How to Find Your Angle For Media Exposure Video

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How to Find Your Angle For Media Exposure

Host: My pleasure to welcome this panel and the moderator Ivy Hartman from SBTV.com, so please join me in welcoming Ivy. Ivy Hartman: Honesty is seriously my worst flaw and imply and best asset ladies, so I’ll be up front with you. I although I’m expert in public speaking, reporting, anchoring, all those great things, not so much when it comes to moderating a panel, so this is my first opportunity to do this and I’m really happy to be here on behalf of SBTV.com. And I’m really excited to meet some wonderful women, Rebecca Weeks is the business Director of Development for Real Girls Media Network. And Christina Leonard who is the editor in chief for Arizona Woman and a biz-AZ, which is another publication that she’s in charge of that, is all under the Arizona Republic Umbrella. And we’ll let them talk a little bit about their companies and I’ll tell you a little more at SBTV.com after they have introduced themselves a little bit more in depth. Christina Leonard: I, like she said, I’m the editor of Arizona Woman and biz-AZ and if you’re not familiar with this publications; Arizona Woman is a magazine that’s been in our community for a little over 20-years. It’s a business magazine for women. We love showcasing women just like you in magazine. We’ve got lots of different collected different feature; we’ve focused on stories about your life, your career and your community. Biz-AZ is another one of our publications. It also comes up by monthly. It is a magazine for entrepreneurs and we like to sort of package them together. Arizona Woman comes up, you know, it’s the January, biz-AZ comes out February. They have slightly different target audiences but are both business magazine, like she said we’re own by Arizona Republic so I work through the business desk in the Arizona Republic Newsroom. I’ve been there for about 11-years and it’s a lot of fun. Rebecca Weeks: Good morning, my name is Rebecca Weeks. I’m the director of Business Development at Real Girls Media. I’m excited to be here. Real Girls Media is a media network for women. We were founded in mid-2006 so we’re still a baby company or maybe we’re a toddler or I guess you could say. We wanted to build the leading destinations for women on the web and what makes us really unique, we launched our first website called Divine Caroline, d, I, v, I, n, e, caroline.com. We wanted to build a publication for women that actually included everyday women’s voices so we look like an online magazine with articles and videos about travel and healthy living and recipes and parenting topics and things. But we also incorporate the user experience in which we empower people to share their own stories so we felt like there was a void on the web where there was no way for a woman to contribute her thoughts and share her stories in a very simplified way. So you’ll note that a lot of people have blogs and a lot of people have started their own websites but we felt like the majority of women out there don’t have time to maintain a blog and so they come to Divine Caroline to share their experiences and their thoughts and their stories. So we launched our site on February 2007 and it has been a whirlwind, we are now the 18th largest web community for adult women and looking forward to telling you all about some of the best practices I learned in marketing this site and getting some awareness to influential women such as yourselves, slinging businesses and trying to just make connections with other woman. Ivy Hartman: Thank you Rebecca and thank you Christina and back to SBTV.com, we, Susan Wilson Solovic is our CEO so we’re women on business. My role for SBTV.com is, as I mentioned before, mostly in a reporting, producing, anchoring, kind of role and then I get to—. I’ve been to this, my second year at NAWBO and I really love meeting all of you and being inspired by many of you because I’m also a mother and a free lance reporter so I kind of own my own business as well. SBTV.com is the only online video resource that is tailored directly to the small business owner. So we’ve got online news and information all in the video content but we’ve also tailored it so that it’s on demand so it’s when you need it and when you have time to listen to it or watch it, we’re also launching our own radio network and we’ll get into a little bit more about how you can become part of SBTV.com and get your businesses on the online resource as well. We, what I did is I came up with a few trends and topics that I found as a reporter recently and some words on the street, you know because of my poor hair I never take that hat off so I made a brunch with my family, on mother’s day for example. And my mother in law may say, “you know, I don’t think there is a recession, why do keep saying there is a recession? You’re in the media.” And so that was kind of one of the topics I came up with, with the economy. As woman business owners, maybe you’re feeling a pinch, maybe you’re not. We’re going to talk a little bit about where we come up with some of that content and how we’re tailoring our content around that and I’m going to start out just really quick so that I can give an example. In the news which what I primarily concentrate on, I’m talking to small business owners. I’m also researching a lot of what a lot of the pulse and surveys that these professional organizations are taking and its saying, “hey listen, our confidence in the economy is dropping.” I mean out the bottom, dropping. As small business owners though on the other hand, I am still hiring. I can’t find them, people to fill my positions. So there is a contradiction there. Businesses still coming in enough that small businesses are growing but also small business owners and woman business owners are feeling like, ‘I don’t know that the economy is moving forward and my confidence is weaning.’ How do you guys, are you guys covering any of those topics in your and how do you get information for that content on your sites. Rebecca Weeks: So we have a category, one of nine called Career and Money where we address what’s happening in the business world and women can share their experiences and how they are struggling with either their independently and businesses where they can talk about some of the fears they have around. Their business going under, lay offs or things like that so we have noticed an increase in the amount of stories that are being contributed talking about the recession. But we also wanted to develop some content initially in the form of articles or text based that address some of these kind of timely topics and so one of them is called Diary of a cheapskate. And so we have a woman and in house writer who talks about ways that she kind of cuts corners, not really fun and it makes it more down to earth. And then we have another one, we have a writer in our fashion section that talked about; she’s an ongoing column about “Sex and the (Recession Hit) City.” And she talks about the items that she really wants but can’t necessarily afford right now. So those are some aspects of things we’re doing internally within the company and then we also noticed that, you know, women are feeling very vulnerable right now and they love just little perks and little rewards for their family. And so we decided to have a sweepstakes and ongoing monthly sweepstakes where to be able to enter to win, you type in a comment to a particular what we call like a chitchat and so we start with the theme and we say, you know, what’s your worse fashion day or something that you wore that you really regret. And people type in a few synopses and then they register to win a $500.00 piece of gift card and this has dramatically increased the number of registered users on our site because people basically are really biased to do that. So I highly recommend kind of incorporating those types of things to