked at communication for personal and professional reasons. Today I communicate in many ways for different reasons. My purpose for communicating with others is both direct and sometimes general. With so many channels to choose from we have incredible segmentation opportunities. Consistent personalization becomes a challenge as more channels are created.

Here’s how I communicate in 2010:

• Interpersonal: In person, face to face communication is always the best.
• Email: Today email is critical but also a chore at times to maintain and organize. Has become CYA dropbox. Simply put I’m getting to hate email but know it’s a vital communication tool.
• Social Networks: I’m a daily user of Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook in that order of preference and frequency. This is where direct and general communication is happening in real time in my community.
• Phone: since everyone is emailing, tweeting, posting status messages and other online communication, talking on the phone is becoming passé. Phone is being used mostly for conference calls, family communication and when I need to talk to vendors. Also a phone call needs to be used when you need a decision made and time is critical.  The fundamental shift is now that all my phone/voice communication is on a mobile device.  I no longer have a home phone.
• Texting: Use only with those who prefer this as a channel or for time sensitive communication. I’m not part of the texting generation and don’t have a texting plan.
• Fax: Use less and less, mostly for signed contracts or forms.
• Paper Mail/Shipping: Decreasing usage but now when I get mail I’m more interested and specialty giveaways from companies can be good inspiration at times.

Going back 10 years to 2000:

• Interpersonal: more frequent as most people worked in the office.
• Email: Still a new communication method at this time and was gaining ground, not near the volume used today.  Most of the older executives did not use email or understand it so you had to talk to them in person or leave them a note.
• Phone: I spoke more on the phone then and called people for important conversations that today are on email.  Most of the voice conversations were on a landline.   Mobile calls were still pricey and network coverage sucked.
• Paper Mail/Shipping: Newsletters, collateral and other paper mail was still going strong.
• Fax: This was the end of faxing era. My company actually had a faxing service to fax newsletters at the time.
• Memo/Personal Note: widely used for cover notes to paper mail or sales/PR kits.
• Chat/IM: this was the new kid on the block. Used it a few times to learn how it worked. Found it to be annoying more than useful most of the time.

Going back to 1990:

• Interpersonal: Everyone in my company worked at one location. If you wanted to get to the point you could walk over to their office and stand in their doorway until you got an answer, or leave a note.
• Phone: There was no email so the phone was the primary communication to those outside of the office or co-workers that were travelling. Cell phones were pricey at that time so calling cards were gold. Answering machines were our best friends.
• Paper Mail: Huge volumes of paper mail and printed magazines, journals, etc. I was the marketing grunt and had to actually do internal clipping service of all incoming periodicals.  I even attended direct mail seminars to learn how to design my direct mail pieces.
• Fax: This was the new revolution in communication at the time. I was just starting to understand how to use a fax machine.
• Memo/Personal Note: Memos ruled the day for internal corporate communication. And since you had to print, copy and distribute you made sure you got it right. Otherwise you would have to spend an hour or two correcting the mistake and all the miscommunication that followed.

I won't go back farther than 1990 for two reasons. The first being is that I graduated college in 1990. The second is that I think I made my point. Not much changed between 1970 and 1990 other than the first PCs but they did not communicate with each other unless you were the kid from Wargames.

How has your communication model changed over time?

If you’ve ever had to prepare a proposal response to a Request for Proposal (RFP) you know it can be a challenge. RFPs come in all shapes and sizes and no two are alike. Some can be over 100 pages while others can be less than 1,000 words. Either way your response is what is judged to award the project to your company and bring in revenue.

When reviewing RFPs it’s important to look at the document in several ways. After initial team reviews of the RFP questions tend to arise. You should always check to see if the organization issuing the RFP allows you to submit questions about the RFP and what the deadline is for submitting those questions. Also check to see if all questions submitted will be publicized so that you can review other firms’ questions as well as yours.

