Ambron says BrandYourself isn’t so much about removing the negative as helping you create a [positive] presence online. I agree with that philosophy and also wonder if their Do It Yourself tools can really work. In my own experience, I find clients want to spend as little time and money as possible. They typically don’t understand my philosophy of:

Great online reputation management is actually great online marketing, which most every company should be doing.

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And I find this quote from Reuters to put things in perspective.

Most technology security experts, including many who have served in government, have said technical efforts to provide government access to encrypted devices inevitably degrades security for everyone. It is an argument that has been made since the 1990s, when the government tried and failed to force tech companies to incorporate a special chip into their products for surveillance purposes.

Tim Cook and Apple states in their letter to customers, “The FBI is proposing an unprecedented use of the All Writs Act of 1789 to justify an expansion of its authority.” Nothing like an from 200+ years ago to use in the high-tech world of 2016.

In any case, we should all read and listen to the issues and possible outcomes from this situation. It could affect our privacy for years to come.

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Online marketing professionals typically have an opinion on how to write LinkedIn profiles. Many of them promote the use of first person. They argue that first person is more friendly and inviting. I don’t disagree with that notion, however, there are intervening variables. Like search engine results, for example. It’s kind of a big deal since for the time being, Google is likely to pick up your LinkedIn profile on page one of a search for your name, or your company name.

Will Google easily recognize and display your information when it says, “I am a blah, blah, blah?” Who is “I?” Well, “I” is everyone on the planet. It’s more beneficial to write something like, “Mary Johnson is the founder of XYZ accounting and consulting firm and responsible for the day-to-day performance of more than fifty dedicated employees. Mary Johnson leads the company’s management team and is responsible for planning, operations and the company’s overall financial success.”

Why the third person and full name? According to Copyblogger, Google zeroes in on your LinkedIn profile summary. Using your first name in your summary allows Google to pick up “Mary Johnson is…” as not “I am the…” Makes sense doesn’t it!

The summary is the first big block of copy about you after your name, photo and job title. Then comes the listing of your past positions and education. Here’s the place to change it to first person. It reads more friendly and personal, and we’re not so concerned with Google displaying statements from these sections. And frankly, it feels more natural to write about ourselves in first person.

Bottom line? Write your summary in third person, and everything else in first person. You’ll get better Google search results while still conveying a more personal tone in the rest of your LinkedIn profile.

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The award for best chapter newsletter was physically awarded at People to People International’s Worldwide Conference in Tainan, Taiwan on September 17, 2014. Since I was unable to attend, fellow member, Ann Musser, accepted it on my behalf. The photo shows Ann presenting the award to me here in Kansas City, MO USA.

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Unfortunately, you might start out with two or three great blog topic ideas, and then, you’re stuck. You got nothing. No new topic ideas, and your commitment to regular blog posts means there are deadlines. If you had only taken a bit of time up front to plan your content. Well, it’s not too late, and you’ll be glad you did.

As a professional service or small business person, you don’t want to spend loads of time planning. However, a little time and thoughtfulness can allow you to create a simple, actionable content plan. Let’s review the essential elements of a content marketing plan.

Business objectives

Business objectives are two-fold: financial and marketing. It’s the same for any business plan. Financial objectives include quantitative goals, like “achieve a 12% growth in revenues,” or “increase revenue by $100,000” or “gain 20 warm leads.” The time frame might be monthly, quarterly or annually, and the time frame must be included in order to measure results.

Marketing objectives help you achieve your financial objectives. They might include:

• Increase the company’s brand awareness (as evidenced by website traffic, interactions with prospects, friends of the firm, etc.).

• Develop and nurture a reputation as a thought leader.

• Increase loyalty among clients and referral partners.

• Produce great content that is useful and valued by prospects and clients.

Marketing objectives are not always quantifiable, but online tools, like Google tools, provide a lot of data that can help beyond just assuming you’re making progress.

Content conversion goals – getting prospects to take “next steps”

As a business owner, you understand inbound marketing is a process. People find you and perhaps identify themselves as a bona fide prospect. Actions they take on your website can be tracked. Perhaps, they email you or call you or read a blog post. These actions, or steps, are all part of the conversion process.

“Key performance indicators” (KPIs) can help you assess your progress in content marketing and conversions. KPIs are readily trackable. KPIs might include:

• Website visits
• Time spent on your site or particular pages
• Video views
• Gated and ungated content downloads (e-books, PDFs, etc.)
• Blog/email subscriptions
• Blog comments
• Webinar registrations/attendees
• Mobile device readership

My advice: keep it simple at first. Track a couple things that make the most sense. Add others as you gain a better understanding of your audience, their needs and preferences.

