I survived Black Friday Midnight Madness

Hope everyone had a very Happy Thanksgiving Holiday! Also hope that you survived the Black Friday Madness, if you dared to explore, like I did. As I see it, what better way to burn off some calories after Thanksgiving dinner, than to go shopping? For the 4th year in a row, I dared the Black Friday Midnight Madness and again went home a winner. Extremely tired, but at least a winner! Heck... while everyone else is hustling around shopping for the next 25+ days, I'll be enjoying the decorating, present wrapping, & holiday parties. How did I survive you ask? Here's my story & helpful tips to surviving Black Friday midnight madness.

1. Started off with a great Thanksgiving meal… of course!
2. I had a power nap between lunch & dinner as well as during the one hour drive home.
3. I dressed comfortably for the occasion. Comfy tennis shoes & sweats.
4. I dared the event with a buddy. A mom like me targeting the exact same store(s).
5. We planned to arrive at the Great Mall within an hour of opening (which was midnight).
6. We targeted no more than 2 stores in the mall - Gymboree & Children's Place. Targeting the 2 stores which we needed to purchase the most type of items from maximized our time & savings to take advantage of the doorbuster specials (such as additional 20-30% off entire purchase before 5AM).
7. While at the first store we used the buddy system. One of us stood in the check-out line, which already wrapped around along the edge of the store walls. While one of us shopped. About half-way we switched. This gave us enough time (at least an hour each) to gather all the items we wanted to buy off of our list. 2+ hours later, at the end of store one I had finished about 70% of my holiday gift shopping. Yeah!
8. We then ran back to the car to drop off our shopping bags, so that we would be hands free for store two.
9. While at the second store we used the buddy system again, but this time there were three of us since we ran into my girlfriend's cousin (also a mom). So we took advantage of taking turns standing in the check-out line. This worked out great since by the time we got to the second store, the check-out line was even longer than at the last store. Another 2+ hours later, at the end of store two I had complete about 90-95% of my holiday shopping. Double Yeah!
10. By about 6am we were done. And while we left the parking lot, others were barely arriving to the mall.

I admit I was exhausted, but the deals were definitely well worth this one time 4-6 hour shopping spree (without kids in tow) vs. trying to get my shopping done hours at a time after work or during the weekends for the next 25+ days. Would I do it again next year… absolutely!

BLING BLING Holiday Giveaway!

Welcome to this MicroBlogginMom’s FIRST blog giveaway!
chicBuds Swarovski Crystal Earphones (retail value $49)


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***** UPDATE *****
Sunday 11/30/08
This giveaway is now closed.


The winner of the chicBuds Swarovski Crystal Earphones is… Karen Hartzell. Congratulations!!!

But wait… in the spirit of giving, and since I am so giddy that I got to do my very first giveaway… I get to make you all winners! chicBuds/ChicBlvd is letting me offer you $5 OFF a pair of chicBuds or any purchase over $25 from ChicBlvd. Use offer code: MICROBLOGGINMOM. Offer good until Friday Dec 5, 2008. NEW!!! for an even better deal on a pair of chicBuds use code CHICBUDS30 for 30% OFF, but you have to act fast, this code is only good until Wednesday Dec 3, 2008.

Enjoy Cyber Monday and Happy Shopping!

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Last month, while surfing CyberSpace and TwitterUniverse this MicroBlogginMom found some much needed BLING! This week, the chicBuds I ordered arrived. First impression, out of the box... so cute and very chic... I LOVE IT! I use it with my iPod and my computer at work. I recently used it with my iPhone, when I forget to charge my Bluetooth headset. I have them with me pretty much all the time now and I have received several complements at work & from friends. My 4 year old daughter saw it and said… Mommy I love your sparkles!

I think every woman deserves a little bling now and then, so I am so excited because thanks to the sponsorship of chicBuds & ChicBlvd, I get to award one lucky winner with a pair of chicBuds.