When you first review the RFP get a highlighter and outline both questions and requirements. Use different color highlighters for each so that you can easily identify on future reviews. I typically print the RFP on 3-hole punch paper and put it in a binder so that I can attach post-it notes for callouts and tag specific sections if necessary.

Along with the deadline to submit questions, there is a deadline for when proposals are to be received. Look at this date and plan to have your response arrive at least 3-5 days earlier. Work backward from that date to allow time to prepare the necessary materials for submission. You will most likely have a few reviews so plan time for the team to review the proposal as it develops and send your schedule to the entire team so they can allow time for their contributions.

Next carefully review and analyze how points are awarded for different parts of the proposal. Points are taken away for various reasons including how many pages your proposal is and your proposal can even be disqualified if you do not adhere to the restrictions defined. Also weighting of points for various parts can affect how much time you spend on that subject matter. If the points awarded for team bios are only 10% of the total don’t put too much effort into rewrites and headshots.

Packaging is also crucial to how your proposal is received and viewed. Your document layout should be clean and legible with an appropriate amount of white space so that it’s not too crowded. Using styles will help you greatly. Many RFPs have a numbering system that you will need to refer to so if you can use auto numbering to match your responses to questions in the RFP that’s great. If it’s too cumbersome then manually enter the corresponding numbers and data. Don’t try and make your word processing application jump through too many hoops.

Once you have the document written and reviewed your done right? Wrong! Now you have to package the document, both hard copy and sometimes digital copies on CD-ROM or other media. Carefully review how many copies and if they need to be sealed. Many times the cost proposal may be submitted in a separate sealed envelope that needs to be marked accordingly. I’ve found that using laser printed labels can both identify the different versions of the proposal as well as seal the envelope. If allowed put the RFP number the label. Save your templates and you can use them for future RFPs.

Hopefully if your product or service meets the RFP requirements and your proposal is well written and easy to read, you should be a top contender to win the contract!

When you look at job descriptions for marketing managers these days you wonder if any one person can really fulfill the role.  Marketing has expanded greatly in the past dozen years as the Internet and digital marketing has exploded.  Today when I look at position descriptions for marketing managers and directors I see a huge list of skills required including:

• Planning and coordinating marketing programs and campaigns
• Identifying new marketing opportunities
• Manage and develop CRM programs
• Manage and track social media communications
• Development of traditional sales collateral
• Trade show and special events management
• Development and management of online advertising, pay-per-click campaigns and Google Adwords programs
• Create, manage and administration of website content with knowledge of HTML, CSS and other web technologies
• SEO/SEM administration and tracking website traffic
• Develop and promote demonstration videos, kits and point of sale programs
• Write, edit and distribute press releases
• Manage relationships with vendors
• Develop and manage marketing budgets
• Design and implement email marketing campaigns and programs
• Various duties to support sales teams

What really amazes me is when people looking for managers to fill the roles they state 3 years of experience. Really 3 years to learn all of this?  In my first three years of marketing I learned about developing corporate collateral, managing tradeshows, direct mail promotions and tracking PR efforts.  We had a 3-5 person marketing team for a company of approximately 110 people with 3 distinct product lines.  Other members of the team were responsible for content development, budgeting, high level planning and CRM.

Realistically any company looking to have a single person do all these skills and efforts well is not being realistic.  I’ve discovered that small businesses trying to be all things to all people in marketing tend to skim the surface of these efforts because the one person doing all the work is trying to keep their head above water.  True the marketing manager should be involved in all these efforts but some of the work needs to be outsourced or additional resources should be brought in to help with specific programs like SEO/SEM and online ad management.  Heck Google Adwords alone is a full time job!

Even if you do find someone that is semi-proficient in all these areas how well do you think they can perform them in a 40 hour work week?

In my last post I talked about what makes a good storyteller and I thought this post would be a good follow up to talk about how to use the web and social networks to spread your story.  Now we all love a good story and want to share with our friends.  But if you are managing an online brand what's the best method to spread your story via the web and social networks.

