Developing an environmental strategy is good citizenship, but as you discussed with  our guest Jennifer Riley Simone, it can be good marketing as well. The conversation drifted from how companies incorporate green into their marketing, to how green causes can take advantage of new technology.

You can listen to the podcast here.

And be sure to tune in next week for another interesting topic. More than a Few Words is broadcast live every Wednesday, from 10:30 – 11:00 To listen live check out our station on BlogTalkRadio.com Till then you can check out some of our past programs here:

All sorts of companies and associations need marketing support, not just consumer products.  So how do you approach marketing for community events and social causes. This week we spoke to  Steven Shattuck, the communications director Irvington Halloween Festival, about their marketing activities.  Steve shared his perspective on how non profit associations and community events can use social media and video to build excitement and involvement in their event.

Listen to what he had to say:

About our guest:

Communications Specialist at BCforward, the largest minority-owned IT consulting and staffing firm in Indianapolis. Steven manages the communications department, and is responsible for creating, deploying and analyzing marketing materials, social media campaigns, digital content and internal training resources.

More Than a Few Words is a podcast produced by weekly by Roundpeg, an Indianapolis social media firm.   The program airs each Wednesday from 10:30 – 11:00 and you can hear the live show or any of the past programs from our station on  BlogTalkRadio.com

Have you ever been in a conversation with someone who only talks about themselves? I have, at more networking events then I care to remember. While I stand there politely for a few minutes asking the appropriate questions, I find myself getting annoyed when they show no interest in me as anything other then a potential customer. I have learned to gracefully end the conversation and walk away.

The same behavior carries over when I am watching television, reading a magazine, looking at email or direct mail. If the advertiser doesn’t make it immediately oblivious they care about me (my interests) I am likely to flip the remote, turn the page, delete the email or trash the postcard without a second thought.

So how do you capture the attention of prospects in a world where they receive thousands of messages daily?

Talk about them first! – Sounds simple, but it is not easy. You have to know who you are talking to. If you are trying to sell to everyone the message is so watered down it isn’t relevant to anyone. To do this well you have to know a bit about your audience. For example a day care center wants to talk to moms, but what kind of moms? What is most important? Safety? Stimulating environment? Affordable child care? Nurturing environment? Pick one and build a story around that.

1. Safety: Did you know, x% of children are injured in day care center accidents each year.. That is why….
2. Stimulating Environment: Your child’s future academic success begins in day care….
3. Nurturing: Sometimes the thing a child needs most is a hug… when you are not there, we are

I am often asked by small business owners, what if I pick one message, and that isn’t important to a particular client? Instead of trying do all these things in the same place, have multiple communication paths. When clients come to your website, ask what they are most interested in. For parents interested in safety offer supplemental information on how to keep your infant or toddler safe at home. For those parents interested in raising the next Einstein, offer tips on how to stimulate brain development. Once you they tell you what they are interested in, you can begin to send more information on that topic.

You don’t have to tell them everything at once, either. In a five minute conversation, I can’t tell you everything you need to know about my business, so I pick the most interesting things, and if you have questions, I have an invitation to a longer conversation. Do the same in your advertising and marketing, give customers the opportunity to ask for more and they will. Email and social media are both terrific tools to continue the conversation with prospects, help them get to know you, and hopefully become clients.

Will you miss some people on the fringe? Maybe. But you have a better chance of reaching the ones who are really interested in what you have to offer.

Do you have what it takes to go after the really big clients?  And more importantly, should you?  Join us as we talk to Dr. Barbara Weaver Smith, (@thewhalehunters)  founder and president of The Whale Hunters and Matt Nettleton, (@mattnettleton) my sales coach from Sandler Trustpoint.

Do you have any comments or questions about Whale Hunting? Join the conversation with a comment or question.  Post it here, send it to one of us on Twitter. Remember to use the hashtag #MTFW on Twitter, so we can find your comments during the broadcast.  Or you can call in during the show at (805) 285 -9865.

The call will be live from 10:30 – 11:00 today,  Wednesday,  September 14th You will be able to listen to the program from our  station on BlogTalkRadio.com

Listen to the recorded program here:

There is no such thing as bad student…only bad teacher.

