How To Get More Opportunities As A Guest Speaker

 

Jan. 8, 2012

If you’re successful in generating speaking opportunities, you’ll create opportunities for your career. At the least, you’ll be in a position to raise your business profile.

Ideally, prospective clients or customers will be in the audience. Count on opportunities to develop centers of influence — people who can refer business to you. You can expand your comfort zone. Also, you can learn a lot by teaching or speaking. By elevating your profile, it’s easier to keep your clients. At the very least, public speaking will help to keep your skills sharp.

Joey Tamer is in demand as a public speaker and moderator. Based in Los Angeles with an outstanding record of success, Ms. Tamer is a strategic consultant to technology and media.

She’s graciously shares her recommendations on how to be invited to speak at events for your niche industry.

Key first four steps:

1. List of all the conferences special to your industry.
2. List the events and conferences at which your competitors present (search your competitors’ websites).
3. Select the ones that put that targeted decision maker in the audience.
4. Refine your selection to prefer events that allow you a solo presentation. Panel participation is fine, but often is not as effective due to the limited time to show your expertise, bad moderators, and other conditions beyond your control. Another high priority includes events that allow either solo or panel presentation, but add on a breakout session or workshop as well.

Due diligence:

1. Explore each event or conference website to determine if it attracts your target market in its audience. There will be a list titled “Who should attend.”
2. Contact the conference (use an email address not associated with you or your company) to send you the promo package for sponsors or exhibitors. This should give you a much more detailed demographic and psychographic description of the attendees, by percentage (10% CxO, 25% VP, etc.) of rank.

Pitch:

1. If the conference or the Call for Speakers lists its agenda of panels or speaking sessions, select the one or two that fit your expertise.
2. Draft an introductory email (or fill in a Call for Speakers form) pitching the topic(s) you can offer for those items on the agenda. If there is space allowed, drop the names of at least two major conferences where you have presented this topic (or something similar) previously.
3. If the Call for Speakers is open-ended, and no agenda is offered, then study the audience and mission statement of the conference and pitch a series of topics that they might be interested in considering.
4. When offering to present, offer a list of two or three topics that might fit. Attach the Speaking page of your website as a PDF attachment.
5. In your email, add a link to your speaking page and a link to the home page of your website.
6. Your speaking testimonials should be included, usually on the Speaking page of your site. If they are on a separate page of your website, add a link to that page as well. Of course, if you know someone inside the organization that is hosting the conference, connect with that person to get any inside information you might use, or ask him/her to get your pitch letter to the best decision maker inside.

So now you know how to garner invitations to speak. But your job is only half-done. Here are Ms. Tamer’s tips on how to obtain the most profit from speaking opportunities.

For more of Ms. Tamer’s insights, visit JoeyTamer.com. You might also want to read her six-part series for a downturn survival, as well as her 10-part series on the 10 characteristics of a successful CEO.

(Note: I’m very familiar with Ms. Tamer’s expertise. She is a fellow member of Consultants West, www.consultantswest.com, a roundtable of veteran consultants in the Los Angeles area.)

From the Coach’s Corner, here are public speaking tips – for speeches in accepting awards and honors.

“Speech is power: Speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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 Columnist Terry Corbell is also a business-performance consultant and profit professional. Click here to see his management services (many are available online). For a complimentary chat about your business situation or to schedule Terry Corbell as a speaker, why don’t you contact him today?

 

Risk Management – Picking the Best Cloud Storage Provider

 

Dec. 13, 2011

There’s been quite a buzz about using the cloud. Personally, I’m still not sold on using cloud services for many businesses. There have been too many problems, and I prefer to maintain controls to alleviate uncertainty in business. Not to mention one of the lessons I learned very early — when there’s a lot of hype like there is with the cloud — go slow with due diligence.

But if you feel you must go the cloud route, remember choosing the right cloud storage provider is a must for risk management.

You have a vast array of options. Cost is important, of course, but so are your company’s risk-management needs – just like the federal government.

