Developing a sound strategy is critical before success is achieved on the Internet. I often talk with prospective clients who ask me to further articulate and provide them with additional clarity as to what strategy is. So with that in mind, I have decided to write this section for my new upcoming book Million Dollar Web Presence. Since I get asked this question a lot, here it is for your benefit.

A strategy is the framework that helps you identify where you are taking your company and what you want it to become. It is all about answering the “what” and the “why” questions while tactics are the detailed action plan that answer the “how” to achieve these type of questions.

Answering these questions will provide the clarity necessary to then develop your tactics or action plan:

1. What do you want the site to do and why?

• Create credibility?
• Deliver value?
• Educate the visitor?
• Diagnose the visitor through process visuals or surveys?
• Convert visitors to prospects and prospects to clients?
• Enable products purchasing for passive income?
• Leverage marketing effectively?
• Promote your products and services?
• Create a community?
• Promote your books?
• Capture visitors’ information?
• Become the hub and the repository of your intellectual property?
• Help you gain as many clients as possible while reducing your labor intensity and increasing your responsiveness significantly?
• Visitor to have fun?

2. Who is your audience(s)?

• Identify all groups.
• Where do they hang out and what are their geographic areas?
• What do they read?
• What trade shows do they attend?
• Where are they on the web?
• What are they looking for?
• What is their age group and sex?
• Do they search on search engines?
• Do they use social media platforms and which ones?
• Should journalists be targeted?

3. What do you want to become?

• Thought Leader?
• Consultant, author, coach, speaker?
• All or others?
• What are you known for?

4. What is the outstanding value you bring to your clients and your offerings?

Let me finally suggest that no technology should be discussed or design executed prior to the strategy being clearly identified followed by the tactics. As you’ve heard me say: “Strategy first, technology second!”

This is an excerpt from my new and upcoming book Million Dollar Web Presence - Leverage technology to build your brand and transform your business, which I am coauthoring with Dr. Alan Weiss and which will be published by Entrepreneur Press.

© Chad Barr 2011. All rights reserved

I am constantly intrigued by what generates success for entrepreneurs so I may coach and apply this blueprint for my clients. During a fabulous dinner with Alan Weiss this past Wednesday evening at The Spiced Pear in Newport, Rhode Island and over an amazing 2001 Chateau Margaux, we discussed some of the components of such success:

1. Internalized Knowledge and experience.
2. Intellectual fire power which is gained through additional learning, reading and experience.
3. Innovative and creative ideas.
4. Mental discipline to get out the intellectual capital (between your ears) into products and services which become your intellectual property. This transfer process is done through instantiation, which is your  ability to take complex concepts and simplify them.
5. Constant daily creation and addition to your body of knowledge and body of work.
6. Passion demonstrated in your work and your contacts with your clients.

Below is a process visual I have just created at 32,00 feet, on my way to Rhode Island to speak at Alan Weiss’s Million Dollar Consulting® College:

There are several elements to the chart above: On the horizontal axis is your “Strategy, Tactics and Execution” (referred below in short as strategy), which are the components of what your business and internet should look like, how will you do it, the steps to get there and your fierce commitment to execute it. On the vertical axis is your “Intellectual Property (IP), Content, Products and Services (referred below in short as content). The plus sign(+) represents the high of each quadrant and the minus sign(-) the low.

Quadrant 4 – Create, innovate or get out – This represents low strategy and low content. These individuals suffer from low or no success and are usually struggling quite a bit. The solution (as in my heading) is quite obvious. If you fall into this quadrant and assuming you have the wisdom and passion, start creating and innovating while developing and executing your strategy or find another occupation.

Quadrant 3 – Best kept secret – This represents high content and low strategy. These individuals have outstanding content and lack the strategy to make them extremely successful. Although, some do see some success, the majority struggle to reach that next level in their business.

Quadrant 2 – The emperor has no clothes – This represents high strategy and low content. These individuals are good at the strategic aspect of their business and may even be somewhat successful for a while but they lack the wisdom or the knowledge of how to do it or they use fraudulent techniques.

Quadrant 1 – It’s good to be the king – This represents high strategy and high content. These individuals are great at what they do, their content is good to remarkable, they execute powerful and effective strategy and are extremely successful.

The solution is pretty straight forward. Focus on creating and innovating while increasing your IP, content, products and services while making sure you have a clear strategy and tactics that you execute well and with great discipline.

© Chad Barr 2009. All rights reserved.

Upon review of probably thousands of web sites over the years, I have come to the conclusion that in order for your organization to be successful on the Internet, 3 key elements must be accomplished to generate such success:

Design: Your site ought to be professionally designed, attractive and engaging and be easy to navigate in order to quickly gain the visitors’ attention and interest. Good use of images is important as well as the use of action shots of you with your clients.

Content: Your site must focus on your visitors’ interest and addresses the question of what’s in it for them and how to improved their businesses and lives. To accomplish this, strong content must be developed in the form of products, services, and intellectual property while constantly evolving.

Strategy & Tactics: What should the business look like and how should it position itself online. What Internet components are critical to make the business a success. How should you reach and communicate with your current and future customers? Should they be able to purchase products, read articles, subscribe to newsletters, communicate through blogs and online communities?

