It’s people like Diane Hessan who make me look forward to opening up my computer, firing up Twitter, and listening to her stream of of consciousness. She’s the best of the best when you think of CEO’s on Twitter. I’m honored to call her a friend, a mentor and one of my favorites in the  ongoing “7 Habits of Highly Effective Social Marketers” Series. Thanks Diane!

About Diane
I am CEO of Communispace. We help many of the world’s most admired companies listen to, and get insights from, their customers — by building and managing online communities. We have about 100 clients and over 250 employees.

1. What one trait or habit got you to where you are today?
I love to laugh.

2. Your work day just started, what’s the FIRST thing you do and why?
I hang out at the coffee machine with employees and find out what they are working on that excites them – because it inspires me.

3. What makes you efficient with your day?
I have the best executive assistant in Boston. He is patient and super smart, and he anticipates every possible thing that could go wrong with my day.

4. Your Favorite Business book of all time?
First, my 12th grade physics book Concepts like momentum, critical mass, vectors, energy, and force are key to building a growing and profitable company.

Secondly, Customer-Centered Growth, which I co-authored in 1995, because it was an enormous intellectual challenge for an extrovert like me.

Thirdly, In Search of Excellence, written by one of my mentors, Tom Peters, which first raised the notion that some companies are intentionally more amazing than the rest of the pack.

5. 3 things on your desk right now/3 things you can’t live without
My blackberry
my laptop,
and my Red Sox Trivia Calendar (The record for the most strikeouts in a single season is Pedro Martinez in 1999).

6. Habit you want to kick in 2010
When I start our 8:30 a.m. bimonthly all-staff meetings, I say “Good Morning Everyone!”, which really bothers our employees in Europe and Australia.

7. Habit you want to form for 2010.
I want to pick up the phone at least 3 times a week, call a client, and tell them how much we value their confidence in us. I also need to take more vitamins.

If you are a small business on a shoe-string budget, look no further than Duct Tape Marketing. Today’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective Social Marketers” continues with
the 7 Habits of John Jantsch.

About John
John Jantsch is a marketing and digital technology coach, award winning social media publisher and author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine

1. What one trait or habit got you to where you are today?
Paying attention to what’s going on around me and writing about it daily

2. Your work day just started, what’s the FIRST thing you do and why?
Coffee – I have a routine of sites, email, engagement, Twitter, etc that I run through – I guess it’s part of my overall systems approach

3. What makes you efficient with your day?
GTD and Central Desktop – I’ve always been a list maker

4. Your Favorite Business book of all time?
The Practice of Management – Peter Drucker – although it may not seem like it, it’s the best marketing book I’ve ever read

5. 3 things on your desk right now/ 3 things you can’t live without
24″ Monitor, Moleskin notebook, Jug of green tea

6. Habit you want to kick in 2010
Coffee

7. Habit you want to form for 2010
Increase Yoga and running practices

I’ve spent the better half of the last month trying to think of a name for my new company. It’s an incredibly challenging process. So, let’s talk about it.

A company name should be:

Memorable: Something that resonates with the audience. Catchy, but not too cliché, right?

Easy to pronounce or spell: You don’t want someone butchering your company name.

Searchable/ unique Tyson’s Social Media Group” is not unique enough. A friend of mine named his blog Artificial Simplicity. Good idea. Two memorable, distinct names. His blog comes up at the top of a search with those two names. (Hat tip to Scott Karamabis, @copia if you are keeping score at home)

Is the URL available? Probably not, but if you add “inc”, or “group” or “llc” to the name, you’ll have some luck- be creative….

Descriptive of your services and/or audience: Now this is where it gets tricky. How do you possibly do that in two or three words?

Active: If you name your company after you high school mascot, that’s great, but it’s a static name with no “real movement”.  A company name I really love is from another friend who recently named his company “Ingage”. (www.ingageinc.com) It’s a terrific name that’s easy to remember, spell and it speaks to what he does as his business. (I thought of a similar name literally the day before we had coffee- darn it!)

A creative combination of everything I just mentioned. Now, I have to give a hat tip to Jim Spencer here who has recommended two good sites that are keeping me busy tonight and they are www.nameboy.com, www.makewords.com. There are a couple more I can’t remember right now, but Jim is a great resource for anything website related (and I highly recommend him check him out at www.jbspartners.com)

So, the company naming journey continues. Maybe there is some value in keeping it simple and naming my company “The Goodridge Group”?

There is a company name for me out there (ideas welcome),  I just can’t find it tonight.

There’s a darn good reason why people charge good $$ to help name your company, it’s worth every penny. As an entrepreneur, I just wish there were more of those pennys to go around….