Laura's Winning Ideas

I thought I’d talked about this on my blog, but evidently not yet. Business Cards asked me to write a post about best practices, and I didn’t realize I hadn’t already done this!

Business Cards as a marketing tool

Social media is growing, so some of the trendy industries are including lots of contact information on their business cards that aren’t the usual stuff. However, for many of us, this is not yet a common practice, partly because we don’t post to social media as a regular part of our work practice.

Here’s what I’d suggest you consider for the next round of business cards:

DELETE fax numbers. I have a fax line. It has been used to fax less than 10 times in the last year. No one needs to fax me unless we are working together already, or they are a Chinese restaurant sending out menus. Take it off.

ADD some kind of social media contact. You look old-fashioned if you don’t have something on your card. Use your LinkedIn profile address. It will satisfy the problem of not looking hip, without divulging that you aren’t tweeting or posting about business on a daily basis.

CONSIDER adding a QB code that goes to your website on the back of the card. Most first visits to your website are now made via smartphone. You can make this much easier by putting a QB code on one half of the back of your card. Keep the other half blank so a note can be made on your card. QB codes are trivial to produce. I did it on my first try. Search “How To make a QB code” and you’ll have your code in less than 45 seconds.

DO NOT use weird paper. Make sure the paper you use can be written on, and that there is space on the back for a note about where they met you, or what they want to follow up with you about later.

DO NOT use odd sizes or shapes of cards. Creative ad agencies can get away with this, especially if they spend $5.00 per card for some extravagant treatment. Unless you are that, don’t do this.

TEST your logo to see if it scans into OCR software. No one wants to bother typing in your company name into a database. If your company logo can’t be recognized by OCR technology, be sure to add the company name, maybe above your mailing address.

Now, all I have to do is hand out another few hundred business cards so I can update mine with my LinkedIn Profile too!

http://goo.gl/tjr4A

Here’s a great idea to make presentations more mobile.

In most meetings, folks are carrying smart phones,  iPads or laptops. Why not use that feature to expand your ability to present anywhere you meet?

Here’s how it works:

1) Post your presentation slides to SlideShare.net

2) Create a short URL for your presentation slides.

Search “short URL” for sites that convert long URLs to a tiny URL all free. If you use Google’s service, you can save yourself a step below.

3) Create a QR code that points to your slides on Slideshare.net

Search “QR code create” for sites that create a QR code from a URL. If you used Google’s service above, just add “.qr” to the end of your short URL and click to get your QR code.

4) provide the QR code and short URL to your meeting members.

If they are on a smart phone, they’ll scan the URL and be instantly looking at your slideshow. If they are on a laptop, they’ll type in your URL and be instantly looking at your slideshow. If they are on a tablet, they’ll do either, depending on whether they have a camera or browser.

You could print these on businesscards you hand out, you could offer the scan from your phone, you could email the short URL with QR code.

I didn’t think of this, but I wish I had. Todd Ogasawara at SocialTimes thought of this when he was asked to speak to a group, but they met in a restaurant without AV support. His commenters added the suggestion of having a URL alongside, so folks without cameras could also join in.

Proposals can use this idea: Think about building a set of pages with additional detail/illustrations/animation for which QR codes could be created and printed in your proposal. Do you honestly think a technical reviewer will pass by the opportunity to check out what is behind the QR code?

Is huddling around a big laptop to show a presentation more professional than allowing each person to see the presentation on their own device? I’ve seen folks lugging in laptops for meeting presentations, but that limits the audience to one person or maybe two if they are comfortable snuggling up to one another.

For confidential materials, you can get a short URL that is time limited. Search for “URL shortener temporary time limit” which allows you to reach pages you don’t want them seeing again after you are out of the room.

Would it help if you knew whether they were showing the materials to others? Many of the short URL sites provide tracking so you can see how many folks visit the link.

All the examples here are free services, so you have no excuse not to try it out and noodle about how it might help your organization.

I’ll stop here. Lot’s of interesting opportunity to expand your ability to reach prospects. Go get’em!