Chic features include:

• Bling-Bling - nearly 100 genuine Swarovski crystal pieces
• Built-in retractor keeps the cords from tangling – no more tangled cords in your purse.
• Built-in retractor allows you to adjust the cord to 5 various lengths – perfect for any activity
• The fastening clip allows you to clip on the buds so the cords don't bounce around or clip them to your purse so you don’t loose them.
• Compatible with iPods, iPhones, MP3 players, DVD players, airplane connectors...basically almost any listening device.
• Top top it off, these very chic earphones are popping up in all of the cool magazines as a “hot” holiday gift. Check them out on Us Magazine & Cosmopolitan.

Impressed! Okay, to win your own pair of chicBuds… do any or all of the following:

1. Follow on Twitter @MicroBlogginMom, @chicBuds, @chicBlvd, AND @chicExecs. Then let me know that you did.
2. Give thanks & share the BLING by asking your friends to tweet the following quote on Twitter: “I entered to win a pair of @chicBuds from @MicroBlogginMom because of [INSERT YOUR @TWITTERNAME] . You can enter to win too at http://tinyurl.com/58z44k.” You AND your friend will each get ONE entry.
3. Blog about this giveaway on your own personal blog & include links to both chicBuds and MicroBlogginMom. Then come back here and post a comment with a link to your blog post. This is worth FIVE entries.
4. For those who don’t blog or tweet: Visit the chicBuds website. Then let me know which chicBuds you want (if you win) by sending me an email at adiwaly (at) gmail (dot) com or by posting a comment here.
5. BONUS: Search for chicBuds in retail stores – Dillards, Fred Meyer, boutique stores, etc. Take a photo of yourself holding chicBuds with the cute candy-like packaging & email it to me at adiwaly (at) gmail (dot) com so I can post it on my blog. This is worth FIVE entries.

Easy enough, Great! I entered the contest… now what?

• Giveaway ends at 11:59PM PST on Saturday, November 29. Random.org will be used to generate a winner from all qualified entries.
• Come back here on Sunday, November 30 to see who the lucky winner is… it could be you!
  

In the meantime:

• Visit chicBuds & ChicBlvd for other very chic holiday gift ideas
• Subscribe to ChicMail – to keep up with the “Girlfriend’s guide to the road of life”
• Subscribe to my Blog feed – to stay up to date with MicroBlogginMom’s “tidbits” “tweets” “links” “cool finds” “short stories” and more
  

Best of Luck!
Gail

Wordless Wednesday - #3

Snowboarding Princess

15 Days of Marketing with Jessica Knows - Day 15

Day 15 - Keep Your Eye on the Prize and Make a Plan
Day 15 - Assignment: Goal & Six Month Follow Up

Whew… what journey the past 15 days have been. And to think… this is truly only the beginning. For me this will be a never ending but very exciting journey.

I thank Jessica for sharing her experiences, recommendations, and even openly admitting her pit-falls. She truly is an inspiration! If you have not already done so, I would definitely encourage you to read up on 15 Days of Marketing with JessicaKnows. Trust me its not too late and the wealth of information she provides is priceless.

My plan is simple, really. I want to be readily available for my kids and involved in their day-to-day. I am currently bound to an 8-5 job, which a part of me does enjoy. But in the long run, I truly just want to have fun doing what I do with the flexibility of not being tied down to rigid restrictions. As I see it, so long as the job gets done, everyone wins!

15 Days of Marketing with Jessica Knows - Day 14

Day 14 - Your Brand and Damage Control
Day 14 - Assignment: Dealing with Difficult Scenarios

Lessons learned that Jessica shares in Day 14 are excellent examples of how to deal with difficult scenarios. Be sure to check out her list. I now I have it “book marked” and will refer to it when the need arises.

15 Days of Marketing with Jessica Knows - Day 13

Day 13 - What NOT to Do When Marketing & Branding Yourself
Day 13 - Assignment: What am I going to do?

I just read Jessica’s list of “What NOT to Do,” and found the entire list very true.

From her list, these three stuck out the most for me:

1. Don’t promote something that you don’t believe in – I am often considered too truthful… saying it like it is.
2. Don’t forget that it’s all about the content and conversation – Which is what I love about blogging… just writing whatever comes to me, focusing on sharing what interests me.
3. Don’t rush – Need I say more? Learning is a never ending journey. As long as I stay focused, I know that slowly but surely I can & will achieve!

