Please share your idea for what message to print on our T-shirts on our Facebook page or by sending an e-mail to info@arkansasdiamondmineadventure.com. We hope to choose the winner next week, then we hope to start selling the T-shirts on our Facebook page and website shortly after that.
We jumped into the blogging world at the encouragement of our new friend from church, Frank Turk, one of the most popular bloggers in the world. Our hope is that people will want to read about our efforts to establish this business dream, learn from us and share with us their business knowledge.
Frank suggested that we also link this blog to our Facebook page. He e-mailed instructions to us, and we followed them as best we could. We're not sure how to know if we succeeded; we never found anything listed on our Facebook page saying "here's our blog." If you can verify this, please let us know.
I'm sure it comes as no surprise that we know nothing about "tweeting," so we have not jumped into that world, though Frank says we should. Speaking of tweeting, did you see the news about McDonald's recent Twitter episode? As parents of five children, we are big fans of McDs, but we had to laugh when we saw this.
McDonald's began (perhaps unleashed) a Twitter campaign Jan. 19 with the "hashtag" #MeetTheFarmers to coincide with their current advertising drawing attention to their guarantee of fresh produce. (Is a hashtag a breakfast item?) Their plans backfired later that day when people started trashing McDs. The tweets were pretty funny. One person tweeted: "PETA and McDonalds got into it today on Twitter. I was surprised, I didn't know there was actual meat at McDonalds." Ouch.
McDonald's social media director, Rick Wion, in a story on LinkedIn, said, "We quickly pulled #McDstories and it was promoted for less than two hours. Within an hour of pulling it the number of conversations about it fell off from a peak of 1,600 to a few dozen. There were 72,788 mentions of McDonald's overall that day so the traction of #McDstories was a tiny percentage (2%) of that. With all social media campaigns, we include contingency plans should the conversation not go as planned. The ability to change midstream helped this small blip from becoming something larger."
We're not sure what all that means, but based on what happened, we're guessing that Rick is about our age and tried to handle social media by himself or with other adults. Take our advice, Rick, you should hire teenagers to handle that effort.
Arkansas Diamond Mine Adventure blog
Monday, February 27, 2012
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Social media
Currently we are soliciting ideas for what message to print on T-shirts featuring our logo. In March we hope to start selling the T-shirts to raise money to establish our business. Our logo designer at Stormer-Brooks Illustration suggested "Fun + Adventure =" and "We'll show you the ropes." Please share your suggestions for what to print on our T-shirts.
Meantime, we have resisted the temptation to join the rest of the civilized world and get a personal Facebook page. We can't understand how people find the time to spend hours and hours every day on the social network.
But as wannabe entrepreneurs, we had to wade into the social media waters to promote our business dream. You can read other posts in this blog to learn about our experiences with creating a website and a Facebook page. Suffice it to say, it has not been easy for us. Our 8 year old knows more about this stuff than we do.
We wasted quite a few hours and brain cells trying to figure out how to update our Facebook page. For instance, we wanted an address like most other businesses. The Facebook address for McDonald's is facebook.com/McDonalds. We thought that was what we signed up for, but ours was facebook.com/pages/Arkansas-Diamond-Mine-Adventure/276343369092980.
We talked to friends and searched the Internet and recently found that to make such revisions to your FB page and address (or URL), you have to have at least 25 people "like" your page. So we asked our children and our friends to like our page. That left us about 19 people short. Fortunately others eventually liked our page and recently, we're excited to report, we were able to get the Facebook address that we wanted. Check it out sometime: facebook.com/ArkansasDiamondMindAdventure.
Meantime, we have resisted the temptation to join the rest of the civilized world and get a personal Facebook page. We can't understand how people find the time to spend hours and hours every day on the social network.
But as wannabe entrepreneurs, we had to wade into the social media waters to promote our business dream. You can read other posts in this blog to learn about our experiences with creating a website and a Facebook page. Suffice it to say, it has not been easy for us. Our 8 year old knows more about this stuff than we do.
We wasted quite a few hours and brain cells trying to figure out how to update our Facebook page. For instance, we wanted an address like most other businesses. The Facebook address for McDonald's is facebook.com/McDonalds. We thought that was what we signed up for, but ours was facebook.com/pages/Arkansas-Diamond-Mine-Adventure/276343369092980.
