Business Building - Shonali Burke Consulting

28 Dec 2009

3 Reasons Why Being a Volunteer Leader Helps Your Business

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

One of the great things about joining a professional development organization is that you can get hands-on leadership experience as a volunteer; experience which, they say, will serve you well in your “real” job. Certainly that’s a selling point for such organizations and in the PR/communications field, organizations such as IABC and PRSA thrive on it.

What kind of leadership skills do volunteer leaders actually gain though? And do these skills actually benefit them in their careers, or are they simply good volunteer leaders because of skills they’ve acquired […]

By Shonali Burke|Dec 28, 2009|Categories: Business Building, Career Development|Tags: Career Development, grow smart business, iabc, iabc washington, jill foster, leadership, Measurement & Metrics, pr, SFBAPC, volunteering|7 Comments

07 Nov 2009

My Virgin Trip on Virgin America

Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

As I write this, I’m about two hours away from San Francisco en route to San Diego for PRSA09. I’m on Virgin America’s Flight 67, which is my first time traveling with the airline.

I’m sold… mostly.

I’ve heard quite a bit about the Virgin experience (mostly on Twitter), but you really have to fly it to get it. The minute you step on the plane, you enter this nightclub-like ambience … or if not a nightclub, then at least you get the feeling you’re stepping into the “cool kids'” zone. Their lighting is pinkish-neon […]

By Shonali Burke|Nov 7, 2009|Categories: Business Building, Public Relations|Tags: customer service, prsa09, virgin america|12 Comments

06 Oct 2009

The Business of Business Cards

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Last week I spoke at Communitelligence’s “Rethinking Corporate Communications 2009” conference just two days after the GrowSmartBiz conference. GSB was a veritable smorgasbord of networking and ideas, with Steven Fisher’s presentation on killer business cards definitely a highlight.

So when I met Mahmoud Arafa of designframe at RCC and saw his business cards, I couldn’t but help think of Steve’s presentation. Check them out.

And this is the back.

[…]

By Shonali Burke|Oct 6, 2009|Categories: Business Building|Tags: communitelligence, grow smart business, mahmoud arafa, steven fisher|10 Comments

29 Sep 2009

DC, #GrowSmartBiz Is Here

Estimated Reading Time: 17 minutes

Update: This is a recap of my live-tweeting from the GrowSmartBusiness conference held today in DC. I did try to give everyone a heads up that I would be doing this, but if you didn’t get that (because I know you have better things to do than hang on every word I say), I apologize in advance for clogging your Twitterstream.

As far as the conference goes: in one word – WOW, what a day. But more on that later. I used the Twitter LiveBlog plugin for WordPress to […]

By Shonali Burke|Sep 29, 2009|Categories: Business Building|Tags: Career Development, grow smart business, live blog, network solutions, neville hobson, shashi bellamkonda, Twitter|10 Comments