Next Q: Online/Offline
I’m having a good time responding to questions from my 6/18/09 presentation to CPSE. Thanks, ladies.
Q: With so much moving online, what do you bother to print?
If a tree falls and no one hears it...
A: I’m not qualified to answer questions about e-commerce and web-based customer self-service. I’ll answer this from the perspective of the solo-preneur who asked the question.
What goes online and in print varies from a person to person and must align with industry norms. For example, when I ran an environmental contracting business my market was general contractors with public-bid jobs. Contractors are low-tech, and expect bids to be FAXED, not emailed. Most of them have Yahoo or Hotmail accounts and a LIGHT web presence if any. I could have senselessly spent a fortune on multimedia that would have been like the proverbial tree falling in the woods with no one to hear it. Instead, I hired a telemarketer who made personal contact with the estimators and then followed up with a customized packet that spoke to our expertise on the kinds of jobs the contractor bid.
On the other hand, when I ran a software and services consulting firm we had to demonstrate our tech chops — everything was online.
Answer these questions:
- Where do the people you most want for customers turn when they’re looking for your products and services? Referrals from people they know or from independent raters like Angie’s List? Straight to the Google search page?
- When you’re at a business mixer, how often do people ask you to send them a packet of information?
- When you present your qualifications/proposal to a new prospect, what materials do they spend time REALLY looking at? What do they repeatedly ask for that you don’t often bring?
- Why do your competitors do what they do? They may have best practices or they may be laggards, but it’s always prudent to check them out.
- Do you represent a product or offer a service that requires buyers to hunker down and study to make a decision? Offer that online for sure — also in print if you’ve got lots of money to spend. When I meet a new client I find it helpful to simply sit with them at a computer screen and go through pages on my site and elsewhere. This assures that they’ve seen my site and gives them a constant place to go if a printed piece goes astray.
Business cards & postcards
Business cards are, in my view, still a must. There’s an ongoing and lively discussion on whether you should include your social media “handles” on the card (for example, you can follow me on Twitter @TamelaRich). I can see all points of view.
I also carry 4.25″ x 5.5″ double sided postcards that act as a mini home page. Most people, when given the choice, will take a p-card instead of a b-card. Given the nature of my work, that’s all the print collateral I need, b-cards and p-cards. Your mileage may vary.
How ’bout it, experts? What else should entrepreneurs/small business owners consider?
Next Q: Personal vs Professional Blog?
Continuing my series of answers from questions asked at the CPSE meeting 6/18/09.
Q: When should you have a personal blog and when should you use a blog professionally?
A: (From the perspective of a self-employed/solo-preneur who asked it) This can be a delicate balance. Find your voice somewhere between “faux big business” and the emerging “my-life’s-an-open-book” ethos.
Set the tone with your bio
Here’s a Twitter follower’s bio, (@ex-wirehouse) which sets the stage for the voice he uses in his blog posts and tweets:
“One time Infantry Officer, longtime wirehouse veteran. Currently Principal and CEO of Andover Equity Investment Group LLC an independent asset management paractice,successfully focused on absolute return investing. Proud husband and father of 7 year old twins. Discplined trader who is constantly humbled by the markets. In no way should this even remotely be construed to constitute investment advice, more aptly a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
When you go on to read his posts, you’ll see that he blends strong professional views with a heavy dose of humility, just as his bio suggests he would.
For something a bit more traditional, here’s my bio.
Find your voice
Let’s say you’re a baseball card collector, you love all things about the sport but your paid work is interior design. How to get into the new media groove?
You might talk about the parallels between project management and third base coaching or dealing with a difficult customer with a personality like Ty Cobb’s. This makes you a REAL PERSON, infuses warmth into your posts and will probably garner you a following of other baseball lovers. Wow, imagine having a client roster full of other people who love the game — that’s the potential of your new media voice.
Next post: What to put in print/online
How to Quench the New Media Thirst?
I’ve got street cred talking about adolescent boys — mine are 17 and 20. So believe me, when it comes to technology, I’m like an adolescent boy learning how to deal with hormones; my ego swells and deflates according to the company I keep.
Last week I addressed a business networking group of small business owners and solo-preneurs. Their program director asked me to speak on e-newsletter marketing, but they wanted to know EVERYTHING about social marketing, from blogs to the proper form for declining a Facebook or LinkedIn invitation without offending.
Since nothing they asked stumped me, my head swelled . Like an adolescent boy, it doesn’t take much.
Getting the job done
Half an hour for Q&A was insufficient; books have been written on each question!
As marketing and media become more granular and everyone’s expected to publish SOMETHING, even a 140-character tweet, there’s an audience for what I have to say about effective business communications and plenty of opportunities to ghostwrite. But I’m a Business Person who writes like an English Major, not a new media guru.
Fortunately for us all there are technology scouts out ahead charting the best path to success. Given the thirst for new media information, I’m going to address the specific unanswered questions of the Charlotte Professional Saleswomen and Entrepreneurs through a series of posts and invite the REAL GENIUSES out there to comment on and enhance what I have to say.
Blog versus Newsletter: what’s the difference?
I love open source technologies, and I love WordPress.
