By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability Tagged with , , , , , ,

Okay, we all know the usual places to put money are performing pretty badly right now. But get this: the Empire State Building is embarking on a massive energy retrofit that will return nearly 28 percent a year! The project will cost $13.2 million, not exactly chump change–but will slash energy consumption by 35 to 40 percent, and save $3.8 million a year (considerably more, if energy costs spike back up again). After the third year, that’s nearly $4 million going directly to the bottom line. If the improvements have even a 20-year lifespan, that $13.2 million investment would return $176 million, and that’s with stable energy prices. The number is much, much higher if you factor in average energy cost increases of 5 percent a year. (I’m not going to do the math here, because I don’t know all the factors we’d need to compute–but it’s sure to be at least $200 million, maybe much more).

Too bad we can’t put our Roth IRAs into renewable-energy retrofits .

Meanwhile, we can all learn from the creative thinking at Rocky Mountain Institute, which is doing the heavy lifting on this project–for example, remanufacturing the windows on-site to reduce trucking costs in fuel and money. For years, RMI has been generating this kind of holistic, big-picture energy planning that saves many times the cost, and quickly. I profile RMI founder Amory Lovins in my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Unbelievably stupid quote from the agrochemical trade group Mid America Croplife Association, whose members include the likes of Monsanto, Dow, and other manufacturers of farm chemicals (oh, and can you spot the two grammar errors in those three sentences?):

Did you hear the news? The White House is planning to have an “organic” garden on the grounds to provide fresh fruits and vegetables for the Obama’s and their guests. While a garden is a great idea, the thought of it being organic made Janet Braun, CropLife Ambassador Coordinator and I shudder.

This quote was in an e-mail to the group’s supporters, enclosing a classic-PR letter to Michelle Obama (or “Mrs. Barack Obama,” as the letter calls her–and for which one blogger took the authors to task), apparently authored by Bonnie McCarvel, Executive Director. You can see both MACA’s letter to Michelle Obama and the cover note here.

As a long-time believer in organic agriculture/sustainability and as someone who eats out of my family’s organic garden and a local organic CSA farm all summer and fall, I was all set to do a rant on the idiocy of this statement. But before jumping in, I Googled around, and decided to focus on some other lessons; that one’s been done about 24,000 times on the blogosphere already.

Lesson 1: Never say or write anything that will come back to haunt you. As MACA found out, you can’t assume an internal memo will stay internal. so say what you mean, mean what you say, and be prepared to back up your assertions.

Lesson 2: Backlash is quick and can be humiliating. Numerous petition campaigns have sprung up supporting Michelle’s desire to grow organic, and the already-shaky credibility of the pesticide industry might take a big hit.

Lesson 3: Old-school PR is no longer enough in a world where journalists no longer stand as intermediaries and gatekeepers between press releases and the public. From a technical PR standpoint, the letter MACA sent to Michelle Obama is quite good: full of reassuring language, on-the-surface well-reasoned arguments about the importance of agriculture, etc. But in a busy, harried world, it doesn’t get to the point; without the controversy, the recipient might not have even figured out (on the quick 30-second scan) that the letter was advocating chemical agriculture. Which hasn’t stopped the blogosphere from picking apart every nuance.

Lesson 4: Controversy and stupidity are just as sexy to the blogosphere as to traditional media. For all the carefully worded letter to Michelle Obama, what stands out (and is getting most of the attention) is the dumb quote in the supporter cover letter about organic gardening making them shudder.

Lesson 5: If the mainstream media wants to stay relevant, it needs to be visible. On three different Google searches on this story, including one for the exact quote from the cover letter, I did not see a single mainstream media result in the top three pages. The closest was a non-journalist’s blog quoted (apparently by a content-scraping robot) on the Wall Street Journal site, which was #28. Blogs and newsletters about gardening, sustainability, and progressive politics were all over this story, but the voice of traditional journalism was not being heard. I was actually beginning to wonder if the whole thing was an urban legend, until I finally tracked down the actual letter, on a local-foods blog. As newspapers are folding every week, as electronic news organizations are laying off staff, people will be asking why we need these trained and theoretically unbiased filters, if they’re AWOL on important stories (or if not AWOL, hidden deep under a rock). This will be a critical question. I’m of the strong opinion that we still need journalists to keep politicians and corporations honest, but journalism’s lack of presence on this and other stories makes that a much tougher argument.

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Reviews, Uncategorized, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , , , ,

Reviewed by Shel Horowitz

A very good basic introduction to the most important social network platforms–and some truly extraordinary content about how and why to use video to achieve massive conversion rates. A nice Q&A section answers several common beginner questions, very sensibly.

