Name tags
from Seth Godin’s Blog:
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I love name tags.
I think doing name tags properly transforms a meeting. Here’s why:
a. people don’t really know everyone, even if they think they do.
b. if you don’t know someone’s name, you are hesitant to talk to them.
c. if you don’t talk to them, you never get to know them and you both lose.
d. if you are wearing a name tag, it’s an invitation to start a conversation.
One summer, I led 90 people, some strangers to each other, through a three-day training. Every single person had to wear a hat with his or her name on it until every person in the group knew every other person’s name and could prove it. It took two days. Worth it.
Doing a name tag right isn’t easy. Here are my rules:
a. BIG first name
b. positioned in a place where you can see it
c. ideally two-sided, on a short lanyard (why on earth would you make a one-sided lanyard tag?)
d. a piece of information that is an ice breaker. Here’s my latest example. Every single sticker had a different picture. No real logic behind it. But what if there was? What if attendees picked their favorite movie star, metaphor, state capital, political gaffe, Saturday Night Live skit… anything worth talking about?
Mormon evangelists all wear name tags. Great idea. Doctors used to. Too bad they don’t. Now it’s almost like a Prisoner thing, where the only purpose of the tag is to enable you to tattle on someone who doesn’t give you good service.
The Hidden Value of a Link
Is PayPerPost evil?
Sure. I can get on board with that. Though it’s a flawed hypothesis, a lot of my column this week tries to explore why. It actually does have parallels in other media, and there are even some blog advertising campaigns enlisting bloggers themselves that tapped into the real power of community, but PayPerPost keeps making me squirm. I’ll take pop-ups over PPP any day. It does have some defenders, such as those who commented on the column on MediaPost (granted, those who emailed me were much more supportive – hardly a surprise, given sample biases).
The column also once again, like last week, stars the link. The full column’s in the extended entry. Is PPP really just product placement or advertorial? Or is it corrupting the fabric of social media, and the entire social media ecosystem? I welcome your take, as this debate isn’t going away.
The Hidden Cost Of A Link
by David Berkowitz, Tuesday, February 27, 2007
How much is a link back to your site worth to you?
That’s one of the questions that arises with PayPerPost, the service which, as its name suggests, offers a marketplace where advertisers can pay for bloggers to post about them with a link to their site, all within the blog’s editorial content. The link itself is arguably the most valuable part of the whole operation (for more on the value of links, read last week’s column).
The biggest problem with links from PayPerPost is that they’re in the editorial copy instead of with the ads. This presents a double-edged sword for PayPerPost. If the links were off to the side or otherwise demarcated as ads (such as when ads in RSS feeds are set off in a shaded box or surrounded by the word “advertisement”), then there wouldn’t be much controversy over money changing hands for running them.
The backlash against PayPerPost stems from these ads being included as regular posts. The fact that there’s a disclaimer requirement doesn’t do enough to blunt the negative effects of such a slippery slope with ads being included in the editorial content. Additionally, the disclaimer can negate the value of the blogger’s write-up (making the link the only real value) — and bloggers with impeccable integrity, or enough of an audience to otherwise monetize their blogs (whether it’s through ads, new business, or other leads such as speaking engagements) won’t risk their reputations to join.
Some defenders of PayPerPost claim that their model is no different than other forms of advertising. A perfect parallel is hard to find, so this may be a straw-man argument. One somewhat related model is in radio, where hosts will shill a product themselves on behalf of the good folks at the advertiser being promoted. You won’t find such advertising in The New York Times, or embedded in a Fareed Zakaria column in Newsweek. For similar reasons, it shouldn’t be on a blog.
Another parallel can be made with advertorials, which appear in many shades of gray. Some are merely ads that include editorial copy written by the advertiser, and they’re often made to look like other articles on the page or in the publication. As that’s just another type of ad, the parallel is tenuous at best. Some publications, meanwhile, will have their writers interview the advertiser and write the copy for the advertorial, which is the only place that the publication will cover a given topic. In such a case, the advertiser’s only way of getting into the “editorial content” of that issue is by buying its way in.
Bloggers have nothing in common with the second form of advertorial I mentioned. Bloggers can always write about whatever they want whenever they want. I’m a blogger, and I can post 20 times a day or once every 20 days, covering as few or as many trends, ideas, and companies as I wish. I’d never run PayPerPost ads for fear of losing credibility (full disclosure: I did register my blog with them to check out the service, though I never took part in any campaigns).