It’s taken two years, but now the government has launched FedRamp, the federal risk and authorization program (FedRAMP). It established security standards for providing cloud services to the government. FedRAMP also provides agencies with monitoring tools to insure continuous compliance with security standards.

Those are important considerations.

So what about cloud risk-management for your business?

Here are basic questions to ask of your potential cloud provider:

1. If they’re a large provider, has the vendor been qualified by FedRAMP?
2. What is the company’s financial situation? According to federal data, there were 1,467,221 bankruptcies last year. Of which, 49,895 were business bankruptcies. Have a frank discussion with the supplier. Find out if they expect to gain or lose business in the next year. And ask about their cash flow, and for references regarding the status of their banking relationships.
3. What would be their total charges? Is it a flat fee? What are the additional costs for storing each gigabyte or for transferring data?
4. What about the security of their services, and what does their service level agreement (SLA) provide? Keep in mind commitments for performance and reliability, and what happens if they fail to perform according to the SLA.
5. What do they provide in the way of data availability each month? What will be the percentage of time you will be able to get into your data or add new data?
6. What do they provide in data transfer rates? Data storage is important, but so is your ability to rapidly transfer your data.
7. What level of data durability do they offer? That is the amount of potential data loss from data corruption.
8. Does the vendor provide data shuffle or bare metal service? This service is a hard copy backup. Will you be able to present a hard-drive data copy to the cloud or will you be able to retrieve a copy of your data?
9. What do they support in operating systems? Make certain they’re capable of working with all your operating systems.
10. What are their backup services? You’ll have problems if they simply backup your data. You’ll also want assurances that they will back up all your computer applications and operating system, and will provide virtual servers for crashed systems.

From the Coach’s Corner, here’s How Small Businesses Can Capitalize on Cyber Strategies for Profit.

“It’s not a faith in technology. It’s faith in people.”
-Steve Jobs

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Terry Corbell is a business-performance consultant and profit professional. Click here to see his management services (many are available online). For a complimentary chat about your business situation or to schedule Terry Corbell as a speaker, why don’t you contact him today?

Biography: Will President Obama Listen to Steve Jobs on the Economy?

 

Oct. 21, 2011

Toward the end of his life, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs – widely recognized as a genius – issued a warning to President Barack Obama.

“You’re headed for a one-term presidency,” he said. That’s one of the intriguing details in Mr. Jobs’ authorized biography. Messrs. Jobs and Obama met in a tense meeting for 45 minutes in 2010, according to ABC News.

Authored by Walter Isaacson after 40+ interviews, the Simon & Schuster book reveals Mr. Jobs’ wife, Laurene Powell, scheduled the meeting with the president. It was held at a San Francisco airport hotel.

About a conversation between the couple, the author writes:

President Obama was “really psyched to meet you” Ms. Powell informed her husband. The author indicates Mr. Jobs responded with anger – he felt the president should have personally asked for a meeting.

Mr. Jobs told the president that the U.S. needed to work for a warm, economic climate. Mr. Jobs explained why businesses build factories in China – fewer regulations and less costs.

Mr. Jobs had harsh words for education – ineffective teachers were protected by the unions and principals were shackled in trying to hire good teachers.

The book portrays the genius, not surprisingly, as creative. His other attributes: sensitive, intense, and he had a temper.

When the new Android software seemed to be a replica of Apple’s, Mr. Jobs characterized Google as having committed “grand theft.”

He told author Isaacson: “I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

Yes, he was competitive.

“Our lawsuit is saying, ‘Google, you f—ing ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off,” said Mr. Jobs according to the author. “I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product.”

Millions of his iPhone4S were sold as customers paid tribute to Mr. Jobs in lining up to spend an aggregate $1.2 billion. Being much respected the outpouring of affection and sentiment upon his death was to be expected.

In the last decade, only one other businessperson received such adulation – Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas. His folksy demeanor and strong advocacy for adopting children sparked massive sentiment for him. Upon Mr. Thomas’ death, Wendy’s sales skyrocketed, too.