Clearly written, and delightfully formatted for easy on-screen reading.

Shama also walks her talk. In the six or eight months since I first saw her name, I’m running into her everywhere: on Facebook, Twitter, as a teleseminar guest with various other expert marketers…all using the no-cost social media techniques she describes in this e-book.

I’d recommend this highly for those just starting out in social media, as a way to jump-start your education. And if you’re experienced but haven’t done video marketing yet, or have not found it effective, that short section will be more than worth the price.

Shel Horowitz, author of Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World and six other books

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics Tagged with , ,

Someone on a forum I belonged to posted a really great article. The only problem was, it looked like the poster hadn’t gotten permission.

As entrepreneurs, we need to be careful to respect the intellectual property rights of other entrepreneurs, and that includes writers, musicians, photographers, etc. It is often not difficult to get reprint permission (I have over 1000 reprinted articles on https://www.frugalmarketing.com and https://www.frugalfun.com, and I have permission for every single one. To simply place a whole article and not get permission or give credit to the source, is an act of theft, called plagiarism. But even if you give credit, if you don’t have permission, it’s still theft. And yes, that includes throwing together a scraped-content computer-powered website to try to get ad revenue from someone else’s content without asking. If you published a book, you wouldn’t want someone taking your hard work and publishing their own edition.

Remember this: when you steal from those of us who create intellectual property for our livelihood, you not only take away our ability to make a living just as surely as you would if you shoplifted goods from our stores, but you also take away the incentive for us to keep creating the things that make the world beautiful, intersting, and well-informed.

I’m sure the person who posted was not acting out of malice but of ignorance. Many people don’t think of reprinting an article as stealing, just like they don’t think throwing a toxic cigarette butt on the ground is littering. It’s totally appropriate to quote the first paragraph or two, mention some key points in the article (in your own words), and post a link–or to go get permission from the author, who’s usually pretty easy to find online.

Let’s not do things that come back to haunt us.

Note: I have posted a whole bunch of articles about business ethics on my ethics site, PrincipledProfit–and yes, I have permission for all of those as well. I’ve also written an award-winning book on success through business ethics: Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First.

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By Posted on Posted in media-general, Publishing Tagged with , , , , , ,

Interesting piece in the Washington Spectator, noting that the Anniston (Alabama) Star seems to be doing reasonably well, even as big-city papers around the country move to Internet-only or shut their doors entirely. Even the Boston Globe is teetering.

In my own area, I read the Daily Hampshire Gazette, published in Northampton, Massachusetts for over 200 years. Northampton is a town of about 30,000; the whole county had only 152,251 in the 2000 census.

Yet, despite a proliferation of local online advertising channels and a tough economy, the Gazette seems to be doing well also. The parent company has even acquired several newspapers recently, and the Gazette also publishes a growing number niche magazines.

Early on, the paper decided it would not cannibalize print with its web edition; many of the stories (especially the local news stuff that would be hard to get elsewhere) are behind a firewall, available only to paid subscribers. Oddly enough, I notice that the link to the Spectator story is also subscriber-only. Hmmm–can this model work? The Wall Street Journal abandoned it, but clearly traditional print journalism is not doing well in a world of free content from professional journalists.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics: General, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , ,

I had the good fortune to follow Dr. Ron Capps, a/k/a “The Niche Prof,” speaking at Willie Crawford’s 50th birthday celebration in Orlando.

Ron started his speech by saying, don’t worry about taking notes; I’ll send you my slides. But please feel free to Tweet. I was one of several people who took him up on it; these are my Tweets about his talk (in reverse chronological order, as they appear on my Twitter page, shorthand, typos and all–these were all sent while he was speaking. The #bbash tag enables anyone to search for all the Tweets about this conference and find these):

Don’t cheat the process. Having a baby in 3 mos is NO blessing. @NicheProf, #bbash from web

…or where they will find you. So you’ve got to be everywhere (and everywhen), via Ping.fm. @NicheProf, #bbash from web

Social media is farming: nurturing yr reputation & the relationships. & You never know what people respond to…. @NicheProf, #bbash from web

(I still prefer to brand my name) Why not to brand 2 yr name: 1. Too common 2. No exit strategy. @NicheProf, #bbash from web

You can meet people online you could never meet f2f. Post great content & people’ll start talking abt you:@NicheProf, #bbash from web

RTs are Inernet gold: @NicheProf, #bbash from web

30K new jobs posted 7 dys at TwitterJobSearch: @NicheProf, #bbash from web

Soc net profiles that give an edge: support yr claims, good spelling/grammr–soldify hiring decision @NicheProf, #bbash from web

20% firms (& univs) are screening profiles and SEing you-Neg impression could be VY expensive. @NicheProf, #bbash from web

Not who you know, who knows you. And you get known via social media: @NicheProf, #bbash from web

Think about what happens when five or ten attenders are actively Tweeting the highlights of your talk in real time. Think about how many people might see it, learn about you, click on your screenname, start following you, see over the next several months several more streams of Tweets about how great you are–and then that person happens to be planning a meeting. Who are they going to call–you–or some stranger they’ve never heard of?

