Blog

I launched my blog in 2009 when I was wrestling with a midlife crisis. Since then, the digital world has changed so much. I was new to both Facebook and Twitter when I started blogging, and I was still rocking the BlackBerry for email. Instagram hadn’t launched yet. Podcasting and short videos are what the cool kids do these days, blogging is considered old fashioned. But I still find it the best way to share my thoughts and to profile people who inspire me.

I hope you’ll find something here that inspires you, or at least sparks a conversation. Some of my favorite posts are pinned to the top, scroll down a bit more to find the most recent, or check out the categories in the sidebar.


Marketing Monday: How to build a better relationship with the media

Marketing Monday: How to build a better relationship with the media

I’ve been on both sides of the media relationship — I’ve been a reporter and editor getting pitched every day and I’ve worked in public relations trying to get journalists interested in covering University of Michigan. Like any relationship, when it works well, everyone wins. The journalist gets to tell an interesting story she might not have otherwise known about,…

Manage your to-do list by doing less, not more

Manage your to-do list by doing less, not more

Like many people, it’s easy for me to get caught up in my aspirations for more — a bigger home, more money, greater success. Harvard Business Review‘s article, The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, challenges that. Instead of more [fill in the blank with whatever you are chasing here], focus on the right things. Author Greg McKeown starts by defining “the…

Marketing Monday: 5 tips for using email better

Marketing Monday: 5 tips for using email better

Social media gets a lot of buzz as the cool, exciting way to do marketing. I get it. I’m a social media nerd. Tools like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn give us a way to connect with others faster and more efficiently than ever, and they’re growing like crazy. Mashable reported that Twitter had 200 active users in December, double what…

Marketing Monday: How to blog if you hate to write

Marketing Monday: How to blog if you hate to write

Phone? Check Email? Check Website? Check Blog? No? No blog? It’s become standard marketing advice that a business must have a blog, alongside more standard communications tools like having a phone number and email. The benefits of business blogging are many: You keep your website fresh so you give people a reason to come back You share useful information that…

Marketing Monday: 5 tips for better do-it-yourself market research

Marketing Monday: 5 tips for better do-it-yourself market research

I’m starting a series called Marketing Monday, with tips and tricks on more effective marketing, from market research to social media, from public relations to branding. Eventually I plan to move the series to a new website at colleennewvine.com, but in the meantime, I think improving sales and customer communications is close enough to improving your personal and professional life…

Learning how to show your love instead of just saying I love you

Learning how to show your love instead of just saying I love you

Do you remember that exhilarating feeling the first time someone you adored said those magic words, “I love you?” And do you remember the gut-wrenching feeling the first time you realized that someone who’d been throwing around the L word didn’t really love you? At least, not in the way you needed? How you demonstrate your love matters. John and…

Setting my 2013 goals with help from friends

Setting my 2013 goals with help from friends

How are those resolutions coming? If you’re already stumbling, maybe you need some positive peer pressure. Just after the new year, I spent the better part of a day with two of my favorite ladies working on our 2013 plans. The three of us are at different places in our lives, with different ambitions and different ways of organizing our…

Take care of your health, ego and haters be damned

Take care of your health, ego and haters be damned

Like so many others, I am thinking the new year is a good time to recommit to exercise. Health clubs are full this time of year. Many won’t make it ’til Valentine’s Day before they drop off. But Lindy West isn’t a hit it and quit it gym member. She wrote a sassy, funny, inspiring article on Jezebel headlined, “Hello,…

Blogversation 2012: Wrapping up a year of online conversation

Blogversation 2012: Wrapping up a year of online conversation

Throughout this year, several bloggers have engaged in a conversation here and on their blogs — asking questions of each other and responding.  It’s been an honor to share Newvine Growing with these smart, thoughtful, articulate, committed women: Mary Jean Babic Kay Hoffman Goluska Lauren McCabe Maria Stuart Amy Throndsen Eleanor Traubman Lesley Ware Jennifer Worick Every week, one of…

Blogversation 2012: Has the Newtown tragedy changed you?

Blogversation 2012: Has the Newtown tragedy changed you?

Throughout this year, several bloggers will engage in a conversation here and on their blogs — asking questions of each other and responding. Others are absolutely welcome to join the conversation, as well. Learn more about the ladies of Blogversation 2012. Today’s question comes from Kay Hoffman Goluska, who blogs at Pen on Pointe.  She’s @PenOnPointe on Twitter. The original topic…

On reporting the pain of parents who have lost children

On reporting the pain of parents who have lost children

I miss many things about working at a newspaper. Sure, I continue to freelance (and to blog) to scratch my reporting itch, but it’s a different experience from working in a newsroom. I’m grateful I get to interview people and tell stories, but I sometimes miss the exhilaration of working side by side to dig into a big, important story…

Blogversation 2012: How will you add glimmer to your look this season? Or will you maintain your usual fashion profile?

Blogversation 2012: How will you add glimmer to your look this season? Or will you maintain your usual fashion profile?

Throughout this year, several bloggers will engage in a conversation here and on their blogs — asking questions of each other and responding. Others are absolutely welcome to join the conversation, as well. Learn more about the ladies of Blogversation 2012. Today’s question comes from the fashionable, creative Lesley Ware, www.thecreativecookie.net. On Twitter, Lesley is @creativecookie. The holidays always conjure…