So how could a marketer reach me and take advantage of those 133 links Google counts pointing to my blog? Blogger relations would work better. I have companies write me every so often letting me know about new Web sites, products, and services. If it’s a really great Web site, for example, I’ll write about it (rarely do I cover things that don’t interest me just for the sake of posting about them), and I’ll provide a link with commentary. Instead of paying per post, the marketer invests time (by themselves, or through an agency) in researching appropriate blogs, developing pitches relevant to each blogger, and then making the pitch — with the occasional added cost of sending promotional items. While such a campaign can be more costly, it’s exponentially more effective. As a bonus, other bloggers will readily post their own links to something they find in another blogger’s copy, though with PayPerPost that viral effect isn’t there (I’ve never blogged, “Hey, check out what this advertiser paid this other blogger to write about!”)
PayPerPost refers to its service as “consumer-generated advertising,” but that’s a misnomer. When I write on my blog that I loved staying at the Ceiba del Mar in Puerto Morelos, Mexico, that’s a consumer-generated ad — better known as word-of-mouth marketing, and from the consumer’s perspective, it’s just sharing information. When Dale Backus won a contest for producing the Doritos Super Bowl ad, that was consumer-generated advertising. When advertisers pay someone to post a link and comment on their offering, it’s a cash-for-link deal that appears in the editorial content. When PayPerPost’s advertisers hire consumers to write the copy and post the link, it’s clearly not in the spirit of consumer-generated media, even if in some way it counts as a technicality.
It’s up for marketers to determine how much links are worth for them. They should keep in mind that the price can include intangibles that harm their brands. And that, by the way, is full disclosure.
Don’t commit these mailing list mistakes
One of the best ways to begin a friendly and non-intrusive relationship with prospective customers is to build a mailing list of people who are interested in you or your business concept. One of the easiest ways to do this is to offer a useful free report or piece of information, then follow up with a regularly published newsletter or “ezine.”
Your primary goal with a newsletter is to share useful information and tips that will help your target audience get to know and trust you and learn things that will help them solve problems.
But some people, eager to get on the mailing list bandwagon, make some of the following mistakes:
- Don’t ask permission for people to join your list, just add their names. This is more than a case of poor etiquette, it can also land you in very hot water with the CAN-SPAM Act, resulting in everything from an $11,000 fine for each violation to shutting down your email server. I find this most often occurs with people just starting a list who will roll their personal email list into a mailing list. A better way is to send one message to your email list when you launch your newsletter explaining its purpose and benefits. Provide the directions for signing up through your mailing list service. If I get newsletters that I didn’t sign up for, I immediately unsubscribe, out of principle.
- Try to manage your list manually. You will pull your hair out trying to keep up with subscriptions, cancellations and address changes. There are many good mailing list services available for a reasonable price. I use AWeber and am very happy with it. Others have recommended Constant Contact or even an integrated shopping cart and mailing list program like 1ShoppingCart.com. The other benefit to these paid services is that they live and die by observing the CAN-SPAM Act, so your list should be protected.
- Provide no meaningful information, just sales drivel. No one wants to join a mailing list only to receive sales announcements. If you consistently provide useful information in your main article, it is perfectly fine to include a section of your newsletter where you promote your products or services. But use discretion so that people don’t feel the hard to describe but easy to identify sensation of being “sales slimed” every time they read your newsletter. Soon, they won’t bother reading it.
- Send more messages than you initially described in your sign-up. I send my ezine out once a month, and as a general guideline, only send one additional message a month if there is something to announce that misses the monthly cycle. This is for my large regular mailing list. You may follow up more frequently with people who have signed up for a particular program or class, since they may require more information. Whatever timing and amount of messages you choose, state it right up front when people sign up so that they won’t be surprised by the amount of emails they receive from you.
- Take unsubscribes personally. This can be a bit of a challenge, since all of us would like to think that we provide pithy, useful information that our readers are eager to find in their inbox. But the reality is that your information may be useful to someone at a particular point in time, then become obsolete. Or they may need to purge all of their mailing list subscriptions to get control of their inbox. Or … they may not like what you have to say! And this is ok too, because your objective is to fill your list with people who genuinely are connected with you and your message. I think it is better to have 300 ardent supporters on your list rather than 3,000 near-disgruntled ones.
