Karl Sakas

Find more free time, make more money, and love your work again: “5 Things You’re Missing That Are Killing Your Business”

Karl Sakas — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 14:50:51 +0000

Karl Sakas sharing advice about business operations for marketing firms at DMFB conference in Raleigh, NC

After a few years, many marketing agency owners find work isn’t fun any more. They’re getting pulled in a million directions, and there’s never enough time or money. And they don’t spend as much time on the work that got them started in the first place.

Fortunately, marketing firm owners don’t have to go it alone. I’ve found a solution to this problem by applying my business operations experience.

I shared my solution today at the Raleigh Convention Center during the Digital Marketing for Business (DMFB) conference, a conference reaching 400 marketing professionals and business owners from North Carolina and across the Southeast.

My presentation was on “5 Things You’re Missing That Are Killing Your Business.”

By creating and consistently applying systems in five key areas of their business—sales, marketing, accounting, recruiting, and project management—business owners can make more money, find more free time, and love their work again.

Download the slides, including tips & resources (PDF, 1.5MB)

Prefer to view the slides online? See the SlideShare version.

Question: What’s your favorite tip from my talk? Are you ready to commit to taking action on it in your business? You can leave a comment by clicking here.

Image credit: Photo from Digital Marketing for Business via Twitter

Banning telecommuting: Yahoo! is using the wrong tools to fix what’s really an accountability problem

Karl Sakas — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 06:19:20 +0000

Part of my job running the business operations side of a marketing firm is to help people be productive. One of our web developers has worked remotely for years. A designer recently went from working from home 40% of the time to 100% of the time. Both are productive, and I don’t have trouble reaching them during the day. We’re on IM and Google Hangout every day.

We’re all adults. Collaborating with remote workers is baked into our corporate culture. So when I heard Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer had banned telecommuting, I assumed it was a joke. Nope, not a joke.

Apparently a number of Yahoo! employees had been abusing the work-from-home policy. Well then fire them. People goofing off all day is an accountability failure by front-line managers, not a company-wide HR problem.

I applaud Mayer for her efforts to revive a has-been Internet brand. And as CEO, it’s her prerogative to mandate a draconian HR policy at her own company. I’m not a Fortune 500 CEO but I bet you it’s going to hurt retention and recruiting. In-demand prospective employees have options. Yahoo! is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

For the record, I prefer working in the office. Operations tends to be work better that way–whether it’s working on marketing projects or accessing QuickBooks over the network. I like being able to unplug by going home. I like being able to have a frictionless impromptu meeting. Remote collaboration isn’t as good as collaborating in person–but not so much that it counterbalances the other benefits, such that I’d recommend saying no one’s allowed to work from home.

When it comes to Yahoo! and to marketing firms like ours, the productivity solution is really about hiring responsible people who have a strong work ethic, trusting them to do the right thing, and then verifying (as needed) that you’re getting what you’re paying for.

As business managers, I believe it’s our job to maximize sustainable results. Maximize as in “as much as possible,” but sustainable as in “don’t burn people out while you’re doing it.” If someone is productive, let them be productive where they’re most productive. And if someone isn’t being productive, it’s time for you to have a candid chat about their performance, not to create a draconian HR policy that punishes both the innocent and the guilty.

Question: Do you think an HR policy banning remote workers is good, bad, or somewhere in between? You can leave a comment by clicking here.

To succeed, businesses need to think about design & creative entrepreneurs need to think about business

Karl Sakas — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 05:26:26 +0000

There’s more to marketing and design than creativity—it takes a strong business sense, too. To borrow from marketing agency consultant David C. Baker—marketing agencies don’t go out of business for lack of creativity; they go out of business for being poorly-run businesses.

Design entrepreneur and BLDG25 co-founder Raven Manocchio recently shared some important lessons about the business of design and marketing to a packed house at 18 Seaboard, during AIGA Raleigh’s Homegrown lunch & learn series.

1) Recognize that Entrepreneurship Isn’t Linear Any More

In the past, being an entrepreneur often involved writing a binder-sized business plan up front. A business plan is still important if you’re seeking venture capital or other funding, but most entrepreneurs are better served by designing, testing, and adapting.

Raven shared the new stages of entrepreneurship–working more like a Lean Startup:

Ideate.
Design.
Prototype.
Test.
Iterate.

2) Accept the Nature of Day-to-Day Entrepreneurship

On a day-to-day basis, being an entrepreneur is less exciting than your friends, clients, or grandmother think it is. Raven (right) acknowledged:

“Yes, it’s boring, because it’s hard work. Hard work isn’t sexy.”

