Category: kinzieology

From my early days growing up in a remote, rural community in western Canada, I learned the importance of relying on each other. When a stranger went off the road and came up to the house looking for help, we fired up the tractor and took time out from farm work to pull them out. No charges. It’s just part of life.

When my bachelor uncle lost his leg in a farming accident during harvest, every combine in the neighborhood arrived in his fields, putting their own profits in peril to ensure his crops made it into the bins. Our kitchen filled with women preparing food for the farmers from their own gardens and pantries.

Community was essential to our survival and our social network existed only among our neighbors and extended families. School was 16 miles west, services were 15 miles north in the nearest city and the next door neighbor was nearly a mile down the road. Digital social networks have helped me maintain connections with that community of my childhood.

In 2001, I launched HK heartbeat to share information with friends who approached me looking for natural lifestyle information in Hong Kong. It started as a weekly email newsletter, grew to include print publications and local events and I built the website directory myself in 2006. In recent years, I have added social media channels, integrating the information to reach members and keep everyone up to date with what’s new and what’s on in Hong Kong … naturally.

Companies recognizing the financial value of community are now attempting to recreate the magic under their brand and leveraging the network to sell their products and services.

Businesses beware — conscious customers recognize when a community is little more than advertising.

5 tips for building an online community

1. Set up your community around a shared interest
2. Encourage sharing of content, ideas and experiences
3. Present your brand as the community sponsor
4. Provide resources to develop the group
5. Extend special offers to your members

By adopting this strategy, you will expand participation to include people who will not be put off by commercial nature of the program and present the project as actual community rather than a business venture.

This approach also opens the possibility of using the community to brand other products in the future.

I am always thinking ahead.

Photo by Kinzie

With the growing popularity of healthy living trends comes growing confusion as companies flood the market with new products and services designed to reach these new customers by making bold claims to attract attention in a cluttered media environment.

Everything is connected. 

Marketers created Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS) in the late 1990s to identify an emerging demographic. The market is a reaction to increasing pollution, excess processing, unsustainable production and unfair practices affecting society. The niche segment is now a recognized market in the USA, Western Europe while governments across Asia, including China, Korea, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan, actively promote LOHAS with certification, public campaigns and trade exhibitions.

Originally introduced as an industry term to help businesses identify customers in this broad but narrow niche market, LOHAS is now becoming a lifestyle brand across Asia, particularly in China, South Korea, Malaysia, Japan and Taiwan.

To confuse matters, the English acronym has been adopted as an English word by branders across Asia selling non-LOHAS products to the growing healthy living market. This is a classic example of marketing to trends.

Companies are jumping on board to market everything from plastic bottled water and produce to cafes and festivals. The response is positive in an environment where toxic haze, food scares and long working hours take their toll on physical health and personal well-being and customers have not yet learned to distinguish fear-based marketing from authentic communications about an authentic product.

There is still ground to cover in providing customers with information about the spirit of LOHAS. For example, in Hong Kong, the brand is synonymous with an MTR property that can boast no healthy or sustainability characteristics beyond its beyond a green outlook.

Today, almost every product category and service has a natural option.

• Fair trade products
• Green and sustainable building
• Complementary and preventive medicine
• Organic and natural personal care products
• Mind-Body-Soul and holistic health literature
• Household, paper goods and cleaning supplies
• Energy efficient electronics/appliances
• Hybrid and electric cars; city bicycles
• Organic and locally grown food
• Socially responsible investing
• Sustainable or ecotourism

LOHAS customers are described as passionate about sustainability, health and wellness, personal development, resource conservation, corporate responsibility, social justice and natural & organic products. In 2012, they purchased $350 billion in goods and services worldwide.

“What you’re seeing is a demand for products of equal quality that are also virtuous.” Paul H Ray, The Cultural Creatives

I learned how to write a media release at university in the 80’s, long before the digital boom would allow anyone to publish anything online. Today, as founder of a popular natural lifestyle publishing a website and print publications, my inbox is filled with requests from companies requesting free publicity. The new DIY culture means much of the material being sent is primarily promotional material with minimum editorial value. Often, the material is incomplete, critical content is not included in the email body and highly-produced graphic attachments consume thousands of bytes of data storage unecessarily.

Here are 5 tips to publish a 21st media release

1. We now call it a “News Release” or a “Media Release” to address the fact that many of your media contacts will never encounter a printing press.

2. Include everything you want the recipient to know in the first paragraph out of respect for their time. This way, the recipient can quickly forward the message to the relevant editor or journalist if and they find it of interest and it is not in their area.

3. Include your contact details at the top and leave out the logo or it looks more like promotion and less like news. You can include the logo on a separate page if you like, along with other relevant images for reference.

4. An official media release does not include more than one page. People still print these things and the second page can get lost — this is the original thinking behind the rule from back in the days when we used typewriters.

5. Include the content of the release in the body of the email so it can be quickly and easily copied and pasted. Lots of bloggers are printing media releases as-is these days.

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Here is an example:

Master the art of efficiency and inject fresh, creative energy into your business

We begin with a session to review your activities and address issues that surface during our time together. Through a series of practical exercises, we generate cost-effective ideas and outline steps to extend your existing resources immediately with a little outside expertise.

During our time together, I may also suggest, introduce and propose joint projects with contacts from organizations and/or vendors in my professional networks. My connections are central to my operation and clients who come for referrals take away a plan complete with the contact details to make it happen. Following the initial session, we may agree on deliverables or you can contact me for feedback, advice and ongoing support by phone/email.

Bring your to do list and leave with renewed clarity and steps for immediate action.

Valuable tools for established businesses, start-ups, non-profit organizations and agencies.

Next steps — prioritize the projects and allocate the amount of time for each or request support as needed until the time is used and you’re ready to top-up or continue on your own, getting back in touch when you’re ready for more …

Related: Profile | Expertise

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“Kinzie has great organizational skills, has great attention to detail and a tremendous gift for bringing zest and color to everything she touches. Every entrepreneur should have a Kinzie. It is rare to find someone who can stay calm and focused when everyone else is losing their mind. I recommend Kinzie as a trusted advisor who has great wisdom to impart for those smart enough to listen. Kevin Trczinski, Founder, CASBAADirectory

There is nothing like an easy hike to clear my head and get the chi flowing – it is a great start to the new year

Local developers have cleaned up this beach in preparation for 40 new small houses … currently under construction.

This hidden beach can only be seen from here.

These are the sharpest leaves … and still the water buffalo manage to eat them.

On rare days, one might look at the color of the water and be convinced that we live in South East Asia.

The farm girl in me is attracted to this mixed-material fence — tree branch, metal pipe, barbed wire and bamboo — and curious about who anyone would be trying to keep out (or in) this far from anywhere.

On a winter day, we enjoy blue sea and an almost blue sky … Hong Kong style.