Blog, to grow your business: a Solari Position Paper

Do you want to grow your business, engage your customers, enhance your
brand, elevate your reputation, and increase sales?

Blog.

Properly carried out, blogging is good for business. Your blogs can
cultivate a community of customers, prospects, and advocates to help attain
the goals mentioned above. You can discover how in our latest position paper
entitled “Embrace Social Media: Blogging and Microblogging”.

Read the position paper as an entry in Solari’s “Toward Humanity” blog: and leave a comment.

Or download the PDF and click the top link.

Tell us what you think. Your insights are welcome.

STC Scholarship Opportunity

On April 1st, the STC Technical Editing SIG announced that we were accepting scholarship applications for 2009. The deadline for applying for a $2,000 scholarship has been extended to Sunday, May 10th, 2009. If you intend to submit an application and have not already done so, please go to the STC Technical Editing SIG Web site and apply. There will be one graduate and one undergraduate scholarship awarded.

Co-manager, TE SIG

To Tweet, or Not to Tweet?

You can’t turn on the radio or read the newspaper without hearing some mention of Twitter, one of the fastest growing social networking sites, allowing short posts comprised of 140 character limits.

The question on everyone’s mind is ‘What is Twitter and why should I care?’
I can’t make your mind up on if you should care, but I can at least provide some insight.

Myths and Mysteries
My first reaction to Twitter was an absolute “NO”. I could see no reason for anyone to know what I was doing at all times. Don’t get me wrong, I love the social networking sites like LinkedIn, MySpace, and Facebook, but I don’t want everyone knowing what I am doing at all times. That is a whole new level of stalking that I am not ready for. (You CAN end sentences with prepositions. Your teacher was old and lied to you.) But, being too quick to judge, I found out that Twitter does not have to be the ultimate stalking tool. You don’t have to be the self-centered ‘Twit’ who posts about their daily grind!

How Can Twitter Help Me?
As I added valuable friends, which I consider as professionals in my industry and peers whose opinions I trust, I realized that their posts were not a 24hr fest of ‘Naptime over- now it is time for a trip to Half Price Books.’ Ok, so one of you DID post that, but I didn’t mind. Read the rest of this entry »

The generational effect on social media – Our youngest generation sets the tone while the rest of us struggle to engage

The year you were born has a profound effect on how well you ‘get’ social media, and how comfortable you feel communicating through its numerous channels. The generations—Baby Boomers, Gen X, and Gen Y—all perceive and employ social media in markedly different ways. Understanding how these generations grew up sheds light on why this is so.

Baby Boomers. Most Baby Boomers simply don’t get social media. And why should they? Born at least 50 years ago, Boomers grew up when many telephones were shared party lines; when calling long distance required operator assistance and was saved for Sunday afternoons (reserved for the few family members living out of town); when all your friends lived in your neighborhood and you went to their house to talk with them; when television was black and white, had only three stations, and only broadcast during the day; when letters were written regularly; when essay test questions were answered by handwriting in ‘blue books’; where the library was for conducting research; and record players spun 45s of Elvis embodying the breathtaking new sound of rock ’n’ roll. Read the rest of this entry »

Know your user’s technology level

I have a client that develops software for managing specialized functions in the travel industry. Their software development team produced a video contrasting an early version of their software with their newest release. They wrote and produced a terrific movie. They asked me to help produce a nice distribution disk using artwork they had produced. This couldn’t be easier. All I needed to do was design a simple DVD “label” that my burner’s LightScribe labeling technology would etch into the DVD. They would burn the movie to the DVDs using their equipment.

The first DVD I labeled would not play reliably. It worked fine on their Macs, not on their PCs or stand-alone DVD players. I burned a new disk burning both the movie and the label. This disk worked on their stand-alone players, Macs, and most PCs, but not all. Read the rest of this entry »

Ready to Build a Better Blog? Problogger.com to Kick Off 31 Day Challenge (aka FREE Training)

I noticed a query on our forum asking about training opportunities, so I thought I’d share that on April 6, 2006, Problogger, Darren Rowse, is kicking off his free program 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. This is a great opportunity to flesh out your own answers to the top questions marketers ask about social media I mentioned in an earlier post.

If you’re just getting started in blogging or are hoping to fine-tune an established blog, I’m sure you’ll get some value out of this free training. I’ve been following Problogger for a while, and have found both the website and Darren’s book to be a wonderful resource as I’ve ventured into the blogosphere.

