Coleman Unlimited LLC

Catapulting the Curve Podcast Series: Segment 1 Now Available

Sonia — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 22:56:49 +0000

I recently moderated a podcast series, “Catapulting the Curve” on technology trends in the electrical industry. I interviewed industry insiders Larry Stern and Del Nickel. Larry is the president of Standard Electric Supply and current chairman of IDEA. Del is past president of Pentair Technical Products, most known by its Hoffman brand in the US, and past chairman of IDEA.

I had great fun asking Del and Larry some tough questions and hearing their thought-provoking answers. This is the first of four podcast discussions and is released by IDEA and NEMAcast.

Enjoy listening!

Video Now Available from Digital Marketing Strategy Presentation

Sonia — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 22:46:56 +0000

Watch your hearts out! Amanda Johnson and I give some great pointers and tips on how to build, engage and embrace as you develop your digital marketing efforts. Special thanks to the E-Biz Forum for the opportunity to share with their attendees.

Our Digital Marketing Presentation Slides Now Available

Sonia — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 22:42:53 +0000

For those of you who missed our live presentation at the 2011 E-Biz Forum, the slides are now available on Slideshare. It’s packed full of great information on digital marketing… and could easily have been expanded into an entire day-long workshop. Good stuff!

Digital Marketing Strategy: Ride the Groundswell or Crash and Burn? – Sonia Coleman, Coleman Unlimited; Amanda Johnson, IDEA

View more presentations from IDEA eSolutions

Digital Marketing Strategy: Ride the Groundswell or Crash and Burn?

Sonia — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 22:26:50 +0000

I really enjoyed teaming up with Amanda Johnson to present on Digital Marketing strategy at the 2011 E-Biz Forum on September 27. This is such a huge topic that we had hours of material—and the hardest part was fitting everything into a 50-minute session!

Topics we covered:

Build: developing your strategy—questions to ask, listening and monitoring, evaluating your audience, etc.
Engage: interacting with current and potential customers via social networks, forums, effective content, SEO, and more.
Embrace: integrate tools into your business so you can become more innovative and efficient.

Since technology changes so quickly, we focused on developing the strategy and goals necessary vs. focusing only on the tools available. The slides and video should be available soon.

Electrical Industry Technology Trends to Be Published in tED Magazine

Sonia — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 20:35:45 +0000

Our Q & A article with electrical industry leaders, Del Nickel and Larry Stern, is slated to be published in the September 2011 issue of tED Magazine.

As past and present chairs of IDEA, Nickel and Stern discuss trends that are impacting the industry, like the increasing demand for e-catalogs, and actions leaders can take to stay up to date and effectively compete.

We’d love to share more, but you’ll have to wait until the article comes out in tED to read more.

Article Selected for the Cover of NEMA’s electroindustry Magazine

Sonia — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 20:20:04 +0000

Coleman Unlimited’s article on Building Information Modeling (BIM) has been selected as the cover story for the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) electroindustry Magazine!

Special thanks and congratulations to IDEA E-Solutions for their great work on the future of the electrical industry.

Here’s a link to the online version of the article.

Sonia Graduated with Master’s Degree!

Sonia — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 23:58:05 +0000

Although I finished my final master’s project some time ago (a 130 page project!), it took me a bit longer to officially graduate and even longer to actually go and pick up my diploma! I know hold a Master of Fine Arts in Writing.

Here is my diploma in all its glory!

Communication Contest Awards

Sonia — Wed, 19 May 2010 00:02:42 +0000

This year we participated in the Missouri Professional Communicators (MPC) 2010 Communications Contest again. And we were grateful to be awarded some placements including:

First Place

Personality Profile, for the article “Solving Mysteries” by Sonia Coleman in the New Dimensions magazine, published by the American Association of Orthodontics (AAO).
Page Layout, for the design of “Going Green Outside” and “Sustainability Best Practices” for the National Association of Electrical Distributors (NAED).

Second Place

Writing for the Web, Home Page/Blog

Third Place

Feature story, for the article, “Bringing Health and Hope to Needy Children in South and Central America” in New Dimensions Magazine, published by the American Association of Orthodontics (AAO).
Business Articles, for the articles, “EDI: Improving Efficiencies” in IMARK Market Focus Magazine and “Market Your Practice” in the AAO Bulletin.

I Won First, Second, and HM in the 2009 National NFPW Communications Contest!

Sonia — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:53:05 +0000

A few months ago, I won three first place awards in the Missouri Communications Contest through my local National Federation of Press Women (NFPW) chapter. These three entries were then entered in the NFPW’s national contest. I recently heard that I won First, Second and Honorable Mention in the national contest!

First place in Magazine Section Editing – for my work in 2008 on the National Association of Electrical Distributor’s NAED Direct section in TED Magazine.
Second place in Writing for the Web (Web content written for corporate or for-profit organization sites) – for the text I wrote for the Cutter’s Kitchens and Baths website.
Honorable Mention in Special articles, Business – for articles I wrote for IMARK Marketfocus Magazine (see Results for the articles). I’d write down which ones it was here if I had finished putting away all my files after we moved offices!

The awards will be given away at NFPW’s national conference in September. Now I have to decide if I’m up for a trip or not!

Press Releases as a Powerful SEO Tool

Sonia — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:11:27 +0000

I work frequently with my husband’s web development company, so I know that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the new Atkins Diet in the world of technology. All companies want to know about it because they think it will save them tons of money in advertising. Many companies sell SEO services, and some make ridiculous promises! (Example: We’ll make you #1 on Google! they say… sure, sure! Just roll your eyes when you see that one.) We do offer SEO services, and there’s many things a company can do to improve their SEO rankings.

However, the best way to raise rankings without buying Google AdWords, is to simply have a lot websites linking to your site. This is a great differentiator for search engines like Google to be able to tell if a website is the real deal or not.

With a background in PR, I know how to get free publicity. And now, there’s even more avenues to get news published! Press releases are often published on the websites of publications, especially when they don’t have space in the print edition. This used to be a lesser thing in PR because everyone loves to see a printed clip. (The web can sometimes be a bit invisible to those leaders who like physical printed materials.)

However, now with SEO coming to the forefront, press releases offer companies with a cost-effective and powerful tool to send out a message AND raise the ranking of your website, as long as your press releases link back to your website. I’m going to using this approach with a few of my clients that I also have access to their web stats; it’ll be interesting to see if I can measure a correlation between web stats and press release distribution. It’ll be fun! I’m going to use this website as a guinea pig also.