Mr. Jobs’ biography is well worth reading.

Mr. Jobs, you will be long remembered. Thank you.

From the Coach’s Corner, Mr. Jobs hit the target regarding the economy and the poor public policy:

Healthcare Reform – New Red Flags for Business, Workers

Is Higher Education Doing the Job to Prepare Grads for the Workforce?

President Obama Misses Mark Again, More of the Same 

“A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.” 

-Steve Jobs

 

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Columnist Terry Corbell is also a business-performance consultant and profit professional. Click here to see his management services (many are available online). For a complimentary chat about your business situation or to schedule Terry Corbell as a speaker, why don’t you contact him today?

Are HP’s Board and New CEO Headed in Right Direction?

 

Updated – Dec. 31, 2011

Not to be gauche, but it wouldn’t be surprising if Harry S. Truman were perplexed by the judgment and performance of the board of directors at the world’s biggest-selling tech company. That being the Hewlett-Packard board of directors over the past decade.

Indeed, many people might be wondering if the company might be better-served if the board adopted the former president’s famous mantra, “The buck stops here.” Because the question is, have they acted like it?

It’s unfortunate – the tech company has a rich heritage. That’s not to conclude that the board has ruined the company, because in 2010 it had an enviable $126 billion in sales. It employs 326,000 workers.

But HP has lost more than half its market value. Meantime, the board doesn’t appear to understand the Link between Financial Performance and Succession Planning.

Questions have once again recently risen over the board decisions and strategies, while many analysts approve of recent developments.  The storied company plans to continue with its strategy of cloud-based services and enterprise software solutions.

Based on past developments, HP fans, and I’m one of them, might wonder about HP’s long-term strategic planning.

Consider:

1. The board hired Carly Fiorina as CEO in 1999. Her performance proved to be unsuccessful, as she apparently didn’t understand a basic principle about mergers (If Mergers & Acquisitions Tempt You, Consult HR Pros). She persuaded the board to force a merger with Compaq – despite all kinds of red flags. At the time, as a media columnist for Belo Web sites, I wrote it would never work because the cultures of the two companies were vastly dissimilar. My predictions proved to be accurate. The merger resulted in the layoff of 17,000 talented people and HP’s financial picture worsened. She was fired in 2005.
2. Soon, the board’s chair, Patricia Dunn, hired firms that used illegal methods to try to stop leaks of proprietary HP information to reporters. 
3. Mark Hurd was hired to run the company. While he did have some success, many analysts believed HP suffered from his lack of vision and poor judgment leading to his forced resignation – over sexual harassment of a marketing consultant, who was actually an actress, and his inconsistent expense-account reports. 
4. They hired a CEO, Léo Apotheker, who made his own controversial decisions, including plans to change the company’s mission – from world-class hardware to software and cloud computing. Some board members voted to hire him without even meeting him. Mr. Apotheker’s actions prompted declining shares and a shareholder lawsuit. 
5. The board hurriedly hired a new CEO, Meg Whitman, who had joined the board after she lost to Jerry Brown, Jr. in running for California governor. As head of eBay, she was successful but known for questionable acquisitions. You might recall her 2005 purchase of Skype for $4.1 billion, but eBay ultimately sold it for $2.75 billion four years later. 
6. Ms. Whitman recently said she supports Mr. Apotheker’s decisions, including the proposed$10.3 billion purchase of commercial software-maker Autonomy, but she will not forego HP’s hardware business. The latter is ostensibly is one the most logical public decisions to come from her office. 
7. Ms. Whitman’s first announcement that her priority will be to get HP strong financially. But again, HP’s finances were hampered by negative Wall Street reactions to Mr. Apotheker’s actions, which she mostly supports. So how can she achieve such goals, especially since she doesn’t have any enterprise experience?

