Kickify

Military Business Tip #2

Greta — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:50:58 +0000

“I will take A+ task execution with a C+ plan over the reverse with out exception.” ~Adrian – U.S. Marine~

This tip comes from my New Orleans-based Marine pal, Adrian of Gulf South Strategies.

If you are a Veteran or Milspouse, who is in the work force now, we’d love to feature your quotes regarding your training and how you apply it to business. greta@kickify.com

Digging Into a New Project Website Makeover

Greta — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:58:41 +0000

When I attended the First Robotics Bayou Regional Competition this year, as both a parent and mentor, I approached the administrators. I’m trying to teach the kids all about social media and was looking for a conference Twitter feed. I started talking to the FRC Regional Director, Carolyn Arthurs about the situation. We also chatted about the broken website as you could not even log on during the competiotion! One thing lead to another and we continues our conversation after the competition. She gave us access to at least fix the the site enough to get it to load. Woot woot- now we have a formal contract in place and are just beginning a complete website makeover. Our first order of business is to create a mockup for their approval. We will also be moving it from Joomla to WordPress. Their logo is fabulous and they finally were able to dig up the non-jpeg files of it, so it will look much nicer on the final product. Wish us luck as we venture into this exciting project!!

Below, is the before:)

Military Business Tip #1

Greta — Mon, 13 May 2013 19:14:05 +0000

We decided that one portion of the Kickify business that we would like to build up, is serving the military and military spouse population. We have been toying with the idea of making some business tip graphics that military personnel can relate to. Here is our first attempt, “Apply your training to your business: Plan your mission, get the supplies you need, follow through, and achieve the goal.” Hooah!

Kickify: Military Portfolio

Greta — Fri, 10 May 2013 19:05:36 +0000

I’m the military wife of a retired soldier and the social media expert for the National Military Spouse Network. My top contractor, Wendy, is a Blue Star Mother, and 2 of the entrepreneurs in my Circle of Trust network are military spouses. We love all our Kickify clients, but it is a special honor when we get to work with some of our nation’s finest. We started putting together a military gallery/portfolio. We have also done work for military spouses.

We love the website we did for Army Week NYC. Former Marine, Mike Scotti’s site, is one we are proud of as well. And of course, it was an honor to create a custom Twitter background, for Medal of Honor Recipient, Dakota Meyer.

We “get” the military and their unique needs here at Kickify!

PTA (volunteer) Syndrome

Greta — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 14:17:49 +0000

SYNDROME |ˈsinˌdrōm| noun
• a characteristic combination of opinions, emotions, or behavior: the “Not In My Backyard” syndrome.

VOLUNTEER |ˌvälənˈtir| noun
• a person who freely offers to take part in an enterprise or undertake a task.
• a person who works for an organization without being paid.

PTA SYNDROME (my made-up definition)
• When a person volunteers for an organization and gets so overly-consumed and frustrated that “they” or “a few” are doing all the work, they become negative.
• When an organization that should be open to the masses and gain new volunteers all the time, becomes locked down with negativity and frustration. The organization then gets labeled with a reputation that deters new volunteers from entering.
• When a person who volunteers for an organization gets annoyed or negative when a person who has not previously volunteered, offers up a suggestion.
“When an organization is broken or unable to gain new members, it is often infected with PTA Syndrome.”

PTA (volunteer) Syndrome is something I made up years ago and find myself referring to more and more. When I explain what it is to a person who may be suffering from it, they have an “a-ha moment” and say I hit the nail right on the head!

Have I really been volunteering as long as my oldest kid times two? Yep – I calculated about 32 years of volunteer work under my belt! Back as a teenager, I’d take the bus to the closest nursing home to volunteer as a “Candy Striper.” Then it never ended…Red Cross, Military Family Readiness Group (FRG), PTA, military non-profits. just to name a few. I have stepped into leadership roles and become overly-consumed and frustrated many times over the years. I even lost focus of why I was there and threw my life out of balance. That is when the “never again” statement usually left my lips.

Why am I writing about “PTA Syndrome?” Because now I often take the role as “Consultant” to organizations, non-profits and businesses (whether paid or as a volunteer) and identify this issue when the organization is fractured or limping along. It is often impossible for the volunteers/members to see what is happening from the outside looking in, when they are wrapped up and consumed by having to work even harder because they have fewer and fewer new members.