Of course, as someone who loves the operations side of marketing firms, I enjoy working magic with spreadsheets, pre-screening job candidates for interviews, and other things Raven might think of as more mundane.

3) Acknowledge that Change Happens

There’s a strong benefit to following the design-test-iterate approach. As Raven, noted:

When was the last time you used a pay phone to call your local movie video rental store and used a paper map to figure out how to get there?

In business and elsewhere in life, change happens. Will you be leading or following?

4) Observe Design-Trained Entrepreneurs

In promoting the importance of including good design in any new business, Raven shared a slide with logos of companies (or brands now acquired by larger companies) that were founded or co-founded by people with design training:

Of course, they couldn’t have gotten where they are today without developers and business people, too!

5) Understand Your Limitations

During the Q&A, an audience member asked for advice on how to find a good designer to help him improve his startup’s SaaS product. As a non-designer, he observed:

“We realized a business guy and a programmer with Photoshop create really ugly designs!”

In response to a question about how soon a startup should involve a design, Raven said, “in the beginning.” That answer might vary by business, but poorly-designed products and services need a lot to counterbalance the poor design.

6) Learn More at AIGA Raleigh

Want to learn more from Raven Manocchio’s presentation to AIGA Raleigh? Be sure to read the official recap by creative director Maura McDonald.

You can find Raven on Twitter at @ravenmanocchio and @bldg25.

Question: Can you think of a product or service that succeeded in spite of being poorly designed? You can leave a comment by clicking here.

Image credits: Headshot via LinkedIn. Chapter logo via AIGA Raleigh. Other photos by Karl Sakas from Raven Manocchio slides.

Teen Tech Camp: inspiring & mentoring the next generation of technologists, in the Class of 2023

Karl Sakas — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 22:32:19 +0000

I recently led a workshop via Refresh the Triangle and the Durham County Library. During the all-day Teen Tech Camp, we helped 30 local students (ages 11 to 17) who wanted to learn about working with web technologies.

Teaching students at the tech business workshop (Photo by Autumn Winters, with photo releases at Durham County Libraries)

As one of the Refresh the Triangle co-organizers, I gave a keynote workshop for the middle school and high school students, “How to Make Money with Your Technology Skills” (download the PDF handout!). Other workshops included:

Blogging with WordPress
Design for the Web
Coding with HTML/CSS
Introduction to JavaScript
Game Design for the Internet

Sharing My Business Experience at Teen Tech Camp

In high school in Virginia, I started a technology consulting business (computer training, troubleshooting, web design, and marketing). I eventually grew the business part-time to 20+ clients by the time I graduated from college, growing primarily by word of mouth marketing.

I learned mostly by trial and error–I want to help today’s students jumpstart their experience. During the workshop, I used an interactive worksheet that helps students answer key questions, so that they’d leave with a plan for getting started:

You can start making money with your computer skills today. As a teenager, I helped people fix their computers and build websites. You can get paid for what you know, too!

I went from charging $12/hour in 10th grade to charging $75/hour by the time I graduated from college. Beyond the money, I learned important business and technical skills that I still use today.

To help you get started faster, I’m going to answer 10 key questions about starting your computer freelancing business. By the end of our session today, you’ll have ideas on how to make money, where to find paying clients, how to stay organized, and more.

You can see immediate or almost immediate results — and your freelance experience can lead to getting a job in the future, just as it did for me.

Participants at this first Teen Tech Camp will graduate from college between 2017 and 2023. I can’t predict the future, but I know there’s plenty to learn between now and then!

Get the Handout

Download the PDF handout here (161KB)

Answering the Top 10 Questions from Teenagers About Starting a Tech Freelancing Business

During my workshop at Durham’s Southwest Regional Library, I answered these 10 top questions teenagers may have about making money with their tech skills:

How can I make money now using my computer skills?
Where can I find my first clients?
How much should I charge?
How do I convince people to hire me, and should I ever work for free?
What should I do to keep making money?
How can I stay safe, personally and financially?
Where can I go to learn new skills?
Do my parents need to be involved?
Where can this take me?
What should I do next to get started?

Here’s a PDF copy of my handout (161KB) so others can use it, too.

Thanks to UX engineer Sarah Kahn and teen services librarian Autumn Winters for taking the lead in organizing the first Teen Tech Camp event!

Sharing Your Advice

I’d love to get your tips, too! Did you start a business as a teenager? Do you know teens who want to use their tech skills?