know, kind of what are their emotions surrounding this business atmosphere and then being able to empower people through that. Ivy Hartman: I’m going to talk to you a little bit, sort of along at your, how we would cover the economy. How you could be on a radar screens for both—I’ll look at this both from the Arizona Republic side as well as the business magazine side. Christina Leonard: We’re two totally different products and as well as azcentral.com which is the Republic’s website as well. The republic will cover source about the economy when a study comes out, when there is news happening, when you know, all the indicators shower in a recession. Those reporters will look quickly to the sources they know and they are aware for, for examples so we can put those, you know, put you all in the news to fit that particular story. For the magazines, we’re not so much going to cover the economy on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis because we only come out every other month so the purposes of our magazines are really to be that helpful kind of resource for you. We offer lots of tips, lots of advice, success stories. So I am more looking for people who have, who we’re experts or who have insights or who have survivor stories that are a little bit more inspirational and not such, you know, a down type story so you know and the reason I bring that up is just because when you think about. You’re pitching yourselves to us, you really need to think about the media and your pitching to because what a republic reporter’s looking for is going to be very different from what a magazine or reporters looking for or the T.V are reporters looking for. Ivy Hartman: Great point. We do balance our client and also so that we aren’t just doing, it’s funny because I think from the perspective of a lot of business owners we hear from. They are pitching their story or their brands to us and as a network, we are looking like Christina said, okay, well how does this relate to the trend right now on my mind. All right, I think I’m going to be doing a green story because it’s just hard to get away from it. I don’t think we’re ever going to get away from it, that’s my opinion. Now as a newscaster, I can feed you some good little tid-bits of news. According to REBANK; Women’s Business Enterprise National Council, their members, I know that that’s a different organization, 71% of them; other business owners are saying that they are working to make their businesses green. And the more and more I report on this, University of Maryland is saying that’s over a $104 billion potentially out there if you can market a green product. The more I report on it, the more I find out great ways. I could start a new business on recycling or how I could do something like that but even more so, I’m talking to women business owners and small business and they are so conscientious and I think with that we play that double role quite often about okay. We care about the double line and so when you start talking about the success of women business when I, in my research, it’s been great. I’m making profits but I’m also a little concern about the people who work for me or giving back to my community so that double bottom line. Now we’re adding a triple layer with the planet into our bottom line of our businesses and I feel but this is my personal opinion in talking to other women that we almost feel like, I don’t know if any of you feel that way. That responsibility or that burden is being put on because women in general kind of care a little bit more or we’re just going to be the ones who actually take the initiative and do it. I’m not to say that men and male business owners won’t. Are you guys reporting on, I know that you’ve got some green trends on both of your entities and how are these business owners kind of getting integrated into those stories for your publications? Christina Leonard: Well, green is a hot topic so if you do green things, make sure that you let us know that you’re doing most green things. I think that for the magazine, you know, every year with both magazines will have a green issue. It’s a great way to get your business featured if you’re doing something especially different or you know, something interesting, new so greens always going to be a topic for us. It’s sort of one of those red flag areas. If you send a release, it’s got green stuff, I will almost always, I have a whole tickler full of green stories so that’s constantly on my radar screen. Same thing with the Republic, very into the green stuff, you know and we consistently share information so, I love green stories, love to hear about business doing, like I said, new exciting thing. And even if you don’t think that it’s something that you know, you’re, maybe it’s not your main focus. The fact that you do it and can be what we call a real person, you know, just a normal business owner who has incorporated green things into their business and maybe it’s not, you know, you’re totally solar or you know, what not. Even that kind of helps us because we’re looking for a broad range of people. We’re looking for you know, a heavy duty green people and we’re also looking for people who you know, might do a little bit each day but to show that you care about the environment and all that stuff; we want to hear about it. Rebecca Weeks: Yeah. I think of that as well on the point of, even if it’s little things. I think everybody gets a value of going green but nobody has expressed you know, that there has been a lot of counteraction items in terms of just the individual and so what we wanted to do but then our sustainability section on the DivineCaroline was be able to offer some really tangible tips. Some daily advice and so a part of the community called ideal bite, b, I, t, e and they offer just daily tips like things you can do in your home or you know, with your lawn or teach your kids and things like that. That was great partnership. Also worked with the company called SustainLane, based on San Francisco where we are and they are huge resource for going green and so I really look at it in terms of going to experts who know the space rather than they have to come up with our own content. The other thing we noticed was that since there is such an interest on the readership side. It interests our advertisers to kind of collaborate within this topic and so we as a media network make our revenue from advertisers and so when our sales team went out to speak to Chevy about their advertising campaign on our site. We said, it was in March and we were getting ready for April, we said let’s do like a mother earth day campaign and talk about you know, fuel efficient cars and things like that. So it’s a perfect tie end where we could create some literally green advertisements for Chevy and include them across our site, get people interested and also link to the various stories that were relevant. So it’s a great opportunity for Chevy to have this kind of sponsored content and really contextual advertising placement for us Ivy Hartman: I’m going to head on about how we choose our content based on those things. We because sometimes can, just like you yourselves, sometimes you probably feel like you’re consumed about being the office unless you’re an outdoor person that entails your business, entails you to be out at the office a lot so I rely a lot on press releases or e-mails or different things like that. Or other website like you mentioned, other website resources that you can partner with or I can, oh you know. I can borrow some of that information. What we are looking for; experts and how can point yourself as an expert in any area. It doesn’t have to be necessarily about your business so we’re talking about business trends here so maybe you’re an expert on your business but how does that relate to the business trend of the green, greening or green economy. How does that relate to the economy in general, are you a survivor or I’ve survived 14 years and