We talked to friends and searched the Internet and recently found that to make such revisions to your FB page and address (or URL), you have to have at least 25 people "like" your page. So we asked our children and our friends to like our page. That left us about 19 people short. Fortunately others eventually liked our page and recently, we're excited to report, we were able to get the Facebook address that we wanted. Check it out sometime: facebook.com/ArkansasDiamondMindAdventure.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Help create our T-shirt
Now that our name and logo are trademarked, we are ready to proceed to the toughest part of our business dream: raising funds. Our dream is to build a family recreation attraction featuring a ropes course, an obstacle course and a children's play area. Our research for our business plan came up with a figure of approximately $315,000 to build this dream, not including the land on which to build it.
We decided to try to raise money on the Internet after we read a story on CNBC in early January about a comedian who sold his latest comedy "album" on his website and made $1,000,000 in 10 days. We've read other stories of people raising money on the Internet, so we thought we would give it a try. We will gladly take donations, but we are going to sell T-shirts featuring our wonderful logo.
As you hopefully know, we are using our blog and our Facebook page to give people an opportunity to help develop our business dream. Your next opportunity is to help us decide what message to print above our logo on T-shirts.
For example, we could print "Follow me to the..." above our logo. Or "I can't wait to play at the..." Our good friend Kerry in Atlanta suggested, "I got ICED at..." We don't know what that means, but it may be exactly the message we need. Let us know what message you think would help sell more T-shirts.
Please share your suggestions on our Facebook page or by sending us an e-mail to info@arkansasdiamondmineadventure.com. If you really like what someone has already suggested, let us know that too. We will determine a winner in a few weeks. Then we can start printing T-shirts and selling them on our website and Facebook page. We are excited, and we hope you are too. Thank you for following us and for your encouragement.
We decided to try to raise money on the Internet after we read a story on CNBC in early January about a comedian who sold his latest comedy "album" on his website and made $1,000,000 in 10 days. We've read other stories of people raising money on the Internet, so we thought we would give it a try. We will gladly take donations, but we are going to sell T-shirts featuring our wonderful logo.
As you hopefully know, we are using our blog and our Facebook page to give people an opportunity to help develop our business dream. Your next opportunity is to help us decide what message to print above our logo on T-shirts.
Please share your suggestions on our Facebook page or by sending us an e-mail to info@arkansasdiamondmineadventure.com. If you really like what someone has already suggested, let us know that too. We will determine a winner in a few weeks. Then we can start printing T-shirts and selling them on our website and Facebook page. We are excited, and we hope you are too. Thank you for following us and for your encouragement.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Encouraging each other
When you start a project such as creating a business venture, you really need friends to encourage you through the inevitable roadblocks. Since today is Valentine's Day, we want to take a minute to say thank you to some friends who have encouraged us in the past few months.
Work on pursuing this business dream began in earnest in January after Phil Hutchins with ArkyTech dot com gave David a pep talk before our church care group meeting. Phil told David about a John MacArthur sermon ("God's will is not secret") he recently had listened to. MacArthur said, in essence, that if you are living a God-fearing life, Psalm 37:4 says "the Lord will give you the desires of your heart." That does not mean He will fulfill all the desires in your heart; it means He will put the desires in your heart. So if you have a desire to start a business, Phil encouraged David, go for it! Phil encourages us every time we meet in their home.
In addition, David's friend and graphic artist extraordinaire Scott Brooks with Stormer-Brooks Illustrations has greatly encouraged David as they have e-mailed over the months about our business plan. As Scott developed the sketches and then the logo versions for our dream, he encouraged us to keep at it, to pursue this dream despite the long odds and obstacles. The logo he developed is like a booster shot of adrenaline. It was Scott's idea last fall to try to raise money for this business dream using the Internet.
After Phil Hutchins' pep talk, we decided that we needed to immediately create a Facebook page and a website. At the encouragement of another new friend from church, Frank Turk, we jumped into the blogging world. He's one of the most popular bloggers in the world. His blog covers much more serious topics than ours.
