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Browse published articles attributed to Barbara Wayman, with full-archive search.
Has this ever happened to you? You decide to participate in a trade show so you print a stack of pricey brochures, spend three days shaking hands and afterwards you’re not really sure what you accomplished. Here are some tips I recommend to my clients to make the most of their trade show investments.
“Build your reputation by helping other people build theirs.” --Anthony J. D’Angelo If you were going to run a marathon, you wouldn’t do it with a knapsack full of rocks on your back, right? Yet many businesses are saddled with names that are misleading, out of date, hard to pronounce or just plain bad. That makes their marketing extra difficult.
"Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable."rn --Sir Francis Bacon Nowadays diets tend to have a bad name. Overly restrictive and temporary, they often ensure that people revert back to their old habits quickly, thereby eliminating long-term results. This year I've discovered a new way to apply the idea of a diet to a host of goals that have nothing to do with food.
Here are some additional Twitter Tips to keep you active and visible! One is Your Twitter Karma at dossy.org/twitter/karma. It doesn't load well in Internet Explorer, so be sure to use a different browser, like Firefox for example. What it does it allow you to see all your Twitter followers and see who you are following and who is following you back by category. Twitter itself makes you look up each individual person, which is a big pain once you have hundreds of followers. But with Your Twitter Karma you can sort in bulk.
Wouldn't it be great if once we finished all the work of creating a website, people flocked there of their own accord? I wish it worked that way, but alas, we have to get them to visit. Here are some quick tips on increasing your traffic: • Make sure your web URL is on every, and I mea EVERY source of information you send out. (Your URL is the address people type to get to your website, like www.cocacola.com.) That includes your business card, email signature, letterhead, footer of your invoices, direct mail materials, brochures, etc.
“In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things.” --Miyamoto Musashi You can hear it every time you turn on the television. You can feel it emanating from those you work with. Perhaps it even keeps you up at night: fear. Fear of our uncertain economy, of loss, of what the future holds.
Is your business using a Facebook Fan page? With over 300 million active users, many companies have found fan pages vital to their marketing efforts. But how to get your fan page going? Here are some simple suggestions. 1. Create your own URL - the URLs for Facebook pages often are long and ugly. Register a separate domain name for your page and forward it to your Facebook page. If you already have a website you can use a subdomain, like yourwebsite.facebookfanpage.com.
“Silent gratitude isn’t very much use to anyone.” --Gertrude Stein It isn’t often I come across a completely novel and unique business tip that’s both powerful and simple. It happened recently when I was reading Million Dollar Networking by Andrea Nirenberg. Andrea is a master networker who came up with the thank you chain.
“Tell me your friends and I’ll tell you who you are.” --Assyrian Proverb Do you have a life philosophy? For the past decade mine has bee “proximity is destiny.” This somewhat opaque saying speaks to me because it reinforces a basic fact of the universe – we become what we think about most of the time. And we tend to think about that which surrounds us, either in place, time, order or relation. I’ve noticed most self-development literature tends to overlook the importance of proximity. In fact, if you Google the phrase only 98 references pop up.
“What I know for sure is what you give comes back to you.” --Oprah Winfrey I guess it’s inevitable when working in PR to find yourself in a room with clients who ask you to get them or their products on Oprah. Nationally, 7.4 million people watch Oprah every day. Her support of a product, service or even political candidate can translate into huge results.
“Failure is not the only punishment for laziness. There is also the success of others.” --Jules Renard I’ve been working in PR for over 15 years, so you can bet I’ve got some expert thoughts in how to make the absolute worst PR decisions possible. Below are my top 5 ways to ensure the worst PR outcomes. 1. Be inconsistent in your messages. Sure, big successful companies come up with a clear platform of messages around their product that they use over and over again, but that’s so boring. Rework your key messages frequently and make sure they change radically.
It’s 2010 and blogging is no longer a hot new marketing tactic. Yet I’m hearing from entrepreneurs are still unsure if blogging is worth their time. While blogging can be a powerful way to build brand awareness and share of voice, it also has some major drawbacks. Here are some pros and cons of blogging for business. Pros 1. Blogging can help you gain recognition as an expert in your field because you’re out there producing content that educates and informs people.
Have you heard that story about the teacher who showed his students how to get a sizable amount of big rocks, little rocks, sand and water into a jar, as long as they put the big rocks in first? The analogy was that the big rocks are your most important relationships and they deserve your first consideration.
“Build your reputation by helping other people build theirs.” --Anthony J. D’Angelo Aside from “How are you?,” “What do you do?” is probably the question you’ve been asked most often. Recently I heard a networking expert share what she thinks the question really means. Her take? It means “How do you help people?” or “How can you help me?” I thought this was an interesting re-frame because it totally changes how one answers the question. Let’s say you’re a computer consultant.
