Monday I gave feedback to Brad Merrill about HOW he let others know about his blog… today I want to write about a blog post (his second post).

Brad titled the post What is Ethical Behavior?  It’s a good question which really came out after the Enron thing… as an accountant Brad should have some good thoughts.

First Thought

It is toooooooooo loooooooooooooooong.

This post has 1,535 words and would print of on almost four full pages!

I couldn’t read it.  It’s simply too long.

Here’s an idea, though: take this four page post and break it up into three or four posts.

Call it a series and make it easier to read for ME.

The beauty of this idea is it is now easier to write for Brad.  Why?  If he takes one “post” and breaks it down, he now has one to two weeks of blog posts already written!

Let me say this another way – if he spent an hour on that post, and then thought about spending an hour on every post, and wrote two to three times a week, he’d spend quite a bit of time writing blog posts.  Okay sometimes, but sometimes that hour just isn’t available.

What if he took this one hour and had all the writing for one or two weeks done?

That is more sustainable, over the long haul.

Second Thought

Give me more personal stuff.  The first page (above the fold) has two references to dictionary definitions… I have to scroll down before I see if there’s some Brad Merrill personality.

Instead of starting off with a page of sources, I would have liked to see him launch into a story from his past rich work history:

• I was consulting a client when _______
• I remember being faced with an ethical dilemma when my boss _______
• My first major ethical conundrum came when my client _______

Wouldn’t a line like that be more interesting?  I’d want to read what an accountant has faced … not the bean counting boring stuff, but some conflict, how it was handled, what he had to think through, etc.

My point is, make it personal.  I want to read about BRAD MERRILL, not what the dictionary says.

So these are my thoughts as Brad Merrill starts his blogging journey.  Really, he has a great start… I’m excited to see him mature and evolve as a blogger

My friend Brad Merrill took the plunge and started a blog.

It has the potential to be an awesome personal branding tool for himself, and I applaud what he’s doing.

This is the first of two posts where I’m going to give feedback (with his permission) on his nascent strategy.  Today I’ll talk about how he let me (and hundreds of others) know about the blog.

It’s important to let others know you have a blog… not just once but frequently.  Be careful how you do it, however, because no one wants an email each time you write a new blog post (unless they opt in to a newsletter, or something like that).

Here’s Brad’s message I got last night:

There are a few things I like about this email, and perhaps a line or two I don’t care for.  Instead of critiquing the entire thing, I want to focus on TWO things:

The Length.

The length of this message is PERFECT.  If it were any longer I’d get lost, or not read it, or save it for later, or something like that.  If it were shorter I might feel like he’s just spamming me and a million others with “read my blog!”  It is sincere, concise, and very focuses.

The Question in Yellow.

This jumped out at me the most.  At first I thought “COOL, a professional blog” (as opposed to a personal blog).

But then, when I read the question “if you have some things you would like to (to) see me write about,” tell me.

That’s when I thought “where’s the focus?”

Indeed, reading through the email again I realized I had no idea what the theme, or topics, of the blog are. Is it a personal blog? Is it a professional blog?  What exactly does Brad do, or think about?

If Brad could help me understand this, even if it’s just a reminder (some people know, but a reminder doesn’t hurt), he would have used this email as a branding tool, and helped reinforce his personal brand to his contacts (whether they clicked over to the blog or not).

At a minimum he could have said:

I am going to write about ______ and ______.  My last post talks about ethical behavior.

To take it up a notch he could have said something like:

As a professional accountant I see a lot of interesting things.  I’ll write posts about my expertise (sales and use tax and financial accounting) and keep it interesting with stories and examples. I will probably write about my passions, including watch collecting) and try to always tie the posts back to business ideas. Whether you are an accountant or just interested in business, I hope to have relevant content for you.  If you have any ideas or questions, please let me know, as I begin this journey.

In the first email he reinforces his brand.  In the second email he drills down a bit more so people understand more of his breadth and depth… even if they don’t become blog readers they will know what some of his specialties and passions are.

“Where’s the focus” was my first thought, the second thought was: missed branding opportunity.

Next post I’ll critique his second blog post.

I’m sitting on my couch plucking away on a Microsoft 6000 keyboard I just got in the mail, writing this on my iPad 2.

I feel like I’m such a techie, although in reality I’m usually quite behind on new technology.

But this is pretty cool, I’m really enjoying it. 80% of the coolness of having an iPad 2 is that, well, I have one! Most iPad people only have the grossly outdated iPad 1 :p This is my first real apple product (not including a non-touch iPod), and I’ve had to figure out how it works… I’m slowly falling in love with it.

Here are some things I love about my iPad 2:

1. It is fast to turn on and turn off! I LOVE this for when I’m on the plane… as soon as we hit 10,000 feet I pop it out and turn it on and I’m ready to go. No watiting to load up.