here’s what makes me an expert. So that’s why we’re looking for those interviews from you ladies and that’s how you can market yourself to us. The other thing is there are other trends that we’re going to cover; cloud computing boomer entrepreneurs or a couple of other things that came up for us. As woman on the go, we back track a little bit. So as an expert, you can market yourself to SBTV.com. As an expert, you can provide content as a business owner on our website as well so you can join our community at SBTV.com and become part of our community, share your expert advice with other business owners, gain expert advice from other small business owners. But also eventually, once we build that relationship with you, you’ll see that we have expert advisors where they come in to our studio and do interviews. Great publicity, it’s a great resource for your business also so that’s a way of starting a relationship with us personally and you start building that relationship. I used to be a college peer councilor and I told the kids, I tell these high school as I said, “you really want to get into a high school, sending that vocation’s great” so sending that press release is okay and following up is even better. But if you go for a campus visit or use an e-mail to that commission’s councilor, all those demonstrated interests are going to pay off in the long run. I find that for SBTV.com. I’m sure you guys have probably file. And you DivineCaroline is interactive so are definitely providing the content. Ladies, how many of you are finding that your iPhone or your PDA has made your life lot easier? How many—how many of you think it’s actually made your life a lot harder? Yeah. I think that we’re constantly writing to that in your guys publication as well as how do we balance those things. And I think they met a business owner here who’s offering a service; you can get your faxes on you phone, your PDA. Yeah, so what I said, I said that’s great and she said it’s really inexpensive, I said wonderful. I said but at what point do we drive a line. And here’s what I know, PDA’s and iPhones, since last year for women have doubled to 10.4 million items being sold in million dollars and sales. It has just doubled in one year because we’re finding ways to try to make our lives easier on the go. So we’re talking about cloud computing and I know that Rebecca, you mentioned that you hear a lot from, a lot of your readers about this topic and I’m sure you’ve got some advice from some of them and also where do think you see this trend going and also Christina, maybe you guys are kind of heading on that where you see this trend going for future as use for your magazine. Rebecca Weeks: Yeah. I mean, so before launching Real Girls Media, I was actually, it was sort of a trend forecaster for media and entertainment so I know a lot about these emerging platforms and what’s really happening is that, it’s kind of the age of everyone having add because it’s, you know, it’s extremely interactive. Everything these days is kind of, I call it like snacking, everything is really quick and fast and short and sweet especially if you notice what your children or what the younger demographic. You know, they are not watching a long programming or reading these traditional print publications or even newspapers, they are getting really fast, quick insights and so what’s happening in sort of this interactive media world is that. These platforms are allowing you to communicate on the go and also contribute your own voice and so it’s really allowed people to elevate their voice. And I think what’s interesting about cloud computing is, I think the best example is Wikipedia. There are more people on Wikipedia in one day than purchase a product online. I mean that is just fascinating, the fact that Wikipedia is all based on information that people like yourselves has contributed and then that information’s kind of embedded through quality control but that’s really the future of the web as people coming together and sharing their insights on one place. And the way that you can kind of contribute to that is, Ivy was talking earlier about how people can become experts. Well you don’t necessarily have to publish a book or you know, have a professional speakers agents to your bureau. You know, positioning you as an expert, you can actually establish yourself as one and so when people come to me saying, “hi I’m an expert and starting my own business” or and you know, diet and fitness, I’ll say, “well show me some examples.” And that’s I think, which really important for you all is to have some places on the web or in publications where you have expressed your voice and you have shown and demonstrated your insights. So whether it’s starting a blog on a specific industry or topic or having being included in a particular article, having those press releases or creating your own content like on online video and things like that. Those are items that you can actually pass on to other people that demonstrate that you are an expert in your particular field. Christina Leonard: Okay. This is a tough one for us because wit cloud computing, we don’t necessarily cover it as a trend and an issue and we do it in a way that we, you know, we offer a work, life balance, you know, a story, every issue about that and you know. We cover the latest created gadgets and you know things to make your life easier. But it’s also one of those things that we know it’s here, we know it’s here to stay, it’s only going to get worse, our lives our going to get crazier and how we deal with that and you know for the magazine, that’s one of those things that we just decide, okay, we’ve got to go with the flow. We understand that you know, attentions spans are shorter, you know, how can we still get out there and so some of things we’ve done; we started a newsletter for Arizona Woman. And you know, our website now is starting to have immediate feeds for fresh stories so we’re trying to offer different content so for those of you who are connected all the time can really hop in to us anytime you want and so it’s kind of a, a two way street. It’s like you might want all the information that we’ve got or we’re still going to you know, we’re going to give it to you as much as we can in every way, shape, form, possible so it’s a— Ivy Hartman: Here’s an interesting thing, listen, I know I put you on the spot Christina but as we are on the go, I found myself, I didn’t have time to sit down and really look at a magazine until I sat on the airplane. You know, I was either working or I was hey looking at the magazine. So as far as that trend goes, I know that online advertising is going up and I know as business owners, you guys are looking at advertising but you want to get your name and the media other ways without having to necessarily pay for it. So are you seeing your content and your readership go up online as a result of people being on the go or what are you seeing because you’re a statewide publication? Christina Leonard: I don’t know that, we just started offering more content online so I don’t know if it’s like dragging it but we do have you know, AZ-central is part of our publication and you know, we get millions of millions of hits and it grows, it seems every single month. So we know more and more people are going online for their information there. For us it’s just figuring out as a magazine, how do we force them to sit in the bathtub you know and turn off the TV and turn off the computer, sit down with us and we’ve got the offer. Rebecca Weeks: Let me give a real challenge with this print publications is how to balance their businesses because there are still value and you know, having that touching feel in your hand but there is also the need to connect with people where they are spending the majority of time which is on the internet. And as more women come on to the internet, that’s really the future so various partners of mine that I work with, for example, PINK