Author: davecriswell

If you are responsible for doing any online monitoring for your business, or someone else’s, joining Google Buzz is worthwhile to join if for no other reason than to be able to monitor the public comments made about your business, brand, product, etc.

While training for my first triathlon almost seven years ago I had no idea what I was getting myself into. That was probably a good thing. I didn’t know how to train, and, I didn’t know there were groups of other triathletes who trained together so I spent those few months training alone.

At my first race I noticed there were a few groups wearing uniforms, club branded tents and athletes cheering each other on. Wasn’t this an individual sport?  I found it intriguing that while there was no explicit team work that you see in typical team sports. However, I saw more team work and camaderie within these groups of people than I experienced in my years of team sports play. I was hooked.

So that next year I joined a triathlon club and haven’t looked back and haven’t looked back. And that’s the paradox:

The seemingly solo sport of triathlon is anything but if you want it to be. I’m sure there are triathletes who prefer to train alone. However, in my experience, most of us participate in the sport for very individual goals that requires the discipline to complete the training. But we enhance the fulfillment we receive from reaching our individual goals by sharing the highs and lows it takes to get there with others.

It now seems that most triathletes participating in races are part of a club.  The governing body, USA Triahtlon has embraced the formation of the clubs by supporting and encouraging their creation. If there is a group of triathletes there is like a triathlon club.  If you haven’t joined a club yet, check one out, I think you’ll be glad you did.

Are you part of club? Why did you join?

Many people associate this phrase with how important location is to a piece of real estate. But this also could describe the next big trend in social media.

Combine the social sharing features of Facebook and Twitter with GPS enabled smartphones, witness the rapid growth of services like Foursquare and Gowalla, and it’s easy to see how this trend is going to force brick and mortar establishments to pay attention to location based social services. More recently Yelp has jumped into the action announcing their own form of location based social activity.

The common function that all of these services share is the ability for a user to “check in” when they are at a particular location. Foursquare and Gowalla are using game style features. For example, each service awards badges for various achievements such as “checking in” to a location more than anyone else, or stopping in multiple locations in a short period of time.

Why should destination businesses pay attention? If one of your core business beliefs is that your customer is central to everything you do, AND you want to create engaging meaningful relationships with your best customers, then these location based services have the potential to now give you complete insight into who those customers are and what they think of your business.

I’ve only used Foursquare so far but in my experience the potential for businesses to leverage these tools is big, particularly for early adopters who can build influence before their competitors.

I really like to train.  Sometimes it borders on the unhealthy side but for the most part swimming, biking and running has been good for me.  It is also an inherently selfish activity if you let it be. 10 – 20 hour training weeks need to come from the finite number of hours available in the week. Sometimes it’s work, sometimes it’s familiy, sometimes it’s sleep.

For me, one of the reasons I blog is to share my thoughts on fitness and nutrition in hopes of inspiring others to go out and exercise.  In my mind anyway, this helps offset the selfish nature of the training I do.

I never thought of myself as a writer (just ask my high school english teacher!) but I’ve found that since I’ve started to blog about what I think about during the hours and hours of training, at least a few people have responded positively. Some have gone so far as to tell me they are inspired by it.  That’s very humbling and creates an urge to write more.

However, one of my biggest frustrations has been finding the time to get down “on paper” what goes through my head while training.  Many times the stream of conscience flow of information in my head experienced in 1, 2, 6 hour training sessions is overwhelming to sort out into a cohesive blog post.

Hopefully I’ve found a solution.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve quietly launched two communities – Why I Run and Why I Tri. Using Ning, Twitter and Facebook, I’ve created a place to share my thoughts in more digestible chunks, both for me to write and hopefully for those who choose to read those thoughts. As a bonus, I’ve seen a community of runners and triathletes join in sharing their motivations which has only served to make the communities better for everyone.

Do you run or tri? Please join the community and share with the rest of us.

Why I Run

On Ning

On Facebook

On Twitter

Why I Tri

On Ning

On Facebook

On Twitter