Good starting points and glad you put in some of the twitter-ethics. To easily I've seen new marketers begin to blast their message w/o thought that it's not a megaphone but a conversation.

-andy aka @ciordia9

Will is always working it in our area. The mans gears are always turning. :)

I remember prepping for a conference presentation once and, backing up what is being said here, an audience only retains 4-8% of what is said. The presenter wants to give their entire mindshare of their domain, when really all you are going to pass along is a brick or two of the foundation.

People should attend more functions like Pecha Kucha nights in their areas to learn what a presentation can be boiled down to. (20 slides, 6 minutes I believe)

Slides back up your message but should never be read from. Give people hooks into what you are trying to say and let them have good materials to follow up with you, or the imminent domain you're speaking about.

It drives me insane when people just read from a slide. I've started leaving those presentations whenever I can because I can read the cliff notes without an orator. Your communicating with an audience of rapt minds, show them what they don't know, show them what you do know, show them how to know more and do it with great imagery and thought provoking syntax.

While I hate a bad presentation boy do I love a good one.

Using Safari, OSX, under articles when you go to create a link (via the GUI) it pops up a box but nothing ever loads. I loaded it in Firefox and the JS populates right but tried again in Safari and its just empty.

Great idea.

Anyone have a book recommendation on these ideas? Last night we had 55 ppl come out to one of my meetings, 85% of them were new faces and not one of them wanted to be called on. I know what the hotseat is like and I dislike it so I don't go far into peoples comfort zone but I'd love some further ideas on group participation notions or books I should read. :)

Not that this is the best moment for gaining traditional lending, I would say go find your local SCORE and SBA communities. In my area the SBA has Community Express loans that can help many people with good credit some small loans (<35k). They might also have programs based on ethnicity and gender.

Getting in touch with them is a great thing from business review, educational series, and more.

Secondary advice for photography/essay books?

One of my many hats I wear is photographer. In a few weeks I'll be going to Slow Food's Terra Madre in Italy. I'm a big supporter of local food and am involved with running our own chapter of Slow Food in Charlotte, NC. I've done an agriculture related book before that received a lot of good local purchase support but haven't tackled something on a national/international stage yet.

I believe with all the food crisis press that covering an event that brings together 159 countries to share food traditions and culture to be something that might be provocative and worthy of publication.

Looking for further ideas built upon those listed that might help me reach the market.

From what I understand the "menu" like google results are generated when each of your sub/internal pages begin to rank on their own accord. After some magic "google" math they begin to glue together. A site map is needed to have the process begin, but then to get it through all the hurdles you need to gain rank everywhere.

Great followup. We've already been in a recession and the tide has been pulled way back locally. It's going to be odd to see just how high it does fully retract.

We're always trying to explain to those with resources that they really need to step up and broadcast loud and clear in this time. The more a brand retracts the less stable it is after this all washes.

Not sure if I approve of the passing package but lets just add more rock to the roll and move forward as quickly as possible. I'm ready for a saner tomorrow, that's for sure.

The problem I run into is where do you draw the line. Do you just put a white paper out there with all your prices? I'm the owner of a consultancy, we have packages, book rates, and a serious litany of services. To me publishing the entire ledger is just overkill not to mention client overload.

To me publishing prices creates pre-qualification. Good for those who continue to seek you after they've read it all, but again how do you go about picking just which offerings to show?

The real answer is probably akin to publish your most popular packages and then do split a/b testing with different packages and different items to see what causes a greater conversion.

Time time time! hehe

Good article,

-andy

I had a feeling you'd take your commentary and compose something for us. Great read, can't wait for the sequel and I hope the final article in the trilogy is how the market stabilized. ;-)

It's sad when irrational fear combined with media over attention and mal-reporting on top of a poor government proposal sure has made this divot harder than it should have been.

Practice just makes perfect.

As a photographer I tell those I photograph if you want to know the secret of being captured well it's just practicing what you want to see and then when you need to do it, you recall the feeling and you set the pose.

A model is (and many actors are) good at their job because they recall emotion asked for and put it into play. People aren't good at being worked with because it's unthought of, unpracticed.

Mirrors are great tools. See who you want to see, feel how you look when you look your best. Remember, recall.

People forget how you can be anything with practice. The trick is sticking with it and making time for it. The old personal trainer in me can attest to the 3 month rule. If you can survive a change of lifestyle for 3 months you can continue for life. 80% of clients don't last 3 months.