How to cure PTA Syndrome?
1. Identify the problem. Is it one or more people in the group who have this?
2. Make an exit strategy for all members. Often times it is hard to leave as you are convinced nobody else would want to or is willing to take on existing roles.
3. Review the goals, structure and job descriptions of the members. Make revisions immediately if there are issues.
4. Feel free to delegate or task others within the organization.
5. Approach potential members to take on a job or task. You would be surprised (see below examples).
6. GET CREATIVE! What you are doing is NOT working. That does not make you a failure, it just means you need to change something.

I will use a couple of personal examples regarding number 5:

1. When I lived in El Paso and was very involved with the PTA (I burned out after that), we were trying to gain more participation from parents. The school was 80% Spanish speaking and had several other very small groups who spoke different languages and hung out together. Speaking only English and very poor Spanish, I approached a group of Asian mothers and asked them if they would run a certain table for an event. They gladly joined up and hence we had a new and very powerful group of parents involved.

2. When I was the FRG leader for my husband’s Battalion of about 600 soldiers and their family, I was tasked to put on an Easter Egg hunt. At the time I had a one year old and three year old, so you can imagine how stressed I was. Well, this was the time when Better Opportunities for Single Soldiers (BOSS) started getting popular. I pulled the BOSS leadership into my meeting and I have to say that was the most successful Easter Egg Hunt ever! The single soldiers (most young and without children) lead the event so that the parents with kids could enjoy it and they all had a blast doing it!

After cutting my volunteering to a bare minimum and staying behind the scenes for a few years to build my business, hopefully I approach new volunteer roles with wisdom. I am currently the Online Media and PR mentor for my son’s Robotics Team and just agreed to step into the role of President for my Homeowners Improvement Association. Hopefully, I’ll have no regrets for either new position!

Remember…it all comes down to life balance, a positive attitude and good communication. Good Luck and step forth and volunteer!!!

• Def from my Mac computer and modified by me.
• Volunteering should go on your resume!

Cyberbullying is Sadly…Alive and Well

Greta — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 17:49:40 +0000

Cyberbullying Definition from the Urban Dictionary

This morning another blurb on the internet came by me, with the headline, “Cyberbullying on the Rise.” The picture depicts a stoic looking mother, whose beautiful daughter’s picture is shown in the background. NOBODY wants to be that mother or have a child who is a living or deceased poster child as the result of cyberbullying!!!

The terms “bullying” and “cyberbullying” are used a lot these days – probably overused to the point where many of us don’t actually get how serious it is as we become numb to things we see all the time (normal human behavior). I am very electronic savvy mom of 2 teens and a tween (the exception to the rule). My husband leaves this department to me as he does not embrace social media and uses technology for what he needs to to get his job done (the norm). I’ve told some of my local social media friends that I’m writing a “parent technology guide” for them as I go along and learn (their kids are younger). But the truth is, technology evolves so much every day and kids have technology at their fingertips as young as a baby! This gives them the advantage over those of us who did not grow up with it they will always be ahead of us – they even know how to clear history from their computer and to use text apps that we can’t monitor.

From the outside looking in, I was doing everything right by embracing the kids need for technology, establishing boundaries regarding their social media and online habits and checking their online patterns. Yet, I failed and missed something large!

I randomly check my daughter’s phone to read her text messages, Instagram, Facebook, Kik app etc… she always has a new one! Apparently during all these checks, I missed a nasty Instagram incident, which she actually save as a screenshot (I contacted the mother), and 2 horrendous threads of cyberbyllying. Yes, my daughter was attacked via text messages for a month’s time without telling us and I missed it! She did tell a couple of friends and finally, instead of telling us, went to her school principal with this information. In a nutshell, for one month, 2 different text numbers had bombarding her with messages calling her every name in the book and telling her to take her own life. I am one of the fortunate ones as she was in a good place and strong enough to handle this. We are not sure why she did not come to us, but I did watch her exhibit an instant “sense of relief” as we got behind her and supported her on this.

We proceeded with local law enforcement. It took a couple of visits to the police to figure out what to do as the first officer told us we might want to let sleeping dogs lie as it had stopped for 2 weeks. After stewing over it a bit, I decided to file a formal report. It did go into a formal investigation and I must say – they took this very seriously!

The main reasons for proceeding with the investigation were:
1. To find out who did this and get some closure.
2. To help the person who was sick enough to send it.
3. Because this person will likely do this to another kid whose parents might not be as fortunate as we were.

