Small Business
Learning and Teaching: Do Both for a Dynamic Career
Both learning and teaching contribute to a dynamic career
I’ve been thinking about the learning and teaching cycle.
When I first started this blog, I was an inbound marketing neophyte, just starting to transition my communications practice from traditional PR to an array of online services. At the time I was acutely aware of being a student and sought teachers and mentors.
Ironically, I was moving from a place where I was highly competent and knowledgeable and where I was teacher and mentor to interns who sought me out and went on to make it in the business. Stepping into their shoes turned out to be an exciting and energizing experience.
Today, I’m still a student because there’s always something new to learn. And I love being engaged in learning. It’s stimulating. But almost three years into this transition, with a body of good work to point to in my new service areas, I’ve begun to feel credible as a teacher again – even moreso with my new knowledge and skills integrated into my earlier experience.
It’s a good thing, too, because businesses still need a great deal of education in order to begin taking advantage of the powerful marketing tools available to them. Teaching is so gratifying because it reveals to us just how much we’ve learned and can apply to helping our clients. It also clearly points the direction to our next student stint.
The cycle of knowing and needing to learn keeps us moving productively into the future. What are you learning and teaching?
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Inbound Marketing Education is in Middle School
HubSpot Developed an Efficient System for Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing has been around for several years now. It’s the subject of bestselling books by David Meerman Scott and HubSpot founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. In fact, HubSpot has surpassed the 5000-customer mark for the Internet-based content management system they invented to put all of the pieces of inbound marketing together.
Yet, when I sit in a roomful of business owners and ask how many people know what inbound marketing is, frequently all hands stay down. Or a hand will shoot up and the eager contributor will say, “Social Media.”
It’s clear to me that we inbound marketers have a lot more work to do educating the marketplace about the approach. Yes, social media is a component of inbound marketing, but it’s only one.
There seems to be pretty widespread awareness of other inbound marketing components, too, like SEO, blogging and email marketing. Yet there’s little awareness of how all of these efforts can coalesce in an effective and measurable process. This post is one of a number I’ve written to help flesh out the process in a way that’s meaningful to business people.
At heart, inbound marketing is just marketing updated to reach our potential customers where they are – online – then to get their interest and win their trust so that when they buy, they buy from us. These days, it’s harder, if not impossible, to find our prospects by advertising in newspapers (why they’re shrinking), by telemarketing (think voicemail), on TV (thanks to TiVo and DVR) and other traditional channels. But future buyers are almost all online – at least enough of them to keep our businesses growing.
Business owners and managers I speak with will often say, “Well, we’re driving lots of traffic to our website, but we’re not sure what it’s getting us.” Then I ask, “What’s your bounce rate? And what are you doing to convert traffic to leads?”
They begin to understand inbound marketing when I explain how it serves as a lead generation and lead nurturing system. When they realize that inbound marketing can be planned and implemented with the objective of helping them reach revenue goals, it becomes a much more interesting idea to explore. It becomes a compelling idea when they recognize that analytics can be integrated and success measured.
There are a lot of steps to inbound marketing. It can seem daunting at first. It does take some re-thinking about how you do marketing. And it does take an investment of time, staff resources and budget. But, properly done, it works and pays big dividends.
I use HubSpot’s content management system for my own company’s inbound marketing. There are other ways to approach and handle inbound marketing using multiple sources. But for me, HubSpot offers the best system, education and support – especially for small to mid-sized companies I work with.
As the product matures, there’s now a developer’s marketplace growing up around HubSpot that’s yielding and will continue to produce plug-ins, variations and customization for the original software, similar to WordPress. They’ve also made some recent acquisitions that will beef up various aspects of the product – including middle-of-the-funnel and larger enterprise functionality.
At minimum, HubSpot walks the walk regarding sharing useful information. The company is a virtual content factory and you can immerse in free educational downloads, blogs and other information, free webinars and a free trial to get a good feel for how inbound marketing works.