We all hear the experts say start with a blog or web site.  While this is the starting point it's important to look at channels that can help spread your story.  Feedburner and RSS feed tools are one great way to allow users to subscribe to your content and stay abreast.  But are there other avenues to help spread the word?

The answer is yes and to explain this point I'm going to use a recent example I came across.  A few weeks ago my friend Greg Ng @gregoryng asked for volunteers for a Freezerburns episode on frozen hamburgers.  I was excited to be chosen as one of the taste testers for his "frodown" where he had three fathers taste frozen hamburgers and choose their favorites.  The episode was a big success for Greg and even made the front page of YouTube on Father's Day.

Wow exciting right? But what really caught my interest was when I went to Freezerburns site and check out the subscribe page. I expected Greg to have the leading subscription options like YouTube and iTunes. But what I found was that he had that and much more. A total of 13 subscriber options are available for his content. The usual suspects like Feedburner and email options as well as Twitter and Facebook are present. But what impressed me were some of the lesser known, at least to me, video and podcasting options Greg managed his content through. Take a look below at his subscriber options listed on his page.

Now I know there are tools that allow content creators to autopost to multiple sites.  But at the same time that's only half the work.  Setting up accounts, moderating comments and keeping up with all the necessary options, updates and other tasks on these networks is time consuming.  What this impressive list tells me is that Greg is dedicated to his audience and wants to deliver content to audiences on sites that are relevant to his content type, video.  I know that I've had to sometimes not use some social networks or distribution sites for some of the online brands that I manage because I'm not sure if it's the right audience or if anyone is really going to the site.  However in making that decision I may have missed some readers and opportunity to connect with potential customers and audience.

What channels are you evaluating when distributing your content on the web?

Storytelling is one of our most important and primary means of communicating with others. The name conjures up images of reading bedtime stories to our children. Yet the art of storytelling is vital to sales and marketing communications. The great sales guys that can sell ice to Eskimos are also great storytellers that can engage their listeners and bring them to decision points.  And I bet they can also keep kids enthralled when reading a bedtime story as well!

As we build our personal brands via social networks we eventually find ourselves telling our own personal or corporate story many times. I find that each time I talk with a new vendor I have to tell the story of who my company is, how we got here and our current needs. Ideally I need to communicate enough of the story so that the vendor can then tell me how they can help.  Storytelling also plays a huge role in when we are selling ourselves and personal brand when interviewing, seeking partners and just about every business relationship at some point.

But how do you become a great storyteller in the business world? No doubt part of it relies on talent and if you are lacking you need to work on some critical areas to succeed.

Practice, practice, practice! As many times as we hear this and as many times as we review and read our story you can never have enough practice. But the key takeaway is finding the parts of the story where you may be having problems. Getting your story down is the first part. Also time your story. You need to give a background and overview in less than a minute or two.

Sequencing is also a key to storytelling. Nothing is worse than saying, "wait, I forgot about.." Backpeddling during a story makes the listener have to break their concentration and can train-wreck the message. If there is a significant event in your history find a good way to mention it without going too deep.  You can even say, "that's another story," so that your listener can ask to hear it later if it's pertinent.

Which leads me to another important point, trim the fat. If certain parts of the story are not relevant take them
out. Nobody wants to listen to a rambling tale that may have a good ending but takes too long to get there.  Of course this sounds easy but when we're having to tell our corporate or personal story we can stray off kilter. If you're like me sometimes your brain gets ahead of you and can lose focus. You can get nervous trying to keep listeners attention or their lack of attention can be distracting. Staying focused can keep you on top of your story.

And most important is to be relevant.  Is you listener interested in your story about you or your company.  Ask questions ahead of time if possible or seek input from others.

In my next post I will write about how a great storyteller can use social networks and content to reach their audience.

What are your storytelling tips?  Who is the best storyteller you've seen in the business world?