Questions: If you were giving business advice to a tech-savvy teenager, what would you tell them? You can leave a comment by clicking here.

Marketing interview: Cartoonist Tom Fishburne on niche marketing, career goals, and raving fans

Karl Sakas — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 06:12:50 +0000

Marketing cartoonist Tom Fishburne

If you’re in marketing or brand management, you probably know Tom Fishburne as the business cartoonist behind the popular Marketoonist series (read by 100,000 people each week), the author of This One Time at Brand Camp, and a communications consultant to companies like General Mills and the Wall Street Journal.

This month, I interviewed Tom from his Marketoon Studios office near San Francisco. As someone who loves both marketing and dry humor, I especially enjoyed hearing Tom’s perspective on:

How doing what his coworkers called “career suicide” actually helped at work,
Why the Dollar Shave Club has become so popular,
Why anti-social brands can’t just start using social media,
Why Don Draper isn’t calling the shots on branding any more,
How the “career ladder” has turned into a “career trapeze,”
How there’s more to career planning today than just “follow your bliss,”
How Tom’s creating a market to connect cartoonists and brands, and
Why helping customers become more awesome is your top priority at work.

You can find Tom on Twitter at @TomFishburne. Sign up to get a weekly email reminder about new cartoons at TomFishburne.com and learn more about his brand storytelling business at MarketoonStudios.com.

KARL SAKAS: In the video of your presentation at Do Lectures, you mention a Jerry Garcia quote: “You do not merely want to be considered just the best of the best. You want to be considered the only ones who do what you do.” What if someone isn’t a rockstar or a “rockstar” CEO?

TOM FISHBURNE: It’s really about finding what you uniquely do, whether that turns you into a rockstar CEO or actualizes you as a person. The lesson came to me from having twin interests in marketing and cartooning, and thinking they’d always have to be separate, with a day job in marketing. The revelation for me was realizing I could combine the two and think about developing marketing campaigns based on cartoons. And they could be even more interesting than each on their own.

This can be true for anyone–find what you uniquely do, so that you’re not one of thousands, so you’re the first to come to mind. (Tweet this!)

When I joined General Mills–which has an excellent training program–I was one of 34 associate marketing managers. My initial thought was, “I don’t want to stick out. I want to be like everyone else.” I had this experience where I was trying to assimilate.

Then I started drawing a cartoon strip. A few of them were a little snarky. People would sometimes poke their heads over the cubicle wall, and say I was committing career suicide.

After a while, I got a voicemail from the assistant to the CMO. I thought, “Great, I’m getting fired after all.” (Tweet this!)

I called her back and she said he wanted to take me to lunch. Turns out the CMO had seen my cartoons and was really interested in what I was doing, and he wanted to get to know me better.

By assimilating and taking the safe route, I would have stayed anonymous. By sticking your neck out, suddenly you can have opportunities that others don’t.

You don’t have to be the best in the world, but you have to be the best in your environment, however big that might be.

KS: I love your cartoon showing a “Like us on Facebook” placard at a TSA security checkpoint. Are some brands like the TSA or the IRS just hopeless? What about brands that just seem… not compelling, like SKF, the Swedish ball bearing manufacturer?

TF: It’s a great question. A lot of my worldview was shaped by my five years at method products. It’s a wonderful brand in an extremely dull category–household cleaning products. My boss liked to say, “There are no low-interest categories, just low-interest brands.”

If you can get people enthusiastic about a cleaning product brand, you can get them enthusiastic about anything. (Tweet this!)

The trick is not just about jumping into social media. If you’re an anti-social brand, you can’t just start being social. (Tweet this!) You have to be doing something likable and sharable in the first place. Anyone can do it, if you’re doing something delightful.

Thinking about yourself as a commodity is often a self-fulfilling prophecy. (Tweet this!)

If you challenge yourself to find an emotional connection to an audience, anyone can succeed. But you have to find that experience first.

The TSA has a bit of work to do before leaning into social media. But to be fair, they are trying to be more transparent about explaining why they do what they do.

KS: In your Google “Think Branding” keynote, you described how retro liquor brand Sailor Jerry gave a shot of rum to each customer who got a tattoo of the company logo. In college, I visited the NRA museum near where I grew up outside D.C. The guestbook comments said, “Our six year old loved the museum. She’s already a Lifetime Member.” Is there a replicable quality behind what makes people tattoo logos on their arms, or that makes people buy their first-grader a $1,000 lifetime membership in anything?

TF: [Laughing] You just shortened my Christmas list.

