So many people tweeted me wondering why I was vacationing in Ukraine, kidding me about borscht (which wasn’t that bad), asking where Ukraine is and if I had relatives there.

I have no family there, had never even heard of the Dnieper River, and I’m not a history buff.

Nonetheless, I learned so much from the AHI Tavel trip. It was planned as an education with small alumni groups from Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins, Colby College, Northwestern and the University of Washington plus a few stragglers like us.

There were also several hundred Europeans aboard, mostly from France, Germany and Spain.

The best part of the trip? The people in our group were all very pleasant and well educated, the kind of people who like to learn just to know new things! We enjoyed daily lectures from the cruise staff, a Kiev University Professor who talked about politics and the head of Russian studies at Dartmouth. We also visited so many places we’d all been reading about since our childhood. In addition to Kiev, Sevastopol, small river towns and the fascinating Odessa, three side trips stand out:

· Yalta, where Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt decided how Europe would be divided after WWII. I wanted to sit in Churchill’s chair but had to settle for just touching it.

In a way, this was where the Cold War began as Stalin made promises he had no intention of keeping.

· A secret underground submarine base right in the port of Balaklava. The Soviets built it into a mountain in the late forties at great expense and a few months after they finished, the new subs were too long to fit in it. Central planning at its best.

· We had lunch with a family in their home in the middle of nowhere on the banks of the river where we toasted them with Ukrainian Moonshine they’d cooked up themselves.

As a marketer, I couldn’t help notice that:

1. All Ukrainian street stalls seem to sell the same stuff from Kiev to Odessa: the same plates, dolls, paintings, shirts, etc. One creative person would own the tourism souvenir market if they created unique branded items.

2. The people selling in stores and stalls need help in dealing with European and American customers. They could be a lot more customer friendly. Their first and only answer to everything seems to be “No”.

3. I saw very few Ukrainian brands. Maybe that’s because of the Russian mindset. Based on what I did see, Authentic Ukrainian Moonshine might be an idea.

This was the original gate to the city of Kiev

I missed you while I was away. As always, please feel free to send any questions, ideas, etc. Or leave a comment here.

I walked toward our board room, and the smell of fresh-baked brownies wafted around the office. People were peeking out from their desks, wondering if someone was baking. People who usually stay huddled behind their computer screens were appearing outside the board room to see if we were getting Duncan Hines as a new account.

But there she was, Suzanne Beecher, blonde and smiling and carrying a huge box of brownies for everyone. She was definitely my kindred spirit.

She told me then she was starting a new venture, an online book club…talking about different types of books and perhaps getting libraries to sponsor her business…so she could email her reviews each week to her readers.

It sounded a little far-fetched to me, but I figured if anyone could do it…Miss Enthusiasm would. Well. 350,000 people now read her DearReader.com and her daily column. She’s homespun, down-to-earth and funny and when she writes you feel like she’s writing only to you. She reminds me of Fanny Flagg.

We’ve talked on and off over the years and 2 years ago, I was visiting Sarasota and invited Suzanne to meet me for lunch. She did, and it was delicious to see her…and she told me she was going to write a book about her life, and add some recipes…and some photos of her family. We dropped her at her home, met her husband, Bob, and I missed her as we drove back to Miami.

Well, last month I received her new book (in uncorrected reader’s proofs), and she asked me to give it a read. I just loved it, like I do her. It’s her story of her own dreadful kind of upbringing, her challenges in life with illness and business. And, the whole time I’m reading it, I’m thinking I’m sitting at that little café in Sarasota yakking with her again.

You get a snapshot of her life as a little girl, and cooking when she was eight, while practicing singing her backup part to the Monkees. Then years later when she met her husband for the first time as she hobbled around with one leg in a cast and the other taped in an ace bandage.

Sprinkled with her grandma’s favorite recipes, she writes about her wonderful magazine that she had to walk away from, and her overnight stay with her grandson in the hospital, and life, in general.

What happens to Suzanne, happens to all of us. And the difference is she gives and shares more of life and love in her book than we often can. That’s why you’ll love this special book.

