GreenSmith Consulting

Care2: The Social Network Most Green Businesses Miss

With the recent release of the film The Social Network, a lot of attention is being focused on Facebook. But one social network of a different sort and vastly different numbers bears paying attention to if you’re a green business: Care2.

  You’d be in good company if you said you’ve never heard of it. Or dismissed it as a bastion of petition signing activists. But you’d be off the mark and missing out on an important group of people to pay attention to and engage with, that could prove tremendously valuable allies. 

Already a group inclined towards action, both online and in the real world, Care2 incentivizes member participation by awarding points for nearly every action you take on the site, then allowing you to redeem them for things you’d never expect: a toy for a shelter dog. Raising a farm animal humanely. Life saving oral hydration salts. Note the lack of swag for the member themselves.

While at first this may seem counterintuitive, my experience at 3rdWhale Digital Media, a green mobile app developer, showed that many people would prefer beneficial gifts to others and the environment rather than themselves. A surprising and hopeful find, wouldn't you say?

Of greatest interest to green companies is what they call C2NN - Care 2 News Network. 

10 Ways Geolocation is Changing the World

This post was written by Rob Reed. He is the founder of MomentFeed, a location-based marketing, strategy, and technology firm.

Location technologies are transforming how we experience, navigate, and ultimately better our world. From the global to the local, here are #10Ways geolocation is a positive force for good.

Social media has changed the world. It has revolutionized communications on a global scale, and the transformation continues with every status update, blog post, and video stream. The global citizenry has become a global network.

Since becoming widely adopted just a couple years ago, social media has supercharged social action, cause marketing, and social entrepreneurship. Indeed, the true value hasn't been the technology itself but how we've used it. Today, a second wave of innovation is defining a new era and setting the stage for change over the coming decade.

Mobile technologies will extend the global online network to anyone with a mobile device while enabling countless local networks to form in the real world. We've decentralized media production and distribution. We're doing the same for energy. And we'll continue this trend for social networking, social action, and commerce.

The combined forces of smartphones, mobile broadband, and location-aware applications will connect us in more meaningful ways to the people, organizations, events, information, and companies that matter most to us---namely, those within a physical proximity of where we live and where we are. Can location-based services (LBS) change the world? Here are #10Ways:

GreenSmith Sessions #1: Joey Shepp of Earthsite

Somewhere amidst the preparation to move my life 12 hours away to Portland, Oregon, an idea took root: Talk to the people that inspire me, and share it with you. My goal is to have brisk freeform conversations with some of the key influencers, thinkers and doers in the sustainable business realm, and all the neighboring arenas it touches. Rather then be a linear Q & A, I want to  see them be a dynamic dialogue that will give you much food for thought.

It's called GreenSmith Sessions.

My first guest is Joey Shepp, who has been involved in the sustainable business realm in some form or another for the better part of a decade, and presenting engagingly about it at innumerable events. Whether it's leading the technology efforts at Green Festival, running web, design, and social media strategy firm EarthSite, Joey has a lot to say on how technology and green meet, and how to do it effectively. 

We had a far ranging conversation, largely anchored in the social media realm, Joey sharing interesting perspectives on privacy, Facebook, how he sees geolocation based businesses being of use to you and I, and more.

So join me please, for GreenSmith Session #1. 

And please, do share your thoughts, on the content, on the overall presentation, on who you think I should be talking to. I'm all ears!

PS: That article I mentioned talking about youth actually being nearly on par with (rather than jaw droppingly open with) their online privacy, is here. 

>>>Download/Listen to GreenSmith Sessions #1 Joey Shepp

Paul Smith is a sustainable business innovator, the founder of GreenSmith Consulting, blogs weekly on green start ups of note at Triple Pundit and has an MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco. He creates interest in, conversations about, and business for green (and greening) companies, via social media marketing.

Do You Know Your Community? Does the Community Know You?