Magazine which I absolutely love and Working Mother Magazine have noticed their shift ands they are very scared and they are having to hire more people who are knowledgeable in online space. I mean just sort of the traditional type print writers and editors so I think it’s really important that people start you know, hiring or leveraging consultants whoever is in the online space to give you that information that you need to prepare for the future because you have to have an online presence no matter who you are. Ivy Hartman: Okay, I. Forgive me Christina this might take you out a loop time in if it does not you know. But I want to touch a little bit on different platforms of media for you so we’re an online video resource television on the internet. DivineCaroline is in internet and interactive website for you. How many of you have done a podcast? Absolutely, wonderful, about a third of you, a podcast is put on the internet. You can link that to a website. You can listen to it on demand anytime you want. You could also in many cases put in on your mp3 player, your ipod, whatever it is and access that. So that’s one platform, podcasting, blogging, we talked a little bit about that that on our site and also on DivineCaroline, you can do some blogging. So there’s interactive but you’re getting your face out there. You can put a picture on our website and say what I do and blog about whatever it is. And the key with blogging, I know you ladies know this. What are some of the keys to blogging? Keep it fresh what’s that, keep it going, keep it short, keywords, what are people searching. So my CEO or myself will be blogging about something but guess what its going have in the blog. Something about sex in the city, what because it’s billion dollar movie, I mean it’s a huge hit so consider that too when you’re talking about getting your name in different forms or platforms of media. Maybe you want a piggyback on the platform of media, Rebecca. Rebecca Weeks: Yeah. One more thing I’ll address when you mentioned the word face. I thought it’s something that we absolutely have to discuss is the face book generation and if you don’t know what Facebook is, it’s basically a social media platform and this is the direction that the web is going into more of a social web. So before the web consisted of professionals creating stories in there was you know a book of them, kind of considered mass media. Now it has moved into a lot of various websites and communities where people are expressing themselves as we’ve talked about today. Face book is a community so a social interactive website where people maintain profile pages. Similar to face book, there is MySpace, Bebo and hi-fi and DivineCaroline is a community. Ladies who have launched, so websites like that and what’s important fort that is the, into way to get exposure for your business as well so you can have profile page for yourself and have regular feats and news feats and find out what your friends are reading, what cities they are visiting. You can connect with former colleagues or room mates, things like that but you can also start a profile page for your business so I know a lot of small business owners that have actually benefited and gained increase exposure just by being on these platforms so it’s basically the online version of a mall or a book club or the junior league because it’s where everyone is kind of collectively spending their time on the web social life. Ivy Hartman: I know you’re generating several questions as we talk. Write those down, we’re getting to that question and answer period just in a few minutes. I came up with some of these trends, like I said before just on some of the different topics that I’ve been reporting on and so I was being a little selfish when I chose this. But the last topic that I’m finding a lot about and that I’m interested in hearing it in hearing it from other small business owners about is the boomer entrepreneur generation. So we’ve got 76 million people who are set to retire over the next, what 20 years, possibly, maybe less, probably less. Five and a half million have already of the work force or business owners I should say are over 50. And they started their business over 50. So and that’s growing. Whether it’s because some people over 50 are losing their jobs and that’s what they are deciding to do or they are just tired of working in corporate America, that’s where we’re leading and so if you’ve got topics or an expert advice or a story to share that’s kind of where that’s going. If you guys have anything to add about that, what about other business trends that you guys, I mean, Christina I’m interested in knowing what we’re going to see in the future even though we can’t all get our hands on Arizona Woman unless we go online. Christina Leonard: We can. Ivy Hartman: We can. We can subscribe. Christina Leonard: Through subscription. Ivy Hartman: Okay. Then what can we see in coming issues as far as business trend go or trends for women. Christina Leonard: You know, I think, some of the topics that you’ve hit on I think generation X and how you incorporate generation X into the workplace, that’s a big one. For us, especially being here in Arizona immigration’s always going to be hot. What’s going on with that? The economy, I think, with Arizona Woman, we’re also very big on giving back and then we’ll always be a place in the magazine for that part of it and how you incorporate giving back to the community into your business and the economy like you said, just hot things like that and for Arizona Woman, you know, we have a unique niche in this community to where, there’s no other magazine that does exactly what we do. And so a lot of what you’ll find with our—our project is we do unique projects. We have the Million Dollar Club coming up which spotlights women own businesses in the state that have revenues of a million dollars or more. We do best work places. We do you know, a woman who are going to change the state, things like that that you might not necessarily find in other kinds of publication. Ivy Hartman: I know, just have been reading it too, you do a feature about a woman in business and then it’s, is that a consistent segment, what’s in her bag? Christina Leonard: Oh yeah. That’s yeah. It’s usually on the very back page. Ivy Hartman: Yeah, yeah, it talks about a dancer. A woman who owns a dance company, what’s in this woman’s bag, a needle and dental floss so she can stitch together her purse? I hope I never ever get asked the question. Rebecca, what do we have coming up? What are you talking about content and how is that going to change in the coming months? Rebecca Weeks: Yeah I mean we don’t necessarily position the site based on themes except for more timely matter like our mother earth day campaign or father’s day or something like that and the election. But I guess more in generally what I’ve noticed from the readership on our site is that relationships continue to be our strongest category. So among the nine, really managing you know, emotions and your family and balancing your life. I mean, most women will tell you that that’s the hardest part of their life are balancing all aspects that they want to and nobody really feels like they have a good handle on that. So that’s been an important area for us and I think sex in the city really talked into that while it was fun for the fashion aspect. I think that really shows that you know single women are having a hard time right now especially the ones raising families. So that’s been an important part of our business. And then constantly just empowering, so stories that, you know, women have had success on their own in our career section and launching their own business and you know, finding a deal and a car on negotiating. Things that really show that the world has moved on to support women; these are always great stories and get a ton of traffic and viewer ship on our site. Ivy Hartman: Great. Right before we open it up to you.