Understand your audience via “buyer personas”

A buyer persona is a thoughtful method of coming to grips with your ideal customers. According to Hubspot, a buyer persona is a “semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.”

The buyer persona identification process forces you to take a closer look into the needs, motivations, demographics, behavior patterns and goals of your customers and prospective customers. They are the people you want to educate, persuade and influence into being your customers. Your content should be designed to help them solve their problems or achieve their goals, and convince them that you might be just the one to help.

Topics and keywords

With some thought, you should come up with topics and categories of topics that are important to your buyer personas. You can also use keyword tools. Google has some simple and free keyword tools:

• Enter a word or specific word combinations that you think are relevant to your audience into the Google search window on your browser. The organic and paid search results may give you new wrinkles on the topics interesting to your audiences. Google immediately suggests similar words and phrases that might yield appropriate topics for you.

• Follow the same steps as above i.e,. conduct a normal search on relevant terms. This time go to the bottom of the screen and note the header, “Searches related to…” Those suggestions there for searchers are also ideas for you!

• Jump into google Adwords and its keyword tool if you’re a bit more sophisticated or just resolute. It’s also free to use, although it is part of their pay per click tool should you decide to go live. It will give you more keyword ideas when you enter a few. You can even submit your competitors’ website URLs to see what keywords Google offers as relevant for a given website.

The longer keywords, say two to four words, will help you think of topics. If you want more tools, well, just Google for “free keyword tools” or “paid keyword tools.”

Content types

The types of content for your website can vary widely. Following are some of the most common types of content.

Evergreen articles

The majority of your content should be evergreen, content that will have a long shelf life. Discuss the topics important to your audiences. Give them helpful, insightful information. Offering your own point of view can differentiate you from the competition.

Guides or “How-Tos”

Expert guidance, such as information on how to do “something” in which you are an expert, gives your audience valuable tips and guidance. It also gives them an insight to you as a provider of such services.

Curated content

Content curation is simply sharing content from other sources. When you come across an interesting blog post, website, video, etc., share it by adding a brief post on your blog and share it via your social media updates. Enhance the curated content by adding insightful comments or your own perspective.

Whitepapers

Whitepapers or point of view (POV) articles help inform your audience and also showcase your own knowledge and expertise. They usually are longer articles or publications with modest use of images and graphic design.

Case studies

Case studies can inform readers and offer an in-depth look at how your company helps clients. The classic formula is to present a business challenge, the solution and the benefits gained.

News jacking

Comment on trending topics and news stories. Demonstrate that you’re current with your industry or profession. David Meerman Scott’s book, “News Jacking,” describes news jacking as “a process by which you inject your ideas or angles into breaking news, in real-time, in order to generate media coverage for yourself or your business.”

eBooks

Ebooks are a long-form way to share your knowledge with others, to increase website or blog traffic and to promote your expertise in a given area. They can be self-published and distributed electronically.

Webinars

Record your webinars or live presentations and add to your content mix.

Videos

Videos can increase in your visitors’ understanding of your organization and products, thus increasing the chances of gaining new customers. Costs and production value can vary greatly, so it’s important to know what you want and how much you can spend.

Schedule your content posts – yes, you need a calendar

Content marketers are publishers, and publishers know they have to keep churning out the stories and information that people will consume. This can be a big adjustment for some. Your calendar, with schedules and deadlines, will help keep you on task. It will help you decide which topics are most important and when they should be publicized. Schedule your content items for 6 to 12 months into the future.

Distribute your posts

Your content is created for your website, that’s where it lives and where internet searchers can find it via Google, Yahoo or Bing. Your email tool (think Constant Contact or MailChimp) is an equally important way to distribute, or share, your content. Add links to your new web content on social media outlets: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. as appropriate. Pay per click (PPC) advertising can be another way to help internet searchers find you. Google AdWords is the most used PPC tool. Yahoo and Bing have PPC programs . The social media tools like Facebook LinkedIn and Twitter are adding and refining their own advertising tools.

Purposeful planning can increase your chances of content marketing success. By being organized and methodical, you can build your reputation as an expert in your field. Prospects will find your content, customers will gain new insights and you will be happy you invested time and energy into a comprehensive content marketing plan.

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Responsive Web Design

This year I’ve built new websites for clients on responsive design platforms. Mobile responsive design has been talked about for a few years, but I think it’s really become a must in the last couple of years. And it’s much easier to accomplish today with responsive design platforms, like most of the StudioPress WordPress themes.

If responsive web design is a somewhat unfamiliar, no worries. Responsive web design is a website design that adjusts elegantly to fit on desktop, tablet and smartphone browsers. No longer will people get essentially the same website view as a desktop – only scrunched to fit the smaller space. Instead, the responsive technology adjusts the website content to  the particular device. Searchers and visitors can easily see and navigate the available content.