Anyhow, good article. You've given me even more reason to add practice into any speaking engagement. Then I can forget the dialog and just focus on the audience. The rest plays out so natural it's kismet. Good stuff.

-andy

Squidoo is fundamentally a backlink and lead generator. Harnessing the power of their site can help you in rankings.

If you one time had a page lens it further on your own blog.

John it looks like you handled the page real well. Great demonstration of knowledge and your article writing is clean and helpful. Thanks for sharing your information and I'm sure it will lead to some inquiries. :)

Yes, another East Coaster. I get worried sometimes that we aren't being represented! I fully endorse getting out on your own. It's a boatload more work than you ever thought possible but it's your work. Not someone elses.

I don't like to outsource design to the design chop shops so I'd love to learn more about you!

-andy

Hi Melinda, I work a lot at markets and help my in-laws with a chocolatier startup and am real good friends with a lot of AI bakers locally, so I know the row that you're facing. I'm just going to shotgun some ideas out for you..

1 Get to your local market.

Very low overhead and you get to make face-to-face relationships with people.

2 Hold Parties

Think of packaged catering for people who have gatherings. Build some desserts, and then have some on-hands participation. Calculate it to a cost per person and market it to clients.

3 Get In Retail

Find your best niche of products and start marketing to the cafe's, natural food stores, and small chains. Maybe one of your products could be next to the cashier as a grab-and-go.

4 Trade-shows & Contests

There are tons of trade related events happening everywhere, get involved. Spend on marketing, a brochure, banners, and use them when possible.

5 Charity

There are numerous charitable functions per year, see if you can be the provider of treats. Usually you work at cost but it's a great PR mechanism for getting your name mentioned.

Much much luck to you and your endeavor!

-andy

Good article and truly on the point.

We have found in our consultancy that what it really comes down to is time. A restaurant is such a high input time sink for many of the owners they are usually always catching up on their books or the fire in the back, or the upcoming yada yada, to sit down and have enough clarity to put these things into play.

If the budget is there a part time community manager would be the best solution. Someone who knows their business, their voice, and can take the time to implement these and other points on a regular (emphasis regular) basis.

We are finding though time in equals benefits out. A higher ranking, a good set of reviews, owning the local SEO searches, all go to a higher level of professionalism. Not to mention a better conversion of new customers and a higher loyalty of existing.

Good things to know for those who invest in their business on and offline.

-andy

Good article and good points made by Joy. Being small has great advantage of agility of change and ability to really focus on what is important as change approaches.

While the government is big on saying this is hurtful I'm not still sure who it's hurting. Until the population under the boot-heel of those who wasted good reason for quick money settle it is going to be an interesting ride.

I just want to make sure I can help others stay agile and ahead of any pending issues. The recession caused a tightening, where will this lead.

Ah, see I didn't even understand that was the angle. Now it makes even more sense.

I guess then it just comes down to adding a bit more background for those of us who don't know. Ie do a deeper citation of, "If you think the law of attraction is what's going to cut it.." Make sure the audience understands the scope of the article.

For some it might have deeper intrinsic value but to other demographics it might feel a bit wet.

In the end people still give it an above average rating and it's being read which means it has value. Don't worry too much. :)

-a

I'll rattle a bit for you. You're writing skill is fine, the first bump in the road for me occurred with the titling and subsequent misunderstanding of direction.

Attraction marketing is a technique in marketing; everything about lead generation, funnels, etc. It works and it works well. So I was baited for a counter argument on that and what I got was a story about how not sitting on your ass for word-of-mouth with shards of business-consumer psychology analysis for motivation.

It's a bit too wrapped up in soft thoughts. Cut out some of the fat and hone the article down to tips on making progress. The emotional draws you make just bog down the piece.

You're giving value and that's what counts so keep on working it. :)

-andy

What's really sad is both solutions are dated for the modern age. I really don't know what Intuit is doing with their mac team but I wish their windows developers would kick them in the pants. hah. Their windows division stomps the mac counterpart, it's about the only thing I run in VMware.

I would love to see some upstart competitors come to dominate this space but we've yet to see any real inroads. I think banks and payroll services need to agree on a common API for others to use that is both validated and secure. Then we could see more services tie into them and allow us a lot more flexibility than the services currently offered.

Until then these style of discussions will reverberate over and over again as we all kick the ground wondering why we can't enjoy applications like we would like.

-andy