Ms. Whitman knows she has to make some strategic decisions about hardware, as the company initially indicated it might jettison its PC division. HP’s biggest customers balked at buying PCs until they got clarity on HP’s plans. Savvy consumers were probably hesitant, too. That was my thought when I spotted some flashy HP notebook computers in recent visits to retail stores. Fortunately, HP decided to stay in the notebook computer business.

Following weak sales, Ms. Whitman’s predecessor stopped marketing smartphones and tablets with webOS software, an HP product. She also needs to waive her magic wand in combating the popularity of iPads and smartphones to use the Internet.

Meantime, HP has other complicated matters to solve, including what to do about its services business, its slim profit margins in servers, and slower sales in printers. The latter two might very well be approaching the end of their product life cycle.

Ms. Whitman also promises to get more teamwork and cohesiveness out of her management team. That’d be a good move, too.

Before making any rash irreversible decisions, Ms. Whitman needs to conduct an in-depth SWOT analysis – of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats – followed by a strategic action plan to anticipate emerging trends and capitalize on them. A sophisticated look to the future is prescribed here.

Let’s hope Ms. Whitman comes up with better strategies and communication than she did in her failed gubernatorial campaign and questionable acquisitions at eBay. She also has to be successful working with a board that’s made so many anemic decisions.

HP is a fine company and deserves a better future than its performance of the last decade.

From the Coach’s Corner, here is a related link: Leadership, HR, Marketing Lessons from HP’s Executive Turmoil.

“One of the biggest responsibilities of management is to look after the corporate DNA.”

- Andrew Rolfe

 

Columnist Terry Corbell is also a business-performance consultant and profit professional. Click here to see his management services (many are available online). For a complementary chat about your business situation or to schedule Terry Corbell as a speaker, why don’t you contact him today?

 

Study – CFOs Still Calling the Shots in IT Decisions

 

The top IT decision-maker for many companies is not the chief information officer. Instead, the chief financial officer is, according to a Gartner study.

The chief financial officer is becoming the top technology decision maker in around half of businesses, according to Gartner research released in June, 2011, which is entitled: “Financial Executives International (FEI) Technology Study.”

In fact, more IT departments are overseen by the CFO, not the chief executive or other senior managers. But this is ill-advised, and I’ll explain later.

The study’s conclusions:

• 42 percent report to the CFO
• 45 percent IT investment strategies made by the CFO
• In 38 percent, the IT department is managed by the CFO
• In 7 percent, the CFO is the lone decision-maker

“Understand that the CFO views the impact on business process and business enablement as the top technology issues,” said Gartner analyst John Van Decker.

“Therefore, applications and analytics are the top investment priorities, and the enabling technologies that support these initiatives need to be viewed as equally important,” he added.

The study also indicated that analytics and applications are the No. 1 investment priorities by the CFO.

While this trend probably makes financial executives happy, it doesn’t make for best practices.

It raises at least three questions:

• Do such CFOs have the necessary tech knowledge to understand the value of each decision? Sufficient steps have to be taken to ensure due diligence in IT security and other decisions.
• When will CEOs reconsider such strategies because of the negative impacts on the teamwork and morale of IT departments? An IT thought leader will resent such intrusions on the chain of command in organization structure.
• What will CIOs do about it? CIOs must take the proverbial bull by the horns to exert more leadership.

My bottom-line: Agreed, the CIO should adhere to all financial checks and balances. But there should be balance. As with human resources management and marketing whom the chief people often aren’t sufficiently respected, in essence, the top IT decision-maker should be the chief information officer with input from the CFO and other managers.

From the Coach’s Corner, here’s related reading:

How CIOs Can Get More Respect in the C-Suite

Tech Trends: CFO’s the Boss, IT Departments Are Disappearing

Tech Planning: What If There’s A Double Dip?

“Men are respectable only as they respect.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Terry Corbell is a business-performance consultant and profit professional. Click here to see his management services (many are available online). For a complementary chat about your business situation or to schedule Terry Corbell as a speaker, why don’t you contact him today?

11 Tips to Make Money on Facebook

 

Depending on your type of business, the jury might still be out over whether Facebook can you help you make money by making the cash register ring. But advertisers are increasingly investng in Facebook.