We say a big thank you to Frank and his family for their friendship and encouragement. Frank and his son drove up to North Little Rock one recent Saturday to help us erect a wooden privacy fence around our backyard. That's a real friend to give up a beautiful Saturday afternoon to work, and we are grateful. Frank told us that a blog would be easy to set up but then take the rest of our lives to keep it going.
We didn't get a picture of Frank and his son working on our fence, but here's one of our son helping Daddy attach the fence pickets onto the 2-by-4s.
We are grateful for other friends in our church, too. Mike and Nancy Davidson have been very encouraging. In getting to know them recently, it has become obvious why Mike's Parkway Automotive business is doing so well. To all of you who have encouraged us and helped us in any way these past few months, we say a big thank you. We are so grateful for your support. Keep checking back as we update you on our progress.
Work on pursuing this business dream began in earnest in January after Phil Hutchins with ArkyTech dot com gave David a pep talk before our church care group meeting. Phil told David about a John MacArthur sermon ("God's will is not secret") he recently had listened to. MacArthur said, in essence, that if you are living a God-fearing life, Psalm 37:4 says "the Lord will give you the desires of your heart." That does not mean He will fulfill all the desires in your heart; it means He will put the desires in your heart. So if you have a desire to start a business, Phil encouraged David, go for it! Phil encourages us every time we meet in their home.
In addition, David's friend and graphic artist extraordinaire Scott Brooks with Stormer-Brooks Illustrations has greatly encouraged David as they have e-mailed over the months about our business plan. As Scott developed the sketches and then the logo versions for our dream, he encouraged us to keep at it, to pursue this dream despite the long odds and obstacles. The logo he developed is like a booster shot of adrenaline. It was Scott's idea last fall to try to raise money for this business dream using the Internet.
After Phil Hutchins' pep talk, we decided that we needed to immediately create a Facebook page and a website. At the encouragement of another new friend from church, Frank Turk, we jumped into the blogging world. He's one of the most popular bloggers in the world. His blog covers much more serious topics than ours.
We say a big thank you to Frank and his family for their friendship and encouragement. Frank and his son drove up to North Little Rock one recent Saturday to help us erect a wooden privacy fence around our backyard. That's a real friend to give up a beautiful Saturday afternoon to work, and we are grateful. Frank told us that a blog would be easy to set up but then take the rest of our lives to keep it going.
We didn't get a picture of Frank and his son working on our fence, but here's one of our son helping Daddy attach the fence pickets onto the 2-by-4s.
We are grateful for other friends in our church, too. Mike and Nancy Davidson have been very encouraging. In getting to know them recently, it has become obvious why Mike's Parkway Automotive business is doing so well. To all of you who have encouraged us and helped us in any way these past few months, we say a big thank you. We are so grateful for your support. Keep checking back as we update you on our progress.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Houston, we have a trademark
We took another step today in setting things in place to establish our business dream. Our 8 year old and I went to the state capitol to file the paperwork to trademark our Arkansas Diamond Mine Adventure logo.
The Arkansas Secretary of State's Business and Commercial Services Division office moved from the capitol eight years ago, the receptionist told us. It is now located at 1401 W. Capitol Avenue in the same building as KARK Channel 4.
Here is a picture of Julie helping us submit our paperwork, which is available on their website. We needed her to verify the classification number and title of goods and services part of the application. Registering a trademark with the state costs $50. (Registering a federal trademark costs $500, so we will wait on that.) Unless their staff attorney finds anything wrong with our application, everything is in place for us to proceed.
Now the name and logo are official. The trademarked color logo (below) will go on our website and Facebook page soon. As soon as it does, we will solicit your opinions on our next issue to decide. We will save that question for next time.
By the way, our timing on developing the logo was fortunate. Our good friends at Stormer-Brooks Illustrations made the time in their busy schedule to develop our logo very quickly. But their work situation changed late this week, meaning they would not have been able to finish as quickly if we had waited any longer. Thanks to them for the fantastic job they did on the logo.
Thank you again for your interest and support.
The Arkansas Secretary of State's Business and Commercial Services Division office moved from the capitol eight years ago, the receptionist told us. It is now located at 1401 W. Capitol Avenue in the same building as KARK Channel 4.