As Zen as you can be about the “ebb and flow of the mailing list,” there will be times when people piss you off by reporting your message as spam (which is simply not true since they can ONLY sign up voluntarily by a double-opt-in subscription process if you set your list up correctly) or send an incredulous “This is useless nonsense and I have no idea why I received it” message to you. I have gotten more than a few of these, and always wonder if they either have a bitter spouse or teenager that maliciously signs them up for things they don’t want, or if they got hit in the head with a wooden beam since the day a few weeks before that they voluntarily signed up for my mailing list. The appropriate response to these messages is not a scathing reply (which may further fan the flames of their desire to get you) but rather to stand in front of your computer screen and chant the following sophomoric song lyric right before you hit delete:
“Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, GOODBYE“
Happy mailing!
Are You Ready To Start Your Home Based Business?
By Allen Lundy
There are all types of people in this world. Everyone of us is unique in one way or another. We all look different, we have different hobbies, likes, dislikes, and most of all we have varied skills and learning abilities.
Our uniqueness is what makes each of us special. The ability to make decisions and take responsibility for our actions is what really sets an entrepreneur apart from everybody else with a desire for a home based business.
Making the decision to start your own home based business is just the beginning of a long, fun, exciting and sometimes frustrating journey. Are you ready?
With the Internet being such a prolific venue for anyone desiring to have their own home based business, it’s no wonder so many people have shelled out hundreds and thousands of dollars for their dream – a successful home based business – only to have that dream turn into a nightmare.
You may or may not have been one of those that started a home based business only to find out there is more to a work at home business than just putting up a website and waiting for the money to come rolling in.
If you haven’t been told before, let me say it now – It doesn’t work that way.
Running a successful home business takes planning, hard work and yes, even money. You may have heard that you can start your own home business and make a fortune for no money. That my friend is a myth!
Before you start your own home based business you absolutely MUST look before you leap. A home based business requires the same dedication, hard work and ingenuity as any other brick and mortar business.
Do you have a business Plan? Without a “blue print” of what you envision your home business to be and a path forward to get there, all your hard work may be for nothing. You need to have a business plan and you must research the niche that you are planning on making your fortune in. You must know what your business is all about and what it is going to take to make it a success.
You must have a positive attitude. Your home based business will succeed or fail, depending on how you approach it. Regardless if you work your home business full time or part time, you must always do everything in a positive manner. Your should always remember and believe that your home business is a business, it is not a hobby. Thinking of your home business in any other way could set you up for failure.
Set yourself up a balanced schedule. To achieve a balanced schedule, you need to sit down and actually write out a schedule to follow on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Set up specific periods of time for your business. When your schedule shows it’s time to work, do nothing else but work on your business.
You will also set aside time for your family on your schedule. After all, isn’t more time with your friends and family a benefit of having your own business? Put in time for your hobbies, go fishing, ride your Harley, whatever you feel like. You absolutely must have some free fun time. Like the saying goes, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy…Follow your schedule.
Learn everything you can about your products or service: Whether you are selling affiliate programs, software, PLR/MRR products or a service that you can offer, such as television repair, auto repair, the bottom line is you must be considered an expert or at least very knowledgeable. The more you know and the better you are able to articulate to others your knowledge, the more respect within your niche area you will receive. When you are considered the best, Word-of-Mouth advertising can do wonders for your bank account.
Purchase a good domain name: You have already done your research and you know what products you are going to sell, you now have to get one of the most important items for your new home based business. You need to “name” your business. Your domain name is one of the very first things people will see and it will be their first impression of you. Make a good first impression.
Set up your payment options: Many home based businesses will already have some sort of payment option set up on ready made websites. However, especially for individuals that may be new to Internet Marketing, I would suggest starting off with PayPal. It is one of the most popular payment processing systems around.
STUDY, STUDY, STUDY AND DID I MENTION – STUDY? You can never learn too much when it comes to setting up, running and maintaining your home based business. There are a ton of books in both hard copy and digital available for you to become an expert in your field in a very short period of time. Start off with the free eBooks you may find. They have excellent information for the beginner or those that just wish to refresh their knowledge. You don’t have to spend $197 for an eBook when you don’t even understand the basic fundamentals.
Finally: Take your time, be patient, don’t get down on yourself if you aren’t the next Internet Millionaire in 30 days or less. Think about this, Microsoft(tm)started out in a small garage and took many years to become what it is.