The word “blog” is truncated from web log. Remember Star Trek, with “captain’s log” entries? Well, a blog is a web-based log of thoughts, activities, articles, and whatever else the author publishes in a “post” (as opposed to a web page). Lots of great (and free) software makes publishing a blog easy.
A newsletter can contain the same kind of materials that are published on blogs. Newsletters can be published electronically or on paper, but the blog is called a “blog” because it’s a web log.
If you publish both a blog and newsletter, they should reinforce each other. Your blog should be updated more often than you publish newsletters, so refer to blog posts that take the reader further down the knowledge path of the articles and topics in the newsletter. For example, in my recent newsletter I referred to six blog posts on how to keep your e-newsletters out of the SPAM filters. No need to condense six blog posts in the e-newsletter!
OK, that’s enough from me on this particular question. If you have further questions or want to elaborate on my answer, have at it — floor’s open.
Set the Hook
What’s she* talking about?
Women are faking it in bedrooms all over America.
“When my husband says, ‘Can you believe how much better this is?’ I say, ‘Yes, honey, it’s amazing,’ ” one woman told me. “I really don’t see that much difference, but he’s so happy, I just pretend to.”
Answer: Hi-def TV
“As an explosion of pixels hits our TV screens this weekend, with the digital and high-def revolution, my unscientific survey shows women are less excited about high-def than men.”
According to a quoted source, “Men are all about the bigger, better, more…and sports are infinitely better in high definition.”
Compel and propel
Good writing starts with an irresistible hook that compels the reader to find out what’s on the other end. Good writing propels the reader through the piece, oblivious to the passing of time.
I couldn’t care less about HDTV and wouldn’t have read a column about TV without a hook that compelled. I stayed with the piece because it propelled, focusing on the gender gap, a topic that interests me. Compelling while propelling is easy on the reader — and unless it’s your private diary, writing is all about the reader.
On a whole-brain-communications note, this hook resonated as possibly salacious. Our brains are wired to be piqued by the possibility of pleasure.
Speaking on Newsletters
This week I speak to the Carolina Professional Saleswomen and Entrepreneurs on a favorite topic: Newsletters and CAN-SPAM.
I plan to start with a primer on the scary compliance stuff and then discuss how professionals can build their newsletter subscription list (as well as subcriptions to blogs, ezines, etc) with a solid CONTENT strategy, including article marketing.
I’d appreciate any advance questions you think I should plan to address in my talk.
I’m also interested in any research on this topic, whether your own or someone else’s.
Thanks in advance.
Global Defense Bonds?
I’m no weenie peacenik. Thugs must be taken out. But please, let’s rethink our military expenditures.
What if we killed two birds with one stone? First bird, the precarious US treasury. Second bird, the unsustainable global arms race. The stone? A global peacekeeping collective powered with the existing world’s arsenal, most of which the US built.
We built it, so I’m in favor of being compensated for it
The world needs a police force. But I’m not in favor of the ever-escalating arms race or the US being the de facto world’s police force.
What if we paid down our massive foreign debt by selling our portfolio of defense weapons to a global defense bond fund? I got the idea from a white paper published by the Prince’s Rainforest Project which I covered in the May blog. The basic logic of the proposed Rainforest bonds and my proposed global defense bonds is the same: those who add value must be compensated for what they bring to the table.
Rainforest bonds, hence global defense bonds
Here’s what I said about Rainforest bonds: Rainforests cool the planet, regulate the water cycle and provide a home to countless species. To preserve the world’s ecosystem functions and avoid catastrophic climate change, we must reduce tropical deforestation. The world should provide funding to Rainforest nations to help them address the drivers of deforestation and embark on alternative economic development paths. Since the rainforests provide “services” essential to planetary life, justice dictates that those services be compensated.
Similar argument for global defense bonds: The world needs the threat and capability to enforce swift justice to keep the wolves from devouring the lambs. The countries that have sacrificed mightily to build armaments (see graphic above) should be compensated by the beneficiaries — the entire world.
OK, maybe the bond mechanism isn’t ideal, but isn’t this a great conversation starter/brainstorming prompt?
Writing prompts for all professions:
I don’t claim to have the answers, but I thoroughly enjoy seeding the wellspring for your blogs, articles and newsletters:
- Financial analysts: what’s a fundamental analysis say about the efficiency a dollar invested in defense compared to other sectors? How would this change if there were a different marketplace for weaponry?
- Consultants: Technology transfers from weapons to medicine and IT (and visa versa). Do you know of any breakthroughs in medicine or elsewhere that would have come to light sooner if the threat of national security hadn’t kept a weapons technology classified?
- Finance professionals/venture capitalists: Speculate on what might happen if weapons technology was a global defense asset that followed the model in place with universities’ technology transfer programs. Is there a parallel?
- Environmental: Weapons sites decomissioned so far require significant environmental cleanup. Anticipate the impact to the environment of having fewer global weapons sites.
- Services: Reflect on how military bases and weapons plants have been repurposed so far what that portends on a global scale.
- EVERYONE: 1.26b is a lot of money. How would you reallocate it?