Yesterday was supposed to be the day that Facebook users would delete their accounts in protest of the company’s privacy policy changes over the past several weeks. However according to a post Web Pro News only 34,424 users took the plunge and did just that. I can see a few reasons why this is true.

First most users don’t understand the privacy issue and many don’t care. Social networks are all about connecting and many users want to do just that. By having more open access to their profile they can connect with more users that share common interest and activities. True many savvy users have more restricted access but they are the minority of the Facebook population. Facebook users that are using the social network for business are also eager to be more accessible to generate leads and new business opportunities.

Over the past year Facebook has changed, modified and tweaked its privacy settings. It seems like every time you access the settings it has changed. The frequency that I visit these settings is maybe once a month. My feeling is that most users never revisit their settings once they set up their account and forget about it. Of course this can change if they get too many strange friend requests or suspicious emails from the account.

The other reason many users won’t quit Facebook is the platform itself. Let’s face it how many software platforms have you use that have the breadth and depth of Facebook and are free? Without being a web designer you can have photo albums, video posts, a blog, and links to all your favorite music, movies, restaurants or any other collective “like” page. You can even organize your high school reunion, local sports team fan club or whatever type of group you want to manage with out having to code.

Add onto that the ability to connect with such a large population of friends and other people, Facebook is hard to match. True the new Diaspora Project aims to create the next great social network, but how long with it take them to get 1 million users, much less 400 million users. Are you going to ask your friends to migrate as well? What about your Mom? Facebook has become an easy way for us to share with family members and has replaced the phone calls and extra photos we used to mail and email each other.

I have to admit that I get tired of some of the Facebook minutia of people’s lives. Reconnecting with past friends and co-workers many times has the lifespan of a few days. However for local connections it’s a great way to keep abreast of what’s happening or experience events or other occasions that I may not be able to attend. Even though I’ve said to myself and a few others I want to get rid of my Facebook account just because I don’t want to keep up with it I won’t.

What’s your take on quitting Facebook? Are you upset about the privacy settings or any other facet enough to delete your account? If you did get rid of your account what’s the fallout if any?

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure to speak to the Raleigh SEO Meetup organized by Ashley Berman-Hale and Phil Buckley @1918.  The topic was “Branding on A Budget,” and since I’ve worked for many small companies I’ve had my share of challenging marketing goals on little or no budget.  In preparing my speakers notes I came across some marketing strategies to help get the most from your budget.

• Find a major media event that may be happening at the same time as your marketing campaign.  Last year I had to promote a trade show appearance for Site Dynamics.  I had a minimal budget of $300 for promotional items.  One of the big stories in the mainstream media at that time was the release of Beatles Rockband.  I decided to tie into the buzz of the video game release by giving away guitar picks and a copy of Beatles Rockband to booth visitors.  For more details on the campaign read the blog post here.
• Make the most of major events.  Another client, SignalShare was preparing to work the Pepsi Fan Jam at this year’s SuperBowl.  Since the company was a start up and had a new story to tell I reached out to people I knew at WRAL Channel 5 and pitched them on the story idea.  It worked and WRAL did a story on SignalShare that aired the week before the SuperBowl.

• Use Social Media where and when appropriate.  I manage the newsletter for the Triangle Chapter of the American Marketing Association @TriangleAMA and delved into social media as a method to increase exposure for the newsletter articles.  I found that by creating a blog and Twitter presence I was able to reach Triangle area marketing professionals and increase awareness of our programs and events.  Website traffic increased and so did meeting attendance.  Over the past two years we have incorporated social media into our strategic outreach and communication strategy.  Click here to read my case study on Triangle AMA social media.
• Find partners with more money or brand awareness than you.  Many times we have corporate partners, resellers, etc. that have a strong brand presence.  See if they are willing to do a co-op promotion or campaign to increase their customer base as well as yours.  If you partner with a major brand, see what their co-op program offers.  Many large companies have entire departments for managing co-op funds and struggle to get partners to use them.

