Archive for July, 2009

Three of the Most Common Search Engine Optimization Mistakes to Avoid

By Andrea Kalli

Search engine optimization is not just about keywords and web content. Although these elements are extremely important for SEO, there are other elements that are also being assessed by search engines. One of these factors is web design. A properly designed and structured site is important for achieving the best possible search engine ranking for your website.  A site needs to be created with SEO in mind in order to maximize its placement in search engines result pages. Here are some common SEO web design mistakes that you should be aware of.

1. Search engine crawlers can identify text but not graphics. Crawlers see graphics as code or unreadable text. So it is essential not to build a website that contains too many graphics. Graphics may improve the appearance of your website but it will rank low in search engine results, as search engine crawlers will not be able to index it correctly. Adding alt text to your images does help, but it cannot take the place of good old-fashioned text content on your site. Content is king!
2. Ensure that your website does not have any broken links.  Test the status of all your site links to ensure they are functioning. A website with badly maintained links will not be ranked highly by search engines. If you use WordPress, there is a great plugin to check for and help you correct broken links.
3. Do not create a flash website. Search engine crawlers do not recognize flash graphics and consequently the website will not be ranked on search engine listings. Having the coolest looking site is not always in your best interest.

But let’s not end this on a negative vibe. What about three top SEO tips?

1. Title Tag, Meta Description, and Meta Keyword – Use accurate and carefully worded keywords and phrases. This is no place to put your company name, unless it IS packed with your keywords. The Title tag is prime real estate. Use it wisely. Also, keep it down to about 70 characters (if you can)…always a struggle for me. Use the most important keywords first. Oh, and don’t forget to make the page Title unique for each page and based on the content of each page. The Meta Description can be very similar to what you’ve put in your Title tag, but expanded on a bit. Use the same concepts. Make the information relevant to the content on the page.
2. Page Content – While it might be difficult for you to come up with content about you, your company, your industry,  and your services, and while it may be easier to load up your pages with images – please spend the time on this, spend lots of time. You can tweak it as time goes on, but don’t skimp on this. It’s one of the most important things you can do to help yourself be found and to impress the people that find you. When it comes to the “text .vs image” battle, TEXT wins every time. It goes without saying that you need to come up with great keywords to use. I use Market Samurai, but there are plenty of keyword research tools available.
3. Build Quality Incoming Links – use Search Engine Directories, Article Submission sites, Social Networking sites, Press Releases. Also, if you’re willing to provide valuable information and not use spammy techniques you should find the time to contribute to forums, blog comments, review sites, and Q&A sites (such as Yahoo Answers)

Remember, if you have a WordPress blog or your whole site is built on the WordPress platform all SEO tips, strategies, and techniques still apply. Spend the time to get the most out of your site, or hire me to do it for you…(shameless plug).

There, I’ve listed the 3 top things not to do, and the 3 top things you should be doing to get great SEO results for your website. This is just a short list. There are plenty more where those came from.

Andrea Kalli Virtual Trainer and Assistant, LLC offers a wide variety of business services.

As a Certified Internet Marketing Virtual Assistant, she specializes in social media optimization to increase organic search rankings through brand awareness and community building strategies. Edit audio/video for podcasts, teleseminars, audio books. Create products to sell & teasers for marketing. She supports your Internet marketing needs such as Website Analysis, Search Engine Marketing, Email Marketing, and Article Marketing.

With a background in corporate productivity and team training for Outlook and SharePoint users, she offers video training tutorials through her e-learning site.

Outlook / SharePoint training and support, Podcast / audio editing, Certified Internet Marketing Assistant.

Twitter Marketing Strategy – A Simple SEO Blueprint to Power Your Twitter Marketing Strategies

By Kenneth Yu

Most people are puzzled about how to combine their Twitter Marketing Strategy with their Twitter for SEO efforts. In fact, most naysayers say that Twitter (and social media) in general are useless for search engine marketing.

I say they are plain wrong!

Granted, Twitter does not have link juice. But because of their insanely high pagerank, your tweets and even your Twitter profile page can get on the first page of Google just with the simple backlink strategy that I’m about to reveal in this 7 step Twitter SEO blueprint below:

1) Use a keyword research tool to find a keyword phrase you want to rank for.
2) Write the Tweet with the keyword phrase in it. Ideally, it should link to a blog post or article of a similar topic for additional traffic.

3) Write a simple 250 word article on EzineArtlcles and use the keyword phrase as an anchor text to your “money” tweet.

