Prepare for the Worst -- Devise a Comprehensive Emergency Action Plan

I was sent this and if you are in Northestern Indiana I would encourage you to at least browse thru the topics and the full course agenda. You might find a few things interesting.

Business Continuity Planning Workshop

Devise a Comprehensive Emergency Action Plan

Click Here to See the Full Course Agenda

You Should Attend If You Are...

• Writing a business continuity plan
• Emergency or disaster director of operations in your organization
• Responsible for  compliance for your business to C-TPAT (Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism) or any mandatory planning standard (e.g. NFPA, NASD)
• Developing crisis and/or emergency management plans
• Developing Emergency Action Procedures for your department within an organization

REGISTER TODAY .... SEATS ARE LIMITED!
Call 260-420-7374 by September 24th

Top 12 Resources for Start-Ups

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Top 12 Resources for Start-Ups

Every now and then I get asked to provide a list of resources to help small business owners get started and growing. Here are some of my favorite recommendations.

• SBDC - Counselors trained to help you find the local and national resources you may need - located in most metropolitan areas - Find an SBDC chapter
• SCORE - Service Corps of Retired Executives Find a SCORE chapter - Retired business owners volunteer and share wisdom.
• StartUpNation - Resources to help you start your business and growing community of folks interested in starting.
• SBA - Small Business Planner
• IRS - Starting a business checklist
• Business Know-How - Tips on starting a business
• Microsoft - Small Business Resource Center
• Entrepreneur.com - Guide to starting a business
• Inc.com - Guide to starting a business
• Business Owner’s Toolkit - Guide to starting a business
• AllBusiness.com - Tips for staring a business
• BPlans - Business plan help and advice

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Starting a Small Business? A Retired Executive Wants to HelpSmall Business 101: How to Get Started

Why can't we find Bin Laden?

GPS is becoming one of the hottest personal tech sectors this year, with more and more cell phones including location capabilties and portable navigation devices for the car hitting that sweet spot intersection of affordability and packed-to-the-gills features.

 

 

 

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Look at this stuff! And you know something, we don't get to see the good stuff, but the government does! So someone tell me, why can't we find him?

Seth Godin on Nonprofit Marketing, Free Webinar

Network for Good is sponsoring this Free Webinar. If you don't know who Seth Godin is you should. He has the most popular marketing blog in the world. This will be well worth your time.

Nonprofit Marketing Basics and What is Squidoo?
with Special Guest Seth Godin.

Free Nonprofit 911 teleconference on September 16 at 1pm (eastern)

Network for Good is extremely privileged to welcome marketing guru, author and world-renowned blogger and presenter Seth Godin to lead our upcoming Nonprofit 911 call. His 10 books have been featured on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Amazon.com and Business Week bestseller lists—not to mention his wildly popular ebooks including “Unleashing the Ideavirus” which more than 1,000,000 people have downloaded.  Seth was founder and CEO of Yoyodyne, the industry's leading interactive direct marketing company, which Yahoo! acquired in late 1998.

• Learn the tricks and common pitfalls of nonprofit marketing
• Get practical tips for creating messages that compel action
• Meet Squidoo, and learn how and why to use it as part of your nonprofit organization’s marketing and fundraising plans

6 Writing Rules To Master

 

If you want to write like a best-selling author, you might as well listen to what one of them thinks about writing.

George Orwell may be best known for the books Animal Farm and 1984, but there is a lesser-known essay he put together titled, Politics and the English Language, that featured his six rules for better writing:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Here's what he wrote about his rules:

"These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English... I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought... If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself."

He wrote this essay in 1946.

Words matter. With publishing tools like Blogs and Twitter, maybe they matter even more.

Great rules are timeless, no matter how much technology changes the platform by which they are delivered.

Focus On Digital Marketing

 

Here's an old sales question for you:

Is it easier to sell one person one item for one million dollars, or to sell one million people something that costs one dollar?

It's not a trick question and the logic goes that it's much easier to sell one person something for one million dollars.

Here's the challenge: don't get sucked into the mass media mind-set when it comes to online.

The Digital Marketing channel offers you the ability and the channel to focus.

Harness it. Check out Mitch Joel's entire blog at

Six Pixels of Separation

Tags: advertising business chris anderson cpm digital channel digital marketing ebay marketing mass media

Social Networking: Common Mistakes Small Businesses Make

I posted this, because I think I have made them all. So, if you are just starting with social media, don't make these mistakes like I have.

Posted by Kelly Spors

Many businesses these days are venturing into the Wild West of social media, trying their hand at things like blogging and Twitter and creating profiles on social-networking sites. But along the way they’re making lots of mistakes.

Sta.rtup.biz, a small-business social-networking site, recently had some thoughts on how small businesses are botching their forays into the social-media world. Here’s a look at some of the most common mistakes from them and other social-media experts:

– Bare Profile: Signing up for a Facebook account is the easy part.

– Too Little Personality: Lighten up.

– Too Much Hype: Using social media shouldn’t be about blatantly selling a business.

– Not Enough Fresh Content: Engaging others through social media needs to be an ongoing, frequent process.

What do you think of this advice? Anything else to add?

Photo: Getty Images

Permalink | Trackback URL: http://blogs.wsj.com/independentstreet/2008/08/21/social-networking-common-mistakes-small-businesses-make/trackback

Building Blocks

I have never done this before but from a fellow DTM coach from another DTM coach is a blog post that I feel has some decent value.

Building Blocks

Do You Have a 15 Second Pitch?

Posted: 27 Apr 2008 06:22 PM CDT

Do you have an effective 15 second pitch? Or what my fellow Duct Tape Marketing Coach in Connecticut calls a One Breath Commercial?

If you don't have a 15 second pitch or you're not happy with the one you have, head on over to 15SecondPitch.com. Use their PitchWizard to write a clear concise pitch. Sign up for a free account to store your pitch and be able to quickly send your pitch to prospects.

The free account includes a Pitch Assessment to get feedback on your pitch.

You can even order PitchCards, an interesting alternative to the standard business card.

Here is an example of what a pitch looks like:

Got your pitch down? Send me a copy, I'd love to "hear" it.

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