I believe that we learn best by hearing from many different voices. And in this case, I'm learning along with you in our latest guest post. Like many of you, I use my deep, broad online resources almost exclusively for getting new business, and with the exception of one client, all are from other parts of the country, or even out of the country. Here we have Victoria Klein reminding us to pay attention to and make best use of what's going on right in our local communities, in terms of business, and gives several excellent resources to best explore it. Please share any we've missed, of which I'm sure you know some gems.

The wide wide World Wide Web has become an indispensable business tool in a very short amount of time. Websites, blogs, social media accounts – the way we do business has forever changed … or has it?

No matter how many virtual meetings we share, nothing can replace the importance of talking and collaborating face-to-face. The same concept goes for promoting and growing your business. You can have clients in all parts of the world, but does the mom-and-pop store down the street known what you do? With their own unique needs and perspectives, local residents and businesses are indispensable source for a business of any size. They are the original world of social networking.

But where do you start? How can you bring your knowledge, experience, and services to those who may need you the most – the folks right in your city? The answer is much simpler than the question: walk and talk. Now is the time to put in the time and effort to call or visit local ventures to, at the very least, introduce yourself and pass on a business card.

I’m not encouraging you to walk into this blind. Nor do I want you to desperately try to sell yourself like a telemarketer. Like any important project, step one is research. Delve into your local business community to find those that would benefit the most from you services. Start with:

BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies
Yahoo! Local
GenGreen Life Directory

Seek out local business organizations for advertising opportunities and networking events, which are more common than ever. Use your talents to volunteer with  a local non-profit – another networking goldmine. Don’t overlook any opportunity to talk with a real human about your work: hobby meetups, library events, weekly farmers’ markets, high school reunions … the possibilities are endless.

You don’t need to join yet another website to get the word out about your business – just knock on your neighbor’s door. Watch the 6 degrees of separation in action by joining in and sharing with your local community.

Readers: So, what do you think? What other resources do you use to connect with and learn about your local community and its resources, businesses? Let's talk about it below.

Victoria Klein is a writer, eco-consultant, and photographer who uses her creative interests to explore the delight and difficulty of the human experience, and our effect on the planet. You can read her blog here.

image credit: itzafineday on Flickr

What's in Your Bag?

Sometimes you find inspiration in the most unusual places. This time it showed up at breakfast, in the most humble of origins.

I like to read with my breakfast. Totally against the high minded Ayurvedic digestive principles of my wife Vanessa, aka @CoachVanessa. But my mind needs feeding just like my stomach, and sometimes there's some surprising treats to be found.

Like this morning, with nothing close at hand to read, I began to look at the nearest thing, a bag containing the brown paper lunch bags we use for scooping cat litter in to.

These Safeway Basic Red lunch bags contained a surprise.

Just below the words LUNCH BAGS, it said:

SELF STANDING • FLAT BOTTOM • EASY TO OPEN

I had to laugh, as of course they're all these things. That copywriter must have been bleeding out the ears trying to come up with "features."

But then I thought, If a simple brown paper bag can be stretched to fit such previously un-thought of features, what is there about your company that we should know about that you haven't told us yet? What do you take for granted that we'd see as special, worth supporting? We're waiting.

What is it about your company, your culture, your product, that you take for granted that, when shared with others, would be seen as extraordinary? Help us see what you do, are, or offer that will make our lives better, expands our possibilities, is a boon to the planet, and is just plain a pleasure to experience. And please, don't deal in trivialities, give us something of substance. We'll thank you, and tell others.

And internally, what might be the effect of seeing yourself and your company in a new light? It's a no cost, high benefit endeavor I'd say.

Get to work. And tell us what you come up with, here in the comments.

Paul Smith is a sustainable business innovator, the founder of GreenSmith Consulting, blogs weekly on green start ups of note at Triple Pundit and has an MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco. He creates interest in, conversations about, and business for green (and greening) companies, via social media marketing.