Twitter | Michael Reynolds

August 16, 2011 By Michael Reynolds 5 Comments

17 productivity hacks and tools that help me accomplish more

I’m a pretty busy guy. I own a web solutions firm. I run a social media and technology consulting practice. I work for a workplace productivity training company. I speak at events around the country. I volunteer on non-profit boards and committees. I write books. I travel (a lot). I serve in my church. I blog. I play the cello in a chamber music ensemble. I build e-learning communities. I also try to fit in lots of tennis and sushi, as well. My friends sometimes ask me how I get so much stuff done. Am I an obsessive workaholic? Well, yes. However, I also make use of a number of productivity hacks and tools in my life and business that help me accomplish more in less time.

Each hack on its own my not be much, but when you add up the time saved and the friction removed with each item, it quickly adds up. Here are my favorite productivity hacks and tools that help me get more done.

1. Use reQall to capture ideas. Anyone who has read “Getting Things Done” by David Allen (affiliate link) is familiar with the idea of ubiquitous capture. This is the idea that if you are equipped to record ideas and action items at all times, then you keep your brain clear for creative focus while at the same time ensuring that nothing falls through the cracks. I love reQall because it lets me simply speak notes into my iPhone which are then transcribed and emailed to me for later processing.

2. Use Tungle to schedule meetings. I cannot find the words to explain how much I heart Tungle. How much time is typically wasted playing phone tag or sending emails back and forth doing the “when are you free” dance? Tungle solves all that by allowing me to book meetings in 30 seconds by sending out a link that allows others to see my open times, suggest time slots, and automatically add meetings to my calendar. I think anyone who doesn’t use Tungle is stark raving mad.

3. Use TextExpander to save typing. How often do we type the same blocks of text over and over? Meeting details, locations, addresses, messages, etc. TextExpander allows me to save commonly used blocks of text into an archive and then magically pop them into data fields with a simple shortcut. For example, my email signature becomes “ssig”, my name becomes “nname”, and my Tungle link becomes “ccal”. It saves tons of time and helps me maintain my workflow without copying and pasting things. TextExpander is for Mac only but I’m sure there is some Windows alternative out there but I wouldn’t know about that.

4. Use the same GoToMeeting details for all my meetings. Not everyone knows this but you can set up a recurring meeting in GoToMeeting and simply re-use that meeting over and over. You just schedule a meeting, check the box that says “Recurring meeting” and poof! Use the same meeting details over and over. You never have to set up another meeting again. The bonus hack with this is that I have a TextExpander shortcut set up so that when I type “ggoto” it drops in the meeting URL and other details into emails or calendar invites so I can effortlessly schedule meetings and send GoToMeeting info in a matter of seconds.

5. Follow Inbox Zero. Merlin Mann made Inbox Zero popular during a talk he gave at Google. I have since adopted and tuned the system to help me process email faster and be more productive as I manage it. It takes discipline but when I follow the system, it helps me get more done.

6. Keep up with online articles using Instapaper. I subscribe to a lot of blogs and see lots of information go across my radar on a daily basis. I love this because it keeps me informed and helps me stay in a state of continuous learning. However, if I read everything in real time I would get nothing done because I would be reading blogs and articles all day. Instead, I save interesting articles to Instapaper and then catch up with them on my iPad when I have more focused reading time, such as when I’m on a plane or winding down at night. This helps me avoid missing useful educational material while not letting the input slow me down.

7. Migrate to a Kindle. I love to read but transporting a bunch books when traveling is cumbersome. Once I went Kindle, I never looked back. For those who use the common retort “but I like the feel of a real book” I say: give the Kindle a try. Trust me. It is awesome. I love being able to carry an entire book collection with me on a tiny device that gives me the ability to choose what I want to read any time and switch books with the click of a button. And it looks and reads like real paper. The Kindle is truly a revolutionary device. Oh, and don’t waste your time on the alternatives like the Nook, etc. Go Kindle. Trust me. Since moving to Kindle, I find myself finishing more books than I ever did before.