“The art of resting the mind and the power of dismissing from it all care and worry is probably one of the secrets of energy in our great men.” --Captain J.A. Hadfield Every successful professional has experienced burn-out, that dreaded block of time where you can’t seem to get motivated, you’re crabby and irritable and you produce little results. In our information-filled world it’s very easy to get overwhelmed and tip into burn-out.
No, not that one. I’m talking about a different “f-word” – failure. Our culture shies away from the failure label. Some folks even refuse to use it, preferring euphemisms like “challenge” or “issue.” There’s something even more powerful than pretending failure doesn’t exist. That is embracing it as evidence of growth and a crucial pathway to success.
“Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.” --Ralph Waldo Emerson Emerson called consistency the hobgoblin of little minds, but when it comes to public relations, consistency is THE most crucial key to success. Why? Because we live in a world of cause and effect. The number of people who know about your company is a result. Your company’s reputation is a result. The way people feel about buying from you is a result.
“The highest reward for a man’s toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it.” --John Ruskin The rugged individualist, bravely doing it all by himself – it’s a familiar theme from Hollywood but not the best way to run a business. The smartest thing I did last year was make a commitment to get help and support in many different forms. In addition to a crack team of web designers and programmers, a graphic artist, accountant, IT specialist, lawyer, assistant and virtual assistant, Team BlueTree also includes mentors and a board of advisors.
"Good plans shape good decisions."rn --Lester R. Bittel By now I'm sure you've noticed what an amazing habit planning is. It's hard to accomplish things when we aren't exactly sure what we're doing or what success is going to look like. We are all much faster and efficient at doing tasks when we've set aside some time at the outset to think about the exact outcome we want. Even if you've never worked with a marketing or PR plan, or even if you've never seen one, the same principle applies.
Do you know the difference between a crocodile salesperson and an elephant salesperson? The crocodile salesperson is all mouth, no ears. The elephant sales person is all ears, little mouth. If you spend all your time talking, you miss the chance to hear what your prospect is thinking and wanting, which is a surefire way to miss making the sale. Recently Jessika Ferm of J.Ferm, LLC and I came up with our top seven questions that can best draw out what is motivating your prospects to buy.
Becoming self-employed can be liberating, exhilarating, frustrating and terrifying. Often all at the same time. Most entrepreneurs I meet know they need to be doing marketing. They just often lack a clear sense of what marketing is, or they have no idea where to start. Here are the seven most common mistakes I see new business owners making with their marketing (and how to fix them):
Great slogans can elevate a company from ho hum to world class. Who can forget sayings like "Where's the beef?", "We try harder" or "Just do it". A truly great slogan encapsulates a company's point of difference in an engaging and succinct way. It makes people notice and it makes them remember. If your company lacks the right words to help people understand how you're better, there's no better time than the present to fix that issue. While it would be nice if the perfect slogan ideas popped into your head during your next shower, it doesn't usually work that way.
They’re the most important marketing tools for any professional, yet many people continue to miss the boat when it comes to getting the most out of them. Business cards are often a company’s number one means of contact, follow-up and advertising, but they won’t work well if you are making any of these top errors with them. Run down this checklist and see if any of these apply to you. Top 10 Business Card Blunders 1. Flimsy paper – If you can bend your card into a curving s-shape the paper stock is too thin. Business cards need to hold up well.
If you’re going to move forward you can take big leaps, regular steps or baby steps. It’s fun to focus on the big leaps because that seems like the fastest, most direct way to go. I used to think that and was always percolating on what big leaps I could take and then something happened to change my point of view. It was last year when I decided to stretch myself by entering a beauty pageant. I had never entered a beauty pageant in my life, so I had a lot to learn. One of the areas of my attention was fitness, since there was a swimsuit competition that was 25% of my scores.
I once read a story about a boy who received a very expensive art kit from his grandparents for his birthday. He loved art so he saved the kit for when he felt like he was a better artist. Finally one day he went to get the kit and couldn’t find it. He asked his mother if she’d seen it and she said, “Oh, you never used that so I figured you didn’t want it and gave it away.”
When you travel a lot like I do, you come to depend on habits and tips to keep everything going smoothly. Recently while I was at 30,000 feet I started thinking about my very best practices that make the biggest difference in my travel experiences.
Social authority isn't given, it's earned. To develop social authority you basically need to do two things: 1. Cultivate a following or network and 2. Consistently add value That's it. Sometimes people make it a lot more complicated than it really is.
The logic of connecting more closely with your target audience has attracted many businesses to Twitter, but once they're there they can be unsure of best practices or what to do next. Here are some tips to help expand your reach in the Twitterverse.
How to Hire Out Your Social Media Busy entrepreneurs often find out it’s not always best to do everything themselves. Embracing a new social media program can put unnecessary demands on a business that hasn’t thought ahead about how to manage the increase in workflow. Here are some common questions and answers around when and how to hire out social media work. When is it time to hire someone to manage your social media?
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