-Mr. Miyagi

As I was trudging through 16 years of school, I never thought I’d be the one teaching. As an Indianapolis web design firm, we choose to provide training for all of our clients. We like small business owners to feel empowered to manage their websites to support their business objectives.

Training is a standard part of every web design project.  So as we are wrapping up the design phase, I always set a side a few hours for training on how WordPress. I’ve taught clients of all ages and skill levels. Working with this diverse group of students has taught me more than I could ever teach them. Here are just a few of the  things I’ve learned along the way:

• Set ground rules and goals-Some people can become overwhelmed easily or (worse) attempt to camp out in your office for hours at a time. Spending 45 seconds at the beginning of the training allows me to reassure them and set reasonable expectations for what they can learn in one session. It also allows me to reinforce that there is a cutoff time for the end of the lesson. Learning to establish a timeline and ground rules has helped me not just in a training setting, but also when it comes to having productive meetings in general.
• Don’t just talk…listen-It would be easy for me to spend the hour of training rifling off WordPress methods without taking a second to breathe…and odds are my students would absorb about 10% of whatever I was saying. I’ve found it is far more effective to stop every 5-10 minutes and genuinely ask if they have any questions. Once you start losing your students, if you don’t catch them, the rest of the training is pointless. Please trust me on this.
• Gauge and adapt to learning styles-It would be easier if everyone processed information the same way, but they don’t. Each individual is different. They figure things out differently, learn at a different pace, and grasp some things easier then others. It’s the responsibility of each instructor to adapt their teaching style to the student. Luckily, I’m usually in a one-on-one setting, so adaptation is a bit easier and more straight forward. All I know is I have much more respect for my 5th grade teacher than I did three years ago. (Hi Mrs. Heller!)

Learning to teach has been one of my more rewarding experiences while at Roundpeg. Have you ever taught a class or student? What did you take away from the experience?

Join us this Wednesday, August 10, when we talk to Will Hardison, founder of Mediaplug, an Indianapolis web design firm.

On this episode of More Than a Few Words, Will will share some of the lessons he’s learned in the three years he’s owned his own business. He will also give business owners insights into how he utilizes Facebook ads for both Mediaplug and the company’s clients.

New and potential business owners won’t want to miss this episode. Tune in to learn how to take advantage of the opportunities-and avoid the mistakes-new business owners encounter as they start up.

You can listen to the program here:

Working with a range of industries can sometimes provide unique challenges. A web design which  works well for a dentist may be completely useless for a client trying to sell candles. Types of images, navigation styles and plugins will vary dramatically with the industry and customer objectives.

Workplace Safety, an industrial risk management firm based in Indianapolis, came to us for an update of their website. In a complex and technical field they challenged us to present an incredible amount of information in a logical, organized fashion.  They wanted a site which catered to engineers but appealed to everyone. Our worst fear was overwhelming visitors to the site as we worked to design a web site which would clearly communicate their mission of  ”protecting human capital.”

We decided to go with a clean, simple layout. While the site holds a virtual encyclopedia of information, visitors are not overwhelmed when they arrive on the home page. A well organized navigation structure directs visitors to the information they are seeking.

Want to learn more about how to streamline your website? Roundpeg, an Indianapolis web design firm, can help. Take our web design quiz here.

Four years ago, I wrote all the content for the Roundpeg blog.  It is a good thing I wasn’t all that busy, so I had time to research and write a daily post.   But after awhile all the content started to sound the same, so I  began to encourage the rest of the team to write posts from time to time.  Each of us brings a slightly different perspective to topics relating to small business marketing and the result is a more interesting blog.

But we hang out together, and even though we have different perspectives, I think our topic range is fairly narrow, so I love to invite others to share content.  You can see some of their posts here : http://www.roundpeg.biz/author/guest/ And we are always looking for others to share their opinions and ideas as well.

So what do you need to know to write a guest post for Roundpeg?