An overnight success story according to the newspapers and television – yet, that overnight success took 7-10 years to attain. Be patient, and you too could become the next “overnight success”.
Allen Lundy has been working online for the last few years. His new site The Home Business Plan teaches anyone how to create their own plan for a successful business.
Legitimate SEO Tactics
A lot of people call me about optimizing their site to improve their standing within the major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, and MSN/Live) for a few to multiple keyword phrases.
Many callers or website visitors are shocked to learn that I ain’t cheap, and I make no apologies for that. I prefer to say I’m extremely “cost effective” when compared to radio, television, newspaper, magazine, or billboard advertising. Furthermore, I share my processes and methodologies throughout which means my clients receive valuable educational benefits that will enable them to take over their own optimization campaigns once they feel comfortable enough. I also offer basic plans which allow a client with a good web presence to maintain their rankings with a lesser investement. The truth is most of my clients don’t have the time or staff to dedicate to a successful SEO campain so that’s where I come in. I can offload some of those tasks for them and provide that peace of mind they are looking for.
With all of that said, I figured now would be a good time to share some basic tips & tricks for those that do have the time to dedicate to improving their website’s presence within the search engines. All of these are ethical and time tested. If the search engines change their algorithms, it won’t impact you too much.
1) Write content rich articles–this is a common sense approach to growing the popularity of your business online and offline. If you write something that people really want to read, they’ll generally want to learn more about the author. That’s where your byline at the bottom comes in. You should always include a link to your site in any correspondence you produce. Some of the better online article directories you can submit your articles to in order to gain exposure include:
- http://www.zinos.com
- http://www.ezinearticles.com
- http://www.articlecity.com
- http://www.weeno.com
- http://www.articledashboard.com
- http://www.goarticles.com
- http://www.articlesfactory.com
- http://www.article99.com
2) Include your link everywhere–again, this is another common sense approach that applies offline as well as online. In your e-mail signature, you should have a link to your site. On your letters to potential customers or partners, you should include your web address somewhere on the letter. If you use letterhead for a majority of your letters, make sure you have your web address on there somewhere. Same with envelopes, product packaging, brochures, handouts, giveaways, fillers, company vehicles, etc. Anywhere a potential customer may see something from your company, they should also see a web address. This is another form of marketing that doesn’t cost an arm or a leg. If you’re looking for some items to brand with your website, visit http://www.cafepress.com for some ideas.
3) Regularly comment on blogs, message boards, and news based sites. Be sure to include a link to your site either in the message body or in the area provided for your link. If you can, use a targeted keyword phrase for the anchor text. Anchor text is the more descriptive text you see to mask the long drawn out website URL as demonstrated below:
If you are interested in SEO Pricing, you may want to visit this page: http://smbconsultinginc.com/seo_pricing.html. Both links point to the exact same page, but one is “optimized” for a targeted keyword (SEO Pricing) whereas one is not. When people search, they are more likely to search for “SEO Pricing” than they are for a URL. Think about it–if someone knew the URL, they’d simply type it in, but most people can’t remember a long URL whereas they can usually think of a couple of words to try to find something online. Many blogs and message boards will use your name section as the anchor text so replace your name with a targeted keyword phrase. The best blogs to post comments on have a lot of links pointing to them (often referred to as “authority”). To find a blog that might apply to your particular company, industry, or general interest, visit http://www.technorati.com and do a search for a phrase that you believe applies. Search for sites with a lot of authority, and have fun participating in the conversation. Don’t forget to include that link!
One last bit of advice that may generate a lot of buzz around your site. If you post comments on blogs, news sites or social networking sites and include your link, try to find a topic that has a little bit of controversy built into it. Subjects such as religion, politics, and sports have passionate believers and huge followings that will take a side on an issue very quickly. I’m not suggesting you go in there and piss everyone off, but it wouldn’t hurt you to contribute something thought provoking or a differing point of view to further stoke the debate. Your objective is to stand out somehow so that people will take notice. The easiest way to accomplish that goal is to contribute something unique to a topic that already has people buzzing.
There you have some very basic SEO tips that are as much marketing tips as they are anything. I hope you’ll put some of them to the test and share the results.
SMB Consulting Highlighted in Louisville Paper
Today, Bill Wolfe of the Louisville Courier Journal did a wonderful piece on me and SMB Consulting, Inc. Read a copy of the article by clicking on the link below:
Please share your thoughts.
