Money, time, or magic?
I talk to a lot of business owners who are looking for ways to grow their businesses. It seems that everybody wants to be more successful and is eager for advice on how to do it. However, I’m surprised at how many of these business owners are looking for magic. Magic can come in many forms. How about a Facebook fan page? That will bring lots of new customers, right? How about showing up at the occasional networking meeting and exchanging a few business cards? This will lead to lots of great prospects, right? Maybe launching a great new website will do the trick… people will come...
Read MoreAssociations: Is it time to eliminate the newsletter?
As we all know, paper is getting less relevant. Many associations are scrambling to “go green” with their newsletters in an effort to reduce costs and make use of electronic means of delivery. Kudos for this! However, what most associations are doing is simply emailing out a PDF version of the newsletter they used to print. While this does save money and takes advantage of modern electronic tools, there is a problem with this approach: it assumes that members want to consume information the same way they always have. We need to abandon our old thinking of just “going...
Read MoreFacebook friending etiquette
Ok, I can’t take it anymore. It seems like almost every day I get a Facebook friend request from someone I don’t know. And each time there is no message sent with the request. Just a friend request with no explanation. Now, I’m more than happy to make connections with people I don’t know as long as I know how the connection was made. However, if I don’t know someone and he/she gives me no reason to connect, why would I take the risk of opening up my network and personal life to that person? If you want to friend someone on Facebook and you don’t know that...
Read MoreStop making excuses and start blogging
Blogging is hard. I get that. It’s not easy to consistently create new content and make the time to tweak and publish it. However, blogging is one of the best ways to build deeper relationships with your constituents and reach deeper into their networks as well. Often when I talk about blogging with others, I hear all sorts of excuses: I’m not a good writer I don’t have time I don’t like to write I don’t know what to write about I wouldn’t be able to keep up with it No one would read what I wrote The list goes on and on. However, like most...
Read MoreIs your website an information hub or a brochure?
I’m sure we’ve all heard the term “brochure website” before. For a while, it was used as a legitimate way to label certain types of websites and was accepted as a normal way to do business. Organizations would simply take their brochures, turn them into static websites that regurgitated brochure content, and called it a day. We all thought this was ok. Then, we evolved beyond this and realized that websites were more than just a digital brochure. We started to add things like fresh content, Flash promos, and changing photos. This let our audience know that things were...
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