I’m excited to be a part of the challenge. Worst case scenario, I unsubscribe after a couple of days with a start. Any other Mar-Com-ers out there want to join me? Darron mentioned that there is a group of 50 Italian bloggers who joined together to have the added benefit of the power of a group. It’d be kind of fun to see if we could give them a run for their money. I can think of a blog that could benefit from this sort of community effort….. Anyone, anyone, Buehlor?

Enough with the arm twisting, here are a few details from the instructor:

1. It is free and kicks off on 6 April.
2. Each day over the challenge period (31 Days) you’ll receive an email notifying you of a new post that contains teaching and practical tasks to help you improve your blog.
3. Tasks will be small enough to do in 10-15 minutes
4. You may unsubscribe at any point if the challenge doesn’t fit with your needs or situation.

New to blogging? Come on in, the water’s fine.

Call for Proposals: Special Issue on “Legal Issues in Global Contexts”

Technical Communication, the journal of the Society for Technical Communication (STC), is soliciting article proposals for an upcoming special issue that will examine how factors of law and of culture affect how technical communicators work in international and cross-cultural contexts. This special issue will be published in November 2010, and the guest editors are Kirk St.Amant of East Carolina University and Martine Courant Rife of Lansing Community College.

SPECIAL ISSUE DESCRIPTION
Legal issues are increasingly affecting the work we do as industry practitioners, academic researchers, university and college educators, and independent entrepreneurs in technical communication. In some cases, these legal issues involve notions of ownership, copyright, and trade secrets. In other instances, legal concerns related to privacy, disclosure, and free speech affect how technical communicators perform different activities. These legal issues are further complicated by different cultural perspectives related to working in global environments and to addressing the informational needs of different cultural groups within our own nations. Very few individuals in technical communication, however, are lawyers or have formal training in issues of law and its intersection with different cultural communication expectations and assumptions.

This special issue of Technical Communication will examine the legal issues affecting technical communication practices related to designing materials for or to working with individuals from other nations and cultures. Read the rest of this entry »

How Marketers are Using Social Media to Grow Their Business

Social Media Marketing Industry Report

Earlier this week, I received a flutter of tweets through my twitter account about Michael A. Stelzner’s hot off the presses white paper: Social Media Marketing Industry Report-How Marketers are Using Social Media to Grow Their Businesses.

Whether or not you’re involved in social media marketing today, you should take a moment to read the paper. Stelzner provides great details and plenty of charts to help you build a business case for easing into this new realm of marketing.

Major Findings About Social Media Marketing

Want to know what you’ll find in the report? Here are Stelzner’s major findings. I found these to be very interesting and spot-on with what I have experienced while working with my clients. In fact, the top three questions are always the first thing questions my clients ask! Read the rest of this entry »

The nut as an effective marketing tool

Immediately impress your clients and prospects with strategic three-dimensional marketing.

“THE NUT” ARRIVED IN THE MAIL, AS IS, without a box, for a deep visual impact (see the photo). The postal carrier was so impressed, she had to stop in and hand it to me personally. Why? Because “the nut” is a coconut!—a three-dimensional fruit sent to gain my attention. And that it did.

Hand-written quotes from numerous famous and influential people cover “the nut”. Karl Schweitzer, president and founder of MobiRez, a client, colleague, and friend, sent me “the nut” to honor our relationship and to make an impression. For him, it was the perfect marketing device.

Consider, for a moment, the effectiveness of your marketing if you sent your version of “the nut” to tightly targeted prospects. It most definitely would be remembered; people would stop to admire and inspect it. It could even become the buzz of the office. On thing is for sure—it would make an impact. Read the rest of this entry »

Communications is both simpler and more complex.

Producing communications projects is increasingly becoming both simpler and more complex. It is far simpler in that the functionality in the tools needed to create effective communications have blurred. For example, if you want to create a dynamic, interactive element, Macromedia Flash is an obvious choice but this tool requires considerable effort to develop expertise. Most administrative assistants will be tempted to point out that, on the surface, Microsoft’s PowerPoint can create some of the same elements. The project’s production appears simpler in that the functionality is available on any computer using Microsoft Office.

In fact there are very legitimate, and technical, reasons for using a tool like Flash. Understanding these issues and mastering these alternate digital tools is essential. Going forward we will discuss specific projects, the tools capable of creating these projects, and the relative strengths of each.