2. It is small, small, small! Normally I like big, big big! but on a plane (I guess I spend a lot of time on a plane!) I find it more comfortable to collect my thoughts (work on a book, etc.) than using a keyboard… where my wrists and elbows are bent at unnatural angles.

3. It definitely has a “cool” factor that I’m not used to. Everyone wants to ooh and aah over it…

4. I love my first exposure to Apple design. I find some stuff to be non-intuitive, but once I figure it out it’s easy to navigate and use. Sometime’s it’s just hard to figure out :p I’ve already given a few design ideas to my JibberJobber dev team based on the interface I’m experiencing on the iPad.

There’s more I like, but I’ll stop here.

I don’t see this replacing my laptop (for on the road) and my PC, because they have different purposes, but it is really cool technology for someone who group up before cell phones, GPS and the rest of the amazing technology we have today.

I hope I can find some older iPads at discounted prices for my family… it’s pretty amazing!

Today I started piano lessons with my 13 year old daughter.

That is, SHE is teaching me.

Considering she’s been playing since she was 3 (see a cool song she self-taught herself below), I figured she’d be an excellent teacher.  Plus, I’d like to see if she likes it and would teach other young kids and make a buck here or there.

It went well, although my fingers and hands don’t really want to do what they must.  Piano isn’t as much about learning what sound each key makes as it is figuring out how to control the movements of my body, and retrain my movements.

The sound I’m plucking right now are very simple, but if I can get the form down I’ll be able to move into other, complex, more beautiful music.

Just like earlier this morning when I took her to the raquetball court.  She wants to hit with her wrist, and she wants to hit overhead, and she wants to have her body point in the wrong direction on a hit, and she wants to—— use bad form.  Because it’s more natural.

But she’s learning good form, and as she masters the good form, and her muscles strengthen, and she gets more control, she’ll be able to play at a higher level.

Just like her mom, who started to write songs many, many years ago, but a few months ago she started to go to local songwriter meetings to learn how to write songs – what is a bridge, what is a hook, how to use twists, how to relate to the audience, etc.

She has dozens of songs started, but some of them are probably pretty sophomoric, because she didn’t have the training.  But she’s getting the training, and she’s practicing – in the mornings she pulls out a notebook while her mind is fresh and she writes for ten minutes.  She is reading books on lyrics.  I’m sure she’s already improved, and over time her songwriting will only mature.

Just like blogging – when I started blogging I thought I was freaking awesome, but I’m coming up on my five year anniversary and I know my blog posts have gotten better.  I didn’t go to blogging school, but I have been at it, writing almost 2,000 posts in the last five years.  I’m experimented, played, tried and just plain written, and I can only hope that my posts are more meaningful, more impactful, and just plain better.

So, could the formula for getting proficient at something be:

proper instruction + plenty of practice = profiency

?

About Sam – she’s really good.  She self-taught herself to play this song (we need to get a recording up on youtube):

Hey there, I write on a number of different blogs … you might not have seen these so I wanted to share them with you here:

From my JibberJobber blog: Seth Godin: Pick Yourself

From the Career Resumes blog: Job Search: You Have To Pick Up The Phone

From my LinkedIn blog: Optimizing Slideshare On Your LinkedIn Profile

From this Jason Alba blog: pill vs. vitamin

Enjoy!

I remember a radio interview I was doing in with a supposedly enormous audience and I hoped I sounded good.

Why?

Because the tissues stuck up my nose to stop the bloody nose made me think I sounded stuffy!

But do the people on the other end know I had a bloody nose? I don’t think so – I think I hid it fine.

SHOULD THEY HAVE KNOWN?

Absolutely not.

There is no reason for you, listening to the radio, to know that I’m… um, human.

Why not?

Because it would only distract from the few seconds that I get to be in front of you, or have your attention.  And for those few seconds, I’d rather be “the expert.”

I get this idea from the story in Jeffrey Fox’s Rainmaker book, about the sales guy who lost a sale/opportunity because he spilled a bit of coffee on his shirt right before (or during) a sale.

It was too distracting.

Yes, I’m human, I can’t hide that, and I’m not ashamed of it. But if you are going to give me some brain time for a few seconds, minutes or hours, I want to make sure we’re on-topic the entire time.

Even if I have tissue stuck up my nose.

Even if I stub my toe right in the middle of our call (but you never know).

Even if I can’t stop yawning, or have extreme fatigue, or can’t stop coughing, or hiccuping (thank goodness for a mute button!).

Even if I have pnemonia or whatever else.  You might care about me as a human, but many times I can work through it to get the job done.  I’d rather not wait until a better time.

Why?

Because that better time might not ever, ever happen.

Now.

Even through the bloody nose.