Overall these strategies are great for when you are starting to build your brand.  Ideally as your company grows so should your marketing budget and resources.  I’ve seen too many companies not do this and then when the economy goes south they panic.  Branding on a budget mostly requires creativity and savvy.  Building your brand requires a commitment to marketing and an understanding of its importance to your organization.  As with any organizational activity use your budget wisely, evaluate vendors and perform your due diligence.

I want to thank Ashley, Phil and everyone that attended and asked great questions.

What are your tips for getting the most from your marketing budget?

Last week I attended the Triangle AMA CMO panel, a great event with four Chief Marketing Officers from SAS, Concord Hospitality, Cheerwine and Genworth Financial.  One of the presenters, Jim Davis, SAS CMO, said something that really hit home.  Jim stated that your company’s brand is not the logo but what is felt and the customers’ reaction.  I could not agree with him more and so many times I find the wrong use of brand terminology and the true meaning.

I hear many times a request to, “put more branding,” on a marketing piece or campaign.  This conjures up an image of me getting my iron brand fired up in my workshop so I can “brand” what ever physical piece I can get my hand on.  Word of advice, doing this to your monitor will ruin it so don’t try this at home.  For more about how I dislike corporate America creating non-words that make me feel like at 18th century blacksmith, see my post on “wordsmithing.”

Modern corporate culture always takes great concepts and turns them into buzzwords and verbs.  Personally I don’t feel like you “brand” anything or apply “branding.”  Many reference sites will tell you that a brand exists because there is a logo and a company that offers the brand’s product or service.  These are brand names and brand identity.  Going back to what Jim Davis said, “a brand is felt.”

Most of modern branding research is based on consumer brands.  Surveys and focus groups of loyal customers will tell researchers how they love the brand for various reasons.  Most will focus around quality, consistency and value.  These are what comprise a brand promise.  Consumers will come to expect these values when purchasing and engaging with brand products and services and will let you know when they do not met expectations or fail to deliver.  When asked to recommend a product or service a trusted friend or coworker will express these feelings.

Being in the services industry, brand development takes on a whole new approach.  My company offers business analytics consulting services and I am constantly telling our consultants that their actions are our brand.  How they dress, communicate and deliver on projects is the feelings that the customer will experience and communicate back to us, our partners and potential new clients.  It’s important for our solutions to work and the people that create and deliver them to provide a sense of security and trust.  No matter how much creative marketing I do to communicate my company's brand values, it is up to each and every consultant to deliver on that value on every project.  If this fails to happen then the brand value is tarnished and requires attention to rebuilding the customer's perception of our brand.

And that’s what it’s all about, trust.  We hear a lot about trust these days, from government, financial institutions, family and technology.  Privacy concerns are stemming from all the information being posted to social networks.  Consumers trust big institutions less and less as well as our federal government.  But yet we continue to trust our brands to provide the value and level of satisfaction we’ve become accustomed to receiving.  In doing this they build upon the brand promise and reaffirm the customer's purchasing decision.

That’s why brands have become so important in our life.  The feelings and trust we associate with our favorite products and services give us a comfort level.  And it’s not just consumer products; business brands play a vital role in our life.  From laptops and mobile phones to paper and office furniture, we expect our business brands to perform at higher levels than our personal brands.  And why not, they frequently are dramatically more expensive.

What is your definition of a brand? Is it the logo or commercial or how you feel when interacting with the brand, its representatives and partners?  Do you think adding a logo to a marketing piece is branding?

Approximately six weeks ago the first Raleigh Media Leaders event was held at The Busy Bee.  Over 150 professionals from marketing, advertising, media and technology gathered for an evening of interaction and stimulating conversation.  The event was unique in that there was a grand prize for the evening, a drawing for “Lunch with The Leaders,” a lunch with three area media leaders with three media leaders attendees.