Websitemagazine.com is a must-read for any Internet entrepreneur. Its newsfeed on May 23, 2011 included Facebook’s 10 optimization tips for merchants and reasons to use Facebook’s “like” button. I have to agree.

Thanks to Website Magazine, here are the first 10 of the 11 promised optimization tips:

1. Allowing users to add comments will significantly increase the number of clicks on the Like button

2. Display Like buttons at both the top and bottom of your posted content

3. Clicks increase dramatically when Like buttons appear near videos, images, infographics and other visual content

4. Like buttons that display thumbnail images of friends will receive three to five times more clicks than versions that don’t

5. Ask questions of users on your Fan pages, such as “Would you like …?” and “Would you prefer … ?”

6. Post fun and interactive content such as games, trivia questions and polls

7. Incorporate coupons and discounts on your Wall

8. Post time-sensitive content and relate to current events

9. Post videos

10. Include links to additional content

The Website Magazine feed also mentioned Buddy Media, a Facebook advertising platform. Buddy Media has raised some serious venture capital – $40 million.

Buddy Media licenses its software to ad agencies. The average fee for its 650 ad agency customers is $3000 per month. When you consider the licensing fee is on top of the advertising budget, that’s some serious advertising coin being diverted to Facebook spending.

VatorNews is another interesting trade publication. Reporter Bambi Francisco Roizen interviewed Buddy Media CEO Michael Lazarow for some interesting insights. (Buddy Media accounts for 10% of Facebook ads?)

My 11^th tip to profit from Facebook is from VatorNews: Update your Facebook wall on Tuesdays.

Websitemagazine also published Buddy Media’s list of success stories.

Webpronews.com also has some interesting insights on Facebook and traffic.

From the Coach’s Corner, before you jump entirely on the Facebook bandwagon, make sure you read this cautionary Biz Coach column: Winners and Losers in Facebook’s Invasion of Google’s Turf.

“The Internet is the trailer park for the soul.”

-Marilyn Manson

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Terry Corbell is a business-performance consultant and profit professional. Click here to see his management services (many are available online). For a complementary chat about your business situation or to schedule Terry Corbell as a speaker, why don’t you contact him today?

Windows 7 Looks Great, but Should it Be Better? Yes.

 

Jan. 29, 2011

 

A review about Windows 7 in InformationWeek caught my eye because it struck a nerve. The publication’s senior editor, Serdar Yegulalp, wrote an insightful piece entitled, “What Windows 7 Is Still Missing.” As a longtime Microsoft supporter, I agree with his insights and have my own personal unfortunate experience but more on that later. 

“There’s little question Windows 7 has been received with open arms by users and admins,” Mr. Yegulalp writes.

”It fixed many of the problems that plagued earlier versions of Windows, made good on the promises that seemed only half-fulfilled with Vista, and introduced a slew of new functions — big and small — that were also warmly received,” he explains.

“When Windows 7 was released, Microsoft made a major blunder by not updating a free offering that had been previously available for Windows XP and Vista: SteadyState,” he adds. “Windows does not have, by default, a single all-encompassing mechanism for returning the entire system — user settings, data on disk, etc. — to a given state.”

He explains SteadyState saved Admins setup time.

“Instead, Microsoft released a white paper in which they described how admins could use many of the native technologies in Windows 7 to emulate the behaviors of SteadyState,” he points out.” It isn’t hard to guess the reaction: people booed Microsoft roundly for ignoring a much-requested feature from its customers.”

Mr. Yegulalp maintains Windows 7 doesn’t provide a critical function:  “…one of the biggest and most crucial functions — disk protection — isn’t provided except through workarounds like System Restore. These don’t work in remotely the same fashion as SteadyState’s own disk protection, which required little or no intervention or downtime.”

He points out it lacks support for other hardware.

