If you hire me to help plan and launch your blog, you’re going to spend some portion of the first three months learning how to write for one. And among the first lessons you’ll learn is how to write a great headline. I’ve spent years understanding what makes for a great headline and likewise, spend a fair amount of the first quarter of your blogging campaign showing you how to do it as well. Writing a great headline or title for a blog post is a craft; make no mistakes. Read the rest of this entry »

The other day Anthony, my friend, called me up to get my professional opinion on an issue he is having with a client. I said, “Sure, what’s up?” Well he calmly, but passionately launched into a bit of a rant about a client that is repeatedly calling him to ask “a quick question.” He doesn’t mind helping out here and there but, feels that in this case, the client is abusing the opportunity. Personally, whenever someone begins a conversation with me by saying, “Hey Scott? Quick question?” I always utter to myself, “No such thing.” Read the rest of this entry »

You want a new Web site. You’re the boss and the company needs a new site. The existing one is home to static and dated talking points and lately you’ve begun to suspect that it is shouting at visitors and is thus, not developed with an evolving 2.0 culture in mind. There’s nothing, you conclude, social about. Your wife, mother-in-law and golf buddies all agree. You’re the boss and this is your mandate.

You want the thing redone and you want it redone now. Details are someone else’s problem. That’s what you pay the worker bees to do. You make the demand, they make it happen. You don’t care how; you just want the darn thing done and done well. You assign a small gaggle of your most qualified people to the task and they immediately spring into action. At the outset however, you make it clear that you want every phase of the project to pass through you before moving through each milestone. You’re Teddy Roosevelt. Read the rest of this entry »

What single word would you use describe a wildly successful party you attended? I was at one recently and the word I would use is satisfied. The party was satisfying or fulfilling or even better, cool. I find that there is much that can be learned about how to establish loyalty by evaluating the kind of time I have at parties. Think for a moment about the word you would use to describe what made the outing sensational. I can’t see your word, so let’s discuss mine for a moment. But please be sure to add yours in the comments.

“I was walking around feelin’ Satisfied. Can you imagine that?”

I felt satisfied because I was invited to participate in a round table comprised of people that not only shared my interests, but far more importantly, my approach to discussing them. Being in like-minded company is awesome; don’t get me wrong. But it sure doesn’t promise a sale and it’s a far way from making me a loyalist. I can get my stuff anywhere. Selling it to me doesn’t make me loyal to you. Being in like-behaved company however? Now that my friends is nirvana! Matching my enthusiasm is great, but matching my delivery always leaves me feeling like I belong to something only a few among us knows is cool and in turn, belonging to it makes me think of myself as cool too. Feeling cool by virtue of indoctrination is the best kind, of any kind of cool because others you suddenly admire chose you. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently a prospect asked me how much it would cost him to build an online storefront, populate it with products and launch it. I told him I would need to know the particulars of the project and from these findings could issue a formal proposal and number I feel confident will be fair to us both. That wasn’t good enough for him. He asked me to ballpark the figure and I said I really couldn’t do that without first knowing more about the gig. He persisted. “Oh can’t yah just give me an idea?” Again I insisted that if I were to estimate his costs sight unseen, it would be based on a completely arbitrary number and that might cost me the sale and damage his perception of my consultancy. Read the rest of this entry »

I am tremendously concerned with my legacy. Always have been. What am I giving to the situation? Particularly during moments of contention or heated debate, I ask myself if I am making good choices. Am I saying it and doing it in a way that makes me proud? Typically it’s not difficult to leave a good legacy. Adherence to fundamental virtues such as honestly, authenticity and fair mindedness usually do the trick. But what fascinates me about the act of legacy building is how often subtle self-indulgences govern otherwise well-intended people. These subtleties came into play during a recent spat I had and subsequently inspired this post. Here’s what happened.

The other day I suddenly found myself being criticized for using my BlackBerry while a colleague talked to me. What I found so sudden about the criticism was that the person issuing it entered the room I was in, interrupted me reading my email and began speaking at me.

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