Most brands try to talk to everybody. But that means they talk to nobody. It’s like the Charlie Brown parents’ voices, “wah-wah-wah.” Marketing sounds that way. And consumers recognize that, and tune it out.

I think the replicable quality is finding how to preach to your choir. Who is your laser-targeted core? Who’s most likely to be interested in your product? Evangelize to them, and focus on them.

One of the reason The Simpsons is such a wonderful show is that 5% of the jokes are only understood by a very small number of people. These are the people who start the Simpsons wiki, who watch every show, who go to Comic-Con, who know every line Matt Groening has even written. The show never forgets them.

Brands need to do more of that. They need to do some communication that is deliberately exclusive. For fans of Chevy Chase and Fletch, you could do a lot of ball bearing jokes.

At method, there was a[n external] blog called “method lust: one man’s unsuppressed lust for all things method home.” It was updated three times a week, and it’d get 5-10 comments per post. It was entirely about the method brand. And the blogger didn’t know anybody at the company.

In one sense, it’s a little creepy. But by inspiring a guy like Nathan [Aaron], we knew we were inspiring more. Find the evangelists. They’re a proxy for the people who didn’t start the [fan] blog or leave comments. (Tweet this!)

[KS: We discussed the Dollar Shave Club, which, it turns out, we both recently “joined.”]

They tell a story so well. And [with social media] it’s never been so easy to connect with a brand that way. So focused and targeted. You know from Dollar Shave Club’s marketing, they’re not trying to get on NBC primetime, but that’s fine.

They’ve also gotten people to change their purchasing behavior. It’s pretty amazing.

KS: Your cartoons often poke fun at the disconnect between what a company wants from consumers and what consumers want from the company. What’s your advice to any readers who work at a company that’s resistant to having a two-way conversation with customers?

TF: I think a lot of businesses can breathe their own exhaust. It’s an echo chamber. They hear only what they say.

I had an experience when I was at the Green Giant brand. We had a frozen vegetable product with a sauce that you’d melt when you microwaved the veggies. The package used the term “sauce chips,” as in, “Put sauce chips in bowl.” Thing is, “sauce chips” was a technical term–consumers would never say “sauce chips.” It was technically accurate. But we needed to listen more than we talk.

The first step is to acknowledge that consumers are already talking about your brand, without your control or your ability to ensure they’re getting our single-minded proposition. The two-way conversation is happening, whether or not you’re listening to it. (Tweet this!)

Turn on the listening, and hear how they’re talking about the brand. Consumers define the brand, not the marketing department.

Listen more, and then think about communication as a conversation. It’s no longer a command-and-control model, where Don Draper defines the brand. (Tweet this!)

KS: In a 2008 interview with FreshPeel.com’s Chris Wilson, you shared that cartooning has taught you to embrace niche markets instead of the mass market. I’ve noticed most marketing agencies don’t want to truly specialize. My employer, hesketh.com, specializes in websites for non-profits… but we’re still not the only one in the world who does that. What would you say to reassure companies that are reluctant to pursue niche markets?

TF: It’s something a lot of marketers struggle with. There’s often a feeling that to become a big brand, you have to appeal to as many people as possible. But there’s a much higher value to appeal deeply to a few, than to be blandly appealing to a majority.

At General Mills, we had a joke that every creative brief was written to target “women ages 18-49 with a pulse.” (Tweet this!) Our CMO used to challenge us to get as niche as we possibly could, in our target positioning.

If you appeal to a core in such a meaningfully way, you’ll get a broader audience, with evangelists at the core. Otherwise, it’s the “one size fits none” approach to marketing.

It’s difficult for a lot of companies to understand. But the more focused you are, the more likely you are to hit that insight.

Like with the Dollar Shave Club–it would be very different if they tried to appeal to anyone who shaved. They’re targeting men who don’t like shave tech. It’s a powerful insight for that brand.

Companies still can become big when targeting a niche, by preaching to the choir. There’s high value in preaching to the choir. (Tweet this!)

KS: You’ve been an account director at an interactive agency; a brand manager at General Foods, Nestle, and method products; and now a cartoonist and communications consultant. Considering the changes you’ve seen, what are your thoughts on the value of setting career goals?

TF: A mentor of mine shared the idea that career building was not like a career ladder, but more like a career trapeze. You come across these funny opportunities; you have to take a leap of faith and jump off. You don’t know if it’ll take you up, down, or sideways. But if you don’t leap, you’ll never know. (Tweet this!)

