Computer Security Advice for Process Control Reps, Distributors, and Manufacturers

Fourteen years ago, a man named Bill Burr wrote a book on password security on behalf of the U.S. government. In the book, Burr suggested that to keep them from being guessable, passwords should include capital letters, numbers and non-alphabetic symbols like question-marks. He also advised that computer users change their passwords often.

Since then, corporate security watchdogs have insisted Burr's suggestions was the best way to protect access to computer networks and files. But this year, Burr admitted that he made a mistake. Instead of protecting access to systems, long passwords using hard to remember characters actually made them less secure.

In reality, when people are forced to use long, complex passwords, they tend to write them down and post them in places others can find. Meanwhile, these numbers and symbols weren’t helpful in preventing other computers from guessing these combinations. Also, asking users to change the password often backfired, as people generally change the original password by one character, which doesn’t discourage hackers.

Today, corporate security advisers recommend that people use long but easy-to-remember passphrases, ideally one that captures a memorable visual (such as “rabbiteatingcarrot”). Such combinations might take up to 1 trillion years for an automated cyber attacker to crack, compared with one minute for “P@55w0rd”.

Unfortunately, trends in technical security evolve, and standards that were considered gospel at one point may fall out of favor over time. Not only that, as new technologies emerge, they’ll call for security approaches. Even those who work full-time in industrial/process control IT security field can barely keep up.

That being said, if your company keeps up with the most basic of security practices – those that stood the test of time – you may already be better off than your peers. Good security hygiene can go a long way towards protecting your data and devices.

For example, teach your staff and sales people that when in doubt, they shouldn't click on attachments to email messages sent by people they don’t know. Ban the use of outside flash drives on all office computers, as they can contain viruses or other malware. Instruct them never to write down their password, much less share them with others (a task that could be made much easier by using the memorable password styles described above).

Industrial Companies: Look to Your Employees for Fresh Ideas

Innovation and its inspirations aren't really as mysterious as they seem. The really great performance-enhancing ideas don't come from the research lab or the executive suite. They come from the people who daily fight the company's battle - those who serve the customers. Successful corporations that have developed a culture and reputation for innovative ideas have found ways to harness the creative energies and insights of employees across all functions and ranks. These companies have cultivated "innovation communities - work groups that tackle projects and problems in place of the traditional strategy to engage a team of expensive consultants. These groups provide the opportunity to give new shape and purpose to knowledge already possessed by those employees.

Companies establishing successful innovation communities share seven key characteristics and strategies:

1. Creating the space to innovate. They designate time and organize effective meetings and communication mechanisms.
2. Getting a broad variety of viewpoints. They deliberately cross horizontal boundaries to get input from all management (and non-management) levels, and they cross vertical boundaries to break down information "silos" and allow knowledge to spread among even unrelated departments.
3. Creating conversation between senior management and participants. They require senior management to pay attention to what participants are saying.
4. Pulling, not pushing, participants to join. They recognize that they can't force anyone to share the knowledge they have.
5. Keeping development costs low by tapping unused talent. Participants usually continue to perform their regular roles even while working on the innovation project.
6. Recognizing collateral benefits that sometimes equal or exceed the innovations themselves. Developing a "learning-organization" culture yields benefits that improve morale and company image.
7. Recognizing that measurement is key. A company can sustain an innovation community only if it can produce demonstrable value. Successful companies keep track of how many innovative ideas make it from the communities' drawing boards to actual implementation—and measure the results.

Successful businesses - the superstars you read about in magazine - are invariably recognized as innovative organizations. One thing in common is that they tap into the collective brain power of entire business - from the "C" suite to the shop floor. We've caught glimpses of this principle inside top-performing industrial companies, too. When you walk through the front door of such companies, there is a calm efficiency that is downright palpable. Everyone seems to know his or her job, and they're discharging their duties with poise and confidence. Underlying many of these operations you'll find dozens - perhaps hundreds - of little ideas and innovations that have made the business run smoother. And a good deal of the ideas came from the employees - not the owner or the president. The business leaders were smart enough to recognize that the people who actually do these jobs know a great deal about the problems and challenges they face every day. The leaders have encouraged, recognized, and rewarded innovation from their employees, and it pays off in improved operations, higher morale, and a culture that consciously looks for ways to learn and improve.