Small Business Television Network

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Host: My pleasure to welcome this panel and the moderator Ivy Hartman from SBTV.com, so please join me in welcoming Ivy.

Ivy Hartman: Honesty is seriously my worst flaw and imply and best asset ladies, so I’ll be up front with you. I although I’m expert in public speaking, reporting, anchoring, all those great things, not so much when it comes to moderating a panel, so this is my first opportunity to do this and I’m really happy to be here on behalf of SBTV.com. And I’m really excited to meet some wonderful women, Rebecca Weeks is the business Director of Development for Real Girls Media Network. And Christina Leonard who is the editor in chief for Arizona Woman and a biz-AZ, which is another publication that she’s in charge of that, is all under the Arizona Republic Umbrella.

And we’ll let them talk a little bit about their companies and I’ll tell you a little more at SBTV.com after they have introduced themselves a little bit more in depth.

Christina Leonard: I, like she said, I’m the editor of Arizona Woman and biz-AZ and if you’re not familiar with this publications; Arizona Woman is a magazine that’s been in our community for a little over 20-years. It’s a business magazine for women. We love showcasing women just like you in magazine. We’ve got lots of different collected different feature; we’ve focused on stories about your life, your career and your community. Biz-AZ is another one of our publications. It also comes up by monthly. It is a magazine for entrepreneurs and we like to sort of package them together. Arizona Woman comes up, you know, it’s the January, biz-AZ comes out February. They have slightly different target audiences but are both business magazine, like she said we’re own by Arizona Republic so I work through the business desk in the Arizona Republic Newsroom. I’ve been there for about 11-years and it’s a lot of fun.

Rebecca Weeks: Good morning, my name is Rebecca Weeks. I’m the director of Business Development at Real Girls Media. I’m excited to be here. Real Girls Media is a media network for women. We were founded in mid-2006 so we’re still a baby company or maybe we’re a toddler or I guess you could say. We wanted to build the leading destinations for women on the web and what makes us really unique, we launched our first website called Divine Caroline, d, I, v, I, n, e, caroline.com. We wanted to build a publication for women that actually included everyday women’s voices so we look like an online magazine with articles and videos about travel and healthy living and recipes and parenting topics and things. But we also incorporate the user experience in which we empower people to share their own stories so we felt like there was a void on the web where there was no way for a woman to contribute her thoughts and share her stories in a very simplified way.

So you’ll note that a lot of people have blogs and a lot of people have started their own websites but we felt like the majority of women out there don’t have time to maintain a blog and so they come to Divine Caroline to share their experiences and their thoughts and their stories. So we launched our site on February 2007 and it has been a whirlwind, we are now the 18th largest web community for adult women and looking forward to telling you all about some of the best practices I learned in marketing this site and getting some awareness to influential women such as yourselves, slinging businesses and trying to just make connections with other woman.

Ivy Hartman: Thank you Rebecca and thank you Christina and back to SBTV.com, we, Susan Wilson Solovic is our CEO so we’re women on business. My role for SBTV.com is, as I mentioned before, mostly in a reporting, producing, anchoring, kind of role and then I get to—. I’ve been to this, my second year at NAWBO and I really love meeting all of you and being inspired by many of you because I’m also a mother and a free lance reporter so I kind of own my own business as well.

SBTV.com is the only online video resource that is tailored directly to the small business owner. So we’ve got online news and information all in the video content but we’ve also tailored it so that it’s on demand so it’s when you need it and when you have time to listen to it or watch it, we’re also launching our own radio network and we’ll get into a little bit more about how you can become part of SBTV.com and get your businesses on the online resource as well.

We, what I did is I came up with a few trends and topics that I found as a reporter recently and some words on the street, you know because of my poor hair I never take that hat off so I made a brunch with my family, on mother’s day for example. And my mother in law may say, “you know, I don’t think there is a recession, why do keep saying there is a recession? You’re in the media.” And so that was kind of one of the topics I came up with, with the economy.

As woman business owners, maybe you’re feeling a pinch, maybe you’re not. We’re going to talk a little bit about where we come up with some of that content and how we’re tailoring our content around that and I’m going to start out just really quick so that I can give an example. In the news which what I primarily concentrate on, I’m talking to small business owners. I’m also researching a lot of what a lot of the pulse and surveys that these professional organizations are taking and its saying, “hey listen, our confidence in the economy is dropping.” I mean out the bottom, dropping.

As small business owners though on the other hand, I am still hiring. I can’t find them, people to fill my positions. So there is a contradiction there. Businesses still coming in enough that small businesses are growing but also small business owners and woman business owners are feeling like, ‘I don’t know that the economy is moving forward and my confidence is weaning.’ How do you guys, are you guys covering any of those topics in your and how do you get information for that content on your sites.

Rebecca Weeks: So we have a category, one of nine called Career and Money where we address what’s happening in the business world and women can share their experiences and how they are struggling with either their independently and businesses where they can talk about some of the fears they have around. Their business going under, lay offs or things like that so we have noticed an increase in the amount of stories that are being contributed talking about the recession. But we also wanted to develop some content initially in the form of articles or text based that address some of these kind of timely topics and so one of them is called Diary of a cheapskate. And so we have a woman and in house writer who talks about ways that she kind of cuts corners, not really fun and it makes it more down to earth. And then we have another one, we have a writer in our fashion section that talked about; she’s an ongoing column about “Sex and the (Recession Hit) City.” And she talks about the items that she really wants but can’t necessarily afford right now.

So those are some aspects of things we’re doing internally within the company and then we also noticed that, you know, women are feeling very vulnerable right now and they love just little perks and little rewards for their family. And so we decided to have a sweepstakes and ongoing monthly sweepstakes where to be able to enter to win, you type in a comment to a particular what we call like a chitchat and so we start with the theme and we say, you know, what’s your worse fashion day or something that you wore that you really regret. And people type in a few synopses and then they register to win a $500.00 piece of gift card and this has dramatically increased the number of registered users on our site because people basically are really biased to do that. So I highly recommend kind of incorporating those types of things to know, kind of what are their emotions surrounding this business atmosphere and then being able to empower people through that.