4) Write another simple 250 word article on HubPages or Squidoo with an anchor text backlink to your Tweet.

5) Digg both your EzineArticles articles and Hubpages/Squidoo post

6) Use a social bookmarking software like OnlyWire to bookmark the Diggs.

7) Ping everything, including the RSS feeds.

Now, just wait a few days for your Tweet to rank for your keyword phrase on Google. If you’re fortunate, the properties that you use as incoming backlinks to your Twitter feed can get ranked on the front page of SERPS as well.

This is one of the best ways to use Twitter for SEO tricks as a profitable compliment to your Twitter Marketing Strategy. Try the 7 step plan and let me know.

And now I would like to invite you to witnessing innovative Twitter marketing strategies in action by following my Twitter account at http://TwitterKenneth.com

From Kenneth Yu – The Puppet Master and @EmailCopywriter on Twitter.

Affiliate Marketing Strategy – Choosing the Right Traffic Tools

By Doug Champigny

Affiliate marketing is one of the fastest ways to make money online, and the usual starting point for most work-at-home online businesses. Since the product, web site, sales copy and often even sample e-mails are already created by the merchant, affiliate marketing success simply involves sending enough targeted traffic through your affiliate link to the merchant’s site.

There are paid options to drive targeted traffic, such as the Pay-Per-Click ads you see in the major search engines, ads on web sites and blogs, and solo ads and sponsor ads in e-zines in the niche. But most people starting out with any work-at-home business need to conserve what little investment capital they have, and as such should focus on the myriad of free methods of generating targeted traffic.

The first concern is to decide which traffic tools are right for each affiliate promotion you’re doing. Look over the sales page and decide whether this product or service is short-lived, like a 7-day sale, or liable to be around a long time, like say a dog training guide. Is it a one-time sale, or can you earn recurring commissions as when promoting a monthly membership site or ongoing service?

If it’s short term, focus on the fast traffic generators like Twitter, your e-zine, your blog and social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon or Digg. You want targeted traffic that hits almost instantly, and don’t need to waste time using long-term traffic methods.

If it’s going to be around a while, start by using those same short-term methods to get sales started quickly, then hop over and do some articles, a Squidoo lens and a Google Knol. That gets you the quick traffic from the former, and then keeps some residual targeted traffic going to the page from the latter. If the conversions are good, keep up the short-term til results start to taper off, all the while adding to your long-term efforts. If results aren’t great, let your long-term efforts to date suffice and move on to the next product.

If you’re promoting an affiliate marketing opportunity that pays residual commissions, pull out all stops. Do all of the above, plus record & submit some podcasts, videos and press releases, do either a recorded interview with the site owner or a live tele-seminar, use the recording in giveaways, do a few e-zine swaps and maybe even create some viral e-books on the topic to help promote your affiliate links.

In short, there are a lot of ways to drive targeted traffic to your affiliate marketing links for free – just be sure to use the right tools to match the potential returns, start off slow and if you see your affiliate commissions mounting, turn on the afterburners and maximize your return before moving on to your next affiliate marketing opportunity.

Doug Champigny is a well-known Internet marketing mentor, speaker and super-affiliate. For more on affiliate marketing read his Captain Affiliate Affiliate Marketing Blog at http://captain-affiliate.com For detailed information on 14 ways to drive free targeted traffic to your links, see http://www.TopTrafficTips.com

Newsletters VS RSS Feeds

By Doug Champigny

Effective direct-to-desktop publishing requires a major shift in how you
look at the purpose of your newsletter

It is my contention that some publishers, and most especially email publishers,
are marketers first and publishers second. That means they see making sales as the primary purpose of publishing an e-zine or newsletter. We all hope that our publications will achieve that goal, but it should not be the primary purpose of your publication. Instead, your publication should focus on providing content of the highest quality that establishes your credibility.

You do that by showing your readers that you know your stuff, that
you are, dare I use the word, an expert – a real expert – in your field.

This means you need to do as much writing of your own as possible. Yes, I
realize that writing articles is hard work and time-consuming. That is why we
publishers use third-party articles. but don’t just run any article that you
receive. Use some discrimination. Use only articles that complement your own
content, that are appropriate to the focus of your own newsletter. And, whatever you do, do not just publish the article as is. Write a short introduction that gives your readers your own thoughts on the article. Remember, you want to establish your reputation, your credibility, not someone else’s.