I’ve found this to be true many times in my career. When I went from Nestle to method, which was pretty small at the time, people said I was crazy to leave such a big company. But I know where my career would be now if I’d stayed. I learned so many amazing things at method.

Likewise, the same happened when I eventually left method to start my own business. Everyone thought I was crazy. But I know I had this passion and interest. If I’d stayed at method, I’d never have known, unless I jumped.

We all face those opportunities. The trick is to decide if and when to jump. (Tweet this!)

My guiding principle was to find some way to combine cartooning and drawing as part of what I did. Early on, I achieved this with cartooning as a nights and weekends hobby. But over time, I’ve found ways to integrate cartooning into my professional life.

There’s a Joseph Campbell quote, “Follow your bliss.” The trick for me was to figure out how to market that bliss–how to make it marketable and useful to others. (Tweet this!)

Each time I’ve taken a jump, I didn’t always know where the path would lead. But I know now that they’ve all built on each other.

It’s always more about the gut than the head. Sometimes I’ve found myself trying to convince myself to take a certain path. At times, I’ve listened to my head and leaned in that direction… and my gut said it wasn’t the right path. And it’s true. I’ve always been happiest when listening to my gut. (Tweet this!)

KS: In your “Think Branding” keynote for Google, you also noted: “We sometimes get so excited about the shiny new thing that we forget about the actual big marketing idea needed to take advantage of the shiny new thing.” If a marketing professional were to write a pithy reminder on a Post-It note and stick it next to their computer, what should it say?

TF: There’s a quote from an engineer named Kathy Sierra:

“It doesn’t matter how awesome your product is or your presentation or your post. Your awesome thing matters ONLY to the extent that it serves the user’s ability to be a little more awesome.” (Tweet this!)

That’s been very relevant to me. So often we get caught up in our day to day business, we forget that ultimately it’s about the consumers we’re trying to reach. (Tweet this!) Not only just in terms of what makes sense to us; it’s about helping your audience actualize what they want to be, to become awesome.

If we take care of [customers], we’ll be successful.

KS: I know you’ve done a lot of interviews over the years. Is there a question you’ve never been asked that you wish you had? And how would you answer it?

TF: It would be, “Where you see your business 15 years from now?”

I don’t often know where I’m going next year, or two years from now. But it helps me to have an idealized goal of where I see myself long-term. If I keep that in mind, things magically come along to make it happen. It’s like a version of the “invisible hand.” (Tweet this!)

Since I’ve started writing down long-range goals, which I do every five years, I find even the crazy ones find a way of making themselves true. (Tweet this!) For instance, I’ve become a full-time cartoonist.

What’s the next stage? I’m fascinated by how the cartoon industry’s broken. So many artists are really struggling. Traditional markets for comic strips are broken.

Cartoonists who create traditional comic strips are quitting, people like Gary Larson, Berkeley Breathed, and Gary Watterson.

My goal, in the next 15 years, is to grow this into something bigger than me–to provide a new market for the world’s cartoonists. Cartoonists are such talented storytellers, and there are so many benefits to brands.

Brands need storytelling. I want to connect them with cartoonists who need new markets.

[KS: I mentioned the idea of Contently, which connects brands with bloggers to produce articles for content marketing]

Yes, brands are becoming publishers. And authors and cartoonists are becoming free agents, and they need markets for them to work.

KS: Anyone else you recommend for an interview, or someone you’d love to see interviewed?

TF: Yes, Betabrand–I’d love to hear more from their founder.

Question for readers: What’s your favorite takeaway from my interview with marketing cartoonist Tom Fishburne? You can leave a comment by clicking here.

Karl Sakas uses marketing, recruiting, and business operations to optimize and grow hesketh.com, a marketing agency specializing in strategic web development for non-profits. He lives in Raleigh, NC. This is the 19th in Karl’s regular series of interviews with marketing and business leaders. Thanks for visiting!

Image credits: Cartoons courtesy of Tom Fishburne of Marketoon Studios. Other images courtesy of the respective brands.

Are you invisible to recruiters? Take this 5-minute quiz to find your LinkedIn Recruitability Score

Karl Sakas — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 04:01:00 +0000

Are you invisible to recruiters and hiring managers searching for you online? I’m actively recruiting for Drupal developer positions at hesketh.com, so I’ve taken a deep dive into finding marketing and tech people on LinkedIn.

If you haven’t touched your profile since someone told you to sign up for the site, you might be missing out on messages from people who’d like to hire you. Take this five-minute quiz to see if your LinkedIn profile is helping or hurting.

QUIZ: Are you recruitable by hiring managers on LinkedIn?