In the interest of disclosure, I’m a HubSpot Value Added Reseller in addition to being a user. But I don’t mean this post to be a commercial. I became a VAR because HubSpot is the most intelligent and efficient inbound marketing system I’ve found. It can help my clients to grow their businesses and I can help clients to better utilize the system from the VAR position.
Have you learned enough about inbound marketing to begin implementing it in some form?
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Networking Online and Offline: Anatomy of a Great Day
A Day Of Networking is Energizing
Today was a marathon networking day with both online and offline communities that are important to me – and to my business.
Early this morning I read blogs I subscribe to including Chris Brogan, Seth Godin, my ethnomusicologist Sociosound and my rock ‘n roll management guru Peter Cook who posted a brilliant satire on blues lyrics that started my day with a smile.
Then I went to my Twitter profile to connect with some new folks who followed me yesterday and made initial contact. Next, I sent a few invitations to people I want to connect with on LinkedIn – and accepted some invitations that came in overnite. And I received notices that people who I put into Google+ Circles yesterday on my first interaction with that new social network had put me into circles of theirs.
At noon, I arrived at the Riverside Yacht Club inGreenwich,Connfor the summer luncheon of Thursday III, a professional group of senior PR executives and consultants. The group is fascinating and stimulating. The members are authors and PR icons who guided communications for Fortune 100 companies, major agencies and presidential administrations. I fall only marginally into any of those categories and am honored to sit at lunch with these brilliant and creative people every other month. The stories and the knowledge sharing that happens in that group is the stuff that NY Times bestselling books are made of.
A delightful aspect of the luncheon was that I sat between Ed Bloch who was a PR executive for Perkin Elmer and Ian Kerr who led important PR agencies in Fairfield County and represented luxury global brands including Jaguar and Rolls Royce. Both Ed and Ian are beloved figures in the local and broader PR community. Both have wry senses of humor that make them really enjoyable lunch partners.
Ed Bloch subscribes to this blog and noticed my increased frequency of posting. He good-naturedly teased me that my posts were piling up but that he intended to read them. I gave him some suggestions of how he could work them into his day – including bathroom reading, I’m afraid to admit. I’m including him in this post partly so that I can tempt him to read what I said about him when I post it.
After a bit of catch-up in my office, I met with Connecticut Networking Group www.ctconnected.org. This is a spectacular high-level group of mostly young and accomplished business people – entrepreneurs in fact and at heart. We’re more an advisory board to one another’s businesses than a so-called leads group. Again I’m something of an outlier as I’m a bit senior to most of the members. We get to know one another so that we can refer each other with confidence. We share a consultative and relationship-building approach to business development.
Going from my seasoned PR colleagues to my young, energetic and exceptional networking group was a particularly rich experience; so much valuable input across generations.
After the CNG meeting, I went to a meet-up event on a big paddle wheeler on the Norwalk CT harbor – across from my house. This was a big open group where there were a few people from my established network and many whom I didn’t know. Unfortunately this event was not well organized – in particular, no name tags that would have facilitated and focused networking. I jumped ship right before the group took off for an unannounced harbor cruise – in favor of coming back to the office and posting to my blog and attending to other to-do’s.
All in all, this was a very positive day of connection. We never know what may come of a day like this. But who cares. It re-charges the engines to engage with our communities, reconnects us with people who add to our lives and gives us the opportunity to widen out our circles. Time well spent in my book.
Please share your on- and offline networking experiences.
Image via cambodia4kidsorg under Creative Commons license.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 4 so far )Twitter: Still Misunderstood
Not!! Twitter's Power is Misunderstood.
At a moment when we’re trying to get our arms around Google+ and its Circles concept, I continue to have people asking me about how and why to use Twitter. I’m beyond a novice about Google+, having just gotten in today for the first time. And I have no idea yet whether it will swallow Twitter.
But I continue to love Twitter – a highly searchable micro-blogging platform for identifying and staying in touch with defined communities – Circles?