With that in mind, please review the chart below and notice the obvious at the points of interaction of the circles:

1. The Missing Map – This organization has a site that is well designed with great content yet no defined strategy and tactics to create an Internet success. It’s like driving a great car without a GPS system or an effective map to follow. You’ll be wondering why you are not reaching your destination.
2. The Ugly Book Cover – This organization has a site that has great content and powerful and effective strategies and tactics yet the site is poorly designed and navigated. Most visitors would either close their browsers or press the back button to go to their previous site.
3. The Boring Show – This organization has a site that reminds me of going to see a theater show that was well advertised and promoted with great and colorful posters. Yet when you get to finally watch it, there is nothing there. Just a terrible and boring show. Some site unfortunately suffer from the same syndrome.
4. Success - This organization is reaping the most benefits of effective web strategies. Any missing element and success is either delayed or non-existent. Yet when all three circles and elements intersect that ultimate success is achieve.

Where are you?

© Chad Barr 2009. All rights reserved.

You don’t create a blog or a web site or participate in social networking or whatever and hope your clients will come – especially your CEOs or CFOs. Most consultants are making this mistake over and over and are still waiting for the phone to ring! You drive the value to your customers and prospects by creating amazing products and services, publishing great stuff, shamelessly promoting it, and leveraging every component of marketing gravity you can and guided by your Internet strategy.

Let me also suggest (and I am ok if you all hate me for this) that quite a few of consultants’ web sites out there are quite weak (to put it very mildly), with minimal or zero perceived value. Many want to become world-class consultants, yet their web sites and intellectual property make them look like amateurs.

Blogs are only one component of your overall Internet strategy and Internet marketing gravity. Here is one example of how you may leverage your blog to target CEOs and CFOs (I am inserting in the quote here):

“Dear Bob, (Name of your fictitious CEO or CFO – you pick the real one)

I have assembled a brand new and exciting collection of special reports, podcasts and videos to help CEOs and CFOs. This collection is my creation and innovation of a repository of powerful and unique ideas to help my clients with issues they are bringing to my attention. Issues such as: [list areas of your clients' challenges and where you can help them raise the bar]

I am updating this repository area quite often and I am also planning on bringing some fascinating thought leaders as guest contributors. Names such as: [List some great names you are planning on bringing as guest contributors] This area is becoming “the place” for CEOs and CFOs to hang out, get the answers they are looking for and participate in a like-minded community.

To preview this new place, simply click on this link www.ChadGrowthIdeas.com (you probably should use your own name)

I am also attaching my latest special report: “Top 10 mistakes successful CEOs avoid making”
And please checkout next Thursday my upcoming video: “Thriving in tough economic times.”

I will be in touch with you shortly to share some new exciting ideas.

Best,

Chad”

I realize this takes courage, creativity, investment and hard work. But heck the good news is that there are only a few successful thought leaders out there. The rest simply follow or not.

So what do you think? Please post your comment below.

© Chad Barr 2009. All rights reserved.

On a recent vacation trip to Israel I realized prior to boarding the plane, and to my horror, that I forgot the power cord for my MacBookPro laptop. You all know how ornery I get if I don’t get my daily access to my Mac. I quickly used my iPhone to email my friend Dov Gordon in Jerusalem asking him to make the connections necessary to see where I may get such cord. Upon landing eleven hours later, fully rested in first class, and greeted by the beautiful Israeli afternoon, my iPhone email inbox and text messages quickly notified me that I might be in luck. Dov, with the help of technology and probably the Israeli secret service, informed me that the only place in Israel that may have my desired cord is the Mall of Ramat-Aviv, located in an affluent suburb outside Tel-Aviv. So we (my wife and I) picked up the Hertz rental car, turned on the GPS and on our way we were to the mall.

Less than thirty minutes later I parked the car, turned off the engine, smiled and said to my wife: “We’ve made it. Let’s get the cord and start our great vacation.” She smiled and said: “And what a better place to start than this great mall.”  As I opened the car door and stepped out of the car, my keys dropped out of my hands. In a split second, and to my true horror this time, I realized that they fell into a grate and from the sound of it I could tell that it was quite deep. “Oh shoot,” I yelled. (Well it kind of sounded like that.) “What happened?” asked my wife. “I dropped the darn keys in this hole in the ground,” Frustrated I explained. For a moment she thought I was kidding but she quickly learned I was not.

Looking for a quick solution or perhaps a miracle such as parting of the red sea since I was in the holy land after all, I noticed the security booth around the corner. I quickly ran there and explained my situation to the friendly guys. “Not to worry,” said one of them. They quickly grabbed the ladder, gathered the troops, well three does make a troop right? They rolled my car off the grate, lifted the grate and explained to their buddy that they won’t need the ladder while grabbing his legs and dropping him into the hole in the ground. He was mumbling something while going down and seconds later, my keys are flying in the air and land in my hands while the guy is pulled out of the dungeon. I thanked them profusely and rewarded them with American dollars as a sign of my gratitude.

“The cord you are looking for is on back order,” said the clerk at the store. My life flashed before my eyes. Well, not quite but you get the point and the seriousness of my situation right? Yet, I was determined that there is no possible way I am walking out of that store without a cord. After much schmoozing, we find out that this guy helping us at the store, traveled the US quite a few times, he has a family in Cleveland which my wife happens to know quite well and he admits that someone just turned in their laptop for repair with the cord attached. It took all of my positive influence, talent and mastery of the language (begging probably had a lot to do with it) to finally convince him to sell me the cord for a full price. It was double the price I would pay in the US but who cared at that point. I was able to convince him to take the back order cord when it comes in and attach it to the item being repaired. We paid, thanked him and ran out of the store before he changed his mind.