This 5-minute quiz has 17 questions, all yes-or-no. Give yourself the points for each “yes” answer. Grab a pen or calculator to track your points, and bring up your LinkedIn profile.

1) Do you have a LinkedIn profile in the first place? You can’t win if you don’t play. Create that profile first. +20 points

2) Is your profile set to be visible publicly? LinkedIn has an incredibly high 9/10 PageRank on Google — LinkedIn profiles are usually on the first page when people happen to search for your name. But if your LinkedIn profile is set to private, you won’t appear in Google results, and you may not always appear in LinkedIn’s own site search results. Good in witness protection but bad for job-seekers. +15 points

3) Do you include keywords around specific expertise or technology, like Drupal, Ruby on Rails, or CRM? If you don’t have those baseline keywords, I’m probably not even going to find you. If I do find you, I’m left wondering if you have the experience I need. And if I had a dollar for every time I saw someone mis-spell “manager” as “manger”… +10 points

4) Are you connected with current and former colleagues? Every new connection you make means your 2nd- and 3rd-level network gets bigger. That means being able to connect with (or at least see) more people on LinkedIn. New jobs often come via weak ties rather than close ties, so connect with people you know outside of work, too — your neighbor, your accountant, and your friend from college all know people. +10 points

5 ) Do you regularly connect on LinkedIn with new people you meet in “real life” business settings? Most people have a policy for making new LinkedIn connections — mine is that I need to have met them in person at least once, so I can be sure they pass the “not crazy” test. Some people will connect with anyone, while other people won’t connect unless they’ve had a one-on-one meeting first. Whatever you do, be connecting somehow. +10 points

6) Does your introduction tell a coherent story about where you’ve been and where you’re going? For a great example, see Margot Carmichael Lester‘s LinkedIn profile. Not only does she tell an overall story, but each job description is its own mini-story. +8 points

7) Do you list all of your previous positions and companies, at least in the past 10-15 years? When I’m in recruiting mode, it gives me context to your career path, both past and future. +7 points

8) Have you updated job details to include quantified accomplishments, not just a list of duties? My standard example for this is when I’m giving resume advice to students who worked in a restaurant in high school or college. For “Waiter,” don’t waste space on, “Served food to customers.” Quantify instead — “Earned tips that were 27% above average” or ”Served 100-120 customers each shift.” +7 points

9) Have you asked people for recommendations? I don’t look closely at specific recommendations until we’re in the interview stage — and their usefulness is obviously limited by the fact that no one has negative recommendations on LinkedIn — but having them adds a certain degree of social proof. +7 points

10) Are you using your “Skills & Expertise” tags? LinkedIn introduced a tagging system to extend how the site tracks skills. The tags help me find others with that skill (like you, perhaps!), and they also display whether the skill is on the rise or on the decline. +6 points

11) Have you updated your headline to something a recruiter might search for if they wanted to hire someone like you? For example, when I previously changed mine to “Web Project Manager,” I started getting a lot more recruiter inquiries than when I had a whimsical headline. For instance, “Code Ninja” is cute, but you might not come up in a search for “Drupal Developer.” Think about your target market! +5 points

12) Do you include links in your LinkedIn profile to other places your content “lives” online? This would be things like your blog, portfolio, SlideShare account, or Twitter account. Make it easy and minimize confusion — otherwise, I’m wondering if you’re Bob Smith in Raleigh or Robert Smith in Durham. Don’t forget to link to role- or industry-specific profiles, like Drupal.org or GitHub — they help demonstrate that you’re “with it.” +5 points

13) Is your location/region up to date? I’ve used that to find clusters of developers in particular metro areas, both in the Raleigh area and beyond. This is even more important when you want a job in your current area, not the place you just moved from. +5 points

14) Are the people in the “Viewers of this profile also viewed…” sidebar the people you want to be compared to? Often this tends to be coworkers, which skews things. But if it’s people at other companies, are they doing the kind of work you want to be seen doing? If not, you probably need to do a bigger marketing overhaul, since the LinkedIn algorithm is doing that for a reason. +4 points

15) Are you linking back to your LinkedIn profile from elsewhere on the web? This might include a button on your website, a link from your Meetup.com profile, and (if you don’t have a website) a link from your Twitter profile. Fancy resume layouts are nice to have on your website or in print, but when it comes to LinkedIn, I love that everyone’s info in a fairly standard format. It makes it easier to do lateral comparisons. Again, when I find someone’s portfolio site first and have to hunt to find them on LinkedIn (especially if they have a common name), it just adds an extra layer to asking you to apply. +3 points