The received wisdom is that newsletters should be used to promote your own
products and services. If you look at the vast majority of email newsletters,
that is exactly what the publishers seem to think is the purpose of their
newsletter. In most, including a lot of the most-well known, newsletters, you
can hardly find the content among all the advertising. these publishers seem to feel the need to shove their advertising in your face. However, let’s look at

what should serve as a model for all online publishers: your local newspaper.
Most newspapers do not cram every page of their publications with so many ads that you cannot find the articles. Most of the good ones tend to have a separate section for advertising. And what ads do appear in the content sections are presented in such a way that they do not interfere with the presentation of the news. How long do you think your local paper would keep its subscribers if they overloaded the news pages with ads? It’s time we online publishers changed the way we think

We need to get away from the newsletter-as-vehicle-for-advertising
model and switch to a newsletter-as-vehicle-for-quality-content model. Effective direct-to-desktop publishing requires a major shift in how you look at the design of your newsletter.

Email publishers tend to publish discrete issues of their newsletters on a
regular schedule. The most common schedule is once a week. Each issue contains all the information that publisher wants to communicate to his or her
subscribers for that week. There are a couple of drawbacks to that format,
beyond the basic problem that this publisher is using email as her delivery
system.The first drawback is the length. With a couple of articles and a half dozen or so classified ads, along with the regular information like the welcome, the disclaimers required with email, the unsubscribe information, etc., that makes for a fairly long message. Most Internet users just don’t read messages of that length.

Yes, you could send out more frequent shorter messages, but that only compounds the problems associated with email delivery exponentially. The more often you email your subscribers, the more likely you are of getting shut down because of a spam complaint.

By using a weblog type of format, you do not do discrete issues. Rather you post an article or your advertising or an editorial on any given day. Let’s say on Monday, you post an article about RSS publishing, then on Tuesday you publish an editorial about the upcoming election, on Wednesday, you publish a couple of classifieds, on Thursday you publish an article on holiday advertising and on Friday you publish a few more ads. Let’s say this is the same content you would have published in a discrete issue, except for the disclaimers and the mast head – the stuff at the top that identifies your newsletter, You do not need to publish the mast head because it is always there on your blog.

You do not need to include all the email disclaimers because you are not using email. Things like advertising disclaimers and welcome messages can be integrated into the overall design of your weblog as a sidebar, so they are always there. Anyone going to your blog page will see them every time they visit. Yes, even though you are using RSS as your delivery system for your
newsletter, your newsletter will have an HTML page as well that your
readers will visit whenever they read an entire item in your newsletter.

You see, the RSS feed will only carry the title as a link and the first
paragraph or two of your item, say the article about RSS publishing. Each item
will be listed separately in the same format. The RSS feed will hold up to
fifteen items, the last fifteen items you posted. Any good RSS publishing system will set all this up for you and do all the necessary coding changes. Usually you post your item in HTML and the publishing system converts it to XML for you.

Doing it all manually is not effective or efficient, so I suggest you not do
that! The idea is to use RSS to make your life easier not harder. More on these
systems later on.

With the better publishing systems you do not even have to know a lot of HTML because they will allow you to post your item as text and it will format the line breaks for you. As long as you put a double hard break at the end of each paragraph of text, your article will look fine. You can add bold or italics or
underlines as needed. But, the better your HTML skills, the more creative you
can be in how your posts will look.

Also, if you have the necessary expertise and tools, you can add graphics,
Flash, audio, video, or anything else you want to jazz up your pages. Do NOT add executables (EXE) files to your posts. That creates all kinds of problems for your readers and is forbidden by most, if not all, publishing systems. Also, if
you add multimedia to your newsletter, I strongly recommend you do in a way so that your reader can choose to view it or not. Not only is that the courteous
thing to do, but it also will prevent you from locking up your reader’s
computer. Although most people have fairly sophisticated computers these days, there are still people who might not be able to or do not want to view these kinds of files. Remember, your reader is in control here, not you.

Doing daily posts, which I consider the ideal schedule, may seem like a lot more work, but, in reality and once you get the hang of it, it really is less time
consuming than doing one big issue a week. Also, a lot of email publishers have gone back to doing text-based newsletters to avoid some of the filtering of email that is going on. HTML email is often blocked or the HTML is disabled
unless you specifically ask to see it.