Luckily the stores and coffee shops were still open so it turned out to be a fabulous evening as we gladly invested in the local economy. See pictures below as proof. On the way back to the car I held the keys tighter than ever before yet realizing that in the midst of all this excitement I forgot to take some pictures or videos that would have made my story believable. Well, it truly did happen, really, I mean it!

Chad drinking as known in Israel “upside down coffee” or simply  latté in the US.

Laurel after another successful shopping day

© Chad Barr 2009. All rights reserved.

Where would we be without the innovations that have gradually and progressively evolved into the modern-day technological advancements we now enjoy?

While, at the time, many people considered each breakthrough unthinkable (in the unimaginable sense of the word), gradually these advancements evolved and became so widespread that they became unthinkable (in the commonplace sense of the word). With each breakthrough, social and interactive along with other types of shifts also occurred.

How we go about finding the root meaning of the words “stagnant” or “evolve” today versus how we would have done so twenty years ago or even hundreds of years ago, demonstrates how things have dramatically changed.

Before Gutenberg’s Moveable Type around 1450, we would not have had access to words in print the way the moveable type made possible. To find out what the word “evolve” meant, we would have probably had to ask someone else who may or may not have known how to best state it. Hopefully, someone we knew would have told us that “stagnant” means to stay the same, slow-moving, sluggish or declining and “evolve” means to progress, advance or transform.

With the advancement of moveable type, multiple copies of text could be created and distributed to many more people than were able to read the handwritten books and materials that were limited in number and availability. After moveable type, ideas progressively became more accessible through the printed word in newspapers and books—including the dictionary where we could then look up the meaning scholars had previously discussed and debated and decided to put into print.

Not only were ideas beginning to advance, but so were people. With the advent of automobiles, trains and airplanes, it became easier to ship goods and send out people around the world progressively faster, cheaper and safer. The exchange of ideas and new experiences opened up new worlds to those who were privy to travel and returned to share what they learned.

When it may have seemed that modern technologies had almost evolved to their pinnacle, the landmark technology of The Internet (circa 1990’s) marked a new domain that soon exploded into multiple domains across the world, allowing people to communicate and interact via the digital typed word and now through audio/video faster than ever before imagined! Yesterday’s fast seems slow to us today as we move towards new and improved versions of technologies that become faster, cheaper and better.

The internet (and all the interrelated technologies connected to it in this era) has opened up a whole new world like never before in regard to accessibility and reach. Some of the latest technologies and amazing innovation are increasingly being combined in powerful ways that enable people to enjoy the benefits of multiple ways of connecting with ideas and with others, including: cell phones, text messaging, Twitter and other social networking platforms, blogging, internet sites and strategies that enable you to effectively market your business and allow you to gain information, knowledge and wisdom and all within minutes or seconds.

While some people may be hesitant to utilize the full force of the internet, others are continually upgrading their technology and technological know-how to maximize their businesses. Those who choose to be stagnant are being and will be surpassed by the many advantages offered by those who choose to evolve along with technology, which offers increasingly improved speed, interactive capabilities, spreading of ideas, more focused searches, exploring new buyers and opening new markets and opportunities globally.

There are people today who still see technology as being somewhere on a spectrum between a necessary evil they tolerate to a complex world they fear. What’s important is how do you see it, think about it, use it and most importantly, how you leverage it. The option is up to you to decide how to reach your customers who are increasingly seeking the best of minds to help their businesses. Are you constantly evolving yourself and positioning yourself as a world-class thought leader who delivers great content, products and services to your customers?

Many times I enjoy reading a hard copy book while other times, I enjoy listening to books on my iPhone or even reading them on this great technology. I love reading the Wall Street Journal print edition yet at times I enjoy reading it online. There are always choices in our lives for us to make, but remaining stagnant in business or stagnant with your web presence is unimaginably unthinkable.

© Chad Barr 2009. All rights reserved.

One of my dear and senior clients sends his emails all typed in uppercase or capital letters, perhaps not realizing the internet standard for shouting is all uppercase (although I am not sure who invented that standard). Unbeknown to me, one of my younger staff members received several emails for this client thinking the client may have been unhappy and is “yelling” at him. An interesting conversation followed with each one of them as I was trying to bridge the generational gap.

Although we all live in a diverse world offline, the internet has connected people online in ways that allow us to interact with other people we may or may not meet in person. Some may make the assumption that all internet users use technology the same way as we do to communicate. This assumption needs to be examined more closely so we become aware of the need to be sensitive online as we may already be in our “offline” world. There are cultural, generational and gender differences among people—not to mention the all-important difference of technological awareness, exposure and capability that affects how people use and interpret the internet.

On Facebook—one of the most popular social networking sites—it is easy for people to connect with friends, colleagues and clients so they may stay in touch. It is quite common for people to change their online status and to comment frequently about what they do at the moment. I find the phenomena of mundane comments such as: “I am having breakfast”; or “going to workout”; or “it’s time to go to sleep” not only silly, but somewhat obnoxious, a waste of brain cells, digital ink and Internet energy.