Some of you may have read one of my Tuesday Tweets features where I review individual tweets from my Twitter feed. I intend these posts to serve as a tutorial about Twitter and how to use it effectively as part of online/inbound marketing.
To figure out Twitter you first have to spend some time exploring via Twitter search to find people and organizations with whom you want to engage. Take an hour and keep plugging in search terms that have to do with your company, products, services and industry. Do this until you find yourself viewing a Twitter stream that you can benefit from – by sharing your expertise or gaining the expertise of others — and best of all, both.
Image via jmilles under Creative Commons license.
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Put Your Company First This Week to Drive Client Success
Make Marketing a Business Priority
Welcome to Monday. After a very lovely weekend break – my darling Jeff and I jumped on the Harley and did 150 miles each way on an overnite to the Berkshires – I’m back with my nose to the grindstone. First on my agenda is how do I move my business ahead this week? I consider this a fundamental focus for getting better results for my clients.
Following is my list – in priority order – for today. You’ll notice that before I implement one client project, I’m focused on my own marketing. If I don’t ensure that I can keep my company moving forward, I can help no one else. And then my company has no reason to exist. After Monday I spend more daily time on client projects, but I dedicate time each day to my own marketing — and so should you.
Monday morning:
- Write a blog post for publicizing and publicizing later in the day. (This is the one for Monday)
- Check my website and blog stats and see what’s resonating with my audiences. Based on that, establish marketing objectives for the near and longer term.
- Read and comment on trade blogs and news to keep abreast of market developments.
- Write/Edit my co-authored column for theFairfieldand Westchester County Business Journals.
- Write collaborative letter for joint marketing affiliation.
- Spend time on my Hubspot content management system to plan traffic and lead generation and lead-nurturing campaigns.
- Touch base with affiliates and networking groups and set personal get-togethers for the week.
- Work on responding to requests for proposals.
Afternoon:
- Read and reply to imperative client emails.
- Review projects and create client to-do list for the week.
- Work on strategies to meet client objectives.
- Research, write, review, edit, publish client content and perform SEO activities as required by online project timelines.
- Email clients to obtain sign-offs on previously submitted concepts and content to move projects forward.
- Make calls to clients to expedite project issues that are better served by phone that email.
Although the list seems longer for a.m. activities, there are far more moving parts in implementing successfully for clients.
The point of this post…Our clients are our primary focus, but if we don’t put our own businesses first for at least a morning a week – and for some concerted time each day, we’re abdicating our ability to remain successful contributors to the business world.
Image by Banalities under Creative Commons license.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )5 Steps to Finding Your Key Messages for Better Content Creation
Identify Key Messages for Better Communication
When you’re about to undertake a major communications project – a new website, for example – you have an opportunity to review your messaging. What are the most important points for an audience to know about you and your business, the things you will need to repeat continuously and consistently, regardless of the kind of content.
Many companies have never purposely developed key message lists. This exercise is more important than ever. Especially online. Messaging consistency and redundancy comes into play on websites, as you never know what page will be the entry point for a visitor. It’s not always your home page. It’s also important to include key messages in content you offer for download and that you post aound the Internet.
Here’s a 5-step process for identifying the key messages that will resonate and stick with your audiences.
1. Review your existing content and marketing materials. Sometimes we go on auto-pilot when writing or speaking about ourselves and our companies. Keep an open mind for stale messages that can use an update – or that you can lose altogether.
2. Interview your employees, customers, referral sources and others who know your company. Create a brief questionnaire (it may vary by auience) that asks for impressions about different aspects of your business. Anywhere from five to ten interviews should yield the raw material that will offer up key messages. The interviews will confirm some of your notions about what’s important about your business and refute others. Some of what you’ll learn will truly surprise you. You’ll likely get more candid answers if you hire an outside consultant to help you, rather than asking the questions personally.
