A few weeks ago, I attended the Austin AMA’s monthly luncheon to hear keynote speaker Peter Shankman talk about smart self-promotion.  Peter is the founder of HARO (helpareporter.com) and has been described by PR Week magazine as “redefining the art of networking”.  In a nutshell, Peter’s philosophy is simple: Incorporate helping and your self-promotion will work.  Brilliant!  It’s simple and smart and just so happens to be my approach to networking as well.

So many people cringe at the thought of networking events.  To them, networking feels like shameless self promotion and fake.  So my advice is to redefine the idea of networking.  Don’t go to a networking event, expecting to close a deal.  Don’t go with the expectation of getting anything out of it for yourself.  Just go and connect with people.  Have a genuine curiosity about who they are and what they do (at work or away from the office).  Don’t be the person that is there waiting for others to drop business in your lap.  Be passionate about what you do and be there to help others.

Give without the intent of getting anything in return.  Chances are you could be surprised with what comes back around to benefit you in the end.

Tracy Hinson
Business Development
White Lion Internet Agency

We recently launched a new website for www.printreleaf.com, an office supply company looking to do their part to slow down deforestation.

Printreleaf.com primarily focuses on the sale of ink and toner for printers.  They know that each time a letter is printed, they are contributing to deforestation.  So to offset this decline, they’ve implemented a system to plant trees to offset the paper that will be used from every ink cartridge they sell.

It sounds simple…and it is.  An office supply company with a conscience who has decided to do things right.

White Lion has been committed to being green for many years now, and it’s awesome to be able to support new companies making that same decision.

Andrew Hamlin
Information Architect
White Lion Internet Agency

The Texas Electric Cooperatives (TEC) is a statewide organization dedicated to representing the interests of cooperative electric utilities in Texas and the member-consumers they serve.

TEC also publishes “TEXAS CO-OP POWER” magazine, an award-winning monthly magazine with a circulation in excess of 1 million.

White Lion and TEX will work together to completely reimagining the magazine’s website to feature a user-friendly appearance coupled with more Web-only content.

Andrew Hamlin
Information Architect
White Lion Internet Agency

Long-time White Lion client, Austin’s own Scott, Douglass & McConnico, needed a new marketing strategy that would minimize the soft costs associated with keeping their marketing materials (i.e. firm brochure) relevant.  Also important is that as the law firm grows, so too must their marketing campaign strategy.

With these goals in mind, White Lion set out to design and program an online application to keep the firm’s brochure up-to-date and accessible.  Through an easy-to-use backend tool, the Scott, Douglass, & McConnico team can assemble custom brochures featuring any variation of practice areas and associated attorneys – making it effortless to target any potential new client.  The output of the new tool is a fully formatted PDF featuring all of the text and photos pulled form their website database. The resulting brochure can be saved to a desktop, printed and/or emailed.

Since the brochure and its dynamic contents are all Web-based, the same data is available for download by visitors of their website.  Centralizing the data makes it easy to update in one spot and ensures the brochure reflects their team’s most up-to-date information in a well-branded format.

As organizations continually seek to find ways to reduce soft costs, White Lion will continue to offer our team’s expertise to find creative ways to solve those needs.

Michelle Loeper
Project Manager
White Lion Internet Agency

I really enjoy reaching out to new clients to find out the “why” behind a client entrusting our team for their project.

Nick and Andrew — our lead discovery team — were able to earn a good sized web design and development project recently for the Texas Co-Op Power Magazine.

Reaching out to Carol Moczygemba, we were given some great feedback including what has become my favorite “new client” quote of all time.

Having the great fortune working in such a dynamic industry over the past 15 years, the quote stands out – particularly with how hard our team strives for putting integrity first.

Here is what Carol said:

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From: Carol Moczygemba [mailto:cmoczygemba@texas-ec.org]
Sent: Sunday, April 18, 2010 10:50 PM
To: Steve Kahle
Subject: Re: White Lion Project : Thank You!

Hi Steve -
I think Nick and Andrew “got it” for the most part – there were a few details we needed to clarify when they came to visit, but it seems that is being handled to our satisfaction. I don’t have a comparison point to gauge the complexity of our project against others you have developed, but I know we have expectations that may be very different from other projects simply because we’re a publication. I think both Nick and Andrew are sensitive to that and open to working with us to achieve exactly what we have in mind.

Second question – one other competitor was very close to White Lion in our evaluations – White Lion won out because we ultimately felt more comfortable working with an established team of developers, web architects and designers. We are an organization with a long history and stable team of colleagues. We value those qualities in White Lion. We were impressed with your knowledge base, but as much as that, we all had a strong sense of your integrity.

I don’t know that this answers your questions. Let me know if there’s something I missed.

Warmest regards,
Carol

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Awesome stuff!

Steve C. Kahle
Managing Principal
White Lion Internet Agency

We are very excited to welcome Tracy Hinson into the White Lion den.

Tracy will be putting her 18 plus years of marketing and technical experience to work building new relationships with clients who crave White Lion’s red carpet service & support.

Welcome to the team, Tracy!

Andrew Hamlin
Information Architect
White Lion Internet Agency

White Lion has been hired by Incenergy — an Austin-based start-up company — to develop their new corporate website.  Incenergy is looking to establish a rapid foothold in the smart energy industry by offering a unique deployment approach.

One important goal for the site is to provide content management tools to minimize soft costs for Incenergy in keeping content up to date.  White Lion will use open source technology and established code libraries to implement custom content management tools allowing the Incenergy team to update content through simple-to-use administrative forms.

Andrew Hamlin
Information Architect
White Lion Internet Agency

This week we launched a new site for Scott, Douglass & McConnico. The Austin law firm has been a valued White Lion client since 1999.

In addition to the website’s updated design, new functionality includes a dynamic brochure builder that empowers SD&M’s attorneys to easily create custom brochures for clients — including only the content that is relevant to their needs.

Andrew Hamlin
Information Architect
White Lion Internet Agency