I’d like to thank Debbie Fried (@DebbieFried) for pointing me towards this video of Don McMillan’s “How Not to do PowerPowerpoint” stand-up routine. It was fun to watch and reminded me of the conversations I had with our own Scott Stiefvater as he was preparing for MB/I’s “Avoid Causing Death by PowerPoint” class.

If That’s Bad, What’s Good?

Well, whenever someone asks me what I think a PowerPoint presentation should look like, I can’t help …

Across the country we see shopping centers struggling to keep their storefronts filled with tenants that their individual communities support. Community Marketing Group works with individual shopping centers and commercial real estate owners in order to create mapped resources for towns and cities.

Each map is indexed by a sophisticated database that allows Google to crawl each business and the information they provide. We provide customizations to these maps including user accounts allowing each business to update their information, add events or promotions, and adding multiple links such as websites, reviews, or blogs.

Our maps are designed for both the user and …

Redesigning a website is like building a new one:

Start with a purpose.

If you know you need a change, but can’t put the reason into words, try answering these questions:

“What do I want my new website to do that the old one couldn’t?”

“What do I want my new website to do better than my old website?”

Maybe you want your new site to reflect a new identity, perhaps you want to start selling products online, or you want to start an online community, or improve online customer communication, or reduce the turn around time between when you decide …

As Twitter continues its meteoric rise towards becoming the largest, easiest vehicle for mass personal communication, advertisers and marketers continue to experiment with how the social media tool can be monetized and/or integrated into their campaigns.

Three concerns in particular have driven these experiments: Cost, Impact, and Disclosure.

Cost

As anyone with a Twitter account can tell you, Twitter is a free service.  It costs you nothing to set up an account, and there is no charge for posting to Twitter.

However, there is another price associated with marketing through Twitter, and its coin is time.

If you wish to grow a successful Twitter presence …

You’re working with your web developer and you’ve determined that not all your content is for everyone: maybe you want your site to have added value for members; perhaps you handle medical, financial, or other sensitive documents; it could be one of your protections against SPAM bots; it may even be that you like hiding “Easter Eggs” for customers who gather promotional codes from elsewhere in your marketing campaign.

Whatever your reason is for partitioning off a section of your website, you need to decide how secure it will be.

One for All

At first blush …

“Stop selling your professional services, you are killing your sales.”  That was the message from Jim Horan (known for The One Page Business Plan) in a teleseminar of the same name.

Why Selling Hurts Sales

It’s not selling …

A month-and-a-half ago Google launched Sidewiki - a service that lets web browsers with the Google Toolbar view and write comments along side of any website.

Setting aside my professional mask for a moment, Sidewiki is one …

As I mentioned last time, I’m updating my web site. And, as I mentioned last time, it’s slow going.

For those of us with existing web sites, it can be tough to find time to update it. It’s there; it exists. With other demands on our time and energy, we put effort into things that are urgent. That’s perhaps not a wise …

November 10, 1969

This was the first day upon which someone could tune their TV into a National Education Television station and here the now culturally pervasive jingle, “Sunny days keeping the clouds away….”

Yes, forty years ago today Sesame Street was born on the ailing network soon to be replaced by the federally funded Public Broadcasting System.

From the beginning, Sesame Street was developed with a curriculum in mind, and a philosophy that education and entertainment should be integrated - and an understanding that it was okay to pursue broad educational goals because a breadth of topics would be more likely to …

Last month marked the 20th Anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake. Awareness of this landmark date was a part of my inspiration to write my blog entry on using vacations and sick leave as a small business stress test.

At that time I suggested that business owners make contingency plans and run drills for all variety of business obstacles, including the possibility of bridge closures. Last week the Labor Day repairs of the Bay Bridge failed and we were faced with the longest closure of that thoroughfare since the Loma Prieta quake.

For five days …