WHN Blog :: Connecting

One of the most exciting things about the Internet is that it offers such a broad array of ways to inexpensively promote your passion and get the good word out. I know many of you want to hide under the bed at the prospect of something like blogging, or twitter, but these low cost tools are your friends if you go about them with the right mind set and learn to enjoy the process.

Last Friday I spent about four hours with Val Zavala, the charming host of "Life and Times," and reporter for "So Cal Connected" two shows on our local PBS station KCET. The reason I was hanging out with Val, her producer Christal, and a camera man and sound man is that they were filming interviews with my client Ryan Choura, the CEO of Choura Venue Services about the trials, tribulations, and opportunities for hospitality professionals donating food to foodbanks for a "So Cal Connected" featuring to air in June.

When I first started to work with Choura at the beginning of the year I asked them to consider donating their leftover food from events to a local foodbank called Food Finders who I know via some of my non profit work. Ryan told me they couldn't consider it because they could be sued. I called Food Finders and asked if this was true and they said, "no, sadly many professional hospitality people in California don't understand that the Good Samaritan Law covers them from liability."

A little back and forth happened, a meeting was set up, and Choura Venue Services is starting to slowly work donating to Food Finders into their routine.

The taping with Zavala happened because I'm on Twitter and I'd just started following her there - and she put out a request for caterers who were wasting food! I wrote her a note via twitter, and called KCET stating that the challenge was people don't understand the Good Samaritan Law. A week later I got a phone call asking if my client would like to be interviewed for one of Zavala's show!

And, happily there was enough time for Zavala to also interview Arlene Mercer, the founder of Food Finders so that she could better explain the law, and let people know how much easier it is to donate to established food banks than they might think. The well established long running food banks know all about food rules, and if you can find one like Food Finders who will pick up small donations (every little bit helps!) and who has great flexibility, you'll be doing your community a huge favor.

The interview will air sometime in June, so my next step is to promote the story to the print media, which Zavala is cool with. For those of you in food hospitality here is some more information on the "Good Samaritan Food Donation Act" directly from the website of the California Integrated Waste Management Board:

How does the law protect businesses from liability?

"The 'Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act' (Public Law 104-210) makes it easier for businesses to donate to food banks and food rescue programs. It protects donors from liability when donating to nonprofit organizations and protects donors from civil and criminal liability should the product donated in good faith later cause harm to the needy recipient.

The law also sets a liability floor of "gross negligence" or intentional misconduct for persons who donate grocery products. It recognizes that the provision of food close to recommended date of sale is, in and of itself, not grounds for finding gross negligence. For example, cereal can be donated if it is marked close to code date for retail sale.

Food banks also protect their donors by offering a variety of liability protections, including strict standards of warehouse operation, proper storage and handling procedures, complete product tracking and recall capabilities, and accurate and timely receipting."

One of the keys to a successful public relations campaign is a great story, and one of the biggest stories the media is hooking onto now is the need for "greener and more sustainable" thinking. True, it's a word that makes some people want to run screaming, but it seems almost every day that one scientist or another is speaking up to say that global warming is heating up faster than we thought.

It is a dire situation we're in, we have to face some tough facts, but rather than making you want to hide under the bed, perhaps now is the time to figure out just what the heck you can do about it. How can thinking greener help you, your business and your local community? How can you plan ahead to be safer, healthier and yes, more in the black? How can you help make the conversation about infrastructure and better planning, well, sexier in your neck of the woods?

Here is Long Beach our Mayor Bob Foster is "the only U.S. Mayor" to drive an electric car. I love that we have a mayor who is walking the walk. I love it so much that on "Twitter" I'm doing my best to let everyone know about it (and directly tweeting Time, Newsweek and SoCalConnected to see if they might pick up the story).

On another good "green" news issue. We've just received word that a U.S. Court is refusing to halt the "Clean Truck" program voted in for the L.A. and Long Beach Ports. These two side by side ports are the busiest port in the nation, handling 40% of imports coming into the U.S., and as a result our 710 freeway corridor (leading directly into the L.B. port) is the most polluted in the nation.