Industrial Technical Sales - What Is The Purpose of Your Blog?

A blog is an important part of a social media marketing plan

Does your company or organization have a blog? If so, do you know why? What is the purpose of the company blog? What is it supposed to accomplish?

Before you deep dive into this article, let me stake out the corner of the universe for which I am writing. You are a technical sales representative, with problem solving, personal contact, and technical prowess, the predominant parts of your job description. Here at CMS4i, many of our customers sell and service industrial process measurement and control equipment and instruments. Others are in the laboratory and research equipment field. As the writer, my intent is to deliver useful information and commentary to the group just described. Others may find the article useful, recognizing that the article is targeted at a trade specific group.

If you have a blog, you may have considered what the purpose of that chunk of your social media presence might be. Let's recap.

• Generate awareness and interest in your company.
• Highlight the products and services you provide.
• Drive traffic to your website or other social media properties.
• Promote the expertise and thought leadership of the organization.
• Promote the discovery of your organization by new potential customers.

With a few tweaks, your own list will probably resemble mine. That's good. There is, however, one very important goal or purpose missing from the list.

The foremost goal of your blog is to get someone to read it.

Need I say that again? Without a reader, your message is undelivered and ineffectual. None of the purpose stated above will be accomplished unless someone is sufficiently enticed or motivated to read your posted article.

How do I get people to read my blog?

 Ah, the question of the modern age! You have so much to say, so much to share, but you are just one of about a billion bloggers out there. Face it, getting traction with your blog, especially if you are not an adept writer, can be very difficult and frustrating. Writing is a craft, with competence and expertise developed over time and trial....and error.

Here are a few tips.

Actually, more than a few, if you read between the lines. Before you lean into the keyboard, give thought to some of these points I share with you.

Think like a reader first, then write. Pretend you are the reader, a customer of your company, a user of the products your company sells. If you want to write about a subject, make sure you include what the reader will want to know about that subject. You can also intermingle your message, but be sure to...

Provide the reader something of value. What constitutes value depends on the situation and your reader, but your abiding by this guiding principle will serve you well in every interaction you have with a potential customer. Some help here....entertainment has value, so does information. Inform or entertain, that should be your credo. The information you provide can have greater value if it is not readily acquired by your reader from another source. This means that your article about how your company solved a problem for a customer might be of great interest. People in the same business tend to face the same challenges. A unique story has value. Any commentary that boosts your reader's knowledge or understanding of a subject related to the accomplishment of their goals can also be valuable in gaining interest for your blog and connected social media properties. As the writer, you can also have your blog serve as a source of industry news. If you aggregate and summarize current events into a single source, that being your blog post, you have provided value by efficiently packaging up new information for your customers. You saved them some time and probably are doing for them what they haven't the time to do on their own. It's perfect, but always be mindful that....

Presentation is important. Humans are sensory beings. Yes, we can read, but we are stimulated by pictures, by color, by change. Your blog post gets a boost when a high quality interesting image is included. The image can accentuate the message in any number of ways. This is art, not science, so let your own creativity work in your favor. Beyond images, make your article easy to read. Admittedly, your audience (remember tech sales rep) is likely to be skilled at digesting the written word, but delivering an article that can be read quickly and with good comprehension will work in your favor. And, I have to say this, no spelling errors allowed. Blog post presentation is a big subject, well beyond the scope of this article. The important takeaway is to be aware that presentation counts. It counts for more than you may realize.

