Oregon PTA 97th Annual Leadership Conference

Today I’ll be speaking at the Oregon PTA Annual Leadership Conference. I’ve a number of electronic resources available to participants:

Presentation

Social Media Campaign Plan

Online Forum

Workshop Handouts

Thank you very much for attending!

If you have any questions about the workshop, or would like to ask a follow-up question, I encourage you to Contact Me, or, make a public post in the forum. Thanks again -

R

Case Study – 1996 Olympic Park Bombing

I’ve added a new presentation to my website. A brief overview of the 1996 Olympic Park Bombing in Atlanta, Georgia; this presentation is used in a graduate Homeland Security class offered by Colorado Technical University.

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AfHviP2oD6cNZGZ4MjZidDdfMTQ1MWNnODZyd2hi&hl=en

R

A Simple 3-Step Approach to Using Social Media

Hey there -

Are you a small business owner? Has the buzz about Social Media and Social Networking piqued your interest? Are you underwhelmed with the idea of letting people know what you had for lunch, but see some value in extending your professional network online? Okay, do you want a simple approach to get started with Social Media?

First, get the notion out of your head that Social Media is complicated and just about conveying what somebody had for lunch. Think of Social Networking as the same thing we do in person – shaking hands, meeting people, gaining trust, building relationships – except you’re doing it electronically. Social Networking is the same thing you’ve always done to promote your services and brand: it’s just word-of-mouth … through a keyboard.

Second, if Social Networking is the same stuff you’ve been doing, hey, you’re already a pro! Think about when you’re at an onground networking event. What’s your elevator pitch? Who’s a good referral for you? What’s the best value you bring to a client? How can you transform their lives or business? This kind of self-promotion shouldn’t be new to you – and it’s exactly how Social Networking works online. See? I knew you’d be great at this.

Third, getting started is easy but it helps if you can create some structure for yourself. A lot of experts on social media have some complicated advice. Well, here’s an easy three-step process that I think anybody can use to get started building their online brand.

1. Create a Destination.

Got a website? If you do already, fantastic! Go to step two! If you don’t, go on to Facebook, register for a username if you don’t already have one, and create a Page for your business. That Page allows you to market and talk about your business to prospective clients. It serves as a great destination with plenty of advertising and marketing tools to help you extend your Social Networking campaign later on. Just, for now, you need a destination.

2. Join a Social Network.

If you followed my advice and joined Facebook already, great! Stop here! Go to Step Three! Perhaps you’re already on Twitter, Linked-In, Facebook, or Buzz, and either are okay. What you’re trying to do is connect to a community of potential or existing clients in your local community who’re interested in you, your business, and who you are as a person. As business people, we all keep a stack of business cards of friends and associates so we can make timely referrals. Joining a Social Network is no different.  Just picture these things as a huge Rolodex with a zillion business cards.

3. Socialize, Promote, and Listen.

If you have a blog on your Destination, write! If you made that Facebook Page, start a Blog under the Page. Post some updates. When you post to your blog or write an update, use the Social Network to link back to what you wrote about. Think about using the Social Network – literally, a connection to people wherever they are – to draw people back to your Destination. Promote your destination whenever you can. Meanwhile, make two posts a week on your Destination. Keep the posts under 200 words. Think: “I’m going to write about the same darn stuff I talk about when I’m doing social networking onground.” It doesn’t have to be extensive, profound, or “professional” sounding – heck, the best bloggers ditch professionalism in exchange for personality. That’s what keeps people coming back – you!

What this will do is create a piece of intellectual property – real estate – that you own on the Internet. You then will interconnect yourself into an online community of like-minded business associates and customers in your area who’re tuned-in to your channel, and are listening to what you have to say. Finally, you’re leveraging those connections by saying something.

By just getting started using this simple approach, you can start leveraging Social Media in the same way you leverage social networks onground, and, set up a good practice for participating in an online world.

Plus, this helps with Search: the more content you create gets indexed by search engines, who then point back to your Destination when returning relevant results on your specialties, expertise, or business niche. The more content you create, the more relevant and important you can appear. And that could mean real business when somebody goes searching for you online.

And finally, remember to Listen. Social Media is a two-way, interactive media. People will respond to what you have to say. This could be an opportunity for you. Listen to others and engage and acknowledge them.

This ain’t hard and it’s not anything you haven’t done before. Get out there and start networking!

R

Re-Thinking: Business

Business is about competition. We drill this idea into the minds of students to an extent that competitiveness becomes a prism to interpret all aspects of a company. Stock prices, EPS, market caps, evaluation of its financial statements, its policies and obligations towards labor, its expense and production ratios, its marketing strategy, or even the way that it invests in philanthropy. In business, a company is defined by its competitiveness.