3. Read the home page information of a few competitors, or non-competing companies similar to yours and take notes. See how they’re talking about their businesses, products and services. This will not only give you some ideas of what to say and not to say, but will also help you position your messaging to reflect your company’s market differentiation.
4. Review the interviews and your competitor notes. In the interviews you will almost certainly see repeating comments and ideas. Some of these will be key points that you’ve made historically, some will be fresh ideas.
5. Let your review of the process sink in for a day or two. Then sit down at the computer and make a list of your key messages. They should not be in any order of hierarchy. Put them down as they come to you. You’ll never use all of them in one place, but will pick and choose from the list as appropriate. You’ll also vary the language from one place to another, as long as the key idea is in there someplace. Tweak the list. See if anything is glaringly missing. Ask a few of the interviewees to review the key message list to be sure they reflect your company authentically.
Once you have your key message list, you’ll be amazed at how easily you write your content. The copy will flow. You’ll find yourself working in the right key messages in the right places. Your key message list will also provide a good starting point for key word and search term research.
By the way, you don’t need a new website as a reason to review your messaging. Do it at any time. It will definitely help your ongoing content creation.
How do you identify your key messages?
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Online Marketing for Small Business: Helping a Diverse, Ill-Defined Group
Regardless of definition, small businesses need help putting it all together online.
Because I write for this blog for small businesses – a very ill-defined segment –I’ve decided to talk today about who you are from my perspective. You’re a group that ‘s quite misunderstood in terms of your diverse human characteristics – everywhere from government statistics to media coverage. Truth is, you’re not a monolithic group, but you do face similar marketing issues.
Although I keep up with the latest advances in web technology on your behalf, as I speak with you, I know that’s not necessarily what’s top of mind for you. Most of the companies I’m working with – or who are calling me in to help them get to the next level online — are very savvy. They have an earlier generation website, they have social media channels going, they’ve set up an ecommerce store, they’re doing email campaigns, have attended LinkedIn seminars. They know that online is where the world is and will continue to go. They’ve done the best they can.
But they need help figuring out how to make it all pay off for their businesses and how to organize online marketing into a manageable system. Time and limited resources are the enemy.
I can also tell you that small businesses defy easy categorization. We all see references to SMSB – Small to Mid-Sized Businesses. But the definitions of who they are and how small/large these companies are is all over the map. Attempts are made to define them by revenue, number of employees and other metrics. But in my experience, that’s not enough. So who are they?
Here are some of the varied characteristics of small businesses I’ve worked with:
- Main Street mom-and-pop bricks-and-mortar stores marketing locally.
- Start-ups with great ideas or products and bootstrap budgets.
- Established businesses with a few employees that market nationally or even globally.
- Growing regional companies building infrastructure.
- Exciting businesses – and nonprofits, too — transitioning from the original entrepreneurial founders to management with next-stage experience.
- Established bricks-and-mortars launching ecommerce divisions.
- Start-ups with angel funding.
- Divisions of larger companies with Round ‘A’ venture funding.
- Entrepreneurships with varying levels of experience and previous success.
- Billion dollar enterprises with three employees looking for the right kind of strategic marketing help.
- Manufacturing and service companies with revenues up to 150 million dollars.
- Established innovators ripe for acquisition with the right positioning and visibility.
- Any and all of the above trying to gain recognition for any number of strategic and tactical reasons.
What you and the aforementioned small business types share is that you need scalable help making the web work for you. Regardless of revenues or budgets, you have limited time, staff and/or budget resources and need to get effective and efficient outside advice and/or implementation help.
The objective of this blog is to help you understand the current and emerging environment, for sure, but at a level that does not forsake the practical advice that will help you make the best use of what you have available.
Conversation is part of the equation, so please continue to send your comments, questions and ideas.
Image from deanmeyersnet under Creative Commons license.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Short Post on Facebook vs Google+: Is the new solving old problems?
Does the New Solve Old Problems?
