V.L. Thompson's Blog, page 25
August 7, 2013
Why PR is your best marketing weapon — and how to use it
Acticle from venturbeat.com by Vivek Wadhwa
Our corporate motto should have been, “We’ve never heard of you either.” At least, that is how we joked at my first startup, Seer Technologies, which we founded in 1990.
We had broken records by growing a nascent software company into a $118 million-per-year revenue machine. And we had pulled off a successful IPO in just five years. Not even the legends of that time — Microsoft and Oracle — had achieved such a feat. Yet people would say they had never heard of us.
To say that this was frustrating would be an understatement. It was a matter not of ego, but of credibility and awareness. Because we weren’t known, we had to struggle to find every sales lead. On every sales call, we wasted valuable time explaining who the company was before we could talk about our products.
This wasn’t for lack of investment or effort. We spent a fortune on marketing. Our oversized marketing department hired overpriced agencies to design logos and to develop marketing materials. They produced beautiful videos and gorgeous brochures. We hosted extravagant customer events. We purchased full-page ads in magazines.
The problem was that we didn’t understand the most powerful marketing tool of all: public relations (PR). We assumed that business success would automatically translate into recognition. And we were overly cautious about what we said in public—so that we were “known for the right things”.
Our cautious approach meant that we turned down many interview requests, and carefully scripted our answers to the ones we did accept. The result was predictable: Over a period of six years, our company was featured in 20 to 30 articles in total. And these were mostly in small trade publications or the local press.
Generating buzz for a 12x valuation increase
When I founded my own business, Relativity Technologies, in 1997, I decided to take a completely different tack. We gave PR precedence over marketing and decided we would talk about whatever the media was interested in. My employees and I might make mistakes, be misquoted, and perhaps give out too much information, but I was willing to take the chance. We would have a policy of being accessible to and totally open with the media, customers, and investors. We would let our guard down and be ourselves.
Our products were really boring: We produced legacy systems modernization software. So we had to find a different way of getting attention. We decided that Relativity’s best buzz generator would be our staff of Russian programmers, who had formerly performed top-secret coding for the Russian military and intelligence. We began selling ourselves as an exciting company with a James Bond edge.
The strategy worked. Even though we were located in what was then a technology backwater — Durham, N.C. — we were getting as much attention as the hot dot-com startups during the Internet bubble. In just the first five years, we were featured on all the major TV networks and in more than 1000 articles in major business publications worldwide. Fortune magazine lauded us as one of the 25 “coolest” companies in the world. The Wall Street Journal featured us in more than a dozen articles—including two on its front page.
Most of these articles weren’t about our products but about our opinions. That was okay, because, as we saw, the credibility that you build as an opinion leader spills over into everything else that you do.
As a result, our mailboxes were flooded with enquiries from potential customers and job applicants. Our employees showed a much greater sense of pride. At a time when the worth of a technology company was measured by how well it was known, our market valuation increased by a factor of 12. We were able to raise millions in order to expand.
7 ways to get great PR
The question you will ask is: How does one get PR — and what does it cost?
The good news is that PR doesn’t have to cost much. You don’t need to hire high-priced agencies that specialize in racking up big bills and spamming journalists. But it does require corporate executives — preferably the CEO — to take a proactive approach and to be open and available.
Here are my tips.
Read dozens of business publications. Understand what topics are newsworthy and which journalist writes about what topic. You will find that journalists are always under tight deadlines, have specific “beats” that they cover, and are looking to inform their readers of the latest trends and explain their meaning. Write to them and offer your insights. You will find that most journalists do write back to you.
Focus on the needs of the journalist and not yours. No one is interested in your product. If a journalist asks you a question, answer that, and don’t obsess with getting your product covered. Build a relationship over time, and it will likely pay off with your getting the coverage that you are looking for.
Read Full Article
Google Launches New Ad Unit For Responsive Sites
Article from TechCrunch.com by Frederic Lardinois
Google today launched a new responsive AdSense unit in beta that is specifically designed to run on sites that automatically adapt to different screen sizes. Now that responsive design has moved from being just a buzzword to something many web designers are actually putting into practice, being able to control how ads appear on these sites has become a more pressing issue for developers and web designers.