Buy it at amazon.com today and take it to the beach, or read it in your comfy chair. You’ll feel like you’ve just caught up with your best friend. Then buy lots more copies for your friends and family, as I am.

Suzanne called last week to see if I liked the book. I said I did so much, I was going to even try one of her recipes for my company last weekend. (I have a plant in my oven), as I never cook. So, I did ask her how I sift flour, or if I needed to.

On Monday she asked how my cooking went (afraid that she’d heard about a blazing fire in Miami). I told her no, not yet. Maybe this weekend I will try that marinated flank steak though. I’ll let you know how it works out.

Last week my friend Keith Fletcher of the South Florida Interactive Marketing Association called to invite me to a marketing conference with an intriguing title: Social Media/Legal Mashup. He wanted me to hear Gaida Zirkelbach, a lawyer, speak about social media. A lawyer?

Keith told me that she’s fascinating and I’d learn a lot. So, I went. And she was great. My first clue was that half the room was filled with lawyers taking lots of notes. If I ever have a problem, I’ll just call Gaida fast. She’s great. I wish I had a transcript of her presentation but I took notes, too, and here they are:

· Kim Kardashian said that she’d never use Dr. Siegal’s cookie diet, and would never do an unhealthy diet like his. Dr. Siegal filed a lawsuit and you can read all about it here: Kardashian Article

· Apparently the Ann Taylor Company gave a gift to people who blogged nicely about the company. According to the FTC, you must disclose that to readers. I already knew that. A few years back we did a program for American Express auto insurance. Instead of a traditional sales letter, we used a thank you letter from a happy customer. Our creative director edited it, and we sent the writer a small gift from Tiffany’s. We also added this: “I didn’t get paid for this letter, and my original letter was edited but these are my words. The advertising agency sent me a gift from Tiffany’s to thank me.”

· Gaida (and I) encourage you to read The Digital Milennium Copyright Act.

· Gaida covered a lot of ground quickly. She told us about a woman who spoke badly of her boss on Facebook. Her boss then fired her on her blog. I’ve noticed that people talk freely on Facebook and don’t seem to think that employers or associates might read it. They will, and do!

· There was a fascinating story about Houston’s employees who were griping on Yelp. One of the bosses had gotten onto the site using someone else’s i.d. The employees sued him for “invasion of privacy”.

· Gaida urged us to manage risk in social media by putting together policies for employees. She mentioned the Communications Decency Act, and her parting words were “think before you print”. I think she meant think before you post.

Late one night I was tweeting about my sick cat, Mortimer. One of my followers said that she didn’t care about my cat, and why would I think anyone would? This was followed by a firestorm of people tweeting support for Mortimer. They probably “unfollowed” her.

· Twitter is for kids, mostly following celebrities.

· Who cares what some people are eating for dinner?

· I tried it for a few days, and thought it was like talking to myself.

So many people try Twitter and never go back. That’s like trying to be a doctor and dropping out after BP 101.

When I was growing up my Mom and Dad would never allow quitting. When I signed up (and paid up) for baton twirling lessons, I had to stick with them even after my twirling with fire almost burned out the gym, sort of like Carrie.

Twitter Quitters had short attention spans. All Social Media practitioners are always testing new platforms, engaging with new people and using it everyday.

In fact, I’m just trying Gowalla today, Foursquare, too.

I don’t want to have Twitter as my one area of expertise. Using all the Social Media and connecting them will multi-purpose my content and increase my luck!

Practice, practice, practice.

How do you get to be a Social Media expert? Same answer. And I haven’t practiced nearly enough. Nonetheless, more than a few companies and associations have asked me to speak to them about Social Media. I suppose that’s a good sign – they’re becoming aware of the issue.

Direct Marketing and Branding have always been my major topics and a few years ago I began including thoughts about Social Media in speeches but I’m still no expert.

I’m not even sure who is. We’re all learning and practicing and just when we think we’re close, someone throws a monkey wrench into the works, like Facebook’s new privacy challenges.

Whenever I mention any social medium – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. – odds are that dozens of people in the audience will know a lot more about it than I do. But I still practice. I’ve been practicing yoga for years and although I’m probably better at tweeting than at downward-facing dog ruminating on the topic remains a stretch.

