Marketing Roadmaps

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Disclosing your interests

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It’s inevitable. Sooner or later, you will blog about something in which you have a financial interest. Stands to reason. Your blog is about things that interest you, which is bound to include your work and companies you advise, either as a consultant or a board member.

But… you have to disclose your interests. Your readers need to know up front where you are coming from.

The good news is that most business bloggers get this, and handle it loud and clear in the text of  posts about something which they or their firm has an interest.

I think we have to take it a step further. Our relationships also affect how we think about  issues that may not be so clearly related to a specific company or client as to merit a mention in a post.

That’s why I am now listing my current and past clients on my About page. There’s also a link to my CV if readers are curious about past employers. Next step is to break out of the TypePad constraints to present all this info more clearly. When I have time. 🙂

Many business bloggers already have this information somewhere on their blog. But not all.

It’s time.

If you need something more robust, take a look at Stowe Boyd’s Shorthand for Disclosure. It’s probably more than most of us need, but if you have a number of varied and complex relationships, something like it might work for you.

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Gossip

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Not interested in gossip.

Don’t read gossip blogs. Any of them.

Boring.

What people do is far more interesting to me than who they may be doing.

People publicly standing up for what they believe in and taking responsibility for their actions. Now, that’s interesting.

Update: Go to infOpinions and New Millenium PR for the best posts to-date on the recent PR gossip blog. I can’t possibly say it any better so I won’t even try.

2d Update: I was really trying to NOT write about this PR gossip blog apparently originating in Chicago, but I’ve failed. It still won’t be any better than Robert’s and Andrea’s (above) but what the hell. 

I’ve been having a bit of a "comment-sation" over at Below the Fold about this, and I finally got a clear picture about why I disliked both the concept and the execution of this blog. It’s not the potshots that are the problem. The target of the nastiness is a big boy and I’m sure he can handle it. In fact, he did, with incredible grace, in this post.

And I like snark. Have been known to write a snarky post myself from time to time.

What turns me off here? Three things. First, the anonymity. Take your shots in public, please. Second, take a shot at an A-lister, fine, but make it about something of substance. A fake office pool on when he might "separate" from his employer? Not so interesting to me. Others may like gossip. To each his/her own.

And finally, the persona. Not a terribly positive image of professional women, and forgive me for stating what should be obvious, but women DO care about that. And men should too.

I know some people like the idea of a blog that humorously deconstructs the PR industry. If "rhymes with Smurfette" (well done, Steve) does that for you, enjoy. I’ll be reading something else.

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Escalating cuteness

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Scott Baradell started it. (And, no offense, I’ll pass on the date contest).

David Parmet upped the ante. (And please do post more pics of your kids.)

While I really don’t give a tinker’s dam about rank, I can’t resist an excuse to post pictures of my son and my dogs.

So here’s my entry in escalating cuteness. Since my son is nowhere near as pretty as David’s daughter, I’m going  to go for the cumulative effect of dogs and kids  🙂

Douglas, playing with his Knex Corkscrew Canyon

Tank, 4-month old Scottie puppy

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Blog recommendations for sales people

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Since PR is apparently passe (link found on Burningbird) and marketing is a dirty word, I figured I go for broke today and write about the third topic area of this blog, sales. Because, hey, sales  is probably the only corporate function that gets dumped on more than PR and marketing 🙂 As they say, in for a penny, in for a pound.

Right now, I am working on the first issue of a newsletter of sales/marketing tips for my client GuideMark. GuideMark specializes in CRM for banks. Central to the value proposition for CRM is that it will help the bank improve its sales process. The newsletter is an additional tool in the toolkit (or weapon in the arsenal if you prefer the Art of War metaphor). It will be distributed to our clients’ sales people as well as prospects and anyone else who chooses to sign up on the Website.

The newsletter is written for the line of business sales person. It must be short, so they’ll read  the first issue, and value laden, so they’ll read the second.  Sales people are busy folks — on the road,  meeting prospects, solving customer problems, closing business. They don’t have a lot of time to spare for business reading unless it directly helps them get the job done.