The new units use AdSense’s asynchronous ad code, and developers can use the same kind of CSS media queries they are used to from building their responsive sites to build these responsive ad units. This, Google says, means you can “now dynamically specify the size of the ad that will be served, adapting it to fit the way your site renders a page on a particular device.”
The only thing developers need to ensure is that the size of the ad unit they specify for each screen size matches one of Google’s standard ad sizes. So unlike Google’s standard ad units, you can’t just take the code, copy and paste it into your site and know that it’ll work.
As Google notes, one thing that doesn’t work yet is support for screen orientation changes after a page has been loaded. Google plans to address this in the near future, however. For now, Google also can’t provide a breakdown by size for all the ads served by a responsive unit in its analytics tools. That, too, is something the company plans to introduce later.
Given that CSS media queries only work on modern browsers, developers still have to ensure that they set a default ad size, too. Otherwise, users who are still using Internet Explorer 7 or lower may never see an ad on these responsive sites.
Read Full Article
Seven Ways to Pray for Your Heart
Article from DesiringGod.org by Jon Bloom
Over the years, as I’ve prayed for my own heart, I’ve accumulated seven “D’s” that I have found helpful. Maybe you’ll find them helpful as well.
With seven you can use them a number of ways. You might choose one “D” per day. Or you could choose one “D” as a theme for a week and pray through these every seven weeks. You’ll also note that I have a verse for each prayer. But over time as you pray more verses will come to mind and you might find it helpful to collect them so they are right at hand as the Spirit leads.
I begin each prayer with the phrase “whatever it takes, Lord” because the Bible teaches us to be bold and wholehearted in our praying, not reticent. I also use the phrase because it tests my heart. How much do I want God and all he promises to be for me in Jesus? Do I really want true joy enough to ask for my Father’s loving discipline to wean me from joy-stealing sin? And how much do I trust him? Do I really believe that he will only give me what is good when I ask in faith (Luke 11:11–13)? “Whatever it takes” prayers help me press toward and express childlike trust in the Father.
Delight: Whatever it takes, Lord, give me delight in you as the greatest treasure of my heart.
“Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4). “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:21)
Desires: Whatever it takes, Lord, align the desires of my heart with yours.
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:9–10)
Dependence: Whatever it takes, Lord, increase my awareness of my dependence on you in everything so that I will live continually by faith.
“I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)
Discernment: Whatever it takes, Lord, teach me to discern good from evil through the rigorous exercise of constant practice.
“But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” (Hebrews 5:14)
Desperation: Whatever it takes, Lord, keep me desperate for you because I tend to wander when I stop feeling my need for you.
“Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word.” (Psalm 119:67)
Discipline: Whatever it takes, Lord, discipline me for my good that I may share your holiness and bear the peaceful fruit of righteousness.
“He disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” (Hebrews 12:10–11)
Diligence: Whatever it takes, Lord, increase my resolve to do your will with all diligence.
“Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.” (Ephesians 5:15–16)
These are just suggestions. The Lord may lead you to pray in other ways. But however he teaches us, whatever means we find helpful, may God cause us all to grow in faith until we pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17) and never lose heart (Luke 18:1).
The Art of Running a Small Business
Article from The New York Times by Jay Goltz
Here is an e-mail I recently received from a distressed business owner. Her name is Michelle VanAllsburg, and she owns a salon,The Hair Co., in Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Jay,
I stumbled upon your site, and you seem like someone that understands what I am going through. I don’t know what to do, or what steps to take. I am 32 years old, and at the age of 23, I purchased the salon I had been working at since I was 15 years old. I had been a receptionist from 15 to 19, and grew my clientele extremely fast from 19 to 23. My boss was burnt out from running the shop, and she asked me to buy it from her.