The investigation has been completed, only to be opened up if this happens again. The child (we know it was a kid) circumvented common texting and used an alternate method. In other words, they made a fake number on the internet to send texts from. It was even from the same area code. To trace it would be a ton of extra effort for the local law enforcement by tracking down an IP. That would drag on for months and we don’t want to do that to him as they have already gone above and beyond.

My advice:
1. Talk with your kids about this TODAY!
2. Randomly check everything – including ALL apps!
3. Make sure their audience is as locked down as humanly possible to people they know in real life!
4. Make them tell you all passcodes and passwords at all times.
5. Watch for foul and sexually explicit offensive language and provocative pictures from both sexes.
6. Get other parents involved if you notice something wrong!
7. Check their surfing history regularly.
8. Look at times of interactions to and from your child.
9. Take screenshots for proof of anything you don’t like.
10. Make sure you have a “do not delete policy” so they have to show you what is going on. They can clear after they get the green light.

Kickify Does Politics

Greta — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 20:23:33 +0000

I’ve been involved in politics in my lifetime, at one time considered focusing my social media expertise on political campaigns, got away from politics after getting burned out and now, Kickify is involved in politics!

My oldest is running to be his high school’s Parliamentarian and there was no way he was going to put up flyers that were anything but the best. The posters on the other hand, were made by his team of friends. I had to throw a few away with spelling errors and because…well…parliamentarian is a long word and needs to be measured before being written.

Mama also came up with the idea to pass out suckers (lollipops for Yankees like me) that have tags on them that say, “Don’t be a sucker, vote for Drew.”

Always open to new adventures and the Kickify team is more than capable of tackling a political campaign when we cross that bridge. In the meantime, this will have to suffice!

Circle of Trust

Greta — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 17:37:12 +0000

Over time, I’ve had the honor of getting to know some fabulous colleagues, who also run boutique companies. Since all of us have our individual goals, but want to keep steady work, I bring to you “Kickify’s Circle of Trust.” This logo is owned and created by Kickify, but is shared with 4 other trusted colleagues to proudly display on their websites as well. These are people I feel absolutely confident giving a straight referral to as I know they will get the job done and meet Kickify’s high standards!

VIRTUAL ASSISTANT

Need a Virtual Assistant? Go ahead and reach out to my Milspouse pal, Melissa St. Clair of Paper Chaser . No doubt she will promptly reply with her virtual smile.

IT

Virtual or New Orleans based “IT everything guy,” Westley Annis is your man. He also offer computer backups way better than those advertised competitors and website hosting, phone and so much more! Check him out at Da-Parish.

RESUMES & LINKEDIN

On the ball, fair prices and specializing in the military and milspouse communities, Amy Schofield is another Milspouse who rocks it! Always a good time to get your resume in order with Schofield Strategies.

BOOKKEEPING/QUICKBOOKS

The IRS would be knocking on my door, if Connie Whittingham at Y-OPA Consulting, did not keep my numbers in order! I fear numbers and she makes it painless. Everything was in perfect order for the accountant and he smiled when it was presented – phew!

Kickify Launches Another Website

Greta — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 14:11:15 +0000

Kickify is proud to announce the birth of another custom WordPress website!!! My pal Blake, who is often known online as Laughing Wolf, writes over at his own blog and Blackfive, was kind enough to bring me in on this project! This project was for Army Week NYC to take place this year. We are all about the military here at Kickify, and this was right up our alley!!! They had a logo already designed and we needed to do this rush job designed around it and for their future needs. We accomplished it in 10 business days as guaranteed and our clients are thrilled with it!

The site will add a store and become “e-commerce” ready in the near future, when they get merchandise and have tickets etc… for sale. This site was built for ease of navigation for the younger military population, veterans of all ages and to entice and showcase sponsors. A mobile version of the site was also created to match. This site was built to grow with the company behind it and to possibly be duplicated if they choose to expand. Mission accomplished. Have a look at the matching Facebook and Twitter backgrounds to match. Hooah!!!

It is not you, it is Facebook

Greta — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 22:37:36 +0000

Gah – more wonkiness from Facebook over the past few days. First off, my wall is off so I was blessed with a ton of FB birthday private message greetings. Well…try and reply to a bunch in a row and you get the message below. Reply some more and got the message again. I had to spread it out over a couple of days. Maybe next year I will open my wall up again. Maybe…

Then today, out of nowhere, I kept getting this message below saying, “the content was removed by the owner and can no longer be commented on. When I refreshed, I saw the content, could comment and the message did not reappear.

I love you Facebook – I really do. But some days it can get rocky! ~XO Greta~