8. Use a hands-free cellphone device. Talking on the phone can take up a good portion of my day. This includes sales calls, client meeting, returning voice mails, etc. By keeping a hand-free device handy, I can turn driving time into productive meeting time. Yes, I realize that even with a hand-free device there is still an element of distraction while talking and driving so please don’t yell at me for suggesting this. Just be careful. It’s amazing how many phone calls I can get through as I drive from one destination to another with a bluetooth headset. It’s also helpful as I walk around the office or do other non-intensive tasks. I can also get a lot of laundry folded while returning phone calls! My favorite is the Plantronics Voyager Pro+. It looks dorky but has excellent sound quality.

9. Leave actionable voicemails. How often do we play phone tag with someone by leaving voice mails that say “call me” with no additional details? Sometimes you really do need to discuss something in real time, such as sensitive or emotionally-charged issues. However, much of the time we spend too much time playing phone tag unnecessarily when we could be moving action items along by leaving better voice mails. When I leave a voice mail, I usually leave very specific details that give the other person information on exactly what needs to be done. Sometimes I can leave a message that simply answers the question clearly and specifically. Other times I leave details on where the information can be found online. I will sometimes even briefly offer multiple options/answers for different scenarios. The point is, I leave details that are useful to the other person, rather than just saying “call me back.”

10. Convert “coffee meetings” to video conferences. If you do a lot of networking like I do, you probably get asked to “get together for coffee” quite a bit. While there is nothing wrong with having coffee (or in my case, a smoothie) with people, a lot of the time these are simply exploratory meetings that may or may not be a good use of your time. If I said yes to every request to get together for coffee, I would be spending all my time driving to Starbucks. So if someone asks me to have coffee as a “get to know you” meeting, I suggest that we do a short video conference (or phone call) instead. This helps keep the meeting short and more actionable. There is something about meeting at a coffee shop that seems to make meetings last longer and lack focus but a video conference or phone call tends to be a medium more conducive to a clear agenda and an actionable conversation. With so many options for video conferencing, like Skype, GoToMeeting, and Google+, there is really no excuse to avoid it. If both parties don’t have a webcam, do a phone call instead.

11. Use Highrise for a CRM. Just about all organization need a good CRM to keep track of contacts and opportunities. Highrise is the best CRM I’ve found for those needing something simple and easily accessible. The thing about Highrise that makes me productive is the fact that it removes friction from the process. I’ve used CRMs in the past that required me to log in, paste in notes, click a bunch of buttons, and generally jump though hoops to get things done. This either caused me to waste time in the application, or not use it all all, which is even worse. Highrise makes tracking communication almost effortless. I can Bcc my Highrise dropbox to record correspondance, I can set up opportunities in a couple of clicks, and I can set up tasks and reminders in seconds. Additionally, I can record voice notes using the iPhone app and append them to contacts while on the go. This saves me even more time.

12. Manage my social networks with HootSuite. I have profiles on all the major social networks and I also manage accounts for a few other organizations. HootSuite lets me manage them all in one place. It also lets me schedule certain posts using an editorial calendar which lets me focus my time and accomplish more by batching my distribution and block scheduling when I work on my social marketing.

13. Store receipts in the cloud with Shoeboxed. I used to hang on to business receipts and then toss them all into a big file cabinet periodically. Then, if I ever needed them again it would be a nightmare since I had no real filing system. It was also annoying to hang on to all that paper while traveling. Now, I simply scan business receipts using the Shoeboxed app on my iPhone, discard the paper, and all my receipts are now stored in a nice, organized, searchable database online. This saves time and effort, not to mention storage space. Shoeboxed saves me even more time when I want to create an expense report. I just select the receipts I want to include and it generates an accountant-friendly expense report in seconds.

14. Manage personal finances using Mint. I think Mint is the greatest thing since sliced bread. It’s a personal finance app that lets you bring all your accounts into one dashboard, manage budgets, and track spending with a few clicks. It eliminates the need for budget spreadsheets, recording transactions, and doing math (gasp!) to get an analysis of your finances. Mint keeps it all in one place and even has a mobile app for when you’re on the go. Mint saves me incredible amounts of time on personal finances.