I was only 23, young, and stupid. I trusted this woman, as did my parents. I ended up not being able to get a loan at a bank, since I was so young, and I ended up borrowing a ridiculous amount of money from family. Needless to say, I got screwed, and the staff that loved me didn’t want me for a boss because I was so young. I basically had a walk out, and it took me four years to get a great group of people, but I am now burnt out. …
I have now owned it almost eight years, have made no profit, and have a family that I want to focus on. How on Earth does one try to sell a business that doesn’t really profit but just pays the bills and has some money left over?? I have a great staff of “nice” people, but they just are not busy enough. I have given them all my clientele so they are busier and don’t leave. My husband supports us, and I only work two days a week. I only work two days so that my parents can watch the kids for free, but they can’t do any more days, and I don’t want to pay for child care.
I am stressed out with all this debt I owe my family, and I just want OUT. I know I won’t be able to sell it for what I owe, but my accountant is getting numbers together for me so I at least know where to start. I am just done trying to build something that is not building fast enough.
Is there any advice you can give me??
Stressed out mother of two little ones,
– Michelle VanAllsburg HELP
Read entire article on The New York Times.
The U.S. Has a Really Helpful Student Loan Repayment Program—and No One’s Using It
The menu of repayment options available for struggling borrowers is a key benefit of taking out federal instead of private student loans, but new data show that many students aren’t taking advantage of the government’s programs.
Article from Businessweek.com by Karen Weise
The details come from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s student loan ombudsman, Rohit Chopra, who posted an interesting breakdown of the $1 trillion in outstanding federal student loans. He found that two-thirds of all borrowers are on the standard 10-year payment plan; the remaining third are in one of the special plans that are supposed to help borrowers manage their monthly payments. About two-thirds ofthose people are in plans that either extend the term of their loan or start the monthly payments small but increase them over time, or some combination of those options. They can make loans more affordable in the short term, but they increase how much total interest a borrower pays over the life of the loan.
Just 3 out of 10 borrowers in the repayment plans are getting the kind of help that pegs a borrower’s payment to his or her monthly income. These income-based repayment plans (known as IBR) are generally praisedby student advocates for making loans affordable and because they forgive the remaining balance after 10, 20, or 25 years, depending on the program. Chopra found that given the average amount borrowers in each program owed, “it’s possible that many borrowers in plans not based on income might be better off with an income-based plan.”
So why aren’t more students using the IBR plans? Chopra says it’s because borrowers don’t know about them and enrollment isn’t as easy as it could be. Publicizing the programs is largely up to the loan servicers that collect monthly payments and are supposed to work with borrowers in trouble.
12 Tips for Merchants to Fight Credit Card Fraud at the Point of Sale
Article from smallbiztrends.com by Anita Campbell
It’s well documented that accepting credit cards is good for business, but there is one snag to accepting credit cards that every retailer knows and fears: fraud.
Credit card fraud can come in different forms, but they are avoidable if you know what to look for. These 12 tips will help you fight credit card fraud.
1) Educate Your Employees About Fraud
You need to be aware of fraud to avoid it, but so do your employees. You both make up the first line of defense. Train your employees well to know the signs of potential fraud and remind them periodically to always stay alert.
2) Compare Signatures and Ask for Identification
Very few retailers take the time to glance at the signatures anymore, but it’s simple and quick. Check for misspellings and make sure the name on the card matches the signature. Address the customer using the name on the credit card. If he or she doesn’t respond, ask for a photo ID and compare those signatures.
3) Ask to See the Card
Look for the card’s security features, such as a clear hologram with a moving picture and the Bank Identification Number above or below the first four digits of the account number. Check the numbers themselves for signs of alteration and look for signs of tampering on the signature strip.
4) Be Wary of Customers Who Keep the Credit Card Separate From Their Wallet
Most legitimate customers will keep their credit cards in their wallet along with some form of ID. Fraudsters are more likely to keep the fraudulent credit card separate from their wallet, so they do not have any means of ID with them.
5) Watch Out for Customers Who Are Distracting
They may either be very talkative or very angry. Or they may wait until the last second before closing time to make a big purchase. Either way, they could be a potential fraudster trying to rush the clerk and keep their attention off the card authorization process.
6) Think Twice Before Manually Entering Damaged or Worn Cards
Fraudulent cards are often damaged on purpose so the magnetic strip cannot be swiped. Instead, the customer may insist the clerk manually key in the card number, which bypasses the antifraud features of the magnetic strip. Always swipe the card, no matter how damaged. If the card can’t be read, ask for another form of payment.
