eMarketSouth Central

A local couple disappeared last Monday March 3, from Harbor Town in Hilton Head.  Not just any couple but John and Liz Calvert.  Let me tell you a little bit about the past week and the two beloved friends who are missing.  The day the disappeared they were working as usual Liz is an attorney with Hunter Maclean in Savannah and John owns Harbor Town Yacht Basin and stays very hands on with the daily operations of the basin.  Both had attended meetings, met friends for lunch and carried on with their normal work week just as we all did.  They had a late afternoon meeting with an accountant who had worked on the Harbor Town Yacht Basin books before John and Liz bought the business.  They have not been seen since.  The only other thing to disappear were Liz’s car and Liz’s laptop.  The car was found in a resort parking lot on Hilton Head.  The laptop was not.  They disappeared.  Their blackberries, cell phones, and GPS in the car were turned off.  Turned off so they could not be traced at all.  They have vanished.  By Tuesday morning early, we knew that something was wrong.  Close friends and co-workers knew we needed to contact authorities because John would not leave the marina without making plans.  Liz would not miss meetings at work.  Neither would ignore emails or phone calls.  And neither would leave TC, their cat on the boat unattended.  Talk swirled among those close to them.  Could they have snuck off for a few days?  Not typical and they wouldn’t leave their responsibilites unattended.  Could they have just gotten tired of the immense pressures on both as an attorney and as the owners of Harbor Town Marina?  Again, not likely and so out of character that very little time was spent considering that option. John Calvert is a man who loves his boat, his work, his friends.  John has no family … no siblings … no children and parents who are deceased.  He loves Georgia Tech naming his yacht “Yellow Jacket” and his companion boat “buzz”.  He loves his yacht basin and would not leave without a plan in place.  Liz Calvert is an accomplished attorney who before working with Hunter Maclean in Savannah, she worked for 14 years with UPS representing the large company out of Atlanta.  She is a graduate and board member of Converse college.  She is very active in their institutional advancement.  She is also on the board of the Nature Conservancy.  Liz has one brother who lives in Atlanta and has been called in to help make temporary decisions to run the Yacht Basin.  Liz has no children and her parents too are deceased. If you know any informaiton about the disappearance of these beloved friends and prominent community members, please contact the Beaufort County Sheriff’s office and read more about them and their lives at the Island Packet. 

Tags: eMarketSouth by Suzy Buelvas
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Well, maybe that’s not completely true, but read a number of blogs and you might start to see the power they hold. In a lunch lecture I attended yesterday, the speaker, who owns her own PR firm, admitted that bloggers are evil creatures, often causing havoc for her clients. In her examples, the content related to bloggers who obtained privileged information and made speculations or started rumors on their blogs. But therein is why she has a job in the first place.

If you are concerned about your company’s information leaking to the public, you should be sure to guard it and have complete trust in those who share such information. On the other hand, using your blog to purposefully share information to the public in a timely manner can be a very proactive measure.

At the recent BlogSavannah UnCon, speaker Josh Hallett spoke about the problem Sony had by creating a fake blog where two of its team members pretended to be game players that started a blog to convince family and friends to give them a new PSP for Christmas. The public quickly caught on and called them out, as did the media. Sony came back with a revamped blog, under Hallett’s direction, which now provides communication directly between Sony and its PlayStation fans.

But what is it about bloggers that make them so evil? Well, maybe evil isn’t the right word… perhaps they simply require that companies be more accountable for their actions. Information via the Internet is viral, and while you may not always see comments on a specific blog, you can bet people have read them. (Feel free to review my post from November about Spirit Airlines - the ultimate “OOPS” case study.)

So what are people saying about you? Make Google your best friend. Type in your company name and take a look. Spend some time on Technorati. If something strikes you, see what you could do that might make the situation better. Then take a look at what people are saying about your competition. Those are probably issues to you as well. Don’t start your blog to be a PR response - it needs to be a conversation with your customers, and they will be able to immediately notice if you have someone else writing or some ulterior purposes behind your posts.

Tags: Blogging, Search Engine Optimization, eMarketSouth by Lisa Scarbrough
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If you have been in the Savannah area for any length of time or on the east coast recently, you know that the fastest growing port is right here in our very own backyard. Savannah is rapidly becoming one of the largest ports on the southeastern seaboard. All this time I have noticed more and more container vessels coming in and lots of news about the ports but until these images came across my desk I didn’t give much thought to the process of loading and unloading container ships. They don’t look that big from here … like Lego blocks! But up close, well you have driven up next to an eighteen wheeler haven’t you? You see what I mean. How can the port grow, the containers increase and the cranes stay the same. They can’t … so just yesterday the cranes came to town. Sent from China in December, the cranes finally made it into Savannah’s port yesterday. The city even made sure the bridge connecting us to the low country of South Carolina was closed to traffic … just in case someone had measured wrong. Crazy! What a mess that would have been for that ship to hit the bridge. Luckily they had about eight feet of breathing room. The port authority and all the employees at the port were well prepared for the arrival of the cranes. They were not prepared for the crowd of onlookers. People covered Riverstreet and strained to watch as the cranes made their way to their new home. With the installation of these great big cranes, it doesn’t appear as though the growth of Savannah’s ports will slow down anytime soon. What an exciting time to be part of the blossoming of our fair city … Savannah. Join us and see what the fuss is all about!

Tags: Key to Savannah, Savannah Home Finder, eMarketSouth by Suzy Buelvas
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