What Are You Giving Yourself This Christmas?

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Happy Holidays to all! What are you giving to yourself this Christmas? Did you do some planning in 2009 so that you could surprise yourself in 2010? Take a look at the attached newsletter and see if you think that the 'gifts' described in it are something you want for yourself.

If you start planning now, you could have one of these gifts for yourself in 2011. If you've made a strategic choice to get out of debt or find an alternative way of building a nest egg for yourself, then take a look at the Building Wealth e-news attached.

I made the strategic choice in 2009 to put and end to credit card debt and letting it run my life. I used a Self-Empowered Banking System to do and boy what a difference a year and a little planning makes in terms of financial freedom and control of my money and my financial destiny.

Give yourself the same gift in 2011 and make the strategic choice now to do the planning, make the changes and reap the rewards for Christmas next year! Ho Ho Ho -- warm wishes to all!

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http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Celebrate-Volunteers---Children-.html?soid=1101830415767&aid=IZnj0dV1aRQ

If you're not sure what to give the person who has everything this holiday season, why not make a donation to my favorite non-profit, The Pro Bono Project in New Orleans?

Take a look at their most recent newsletter and see why your donation is important to continue to help New Orleans and the surrounding area recover from Katrina and the BP Oil Spill!

Make a strategic choice and follow the links in the newsletter to give a gift now! Thanks for your support.

Happy Holidays to all!

Quality vs Quantity

For the past several weeks I’ve been doing some research on my own industry and what I’ve noticed is that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Yes, we have a lot more tools to work with thanks to technology. The Internet, Web 2.0, IM, texting and a whole slew of communication options that didn’t even exist just a few years ago have turned our lives upside down and then some. 

But, in truth the fundamentals of the business have not changed: target the right message to the right audience using the right mix of methods and get the right results.

What disturbs me more than anything is the amount of information that’s out there that goes nowhere. Content may be king, but if nobody is reading it, then what’s the point?

When I mentioned this sort of “throw as much as you can at the wall and hope something sticks” mentality to a colleague, what I got back was, “that’s the way the 20-somethings like to get their information.” Considering that 20-somethings make up only 13.8% of the population, where does that leave the rest of us?

I love content, here I am publishing some more of it – but I have made a strategic choice not to throw as much as I can at the wall. It doesn’t make sense for me, my clients or potential clients. There’s only so much information we can take in and process on any given day.

As I browse the Web, I often see a company’s press release on multiple sites – yes, it’s out there, but who is reading it? I wonder how many of those releases that were sent out into cyberspace actually end up as a real news story reported by top tier media?

But, maybe I’m assuming that that’s what the client’s objective is and I could be wrong. Maybe they just want to be out there and don’t care if the audiences they want to reach actually get the message, just as long as somebody does. Whether there’s any action that happens is secondary to ‘being out there.’

Maybe, I’m old fashioned but I always thought that the point of communicating – of marketing a product, service or organization to potential customers – was about getting those prospects to take action of some sort? You know, like inquiring about or buying a product or a service or donating funds to support a cause among other actions?

Yes, I know it’s important to ‘be out there’ – I’m writing this blog aren’t I? But, being out there and actually getting people to respond and to act are two entirely different things.

With that in mind, if you’re ‘out there’ and nothing is happening, here are a few things to think about:

• What’s the end result? It’s one of the first questions I ask my clients. When all is said and done, what do you hope to have achieved? If you’re not clear about that then you can’t get to it no matter what you do.

• What’s the strategy? Great strategy produces great results. I don’t care how clever or creative you are, if you’re not using the right approach then all the creativity in the world won’t produce the end result. How often do you see a really funny or clever ad and then can’t remember the product or service?

• Do you have a plan, no matter how simple, or are you just throwing information at the wall and hoping something sticks? If you don’t have a plan, then no telling where you’ll end up.

• Are you talking directly to your audience and your influencers? Do you have the right target audience profile? I recently told a client that we would know if we had the right profile if the list we pulled had some of his current and past clients, plus people whom he had recently met networking. We found a few of each – profile confirmed.
  

Being out there is useful, it certainly adds to the level of awareness and it can be a lot of fun. But, if specific results are what you want, then the strategic choice is to target, target, target: the right audience + the right message + the right methods = the right results.