7) Do Not Accept “Letters of Authorization”
Some fraudsters will present a letter from the cardholder that authorizes the use of their credit card. This should never be accepted as a form of verification. No one is allowed to “borrow” another person’s card, regardless of relationship. Only the cardholder is authorized to use their credit card.
Is your logo working for or against you?
When creating a logo, it should include these four elements: simple, memorable, relevant and creative.
Simple: Don’t get me wrong here, simple does not mean plain. Simplicity is a concept more than a specific visual. A logo can be simple and interesting at the same time. One of my favorite logos is that of Dish Network. It contains the four elements. It’s not cluttered or crowded. It’s memorable (I remembered it!). It’s relevant due to the use of the satellite beams seeing as the Dish Network is a satellite service. And it’s creative because with all of these elements put together it gives an effortless look while getting the point across.
Memorable: You don’t want a logo that people will forget, pass over or turn away from. Know your target audience. Why does the pink ribbon for breast cancer awareness hold such an esteemed meaning? Breast cancer primarily affects women (pink), and it uses the symbol for remembering someone who is away or has passed on (ribbon). If they had used the words “BREAST CANCER” in bold black letters, no one would pay attention to that. Know your audience and know what touches them. That way when you add that memorable touch, they will be able to relate and more likely to participate. If you’re not sure who your target audience is, be sure to check out my episode on determining your target market.
Relevant: A logo of a shoe wouldn’t be a good fit for a seafood restaurant. Point made. Make your logo something that relates to the business/organization that will be using it. Take time to understand what it is that business does, whom they service, and why they’re doing it. You might make a logo with a neon shrimp in it for that seafood restaurant. While that might be great for a hip, new sushi bar, it might not be a good fit for the mom-and-pop seafood hole-in-the-wall.
Creative: I haven’t met one client of mine yet that wants his or her logos to look exactly like someone else’s. Everyone wants to be different, special and unique. The key here is knowing your business, your competition and your strengths. Think outside of the box and find inspiration in unlikely places. Use a play on words or a twist on an old idea. Change up a previous concept with a different color scheme or use color to show growth, aspiration, mood or specialty. Do a word association exercise and see what you come up with relating to your business’ services or products. You never know what will get those creative juices flowing!
Your logo is your stamp. It’s your introduction. It’s your calling card. Make sure that people that see it are responsive and drawn to it. By having a logo that is simple, memorable, relevant and creative, you can’t help but to be recognized by those that need your business! For more information about creating a logo that works for you, please visit my blog on leapgraphics.com. If you have a current logo that you’d like analyzed or are in need of a new logo, don’t hesitate to contact us! We have tons of logo options starting at just $50, or can create something custom just for you. Remember, it’s your business, why not take a leap!
August 6, 2013
God Help! Which way should I go?
God Help! Which way should I go?
“His direction may not be a booming thunder or a voice in your ear. It may be a high-risk loan application going through, a referral seemingly out of nowhere or a scholarship award for something you were not qualified for. If these sorts of things are happening, God is creating a path for you. He is providing confirmation that tells you, “This is right!” Isaiah, 30:21 proves this to be true, “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying,“This is the way; walk in it.”
- Excerpt from, “The Christian Entrepreneur’s Outlook” by V. L. Thompson. Currently on sale at Amazon.com
Which way should I go? This is a question that we all ask in life at one time or another. Even previously experiencing success does not make us immune to feeling uncertain as to what our future steps should be. Your business plan should clearly define goals and timelines, and your financial planner may have a retirement strategy on deck, but what about the overall direction your life is heading? What about who to marry, what school to send my kids to, what to do about my elderly parent? What about the things that life has no roadmap for?
