The Wax Blog

Legacy seems to be a very popular name for marketing firms, or so I found out when I googled “marketing legacy” to try to get ideas for this blog post. Lyric Marketing’s blog tells me in order to leave a good legacy I have to be authentic, provide valuable content, show my personality..I’m sure all these things are true but they really don’t help me understand what that legacy thing actually is.

The legal guys say it’s a gift of personal property. The dictionary guys say it’s anything handed down from the past. Christians seem to write a lot about leaving a good legacy for their children. Environmentalists talk about leaving a legacy that includes a healthier planet. eHow even has an article about leaving a good legacy through your writing.

I once wrote about how marketing karma could help or hinder your business. I think I’m going to have to solve this “legacy” question by giving you a list of questions to ask yourself about your product or service. (And to be fair, I’ve answered them as well) (more…)

Without a good site strategy, it could be curtains for your PR campaign!

I can’t tell you how many times we’ve busted our butts to get media, especially bloggers, to consider a client only for them to tell me one of the following:

1. “Website took too long to load” or 2. “Couldn’t figure out what they do from their website” 3. “It’s all flash” or my favorite 4. “The website is down”

In public relations class we learned about the importance of understanding your ‘key publics’ – the audiences that include not only your customers but those that will heavily influence the success of your business. And that includes the media. Next step? Make sure all of your messaging is directed at least in part to ALL of your important key publics.

If you want exposure, the main way you’re going to get it is through media. The first place media will go is your website, but if they can’t find the information  they’re looking for, they’ll simply move on. So here’s a simple review list for your site – make sure you do this BEFORE you start promoting. Also, I’m providing an example of a company that gets it – the Natural Curtain Company. (more…)

A little over three weeks ago I was blazing down a hill in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, on the third of eight laps in an inline skating marathon. I remember thinking some not-repeatable thoughts as my left skate started to wobble, probably after hitting some negligible landmark like an acorn or twig. The resulting crash left me in the hospital (the WONDERFUL NY Methodist – can’t say enough great things about that place!) having surgery on my knee. Thankfully, there’s probably no permanent damage but I have been assigned to immobility for the longest time in my adult life, unable to bend the knee until the skin heals.

What does this have to do with my normally instructional, and maybe kind of boring, voice in this blog? Over the past month, I’ve learned some pretty cool things about my platform, new media and the kindness of supposed strangers. I think I’m going to be able to apply all these things in my work as I slowly recover. Here’s a list of just a few:

• My Twitter buddies expressed real concern and continue to check in on me while I’m getting better. I’ve only met one of them in person -  @segnavia who even brought me  a latte -  but the others – @writesourcing, @dogwalkblog, @laurihart @dcwired, just to name a few – really do care! I think this means that I’m engaged in what used to be a purely professional pursuit,  but what has now turned into a fulfilling daily experience, communicating with people I’ve never met all over the country.  (Alternatively, Facebook friends have not provided as much good cheer – interesting in that most of them I HAVE met in person.)

• Along the same vein, my personal voice seems to be more important than my professional one. Or maybe it’s the same as when I was starting out in sales – I was always told we like to buy from people we know. Perhaps I’ve been too standoffish on my blog and even on Facebook – maybe that’s why folks are not as engage or interested in ‘buying’ what I’m writing. I’m going to work harder to ‘show up’ in both those mediums in the same way I show up on Twitter

• Without as much energy, and in the beginning with a great deal of pain, I’ve had to really budget my time working and engaging in social media. Although I’m still catching up a bit, my work quality hasn’t really suffered. If  I can learn to take things more slowly – perhaps my  work will improve without my deadlines suffering.

And finally, this accident was fairly dramatic. From the crash, to the emergency surgery, to wondering if I’d need skin grafts and such there continue to be some major ups and downs with this thing. I think people love drama and my life usually has quite a bit of drama. There’s a lot of interesting, cool stuff that happens to me – and   I’m going to start sharing more in this blog and in my social media.

So stick around for more of my life, not just my professional advice,  in the future.  And here’s a teaser…eventually, I promise to tell you the stories about the Playboy bunny, Ralph Nader and my supermodel client phase. And MAYBE the one about David Hasselhof. But only after I tell @dogwalkblog first.