Strategic Compliance, Inc.

The website displayed here is for Strategic Compliance, Inc., a “boutique, human resources consultancy offering critical wage and hour compliance solutions. Owner Alfonso Zarate created the business to leverage his past experience as a Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Department (WHD) investigator. He seeks to bridge the gap between legal compliance issues and everyday human resource issues, and help employers better relate to employees from different cultures or who speak different languages.

Alfonso’s experience as a WHD Investigator helps his clients defend themselves against WHD investigations, saving them time, money and headaches. He is proficient in reading, writing and speaking to/from English/Spanish. During his time as a WHD Investigator, Alfonso received the prestigious Secretary of Labor Exceptional Achievement Award on three occasions.

Lofstrom + Company professionals developed the firm’s branding, including the logo and tagline, and built the website content and design from the ground up. We chose the “Executive Pro” theme from StudioPress, which allowed us to have mobile responsive design with very few alterations to underlying code.

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Our chapter of  People to People International was recently honored as the “2014 People to People International’s Chapter Newsletter Award” winner. Our chapter president kindly gave me kudos for my part in publishing the member email news blast.

People to People International Kansas City Chapter Members,

Please the attached. I nominated Gary Lofstrom for the PTPI Newsletter award and he won! This is quite an honor for Gary and the Chapter. While I know a number of members have contributed to the quality of the Newsletter, Paulette Markel, Karen Haber and others, it is Gary who pulls it all together and comes up with the great graphics and layout.

Larry Dolci

Chapter President

And the award  letter from People to People International

Dear Greater KC Chapter,

Congratulations!

It is a sincere pleasure to inform you that your chapter is the 2014 recipient of People to People International’s Chapter Newsletter Award. Your achievements will be recognized at our Annual Awards Ceremony and Dinner at the
21’t Worldwide Conference in Tainan, Taiwan. This prestigious program will take place at The Tayih Landis Hotel on Friday, September 19 at 6:30 pm. We hope that one or more members of your chapter are able to join us, along with your peers from around the world, so that we can personally thank you.

I must acknowledge that I use MailChimp, a great email tool. You should try it, too.  Now if I can only raise money so I can travel to Taiwan and pick up the award. I wonder if the country offers any grants!

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I was honored yesterday by my peers within the Kansas City chapter of International Association of Business Communicators (kc.iabc.com) as the 2014 Entrepreneur of the Year. The award was presented at the annual Business Communicators Summit. I am grateful for the recognition and want to say again that IABC has been a great professional organization for so many marketing communications professionals to cultivate their skills and achieve their personal and career goals.

Per our chapter’s guidelines, the Entrepreneur of the Year Award recognizes the achievements of our industry’s self-employed professionals. These individuals inspire us with their entrepreneurial spirit by organizing, managing and assuming the risks of running a business and demonstrate:

• A strong book of clients
• An ongoing, active role in IABC
• Assistance and support to other communications professionals – both organizational and independent
• A position of respect among their fellow entrepreneurs
• Evidence of business stability

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This headline is a question posed frequently by clients when I ask them for their most recent, high quality head shot, or ask them to get a head shot photo taken for their website. I generally support the idea of a photo to go with a bio. However, I think there are times when certain people prefer to omit their photo for security and/or privacy reasons. I know there’s not much in the way of privacy once you do much of anything on the Internet, but if a person has such a concern, then it should be respected. As for revealing one’s age, gender, etc., the bio even without a photo will reveal quite of bit of information (if it’s at all informative). Final thought, I don’t stay long on a website if it the people behind it are a mystery! What are they hiding?

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A large number of communications professionals and other business managers wanted to learn more about the social intranet today by hearing how industry giant, Cerner Corporation, introduced the Jive platform to its 10,000+ employees and numerous clients, business partners, invited guests-researchers and industry experts. The presentation was titled, “Using Social Business Tools to Improve Internal Communications” and was presented by International Association of Business Communicators colleague, and Cerner Program Manager, Lance Yoder.

As a past employee of large organizations, I find this rather fascinating. How can these multinational companies improve internal communications? How can they improve communications with customers, vendors, industry experts, etc.? Based on how curious people from organizations without sophisticated social intranets, Cerner must be on to something.

For me, a one person communications consultant, I want to to know how these tools might affect smaller businesses, which are important clients to me. Can small businesses use them now, or is it, for now, a tool for larger companies with deeper pockets and the personnel to operate the tools.

If I can learn about such trends as they occur, hopefully I will be a more valued consultant to small business enterprise.

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