July calendar ready for download

We may be having cloudy skies in Boston this summer, but July's calendar is designed to evoke a zen like state of soaking up the sun (wearing sunscreen of course) on the beach. Download today and print out on 5x7 cardstock.

June Calendar - Free download

The June installment of my 2009 Calendar series is now available for download. Prints out 5x7. Enjoy!

May Calendar for Download

Another month means another edition in my 2009 calendar is ready. May is now ready to download. It's formatted to print out at 5x7 and looks great on white card stock. Visit my website to download May now.

Get Happy Fast

Take a break out of your day and read The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur's list of 199 Ways to Get Happy Fast. My contribution is tip number 52 (though right now number 52 is listed twice, maybe once you click through that will be fixed and my tip will be number 54). Anyway, here's my tip to get happy fast:

How To Get Happy Fast: Yoga – Have an instructor come to your office once a week. It gives you a scheduled break and permission to take your mind off of everything but yourself for an hour. During the ohm, visualize where you want your business to be then start planning to make it happen.

When you're done getting happy take a look through his other blog posts for tips on how to make the most out of your business.

Image by: Shunpikie

Corporate Blogs and Freedom of Expresion

Last week I was at a marketing meeting at the Boston Society of Architects. The presenter, Mike Reilly from Reilly Communications, briefly introduced HOK’s blog, Life at HOK. After seeing the blog the question came up of how to keep everyone “on message” while blogging, an oxymoron in my opinion. If you’re trying to keep everyone on message within a blog then you’re not allowing the true power of a blog to come through – freedom of expression and opinion. A blog is about free communication - no corporate police, no messages to deliver. For HOK it’s an outlet for its employees to express themselves, whether relevant to architecture or not.

Another company may take a different approach where there are parameters around what the content can be. That too is a viable strategy so long as there is no one in the background editing and putting the corporate spin on the posts. Blogs have different voices unique to their writer(s). It’s the personality that comes through in a blog which makes it more engaging for its readers.

The HOK blog is a testament to what a corporate blog should aim to be, an unfiltered collection of messages. It gives the reader a glimpse into the culture of HOK in a way that polished corporate messages cannot.