Blogging can be a productive part of your social media marketing effort. It is content you create yourself, portraying a message in your own unique manner, or voice. Give readers something of value and they will give your their time and attention.

Follow, comment, reach out to me with your questions. I can be contacted directly at CMS4i by putting @TomO in the message section. At CMS4i, we help small companies build their brand and web presence, so contact us anytime.

Advice I Gave to a Young Entrepreneur

No do-overs in this universe.

We don't get do-overs in this universe. What's done cannot be redone. Your successes and not-quite-successes stay on your private resume throughout your whole life. A young friend of my three sons, whom I refer to as my fourth son, is an engineer and approached me about getting some advice and guidance on starting his own business providing engineering and construction services. He knew I had some experience starting, operating, growing, and selling a business in a similar industry. We agreed to meet in a few days, and the prospect of discussing business formation and growth prompted me to consider what I had really learned from my (gulp!) many years of experience in the trenches.

I started musing about what I know now that could have been very helpful to me if I had known it when I was a cub business owner. I share my thoughts below in no particular order. Some might have some redundancy, but I decided to present it pretty much the way it spilled out with a minimum of editing. Perhaps you have some you might add.

1. Every outcome has a probability. In any situation there are countless possible outcomes. Each has a probability. For the decision maker, it is important to avoid the false euphoria of being sure of an outcome. Other outcomes are possible, even though the likelihood of their occurrence may be very small. Recognize the range of outcomes that have reasonable probability and have a plan for their occurrence.
2. Have a plan for succession or dissolution. When a business is started, the principals are often excited and full of hope. Nothing wrong with that, but a written agreement should be made that delineates the terms the govern if one of the principals decides to leave the venture. While the discussion is akin to a couple hammering out the terms of their divorce while attending their engagement party, having this agreement in place at the outset can avoid conflict at a later date.
3. Avoid letting your hair catch fire. This is an expression, probably outdated, that refers to an overreaction to a newly presented problem. Problems are seldom solved by histrionics. Calm, systematic, and rational approaches will work best at overcoming challenges.
4. Everything is fine – until it is not. Especially in contracts with customers, employees, and partners, outlining what terms and procedures shall govern when things do not go as anticipated can avoid wasted time, conflict, damages, and other occurrences which will negatively impact the business. This is especially applicable to informal verbal agreements or understandings. If the issue has a reasonable probability of occurring, better to solidify an understanding among all involved parties at the outset, before their view is impacted by actual occurrence of unforeseen events.
5. Agree on things before they become things. The best time to reach agreement on anything is before anything happens. This is especially true when money is involved. People think and act more rationally when the object of the agreement does not yet exist.
6. Do not underestimate the power of greed. Study and understand greed and how it can affect the behavior of your partners, employees, customers, and suppliers. Also examine how greed can impact your own behavior. People you know and love may do some pretty harsh and unexpected things when in its grip.
7. Or fear. Everyone has fear of something. At a primitive level, it is what helps us survive. In a business environment, identifying your own fears, as well as the fears of those you work with, can be valuable in decision making and planning.
8. If you want someone to do something, make them believe it is their idea. Don’t worry about not getting credit for the good idea. Your goal is to make money. If sharing or relinquishing ego boosting credit for success or an idea motivates an employee or partner to higher levels of performance, let it happen. Better yet, make it happen.
9. Never discount the potential impact of luck. Luck, good and bad, is the occurrence of those events that, in your estimation, had very low probability. Luck can also be the occurrence of an outcome about which you were not even aware. There is a substantial amount of chaos in the world. Be aware of chaos, and as prepared as you feel is prudent. Oh, almost forgot, do not take professional credit for lucky positive events. Show some integrity and call them what they are.
10. Recognize the most basic purpose of your business. It is to collect checks, revenue, money. The manner in which you go about collecting checks reflects your dedication, professionalism, and ethics.
11. Marketing makes you money – create solid presence and discoverability. This has always been true, but the manner is which you go about it has dramatically changed. Presence and discoverability are essential for growth in the modern business environment. They lead to opportunities for contact and revenue.