16) Do you avoid mentioning any skills or expertise you never want to use again? For instance, I learned Italian in college, but I’m not planning to use that skill now — so Italian isn’t on my LinkedIn profile. +2 points

17) Do you make time to occasionally check your profile to see if there’s anything you need to update? I realize I’m unusual in enjoying continuously tweaking my LinkedIn profile, so I suggest making a recurring appointment (e.g., the first Saturday of each month) to check if there’s anything you need to update. For instance, you might want to add a new skill or two, or accept a connection request that somehow didn’t show up in your regular inbox. +10 points

Check your LinkedIn Visibility Score — are you up to par?

0 to 67 points: You’re Invisible, or at least really hard to find. Take off the Invisibility Cloak — start doing at least a few of the additional things above.

68 to 96 points: You’re OK. You probably have a better than average profile, but there are likely some quick fixes to improve your results. Consider doing some of the things above that you aren’t doing now.

97 to 134 points: You’re Perfect. You’re probably getting tired of hearing about job opportunities. Keep doing what you’re doing!

Now what? Next steps from here:

If you weren’t doing everything, make some updates from the tips above. Be sure to keep in mind that having a profile is only the first step in using LinkedIn to its full advantage — for instance, consider becoming active in LinkedIn Groups that match your interests. And remember that your LinkedIn profile is just one part of your online reputation — things like Twitter and blogging help get the word out, too, as part of your larger personal marketing strategy.

Questions: How’d you do? What’s the first thing you’re going to change on your LinkedIn profile? You can leave a comment by clicking here.

Learning from marketing expert David C. Baker, as the new Operations Manager at hesketh.com

Karl Sakas — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 23:04:02 +0000

Heather promoted me last month, from Project Manager to Operations Manager at hesketh.com. My job has expanded to include marketing, recruiting, and resource management, as our web agency continues to help non-profits and other mission-based clients.

Writing my new job description as Operations Manager

In short, my mandate is to optimize and grow the agency. As the company’s first Operations Manager, I took the initiative to propose and define the position.

My new role includes increasing utilization, recruiting team members to expand our capacity, creating a content marketing strategy, improving financial projections, and doing special projects to meet ad hoc business needs. It’s an exciting change, and I appreciate the opportunity.

Learning from marketing agency expert David C. Baker

If you’re on the business side of running a marketing agency, you probably know consultant David C. Baker as the expert on running marketing agencies. He’s consulted with hundreds of agencies and interviewed thousands of people to identify what does and doesn’t work when it comes to running an advertising, PR, marketing, or interactive agency.

In less than two weeks, I’m excited to be heading from Raleigh to Nashville to take Baker’s once-a-year operations seminar, “Resourcing the Creative Process: Managing Pricing, Deadlines, Budgets, Quality, and Capacity.”

It’s going to be an action-packed day, with the workshop building on Baker’s excellent Financial Management of a Marketing Firm book.

I already have two of his books, and I enjoyed his talk at AIGA Raleigh last year. He has great whitepapers, and his thought-provoking email newsletter is a weekly must-read. You can also follow him on Twitter at @ReCourses.

As you may have guessed, I love professional development.

Networking with fellow agency business operations people

Beyond the specific course material, I’m also looking forward to networking with fellow agency operations people from across the country.

I enjoy speaking with like-minded people in the Raleigh area — like Brooks Bell COO/CFO Robb Czyzewski and New Kind operations head Elizabeth Hipps — but the Triangle is missing a dedicated networking group for business operations folks at marketing agencies. Sounds like my next project!

Question: What’s the “must-visit” spot in Nashville to see before I fly back to Raleigh that night? You can leave a comment by clicking here.

Are you earning your audience’s trust every day?

Karl Sakas — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 13:51:42 +0000

Today’s marketing post from Seth Godin discusses about the role of the Internet as both a leveler and an amplifier. He calls it “The soapbox and the city.” He makes the point that everyone deserves a soapbox to share their ideas, but that no one automatically deserves an audience — they have to earn it.

This seems especially relevant given my colleagues‘ recent discussions about the role of the Internet as a tool for collaboration and for sharing.

When I volunteered in my middle school‘s library in 1995, they had a dial-up subscription to Digital Ink, a non-web online service now regarded as the Washington Post‘s first failed attempt at monetizing digital content. Stories often had hyperlinks to the greater Web, but the librarians warned me, “Don’t click on the links to the web! That costs us money!”