Ivy Hartman: I’m going to talk to you a little bit, sort of along at your, how we would cover the economy. How you could be on a radar screens for both—I’ll look at this both from the Arizona Republic side as well as the business magazine side.

Christina Leonard: We’re two totally different products and as well as azcentral.com which is the Republic’s website as well. The republic will cover source about the economy when a study comes out, when there is news happening, when you know, all the indicators shower in a recession. Those reporters will look quickly to the sources they know and they are aware for, for examples so we can put those, you know, put you all in the news to fit that particular story.

For the magazines, we’re not so much going to cover the economy on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis because we only come out every other month so the purposes of our magazines are really to be that helpful kind of resource for you. We offer lots of tips, lots of advice, success stories. So I am more looking for people who have, who we’re experts or who have insights or who have survivor stories that are a little bit more inspirational and not such, you know, a down type story so you know and the reason I bring that up is just because when you think about. You’re pitching yourselves to us, you really need to think about the media and your pitching to because what a republic reporter’s looking for is going to be very different from what a magazine or reporters looking for or the T.V are reporters looking for.

Ivy Hartman: Great point. We do balance our client and also so that we aren’t just doing, it’s funny because I think from the perspective of a lot of business owners we hear from. They are pitching their story or their brands to us and as a network, we are looking like Christina said, okay, well how does this relate to the trend right now on my mind. All right, I think I’m going to be doing a green story because it’s just hard to get away from it. I don’t think we’re ever going to get away from it, that’s my opinion.

Now as a newscaster, I can feed you some good little tid-bits of news. According to REBANK; Women’s Business Enterprise National Council, their members, I know that that’s a different organization, 71% of them; other business owners are saying that they are working to make their businesses green. And the more and more I report on this, University of Maryland is saying that’s over a $104 billion potentially out there if you can market a green product. The more I report on it, the more I find out great ways. I could start a new business on recycling or how I could do something like that but even more so, I’m talking to women business owners and small business and they are so conscientious and I think with that we play that double role quite often about okay. We care about the double line and so when you start talking about the success of women business when I, in my research, it’s been great.

I’m making profits but I’m also a little concern about the people who work for me or giving back to my community so that double bottom line. Now we’re adding a triple layer with the planet into our bottom line of our businesses and I feel but this is my personal opinion in talking to other women that we almost feel like, I don’t know if any of you feel that way. That responsibility or that burden is being put on because women in general kind of care a little bit more or we’re just going to be the ones who actually take the initiative and do it. I’m not to say that men and male business owners won’t. Are you guys reporting on, I know that you’ve got some green trends on both of your entities and how are these business owners kind of getting integrated into those stories for your publications?

Christina Leonard: Well, green is a hot topic so if you do green things, make sure that you let us know that you’re doing most green things. I think that for the magazine, you know, every year with both magazines will have a green issue. It’s a great way to get your business featured if you’re doing something especially different or you know, something interesting, new so greens always going to be a topic for us. It’s sort of one of those red flag areas. If you send a release, it’s got green stuff, I will almost always, I have a whole tickler full of green stories so that’s constantly on my radar screen.

Same thing with the Republic, very into the green stuff, you know and we consistently share information so, I love green stories, love to hear about business doing, like I said, new exciting thing. And even if you don’t think that it’s something that you know, you’re, maybe it’s not your main focus. The fact that you do it and can be what we call a real person, you know, just a normal business owner who has incorporated green things into their business and maybe it’s not, you know, you’re totally solar or you know, what not. Even that kind of helps us because we’re looking for a broad range of people. We’re looking for you know, a heavy duty green people and we’re also looking for people who you know, might do a little bit each day but to show that you care about the environment and all that stuff; we want to hear about it.

Rebecca Weeks: Yeah. I think of that as well on the point of, even if it’s little things. I think everybody gets a value of going green but nobody has expressed you know, that there has been a lot of counteraction items in terms of just the individual and so what we wanted to do but then our sustainability section on the DivineCaroline was be able to offer some really tangible tips. Some daily advice and so a part of the community called ideal bite, b, I, t, e and they offer just daily tips like things you can do in your home or you know, with your lawn or teach your kids and things like that. That was great partnership. Also worked with the company called SustainLane, based on San Francisco where we are and they are huge resource for going green and so I really look at it in terms of going to experts who know the space rather than they have to come up with our own content.

The other thing we noticed was that since there is such an interest on the readership side. It interests our advertisers to kind of collaborate within this topic and so we as a media network make our revenue from advertisers and so when our sales team went out to speak to Chevy about their advertising campaign on our site. We said, it was in March and we were getting ready for April, we said let’s do like a mother earth day campaign and talk about you know, fuel efficient cars and things like that. So it’s a perfect tie end where we could create some literally green advertisements for Chevy and include them across our site, get people interested and also link to the various stories that were relevant. So it’s a great opportunity for Chevy to have this kind of sponsored content and really contextual advertising placement for us

Ivy Hartman: I’m going to head on about how we choose our content based on those things. We because sometimes can, just like you yourselves, sometimes you probably feel like you’re consumed about being the office unless you’re an outdoor person that entails your business, entails you to be out at the office a lot so I rely a lot on press releases or e-mails or different things like that. Or other website like you mentioned, other website resources that you can partner with or I can, oh you know. I can borrow some of that information. What we are looking for; experts and how can point yourself as an expert in any area. It doesn’t have to be necessarily about your business so we’re talking about business trends here so maybe you’re an expert on your business but how does that relate to the business trend of the green, greening or green economy. How does that relate to the economy in general, are you a survivor or I’ve survived 14 years and here’s what makes me an expert. So that’s why we’re looking for those interviews from you ladies and that’s how you can market yourself to us.