I was fortunate enough to be the host for the lunch held at The Pit BBQ.  The Leaders that volunteer their time for the event were:

• Andy Beal (@andybeal), Online Reputation Management Consultant, Founder of Trackur.com & MarketingPilgrim.com
• Patty Briguglio (@pattybriguglio), President, MMI Public Relations and guest contributor to Fox Business News
• Barrett Joyner, Development Director of The Healing Place of Wake County NC and former President of SAS North America

Joining our leaders were three very special business people.  Karen Albritton, president of Capstrat was the first winner and a media leader in her own right.  The other winners included Charlotte Goodman-Smith and Christine Fawley of Pleasure Mechanics and Richard Knott, a freelance graphic designer.

Lunch With The Leaders at The Pit

After introductions we began a great marketing discussion around how to market your business especially when you are new to a market.  Charlotte, Christine and Richard are all new to the Triangle area and own their own businesses.  They face challenges in getting their name out and breaking into marketing and media channels.

One great strategy that Patty recommended was to work with non-profit associations and attend networking events like Media Leaders as well as Ad Club, Triangle AMA and AIGA.  Barrett offered great advice to keep reminding associations of the important contacts they have and how to get introductions.  By offering your services to help the association you can get great network connections.  Patty also suggested that when attending professional association meetings ask people if they hire freelancers.

Patty also told them to make sure you tell your story because, “if you don’t then others will tell it for you.” I could not agree with her more.  Being in control of your message is vital to marketing your business.  Patty reviewed the process that her firm does when meeting with new clients, the first step is to find out everything about them. What is their story? What are their goals? Then, develop a strategy and supporting PR program to deliver.

The discussion then centered around media and PR.  Patty noted that reporters write about trends and if your business has a story relating to a current trend then you may have the ability to get their attention.  Another tool that Andy mentioned was Help A Reporter Out where reporters ask for sources for stories they are currently researching. HARO allows you to find a possible media placement by offering expert advice, thus creating exposure and awareness for your brand.

This lead into a discussion around personal branding and the use of social media.  Andy gave a great tip on whether you should start by blogging.  He stated that sometimes it’s better to find a blog in your subject matter area and offer to write a guest post.  Many times these blogs already have a larger following that what you would be able to build in the near term and will drive more visitors to your web site or online presence. Another tip Patty offered was to enter award competitions and benefit from the publicity generated by the award and related events.

Andy also spoke about becoming an industry expert and getting quoted in newspapers, magazines and website articles.  He noted that small articles can sometimes lead to larger ones so many times he offers his opinion to bridal or travel publications since someone is reading that publication that may work at Inc. or Fortune magazine and then contact him for another story.  Barrett states that research is important to stories so play a part in it and offer your expertise to reporters.

Lunch with The Leaders did not disappoint to say the least.  Not only did Patty, Andy and Barrett offer great advice to Charlotte, Christine, Richard and Karen but everyone had the opportunity to make another business connection.  I feel that our leaders learned about our event winners as well, asking about how they started their businesses, their backgrounds and what brought them to the area.  The BBQ was not bad either! Thanks to The Pit (@ThePittBBQ) for sponsoring the lunch and providing a great atmosphere.

Again my thanks to the other Media Leaders team members for creating the event that lead to this lunch: Phil Buckley (@1918), Morgan Siem (@morgansiem @mediatwo_social), Dan London (@danlondon) and Sarah Burris (@sarkatbur).   What’s in store for the next Media Leaders event on April 6?  Register now to attend!

I’ve included information about our Lunch with The Leader winners as well if you would like to learn more about them.  And thanks again to our Leaders, Patty Brigulio, Barrett Joyner and Andy Beal.

Our Lunch With The Leaders attendees:

Christine Fawley
Charlotte Goodman-Smith
@learnpleasure
www.pleasuremechanics.com

Karen Albritton
@kalbritton
www.capstrat.com

Richard Knott
www.RichdDesign.com

For more photos from the event, view the Flickr set.