Celebrating 20 Years!

Posted by Tina

 

Our members and friends enjoyed a wonderful evening at the Valencia Ballroom in York as we celebrated our 20th Anniversary as an organization. We have come a long way over the past 20 years and our continued growth and success is because of our members, our sponsors and our partners.  This evening was our celebration.

Ready for guests to arrive

 

Food stations with an international flair - and delectable selections - were set up around the room for guests to enjoy while networking.

Tina Weyant thanked our event sponsors:  Bentley World Packaging, Fulton Bank, MANTEC and Stambaugh Ness, as well as the event's "performance sponsor" Barley Snyder LLC and "table sponsor" John S. Connor.  She then introduced Mayor C. Kim Bracey, Mayor of the City of York, who offered congratulatory remarks.  WTC Board Chair Kim Willing provided a brief summary of our organization's history and thanked current and past board members, sponsors and partners.

You can see highlights of our timeline on the WTC website and here is a link to the slideshow we played during the event.

We then awarded prizes to participants in our year long "WTC Passport" initiative.  Over 300 individuals had requested passports and had earned special "stamps" through various activities, including attending events, engaging with WTC via social media, giving referrals, offering their expertise to other members, and contributing to our blog or newsletter.

"Passport" prizes are ready to be awarded

All attendees also received a gift bag to take home.  Thanks to all our members who contributed items for passport prizes and gift bags:  

Barley Snyder, Bentley World Packaging, Fulton Bank, Gannett Fleming, John S. Connor, Stambaugh Ness, Turkey Hill Dairy, Wolfgang Candies and York Wallcoverings

We even had a special WTC birthday cake: 

Jan, Melissa, Kim Willing (WTC Board Chair) and Tina

Entertainment was provided by Pasos Caribenos, a folkloric dance group that promotes and preserves the Latino culture.  Their performance at our Anniversary Celebration was actually the group's last performance, as the dancers will be graduating from college soon.  Their performance was incredible and we were fortunate to have them participate.

Jan collects gifts at the registration table

Since our anniversary celebration coincided with the holidays, we partnered with the York YWCA for their holiday gift drive to benefit Access-York.  Everyone who brought a toy received a $10 coupon for a WTC event in 2012.  We could not believe the generosity or our attendees that evening - Thank You to Everyone!!

Gifts collected by end of the evening

Mobile Marketing Statistics

Posted by Melissa
Some interesting facts about worldwide usage of Mobile Marketing:

·         77 percent of the world population are mobile subscribers

·         25 percent of mobile Web users are mobile-only in the US

·         8 trillion text messages will be sent in 2011.

·         In the UK and France opt-in SMS gets the best results, in Germany mobile Web ads get the best results.

·         The world's most populous nations have the most mobile subscriptions (unsurprisingly), China and India lead growth

·         70% of Egyptians use mobile devices only to access internet

·         In three years over 300,000 mobile apps have been developed

From http://mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latest-mobile-stats

PoolPak Company Tour

Posted by Tina

On October 27, PoolPak International hosted our group for a company tour and luncheon discussion about the successes and challenges they face in competing in a global marketplace. 

PoolPak International manufacturers a full line of dehumidification systems designed for indoor pool applications, such as large athletic pools, natatoriums in schools and universities, commercial pools and hotel/motel leisure pools. 

Their systems are currently sold in 20 countries. PoolPak also has a joint venture with a Chinese company, the biggest pool contractor in China, which has helped with lead time as well as expensive shipping challenges. 

This event was part of a series of company tours offered in partnership with MANTEC, Inc.  showcasing our members and clients who excel in international trade and innovation.   

Melissa's List of #TwitterDonts and How to Fix Them

Posted by Melissa

Here is my list of #twitterdonts for the month of October, dealing with unnecessary self-promotion.  I don't consider myself an expert on this topic by any means, but I have made some observations in the "twitterverse" and would like to offer some helpful suggestions to make your tweets more effective:

-          “Now following…” tweets

o   Most users get notifications that you start following them or if they don’t, they can see their follower number increased and check them.  The only reason you are tweeting these now following tweets is to highlight yourself.  If you wanted to highlight the person you are following, then do a Follow Friday shoutout, or do another shout out of why people should follow that user.  The Now Following tweets are just a way to highlight yourself and take up space in the universe, because unless there is a good reason to follow them, no one cares that you just started following that person.

-          Asking people to follow you or follow you “back” (without intent for a DM)

o   If a person looks at your timeline and wants to follow you, they will.  Asking them is just almost rude. That’s  almost the equivalent of saying you should like us, just because we like you.   They will follow you if they find quality or information from your tweets that is pertinent to them or they want to see what your or your brand is about.  Tweet quality, engaging tweets and your audience will find and choose to follow you.

-          Self promotion tweets to the media

o   I believe that if the story is worth covering, with all the technology that is out there, the news station/paper/etc will find you.  No need to tweet at all the newscasts to come cover your event.  There are better ways of submitting your idea.  Tweet about it and if seemed news worthy, the media will find you!! This has happened to me three times.  I tweeted about something and guess what? The media thought it was relevant and did a story on it, without me tweeting at them to please come cover my event. In fact, not once did I ever mention that I wanted these stories/events covered, I just simply tweeted about them.  Also, if I was a media outlet and you tweeted at me along with all my competitors, I would think that your story isn’t that newsworthy that you have to actively seek all kinds of attention for it, instead of it finding you.

-          Asking people to RT you, if it’s not a matter of urgent public concern or emergency

o   If the tweet is relevant, people will retweet you themselves without you having to ask.  When asking to be retweeted, ask with intent in getting a message out, not promoting yourself. And, if they do retweet you, thank them!

Published originally in Melissa's personal blog, "Girl in York City"