Recognize how God provides confirmation
The verse characterizes God’s direction by his voice. It is one that already knows the way and communicates to you when the time is right. Notice that as you walk, already traveling the path, the voice speaks up when it is time. Notice that wherever you go “whether you turn to the right or the left” that the voice speaks. We might think that because we don’t see a neon sign that says “turn left”, “buy this” or “stop here” that God simply isn’t paying attention. God doesn’t say “This is the way” because He’s determined that’s the way you should go, He is saying “This is the way” because He created that way for you to travel. God is not just the voice behind us saying “go” he is the ground under our feet, the breath in our lungs, the strength in our legs. His direction is always around because He is always in us. The compass of where to go is housed directly in our hearts when connected to Him.
Being connected to him prepares your ears to hear
How many times did your mother have to tell you to clean up your room, take out the trash or mow the lawn before you actually got up and did it? How many times has someone introduced themselves, and told you their name only for you to forget it the very next second? We humans are forgetful creatures. Sometimes we don’t hear because we don’t want to hear, sometimes we hear and forget. Sometimes we hear and doubt, and sometimes we hear and believe. Having a consistent, purposeful relationship with God prepares your ears to be in perfect listening order so that when His voice speaks, you can hear, understand and obey. When following God’s path for our lives, we can’t simply hear what we want to hear and disregard the rest. If “left” is the direction given, yet looks like a dead end, those who have not cultured their relationship with the Lord will turn around. But those who have “ears to hear” will follow the Lord’s guidance regardless of physical appearances knowing that situations aren’t always what they seem to be.
God’s voice is behind you, propelling you forward
God is not a trickster. He will not purposely lead you the wrong way. God does not repay our sins with false hope and unfulfilled promises. He has integrity, and He is honest. Whatever direction that God provides is correct. It is perfect and will accomplish many more blessings than you could ever see. Your journey is not one that you travel alone. In addition to God moving on your behalf, there are countless others that will be affected by your life decisions. This is not meant to cause feelings of guilt or inadequacy, rather to take in the full scope of what God intends to do on this earth. He is using you to produce ripple-effect actions that will ultimately touch the lives of others. That is why an instruction to head in a direction that you didn’t expect might be the exact route needed to, say, bring another to Christ or allow you to double your success through collaboration.
There is no direction you can go where God is not there
God sees you. There is no part of the path laid out for you where God is not working on your behalf. He is still in control even when you feel lost. He is still in control even when things appear not to work. He is still in control when you can barely see a few feet in front of you let alone 10 years down the road. Even the feeling of being lost is an element that God can use to guide you closer to Him, and cause you to reflect. Sometimes He wants us to be vulnerable and sometimes He wants us to experience displeasure. A child who has never experienced hardship will not make it very far as an adult. It is the same good parenting techniques that our Father uses with us by allowing us to experience every part of this journey we call life fully and grow our experience and lessons learned into wisdom.
Being uncertain about which direction to take is a part of being a human being. But recognizing that, without knowing what lies ahead, God’s direction is one that we can trust ends up benefitting us all in the end. He will provide confirmation if we have ears to hear. His voice will always move us forward and provide growth in the Lord. There is absolutely nowhere that we can go where God doesn’t have his hand upon us. He will show us the way, our job is to walk in it.
7 Ways to Get Smart(er)
Article from copyblogger by Demian Farnworth
In the marketplace of products, services, and content, life is like a crowded New York City street … your prospect is one of seven million people stiff-arming thousands of messages competing for her attention.
She has her own agenda … and that agenda doesn’t include you, your product, idea, or your latest dumb link-bait article.
To earn her attention you need to get drastic. And the best way to do that is with a seductive hook.
What are some of the best tips for finding those incredible hooks (and becoming a lot smarter in the process)?
A couple weeks ago Brian Clark and I covered this topic in an Authority webinar called How to Find the Seductive Hook.
We explained that the best way to find a hook is simply to be relentlessly curious about everything. Then someone asked if it was better to be a generalist or a specialist.
In order to answer that question, we had to back up a bit and eat our words. See, we’d just gotten done telling everyone that you needed to be a generalist. What we should’ve said — specifically — is that you need to be a specialist in your field of expertise.
Get specific, then get free
Nobody is going to listen to Matt Frazier (The No Meat Athlete) unless he is an authority in exercise and plant-based diets.
Nobody is going to listen to Marcus Sheridan unless he is an authority on swimming pools.
And nobody is going to listen to Pam Slim unless she knows early stage entrepreneurship.