Text newsletters are dull and boring. The Internet is a visual medium first and
foremost. Yes, it is for the transmission of content, but that content has to be
visually appealing to your readers. There is nothing appealing about a long text message that uses rows of unimaginative characters like #,@, * or others to try to add some zest to all that text. If you want to keep your readers, yes,
provide them with lots of great content, but also present that content in a way
that captures their imaginations.

Finally, there is a very strong marketing reason for using a blog type of
format. I will only touch on it briefly here and explain it in detail in my next
blog on marketing with RSS.

You want new subscribers for your newsletter, right? That means you need to get new people to see your newsletter, right? That means getting traffic to your newsletter page, right? One of the best ways to do that is to get the search engines like Google to spider your newsletter every time you add a new item to your weblog. What would you say if I told you there was a marketing tool that could do that? It’s called pinging weblogs.com… more about it in my next blog!

How does one become an Internet marketing guru? In the case of Doug Champigny, it took almost 30 years… Starting as a reporter/photographer in the early 70′s,he soon realized the real money was in advertising – and made the switch as quickly as possible! After stints as advertising manager of various print publications, Champigny jumped to the Advertising Agency arena, founding two retail agencies over the years… Fascinated by the mass-communication potential of the fledgling Internet, Champigny took a 2 year sabbatical in the 80′s, returning to college to study computer programming full time, joining the online ‘geek’ community in 1982. How the ‘Net has changed since then!

Returning to the advertising industry, Champigny founded The Cyber Surfer in 1993 as a retail advertising ’boutique’, creating print, radio and TV campaigns for local and national accounts while monitoring the growth of the World Wide Web. By 1996 the decision was made to switch the agency’s focus from traditional media to the Web, and Champigny’s never looked back!

Twitter Marketing Just One Aspect of Online Marketing Mix

By Doug Champigny

Advanced Twitter marketing research has shown a lot of different ways to use Twitter in your Internet and affiliate marketing, but unfortunately too many novice marketers are now starting to use Twitter as their main, or only, form of online promotion. As much as I love Twitter and it’s potential profit paths for an online business, I STRONGLY recommend AGAINST using Twitter as your main marketing activity.

Why? First, Twitter doesn’t belong to you – meaning the owners could at any time shut it down. In almost 13 years online now I’ve seen a number of big sites come and go, and while Twitter seems firmly rooted at the moment, remember that they still haven’t monetized the service. Even with the business brilliance of Biz Stone & crew, and the small staff they’ve stayed to, they do have some good-sized expenditures for hardware, bandwidth, etc. Sooner or later the bills have to be paid, and I for one will feel much more comfortable about Twitter’s future once they have a monetization system set up and working well.

Second, the service could be doing fine – but still shut down YOUR account. There have been a few days recently when 50 or 100 accounts are suddenly suspended for ‘suspicious activity’. Seems the way they’ve kept the spammers out is by applying algorithms that knock out any suspicious behavior – but as with all such systems, some get clipped that haven’t broken any rules. So far Twitter has been impressively fast in restoring accounts caught in the crossfire, but what happens when the number of users and user accounts doubles or quadruples?

Having your account down for 3 or 4 days may not seem like much of a problem, but if it’s your main promotional vehicle and those 3 or 4 days coincide with your big launch, or the launch of an affiliate marketing opportunity, it could mean missing out on thousands of dollars in sales or commissions!

The third (and most important) reason is the same reason Twitter is so perfect as part of your marketing mix. Targeted traffic from Twitter is instant – you tweet, some of your followers see it and a percentage of them click through to your link. How many do depends on a myriad of factors – but mostly on how targeted your following is and how many see that tweet.

So why is that a disadvantage? Because within a minute or two, your tweet has scrolled off-screen for anyone except those that have you in their ‘VIP list’ in some interfaces. So to keep traffic coming in, you have to keep tweeting that same tweet a few times a day every day. As soon as you move on to another opportunity, traffic from Twitter to that first link dries up pretty quickly.

Compare that to article marketing, podcasts or video submissions, that potentially continue to drive traffic for you for days, weeks, months and even years in some cases. Blog posts are another great example of this, for while your current posts get the most action for you, some of your earlier posts may still generate a lot of traffic through being found in the search engines, blog directories, podcast directories, etc.

So just as when marketing in the offline world, keep your online marketing mix balanced using a combination of immediate traffic generation, mid-term strategies and long-term targeted traffic magnets. With a good balance you can have a good launch, then continue to see sales from that product, service or affiliate marketing promotion for some time to come as you turn your focus to your next money-making opportunity!