Here is a picture of Julie helping us submit our paperwork, which is available on their website. We needed her to verify the classification number and title of goods and services part of the application. Registering a trademark with the state costs $50. (Registering a federal trademark costs $500, so we will wait on that.) Unless their staff attorney finds anything wrong with our application, everything is in place for us to proceed.
Now the name and logo are official. The trademarked color logo (below) will go on our website and Facebook page soon. As soon as it does, we will solicit your opinions on our next issue to decide. We will save that question for next time.
By the way, our timing on developing the logo was fortunate. Our good friends at Stormer-Brooks Illustrations made the time in their busy schedule to develop our logo very quickly. But their work situation changed late this week, meaning they would not have been able to finish as quickly if we had waited any longer. Thanks to them for the fantastic job they did on the logo.
Thank you again for your interest and support.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Introducing our logo
Today is a big day for our diamond in the rough. We are unveiling the logo for our dream.
We received quite a few votes for the sketch you thought we should use for the logo, but we received very few votes last week for which version of the logo to use. We think Stormer-Brooks Illustrations gave us two wonderful versions to consider, and maybe folks didn't vote this time because both choices were so good.
We went ahead and chose the diamond version, since the name of our dream is the Arkansas Diamond Mine Adventure. We debated with Stormer-Brooks about what size fonts to use, how large to make the word Arkansas and even the kids' clothes. Scott recommended "jodhpurs," or riding pants, and riding boots for the girl. I insisted on a fedora for the boy. They made several tweaks, and in the end, they outdid themselves.
So without further ado, (drum roll) here is the black-and-white logo for our company.
We think Stormer-Brooks perfectly captured the dream we have with this logo. Scott will produce a color version (we won't vote on the colors; we'll let the expert handle that), and that will become the logo, the face and the brand of our diamond in the rough. We are so excited about this! We hope you like it as much as we do. Awesome job, Scott.
Thank you for following us, and thank you to those who voted. We plan to invite you to vote for other items as we work to develop our business. Thank you for your support. We will update our progress soon.
We received quite a few votes for the sketch you thought we should use for the logo, but we received very few votes last week for which version of the logo to use. We think Stormer-Brooks Illustrations gave us two wonderful versions to consider, and maybe folks didn't vote this time because both choices were so good.
We went ahead and chose the diamond version, since the name of our dream is the Arkansas Diamond Mine Adventure. We debated with Stormer-Brooks about what size fonts to use, how large to make the word Arkansas and even the kids' clothes. Scott recommended "jodhpurs," or riding pants, and riding boots for the girl. I insisted on a fedora for the boy. They made several tweaks, and in the end, they outdid themselves.
So without further ado, (drum roll) here is the black-and-white logo for our company.
We think Stormer-Brooks perfectly captured the dream we have with this logo. Scott will produce a color version (we won't vote on the colors; we'll let the expert handle that), and that will become the logo, the face and the brand of our diamond in the rough. We are so excited about this! We hope you like it as much as we do. Awesome job, Scott.
Thank you for following us, and thank you to those who voted. We plan to invite you to vote for other items as we work to develop our business. Thank you for your support. We will update our progress soon.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Stay Tuned
Good morning; it's Monday morning and we didn't want to go another day without posting a note to say that yes, we are still here. We will post the final version of the logo from Stormer-Brooks Illustrations tomorrow.
We are very excited about the logo versions that Stormer-Brooks produced. We have discussed changes to type fonts and sizes and little nuances with our artist, and we can't wait to see the finished product. Scott promised that he would have it to us by tomorrow morning for us to unveil. We could envision our ad with our logo on one of those Super Bowl commercials. Kids climbing walls. People zipping through the trees. Can you imagine it?!
Once we have the final logo, we will go to the Secretary of State's office to trademark it. We will, of course, let you know how that goes.
Thanks for your interest and support. Check back tomorrow.
We are very excited about the logo versions that Stormer-Brooks produced. We have discussed changes to type fonts and sizes and little nuances with our artist, and we can't wait to see the finished product. Scott promised that he would have it to us by tomorrow morning for us to unveil. We could envision our ad with our logo on one of those Super Bowl commercials. Kids climbing walls. People zipping through the trees. Can you imagine it?!
Once we have the final logo, we will go to the Secretary of State's office to trademark it. We will, of course, let you know how that goes.
Thanks for your interest and support. Check back tomorrow.
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