I rarely read my local business journal but – when I do – I’m inundated with “lists”. The journal publishes lists of the “top” banker, lists of the “top” web services company, lists of the twenty-five most influential real estate agents. And these lists are usually organized by some exaggerated metric like gross revenue, or the number of things they own, or the square footage of stuff they offer, or the percentage of market share they have. You’d think there’d be more to publish about business in the worst recession since the Great Depression but I figure it must be the lists that sell copy because that’s all they’re always talking about. Maybe lists are an appeal to the vanity of their subscribers who can tout, “Ooo – Look: we’re the 16th largest telecommunications company in the area.”  They even publish this monstrous, gaudy “Book of Lists” every year so you can, you know, see how competitive you are and where you place in the Great Race of Lists. Maybe they think I use it to make purchasing decisions or finding a telephone number? A ridiculous idea, I know – I use Google to find things and to help inform my decisions, not a telephone book or a Book of Lists (BOL). Well, intriguing Infoporn that it is, the BOL is a huge waste of bound glossy paper to me and I just end up throwing it away. It has zero impact on doing my business.

Competition is good. It’s competition that forces companies to innovate and to provide increasing value to consumers. It encourages companies to improve upon their core competencies. It’s also quite thrilling – being successful as a business owner offers its own sweet rewards. There’s nothing wrong with competition.

However, where I think competition goes wrong is when we boil the value of business to something like baseball stats and become overly-infatuated with our own standing. That’s how we got Countrywides, or Enrons, or Goldman-Sachs, or Citigroups: where the inflated numbers told us about size and market share but nothing about how the business was managed. Where competition goes wrong is when running your business becomes more of a mundane chore rather than the exhilarating challenge you felt when it first launched. I feel that – where competition goes wrong – is when the mission of the business becomes less about making good products and services, and more about pleasing investors, shareholders, or lenders. Competition goes wrong when a company puts more emphasis in bragging about the sales they’ve earned than earning the business (the trust) they’ve received from their clients.

There are millions of small businesses out there that don’t make the “lists” but do a good job by their clients and customers. Business owners enjoy what they do and aren’t overly-concerned with cocktail parties, after-hours networking events, schmoozing with local political wanna-be’s. They just want to provide an excellent service and make their customers happy. That’s when competition does right. But how do you measure that?

Besides, when I look at these lists and the metrics they propose, they’re completely antithetical to the way that I want to run my business. I don’t want or need employees: that’s a serious liability if not an inefficient means of managing my expenses. I don’t want a facility or an office suite: that’s just recurring fixed costs and property taxes go up every year … why do I want that? I don’t want products: that means inventory, square footage, and assets I can’t turn. I don’t want a fleet of trucks or a trite car detailed-out with my branding: that’s just gimmick, and does anybody doubt the cost of oil will go up? Seriously: is driving around to fix a disposable asset like a computer what any sane person wants to do? And I don’t want huge market share: if my firm got too big, I’d loose sight of pleasing my customers or enjoying what I do – I like being “small”.

Hey, I run a very profitable business that thrives because of low overhead, managing data not stuff, thrives with modern telecommunications, and a commitment to doing right by my customers. I run my business because I love what I do – I get to have fun every day doing the stuff I love doing – and I strive to earn the trust of my clients.

We live in a different age. How can “lists” that track older, material metrics of competitive success be relevant in a world where “tall” organizations aren’t the norm but the problem, and the goal is to become increasingly more “flat” or even “virtual”? How can “lists” measure satisfaction, trust, or fun? If the goal is to become tremendously productive and to do more with less, and if the goal is to establish trust and to get closer to the concerns of your clients, lists like these seem to lose the point.

In this economy, it’s not about how big you are. It’s how smart you are. It’s about how well you’re trusted. It’s not about out-competing and undoing your competition, but collaborating and working with your competition to provide even better value to each other’s clients. In this economy, business isn’t about campuses, plush corner offices, or impressive conference tables. It’s about mobility, agility, and owning nothing at all. Business is about getting closer to your customer and earning their trust, and not just taking them for granted as another statistic for your next listing.

My company never makes the list. I think, though, the local business journal (and its readership) has a lot to consider in re-thinking what business is in the digital age.

R

Press Release: Announcing a Cisco Partner for Small Business in Vancouver, WA

97th Oregon PTA Leadership Conference Presentation

Just FYI:

Posting the presentation that I’ll be using at the 97th Oregon PTA Leadership Conference. I’ll be delivering my workshop of Social Media on Saturday April 24, 2010 around 2:30pm.

R

Social Media Marketing for the Small Business

I just updated the Social Media Marketing Plan on the website. This is a quick and easy template that any small business can use to market themselves more effectively using Social Media. I update this material regularly, so keep an eye on the blog for new updates and extended information!

R

Anywhere is Where it’s At

Let’s see if you’re up on the trade. Take this little survey.