If I ever find myself lost, I plan to refer to the list in my mind to regain focus & inspiration.

15 Days of Marketing with Jessica Knows - Day 12

Day 12 - My Social Media Trifecta is Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn
Day 12 - Assignment: Building my Social Media Trifecta

I’ve been on Facebook for a few months now and love it, more so for personal connections. I just created my LinkedIn account which seems like a great tool to build a fully detailed online resume. I plan to build upon this account for making professional connections. I of course can also be found on Twitter. I have found Twitter to be a great tool for BOTH personal & professional social networking. Heck this is how I found @JessicaKnows and began 15 Days of Marketing with Jessica Knows!

15 Days of Marketing with Jessica Knows - Day 11

Day 11 - Measuring Your Influence So Companies Will Want to Work with You
Day 11 - Assignment: Baseline Measurements & Subscriptions

Wow this assignment sure was an eye opener. Luckily my blog is still in its infancy stage and I have lots of wiggle room to only make it better!

Today’s Baseline Stats:
twInfluence - @MicroBlogginMom Rank: #2,830 (69%)
Twitter Grader - @MicroBlogginMom Twitter Grade = 81 out of 100
Website Grader - Blog-Website Grade = 56 /100

Not sure how the newsletter thing with iContact works just yet so I’ll implement that later. In the meantime I do have a “subscribe button” using feedburner set up. It is located at the very top right of the blog sidebar. As this blog blossoms, a lot will be happening in the next few months; including cool giveaways, a fresh new blog makeover, and so much more. So I invite you to subscribe to my feed, so that you don’t miss a thing!

15 Days of Marketing with Jessica Knows - Day 10

Day 10 - Find Your Awesome Allies
Day 10 - Assignment: Awesome Allies & Online Support Network

I feel like I already started my Day 10 assignment, before I even met Jessica Smith. Why do I feel this way? Well, when I discovered Twitter I found it to be a great medium for searching for and building an online support network – outside of my “offline” allies of course. And as a result I found @JessicaKnows. Timing was perfect too, since she started tweeting about "15 Days of Marketing with Jessica Knows" and I knew... I wanted in.

Part of Day four’s assignment involved finding Twitter “following” AND “followers. During that exercise, I realized that I tend to search for and gravitate toward those who have a similar niche, relate to my “real time” life experiences, or just plain click (based on gut instinct). Thus building on my online support network (and including some awesome allies).

I know I still have lots to learn, so I plan to continue building my online support network and surrounding myself with Awesome Allies - both mentors & peers.

I have never met Jessica Smith, but I have been learning so much from her through this experience. So, I also like to consider Jessica an, Oh Sooo Awesome Ally & Mentor!

15 Days of Marketing with Jessica Knows - Day 9

Day 9 - My Blog, My Brand, Now Show Me the Money!
Day 9 - Assignment: Monetize what works for you

Having a customer services call center background, I did lots of user testing and provided valuable feedback regarding user experience, especially every time the systems were upgraded. So, I’m excited to sign up for UserTesting.com.

Who wouldn’t want to make oodles of money? I know I would! But Jessica makes a great point and key recommendation that you have to figure out what works for you and your style. Affiliate marketing might work great for some type of bloggers, yet direct sales (or even tips) might work better for others. You won’t really know unless you explore and consider what works for you. For me the timing of this post from Jessica is perfect, as I have always been intrigued with how bloggers go about advertising on their site. Since my blog is very new, I am still exploring blogging platforms, designs, images, logos, as well as what type of marketing I want to appear on my blog. I’m hoping to take lessons learned from JessicaKnows (and others) to revamp and re-launch my blog soon.

One thing for sure I am getting done today on my blog is adding a disclosure policy. Thanks Jessica for bringing up this very important (yet often overlooked) recommendation.

