Tactical Execution

September 25, 2009 – I had the opportunity to speak at the Bay Area Consultants Network (BACN) in San Rafael, CA. It was a great event. The room had about 90 sophisticated and successful consultants in attendance and my presentation was met with great questions and dialog. It is truly a privilege to speak for such a sophisticated audience. It raises the game for everyone.

Shari Weiss was one of the consultants in attendance and put together an impressive blog post, chronicling the event and getting reaction from various people in the audience.  She also included a bunch of video clips so you can get a really good idea of what was discussed and how it was delivered.  Thank you, Shari, for putting this together.

I recently did an interview with Processor Magazine and my comments were included in an article about Twitter.  It’s entitled “Twitter: Friend Or Foe? Gauging The Role & Reasonable Limits Of Social Media In The Workplace” and is featured on their website as well as on page 29 of the printed version. If you have any questions about the article or my comments, please use the Contact tab to send me a message. Thank you!

I was recently interviewed by a journalist with Our Blook and the story is now featured on their website.  The interview was all about social media and how it’s affecting modern day politics.  Indeed, Barack Obama was extremely savvy with his use of social media platforms but there are also risks involved.  Read the story here.

I was recently featured in an article written on Digital Media Buzz.  The article is about how companies like Facebook and Twitter will develop their revenue models in the future.  Read the article and please leave a comment – good, bad or indifferent – at the bottom of this post.

Other contributors to the story included Kevin Flaherty from Wetpaint and Teri Ross from Imagine That – good company!  If you are working on a related story, feel free to contact me for a quote.  Thank you!

The most effective thing a small business owner can include in
marketing materials like brochures, newsletters or on a website is
testimonials accompanied by a photo. It’s a well known fact that
third party endorsements are more effective than first person claims,
and the inclusion of a photo dramatically increases trust. For a
dance studio owner whose direct audience consists of children but
whose paying audience consists of parents, a series of positive quotes
by other parents along with their photos can directly increase
conversion.

Service professionals like insurance agents are increasingly using
Twitter as a way of marketing their services. The platform is ideal
for sharing bite-sized nuggets of expertise, insights and advice. In
my case, I summarized my book into 300 marketing-related tips and
release them regularly as tweets. The strategy has worked and I now
have over 20,000 followers.

Every month that goes by, internet marketers are offering prospects
more value before requiring a purchase decision. Just like Costco, we
are almost always allowed to sample the goods before buying anything.
On the internet, that means more and more services offered at no
charge, coupled with premium features for those who need them. Google
is an excellent example of this philosophy, providing a host of
sophisticated services for free. This trend will surely continue as
companies trip over themselves to attract your eyes, your thoughts and
eventually, your wallet.

Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter offer tremendous
opportunities to creative companies who wish to engage their
customers, but they also come with a burden of authenticity. Social
media platforms bring interactions much closer than traditional media
channels and customers rightfully assume they are communicating with a
real person. That presents a challenge. Authenticity is paramount to
online success on today’s social internet and corporate communications
need to reflect that reality. As a rule of thumb, those writing ‘on
behalf of’ someone else should always say so unless they are the
exclusive proxy voice for that individual.

The greatest monetization opportunity available in the Google Voice
phone offering is with premium service features. With more and more
people working from home or other non-traditional working
environments, the need for cloud-based professional services will
continue to rise. The Google Voice offering will undoubtedly have
free basic features but can also offer a wide array of services
catering to the mobile working professional.

VoIP digital audio transmission is becoming increasingly common in the
business world. Now that garbled sound quality and packet loss issues
have been largely resolved, most people can no longer tell the
difference between a VoIP call and a traditional phone call. Indeed,
multinational corporations are already using such technologies for
their offshore customer service departments, Vonage being a perfect
example. While transmission cost savings are abundant, there remains
an installation requirement that can be expensive for large
corporations. Telecom providers are rushing to provide creative
options and corporations are left making breakeven calculations.