Some time ago, I actually used my status on Facebook to post a simple yet provocative question: “I am wondering why are most so addicted to these silly status messages and who out there really cares?” I did get several replies. Some on Facebook and some in my private email. Some were nice and tried to explian their position yet others suggested I don’t get it. I’ve come to realize that many (perhaps those fitting the friendly stalker mindset personality) love to read what others are doing, spend much of their time following others and also use it to find out where to hang out with their friends. Moreover, some love to see pictures of others and often request you post them when you attend events. My personal preference is to post and read helpful, valuable thoughts and tips and even watch good quality entertaining moments. Since I speak, write and consult on this topic, I do make a strong attempt to be aware of those online differences so I may communicate effectively with others.

So whether it is the realization that uppercase emails do not necessarily mean the person is yelling at us, I also realize the important fact that it is often impossible to interpret the sender’s voice intonation in emails. I suggest we recognize that even or especially online some are introverts and some extroverts and there are many behavioral styles and preferences. I am respectful of people’s Right to Interact, Right to Surf, and Right to Post. Yet as I recently wrote on one of my Twitter posts: “You are right. I only pay attention to the brilliant stuff, the other I have learned to ignore. Now what was it that you said?”

© Chad Barr 2009. All rights reserved.

I travel the world quite often and here is a powerful lesson I would like to share with you that I witnessed on one of my business trip to the Bahamas. Being in a new environment, especially one as beautiful as the Bahamas, heightens my senses of natural, everyday occurrences. My colleagues and I were engaged in great discussions outdoors as we were also enjoying the fabulous cocktail party and the various assortments of food. I couldn’t help but notice some uninvited guests: The birds.

Discovering the opportunity to join the party and be fed, it did not take the birds long before one would wait the perfect opportunity to dive in, grab the treat, and leave. Quickly to be followed by another and another.

As I observed their behavior, I was thinking how remarkably they have mastered and adjusted their survival habits. They combined their need to feed themselves with an unbelievable desire to succeed, a fierce focus and a natural sense of timing. Yet they were doing it elegantly and with what seemed to be a sense of playfulness and enjoyment.

Birds adapt to their environment, where their strategy may be similar but different when it is an entirely natural setting versus a combination of a natural setting and human-made setting. In either type of setting, birds demonstrate patience in waiting for the perfect opportunity, yet they also use prowess in knowing when to change locations to seek other opportunities. My amusement centered on what seemed to be their natural instincts vs. perhaps their learned, internalized and mastered skills. Here is the process they were following:

•    Holistic view of the environment.
•    Quick analysis of the situation.
•    Tremendous focus on the objectives and goals.
•    Wait for the perfect timing.
•    Take action.
•    Reap the reward.
•    Life balance enjoyment.
•    Repeat the cycle

Their careful watch regarding proximity of people to the food helped the birds time when to act and when to withdraw to safety. When they observed momentary distance between people and some food, they would zoom in and zoom away quickly. They repeatedly grabbed their food in this manner over the course of an hour and a half. Their repeated success demonstrated sustainability of success when given the right opportunity and desire. It’s important to note that they had no fear in taking this constant risk and also if they waited too long to act, their opportunity may have disappeared.

So let’s pause here and think about it. What I am suggesting through my analogy is that reaching life and business success and getting the results we want is easier than we sometimes make it to be. We overcomplicate things at times, which are possibly due to fear, lack of knowledge and not following a successful process. By being able to narrow our own path to the success we desire, we first have to define what it is we are trying to accomplish, then seek the right conditions that will increase our ability to be successful and then take strong, focused and concise action. The birds have an innate sense of what their needs and wants are; whereas ours are sometimes clouded by the disconnect between what we want and what we truly need. Aligning this disconnect between want and need is quite important.

So with the power of illustrating through an acronym and the playfulness spirit of the birds, here’s a quick way to summarize the simple, but important survival strategy lesson I learned in The Bahamas:
B – Be
A – Aware
H – How
A – Action
M – May
A – Affect
S – Success

BAHAMAS reminds me to “Be Aware How Action May Affect Success.” Just like with the birds, there are many factors that go into knowing when to act (and when not to), which are essential to getting the results we seek. Being prepared with a strategy can help us know how to get to the right place at the right time—when the opportunity knocks, take action! It’s not just for the birds!

© Chad Barr 2009. All rights reserved.

The power of the internet is that it is ubiquitous – which can be a good thing if you are maximizing what your website says about you and your business. Does yours reflect Walking your Talk and Talking your Walk?

Often times during my seminars I ask for volunteers to allow me to demonstrate their sites effectiveness. Most cringe and avoid any eye contact with me. You can almost read them silently say: “please, not my site.” In fact, that may be just the reason why many become our clients since they know that they need to invest in getting their talk and walk in sync.

Your Walk is who you are, what you do, how you do it, why you do it and so forth. It is the action you convey. By being aware of what messages you are sending through your actions, you can adjust them in order to align them so that what you do also tells your customers how your products and services meet and/or exceed their needs and wants.

Your Talk is what you say, the language, that connects you and your customers with what you can do for them. One of the most powerful ways to talk about your business today is through your website so that it says what it needs to say and how it needs to say it. The quality of your website speaks volumes about your business through your powerful language, audio, video and visual messages. Another and probably even more powerful ways of talking about your business, is to let your customers do that through testimonials and commentary.