The other thing is there are other trends that we’re going to cover; cloud computing boomer entrepreneurs or a couple of other things that came up for us. As woman on the go, we back track a little bit. So as an expert, you can market yourself to SBTV.com. As an expert, you can provide content as a business owner on our website as well so you can join our community at SBTV.com and become part of our community, share your expert advice with other business owners, gain expert advice from other small business owners. But also eventually, once we build that relationship with you, you’ll see that we have expert advisors where they come in to our studio and do interviews. Great publicity, it’s a great resource for your business also so that’s a way of starting a relationship with us personally and you start building that relationship.

I used to be a college peer councilor and I told the kids, I tell these high school as I said, “you really want to get into a high school, sending that vocation’s great” so sending that press release is okay and following up is even better. But if you go for a campus visit or use an e-mail to that commission’s councilor, all those demonstrated interests are going to pay off in the long run. I find that for SBTV.com. I’m sure you guys have probably file. And you DivineCaroline is interactive so are definitely providing the content.

Ladies, how many of you are finding that your iPhone or your PDA has made your life lot easier? How many—how many of you think it’s actually made your life a lot harder? Yeah.

I think that we’re constantly writing to that in your guys publication as well as how do we balance those things. And I think they met a business owner here who’s offering a service; you can get your faxes on you phone, your PDA. Yeah, so what I said, I said that’s great and she said it’s really inexpensive, I said wonderful. I said but at what point do we drive a line. And here’s what I know, PDA’s and iPhones, since last year for women have doubled to 10.4 million items being sold in million dollars and sales. It has just doubled in one year because we’re finding ways to try to make our lives easier on the go. So we’re talking about cloud computing and I know that Rebecca, you mentioned that you hear a lot from, a lot of your readers about this topic and I’m sure you’ve got some advice from some of them and also where do think you see this trend going and also Christina, maybe you guys are kind of heading on that where you see this trend going for future as use for your magazine.

Rebecca Weeks: Yeah. I mean, so before launching Real Girls Media, I was actually, it was sort of a trend forecaster for media and entertainment so I know a lot about these emerging platforms and what’s really happening is that, it’s kind of the age of everyone having add because it’s, you know, it’s extremely interactive. Everything these days is kind of, I call it like snacking, everything is really quick and fast and short and sweet especially if you notice what your children or what the younger demographic. You know, they are not watching a long programming or reading these traditional print publications or even newspapers, they are getting really fast, quick insights and so what’s happening in sort of this interactive media world is that. These platforms are allowing you to communicate on the go and also contribute your own voice and so it’s really allowed people to elevate their voice. And I think what’s interesting about cloud computing is, I think the best example is Wikipedia. There are more people on Wikipedia in one day than purchase a product online. I mean that is just fascinating, the fact that Wikipedia is all based on information that people like yourselves has contributed and then that information’s kind of embedded through quality control but that’s really the future of the web as people coming together and sharing their insights on one place.

And the way that you can kind of contribute to that is, Ivy was talking earlier about how people can become experts. Well you don’t necessarily have to publish a book or you know, have a professional speakers agents to your bureau. You know, positioning you as an expert, you can actually establish yourself as one and so when people come to me saying, “hi I’m an expert and starting my own business” or and you know, diet and fitness, I’ll say, “well show me some examples.” And that’s I think, which really important for you all is to have some places on the web or in publications where you have expressed your voice and you have shown and demonstrated your insights. So whether it’s starting a blog on a specific industry or topic or having being included in a particular article, having those press releases or creating your own content like on online video and things like that. Those are items that you can actually pass on to other people that demonstrate that you are an expert in your particular field.

Christina Leonard: Okay. This is a tough one for us because wit cloud computing, we don’t necessarily cover it as a trend and an issue and we do it in a way that we, you know, we offer a work, life balance, you know, a story, every issue about that and you know. We cover the latest created gadgets and you know things to make your life easier. But it’s also one of those things that we know it’s here, we know it’s here to stay, it’s only going to get worse, our lives our going to get crazier and how we deal with that and you know for the magazine, that’s one of those things that we just decide, okay, we’ve got to go with the flow. We understand that you know, attentions spans are shorter, you know, how can we still get out there and so some of things we’ve done; we started a newsletter for Arizona Woman. And you know, our website now is starting to have immediate feeds for fresh stories so we’re trying to offer different content so for those of you who are connected all the time can really hop in to us anytime you want and so it’s kind of a, a two way street. It’s like you might want all the information that we’ve got or we’re still going to you know, we’re going to give it to you as much as we can in every way, shape, form, possible so it’s a—

Ivy Hartman: Here’s an interesting thing, listen, I know I put you on the spot Christina but as we are on the go, I found myself, I didn’t have time to sit down and really look at a magazine until I sat on the airplane. You know, I was either working or I was hey looking at the magazine. So as far as that trend goes, I know that online advertising is going up and I know as business owners, you guys are looking at advertising but you want to get your name and the media other ways without having to necessarily pay for it. So are you seeing your content and your readership go up online as a result of people being on the go or what are you seeing because you’re a statewide publication?

Christina Leonard: I don’t know that, we just started offering more content online so I don’t know if it’s like dragging it but we do have you know, AZ-central is part of our publication and you know, we get millions of millions of hits and it grows, it seems every single month. So we know more and more people are going online for their information there. For us it’s just figuring out as a magazine, how do we force them to sit in the bathtub you know and turn off the TV and turn off the computer, sit down with us and we’ve got the offer.

Rebecca Weeks: Let me give a real challenge with this print publications is how to balance their businesses because there are still value and you know, having that touching feel in your hand but there is also the need to connect with people where they are spending the majority of time which is on the internet. And as more women come on to the internet, that’s really the future so various partners of mine that I work with, for example, PINK Magazine which I absolutely love and Working Mother Magazine have noticed their shift ands they are very scared and they are having to hire more people who are knowledgeable in online space. I mean just sort of the traditional type print writers and editors so I think it’s really important that people start you know, hiring or leveraging consultants whoever is in the online space to give you that information that you need to prepare for the future because you have to have an online presence no matter who you are.