Doug Champigny is a well-known Internet marketing mentor, speaker, super-affiliate and the author of Advanced Twitter Marketing – http://www.AdvancedTwitterMarketing.com Learn the 14 traffic generation strategies that should be in your marketing mix at http://www.TopTrafficTips.com

Link Building With DoFollow Blog Commenting

By Kristi Hines

There are many lists, and even some directories available that identify blogs with DoFollow commenting. DoFollow commenting essentially means that the blog owner has removed the nofollow attribute from the comment author’s links, thus making them valuable for link building purposes. And of course, those who are familiar with SEO know that the more backlinks you have, the better your site will do in search engine results, especially if you have good anchor text for these links.

DoFollow blog lists will commonly rank the blogs by their PR, or Google PageRank. The higher the PR, the more valuable your backlink will be. But common questions that arise are:

1. How do you avoid being labeled as a spammer, as moderated sites may not approve your comment if they think it is spam?

2. How do you ensure your article is actually on a high PR page?

Anchor Text & Comment Policies

The best way to avoid being labeled as a spammer is to do a little research on the blog on which you are about to comment. Look at articles with comments, and see if there are comments where the author uses keywords as their name, or if all of the comment authors are using real names. If the site has a comment policy, be sure to take a read through it as well. Some DoFollow sites have an added bonus of Keyword Luv – this is where you can enter Your Name @ Your Keywords, and they will use everything after the @ sign as the anchor text for your website.

Quantity & IP Tracking

Another way to avoid looking like a spammer is by taking time to comment on a site. Instead of posting many comments all at once on several posts, try only two or three, then bookmarking the site to return to later. On a similar note, do not use the same blog for multiple websites – most blogging platforms show the IP address of the commentator, so if you post three comments around the same time with different author names and links, chances are the blog owner will notice.

Top Commentators

So now that you know how to avoid being labeled as a spammer, the next thing you have to do is figure out how to make sure your link is on a high PR page. On some blogs, you may get the advantage if they have a Top Commentator list which shows the names and links of people who have commented the most on their site. If the Top Commentator list links the authors name directly to their website, then simply by regularly commenting, you can have your website linked to their main site, and thus gain the high PR of their homepage.

PageRank of Posts

If a site does not have a Top Commentator plugin, your next option is to find individual posts with high PR. One way to do this is to register at SEOanalytic.com forums. They have a SEO tool – Internal PageRank Checker – that will go through a domain and check the PR of individual pages within the site. Larger sites will take much longer to load, but this way, you are able to see which articles have the highest PR and start by commenting on those. The only thing that may hinder this is if the blog has a cutoff date after which they do not allow additional comments on articles. So the best method is to start with the newest articles first.

Organizing Resources

Whenever you find a sites with DoFollow comments, high PR articles, Top Commentator lists, etc., be sure to keep them organized so you can use them again. One way to do this is by subscribing to these blogs via Google Reader, and then organizing them in particular categories. This way, when you need to build some more backlinks, you have your list ready to go and can see if they have new articles.

Summary

What I have listed in this article, researching comment policies, checking the PageRank of individual posts, and organizing are not going to be quick and easy. You can always just comment on DoFollow blogs and build numerous backlinks on any post. But one thing to keep in mind is that relative links with high PR will be more valuable than just a link from any source. So why not work on less quantity and gain more quality in your backlink building?

~ Kristi Hines

I am an affordable freelance website designer and optimization specialist focusing on WordPress customization, SEO and Social Media Marketing. Let me help you get your website optimized for search engines, and also show you how to take advantage of the world of social media marketing.

Why SEO Should Be a Major Factor For Any Online Business

By Neil Maycock

Search engine optimization is the art of gaining more visibility in the major search engines for certain keyphrases clients will use to find a business.

The Job of an SEO (the term used for the professionals hired to do this job), is to find related phrases that potential customers are using to find a given website and through on-page and off-page factors, gain authority with the search engine(s) so that the website will appear high up the rankings and thus gain increased visibility.

Lets Look at the two factors in more detail:-
On-Page:-
On page factors are recommendations that the client must make to the website so it is optimized for the desired keyphrases. These recommendations have a varied amount of importance in the eyes of the search engine.