“Kaizen” is Japanese for improvement – a common definition according to Wikipedia is “the philosophy or practices that focus upon continuous improvement of processes in manufacturing, engineering, supporting business processes, and management”.   Kaizen became very important to me after experiencing utter failure in my first job as a manager – granted, I was making a very hard transition from being a top salesperson (where it’s all about me) to management (where it’s all about them) but still, I was awful.  Instead of trying to get from Point A (bad manager) to Point B (great manager) my wonderful business coach taught me that it was all about continuous improvement. I may not be where I want to be right now, but I’m better than I was yesterday and I should still be better tomorrow…if I work on improving my skills on a continuous basis.

Training has changed as our learning styles have changed as well. I don’t think anyone goes by the old rule  they need only get “one great thing” from a training class, the whole experience needs to be worth. These days, training companies like Phoenix Training do an excellent job of combining pre-training consulting, one-on-one coaching and classroom training to provide a holistic experience that addresses needs for management coaching, team building and skills training. (Read some of their case studies to see how companies around the world are implementing training these days)

In a way, I’m really glad that I struggled so much because it instilled in me a love of training, and of gaining new knowledge. I see so many companies find a recipe for marketing or PR that works at that time, and they act as though they never have to address it again.  In our world today of social media, blogging and digital influence, this can be a brand killer.  Our customers are moving quickly from the hottest app to to the next big thing, and we have to continually find them…and continually improve how we engage with them.

In a challenging economy, it’s sometimes hard to justify spending money on training. I would argue that those people and companies who spend money on it now, are the ones who will survive into the next round of economic growth. What’s your attitude toward training right now? Where has continuous improvement served you well?

I was emailing with a virtual colleague of mine about a young media consultant who is known for having thousands upon thousands of Twitter followers. In fact, that’s her primary presence online. We were wondering whether this person’s Twitter stardom would turn into lucrative consulting deals. After all, how much of you intellectual capital can you display in 140 characters? (Those of you who follow me on Twitter during American Idol season might think it actually does the opposite.)

It’s a question that demonstrates how great success in one social media network may not translate to more business for you. And that’s why it’s so important to find the right social media tools to work your campaign, not necessarily the most popular ones.  (If you’d like to know how I feel about many company Facebook pages, you can read my post on that subject here.)

So for the fourth post in this series on writing an actionable social media plan,  instead of thinking about “should we do twitter and facebook” ask yourself, where are my customers engaged in social media? If you’re B2B, it’s probably not on Facebook. If you’re launching a book, what better place to be than Facebook, where you can set up a fan page and tell all your friends about it? Think about your customers, or readers, or whomever you are trying to reach. What are they using right now? Restaurants, bars and other social types of places better get have a presence on  geo-based social media like Yelp and Foursquare. Consultants, I’d suggest having an informative blog that really demonstrates your knowledge of your industry. Whatever you choose, don’t try to be everywhere. Pick a couple of networks that you think you can easily manage and go from there. Just as a quick primer, here is the social media that seems to work well for my clients in different industries: (more…)

I’m in the PR world and we use a lot of interns. For the most part, my experience has been a bit strange since I started Wax Marketing. At first, I thought maybe I had lost my touch…I used to manage a fairly large number of people and was known for spotting the best and brightest of the entry-level candidates. Maybe communications majors were just, well not as bright? (Sorry,  I come from the technology industry. They think everyone is dumber, no offense!) Maybe I should have hired on more individuals with a marketing degree background. Or maybe I’d lost some of my interviewing skills? Whatever it was, I was going through interns and new hires faster than cherry pie at a pie-eating contest.

I started to realize a few things had changed. For example, a pro bike race I worked on had a kids’ fun race. The race promoter insisted that everyone get a medal…a practice I had never heard of. A job candidate’s father accompanied him to his interview. Again, this blew me away. However, not as much as the intern who could not stop emailing her mother…127 emails in two days to be exact. Or the intern who locked herself in the office for two hours because I told her that her work had to be re-done. Worse of all probably, I had a client  who was late to an incredibly important meeting because her son wasn’t happy with what he was wearing to school that day. He was 15 at the time.

These occurrences and others like them have happened on a regular basis lately, and it helped me realize…maybe  it’s not just about me. There is something going on with the education system and with parents that has changed in the last ten years. I found Dr. Jean Twenge’s book Generation Me and others like it that explained our society’s determination to help kids know they’re truly “special” has turned them into a group ill-prepared to take on the competitiveness and, I have to say, at times unfair culture, of business today. (more…)