Five Mistakes When Selling to Small Business Owners
Editor’s Note: Not long ago I conducted an audio interview with small business expert Andy Birol (see his earlier contributions in our Small Business Experts Directory). With so many companies these days interested in selling to small business owners, I wanted to know what Andy saw as the top mistakes vendors make when selling to small businesses and how to avoid them. Andy is himself a small business owner and he counsels many other business owners. He is a colorful, outspoken guy and I knew he would not hold back.
Whether you represent one of the many small businesses whose target market is other small businesses, or whether you represent a large organization, check out this interview. Below are selected quotes of Andy’s from the interview, or you can listen to the podcast or read the transcript. — Anita Campbell, Editor
Andy Birol on mistakes when selling to small business owners:
- …[Y]ou should always give your small business accounts — whether they’re prospects or customers — to individuals that have had at least a close encounter of the second kind, if not the first. For example, Lowes and Home Depot always hire individuals in their stores that have been contractors, so that when a contractor comes in, they’re speaking to somebody that can identify with what it means to be a small business. So, if you can’t hire ex-small business owners yourself, or retired ones, look around and see if you can at least hire their kids. Or hire folks that have already worked in a small business.
- Recognize that when you’re selling to small business, you’re on a series of dates with an owner. And since it’s so personal — because it’s their money, it’s their company, and it’s their problems — the last thing they’re looking for is a long term commitment from the get go. So, if it sounds like a great idea to make a six-month commitment, I’d ask you to think about making a six-day commitment or a six-week commitment.
- … [Never] think of business owners as this giant inanimate mass but rather understand they are as segmented as every other part of the formerly mass market has now been chopped into. Let me give you a great example. You should version your copy when you are writing to small business owners in terms of whether they are at the stage of survival or the stage of success. Those are completely different headsets and to speak to all business owners, even in the first person, as if they’re all surviving or as if they’re all successful is to probably alienate half of them.
- The majority of us want some small part of our miserably overstressed lives to get marginally better for a short period of time, which in turns really delights us. And when you think of the small business owner’s market, you’re talking about something not too different than the upscale mass market. So rather than try to sell them a total solution for which they’ve never asked, why not pick a bite-sized battle?
Read the transcript: Five Mistakes Selling to Small Business (PDF opens in new window).
US employers brace for flood of age-related lawsuits
America’s rapidly-ageing workforce is going to lead to a dramatic increase in expensive age-related law suits, employers have been warned.
Author: Nic Paton
Lawyers have said they are already seeing age discrimination becoming a growing problem for employers as the baby boomer generation starts to approach the traditional age for retirement.
Even companies that have no intention to discriminate, or which are simply trying to improve their bottom line, may have policies and procedures that are evidence of age bias, said the lawyers at Epstein Becker Green Wickliff & Hall.
As the working population continued to age, it was likely employers would be on the receiving end of a surge in age bias lawsuits, the firm predicted.
In 2005, the U.S Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received more than 16,500 age discrimination charges but, with 20 per cent of the U.S workforce set to be aged over 55 by 2015, this number was only going to go up.
“This is a real crisis for employers who haven’t properly established procedures for making sure that bias does not creep into decisions and who haven’t reviewed and revised their employment policies to ensure fair practices,” said Gayla Crain, attorney at Epstein Becker Green Wickliff and Hall.
“The situation is reaching a point of no return, with the EEOC already collecting upwards of seventy-eight million dollars on age bias lawsuits alone,” she added.
A study in 2005 by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College had concluded that a younger worker was more than 40 per cent more likely to be called for an interview than a worker aged 50 or older, she added.
“A policy or practice that seems acceptable on its face may nevertheless discriminate against the older workers in a company’s workforce. This phenomenon is known as ‘disparate impact’ and it can be expensive,” she continued.
The issue of “disparate impact” and older workers arose most frequently with respect to job termination.
When a company decided that it must reduce its workforce, it often naturally sought to cut the highest-paid employees first or the long-term employee whose performance had declined.
Yet these workers were also frequently the older ones. “A company must have a legitimate business reason for all hiring and termination decisions which may exclude older workers,” explained Marty Wickliff, attorney and managing partner of Epstein Becker Green Wickliff & Hall.
“Above all, a company should develop and strictly enforce objective standards to be used in identifying and executing employment decisions, and seek counsel if there is any doubt as to the legality of a policy,” she added.