The Title tag – This is the most important factor in the eyes of the search engine. The ideal Title tag should be no more than 64 characters long. This is because Google will truncate anything after these characters and replace it with …. The title tag should be seen the headline of an advert. It should attract the customer or user to click on your URL, rather than the one above or the one below it. In terms of SEO the title tag should have your keyword phrase in it (preferably at the start of the tag). Common mistakes with the title tag is either to leave it blank or just have the companies name in it. The only thing a company can hope to succeed in the doing this is to be found under the company name.

Meta Description – Although many people feel the meta tags have lost importance (due to some cunning webmaster realizing that it was an important factor when search engines were ranking sites and using the keyword constantly in the description or ‘spamming’ as it commonly called), there are some who still see its potential value. Search engines still look at this tag and it appears directly underneath the title tag in search engines result pages (serp’s).

Body Text – Search engines love content. Let me repeat that, content is king with the search engines, so having a major amount of quality text about the subject you excel in is paramount to good search engine result placement. Again, having your keyword phrase placed around the body text is the way that go to get authority with the search engines. One of the factors when looking to optimize body text for the search engines is keyword density. This is the percentage the keyword phrase appears compared to the rest of the text. A good keyword density is around 6-8% of the overall body text. There are many tools available on the net to check the overall keyword density.
In order to be fully optimized a site should have around 400-600 words of text minimum.

There are other factors that should be looked at, the number of pages, header tags, image descriptions, get these right and with a comprehensive link building package you can easily dominate the search engines.

Neil Maycock writes articles on SEO Sheffield for optimize-yorkshire.com

Elevating the Status of Emotions and Communication

By Jack Bergstrand

In addition to a clear strategy, good measures, and streamlined processes, reinventing enterprises requires a focus on personal relationships and human potential. As a result, it depends upon emotional connection and excellent communication to function well. The objective business world has often struggled with the sub­jects of emotions and communication. If they are considered at all, they are spoken of-in businesses and business schools-in somewhat demeaning terms such as “soft” skills.

Something that I learned as a consultant that I didn’t understand very well as an executive was that the notion of command and control with knowledge workers is largely a delusion. When I worked in a large company, people who reported to me would often nod their head “yes” when I asked them to do something. With regularity I would later discover that they really didn’t know what I was asking for, and many times I really didn’t either.

In large Enterprises these types of command and control misconceptions have the effect of making executives think that things are changing faster than they really are. After I began consulting, it became clear that co-creating solutions and building broad relationships was really the only way to achieve sustainable and productive change. It’s hard, but it is required. There is probably no business management area where I have changed my view more than on this one. The truth is that with knowledge work, the command and control mindset needs to be demoted, and communications and emotions need to increase in importance.

If knowledge work isn’t co-created, chances are it’s not going to get implemented productively. Co-creation is different from consensus, however, because co-creation also requires a decision maker. Even though co-creating work produces slower starts, it will lead to faster and more sustainable results. Investing a little extra time now will save a lot of time later. If you want something done productively and sustainably, you’ll probably need to put more of your own skin in the game-in conjunction with those who are actually doing the work.

The objective nature of Scientific Management effectively bred subjectivity out of businesses during the 20th century. Nonetheless, it is very important to articulate how you’re feeling so that you can better connect with how others are feeling. Emotions are important to productive knowledge work and Enterprise reinvention. They increase energy, clarity, and the productivity power of relationships. In this context, key motivators include the desire to win, achievement of something worthwhile, a sense of personal power, approval and acceptance, and recognition of efforts.

In the Operate work-behavior area of the an enterprise reinvention system, feelings influence actions which produces results. As part of this, it’s important to remember that people ultimately love others because of how they make them feel. We too often forget how important the need is to be appreciated, that neglect can often be more damaging than abuse, and that if you really want to honor someone, you should ask for their help. Leaders need to lead with their heads and their hearts, and in difficult times, emotional resistance can only be overcome by a stronger emotion. It’s important to turn negative emotions into positive ones, with special emphasis on the positive emotions of optimism, hope, faith, courage, ambition, determination, self-confidence, and self-worth.

In addition to elevating the status of emotions in Enterprises, communication also needs much more emphasis for companies to be more productive. This requires integrating the four steps of Enterprise Reinvention: Envision-Design-Build-Operate. Where a Design-oriented person might be overly blunt, an Operate-oriented per­son can instinctively be overly nice. Combining the blunt facts of Design with the emotional sensitivity of is the most productive answer. In practice it is called tact. It is the equivalent in the medical world, of the nurse who has the ability to give his or her patient a shot without having it hurt too much.