Here are a few tips to help you analyze both Your Walk and Your Talk online and offline. Go through each of the tips and individually consider Your Walk; and then repeat it with analyzing Your Talk. Make a list of action steps you can take to get them in sync so that your online and offline walk as well as your online and offline talk are synchronized through and through.

1. Is your value proposition (VP), which defines how your clients are better off by virtue of working with you, prominently displayed on your home page? What sections of your site demonstrate and prove your value proposition? If your VP talks about dramatic growth of your clients, you should incorporate testimonials and articles demonstrating and explaining such growth for you and your clients.
2. What is your vision and mission statement and how does your site substantiate them? A client investing six-figure investment with us shared with me that he felt we have similar philosophy. When I asked him to articulate further he said that it was based on similar vision and mission statements that he read on our web site.
3. Are you using effective language to increase credibility through your clients’ list, testimonials, case studies, client results and your intellectual property and expertise? Do your articles show examples and how-to tips based on successful track record with your clients?
4. Who is your audience and what is your market and what are the products and services that may greatly benefit them? Are you constantly adding new such products and services and receiving happy clients’ testimonials that are displayed on your site?

By refining and aligning what your website is saying about you and your business, not only will you eliminate the cringe, but you may find that you are finally proud for the whole world to see it.

© Chad Barr 2009. All rights reserved.

Here are ways to develop interest in your organization and have your target customers contact you:

1. Start speaking professionally, deliver your expertise and talk about how to improve your clients business with web strategies.
2. Add testimonials and clients list to your web site.
3. Start a monthly electronic newsletter and deliver genuine value to your target audience.
4. Write and publish your intellectual property in print and on the web
5. Network and discuss how you help your clients
6. Comment on others’ powerful blogs with useful tips
7. Write a book or start with a booklet
8. Get interviewed on radio and TV
9. Work your referrals aggressively
10. Create a breakfast club and invite your target audience to attend a breakfast and learn.
11. Purchase a database list of your target customers and send them powerful valuable content to entice to opt-in to your newsletter list. Once they do, keep offering them value.

1. It provides another serious and viable option to traditional marketing, which is already and successfully being utilized by the vast majority of organizations.

2. It enables individuals (Customers, suppliers, your staff) to interact with each other, share their experiences of using the products and services, create additional exposure and buzz.

3. It is often quick and rapid to implement.

4. It is often quite economical.

5. It reaches beyond borders and with global exposure.

6. It creates a virtual 24×7 salesman.

7. It allows your customers to interact with you at their convenience.

8. It enables your customers to get instant answers to their questions.

9. Dramatically improve your time to market, which means, leverage the Internet to rapidly introduce and launch new products and services.

10. Stay better connected with your customers, suppliers and your own organization.

11. When the first car was introduced, there were probably quite a few people rejecting the new technology and insisting they keep using their horse. As Henry Ford said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a better horse.” Are you the one to embrace technology or reject it?

12. One of our clients that sells large and expensive machinery used to have to take pictures of their inventory, print them and FedEx them to interested buyers. The buying decision took days or weeks to be made. Then came digital cameras and email, and we expedited the process significantly. And then came a fully integrated web site that enabled the customer to make an instant buying decision.

13. We have just scratched the surface with what is available to be done with the Internet and how to strategically use it to grow our business. Don’t find yourself left behind.

To develop fresh ideas I would recommend the following:

1. Read the Wall Street Journal, Business Week and such publications and pay attention to what is reported and discussed both in print, online blogs and online forums.

2. Read books on the topic of innovation, Internet marketing and such

3. Attend workshops / seminars

4. Follow blogs of successful thought leaders

5. Meet smart and interesting people, ask questions and start a dialog

6. Create or join a mastermind group

7. Write often

8. Solicit the advice of experts

9. I get tremendous amount of powerful ideas from an online community my company implemented and I moderate http://www.alansforums.com

10. Speaking in conferences or webinars has always generated tremendous mount of great ideas for me when listening to my audience questions

Ideas are all around you, all you have to do is start paying better attention.

1. Unless you have good, interesting and valuable starting content on your forum why would anyone spend time there or consider joining? They are not going to.
2. I would suggest you create a repository of intellectual property (IP) that is available to forum members only and is uniquely position with how-to information.
3. Market to all of your current and previous clients, prospects and anyone you know and share with them the exciting new place / community you have created (after you built the initial content) and invite them to check it out and join.
4. I would charge for membership yet select a smaller group of subscriber that would become the initial group (for free) to start the momentum of posting going.
5. Promote and market your new site and forum in every possible media: news release, networking events, verbally with anyone you talk with, speeches, newsletter, blog, your paperwork (invoices, correspondence), get people to interview you on their blogs (written, audio and video podcasts).
6. Feature the best of the posts in your monthly newsletter (assuming you have one) and create enticements to have new members join.
7. Strive to become “the place to go” for the greatest and latest of your industry wisdom.
8. When possible discuss “success stories” and share on your site and inside the forum.
9. Create a referral network both domestically and internationally that would send your target audience to the forum and to you.