“Most of us are all too familiar with this scenario,” he writes.”You install a copy of Windows on a newly-minted PC, or perhaps reinstall a clean copy on an existing one. Unfortunately, a great many things simply don’t work — your Bluetooth module, for instance, or your memory card reader. Or the whole system just seems weirdly sluggish for a fresh install.”

He makes these suggestions:

• Extend Windows update to close the gap
• Universal software updates
• Proper touch support for tablets
• Acquisitions, third-party features  

“But Windows 8 is two years or more away, and most people will not wait that long for solutions to the problems…They want some sign, sooner rather than later, that the right thing is being done,” he asserts.

“And if it Microsoft doesn’t provide it, someone else will,” concludes Mr. Yegulalp.

Amen.

To read his full assessment, here’s his article: What Windows 7 Is Still Missing.

From the Coach’s Corner, my own Windows 7 experience is not what I’d expect from a leading technology company.

After some thought, I decided to buy Windows 7 to upgrade my most-revered notebook computer, an IBM ThinkPad. (Actually, I own two.)

However, making a purchase online, it could not be installed. Plus, Microsoft didn’t send an email confirmation as promised. I tried every tip provided on Microsoft’s Web site to no avail. So I called the company. It took repeated calls. I was forced to deal with two people who were difficult to understand.

Initially, they didn’t believe I even made the purchase. After all, there was no receipt. Then, someone thought to ask for my product key. They concluded they couldn’t help me.

Ultimately, I reached someone I could understand. But the tech-support person concluded that I’d have to wait for the five days for a disk to install Windows 7.

Then, his major gaffe – he lectured me for buying Windows 7 instead of buying a new computer with it already installed.

“Where’s the attitude of empathy and customer service,” I thought. “What a waste of more than three hours.”

I hung up telling him: “You’re of no help.”

Oh, and more than 24 hours later, I finally received a purchase-receipt from Microsoft.

Is this the best a world-class company can do? Now, after reading Mr. Yegulalp’s article – not knowing whether Windows 7 will even be compatible with my own needs – it’s a purchase I hope I don’t regret.

Key Steps to Make Your Social Media Work

 

Businesspeople have discovered social media is a work in progress. It takes huge amounts of time — to plan,  implement innovations and continuously fine-tune – to succeed.

Here’s a surprise in social media best-practices: To lay a solid foundation for success, save time and money for the long-term by making certain all phases of your operation are ready. That includes bricks and mortar.

Two basics to remember:

1. First impressions are important. You won’t get a second chance. So make sure your employees, office or store, and Web site create a favorable impression. That means cleanliness and organization, and professional customer service.
2. Practice an attitude of service and gratitude for the opportunity to serve customers. In every communication with prospects or customers, use “Thank you” instead of “Have a nice day.”

Prior to my consulting practice, in moving from broadcast journalism, one of my jobs was selling radio advertising for Gannett-owned KIIS-FM and KPRZ-AM in Los Angeles. But I quickly learned that a campaign on a great radio station did not guarantee success. I vividly recall an upscale store in Beverly Hills was unsuccessful because the displays, aisles and end caps were unkempt. The merchant thought a radio advertising campaign was enough to solve his cash flow issues. I couldn’t help a businessperson who didn’t help himself.

That also proved to be true for a struggling law firm in advertising. The firm’s partners expected a miracle by merely advertising. However, the receptionist’s greeting was unprofessional. The teamwork among staff was subpar, and it took the partners 90 days to approve initiatives because of indecision from self-doubt.

Later, when I bought a marketing firm and met my two biggest clients, they had major internal issues that negated their marketing investments. The businesspeople did not understand the value in having an attitude of service and gratitude. They were so close to their self-inflicted challenges, it took an outside participant to identify the problems and implement solutions. (So, as a marketing consultant, I quickly expanded my firm’s practice. My first new projects were included human resources, management and operations.)

In all such cases, none of the advertisers understood what they needed to do to enhance their customer experiences – to create a happy buying environment by eliminating their internal obstacles to success.