A few months ago I was talking with someone about business and marketing and they introduced a concept new to me, but I got the impression that everyone else had already heard of it.

When you are selling/marketing something to someone, do they percieve it as a PILL or a VITAMIN?

The purpose of a PILL is to alleviate a pain (for example, a very bad headache).  The effects should be somewhat immediate. The value of the PILL, at the moment of pain, is really, really high.  I have a PROBLEM and a PILL is an immediate SOLUTION.  You know the perceived value can skyrocket, especially as the problem, or pain, is higher and immediate.

A VITAMIN, on the other hand, is more of a preventative measure.  You don’t take a VITAMIN to get results within 30 minutes…. VITAMINS are a subtle solution to a long-term, non-immediate problem.  The pain is not there, and you might wonder if it will ever come.  It’s easy to feel like it’s a non-essential solution to a problem you might not (or, likely won’t) have.

When I heard this I was perplexed, and I asked, are my offerings (products+services) perceived as PILLs (high value, immediate need) or VITAMINS (nominal value, not sure if really needed)???

Figuring this out, and perhaps even repackaging and repositioning, can help you sell more, make more, and become more valuable.

Or, you can keep trying to sell a solution for a non-problem.

OF COURSE, if you look at Covey’s four quadrants, you know you should spend time in the Important/NotUrgent box… which seems to me to be the VITAMIN mindset… but how many of us (or, our customers) are in the Urgent/____ box?  That’s where the PILL comes in.

How are you positioning YOUR offering?

Many of you know JibberJobber is a relationship management tool, designed off of traditional CRM, but stripped down to focus on RELATIONSHIPS instead of sales processes and jargon.

In the last almost-5-years I haven’t seen much news on the CRM front as far as aquisitions or anything.  Salesforce is the 8 billion pound guerrilla in the space, but I continue to hear they are way to complex and way too expensive (I’m sure they have their sweet spot in big companies, doing huge, huge deals).

Today I just read about two deals, though, which are pretty exciting.

The first is for GIST. I was actually on the phone with a GIST person a few months ago… I had tried to get in touch with them through their Contact Us methods but none of that worked. The phone call was okay.  The announcement of their acquisition by RIM (the company that puts out the Blackberry device) just came out yesterday.  No disclosure of how much the acquisition was for but according to TechCrunch they have taken in over $10M of funding… it’s said investors want a 10x return, which means they would have had to sold for $100M, but I’m guessing this deal was between $30M – $60M.  I have NOTHING to base that on, just a guess  No news on TechCrunch on this yet

The second is for Bantam, acquired by Constant Contact for $15M in cash. This is on TechCrunch here.  This is very interesting to me because it is a low purchase point, imo (even though, if they really did raise less than 2M, investors got about a 10x return (less what other owners got)), and because it was by Constant Contact.  My thoughts about CC doing this?  IT IS ABOUT TIME!  CRM is a great add-on for them.  iContact should follow suit and acquire their own CRM package, because this is so, so, so critical to their clientele.

As for me, I’m still plugging along, doing cool stuff with my CRM

I just read a really cool post by author/speaker extraordinaire Scott Stratten THE AWESOMENESS OF BEING A 2.0 AUTHOR. The title didn’t grab me and at first I wasn’t going to read the post but I’m glad I took a few minutes to get hooked.

WOW! Read the post.

Lots of great stuff there, but here’s one thing I didn’t know about… the ability to track what Kindle users highlight (see Scott’s point #3).

I checked out the top books highlighted and here’s what I found… check out each of these links if you want to see what other people highlighted from various top/popular books:

• Atlas Shrugged (has been hard for me to get through but I’m trying it again….)
• Rework (written by the 37 Signals guys)
• The 4-Hour Workweek (next edition… I haven’t read the book but I love reading the highlights!)
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (the number one book)

Here are Scott Stratten’s highlights: UnMarketing.

Is this cool or what?  See the front page of this feature here.

I recently posted my 5 favorite words, as a business owner, designer, product manager.  Here are two more words I’ve been thinking about lately.  Both have to do with marketing something… when someone wants to buy “something” from you, you have to be able to easily communicate what “it” is that you have to offer.

System: “7 steps to ___,” or “4 ___ in 4 days,” or something like that.  Think: Seven Habits of ______.  People like to know you’ve (supposedly) thought of all the angles and have come up with an amazing SYSTEM that solves their problem.

Package: Very similar concept to a “system,” but a package doesn’t have to have a system to/in it.  The package can be something like “buy 8 hours for the price of 10,” or “get a book, ebook, DVD and upgrade for ___.”  I do this here.

If you are a consultant I recommend you do this immediately – your clients expect it (even if they don’t know they expect it.

Go check out my other 5 favorite words – I didn’t realize this was going to be a series, and will probably be an ongoing series…