15. Use OpenTable to schedule dinner appointments. Ok, so this is not always a problem but I do sometimes spend more time than I want to when I’m trying to set up a dinner appointment and I go through the routine of choosing restaurant options, calling around to see who has reservations available, and getting it booked. Rather than go though that routine, I pull up the OpenTable app on my iPhone, let it locate me and suggest restaurants near me, and then choose from available reservation times to book my dinner appointment. It all gets done in a matter of seconds. OpenTable does save a little bit of time but for me it’s more about eliminating friction from the process.

16. Keep a todo list in Backpack. Like Highrise, Backpack is a 37 Signals product and it’s slick. It’s a super-simple todo list, note taking app, and simple project storage system. I organize my todo lists by context (calls, blogs, errands, etc.) and then use the iPhone app to track items throughout the day. Backpack gives me a one-stop repository for all my todo lists and ensures that nothing falls through the cracks.

17. Shop for household supplies with Alice. I hate going to the store. For this reason, I love Alice. When I’m about to run out of an item like paper towels, deodorant, or toothpaste, I simply scan the product barcode with the Alice app on my iPhone to add it to my shopping cart. Then, once I reach a critical mass of items, I place the order with a few clicks and a big blue box containing my items appears on my doorstep a few days later. It’s like magic! I cannot even begin to add up how much time I’ve saved by eliminating shopping trips since using Alice.

These are some of the productivity hacks and tools that help me get more done in the limited time I have. Do you have any favorite techniques that work well for you? Please share below.

Filed Under: Lifestyle, Productivity, Technology Tagged With: amazon kindle, apple, blog, blogging, bni, business, gotomeeting, iphone, iphone os, Marketing, networking, productivity, ROWE, schedule meetings, smartphones, social media, spinweb, twitter, user interface, workaholics, workplace productivity, writing book

July 3, 2011 By Michael Reynolds 1 Comment

What your business can learn from the Mormon Church

For those who may not be aware, I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Other less formal labels for this denomination include “LDS” and “Mormon.” My faith is a source of great happiness in my life and I am always happy to answer questions about it. However, this post is not about religion, so I would ask that if you have any religious questions about the LDS faith, please contact me directly and I will be happy to discuss.

The LDS Church is one of the largest religions in the world. It has over 14 million members and is the second-fastest growing church in the U.S., according to the National Council of Churches. Other statistics on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can be found in the LDS Newsroom.

All spiritual debates aside, it’s easy to see that the LDS Church is doing something right. What are the Mormons doing that has lead to such dramatic and steady growth and how can it apply to your business?

Strong systems

The Mormon church is extremely systematic about everything from building churches and temples to teaching sunday school. If you go to a Mormon church anywhere in the world, you will find that they all follow the same meeting agendas, the same processes, and even teach the same lessons. If you attend a church meeting one Sunday in Indianapolis and then attend a meeting the following Sunday in California, it will be very familiar and you will be be able to stay on the same lesson plan. If the Mormon Church wants to form a new congregation, it follows a proven system for setting up the meetinghouse and can very quickly set in motion a process to get it up and running (complete with local clergy) very quickly and with very few issues. This saves time and money.

In a similar fashion, your business can benefit from strong systems that allow you to execute tasks and projects quickly and consistently. If you have proven systems for sales, marketing, product delivery, and customer service, your business will run much more efficiently and enjoy faster growth. If you’re unfamiliar with creating business systems, check out The E-Myth (affiliate link).

Member empowerment

The LDS Church makes it a high priority to encourage members to share their faith with others. In fact, one of the three main components of the mission of the church is “to proclaim the gospel.” Church members are encouraged to talk about their faith, share information with others, and speak openly about religion. This creates a culture that empowers all members to become “marketers” for the church. They are encouraged to follow their enthusiasm for their faith and make it a part of their everyday lives and communications. As a result, almost every member of the LDS church is prepared and eager to be a polite but ardent evangelist for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Your business can also turn employees into evangelists. If you continuously encourage your employees to talk about your company with others, share your brand, and openly talk about their jobs, your company will enjoy greater name recognition and awareness. This will result in more leads and potential customers. Empower your team to use tools like social media to inform the public what your company is all about.