Ivy Hartman: Okay, I. Forgive me Christina this might take you out a loop time in if it does not you know. But I want to touch a little bit on different platforms of media for you so we’re an online video resource television on the internet. DivineCaroline is in internet and interactive website for you. How many of you have done a podcast?

Absolutely, wonderful, about a third of you, a podcast is put on the internet. You can link that to a website. You can listen to it on demand anytime you want. You could also in many cases put in on your mp3 player, your ipod, whatever it is and access that. So that’s one platform, podcasting, blogging, we talked a little bit about that that on our site and also on DivineCaroline, you can do some blogging. So there’s interactive but you’re getting your face out there. You can put a picture on our website and say what I do and blog about whatever it is.

And the key with blogging, I know you ladies know this. What are some of the keys to blogging? Keep it fresh what’s that, keep it going, keep it short, keywords, what are people searching. So my CEO or myself will be blogging about something but guess what its going have in the blog. Something about sex in the city, what because it’s billion dollar movie, I mean it’s a huge hit so consider that too when you’re talking about getting your name in different forms or platforms of media. Maybe you want a piggyback on the platform of media, Rebecca.

Rebecca Weeks: Yeah. One more thing I’ll address when you mentioned the word face. I thought it’s something that we absolutely have to discuss is the face book generation and if you don’t know what Facebook is, it’s basically a social media platform and this is the direction that the web is going into more of a social web. So before the web consisted of professionals creating stories in there was you know a book of them, kind of considered mass media. Now it has moved into a lot of various websites and communities where people are expressing themselves as we’ve talked about today.

Face book is a community so a social interactive website where people maintain profile pages. Similar to face book, there is MySpace, Bebo and hi-fi and DivineCaroline is a community. Ladies who have launched, so websites like that and what’s important fort that is the, into way to get exposure for your business as well so you can have profile page for yourself and have regular feats and news feats and find out what your friends are reading, what cities they are visiting. You can connect with former colleagues or room mates, things like that but you can also start a profile page for your business so I know a lot of small business owners that have actually benefited and gained increase exposure just by being on these platforms so it’s basically the online version of a mall or a book club or the junior league because it’s where everyone is kind of collectively spending their time on the web social life.

Ivy Hartman: I know you’re generating several questions as we talk. Write those down, we’re getting to that question and answer period just in a few minutes. I came up with some of these trends, like I said before just on some of the different topics that I’ve been reporting on and so I was being a little selfish when I chose this. But the last topic that I’m finding a lot about and that I’m interested in hearing it in hearing it from other small business owners about is the boomer entrepreneur generation.

So we’ve got 76 million people who are set to retire over the next, what 20 years, possibly, maybe less, probably less. Five and a half million have already of the work force or business owners I should say are over 50. And they started their business over 50. So and that’s growing. Whether it’s because some people over 50 are losing their jobs and that’s what they are deciding to do or they are just tired of working in corporate America, that’s where we’re leading and so if you’ve got topics or an expert advice or a story to share that’s kind of where that’s going.

If you guys have anything to add about that, what about other business trends that you guys, I mean, Christina I’m interested in knowing what we’re going to see in the future even though we can’t all get our hands on Arizona Woman unless we go online.

Christina Leonard: We can.

Ivy Hartman: We can. We can subscribe.

Christina Leonard: Through subscription.

Ivy Hartman: Okay. Then what can we see in coming issues as far as business trend go or trends for women.

Christina Leonard: You know, I think, some of the topics that you’ve hit on I think generation X and how you incorporate generation X into the workplace, that’s a big one. For us, especially being here in Arizona immigration’s always going to be hot. What’s going on with that? The economy, I think, with Arizona Woman, we’re also very big on giving back and then we’ll always be a place in the magazine for that part of it and how you incorporate giving back to the community into your business and the economy like you said, just hot things like that and for Arizona Woman, you know, we have a unique niche in this community to where, there’s no other magazine that does exactly what we do. And so a lot of what you’ll find with our—our project is we do unique projects. We have the Million Dollar Club coming up which spotlights women own businesses in the state that have revenues of a million dollars or more. We do best work places. We do you know, a woman who are going to change the state, things like that that you might not necessarily find in other kinds of publication.

Ivy Hartman: I know, just have been reading it too, you do a feature about a woman in business and then it’s, is that a consistent segment, what’s in her bag?

Christina Leonard: Oh yeah. That’s yeah. It’s usually on the very back page.

Ivy Hartman: Yeah, yeah, it talks about a dancer. A woman who owns a dance company, what’s in this woman’s bag, a needle and dental floss so she can stitch together her purse? I hope I never ever get asked the question. Rebecca, what do we have coming up? What are you talking about content and how is that going to change in the coming months?

Rebecca Weeks: Yeah I mean we don’t necessarily position the site based on themes except for more timely matter like our mother earth day campaign or father’s day or something like that and the election. But I guess more in generally what I’ve noticed from the readership on our site is that relationships continue to be our strongest category. So among the nine, really managing you know, emotions and your family and balancing your life.

I mean, most women will tell you that that’s the hardest part of their life are balancing all aspects that they want to and nobody really feels like they have a good handle on that. So that’s been an important area for us and I think sex in the city really talked into that while it was fun for the fashion aspect. I think that really shows that you know single women are having a hard time right now especially the ones raising families. So that’s been an important part of our business. And then constantly just empowering, so stories that, you know, women have had success on their own in our career section and launching their own business and you know, finding a deal and a car on negotiating. Things that really show that the world has moved on to support women; these are always great stories and get a ton of traffic and viewer ship on our site.

Ivy Hartman: Great. Right before we open it up to you.

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