Jacquelyn Lynn, Business Writer, Speaker

What's wrong with your website?

If your website isn't performing as well as you think it should, the fixes may be very simple. Take a look at "Five Things I Hate About Your Website" by Carol Tice and seek how many of those mistakes you're making.

How to Use Keywords to Pull Journalists and Consumers to Your Press Releases

Are you making the most common mistake online press release writers are making? 

 

Over the years, I have enthusiastically recommended Joan Stewart, the Publicity Hound, for great advice and information on various aspects of publicity and promotion - and I'm doing it again.

 

If you write press releases and post them online, are you making the #1 mistake that 9 out of 10 other press release writers are making?

 

That mistake is this: They aren't using keywords within their releases. Keywords are the same words people type into Google and the other search engines when they're searching for the answer to a problem, or they want to buy something.

 

Not using the right keywords - or any keywords - means consumers might never find your press release. If journalists are using the search engines to look for sources on a particular topic, or news about your industry, they won't find your press release, either.

 

Publicity expert Joan Stewart, who has been the source of many profitable ideas I've used, is hosting a teleseminar on Wednesday, Oct. 21, that will cut through the often confusing issues related to press release keywords. One lucky person who registers for the call will win a free press release, written by Janet Thaeler, Joan's guest expert. I'm planning to attend, and I hope you'll join me.

 

For details, or to register, click here. 

Lessons from Young Entrepreneurs

I love it when young people get bit by the entrepreneurial bug, take the leap, and build successful businesses. Especially in these challenging times, older business owners can learn from how these young folks did it. Check out Charlene Davis' article, What Young Entrepreneurs Can Teach Us About Business, for some great stories and lessons that will benefit business owners of every age.

Five Ways to Protect Your Company and Your Customers from Employee Dishonesty

One of the most damaging things that can happen to a company is for an employee to commit a dishonest act, whether it’s stealing from the company or a customer, deliberately lying, or doing something else that isn’t honest.

Here are five ways you protect your company from such conduct by employees:

 

Garfield the Cat on Planning

I confess: The main reason I read the newspaper is for the comics. And while they are mostly entertaining, sometimes my cartoon “friends” deliver an important message.

 

Garfield did that today. He said: “I believe in planning ahead … becaaauuuuse … If you spend enough time planning, you never actually have to do anything.”

 

He’s right.

 

The problem is, if you never do anything, you never achieve anything.

 

Without a doubt, planning is important. But at some point, you have to take action. Don’t spend so much time planning that you never actually do anything.

 

Jacquelyn Lynn

 

Online Reputation Management: Lawsuit Resolution and Business Decisions

I told you about a company that sued me in small claims court for what I wrote on this blog. All of the posts related to this situation are listed under the category of “lawsuit” if you want to read them in chronological order.

I was fortunate to have the services of a great attorney, Dan Perry. From the very beginning he believed, as I did, that if this matter went to trial, I would prevail. However, it would cost me hundreds of dollars and several days of valuable time to travel from Florida to Boston to appear in court.

In an effort to avoid that, we made a business decision. He contacted the company’s attorney (who was not involved in the initial filing of the lawsuit) and made this offer: I would remove any reference to the company by name or description from my blog if they would dismiss the lawsuit.

Emotionally, it was not an easy decision, but it was a sound business decision. Everything I wrote about this company was accurate. If this company was suffering negative consequences, it was because of its own conduct, not because of what I wrote. But I simply did not want to spend the time or money to fight them. So I made a concession to make the issue go away.

I learned a lot from this process and I’ll be sharing those lessons with you in future articles. Stay tuned.

 

Jacquelyn Lynn 

Online Reputation Management: I got sued for a blog post

A couple of years ago, I wrote about a company that refused to accept responsibility when one of its representatives stole from a customer. I used the situation, which I learned about from an article by consumer columnist Greg Dawson in the Orlando Sentinel, to offer a few lessons on how a business should respond in a similar situation.

 

A few weeks later, I put up another post about that company. Dawson had reported that the company’s general manager was no longer employed there, and I was going to recognize that the company was taking at least some appropriate action. But before I could write that, Dawson corrected his report: the general manager was not only still there, but the company was gleeful about it. So my post repeated what had been published in the Orlando Sentinel.

 

A year or so after those first two posts went up, the company contacted me and asked me to take the post down because the information wasn’t true. I responded that they were giving me no evidence that it wasn’t true and offered to post their side of the story, but did not take the post down. But I did use the way they attempted to have me remove the post as an example of how not to approach online reputation management in another post.

 

I didn’t hear from this company again until May of 2009, when it sued me in Boston Small Claims Court.

 

Now could be the time for snail mail

A substantial portion of my communication is done electronically through e-mail, texts, blogs, Twitter, websites, etc. It’s fast, convenient, efficient—but you know all that.

 

Even so, since I was a small child, I have loved getting real mail: envelopes and packages delivered to me by the USPS. In the last year, the volume of snail mail arriving at my home and office every day has seriously dwindled.

 

Direct marketers are clearly evaluating the cost/benefit ratio of bulk mail and many are probably purging their lists to reduce costs and better target their prospective customers. That’s just good business and we all applaud it.

 

Because of that, a truly personal letter, a hand-written note, or other targeted communication arriving in the mail has a better chance of getting read now than in recent years. This could be the right time for you to consider the role of traditional mail in your marketing efforts.

 

Jacquelyn Lynn

 

 

Before you dump those old computers, clear off the hard drives

Maybe you’ve upgraded your equipment or downsized your company—whatever the reason, if you’ve got some old computers, don’t sell, trash, or give them away until you’ve erased the data from your hard drives.

 

“It is fairly easy for someone else to recover files from used hard drives,” said James Wiebe, president/CEO of WiebeTech, a provider of data security and data mobility solutions. “As a test, we bought used drives on eBay and recovered everything from corporate data to email conversations to financial data to legal documents.”

 

WiebeTech has introduced Drive eRazer™, an affordable (prices range from $100 to $200) hardware solution that does not require a computer and can completely remove data from a hard drive without destroying the drive itself.

 

If you shred your paper documents before discarding them (and you should!), you need to “shred” the data on your hard drives before discarding them as well. Wiebe pointed out, “As many people discover too late, trashing a file does not erase it from a hard drive.”

 

If you’re getting rid of old computers, it’s a worthwhile investment to make sure the drives are clean—failing to do so could be a very expensive mistake.

 

Jacquelyn Lynn

Note: This is not a paid endorsement; I have not been compensated by WiebeTech nor have I tried this product. I received a press release and thought the information was worth sharing.

Money-Saving Tips for Your Business

Even though there are hints of a recovery on the horizon, that's no reason to waste money. Check out the article I have just posted, Buying and Spending Smart: Ways to Save Money in Your Small Business, for some money-saving ideas that might work for you in your operation.

Jacquelyn Lynn