Training

The Mormon Church has a phenomenal training program for its 52,000+ missionaries around the world (who are volunteers, by the way). Before serving, a missionary must spend anywhere from three weeks to three months in a training program that helps them utilize systems, processes, and procedures for reaching prospective new members. Every missionary goes through the exact same proven training process. If some part of the process is improved, it is rolled out to every missionary in the world. The Mormon Church is very serious about proper training and equips its missionaries with the systems and support they need to be successful.

Does your business provide sales training? If not, it might be worth considering. Proper sales training gets all your sales people on the same page, gives them a system to follow, and provides ongoing coaching. My favorite sales system is the Sandler system. If you’re in the Indianapolis area, I recommend Trustpointe or Lushin.

Rapid embracing of technology

Technology evolves at an frenzied pace and it can sometimes be difficult to keep up. However, the Mormon Church sees almost every form of new technology as an opportunity to grow the church’s brand and message. You’ll find that the church has a presence on just about every major social network in use today and even organizes messaging among specific focus areas, including newsroom communications, and member training just to name a few. The church has an incredibly strong SEO strategy which brings lots of relevant traffic to its websites. Additionally, the Mormon Church facilitates messaging through the use of apps, blogs, video, mobile, podcasts, and email. The church even has web portals and apps that allow all members of a congregation to instantly download directories and leadership information directly to their phones in order to facilitate easy communication between members. Most church buildings also now have wireless Internet access in order to encourage members to make use of these technologies as learning aids.

Your business can also benefit by embracing new technologies. If you look at each new form of technology as an opportunity to share your message, your brand will travel faster and your business will grow. Just as the Mormon Church does, carefully study each new tool or technology that evolves, decide how it can strengthen your brand messaging, and then deliberately integrate it into your business.

Partnerships

The Mormon Church does not see other religions as competition. Instead, church leaders throughout the world work with leaders of other faiths to serve and provide humanitarian relief. Some notable examples include Indian Ocean tsunami relief efforts in which the Mormon Church partnered with Islamic leaders and the church’s partnership with the Catholic Church to bring aid to Niger. Other less-dramatic events include interfaith concerts and other social events.

In a similar fashion, your business can also grow faster by leveraging partnerships. Instead of viewing other businesses in your space as competitors, try reaching out to them and looking for ways to work together. Not every prospect will choose to work with you and some may choose your competition (just as some people will choose another religion over Mormonism). However, if you have a positive working relationship with your competitors, you can create opportunities to refer to each other and network constructively, which raises the level of respect for everyone.

Conclusion

The Mormon Church continues to grow quickly and recruits new members very rapidly. With new churches and temples being built all the time, it’s obvious that the methods in and practices of the church lead to growth and success. So what can your business learn from the Mormon Church? By creating systems, embracing new technology, utilizing sales training, creating partnerships, and empowering your employees, you can have a business that enjoys similar growth and success.

Filed Under: Marketing, Productivity, Technology Tagged With: blog, blogging, branding, business, collaboration, communication, email, facebook, indianapolis, lds, linkedin, Marketing, michael reynolds, mormon, mormonism, networking, online social networking, seo, service, social information processing, social media, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, twitter, website

June 30, 2011 By Michael Reynolds 1 Comment

You have to care

Many times when I do speaking and training about social media, I see excitement and enthusiasm from the people I talk to. I like that. I really like that. It makes me really happy to see people getting excited about using new communication tools and methods.

Sometimes, however, I also encounter people who are just the opposite. They whine, they complain, they say “I don’t have time” or “I don’t want to try to keep up with all that stuff” and they defeat themselves before even trying.

I don’t know how many times I can say this: social media is not a chore. It’s not about “learning Twitter” or “getting LinkedIn.”

Social media should be fun. Social communication is about extending your platform to reach new constituents. It’s about magnifying your message. It’s about giving a voice to your passion.

You have passion for what you do? Then you’ll be “good” at social media. Do you have something worthwhile to say? Then you’ll be “good” at social media. Do you care about your customers, members, or constituents? Then you’ll be “good” at social media.

The key is, though, you really do have to care.