Productive communications are socially negotiated. This is harder than being blunt or telling someone what they want to hear. In the communication process, it’s important to connect the dots between where you’ve been, where you are, and where you need to go, because if something doesn’t fit with the past, it will very often be discarded or misread by people. This logical and emotional transition from the past to the future is necessary for sustainability.

Effective communication requires leaders to ask great questions and stick to a few key points. Asking questions instead of giving orders empowers people. Statements limit creativity. When you communicate, it is important to articulate what needs to stay the same, what needs to change, the steps required, and the progress being made. Consistent with this, it is important to have a clear and formal communication strategy to control the dialogue and to channel formal and informal organizational energy toward achieving the vision of the Enterprise.

Focus is as important to communications as it is to each step of the knowledge work productivity system. Short-term memory is limited to about five items. Three is better. If you have more than five points, people won’t remember any of them. To communicate productively, it’s important to be consistent, give people something that they can’t get anywhere else, and make them genuinely feel wanted and loved.

Productive relationships are essential ingredients in effective and efficient Enterprises. To activate them, the Operate step needs to help individuals achieve something as part of the company that they can’t achieve on their own.

Enterprises need leaders who set the tone, connect with people’s personal lives, support employees when they struggle, provide levity in difficult times, and motivate people to achieve the firm’s vision. Motivation requires the combination of emotions and communications. As humans we all need to be treated fairly, trusted, have a chance to grow, and have a vision that is larger than ourselves.

The Enterprise Reinvention system is an important mechanism to activate the human spirit on a sustainable basis. It requires Envision-Design-Build-Operate as a total system. All are needed to help Enterprises, functions, and individuals productively self-organize-using a unified framework and the cybernetic process.

To set the system in motion, it’s necessary to energize human relationships and activate human potential through the Operate work-behavior area. This requires that companies co-create the future with their customers, recognize and capitalize upon informal as well as formal organizations, coach people effectively, and communicate with a combination of objectivity and emotion.

Jack Bergstrand is an expert in enterprise reinvention and knowledge work productivity management. He founded Brand Velocity, Inc., the first company ever prototyped using knowledge work productivity principles, and created the Strategic Profiling (R) instrument, a tool to help firms accelerate and improve important enterprise projects. To learn more about his book, “Reinvent Your Enterprise,” visit: http://www.ReinventYourEnterprise.com/.

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Selling Your Business – Pros and Cons of Working With a Business Broker

By Jeff Becker

Selling your business is something that most business owners do only once in a lifetime. So how do you make sure everything goes well? Many business owners consider working with a business broker, an expert in selling businesses, to make sure they maximize the sell price of their business. Is this always a good idea? Lets look at the pros and cons of working with a broker:

Why you should work with a business broker when selling your business

1) A broker has (hopefully!) sold many businesses for prior clients, and you can use that expertise to learn the basics of the process and avoid making careless mistakes.

2) They can act as a facilitator to the transaction, making sure that negotiations go smoothly, the transaction proceeds at the right pace, and that the business is ultimately sold with all parties satisfied.

3) A broker may reduce your upfront costs of selling the business, as many brokers will pay for creating sales collateral and advertising the business at their own expense in exchange for a fee when the business sells. They also may have insights as to what advertising mechanisms deliver the best “bang for the buck” to make sure as many potential buyers as possible are exposed to your business.

4) They can provide expert advise related to market conditions and can help evaluate potential offers to buy your business. For example, a business broker will typically provide a free initial estimate of the sales price of your business, and can provide information on what similar businesses may have recently sold for in your area.

5) A business broker can help preserve the confidentiality of the sale. By having a third party involved, buyers can interact with the broker instead of the business owner, making it easier to protect the identity of the business for sale.

With so many good reasons why a broker can help sell a business, no wonder that most businesses that are sold ultimately involve a business broker. However, there are downsides to working with a broker that a prudent business owner should consider.

Why you should NOT work with a business broker when selling your business

1) Business brokers may charge a large commission. The amount of commission varies based on many factors, such as the ultimate sales price, geographic location, and the skills of the broker. For a “main street” style business selling for less than a million dollars, it would not be unusual to see between a 10% to 20% commission fee. Some brokers will also have a guaranteed minimum, on the order of $10,000 or $15,000. You should only hire a business broker if you believe that the time and effort involved justifies this price, or if you believe they will raise the selling price by more than the amount of their commission.

