Category Archives: Business & Marketing

MO Dept Conservation blogging

Posted on by

Lorna Domke is in charge of “Outreach and Education” for the Missouri Department of Conservation and she has added a blog to her communication tool kit.

Lorna Domke“I get to learn a lot about what’s going on all over the state in forestry, fisheries, wildlife, resource science, protection and private lands services. We have lots of ways to get the word out including our regular website, the Missouri Conservationist magazine, and news releases. But on this blog, I’m going to share odds and ends of what I’m hearing from other divisions and what’s of seasonal interest.”

Lorna is the wife of my pal Henry, who blogs at HealthCareFineArt.com. Another TBF (Two Blog Family). If you know of others, leave a link in the comments.

Our short-list of state departments or agencies with blogs is growing: Attorney General (Consumer Protection); Missouri Gaming Commission; Children’s Trust Fund; KidsFirst; Dept. of Agriculture (Farmers’ Markets) Department of Mental Health; Lottery. I’m sure there are more that I haven’t discovered yet (Three of these are the work of former Learfielders).

It’s just a trickle now but as people discover how much more effective a blog is than the traditional website, this will become a flood.

Toxic Employees

Posted on by

“Toxic employees are usually afraid, poorly managed and underappreciated. They can rarely be bullied into changing their behavior, often because they themselves are bullies. Managers can hire the non-toxic, re-assign the toxic and be really clear with themselves that they’re willing to pay almost any price to keep toxic employees away from everyone else. And if toxic employees appears to be a pattern, my bet is that it’s your fault, not the employees.”

— Seth Godin

State Fair video contest

Posted on by

David Brazeal (the Man Behind the Curtain at Learfield InterAction) points us to this entry in the Missouri State Fair Video Contest.

“Show us in 60 seconds or less how you are preparing for the State Fair by entering the “Preparing for the Big Show” video contest. Create your work-of-art, then post the video to YouTube with the tag “mostatefair”. The grand prize winner will have his or her video premiered before the Jason Aldean concert opening night of the Fair.”

When pros see stuff like this or the summer intern video I posted earlier… I’m sure all they see poorly shot/edited amateur video. When I see these, I think, “Damn, that’s clever!” Or funny. Or interesting. And I’m reminded that almost anyone can now play in this sandbox. I love that.

Children’s Trust Fund relaunches website on Typepad

Posted on by

ctf4kids.orgChildren’s Trust Fund of Missouri is one of our clients and, for the last few months, I’ve been helping them with a make-over of their website.

Their previous site was classic Web 1.0. It was designed by a company in St. Louis and any changes or updates had to be emailed to the developer who would, in time, make the change. Most of the “current” content was PDF news releases that weren’t very “new. The site was hosted on state servers. The CTF guys just were not happy with their site.

I persuaded them to try Typepad and incorporate a blog as their primary content element.

They took the site public at the first of the month and, although still tweaking some of the content, it looks and works great. And the best part… they are now in control. Paula and Alicia know how to add pages, maintain links, and manage the site top to bottom.

Kirk, the executive director, is finding his blogging feet and posting regularly. From his fingers…to the world. Boom.

We’ve shown them how to use Flickr, Google Calendar and YouTube. And all of this for a fraction of what they paid for their previous site, which simply wasn’t meeting their needs.

Helping folks like Kirk, Paula and Alicia tell their story is extremely gratifying. If Web 1.0 was selling fish, Web 2.0 is using great new tools for helping people learn how to fish.

Seth Godin: Different kinds of advertising

Posted on by

“The first kind is the rational kind. Yellow Page ads, direct mail and Google AdWords fit into this category. This is advertising that works, if ‘works’ is defined as, “pay $3 and make $4.” With measurable direct advertising, you can count on profit-minded small organizations to give it a try (small buys) and if it obviously makes money, to buy some more.

The second kind of advertising is the glamorous kind, the kind that people think of when they think of the Super Bowl or Time magazine or of profitable ads that are worth selling. These ads don’t sell because they work. They sell because they are sold.

Let me be fair: they work if we define ‘working’ as: pleasing the client, pleasing the agency, increasing brand goodwill, and building, over time, a groundswell of awareness and brand respect that ultimately leads to profits.”

— Seth’s blog post on selling advertising.

“Introducing the Missourinet”

Posted on by

A lot of our company’s history is jammed into cardboard boxes and I stumbled upon a little piece this afternoon. This is a copy of an ad [larger image] that ran in Missouri Life Magazine, sometime in the early ’70’s.

Now Missourians from border to border know what their neighbors are doing.

They know what is going on in Jefferson City… in the major metropolitan areas… in the arts… in science… business.

They’re listening to their local radio station… an affiliate of the Missourinet.

The Missourinet is a statewide news network… very similar in operation to the national news networks. Some 40 radio stations carry its hourly newscasts. It has the state Capitol’s largest full-time news bureau. And each week its programs feature hundreds of on-the-scene reports from correspondents and newsmakers over the state.

Missouri + net? Get it? The official name of our company was “Missouri Network, Inc.” back then.

Building your personal brand through your blogging

Posted on by

Darren Rowse (Pro Blogger) offers tips on how to build your personal brand:

  • Build trust. Talk both about your successes and failures.
  • Be personal. Show something of who you are. This doesn’t mean blogging about your personal life, but show you’re human.
  • Use story. Stories of my own experience, stories of other clients (shared with permission as case studies) etc.
  • Establish expertise. Show what you know, show how you apply it and be a thought leader in your niche.
  • Establish relationships in your niche.
  • Be consistent. Every time you post you have the opportunity to add to or take from your reputation and brand

While reading Darren’s tips, I mentally scrolled through the last five years of posts here at smays.com, and –more by luck than design– I think hit most of these. And a week doesn’t go by that my blog doesn’t come up in conversation with current or prospective clients (from them, not me). I’m not sure how valuable smays.com is as a brand, but it’s out there.

Start building your brand. Your company is not and cannot do it for you. [via LexBlog]

eBay to auction radio advertising

Posted on by

eBay is ready to begin auctioning advertising airtime on 2,300 participating U.S. radio stations. The venture –which puts eBay into competition with Google– includes both conventional terrestrial radio and Internet radio advertising. Stations in all of the 300 top-ranked radio markets are covered. Advertising inventory includes primetime spots with 90 percent in morning drive, midday or evening commute hours from Monday through Friday.

How (if at all) will this impact companies like ours that barter our services for radio station commercials? When you finish the quiz, close your Blue Book and raise your hand.

Seth’s Organic Path to Google Happiness

Posted on by

Seth Godin on the “organic success” path to a high Google rank:

“If you want to be on the front page of matches for “White Plains Lawyer”, then the best choice is to build a series of pages (on your site, on social sites, etc.) that give people really useful information. Once you’ve done everything you can… once you’ve built a web of information and once you’ve given the ability to do this to your best clients and your partners and colleagues, then by all means apply the best SEO (search engine optimization) thinking in the world to your efforts.”