Today, it’s getting hard to remember when starting a new marketing platform online wasn’t as simple as spending $20 on a domain name and hosting, and throwing up a WordPress site over the weekend.

Seth Godin’s argument is timeless — anyone can step on the soapbox, but you have to earn your audience.

And, I’d add — not just earn it, but keep earning it.

Just because I sign up for an email newsletter doesn’t mean I want to keep getting it if it becomes irrelevant. If someone’s Tweets veer from what I want or need to hear, I’ll unfollow. And if marketing messages aren’t on target, I’ll stop listening.

Alec Baldwin’s character in Glengarry Glen Ross said “Always Be Closing.” In marketing, it’s more like “Always Be Earning” — your audience, that is.

It’s a continuous process. Earned audiences are ephemeral. Smart marketing makes it last longer, but you can never stop.

As a marketer helping clients and my agency, it’s exhausting — and exhilarating.

Question: What’s an example of a time you lost trust in a company you followed? You can leave a comment by clicking here.

Image credit: “Earned Media” cartoon by Tom Fishburne of Marketoonist.com

Content marketing advice: Top 7 tips from Outbrain’s Gilad de Vries at Triangle AMA in Raleigh

Karl Sakas — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 04:01:25 +0000

Earlier this month, Gilad de Vries (@giladdevries) of content marketing tech startup Outbrain spoke to Triangle AMA in Raleigh. He shared why content marketing is an important tool for us as marketers, and how we can get started.

Mindset changes for marketing agencies (and their clients)

If traditional advertising agencies are to succeed in content marketing, Gilad highlighted several mindset changes they’ll need to make:

From Push to Pull
From Advertising to Marketing
From Campaigns to Always On
From Sprints to a Marathon
From Big Ideas to small insights

7 top tips on content marketing

As I help hesketh.com implement a content marketing strategy for our agency, these were my seven favorite points:

1) The brand should NOT be front and center.

See RedBullUSA.com — it’s hard to find a reference to the actual product. Instead, the site is like ESPN for extreme sports. Red Bull focuses on event marketing, so the site is all about the events, not the drink.
The tablespoon.com recipe site is from General Mills, but the brand isn’t the focus.
Although the logo’s more obvious at KraftRecipes.com, the site has received 20,000 recipe submissions from users — not bad, considering it has 30,000 recipes altogether.
And Procter & Gamble pays attention to its numerous segments — P&G has 1,700 content marketing sites, in 35 languages.

2) Create a new category.

eSalon created a new category, custom at-home hair coloring.

If your market is too crowded, see how you can define a new category or sub-category.

3) Don’t skimp on content design.

But remember it’s for your users, not you.

A busy, cluttered site may not appeal to someone in their 40s but may well appeal to a 20-something target consumer.

4) Don’t out-think your audience.

For instance, don’t change or take down content that’s already online. Build on it.

Some users want timely content; others want evergreen content. They’ll find it.

5) Add a fourth bucket to agencies.

Media agencies are often split into three buckets — social, search, and display.

Gilad believes agencies need to add a fourth bucket — content, which is where most of the brand dollars will go online.

6) Read The Lean Startup by Eric Ries.

An audience member asked for help convincing her CMO to do content marketing.

Gilad shared how the book has great info on MVP (minimum viable product), intrapreneurship, and iterate-and-pivot, which can all help her make the case internally.
If you have cash but not writing resources, a service like Contently lets you build an editorial calendar and then get articles from a network of bloggers (which you then own, as work-for-hire).

7) Find more resources online.

In the Q&A, I asked Gilad about resources on content design.

For content design and other content marketing topics, Gilad recommended the Content Marketing Institute (CMI). [Note: I especially like CMI's "10 Must-Have Templates for Content Marketers"]
And, not surprisingly, Outbrain has its own content marketing blog, too.

Using content marketing at your job

I realized I’d already seen Outbrain’s content marketing work already. Sure enough, when I went home and checked the “more from around the web” boxes on several sites, they were all powered by Outbrain (look for a “?” link). I was surprised to learn from Gilad that their below-the-fold widget gets a 6.5% click-through rate, which you’d never see in traditional online ads.

The part about defining a new category got me thinking — hesketh.com specializes in websites and online marketing for non-profits and other mission-based organizations. In theory, it’s easier for us to do content marketing than a general agency, since our market is more narrowly focused.

I’m looking forward to applying what I learned, including what I’ve been reading at the Content Marketing Institute. And I bet you have some new ideas, too.

Question: What’s your favorite tip for content marketing? You can leave a comment by clicking here.