Filed Under: Marketing, Technology Tagged With: business, communication, facebook, linkedin, Marketing, social media, twitter

September 26, 2010 By Michael Reynolds 4 Comments

Marketing and Technology Review at AMTA National Convention 2010

I had the pleasure of attending the AMTA National Convention in Minneapolis last week. I really look forward to this event every year and seeing so many familiar friends was a wonderful experience.

As usual, I paid close attention how marketing and technology was utilized during the convention. Here are some observations.

AMTA National Website

First off, the new AMTA website looks really good. It was launched a few weeks ago and aesthetically, it is light years ahead of the old website. I am particularly pleased with the softer tone of the design and the more modern branding.

However, the structure of the website is still not very search-engine friendly. The deep links into the content are not very keyword-rich and a lot of opportunity for SEO juice is being lost in its current state. A simple update to the Content Management System that creates the page links could fix it.

I was also disappointed in some of the navigation choices on the website, such as the “Contact Us” item being placed all the way at the bottom of the website. Form fields are also placed in staggered format rather than stacked, which makes them harder to use for some users.

I was happy to see the massage locator service placed prominently on the home page but I was a little unclear about how it was supposed to be used. As someone who knows massage, I understand that I could type in “trigger point” or “craniosacral” into the “Find” box. However, as a consumer, it seems that it would be a little confusing. I think adding a little bit of additional text or perhaps a pop-up box with some examples could help make it easier to use.

Overall, the new AMTA National website it is a great improvement but there is still some work than can be done from a structural level.

Social Media Session at Chapter Leadership Training

Next, I attended Chapter Leadership training on Wednesday. I chose to check out the Social Media session taught by Maj-Lis Nash. I was curious to see what sort of information on social media was being taught to chapter volunteers. Maj-Lis was a good presenter, clear speaker, and a nice person. However, I had some disagreements with what she presented.

First off, the session title was “Social Media” (actually it was called “Social Networking” but that’s old school) but the session was 100% on Facebook. I felt that was a bit misleading.

Next, Maj-Lis recommended that chapters create a policy that requires board members to acquire written permission from the President or 1st VP before posting anything on the chapter’s page/group. In my opinion, this is a sure way to stifle activity. Part of her suggested social media policy for chapters also prohibited board members from engaging on confrontational discussions online. Though I see how these types of conversations can go terribly wrong when mis-managed, sometimes a confrontational discussion can be respectful and useful. I would favor responsible transparency over a policy that keeps all uncomfortable conversations behind closed doors.

Next, she recommended that chapters set up a group rather than a fan page. I disagree with this since fan pages have a number of advantages over groups and are more appropriate for associations and chapters.

Additionally, Maj-Lis spent some time bashing email marketing and saying that people don’t really read emails. Again… I disagree completely. When done effectively, email is one of the most powerful ways to communicate with members. It’s true that spammy emails don’t get opened but it’s irresponsible to make a grand generalization that people don’t read emails.

Some deeper tactics were also left out, such as blogging, linking social activity to websites with automated tools, etc. However, since we only had 45 minutes, I can understand not having too much time to cover it all. I just wish the session title was more accurate. I would have called it “Basics of Facebook” or something like that. Maj-Lis was a good presenter but I would love to respectfully discuss our points of disagreement in more detail sometime.

Exhibit Hall

I took a quick tour through the exhibit hall and was a little disappointed this year. It was smaller than it has been at past conventions and did not offer as much variety. I did see some familiar faces and introduced myself to some Facebook friends that I had not yet met in person.

I did notice that a lot of the people working at their booths were sitting down and not engaging with the crowd. If you’re paying for booth space and your goal is to sell product and acquire new customers, then at least one person needs to be standing up and greeting passers-by at all times. I saw a lot of booth workers sitting down, talking to each other in closed conversations, and working on their laptops. This sort of activity discourages prospective customers from talking to you.

I did have a great time meeting Ryan Hoyme of Massage Nerd fame at the exhibit hall. Ryan is a video specialist and he shot a quick video of me promoting the RISE campaign for the Massage Therapy Foundation. Thanks, Ryan!