2) A great broker is worth their weight in gold, but a bad (or even mediocre) broker costs far more than they are worth. In many cases, the sale will be lost due to incompetence on the part of the business broker. If you are not confidant that the business broker can not only increase the transaction value, but can also increase the chances of actually getting the business sold, then you are probably better of managing the sale on your own.

3) Do not work with a business broker if you go into the transaction not knowing what you want out of it. Many times business brokers will contact you proactively, letting you know that there are buyers interested in buying your business. Selling a business is a big decision, and one that you should enter into with a great deal of care. Make sure that you are talking to a broker because YOU made the decision to sell, and that you have properly educated yourself about the process and the ultimate consequences of your decision.

Working with a business broker, when done properly and for the right reasons, can be a great benefit to selling your business. By educating yourself about the different factors involved, you have taken an important first step towards getting your business sold. Best of luck!

Jeff Becker has bought, run, and sold his own small business using a business broker. He subsequently became a licensed business broker and has advised both small business and Fortune 500 companies on business transactions. He provides insights to the business broker world to business owners interested in selling their business through his website, Business Broker Secrets, at http://www.businessbrokersecrets.com

The Evolution of Marketing

By Steve E Moore

Marketing certainly has its roots in large and expensive campaigns intended to reach as many people as possible. This type of ‘mass marketing’ helped develop corporate branding but was completely ‘product focused’ and treated all customers as if they had the same needs and buying preferences. Compare this to what the direct marketing folks are now doing with target marketing, relationship marketing, permission marketing, event-based marketing and even location-based marketing.

It’s interesting to see how these different strategies actually evolved.

Mass Marketing – The goal here is to reach the largest number of people and ‘hope’ they have interest in your product/service. Mass marketing uses mass media such as TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, billboards, etc.  This type of marketing is (was) characterized by big budgets, national campaigns, and very little actual data to measure marketing efficiency.

Direct Marketing – Mass marketing was flipped around when direct marketing started directly contacting consumers (using direct mail, telemarketers, etc). This new evolution (around 1960) also was the start of test-marketing to gauge the effectiveness of different advertising campaigns.

Target Marketing – Soon after computers became widely used, marketers began gathering data on who was buying their products and why. This led to targeting their promotional strategies directly towards consumers who are most likely to purchase their product. This market segmentation divided up customers and prospects according to their demographics, age, income, etc. 

Relationship Marketing - Many businesses realized that it was just as profitable to ‘sell more to each customer’ as it was to ‘sell to more customers’. This led to (around 1990) marketing that communicated with customers ‘as individuals’ with tailored information geared towards their unique buying experiences and preferences.  Obviously this requires lots of data on customer behavior patterns, profiles, etc. which helped launch the development of new business CRM applications and marketing automation tools. 

Permission Marketing - As consumers began to get bombarded with email spam, many businesses realized the benefits of spending more time marketing to consumers who have specifically shown interest in your product/service and (effectively) have given you permission to market to them (in a way they want to be marketed to)! This is most commonly done when consumers sign up (i.e. give out their email address) to download product information or receive a newsletter. The importance of having good customer data to personalize your marketing is critical since these prospects can remove their permission anytime (by opting out).  

Event-Based Marketing- Imagine someone just supplied their personal information and downloads information about a new vacation resort. This event triggers an marketing automation tool to send out a targeted promotional offer that is customized, timely, informative, and useful. Everyone potentially wins. The consumer gets something they were actually looking for – when they want it!  This type of marketing is heavily Internet focused and relies on good automation tools. 

Location-Based Marketing – Now that cell phones have Internet access AND they have embedded location devices (i.e. GPS locators), we can expect to see mobile advertising based on location. Of course this will also be personalized and permission-based but imagine you are leaving work for lunch and you receive a text message with ’2-for-1 lunch deals’ at restaurants in your immediate area. Over time the system also realizes you prefer Chinese over Mexican, etc. 

Take-aways from this marketing evolution …

• Mass Marketing is moving to Relationship Marketing
• Few Large Campaigns are moving to Many Customized Campaigns
• Product Focus is moving to Customer Focus
• Short-Term Revenue is moving to Long-Term Customer Loyalty

Resources …

The CRM Handbook – great book on CRM implementation, especially read Chapter 2 (CRM in Marketing)

Post from BNET on the subject of Broadcast Marketing and why it doesn’t work anymore.

Steve Moore – Business Growth Consultant (http://www.SPMsolutions.NET)

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