The moral: It’s vital to understand the emotional-buying motives of customers. Pay attention to how your customers are treated by your frontline people. Call your business as ala a mystery shopper to hear whether your customers are greeted with friendliness and professionalism. Check out your Web site. Is it truly customer friendly – attractive, convenient and logical?

Blogging

OK, so now you’re ready to move onto blogging, social media and related tools. Whether you have one already or anticipate blogging, a good blog is an opportunity for growth. It provides added value in content to provide useful information in a variety of channels, if marketed correctly. You’ll get stronger Internet prominence, recognition for your thought leadership, and new revenue.

Actually, for a well-written blog that takes time for research, development, editing and promotion, I prefer another term, e.g. analysis, insights or commentary. But for this discussion, let’s stay with term, blogging.

If you’re not a good writer, you can outsource your blogging with a quality provider.

Make certain you take every precaution about security, and use a reputable outside Web hosting company to give you an added layer of security. You don’t want your blog or Web site to be compromised – hacked or invaded by viruses. The search engines will take action that will embarrass your blog with warning flags.

For most small to medium-size businesses in search-engine optimization, a blog should part of your Web site. Otherwise, you’ll dilute your site’s Web presence and page ranking.

If you’re unfamiliar or unsure about blogging, read the blogs of experts. Like you would for any other initiative or project, do a SWOT analysis. Determine your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Ask questions of experts and customers.

Solicit ideas and help from your staff and close associates.

Find needs of your target customers and plan to fill them with topic ideas. Then, set goals and timelines (e.g. the goals for this business portal are to satiate my desire for writing, provide Proven Solutions for Maximum Profits, acquire clients for my business-performance firm, and to attract advertisers).

Successful blogs operate off a schedule. You’ll develop a more-loyal following by developing a schedule on which they can depend.

Publish well-written guest blogs of experts. But do not publish without permission.

Insert informative videos.

Pay attention to your goals. You’ll achieve them with an excellent editorial plan, and strategic use of key phrases and words.

Basics in Social Media

On your blogs and Web site pages, insert the AddThis social networking widget. This will make it easier for readers to share your content, and boost your traffic. In one button, it provides more than 300 sharing options.

Develop permanent customer relationships by humanizing your social media. Good relationships start by listening. Take the time to do it right – focus on the needs of your customers with strategic headlines and messages.

Social media succeeds if it creates a dialogue, not a monologue. Show your interest by congratulating others and invite feedback. Encourage your employees to do the same. The top three are Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Lay the groundwork to turn your customers and associates into Centers of Influence – your brand evangelists.

Familiarity breeds friendships. Be consistent. Use the same picture over and over. That goes for your branding slogan and logo. Simplify your logo so it’s memorable enough to tell your story, but can be used as a 16×16-pixel favicon on the Internet. It is an image-builder on the search line of browsers.

For ongoing success in our dynamic digital age, use a mentor and fine-tune your social media. Harness the value of Internet press releases. Plus, you might get lucky. For example, it was my press release (Expert Warns About Starbucks WIFI Security, Provides Tips) not my business-coaching column that caught the eye of a Yahoo writer — three months after I wrote it.  He included a link to my press release — 20,000 people read it – many of them were motivated to click on the link to my site’s column.

Don’t forget submissions to the news media. Even though most young people are increasingly using social media for information, authoritative news outlets are still relevant.

By using these basic suggestions, you’ll be creating luck because you’ll be better-prepared — you’ll be enabling your social media to work.

From the Coach’s Corner, this site’s Marketing/Sales and Tech sections have countless business-coaching tips.

“Social Media is about sociology and psychology more than technology.”

-Brian Solis

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Terry Corbell is a business-performance consultant and profit professional. Click here to see his management services (many are available online). For a complementary chat about your business situation or to schedule Terry Corbell as a speaker, why don’t you contact him today?

More Capital for Startups? VCs, CEOs Forecast Growth

 

Venture capitalists and CEOs are optimistic about 2011 – many expect more funding, hiring, higher salaries, and sales – according to a new survey. However, there wasn’t unanimity over forecasting the trend in fundraising in the 2011 Venture View predictions survey by the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and Dow Jones VentureSource. 