Convention Updates for Attendees

On a general note, I was disappointed to see that AMTA was printing out daily (full-page glossy color) info sheets throughout the week and made this the primary method of distributing schedule information. I checked the AMTA website and did not see any sort of detailed information, however. Here are some ideas for AMTA that could be very useful for next year’s convention:

A daily email sent to convention attendees with the day’s schedule information and updates on it. This would have been really convenient to pull up on an iPhone or Blackberry (of which there were many).
Post a detailed, updated schedule on the AMTA website with times, locations, maps, and any other useful information. Unless I missed it, the schedule of events online online did not contain room numbers.
Use AMTA’s Twitter account for daily schedule information. It would have been really easy to schedule it all out in advance with HootSuite. In all fairness, AMTA was using the Twitter account throughout the convention but I think it could have gone a bit deeper.
An option to sign up for daily text alerts with event details and scheduling. Tatango offers a great, affordable way to do this.
Offer an AMTA iPhone app with convention info on it. During the rest of the year, an app could also be used to integrate with the Massage Locator service. What a great way this would be to build AMTA’s brand and strengthen consumer loyalty to AMTA therapists. About 80% of the people I talked to at convention had an iPhone. Hint hint…
Create a more convention-specific Twitter hashtag before the event to build buzz. The only hashtag in use when I arrived was #AMTA so I created #AMTAConv and it caught on quickly. Thanks to AMTA for using it, as well! This helped me (and others) group convention-specific tweets in one place. If AMTA were to start using this hashtag a few weeks before the convention (and advertising on the AMTA website), it would help market the event, as well.

Let me stress that I was happy to see AMTA making some use of technology during convention and there were some good things happening. However, I would love to see the tips above implemented next year and perhaps save some of the members’ money by not printing as much.

Connections and Friendships

As always, the highlight of the convention was connecting with fellow members… some old friends, some new. I loved hanging out with my Indiana board, as well as all the other chapters I’ve had the pleasure of working with and socializing with. I also finally got to meet one of my favorite massage marketing bloggers, Allissa Haines. Her stuff is really good and any therapist who is not subscribing to her blog is missing some great business and marketing advice. Seriously, go subscribe now. Yes, right now.

AMTA is making progress when it comes to the use of marketing and technology but I think there are still some simple things that can be done to improve the effectiveness of how the leadership communicates with members and stakeholders. I look forward to seeing how things go in Portland next year. I can’t wait to see everyone there again for another great AMTA National convention.

What were your observations? Please post them below!

Filed Under: Design, Marketing, Productivity, Technology Tagged With: 2010, amta, attends, blog hosting services, conventions, facebook, Marketing, massage, massage therapist organizations, minneapolis, national convention, national websites, online social networking, pleasures, social media, Technology, technology review, twitter, web 2.0, world wide web

June 7, 2010 By Michael Reynolds Leave a Comment

Personal Branding with Social Media E-Book

Personal branding is becoming more important today as people are becoming more interested in relationships and personal communication. Sales professionals, job-seekers, and professionals in a variety of industries are finding that how they relate to people and how they are perceived in the marketplace on a personal level makes a huge difference in how successful they are.

Social media is enabling us to strengthen our personal brands like never before. In order to address this, I’ve written an e-book to help others understand the dynamics of personal branding using social media and how to take advantage of social tools to strengthen their personal brands.

The e-book is free and you are encouraged to share it with others. If you have any personal stories you would like to include, please feel free to contact me and I would love to include your notes.

The e-book can be downloaded here:

Personal Branding with Social Media (PDF)

As always, comments and feedback are welcome.

Filed Under: Lifestyle, Marketing, Productivity, Technology Tagged With: address, blog, blogging, branding, business, collaboration, communication, dynamic, e-book, enable, facebook, identity, information, linkedin, Marketing, networking, personal, personal branding, personal communications, social, social information processing, social media, strengthen, twitter, understand, website

May 26, 2010 By Michael Reynolds 1 Comment

Better usability in conference websites

As a speaker, I attend and present for a lot of conferences. As an attendee, I register for events online and consume information primarily online via the conference website. As a speaker, I submit proposals for presentations with the intention of presenting at the conference.

As I analyze conference websites, I see a lot of opportunities for improving usability among them. Why is usability important on a conference website? Probably the most important reason is that it can play a huge part in determining how many people actually register for your event, as well as the quality of the speakers.