Straight Talk on Compensation
Interesting piece in Sunday’s NYT on financial planners based on the news that James Putman and another employee of Wealth Management took $1.24 million each in kickbacks related to certain investments they were making for clients and fraudulently allocated $102 million in client funds.
The Times’ reporter said to “Check the legitimacy of planners’ credentials, and ask them to sign a fiduciary oath, promising to act in your best interests at all times. And read every word of every account statement. If you see something, say something. You should never be confused by jargon, strange numbers or anything else on your statements.”
Who can disagree with that advice? A lot of planners, brokers and advisers, from the sounds of things. As I’ve written before, my first career was financial services. I know earnest professionals and I know snakes in the grass. If ever there was a time for proactive client communications, this is it.
Financial & Consulting Writing Prompts
Financial advisers aren’t the only professionals with compensation conflicts. What about the IT firm that also sells the license to the software they’re installing…these prompts work for a variety of circumstances.
- If you own your firm, tell your clients why you decided to structure your compensation as you did. If you work for a broker or agency, tell your clients why you believe the comp structure you work under is fair to you and to them.
- Explain how you balance the competing interests of your financial future and theirs.
- Have an up-front discussion about how they can challenge your ethics.
- Do you belong to a professional organization that requires credentialing? Tell your clients about the credentialing process and how your preparation and credentialing benefit them.
- Publish your continuing education plans for the year.
- Solicit feedback from clients: what topics do they find most confusing?
e-Newsletters: Track Them, You Must
The first week of the month is popular for publishing newsletters. I publish the first week. So with the June flurry largely passed, here’s food for thought before firing off your July edition.
"Do it, you must!"
In a study reported on MediaPost on email marketing (which isn’t exactly newsletter campaigns, but sufficiently related), roughly 18% of marketers admitted they were NOT tracking campaign performance. Stunning.
Marketers that do not track normal site conversions
- Don’t know how 42.86%
- Don’t have budget 4.76
- Don’t have time 14.29
- Other 38.08
Newsletter metrics
Of course I wish you were using my service, since it provides exquisitely detailed reporting, but no matter. If you’re using an off-the-shelf provider, start with what you can track and pay attention.
How’s your open rate over time? What about subscriber base?
Do specific topics generate a higher click-through rate? A higher unsubscribe or forward rate?
Clients ask, I answer
Yesterday a client called for my input. She wants to move her ad-sponsored printed newsletter clients over to an ad-sponsored blog and wanted to check her logic with me. She asked why I bother to publish both a blog and a newsletter.
Answer: I want to make it easy for clients and prospects to hear from me. My audience ranges from the tech-savvy to the tech-impaired, so whether they stream my blog to a reader or hit a blog post I’ve tweeted or look at the monthly newsletter in their inbox (and click through to the blog, or not) I’m doing the hard work so that they can skim what they need and move on with their lives.
This works for me because I’m *good enough* with technology, I have a sales and marketing background, and I love writing, a lucky combination. Few people, including my client, have the same mix of strengths and preferences, so my advice to her and anyone else is to go with your strengths and minimize your weaknesses.
This might mean hiring a ghostwriter, but should never mean publishing an off-the-shelf newsletter. Realtors can get away with recycled articles like carpet cleaning tips and how to stage a house for showings, but I can’t think of a profession besides theirs that should even consider it.
Goal-driven newsletters
From time to time I have tactical goals, like drumming up attendance for a speaking engagement, but my overall publishing goal (blog and newsletter) is client acquisition and retention. I want to keep my services and expertise top of mind. Someday, someone will remember I’m a Business Person who writes like an English Major and engage me.
Staying top of mind is also why I publish free blog/newsletter topics for clients and prospects in the industries I know best: financial services, consulting, services and environmental. I exercise the “give to get” philosophy that feeding professionals ideas for their publishing endeavors will someday yield a harvest for me.
Whether your goal is converting readers to a seminar series or a sit-down session, you need to start with that goal, figure out how to make it happen, and how to track what’s happening along the way. With rare exception you’ll need to make corrections to your current path that will bring you to your goal. But if you don’t know you’re off course, you can’t get back on track.
Unless you’re a statistician, analysis isn’t the sexiest thing you’ll do with your day. But to quote Yoda, “Do it, you must.” Feel free to reach out if you want my feedback.
More Word Cloud Love
As a student of whole-brain communications I love a good word cloud.
Here’s one from today’s presidential speech in Cairo.
Shorten those Subject Lines
Before you hit “send” on that fabulous newsletter remember, email domains often limit the number of subject line characters they display in the inbox*:
Shorter is Better
- AOL, (approximately 22% of the U.S. email market) limits subject lines to roughly 38 characters
- Yahoo!, (with 21% of U.S. email) is at 47 characters
- Hotmail, (14% of the U.S. email market) uses word wrap to display subject lines on multiple lines, but still just 45 characters per line
Bottom line: go for the lowest common denominator (38 characters).
Here’s a wrinkle: Considering the growing reliance on mobile devices, with smaller screens, think even shorter!
If you’re a Twitter-er, you’re probably getting used to truncating…I know I am.
*As reported in MediaPost, 2009
