URG Update

My poor neglected blog! I have so much to update... but I'm in that horrible trap where I missed blogging about something big (babies' birthday, my birthday) then another big thing happened (Brian's job change) and then another thing (Brian's Africa trip) and then another thing (my 15 seconds of fame on 3 news stations for hunting down a camera owner on FB) and I feel too overwhelmed with keeping up that I just put my head in the sand and hope it will go away. But it won't. And I'll feel sad someday if I look back and say, "hey - pretty sure my kids turned 2... and I didn't blog about it?! WHAT KIND OF MOTHER AM I?!" So I am determined to catch up. I might have to hire a babysitter to do it though. Or sleep even less than I am now. Really, I blame my biz though. Utah Running Guide takes up a TON of my time! Well, about 30-90 minutes of each day. Which any busy mom knows is a LOT of precious time. Those are minutes I used to spend doing important things. Like blogging. (and, um, chores. My bedroom is the biggest disaster. I have like 3 laundry baskets full of CLUTTER I have to sort out. I've had to just throw it all in the baskets and hide it, so the front rooms of our home stay clean-looking when people come over). But overall it's going well and I'm glad I'm doing it for now. Quick update: At 7 weeks into it, I'm less than 300 Likes away from my original 1,000 Likes goal. If you haven't Liked the Page....WHY DO YOU HATE ME?!?! Go LIKE it now! Many thanks. The website gets about 2,000 unique visitors each month. I'd like to see it be 2,000 each DAY. I need to work on the calendar really bad to draw the crowds, I think. The Twitter following just passed the 200 mark ( @UTRunningGuide ). But do people really pay attention to Twitter? Still not sure. But covering my bases. The Facebook Utah Running Guide group is at 680 I think. Again, the goal is 1000 for that too. Getting numbers up is HUGE, because that attracts more Race Directors. But I have to have lots of cool races to do promotions for to get more Likes/Fans. So both are important to work on and are dependent on each other.

I'm pretty comfortable doing my sales pitch. If a Race Director will give me 3 minutes, I can explain exactly what Utah Running Guide does that so effectively gets their race info out to the Utah running community. It's honestly a no-brainer way to advertise for a busy Race Director. I don't charge much at all (thus I don't make much at all... another reason I question why I'm doing this somedays :) and the potential reach is huge. For example: a recent giveaway we hosted on FB had 50 people enter. They each had to LIKE and SHARE a marathon's FB Page. Let's say those 50 people each have 400 friends. So there's a potential reach there of 20,000 people. Oh, the mighty powers of Facebook. My favorite part of doing the site is when I get to announce the winners of the free race entry giveaways. Though it's sad sometimes seeing how many people are going to be disappointed, it's fun making those few winners happy. My least favorite part is getting turned down by Race Directors when I contact them to offer our advertising package. It's so frustrating.  I want to yell at them WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?!  Go through all this tremendous effort of putting together a huge running event, and turn down an opportunity for fabulous advertising?  I've actually only been turned down like 3 times so far, but obviously - it still stings.  Grrr.  But on the flip, I've have dozens of RDs say YES, and I've had nothing but happy customers so far.  So those haters missed out.  Anyways.... I need to get a testimonial page up and going on the site. And 592 other things.  I shouldn't even be typing this - I need to go work on my site!  Or go to bed. Since it's midnight.  The only time my house is perfectly quiet and I'm free to work! :)