Here are some things to think about as you plan your conference website or landing pages.

1. Online registration is a must. I know it seems surprising but I still see conferences that do not have online registration as an option. They require you to call, mail, or fax in your registration. This puts up a huge wall between your event and your prospective attendees. Who has time to mail in a registration these days? Not me. I need quick, easy, secure online registration with credit card or I’m probably not going to bother. The same goes for your exhibitors.

2. Use online forms for speaker proposals. As a speaker, few things irritate me more than having to print or fill out a Word document to submit presentation proposals. Many speakers like me are submitting proposals to a variety of conferences and the more cumbersome it is to apply, the more likely I am to skip over your conference. I think I have a lot to offer and bring a lot of value to conferences when I present but making it hard for me to submit a proposal often keeps me (and other speakers) away. Make sure speakers can fill out application forms directly on your website.

3. Create landing pages for each session. I sometimes see conference websites that will give a general outline of the sessions for each day but do not break out sessions into individual landing pages. It’s important to give each session a specific landing page because this allows your speakers to promote their own sessions better, which in turn helps market your conference. It also gives you more specific content to publish on social networks and for search engines.

4. Make your conference website socially-aware. In addition to session landing pages, each session page should allow easy social media distribution. Two great ways to encourage social sharing of your conference material are with a Re-Tweet button via TweetMeme and a share button via AddThis. Both services are free and allow website visitors to easily market your sessions for you with one click. If you make it easy to announce your sessions, your will find that your speakers will help a great deal with your marketing efforts.

5. List all relevant time and location information clearly. This seems like a pretty obvious one but I still see conference websites that neglect to list the times and locations of breakout sessions. Not everyone wants to attend every session so make it easy for them to see exactly when and where each session is. Also, make sure your website includes interactive Google maps to your location so that your attendees can easily find it.

6. Include detailed speaker bios and photos. Few things are more boring than a big chunk of text listing presentation titles with no information on the speakers. Be sure to include speaker photos and bios with the session pages and perhaps even create speaker landing pages to help showcase them. Link out to their own website and social profiles, as well. This helps your attendees feel more connected to the speakers and can sometimes encourage people to register because they have an interest in seeing a particular speaker.

Paying attention to some basic usability details can make a huge difference in the quality of your speakers and the number of people who attend your conference. Do you need to make any adjustments to your conference website?

Filed Under: Design, Marketing, Technology Tagged With: analyzing, attendee, communication, conference, conference website, conferences, credit cards, Design, human-computer interaction, Marketing, online registration, own website, social media, speakers, technical communication, twitter, usability, website, websites

March 26, 2010 By Michael Reynolds 2 Comments

Associations: 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 green” with our newsletters because all this does is keeps us clinging to the idea that our communication needs to come out on an infrequent, scheduled basis as one big chunk of content called a “newsletter”.

Ask anyone today if they read newspapers or newsletters anymore and chances are they will acknowledge that they don’t have the time or the interest in reading a large publication full of content that they have to filter and digest.

Today’s association members consume information differently. While they typically will not read a multi-page newsletter (paper or electronic), they will notice bite-sized chunks of communication that can be consumed in 2 minutes or less. Examples of communication like this include: articles posted to the association website, a single-article email, blogs, Facebook posts, Twitter posts, LinkedIn discussions, SMS, YouTube videos, RSS, and community comments. Today’s association websites must replace the newsletter by truly becoming information hubs that also encourage social commenting.

Associations must offer choices, as well. There are so many ways to consume information today that in order to reach as many people as possible, we need to create a system that includes many different tools and touch points.

In order to evolve, associations must acknowledge this shift in information consumption and abandon the old idea of the “newsletter”. It takes a new kind of communications strategy to reach members today.

Isn’t it time to eliminate the newsletter?

Filed Under: Marketing, Technology Tagged With: associations, blog, blogging, email, facebook, linkedin, Marketing, social media, twitter, website

March 6, 2010 By Michael Reynolds Leave a Comment

Stop 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 difficult-but-worthwhile things, a process and a system can make it easier.