1. Become an entrepreneur
2. Live on less than 85% of your income and invest the rest
3. Invest in your health and life balance
4. Create proper business and personal insurance for you and your family
5. Invest in your continued learning and education
6. Hire the best (staff, advisers and consultants)
7. Re-invent yourself often
8. Find a successful mentor with a proven track record
9. Constantly look for ways to help your clients improve their business and life
10. Give a lot
11. Laugh a lot

Your turn please.

1. Strong entrepreneurship spirit which means not being afraid to fail

2. Willingness to take risk knowing that the potential outcome and success can be enormous.

3. Strong desire to work for myself and exit the “employee” mentality

4. Have complete control of decisions and my own future and destiny

5. Ability to enjoy discretionary time and life balance

What do you think?

So what is your blog good for? Here are some ideas: It …

1. Enables you to publish your knowledge and wisdom for others to benefit from.
2. Allows you to promote and refer to it on your web site and newsletter and reference interesting threads.
3. Makes it easy for your visitors to subscribe so they may automatically receive your posts via RSS feed.
4. Gives you the flexibility to react to other blogs, news, current events and interesting posts.
5. Lets you promote your products, services, speaking engagements, articles and white papers.
6. Entices others to engage in a conversations and debates with you and others.
7. Positions you as an object of interest, an expert in your field and have other bloggers and web sites refer to your blog and posts.
8. Makes it easy to summarize your presentations and email the notes to attendees prior and after your event.
9. Creates the tool to allow the discipline to produce content to strengthen your brand and marketing gravity.
10. Evolves into a repository of interesting information – a knowledge base.
11. Sharpens your knowledge as you focus on developing and delivering interesting, new and valuable content.
12. Becomes fun as it evolves and once successful creates a community around your work.
13. Permits you to capture your clients’ questions and respond by writing a new post or refer to an old one.
14. Expands your network to reach out to clients, prospects, colleagues and business partners while allowing them to reach out to their network featuring your wisdom.
15. Pushes the envelop by augmenting the written words and creating additional channels of delivery methods such as audios and videos.
16. Strengthens your Internet strategy by adding another domain that creates content for Google and other search engines to find and index.

What are your thoughts?

I just returned from my trip to Rhode Island followed immediately with a trip to Austin, Texas, where I attended a conference attracting the owners and top management of independent wholesale paper, sanitary maintenance, and restaurant equipment distributors. While meeting with about 80 of these organizations, I asked them to comment on what they see as the key reasons for their success. Here are the top six answers:

1. Diversity – being able to quickly decide which products and services to embrace and release to market and which to discard while offering the right range of their customers’ needs.
2. Management – the human factor of making the proper decision, leading the company and creating strong relationships with customers.
3. Technology – The best and most successful distributors where using advance technologies while constantly looking for the next best solutions to embrace. I found the opposite to be true. The ones complaining about the economy, suppliers and their customers’ loyalty were the ones to use antiquated technologies and way of thinking.
4. Serendipity – Or what many referred to as luck and being at the right place at the right time. It was interesting that the majority or all of the most successful companies did not talk much about luck but their ability to take control and influence their future.
5. Locality – For many, being local helped them focus and develop strong relationships with their customers. I found the majority who held such belief to be smaller organization size as well as revenues and profits.
6. Customer service – They ALL claimed that the key was customer service yet many complained about lack of customers ‘and vendors’ loyalty.

What are the keys to your success?

I just spent a couple of terrific days in Rhode Island where I delivered my speech on “Successfully leveraging the Internet to Drive Value to Your Customers” to the current class of Dr. Alan Weiss’s Million Dollar Consulting College. One of the items I covered during my speech was how to create instant credibility with your web site. More on that in a future article I will be writing. In the mean time, the key components as I see to create such credibility are: your intellectual property, case studies, your clients’ testimonials, description of the positive results your client receive from working with you and your clients’ list. See chart below:

After my speech and before dinner, we all assembled in Alan’s suite and got to brainstorm and discuss some great topics, while hearing some great stories over red wine. I pulled out my flip video, shot some great ones and uploaded them to YouTube and Alan’s blog. Here is a great sample about asking for referrals:

To see the rest, check out the following links. You are sure to enjoy them, I promise:Click here for the boom box story.

Click here for seven more videos.

Click here for the frog story.

Charge or retreat, it’s a matter of choice.  

I hear people complaining about the strength of the dollar weakening in comparison to other world currencies especially when the media is reaching for our attention with the stories and news of recession. So how do you leverage these economic challenges to benefit your company?

1. Expand your market – We get more inquiries and new business than ever before from place such as Canada, Europe, Australia, South Africa and Asia. I do not know if this is because of the exciting work we do and our marketing gravity, perhaps serendipity or the weak dollar. What is apparent to me is the fact that organizations and entrepreneurs outside the US are reaching out for help and expertise and a way to get better return from their own currency. Seize these opportunities, branch out and go global.
2. Help change your customers’ perception – In his blog entry Marketing in a recession, author Seth Godin writes about how in good times people buy because they feel they deserve it or just want it. Yet in tougher times they buy from a defensive position to avoid trouble or seize the opportunity. Change your marketing message to help your customers better understand why they need your products and services now.
3. Better use of technologies – Whether you are a large organization or a single entrepreneur, smartly using technologies enables you to deliver your expertise to your clients to help their business, build stronger relationships while allowing technologies to perform the work they should. So instead of receiving orders via phone, fax or a non-integrated web site and having to manually key them into your computer system, why not completely integrate them with your system through the Internet to automatically receive them in your warehouse or your receivable department? Instead of shipping hard copy books and CDs why not send them digitally as eBooks or an MP3 downloads. Instead of having to travel and visit your clients for meeting and training, why not use the Internet to conduct online live meetings and even archive them for future views?
4. Improve your web site – In his blog entry Progression in a recession, Dr. Alan Weiss talks about the importance of changing your web site to broadly describe your services and the importance of technology to reach out overseas prospects and partners.