This week I took an opportunity that might be open to you in your community. Our smart local business paper, the "Long Beach Business Journal," runs an opinion column every week called, "Imagine Long Beach." My column appeared this week - and guess what it was about? You got it, my dream of a city with Public Relations Savvy. I'm so pleased with the feedback I'm receiving - including a lovely note on Facebook from the Mayor's wife, Nancy Foster!

Might your local paper allow you to run a well thought out piece on how your town, city or community might be run in a smarter and greener way? Isn't it worth it to ask? And perhaps ask again?

Is there an area of green thinking that you can become an expert of in your area? In our area I'm doing my best to get the word out to local media about the "Good Samaritan Law" that allows caterers and restaurants donate their left over food to local food banks without fear of getting sued. Our food banks in L.A. and Orange County (and I imagine all over the country) are in dire need of donations of food and this law isn't well understood, many don't donate because they're frightened.

I'm also working on positioning my new client Lisa Dohner and "PREP Kitchen Essentials" as a "go to" expert in green and sustainable thinking for the Long Beach and Orange Country areas. This store carries all 100% recycled paper products, only the best in well made products that will last and last (with many American products to cut down on shipping cost and fuel consumption) and is a leader in their cooking classes in using the best organic and sustainably grown and raised food. Owner Lisa Dohner will be launching a new washable, reusable unbleached muslin bag that can replace the little plastic bags at the grocery story for a "No Plastic Bag" bag campaign. For Earth Day she will be giving out a free muslin bag for the first 50 people who visit the store.

How about you? What's on your agenda for Earth Day, April 22nd 2009? And how are you getting your green word out?

Ten years ago, I was on the Internet, I was, but guess what I wasn't doing on it that I've been doing this week?

Oh let's see, submitting press releases, reading my new "new favorite blogs," ordering more business cards - including some design tweaks and matching return of address labels (all done in moments), learning from "savvy marketing blogs" and great websites on "twitter" (where recently "John A. Byrne," editor of Business Week, posted that "BW.com," hit new traffic records set for March and for the first quarter, with huge gains in March of 41% in unique visitors), paying bills, researching a book I'm working on, coaching a client via email on how to "launch her new blog" (stay tuned, it's in its infancy, but Susan Dopart is the most talented, inspiring nutritionist I've ever met), in the beginning stages of putting together a possible new event for October, and finally buying an assortment of books on Amazon.com with a gift certificate a friend gave me for my birthday in January.

Tens years ago doing these things would have meant a lot more leg work for me, it would have meant getting in the car and trips to the store, and to the printer, needing a graphic designer, needing to have a fax machine at home, and of course needing to be on the phone for hours longer than I really want to be.

Yes indeed, the Internet makes a lot of things very convenient, and as a society on the whole we're finally taking to it. How can you not love Amazon when you can buy both new AND used books? How can you not love being able to research the best price and the best version of something online? As consumers we get the power of the Internet, we do.

But where many of us are falling down is in how we use the Internet when promoting our own businesses. Many of us are stuck with outdated buggy whips in our hands proclaiming that the horse will never go out of style as the most popular method of transportation for man!

Now I'm a big horse lover, I'd like to see them used again for greener short trip travel, I would, but I'm a student of history and know what happened - a hundred years ago the car was rearing it's head as the new method of transportation, oil was being discovered in the middle east (and all over the world), Henry Ford was figuring out a new way to manufacture things, and the world would soon never be the same again.

We're in a similar moment. What are you doing about it? Are you embracing the idea of a "beautiful photography" and beguiling website that's kept up to date (one that's modern, with an easy to use nicely integrated style?) Have you create a blog to create connection and a following clearly accessible on your site? Are you putting some of your print advertising budget towards Google Ad words, SEO Optimization (i.e. having the right text on your site to rank higher in the search engines), and say, "Yelp?" And if you can't afford Yelp, why not look into "UrbanSpoon.com?" Are you involving yourself and your company in building a "robust social presence" with social media outlets like Facebook, and Twitter, and Linked In?

Or are you shaking your fist, whip in hand?