When I blog, I don’t usually just sit down and pick a topic out of thin air. Instead, I continuously capture ideas and keep them in a list. Often, blog ideas come from conversations I have, articles I read, or problems I’m solving. When this happens, I capture the idea either by placing it on my list of blog ideas or use Jott if I’m on the go. Then, when I do have some downtime or I’m in a creative mood, I can go to my list and pull out blog topics to write about. By separating the conceptualizing from the execution, I’ve made it much easier to produce content.

Blogging is a great marketing tool for your business because it strengthens your authority in the market. People want to do business with people they like and trust, and they can get to know you and trust you by reading your blog.

Don’t blog like a commercial. Blog with sincerity. Blog about things you know a lot about. Blog about your opinions about your profession. Blog about controversial topics. Blog to teach others something that will help them. Blog about your passions.

Schedule time to blog. Capture ideas throughout the week but maybe you block off an hour every Friday morning to choose a topic and write.

If you want to automate the writing part of it, hire a ghost blogger to take your ideas and turn them into polished articles. This will cost a little bit of money but will be well worth the investment.

Distribute your blogs on social networks. Respond to comments. Use your best blog articles in your email newsletter.

Blogging is a great way to cut through the noise of traditional marketing and give your constituents something of value. They will respect your transparency. They will learn to trust you. They will be much more likely to become your customer. Blogging builds relationships.

Capture your ideas and start blogging. No more excuses.

Filed Under: Marketing, Technology Tagged With: blog, blogging, email, facebook, linkedin, Marketing, networking, social media, twitter, website

February 8, 2010 By Michael Reynolds 1 Comment

How to make your website socially aware

Social media is everywhere. It’s new and shiny and everyone is trying to figure out how to use it, talk about it, and make money from it. However, once we put aside the hype, it becomes clear that social media is simply an evolution in how we communicate. It does not replace traditional marketing and communication, but rather augments it and breathes new life into what we do.

One great way to blend social media into your existing framework is to extend your website and make it more “socially aware”. Your company website is your information hub and should be a high-quality, interactive source for constituent engagement. However, many websites need to be upgraded to extend the organization’s reach into the social space, as well.

Here are some ways your next website can utilize connections to social media:

1. Include a company blog on your website. Your company blog should be integrated into your website, not hosted somewhere else or worse, on a free blogging service. It needs to be hosted under your domain name to maximize your search engine visibility and needs to follow your organization’s branding. A blog also gives you a platform of content to publish on other networks. Publish high-value articles that educate and position your company as an industry leader.

2. Add a Twitter feed to your home page. By placing your Twitter activity on your website, you are allowing others to see real-time updates on your events, news, and announcements that you can update externally from other sources, like your mobile device. This also allows visitors to subscribe to your communication channel via Twitter.

3. Use Ping.fm to distribute content. By connecting your website content to Ping.fm, you can automatically push out news, events, blogs, and other content to social networks. This ensures that your content comes from a single, central location and is then distributed across many networks.

4. Include RSS options for all dynamic content. Make sure that your blog, events, news, and other dynamic content can be syndicated via RSS to make it easy for visitors to stay in your communication channel or publish your content on other sites.

5. Show the faces of real people in your organization. Many corporate websites shy away from displaying information about employees. However, today’s customers are interested in real people. Create a directory of key employees and provide links to email addresses, LinkedIn profiles, Facebook profiles, and Twitter accounts. Make it easy for customers and prospects to engage in conversations with your team. This builds trust.

6. Make sure your blogs, articles, and other landing pages publish correctly on social networks. This means that your code should be structured so that the proper image or logo appears when the content is shared on Facebook, and the right content blurb appears so that the preview is informative. This may involve an upgrade to your website structure.

7. Link back to your website from all other social profiles. This should be obvious but it is often overlooked. Be sure that your website link appears everywhere you have a social presence so that all traffic is driven back to your information hub. Also, make sure your social profiles are designed to match the branding on your website.

When creating your next website, be sure to make it socially aware so that you extend your points of capture into social networks and maximize your permission-based followers.

Filed Under: Design, Marketing, Technology Tagged With: facebook, linkedin, Marketing, social media, spinweb, twitter, website

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