Of one thing I am certain: if we don’t keep learning about the strategies that work and those that don’t, we’re just stunting our growth.

The real joy of the Social Media arena is that it is dynamic and the halls are filled with people who can teach me new things every day. But if you ask me to speak at your association, don’t invite me as an expert but as someone who is enjoying the practice!

P.S. About 30 years ago, National Lampoon magazine sent a writer tricked out as a tourist to Central Park West (8th Avenue) in New York, a few blocks from Carnegie Hall. The “tourist” asked hundreds of passersby “Excuse me, how do I get to Carnegie Hall” and two thirds of the people answered “practice, practice, practice.”

This was the topic of my speech at the FDMA last week.

When AJ Morales called and asked if I’d speak—I said “No”!

Why? Because, every time I do we get every supplier in our area calling for business. We’re a small group, and spending that time and preparing the speech—usually makes new friends for my agency and that’s good—but it eats up a lot of time.

AJ Morales called back a few weeks later and said I’d help members if I taught them the right way to engage people and get business.

So I relented and did!

Then he changed the venue from the Westin hotel to Johnson & Wales University. I told him attendance would drop like a rock (because people including me)—don’t know where it is.

He said 80 people would show up or he’d eat his hat. I told him I’d bring the hat. Here’s AJ eating his new Yankees hat.

And the group was great! The bonus was there were many students from the University who are taking the Direct Marketing course there. The great professor,
Mr. Mark Neckes is shown here with me.

Hope his students intern with us this summer!

This was my leave-behind from the speech,
the ten steps to getting new business:

That is a scary thought for me, because I get nervous when people don’t read. Most of all, I feel sick to my stomach when I think people aren’t curious about things going on in the world, or new ideas, or innovations. Just plain curious is good.

Twitter is great that way. If there is breaking news, someone is always tweeting about it, and I hear it first on my Tweetdeck. I can also test all kinds of things on Twitter:

1. Ask people about something, with a link to show it (people read tweets with links).

2. Ask for advice. Recently I was throwing my new iMac into the ocean as I couldn’t get it to work because the monitor showed vertical colored lines. As soon as I tweeted about it, 5 or 6 people told me the computer was dead period. Take it back to the store.

3. I make friends on Twitter with people who share my point of view. Many people who I’ve had conversations with on Twitter have come to visit us, or called me, and when I visit a city…I get many invitations for coffee and lunch to meet in person.

4. For business, because of the huge numbers of people on Twitter, I can do a tweet and invite people to come to our Facebook page and enter a contest. They do come and then I can send them to a website to sign up for a newsletter (and get their email addresses).

5. If I want to find people who are lawyers on Twitter, I can go to twitter.search.com or simply press #lawyers and find all lawyer mentioned in the last 10 minutes or an hour.

The opportunities are endless to use Twitter as the driver to take people to your website, or blog, or E-zine. It’s got great possibilities…and I’m sure you’ll think of new ones for your business!

I missed it when I was in Vancouver a few weeks ago, because my iPhone service was “iffy” and my tweetdeck was very slow. Why…I ask myself into the night?

Well, if you ask my “real life” friend @amyafrica she’d say that all my followers are wackos anyway, so why even read their tweets.

If you ask my friend @anierenberg, she’ll say the only way to network is in person, not on social media. I do notice lately though when we talk on Sunday nights that there is a tweet tweet sound in the background…so she may be adapting.

I like Twitter for several reasons:
1. I can follow people that I might never have access to in life (or it would be hard to meet them). For example, recently I contacted @marcishimoff who wrote the book, Happy For No Reason. I thought she might write an article for one of our client’s on-line newsletters. So, I tweeted on over to Marci and asked, and she said we could talk about it. Bingo!

2. Learning from the Twitter leaders is interesting, and recently I was sent from Twitter to @chrisbrogan ‘s blog, where he talked about a great book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. He said that it was about how the author talks about the stories of our lives and how when he got off the couch and started moving that his whole story changes.
I bought the book right away on amazon.com .