Outside the boundaries of your specialty, however, all the world becomes (and should be) your oyster. Satisfy your curiosity until the cows come home, building that bank of creative ideas. Be a generalist with everything except your area of expertise. Just go where your interests take you. Learn about what you love.
And to help you get started on that path, allow me to show you exactly how I do it.
1. Obsess about one subject once a year
Each year I try to buckle down and master a topic outside of my field (I use the word “master” loosely).
This year I chose classical music. I even went as far as vowing never to listen to any other type of music except classical (no half-measures with me).
I’m also reading three pages a day out of a classical music textbook. And plan on reading five or six books about classical composers. I’ve already unearthed one idea from the book The First Four Notes, which I used as an opening for a recent Copyblogger article titled How to Nail the Opening of Your Blog Post.
In the past, I’ve spent a year studying the American Civil War, the Spanish Flu of 1917, Theodore Roosevelt, and science fiction writer Philip K. Dick.
2. Listen to podcasts
Whether you are moving the lawn, sitting by the pool, or humming along the subway, pop in some ear buds and catch up with the latest podcasts that pique your interest.
Here are some of my personal favorites …
This American Life
RadioLab
Freakanomics
White Horse Inn
This is all about the accumulation of facts. Strange and curious facts. Facts that will inform your fascination headlines, and separate them from the clutter.
Read Full Article
How to Make Your Networking Event Popular and Recurring
Article from Freelance Switch by Thursday Bram
Once you’ve held one networking event, it’s going to be tempting to run another — to make your networking event a recurring affair that everyone in your industry or your area knows that they absolutely need to attend. But to make a networking event both popular and recurring, you’ll need to invest some effort into building something more than an average get-together.
You need to find what appeals to your audience, as well as ways to bring new people to your event. After all, what’s a chance to network if you already know every single person in the room?
Tutorial Assets
To complete the tutorial you will need the following assets:
The experience of running a one-off networking event.
A list of attendees from your previous event.
1. Collect Feedback from Your First Event
Step 1
Provided you’ve already ran a stand-alone networking event, you know the mechanics of finding a space and scheduling an event. You also have an invaluable resource: the opinions of the people who attended that first event. Follow up with those attendees and find out what worked, as well as what didn’t work, in their experience.
Did they enjoy the event overall?
What caused them to actually attend?
What would convince them to attend another event?
It may also make sense to collect some demographic information about previous attendees to make sure that you’re reaching your target demographic. You want to make sure that you’re bringing out the people who you want to meet and who are valuable to the group as a whole. Where possible, ask if you can rely on any of these past attendees to run future ideas past.
Step 2
Brainstorm a theme or a connection for your series of networking events. Whether you’re holding a series of mixers, inviting a different speaker to every meeting or otherwise creating an interesting topic for your fellow networkers to talk about, you need a consistent style and approach to your networking event. Standardizing the process will make running each event easier, as well as let your attendees know what to expect.
Step 3
Test your ideas for your future events. Even if you’re just sending out an email to a few people to check if they’d be interested in attending, having that level of information will help you to make sure you’re on the right path.
2. Plan Your Actual Events
Step 1
Once you have the idea for how you’ll handle your recurring events, you need to set up at least the first event in your series. It’s not necessarily a bad idea to plan several events at once, provided you’ll have the opportunity to tweak your plans as each event comes closer. That way, you can batch-process similar tasks together, like by choosing your locations all at once (or finding a space that will allow you to host the whole series in one spot).
In order to grow your networking event — and the network that goes with it — you need to regularly be bringing new people to events.
You’ll also benefit from advanced planning when you can tell the attendees for each event what to expect at the next — you can make sure that they’re looking forward to each opportunity to meet and to bring along appropriate connections.
Step 2
Create a marketing plan for each individual event. In order to grow your networking event — and the network that goes with it — you need to regularly be bringing new people to events. While it’s more work, you need to be actively planning how to put announcements of your group in front of new audiences for each individual networking event you plan. Can you tap into other people’s networks, invite related groups or convince speakers to bring along their established audiences?
Read entire article on Freelance Switch.