It also looks like they don’t spend too much time writing blogs either. A Technorati search on the tag ‘sales’ delivers mostly marketing and PR blogs, including this one in 8th place. Now, I’m barely a Technorati blip in my main business areas of marketing and PR. There are lots and lots of marketing and PR bloggers, and since I don’t worry too much about my ranking, I don’t expect to be terribly high.**

The fact that this blog ranks that highly for ‘sales’  is a clear indication (to me) that there are not too many folks blogging about sales issues. Lots of Websites selling sales training and professional development but not many blogs. Combining this little bit of data with what I already know about the sales process, I will guess that there aren’t too many sales folks reading business blogs either.  But there is a lot of information in blogs that really could help our mortgage account executive and small business banker clients. So we are going to have a regular feature that covers valuable free online resources. And rather than just a list of resources, or a blog description, we are going to link the reader directly to a specific post or page that will provide immediate value.

Here’s the first article:

Online Resources that Help You Sell

Let’s face it. There is a lot of sales “stuff” online, and much of it isn’t worth the time it takes to read it. Or it is just trying to sell you something, and you don’t have time for that. You need to be on the phone, on the road, talking to customers, closing business.

So we’ll help you cut through the clutter. Every issue, we will introduce you to some online resources worth your time. And if you have a site or a blog that you find useful, please send it our way.

This issue, we have two blogs to tell you about:

Guy Kawasaki’s Bona tempura volvantur. One of the original Apple evangelists, Kawasaki is now a venture capitalist and author of a number of well known business books. His blog is fairly new, and chock full of advice, some taken from his previously published works, some new. All useful. One recent post worth checking out: The Art of Sucking Down.  How to get people on your side, for the reservation, the upgrade, the access to your prospect. Follow his advice and your life will get easier.

Selling to Big Companies blog, by Jill Konrath. Even though Konrath’s focus is on the high ticket sale, her advice is good for most B2B sales situations. One of her most useful posts, from last December is Why this voicemail failed. She gives some great tips on how to leave a voice mail that just might get a call back.

And on the topic of voicemail, if there is a decent chance that the person you are calling might actually remember you, leave your phone number in the very beginning part of the message. “Hi, this is Susan Getgood from GuideMark 978-555-1212…” and then proceed with the rest of the message. That way, if the person is busy and doesn’t have time to listen to your whole message, she quickly has your callback number and can delete the message.

I’d love your feedback on this feature as well as any recommendations for blogs we should cover.

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** Special note to my readers and commenters: I may not have quantity in my readership, but you guys are definitely quality. Thanks!

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Les blogs francais (French blogs)

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This morning, I received the most delightful email from new PR blogger Philippe Cherel announcing his blog, PR.ojet Z, and thanking a number of PR bloggers (myself included, merci Philippe) for inspiring him in his blog endeavor.

He also mentions the same list in his inaugural public post today. Lucky for us though, he has been blogging away for about three months and has a nice collection of posts for us to dig into!

Inspired by a student in my recent blog workshop who asked if most blogs were in English, I had recently decided that it was time to expand my blog horizons beyond English language blogs.  Since the only other language I speak (relatively) fluently is French, PR.ojet Z  fits nicely into my daily reading and hopefully will help me brush up on my business vocabulary. Last time I lived in France for any length of time was the early 80s, well before the "PC revolution." And I was a student, so my day-to-day vocabulary is (was) decent but I really don’t have a great grasp on professional and tech terms.

The other French language blog I am reading regularly  is "De Quoi Je Me M.E.L." the blog of Michel Edouard Leclerc, the head of French supermarket/hypermarket group E. Leclerc. The name of his blog is great — both his initials and a play on words. The verb "meler"  in the form above roughly translates to: "What I meddle with." In English, we’d probably say, what I stick my nose into. And Leclerc definitely pulls no punches in his opinions. For candor, his US counterpart is probably Mark Cuban, although they talk about very different things. Leclerc also doesn’t strike me (at least so far) as a ranter, which Cuban can be from time to time.

UPDATE 4/2: I am getting slammed with porno trackbacks to this post, so both trackbacks and comments have been closed. Sorry. Send me an email if you have a comment or a link and I will add it manually.

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