Your web site and the Internet are both critical tools in helping you market your company, announce new products and services, deliver new offerings and reach global customers. So rather than listen to the negative news (how else would they get your attention) and act scared and indecisive, why not make a bold move, seize the great opportunities around you and make a positive difference for you and your customers’ success.

When visiting web sites, how often do you click on a link which takes you to another site? Probably quite often you would answer since this is the basic foundation to how the world of the Internet works. But when clicking on that link, does the next page open in the same browser window or a new one?

Make sure your web master does the following: When developing the navigation for your site, all available links within your own site should open in the same browser window. Opening your own site in multiple browser windows is not only a poor design error but also irritating to the visitor. However, if you decide that you must link to other sites from your own web site, make sure you open up the link in a separate browser window while keeping your site open in the current window. This logic will enable the user to visit the new site, and when closing that window or tab they will be returned to your site which is still open. Otherwise, they are gone and probably will not be back.

Click here for an example of a hyperlink to another browser session and click here for an example of a hyperlink in the same browser window. (You will have to press the go back arrow to return to this page.)

How much should you share with potential clients when meeting with them and especially in your writing and on the web? I hear this question quite often and for years I was not a huge fan of “giving” away our IP and wisdom. Here is my belief now:

1. If you think you are giving too much of it away, you are on the right track.
2. Your clients will wonder if this is how much “free” advice you give them prior to becoming a client, how much would you then be giving them after they become a client.
3. It helps me to constantly push the envelope and re-invent with new ideas so I do not become otherwise stagnant.

This week, I had the great opportunity of interviewing Dr. Alan Weiss. Also known as The Rock Star of Consulting, The Contrarian and The Consultants’ Consultant among other impressive brands. Alan is truly an amazing person who leads a life of great success and inspiration to many of us.

I met him about six years ago and have worked closely with him ever since. His impact on my business and my life has been absolutely remarkable. Several years ago I approached Alan with the idea of implementing and building an online community to attract his followers and allow them to better stay connected with him and each other. The result was Alan’s Forums, a unique and special type of online community attracting the best of global consulting minds. I’ve been also fortunate to work with him on many other exciting projects both on the receiving and giving end including the development and implementation of his terrific blog www.ContrarianConsulting.com.

During the podcast interview we discussed many questions such as:
What are the three most common mistakes consultants make?
What do the most successful ones do?
How to stand out in the crowd?
How do you keep reinventing yourself and increasing your creative output?
How to leverage Requests for Proposals?
What kind of role does serendipity play with strategy?
What should we do differently or more of in times of a recession?
What are the five secrets of living a fulfilling life?

And we even discussed the topic of retirement and living and leaving his legacy.

I know you will enjoy this podcast, will find it fascinating and Thank You! Alan.

Click below for podcast to start

Earlier I posted What have you bought for me lately story here on my blog. My good friend, Tom Breur, Principal of XLNT Consulting in the Netherlands was quick to point out the following fascinating facts. Here is what Tom emailed me and I am publishing it here with his permission. Thanks Tom.

That story actually serves multiple purposes, depending on which point I
am making.

World wide, about 100 Million transactions per day, 50 Billion transaction per year are being screeened online
for fraud, using a Neural Network model (in combination with business
rules). The market leader is Falcon, owned by Fair Isaac, formerly HNC.

Learning points:

1 – Because of the huge volume, the learning is remarkably precise.
Conversely, you need sufficient volume to tease out the signal from the
noise.

2 – You need the “feedback recording” of events in order to make such data
capture a sustainable organisatiopnal activity: credit card companies
“know” when they hit a false positive (they call, and then pass the transaction),
the false negatives are claimed (disputed) after the client receives their
statements. These data are fed back in to the application ot make it
“adaptive”

3 – There are costs for false positives (spoiled surpises, like yours
- that’s what everybody expects if you tell the story right which makes it
so much better), and false negatives, fraudylent transations that were
accepted. If you put those in the equation, you get “better” models, that
is, better tuned to the business needs. (another example of asymetric mis
classification costs I always use is credit cards: when accepted +$200
profit, when defaulting -$5000 write-off, therefore you cannot afford to
err very often).

It was almost 10PM and I was standing there at the Tel Aviv airport in Israel waiting for the announcement that my flight to the US is boarding. So in order to kill some time I decided to visit the beautiful, duty free, H. Stern jewelry store.

“You sure have a great taste” said the lovely sales lady, commenting on the gorgeous bracelet I was looking at.