I’d already panned to offer attenders a copy of the slides, and was certainly hoping to be Tweeted. And I immediately stole Ron’s idea and asked for Tweets early in my talk. These are the Tweets (if I missed any, I apologize). Do you think they might help my career?

Caught_Thriving: @CaseStevens some really good stuff from @nicheprof and @shelhorowitz earlier #bbash

MichealSavoie: Finding that @shelhorowitz is an outstanding speaker who offers a LOT of very actionable information! Follow him! #BBASH

marismith: @mrebay LOL. Hi Kevin! Way cool you’re hanging with many of my fave peeps at #BBASH @FeliciaSlattery @lynnterry @LauraFenamore @shelhorowitz

mrebay: @ShelHorowitz is an awesome marketer!!!! Testimonials in your book can get your referrals and business #BBASH

changenetwork: RT @DrMollieMarti “RT @FeliciaSlattery: Honesty, integrity, quality = the magic triangle of business ethics. @ShelHorowitz #BBASH”

marismith: RT @DrMollieMarti: RT @FeliciaSlattery: Honesty, integrity, quality = the magic triangle of business ethics. @ShelHorowitz #BBASH [Yes!!]

raleighgirl: Retweeting @FeliciaSlattery: competence is the other half of trust @ShelHorowitz #BBASH (it’s also one of my 3cs of credibility!)

FeliciaSlattery: competence is the other half of trust @ShelHorowitz #BBASH (it’s also one of my 3cs of credibility!)

FeliciaSlattery: When you do business w/ ethics & integrity you get more of everything: JVs, customers, referrals. @ShelHorowitz #BBASH

FeliciaSlattery: Customer evangelization is abt as good as it gets. Those who tell the world abt you. Comes from doing biz w/ integrity. @ShelHorowitz #BBASH

DrMollieMarti: RT @FeliciaSlattery: Honesty, integrity, quality = the magic triangle of business ethics. @ShelHorowitz #BBASH

FeliciaSlattery: Holy moly: @ShelHorowitz just used ME & what I spoke about yesterday on one of his slides. I [heart] him now. LOL #BBASH

jimdonovan: I’ve known @ShelHorowitz for a dozen years and he’s one of the true good guys. ##BBASH

life_enthusiast: @FeliciaSlattery I second what @MariSmith said. RT @MariSmith We need more peeps with HIGH standards, ethics, eh! #BBASH

marismith: @FeliciaSlattery Brilliant!! That’s what I love about @ShelHorowitz. We need more peeps with HIGH standards, ethics, eh! #BBASH

FeliciaSlattery: @marismith yep @ShelHorowitz is on stage now giving awesome content abt ethics. He turns down $$ when it’s not a good fit for him. #BBASH

marismith: @FeliciaSlattery Oh, is @ShelHorowitz on stage right now at #BBASH? Give him a hug for me, Shel is the BEST!!

mrjaredjames: @FeliciaSlattery RT: “Honesty, integrity, quality = the magic triangle of business ethics.” Super col. From #BBASH ?

Raven73: RT @FeliciaSlattery: You want to be attracting rather than chasing business. @ShelHorowitz #BBASH

FeliciaSlattery: Honesty, integrity, quality = the magic triangle of business ethics. @ShelHorowitz #BBASH his work is grounded in value & ethics

MichealSavoie: Why are you REALLY in business? @shelhorowitz #BBASH

FeliciaSlattery: RT @lynnterry: @shelhorowitz is speaking at #bbash – last speaker of the day. talking ethics, relationships, expertise

neestaples: RT @FeliciaSlattery: You want to be attracting rather than chasing business. @ShelHorowitz #BBASH

lynnterry: @shelhorowitz is speaking at #bbash – last speaker of the day. talking ethics, relationships, expertise

FeliciaSlattery: You want to be attracting rather than chasing business. @ShelHorowitz #BBASH

FeliciaSlattery: @ShelHorowitz getting started @ #BBASH. His attention-getter had everyone standing up & hugging ourselves. Yay!