15 Days of Marketing with Jessica Knows - Day 8

Day 8 – How Promoting Others Will Make Your Brand Stronger
Day 8 - Assignment: Showing some love

This assignment is fairly easy since I naturally love to talk about what I love and let people know about it by spreading the love.

When something intrigues & interests me I usually talk and/or blog about it. Check out my previous post about #15Days of Marketing with Jessica Knows participant, Resourceful Mommy. I think she’s awesome!

When I find a site I love and love to refer to often I tag it on my del.icio.us page so that I have a virtual bookmark of it no matter what device I am on (my laptop, iPhone, or office PC). If a particular post or article is awesome and I want to spread some love by recommending it, I kirtsy it!

When I find a site that relates to me I add it to the “link love” list section in the sidebar of my blog. If you don’t see your blog or site listed, comment here or send me an email at adiwaly(at)gmail(dot)com. If it relates to me, I would love to show you some love!

I’ve seen badge codes on other sites and wondered how that whole thing worked. As you can see from my sidebar, I have picked up a few, such as 15 Days of Marking with Jessica Knows. I plan to continue picking up more badges as they interest or relate to me. What I really need to work on is creating my own MicroBlogginMom badge code. If anyone has ideas of how I can go about doing this, please comment and/or send me an email. Would love to have my own badge that others can grab, too!

15 Days of Marketing with Jessica Knows - Day 7

Day 7 - Building Your Brand through Self-Promotion
Day 7 - Assignment: MicroBlogginMom’s BIO & Press Page

I’ve updated my BIO with more details and was all set to add it to my About Me Page, but realized that Blogger is limited to 1200 characters & I am unable to format the paragraphs. So for now here it is in this blog post… until I can figure out how to get it moved over to the “View My Complete Profile” section in the sidebar.

About MicroBlogginMom
By day, I am a full time meeting manager, managing two 2-day training events per week for a training institute in Silicon Valley, CA.

By evening/night I am a full time mom & wife, managing a busy household. My responsibilities revolve around an over-worked, multi-tasking, Silicon Valley geek husband; a 4 year old princess ballerina; AND a “terrible 2” (but too cute) little man.

I love anything related to my “real time” life experiences. Which currently includes, Motherhood, Girlie Gadgets, Beauty, Fashion, anything Chic & Savvy AND of course sweet Deals & Bargains. If I’m able to find any spare time at all, I am usually reading blogs, writing blogs, maintaining our family website/blog, and I am oohhh so addicted to Twitter.

Continue to follow my Micro Blog and I will continue to share with you “tidbits” “tweets” “links” “cool finds” “short stories” and more of the joys, adventures, as well as challenges of being a busy working mom still wondering if there will ever be more than 24-hours in day.

I also just set up a Tumblr account and plan to build my Tumblr to use as my Press Page.

15 Days of Marketing with Jessica Knows - Day 6

Day 6 - How Social Media Gurus are Relevant to You
Day 6 - Assignment: Social Media Blogs to TAG & Books to read/share

Neat… I love learning new things. Just wish I had more time to read it all. Trying to absorb it through osmosis never worked back in college, so I guess it wouldn’t work now… Darn! But Jessica does it again, by providing some great resources to look and link in to!

I’ve already checked out and plan to follow Patrick O’Keefe since my day job involves my participation in a brand new private online community for alumnus of our 2-day Transforming Diabetes Care training program. I plan to pick up his book “Managing Online Forums: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful Community Discussion Boards” for me as well as to share with my team.

I already review Guy Kawasaki’s blog & follow him on Twitter. He says it like it is, he’s real, and he’s down to earth. Love his style and love Alltop too!

Wow, another book I’m going to have to add to my read list is “Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking” by Andy Sernovitz. Word of mouth comes fairly natural to me, since I love to talk about and recommend what I love… so I’m hoping to learn how to make this work for me.

I still have a lot to learn and since osmosis probably won’t work… I have tagged all of JessicaKnows recommendations on my del.icio.us page so that I have instant access to reviewing & re-reviewing these social media gurus.