Sometimes having a new online marketing tool gets us thinking about what it is about the old tool that we’ve just been putting up with because we had no good options. Until today, I wasn’t that focused on Google+, the new social media service from Google.
If you’ve read – or go back and read – my last few posts, you’ll see that I’ve used the launch of Google+ to focus on the fact that most businesses haven’t yet nailed online marketing basics – let alone what’s new coming down the pike.
But today I realized that Facebook would be much more helpful if we could attach other info than video and image files and outside links. I was posting basic info about an event being put on by an account I administer. It would have been helpful to attach a copy of the flyer or press release to give more details. No dice.
I searched around and came up with a Facebook-centric posting service called PosterWall.com that didn’t seem to intuitively solve the problem – although if I play around with it I might figure it out. But at least in the process I learned that lots of other people are frustrated by the file sharing limitations of Facebook.
To make matters worse today, in the process of playing around with various ways I might share the desired files, I accidentally deleted a previous post and there’s no way to undelete it.
As a subscriber to daily emails of Chris Brogan’s blog, I’ve been following his excellent and ongoing reviews of Google+. As a non-invitation-holder to the current field trial, I have to rely on trusted others to get me up to speed. Chris’ explorations have been very practical and give a visual peek into the Google+ world. You can see for yourself at www.chrisbrogan.com. No need for me to re-invent the wheel here.
But as I watched a very helpful ‘screen cast’ Chris put out today of the Google+ environment, it looked to me that in the area that corresponds to the Facebook Wall, there was no option for posting, say, a Word file. I left a comment to that effect and will let you know if I get a response. Plus I will do additional research.
Looking at the idea of Google+ Circles (different groups and communities that you can define for purposes of what to share with whom) I’m wondering what the difference is from the Lists in Twitter. I started making lists when Lists was first introduced, but as my Twitter followers have increased and people follow me from various arenas, I’ve stopped taking the time to figure out what lists they belong on. Will that be the same with Circles?
I guess the point of this post is that what gets us interested in the new is when the old doesn’t meet our needs. If the new doesn’t meet them either, then it won’t surpass the old.
Image is from Mrs Logic Under Creative Commons License.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Getting Started With Inbound Marketing: Take Small Bites of the Basics
New Orleans Music - Inbound Marketing Basics
Today I’m blogging to music provided in the latest post of a very interesting person and ethnomusicologist (Google it. I did.) whose blog is called SocioSound. We ‘met’ through our blogs. Anyhow – SocioSound just shared five favorite New Orleans tunes. Two of them are also faves of mine by the Rebirth Brass Band.
I happen to have the album in my collection. So I’m going to share one of the tunes – Feel Like Funkin’ It Up — here and pass along an upbeat experience to boost you into the weekend. Of course, you control the play button so only listen if you want to.
All week I’ve been thinking that although social media and other online and inbound marketing techniques have been widely accepted and as they say, “…are here to stay,” there’s still a lot of learning to be done about the basics.
This morning I read a really interesting post about how people are using QR (Quick Response) codes in their marketing. I agree that the ability to help people connect with your website and various marketing offers by scanning QR codes with their mobile phones is very cool. But, for many, that would be running before walking.
Case in point: A bit later I had lunch with a newspaper editor friend of mine who scheduled a Twitter tutorial with me because she still hasn’t gotten up to speed. And Twitter is a particularly good tool for journalists. Plenty of people are still catching up with basic tools that have been around for awhile.
As I started to explore in yesterday’s post, there’s something new to learn virtually every day in online marketing and it’s truly difficult to keep up, even if it’s your profession. That’s why I’m recommending to many companies that they not worry about every new thing coming down the pike until they get the basics in place.
To me, the basics still begin with figuring out what you want to accomplish in your business. How many new customers to generate how much new revenue in what period of time? Once you know that, there’s existing technology to help you build and utilize a web presence to achieve at least some, if not all, of your objectives.