Friskies Cat Food lassoed lots of buzz this week with release of some apps for the iPad (and probably most of the android tablets as well).

This is brilliant. If you are selling cat food, what does your target audience like? Watching videos of cute cats, but better yet, watching their own precious feline being cute.

What the heck does this have to do with your firm? Plenty.

The leaders in our industry are already developing their social media chops. Barton Malow has an executive focused on Social Media, and they are a Construction Management firm.

No, you don’t need to be tweeting your lunch selection to the ether. But if you were the FDA, you’d be a hot twitter feed by posting drug approvals via Twitter. They are now a must have app for Pharma execs. (search for @FDAMedWatch at Twitter.com)

Think about what would help and thrill your clients. Could a preview of an aspect of your proposal be put on YouTube? Saves your client having to manage a video file and you having to forego “showing them” how it would work. YouTube allows you to select Private settings so you send a link to your video and it doesn’t get displayed with Lady Gaga’s latest music video. This isn’t high security, but it is “good enough” for straight forward information that isn’t sensitive.

I delivered an electronic file to a client a few months ago. It is a pretty nifty file, which converts a Goals to Metrics chart to a Gantt Chart and allows them to use the file as a living document. We worked from a set of dummy data to design the file. I hired a consultant who turned my nightmare idea into a dream. He video taped his demo of the file so I could approve it. Once it was finished, we loaded the client’s proprietary information into the file and delivered the file. However, I posted the video for them to refer to as instruction when they started using the file. That was helpful for them since I couldn’t be there in person to demo the file.

Is there a helpful bit that could be made into an App? A lookup table particular to your industry? A reference document that could be interactive and distributed to clients?

The folks at Solar Roadways are making great headway, and they accomplished most of their publicity with social media. They do a great job on videos, even though they have a lousy website.

Can you turn a manual you have written for internal use into an eBook for clients and customers? <shameless self promotion> One of my books: The Magic of Winning Proposals is available as an iBook and at Amazon as an eBook for the Kindle. </shameless self promotion>

Proposal folks are creative souls. What do you have that would be better communicated with a video? What would help you stand out from the herd in a crowded competition? Cruise the app store of your choice and download a variety of apps to see what might spark an idea for your firm. Keep it simple at first.

When I discovered that the YouTube search engine is the second only to Google, I started shooting video for my husband’s small business. (As my friends say, tell’em what your husband does, because THAT’s interesting.) Take a look a few of our videos, shot by an amateur and edited by a professional. These videos helped his business close its best year during the worst recession of our lives.  These are the car guy equivalent of cute cat videos: Davids4Speeds – Restoring 4 Speed manual transmissions for 1960′s and 70′s muscle cars.

Can’t wait to see what’s coming next.

Covers are on my mind this week. I just watched the movie “September Issue” about Vogue magazine and Anna Wintour the editor. The cover determines the news stand sales of magazines and is taken very seriously. Serious money rides on a good cover.

I also just finished reviewing a stack of proposals. One loser I could predict from the cover alone.

The cover can hurt you badly. On this cover, a smear of logos was at the top of the cover, more than a half dozen, some big firms, some unfamiliar firms. The client was mentioned in the fine print. The illustration was meaningless.

The story this cover told me is ugly: Our team is VERY important, more important than your agency and your project. We are all dedicated to maintaining our corporate identity, so we are less likely to be easily managed. In fact, a smaller firm is Prime, and some really big firms are sub, so it will be very interesting for the customer to deal with who is in charge. If they can figure it out!

Don’t do this.

Here’s how I like to work up covers, in order of preference:

• What is your Theme? Illustrate it. (some folks aren’t using themes yet, and if so, try the next approach.)
• What brilliant ideas are you proposing to the client? Can they be illustrated?
• What is your client most proud of? Can it be illustrated?

The cover should be all about the client and how your team brings something special to their project. If you don’t bring anything special, you’ll be just an also ran, so why bother writing a proposal doomed to lose?