15 Days of Marketing with Jessica Knows - Day 5

Day 5 - How to Do a Blog Giveaway That Gives You More
Day 5 - Assignment: Host a giveaway on my blog

So Cool, Jessica has some great advice for doing a blog giveaway. I’ve never done one, so I’m really excited to give this a try. Jessica has made it as easy as possible, as she goes through each of the steps to get it set up in her blog post. Whether you are participating in 15 Days of Marketing with Jessica Knows or not, this post is a must see if you want to get the inside scoop on doing giveaways on your blog.

I just got a lead on working with a chic company for a cool giveaway, so I am connecting with them to see if we can set something up for this month. I am really excited since this will be my very first giveaway, so if you want to know once it’s up, I encourage you to subscribe to my blog feed. I will also be announcing it on Twitter, so if you want to know the play-by-play, make sure you are also following me @MicroBlogginMom to get in on the action!

15 Days of Marketing with Jessica Knows - Day 4

Day 4 - Ask and You Shall Receive Results
Day 4 - Assignment: PR Peeps & Connecting

Part 1:
Checking out where the PR peeps hang out. I signed up for Help a Report Out (HARO) earlier this week. Took a peek at PitchEngine which is pretty cool. And, since I love twitter, I’m now exploring Twellow. Yipee, finding “following” AND “followers” is FUN!

Part 2:
Off to make some connections! So if you are on twitter, find & follow me @MicroBlogginMom.

Note to self: I need to remember to include “#15days” in my tweets!

15 Days of Marketing with Jessica Knows - Day 3

Day 3 - Take a Risk, Reap the Rewards
Day 3 - Assignment: Confessional... sort of?

Ok, I know I’m late turning in my homework, again. Heck, I’m only human! Day 3’s assignment was a little tougher for me than I thought, since I’m not quite into the vlogging thing. But I know my love for technology will get me there somehow.

Okay, so to get through this phase of my assignment, I am going to share something I don’t usually share with those who I have never met in person. For a real peek into my life, I invite you to take a peek at my personal family scrapbook journal at LyFamily.org. I started this online scrapbook & journal before I had my first child in 2004 and before I really understood what blogging was all about. Now, although I have gone back to work & also started other projects, I still continue to maintain this site in hopes that my kids will eventually make it their own and enjoy it for years to come.

I'll end this post now with my 4yo daughter singing Disney's Camp Rock in the background... "This is real, this is me, this is where I want to be..... "

15 Days of Marketing with Jessica Knows - Day 2

Day 2 - Building Your Marketing Resume
Day 2 - Assignment: Communities

Wow, more great advice from Jessica Knows. Love the idea of getting involved with networking communities, geared toward my everyday life as a mom. Thanks for sharing these.

I just signed up for One2One Network, Mom Select, & Mom Central today. Since I love to shop for anything related to mom or baby, I’m looking into the possibility of becoming a Wishpot expert. Applying for a contributor spot on blog networks is something I never considered, but will now. Hoping to have an opportunity to connect with Blissfully Domestic.

15 Days of Marketing with Jessica Knows - Day 1

Day 1 - Make Your Blog or Site More PR Friendly
Day 1- Assignment: Brands

Please note, I originally posted this as a comment on JessicaKnows via my iPhone late at night after Day 1.

Great info from Jessica Knows! As for Day 1 assignment – I have so many favorite brands but here are my top 3:

1. Disney - Especially love Disney clothes. And LOVE the great deals on Disney.com.
2. Starbucks - addicted to a daily zebra mocha. It’s just not the same from anywhere else & I can’t seem to give it up no matter how I try.
3. TIVO - Ever since Oprah shared it as one of her "favorite things" years ago, I became hooked. Now we have 2 just so we can record more shows & multiple channels! Love it!
   

15 Days of Marketing with Jessica Knows, Are You In?

Okay, some of you may not know (or you do since you’re visiting this site) that I have just recently started my own blog. Since this blog is still in it’s infancy AND to jump start this new adventure, I've joined “15 Days of Marketing” with Jessica Knows. I’m In… Are You In?

Timing could not have been more perfect for this brand new blog. For the next 15 days or so, I hope to blog about my experience & learnings through this journey.

Enjoy!