1. Our audience is comprised of small business owners, so content must be relevant for that group.
2. Roundpeg is a marketing and business blog so we look for content with a business focus
3. The tone of the blog is professional, but fun.  Our posts tend to be informative, but not heavy handed
4. We like to keep blog posts relatively short – 250 – 500 words
5. We love photos and don’t use them often enough.  If you have a great graphic, include it with your post
6. We are happy to link to your product, service or profile at the end of the post, but we will not include 250 words of advertising.
7. We will edit for grammar and spelling, but will not change core content.
8. Our readers like to get to know the author, so you must also include a bio and head shot.  The ideal size for your head shot is a 2.5 inch square ( 180 pixels) in jpeg, gif or png format.
9. It MUST BE original content.  We are not interested in re-posting something that appears elsewhere.  If you have good content you want to reference, with a new spin and a link to the original we would be open to that.

Interested? Simply send us a note!

I have never met Mary Biever in person, but we are connected on twitter. I have come to respect her opinions and knowlege, and I am delighted she was willing to share her thoughts here.

Shopping for Small Business Marketing

Marketing Choices Businesses Should Avoid and Seek

“Hire me, and I’ll build your sales to best in the market,” a marketing vendor in the advertising food court calls to small businesses.

The vendor next to him says, “I’ll grow your sales pronto – nothing else like it.”

How is the small business owner to know which marketing methods work best?

We may choose to eat fat-laden fried junk food topped with extra salt when we eat at a real mall food court, but we all know fruits and vegetables are the best choices for our long-term health and well-being.

It’s harder for a business to discern best choices, especially when everything we thought we knew went the way of the rotary telephone.

What should a business hide and seek in the marketing quest for survival in a tough economy?

Avoid

1. The Oldster. This marketer clings to past practices of phone books, mail, print, and media purchases with no personal track record in modern media. He sells his clients nutritionally empty products. Pretty wrappers with flash and bang don’t sell in a world of marketing-savvy consumers who selectively ignore the old sell.
2. The Easter Bunny. The hip marketer who throws all his clients’ eggs into a Facebook basket is selling them out of season, hollow Easter eggs. The number of fans on a page doesn’t equate to sales at the business if the fans aren’t the targeted market. Further, since Facebook owns the platform, the business doesn’t own its own marketing and is subject to constant rule changes. With Google+, this is even more outdated.
3. The Gamer. The contest marketer who sells his client nothing but a contest of the day.  He trains client customers to demand and expect something for nothing and not to get engaged unless there is a free prize of the day.
4. The A La Carter. This marketer buys a billboard here, a radio spot there, and social media somewhere else without a cohesive strategy.

Seek

1. The Talker. This marketer engages in real conversations with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. As a consequence, the marketer understands where customers are and what makes them click – and buy client products.
2. The Multiple Channel Planner. This marketer develops a strategy that utilizes old school methods in new ways – a mix of radio, TV, social media, blogs, video, and mobile apps.
3. The Eagle Eye. This marketer scans the landscape and spots opportunities. Client sales are his prey. He doesn’t get distracted by flash or bang but bases decisions on sound business principles.

Money can be made in this economy. It requires the right marketing plan, shifting resources into methods that sell in our new social world.

I have never met Mary Biever in person, but we are connected on twitter. I have come to respect her opinions and knowlege, and I am delighted she was willing to share her thoughts here.

She  is a computer coach and social media trainer in Evansville, Indiana.

photo © 2007 Josh McConnell | more info (via: Wylio)

Research shows YouTube is now the number two search engine after Google, particularly for the under thirty crowd who are in increasingly turning to YouTube over Google as their searching needs. But what do YouTube and marketing have to do with each other?

Next Wednesday ( July 6th)  we will be talking to special guest Rocky Walls of 12 star media about how small businesses can effectively leverage this resource to enhance their marketing and PR strategies.

Do you have any comments, questions, or tips about YouTube? Post it here, send it to one of us on Twitter or Facebook, or call in during the show at (805) 285 -9865. Remember to use the #hashtag #MTFW on Twitter, so your comments will be added to our Keepstream below.

The call will be live from 10:30 – 11:00 on Wednesday, July 6th. You will be able to listen to the program from my station on BlogTalkRadio.com And  if the time is not convenient for you, listen to the recorded program from the player below or from our iTunes channel.