Survey respondents included 180 CEOs of VC-supported firms and 330 VCs. 

“The improving exit market and a renewed excitement in the IT sector have engendered a confidence among VCs and the CEOs of the companies in which we invest that promises to propel the start-up community forward in 2011,” said Mark Heesen, president of the NVCA in a press release. 

“While the venture industry will continue to evolve, and likely contract, the companies we fund will continue to grow, innovate and drive the U.S. economy,” he surmised. 

“An anticipated rise in venture investment and improvement in the national economy are closely linked,” said Jessica Canning, global research director of Dow Jones VentureSource.

“Venture investment is meant to be spent – on employees, technology, office space and other expenses – which means it reverberates throughout the economy,” Ms. Canning added. “Raising capital also gives companies an opportunity to grow, adding to their headcount and spending power as they try to become the next Google or Apple.”

VC opinions on investments: 

• 51 percent anticipate an increase
• 24 percent don’t forecast improvement
• 24 percent expect a decrease
• 51 percent anticipate increases in later-stage investment
• 49 percent forecast expansion and seed investment
• 46 percent expect early-stage investment
• Among the VCs who invest in the earlier stages, 30 percent plan to co-invest more with angels

CEO opinions on VC investment:

•  58 percent forecast increases in VC investments
• 64 percent hope to get new funding

VC expectations on increases in technology:

•  82 percent predict investments in consumer, Internet and digital media
• 80 percent forecast an increase  in cloud computing
• 66 percent expect more in mobile/telecom

VCs also make predictions about “froth”. (That’s a term used regarding over-investment.) Sixty-nine expect froth in consumer Internet and digital media, and 47 percent predict froth in cloud computing.

Fifty-three percent of VCs will invest only in the U.S.

Otherwise, VCs will not ignore startups in Asia:

• 26 percent are considering startups in China
• 18 percent are look favorably at opportunities in India

While VCs disagree on the direction of fundraising, there is a consensus on limited partnerships (LP):

• 76 percent anticipate LPs to get favorable consideration
• 48  percent say foreign LPs will get more funds

The economy will improve according to 63 percent of VCs and 64 percent of CEOs.

See the survey-results slide presentation.

From the Coach’s Corner, if you’re looking for funding, here’s a column you’ll want to read featuring the expert opinion of premier strategist Joey Tamer: What No One Tells You about Raising Investment Capital.

Are You Web-Ready for the All-Important Q4 Sales?

 

Oct. 2, 2010

 

New data from a Bold Software survey helps businesses develop their holiday online sales strategies, according to Website Magazine.

The answers are in Bold’s Holiday Readiness Handbook. The company interviewed more than 400 employees of its 300 customers that use its live-chat technology services.

For the upcoming holidays, here are the top 10 Web site changes companies have planned:

1. Moderate design changes
2. Site navigation
3. Landing pages
4. Optimization of live chat (tie)
4. Site search (tie)
6. Search engine optimization
7. Video content
8. Purchase process changes
9. Wholesale design changes
10. Mobile commerce optimization

Here’s what businesses are offering for customers:

1. General discount coupons/codes
2. Specific product promotions
3. Free or reduced shipping
4. Free giveaways
5. Lowest-price guarantees
6. Contests/sweepstakes

They’re also maximizing their live-chat systems:

1. Evaluate canned messaging
2. Implement proactive chat
3. Empower agents to offer incentives
4. Optimize proactive rules
5. Chat window customizations

Forty-six percent of respondents made the changes in Aug. Twenty-eight percent said the changes are being implemented. Seventeen percent hadn’t launched implementation.

Sixty-one percent forecast higher sales this quarter, but 37 percent don’t forecast change and 2 percent anticipate less sale volume.

From the Coach’s Corner, if you have not solved all design issues,Website Magazine also published an informative article: Four Principles of Design.

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