3. When I need help, I start tweeting about my problem on Twitter and someone always comes to the rescue in minutes. So, when my new television set couldn’t be set up with the Best Buy guys on Comcast…I marched over to my tweetdeck and in about 30 seconds, I heard from Frank Eliason of @comcastcares and they talked the installers through the process.
Last week I struggles with my new iMac, and people from Best Buy jumped in and told me right away to return it to the store (as there is no cure for vertical color lines on your monitor).

4. And, then I make friends on Twitter I’d never meet in life. @joebees was talking about taking a run and mentioned the loop in Aventura….right outside my apartment. I started talking to him, and he came to visit my office laden with great bee pollen vitamins for us all.

@tlmaurer and I are always exchanging funny chat during the day. She was sad about my computer and eventually told me I should write a rap song about my problems with Apple and put it on YouTube. We’ve been back and forth writing rhyming lyrics ever since.

@relevance , my friend Ted always gives me advice on my latest challenge and @Ernieschell told me about visiting the Barnes Foundation Museum a few weeks back before it moved the collection. I did and it was great.

So, I guess I enjoy Twitter, because it helps me in my life, and my work and introduces me to all kinds of great people….and it improves my luck. So many people have asked me to speak at their meetings, because I’m always giving my latest marketing tips on Twitter.

So, just try it for two months. It is not about who is eating a ham sandwich any more.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you about some Twitter Marketing Strategies we’re testing for clients. Stay tuned.

I had blogged about the fact that my Mom insisted that I write thank you notes, and how those handwritten notes still made a huge difference in my life.

Then, I received an unexpected one myself from a great salesperson. I had raced into St. John’s (who sell beautiful knitted suits) and asked the salesman if he could find me a black skirt quick! I was leaving for Rhode Island to speak at the Travel Learning Conference, and somehow, I didn’t have the skirt that went with my favorite St. John jacket.

He went to the back and found two, and one was a size too small. He told me to try it on anyway, and it could always be blocked a size larger. It did fit, and I bought it and ran out the door, in time to make my flight.

Then I received this beautiful handwritten note from my savior, Armando.

You know I’m headed back there to see what he has for Spring. How great is that? A handwritten thank you note from someone who saved the day for me?

My Grandmother, Mammy, used to take months to painstakingly knit ghastly itchy sweaters and send them to my sister, Margo, and me for the holidays. Scarves, too.

At least Margo’s were in semi-pleasant colors but mine were usually green. Mammy knew that Emerald was my birth month’s color and she didn’t take into account that I looked like a turtle in that color.

Mom had a rule: you must write a thank you note within the week. I’d wrack my little brains and come up with something pathetic like: Dear Mammy, Thank you for the nice sweater. Love, Lois.

Mom put the kibosh on that and sent me back to my desk. Eventually, I’d come up with something half decent, longer anyway:

Dear Mammy, The green sweater is very warm and will come in handy this year as the winds are howling here in Long Beach. Thank you for knitting it for me, and spending all that time to make me a nice sweater like this one. Love, Lois

Mom smiled. She was right, of course. It didn’t matter that I looked like a red eared tortoise in the sweater; I had to show my gratitude.

The idea holds in business too. When I spend time now to write notes to clients to thank them for the kind things they say about us, for their business, for a lunch we’ve had together, they appreciate it. Here are some ideas you might want to try:

· Write a hand-written thank you note and be specific about what you appreciated (at the meeting, or the gift, etc).
· An email thank you is nice as long as you also send the written one.
· I also try to remember birthdays. One time I was speaking about this on a podium and a lady raised her hand and said the only birthday card she got that year was from her oil burner man. That was sad. Made a birthday list and be sure to mail all the cards for that month in the beginning of the month.
· Send gifts to people who are important to you. This week I received a wonderful present from a friend in Canada: Red Olympic mittens. I love them, and the best part was that they were unexpected, although it is coldish in Miami these days.

· We’re all so over-booked every day, and so once every few weeks I write out cards “I miss you” so I don’t lose touch with people I care about. You might try that too. It feels good.

My friend Andrea Nierenberg, the Queen of Networking, writes three notes every day. I’ve gotten into the habit myself. You might try it too, and let me know how it works. Also, tell me your ideas here on comments!