The category of computing devices that saw the most unit sales, increase in platform performance, and content growth in the last decade (2000-2009) was the:

A. Microcomputer (PC or Mac)

B. Laptop

C. Mini Laptop

D. Cell Phone

E. Tablet

Yeah, you already intuitively know the answer, don’t you? It’s D: Cell Phones.

Cell phones are experiencing an extraordinary transformation from a simple communications device to a powerful computer capable of a range of digital entertainment, displacing our use of gaming consoles, laptops, and even television. The cell is also sporting cool productivity applications that allow us to do our business on the road. More than a billion of these things have been sold at affordable price-points around the world; it’s obvious dual-purpose makes it a real bargain for users in developing nations. And when we think about programming opportunities, nobody is saying, “Hey, let’s write this program for a PC.” They’re saying, “Hey, let’s write this program for an iPhone! Or an iPad! Le’ts make it mobile!”

Anywhere is where it’s at. It’s likely where you’re at, too, right now: not in front of a PC but somewhere … out there … connecting, approving, sharing, collaborating, producing, and consuming. Anywhere, it seems, is the office of the future, and it’s where your customers are and where you obviously need to be!

That may be big news for the small business who could have spent the last five years trying to make it possible to interact with their customers using self-service applications on the web, and front-loading their marketing campaigns with content management systems. Many have spent the last five years trying to make it easier to let the customer beat an electronic path to their door. Now, it’s time to leave.

It’s time to integrate mobility as a small business technology strategy and not just a convenience. Instead of thinking of PC’s, how can much of your small business work be conducted by a cell phone? Or how can a cell phone displace the laptop and contain or eliminate those kinds of expenses? How will your customers and employees want to use tablets? How’re they already using smartphones … how do they want to use smart phones? And how can you enable them?  Instead of planning for new desktops, how can you plan for mobility, and allow employees to use their own computers – on their own nickel? Given the rising cost of oil and gas, maybe Mobility (capital-M) should become a core competency?

There are a lot of technologies that can help out here, the least of which are smart phone options, but also strategic use of cloud computing and restructuring your applications portfolio. But there’s a clear choice to small business these days: continue to invest in stationary, distributed technologies that force you to stay in the office, or, invest in centralized, cloud-based, and mobile technologies that accommodate a diversity of access models, to reduce costs and transform business.

A great example: my own application of this stuff.

1. I use QuickBooks Plus Online which allows me access to my financials anywhere at any time. I can even access its mobile features on my iPhone, allowing me to generate reports and even prepare invoices from the phone if I wanted. My accountant even has direct access.

2. Now, my email system is hosted through Google Apps, and I’ve got all of my calendars, email, and contacts integrated across multiple laptops and desktop machines running Mac O/S, Windows, and Linux. It totally integrates with my iPhone. It effectively lets me communicate anywhere and on any machine.

3. Plus, I’ve got Skype going on each platform, including my cell phone, allowing me to contain my telephone expenses.

4. Further, I use this app called DropBox to synchronize my files between all of my machines – I can even access my files (over 50 gigs of data) on my iPhone using the app.

5. And the documents I share to my clients and to my students are hosted through Google Docs, which integrates into my website and my content management channels that I can monitor with Google Analytics. All the content that I create gets shared, re-published, and integrated into my Search strategy, and is reinforced by social media.

What does this mean? Total mobility: I can access my office from anywhere, and I don’t have to remote control any machine to do it. My office is mobile. It’s with me. It _is_ me. All the time. I can respond to my customers faster and have everything I need at all times. And even if my office burns down, it’s still with me. Anywhere I want to be.

You should be anywhere, too. Hey, it’s a cool place to be, but the most perfect place for small business.  Best of all: it’s where your customers are expecting you. Jump in – the water’s fine. I can teach you how to swim .

R

New Presentation: Dept of Homeland Security – Information Sharing

A new presentation has been added to the site: Department of Homeland Security: Information Sharing.

RDC via RWW Misrepresented Resolution on Windows 7 Station

Just FYI -

An oddball thing that I encountered today.

I had a user using Remote Web Workplace on a Windows 2003 Server to connect to a Windows XP box behind the firewall. The user was using IE8 on a Windows 7 box. The default options were chosen to connect Full Screen to the remote PC.

The connection was established appropriately except that the screen resolution was always off, forcing vertical and horizontal scroll bars. I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t scaling the resolution correctly; it was always taking the next highest resolution up. It was very odd.

Finally, I figured out that his browser’s zoom control (IE8) was set to 75-percent. When I set the zoom control to 100-percent, the scaling must have been communicated accurately through the RDC ActiveX control, and the problem went away: I got a perfectly scaled screen with no scroll bars.

That one took me a little while to figure out. Just FYI to anybody out there who encounters something similar.

R