One thing to point out here: Several people who retweeted or commented in this conversation weren’t even at the conference! And one of those was social media rockstar Mari Smith, who Fast Company dubbed “The Pied Piper of Facebook,” and who is personally responsible for getting me (and probably hundreds of others) onto Facebook. Mari has 24,205 followers! However many of them happened to be online during my speech saw her multiple endorsements of me within a few minutes’ time.

Oh yes, and meeting planers can use this too. Allison Nazarian included me in an expert teleseminar series this winter. Even though she was interviewing, she managed to Tweet coverage of every speaker, which you can follow here. (The ones about me, specifically, are here: https://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23DIY09+%40shelhorowitz

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics Tagged with , , ,

Very interesting discussion at LinkedIn on when it is or isn’t OK to pay referral fees. I don’t believe you have to be a member to see the discussion though you do if you want to make a comment (might have to join the group first, I don’t know).

Here’s my take.

When colleagues refer new business to me, I offer them a choice: commissions or “karma points” (good vibes and my thanks). As a copywriter, I get referrals from designers, complementary service providers, etc. I am comfortable with whichever they choose and see no ethical problem in my industry with paying a referral fee, any more than I do in paying a commission when someone sells a physical product.

However, there are industries where cash payments could easily be problematic if not disclosed, not just because of regulations but also because of ethics. The financial services field strikes me as a place to be particularly upfront, as with any companies providing services to elders, disabled people, or others in a position of vulnerability. And the issue of someone within a company referring to another part of the company is another place to be very upfront.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with , , , ,

In the mid-80s, a new local bank opened in these parts: The Bank of Western Massachusetts. Its whole ocre identity was as a business bank that understood doing business in Western Massachusetts. and as more and more small local banks got swallowed up by regional and national conglomerates, that was a powerful USP.

So I was pretty shocked to flip through my local paper and see an ad proudly proclaiming a change of the Haydenville branch to “Legacy Banks.” Hmmm…take a strong regional identity, throw it away, and replace it with something that means “what you leave behind when you die.”

So I did some Web surfing. It seems that Bank of Western Mass is actually becoming part of something called People’s United Bank, which is not the same as the existing People’s Bank or United Bank (both long-established brands around here. People’s United is a consortium of six banks from around New England. Perhaps it’s selling off some units in order to raise money for the merger. Then I went to Legacy Bank, where I discovered that this entity started as the Lee National Bank in 1835 and has seven locations each in Berkshire County (the westernmost part of Massachusetts) and the neighboring portion of New York State, going into Albany. Neither website says anything about the shift of the Haydenville branch, and quite frankly, the newspaper ad is pathetic. the headline is “smart banking comes to Haydenville” (yes, that’s how it was capitalized), the copy tells me basically nothing about why this is smart, and then it mentions the name change.

Forgive me if I don’t see the logic.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with , , ,

Someone on LinkedIn asked, “Is there an opportunity for a startup online business to become a successful brand when there are so many established players?” I think my answer is worth sharing here.

Think back to 1997. Where did you go for search? Probably Yahoo or AltaVista. Google came in and blew them out of the water *because the user experience was so much better.*

Think about Facebook jumping from academia to mainstream in the last couple of years, right after Rupert Murdoch spent an enormous fortune to buy MySpace–and made MySpace much less relevant.

Think about Amazon developing the affiliate model, so that any mom-and-pop website could add a bookstore with no work involved–and how that fueled explosive growth.

So the answer is clearly yes, if you have an attractive user experience that’s better than what else is out there.

I’d recommend reading the partnering strategies sections in my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, https://www.principledprofit.com – it’s far easier to go where there’s already an existing audience than to create your own from scratch.

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , ,

People are always telling me they don’t “get” Twitter. I took to it immediately, maybe because I’ve been doing social media marketing since 1995, and writing about it since 1991. In honor of being named one of the Top 11 blogs covering social media, here’s a 5-point Twitter success strategy.

1. Post some really worthwhile links, good commentary, etc.
2. Follow a few influential people and then send an appropriate @ message to them once in a while
3. Keep the signal: noise ratio high, but engage in human dialog–don’t make it all about you–pick a few people to engage in meaningful sustained conversation
4. Retweet when you find posts useful
5. Post often enough to keep active, not so often that you annoy people

Bonus tip: Your profile page should have a real photo, real name, web links, and perhaps something else of interest (I have my book covers). Here’s a link to mine.

And it takes care of itself. I joined in August and have nearly 1200 followers, haven’t chased them, just used the above method.

BTW, my new e-book, “Web 2.0 Marketing for the 21st Century” (which I include as a bonus with either of my Grassroots Marketing books, or sell separately for $12.95), goes into Twitter and Facebook strategies in much more detail.

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