Tag Archives: business

Set It Free!

Another late post, I know. It’s this pesky business of trying to do some work. I particularly like it when the work is the stuff I do for free. Yep. I think everyone should have at least one pro-bono account in their roster and I’m drinking my own Kool-Aid on that.

My client is in the process of building and launching a new website. This has been fun – a white sheet of paper, SEO built in from the ground up, lots of open minds (OK, maybe that’s not your idea of fun but I’m digging it). But the real fun is yet to begin since we’re just starting to populate the site with information.

“Where is this all going to come from?”, she wondered on our call. That’s when we talked about a pretty significant paradigm shift she, like most people in digital, was going to have to make.

I told her she had to stop thinking of the site as hers or her organization’s. Instead, realize that it belongs to your community – your users, your members, and those who you want to become part of either of those two groups.  We went on to talk about link-building, guest-blogging, and how “viral” doesn’t mean vaccinations.

The important thing here is all businesses have to embrace the Chinese proverb on setting things we love free to see if they return.  By opening up your site to the conversations, you don’t lose control – you gain engagement.

Thoughts?

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Filed under Consulting, digital media

The Silent Treatment

Apple Inc.

I was trained to teach high school English.  If you want to try a presentation skills challenge, try presenting poetry structure to the non college-bound freshmen at 8:30 in the morning.  You almost have to set yourself on fire to get their full attention and many mornings I had a can of lighter fluid in hand as I reached my wit’s end.  But then I realized that all I had to do was shut up.  Inevitably, the class would calm down and listen up, often to hear who was on their way to the dean’s office. Continue reading

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Filed under digital media, What's Going On

Milli Vanilli

Alternative cover

“It’s not about being authentic anymore, it’s about entertaining,” says the man whose Grammy for best new artist was revoked 20 years ago — the only take-back in Recording Academy history.  That’s a quote from an article this morning in USA Today which I thought was about more than music.  In fact, if you read between the lines, there are some great business lessons in there which have nothing to do with making music! Continue reading

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