From what I can see, among smaller and mid-sized companies, very few are really using the web effectively for business development. Even though some studies show smaller businesses building Facebook pages at a pretty impressive clip, that’s only one small piece of a well-constructed online marketing program. And if you sell B2B, you may not want to be on Facebook at all.
It helps to take a look at the big picture first and then determine a logical plan for your company. If there’s a move afoot to update your website, you’ll get more bang for the buck if you take the opportunity to review your overall marketing.
Yes, your site is a central focus of online marketing. So explore what kind of site with what capabilities will contribute to success of the overall plan. Have the plan first. I still see lots of new sites with no SEO and people are till putting up sites built all in Flash, which search engines simply don’t see. So they can’t accomplish even the first step in inbound marketing – getting found.
Recently, I was speaking to a marketing director for an area business about inbound marketing and how it could be used in his industry. He was interested and requested that I get back in touch in a month. They were redoing their website, he said, and couldn’t undertake any other marketing until that was complete.
I suggested that a great time to begin developing an effective online plan is during the website redesign process. It would be unfortunate to invest in a website and then learn a month later that you should have gone in a different direction.
If you have a small company, invest an hour or two with a consultant who can give you a clear overview of the inbound marketing process — from making sure you can be found online right through closed loop analytics to assess the ROI of your efforts and improve where necessary.
Then you can begin to identify effective steps that are realistic for your company to accomplish. You don’t have to have the whole meal at one swallow. It may go down easier with everyone in your company if you take it one bite, then one course at a time, finally enjoying the fruits of your labors for dessert.
It must be the New Orleans music that made me finish with food metaphors. Have a tasty weekend!
Poster image by dingler1109 under Creative Commons license. I chose this image because it’s about a fundraiser to help the reconstruction of New Orleans and it also supported childhood learning – a concept not at odds with our learning the basics of Inbound Marketing.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Ignore Google vs Facebook Battle of the Titans. Keep Your Eye on Your Plan
Don't be Distracted from Your Online Marketing Plan by the Facebook vs Google Battle of the Titans
Anymore when I read my morning feeds, I feel like I always do when the local news gives the Monday morning movie box office scores. Why??
The online ‘movie of the month’ — Facebook & Google: Titans’ Battle to Destiny — is making my head spin. I’m used to things rolling fast in the technology world, but do you get the sense that at this moment the game has ramped up for some reason?
I’ve spent a good deal of time reading reviews of the Google+ field test. The arc that reviews have followed is similar to what I’ve experienced with other emerging tools and online phenomena.
- The brush off (we’ll have to see what this is all about).
- The immersions (Just spent several hours on whatever the new thing and here are my initial reactions).
- The instant embraces and rejections depending on guru.
- The reality of whether everyone other than the insiders actually adopts the new thing in time.
Now today, the news breaks about the Facebook/Skype collaboration on video chat within Facebook. I read the news right after reading Chris Brogan’s positive review of the Hangout feature in Google+ that allows up to 10 people to video-chat at the same time.
Apparently Facebook video chat is a one-to-one deal. I read several blog posts this afternoon that offer mixed reviews of Facebook’s new video venture. But does any of this really matter to you right now?
Readers, please know that I keep up on this stuff. But I don’t necessarily jump in and start blogging about the next great thing online. I’m working with small to mid-sized companies that are still trying to get their next generation websites up, figure out why they need to blog – and how can we ever find the time to do it – and a lot of other things that they need to understand and embrace to use the Web to grow their businesses.
So I say, WHOA!!!! Don’t pay attention to all the buzz and the battle of the titans going on among the huge players whose future lies in trying to control what the future will be.
Let’s not get distracted, my small to mid-sized business friends. Let’s keep our eyes on the ball and implement a rational online marketing plan, based on real objectives, using the proven tools of today.
Promise. When the new stuff is really meaningful to your business, I’ll help get you up to speed.
Is your head spinning with daily Google-Facebook news? What are you doing to keep your online marketing plan on track?
Image by Jason Barles Under Creative Commons License
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New PR Words - and Music! 