“Thank you” I said.
“For a special lady I assume?” she asked.
“My beautiful wife of course” I said.
“Would you like me to check on the price for this?” She asked.
“Why not, it couldn’t hurt” I said.
“$18,000!” she said.
“EIGHTEEN THOUSAND?” I yelled. (Oh, did it hurt)

Probably noticing the nice Hublot watch I was wearing she continued: “May I show you something else?”
“Ok” I said.
She pulled out this beautiful watch that I immediately fell in love with. How did she know? And she even told me that it looked great on me. (Yes, it was a man’s watch and I believed her)

Unknowingly, several minutes later, the phone rang at my home in the US and it was 5 AM. My wife, still sleeping, answered and heard a friendly gentleman voice.
“Mrs. Barr?” he asked.
“Yes, and who is this?” she asked.
“This is John from the fraud department at MBNA. I just wanted to make sure you knew that a large purchase was just made overseas with your husband’s personal credit card.” He said.
“Where was it?” asked my wife.
“At the Tel Aviv airport in Israel.” He answered.
“Oh, that is fine said my wife. It is my husband I am sure buying me a surprise present.”
“I am so sorry.” He said. “I just ruined the surprise your husband was planning on for you.”

Several hours later, I was greeted by my wife, who came to pick me up at the Cleveland airport. With a huge smile she asked: “How was your trip and did you buy anything special?” I replied: “Great, and I got myself a little present at the airport. So do you like my new watch?”

It was a quite ride home that day.

(Note: Please see the note from my colleague Tom Breur from Holland regarding this story)

Early this week I submitted a proposal (among several others) to a prospect interested in our web site development. Shortly after I sent the proposal the prospect emailed me and asked me to further articulate what I mean in the proposal by suggesting to incorporate strong call-to-action techniques on all site pages. I thanked the prospect and suggested the answer is clearly articulated in a previous post on my blog: “what’s your call to action” and I then suggested they might find several other articles on my web site and blog to be of value:
How the 3 strikes rule applies to your web strategy
The importance of web site evolution
Blogging in the new year

So what are some simple and basic ideas of marketing your blog?
1. Include it in your email signature file.
2. Print it on your business card.
3. Verbally mention it in your discussions and presentations.
4. Mention it when writing your articles.
5. Leverage in your emails especially using my idea above of driving direct value to your current and future clients.

This prospect is not a dear new client.

A question was asked on one of the online forums we implemented and I help moderate: “How often does one need to add a new entry to a blog? How long or short should a typical entry be?” Here is my answer:

This is one of the topics I study, track, research, write about, consult others and help develop. So let me share my bias with you.

I am writing an article for my blog with the title of: “The slow death of blogs” and please don’t misunderstand me, blogs are a powerful business tools and are here to stay and evolve. I am referring to individuals that were convinced by someone or thought it is a good idea to start a blog. But they rarely post on it. Not only is it a poor reflection on them but it is also a sad underutilization and a waste of this powerful tool. Their blogs are doomed by google and more importantly by their possible readers and will eventually close down – It’s only a matter of time. Unfortunately, some are members of this forum and some I personally reached out to and recommended they start posting on their own blog. Well guess what, they did for a short while and then stopped. They may get their last minute of fame and get featured in my article.

So if you are thinking of starting a blog here are some pointers:

1. Minimum 3 posts per week but if you missed a week here and there, not a big deal.
2. Length of each post from one sentence to an article length (1.5 page) although I recommend you keep it short and with bullet points. Write effectively and don’t over think this point.
3. You can always break your posts into sections or to be continued which may create anticipation.
4. The key is INTERESTING and VALUABLE stuff. But you already knew that I am sure.
5. The other key is that there is much more to putting together a successful blog than just starting to blog.
6. A blog is a tool for rapid publishing giving 100% of the control to the author of the blog enabling you to basically fire your web master (well not quite but almost.)
7. Finally, the power in creating a rich experience for the user is by combining text, images, audio Podcasts and videos on your blog. See Alan Weiss for a great example of a fascinating blog. Mine is another of course.

There are other members on the forum that have interesting blogs. Ed Poll, Aviv Shahar, Dan Coughlin, Pam Harper and Michael Harrison among others.

Here are some articles I wrote that you may find of value before you make your final decision:

Blogging in the new year
How to make your blog posts more interesting
The importance of web site evolution
How to improve your marketing exposure

Improving your web site effectiveness.

In my quest to constantly improve our clients’ web sites and develop better and new successful Internet strategies for their business, I come across and review many web sites on a daily basis.

To illustrate and discuss the “good, bad and ugly” techniques used by others, and us, I am starting a new blog category today. “How to improve your web site effectiveness” will be devoted exactly for that purpose, discussions and illustrations of such practices, both good and bad. Please realize this category will reflect my personal bias and opinion, which you are welcome to disagree with. I would really like to hear your opinion and your sharing of other sites and concepts you think are bad practice or helpful.

This following site: www.singletongroup.com used to be a consultant web site and had all the basic elements of such a site. Recently it was changed to the following page:

(click image to enlarge)

Please realize that this page is the entire site now. There are no other sub pages to navigate. My assessment:

1. If this person is on vacation and it is their way of communicating such message, I see it as a poor sense of humor that would turn off customers.
2. If this person’s server was hacked (high jacked by someone else) I hope for their sake they recognize this soon.
3. If they decided to retire, I believe there are better ways of announcing it. But then again, they may not care.

I love a good sense of humor and I believe you can easily leverage it in your writing and professional web site development. However, this is definitely not such an example. Watch out what message your site conveys.