12. Revenue generation is paramount. For small businesses, I mean genuine small businesses with owner/operators that know the first names of everyone working at the company, keeping money coming in is the number one priority. Be sure not to forget that for even one day.
13. Pay employees first, then taxes, then suppliers, finally yourself. Your business plan should have allowances for paying everyone, especially yourself. As owner, you are last in line to get paid. Your employees and suppliers put their trust in your integrity and ability to make everything work and generate the revenue needed to pay them for their contribution to your business.
14. Revenue generating activities take precedence over everything else. There is never a shortage of things that need doing in a small business. Prioritizing and delegating tasks in a manner that balances all the needs of the business is your responsibility, Boss.
15. Suppliers can be your greatest source of short term financing. Materials and subcontracted work can be a substantial component of the deliverables of certain businesses. Even terms of net 30 days gives you a month to complete work and get paid. Do not underestimate this value. Good financial relations with a partner supplier can pay off when you need a small extension for a big project.
16. Take liberal advantage of opportunities to outsource. Your human resources have some level of specialized knowledge or skill that directly relates to your company's revenue generation. That is what their pay is based upon. Avoid applying specialized resources to tasks outside of their specialization. Their pay is based upon their value as a skilled operator. Make sure you leverage that cost and skill to its maximum level. Outsourcing frees up the time of the specialists to do the important work.
17. Avoid growth into areas subject to automation and AI takeover….unless you are the one taking over.  In this case, I took a liberty and applied my past experience to the current times. A more generalized appropriate maxim might be "Don't forget to keep a keen eye on the future of your industry". Many areas of work are being changed forever by automation and AI. Learn to recognize tasks or projects your company performs mostly with human resources that might be targets for automation and AI invasion. You should either innovate into automation and AI, or avoid those market segments as potential areas of growth.
18. Establish and describe the value each person brings to the business. This includes all principals, current employees and new hires. The description of that value is the baseline that can be used to assess whether their value has increased, or even if it is being maintained. It’s important not to keep paying people more money for doing the same thing. Pay should be commensurate with value.
19. Examine and understand your risk tolerance profile. Your appetite for risk, or your aversion to it, will impact your decisions in ways you need to understand. Excessive tolerance or aversion can result in a failure to capitalize on growth opportunities, or getting involved in projects with elevated probability of a negative outcome. Knowing your risk profile will help you to temper your enthusiasm or reservations to make prudent decisions. 
20. Put systems in place that can easily scale up 20x. When you start your business, everything is small except your expectations. Putting business systems in place that can remain in place and easily scale up as your business grows will save substantial amounts of money and help you avoid the disruption that comes from changing from one system to another.
21. Be prepared for big opportunities. They usually come without warning.
22. You will likely overvalue your business. If you ever reach a point where the sale of the business is in play, recognize that your own valuation probably includes some very subjective elements related to your personal experience. Don’t be offended by a potential buyer’s failure to share your enthusiasm. Be prepared to show tangible evidence that supports your valuation.
23. Plans for growth and success should be based upon the use of human resources with average levels of performance. You are not going to hire a staff of super-humans. Companies with tons of cash will hire all the super-humans. Don’t worry, with the right plan, you won’t need them.
24. Nobody will do it as fast, or as well, as you. Accept that and plan accordingly.
25. Downtime away from work is where inspiration is found. Find or make time to let your mind freewheel. When your mind is not occupied by the daily grind, room for free thought is plentiful.
26. There will always be more customers. You don’t need to work with the bad ones. Avoiding an overly risky project, or a customer that demands too much of your time, can be a positive move for your growth.
27. Suppliers may be your most important business relationship. A customer is unlikely to have the power to put you out of business. A supplier might, though. You do not want suppliers talking badly about your company’s demeanor (through interactions with your employees) or its payment record.
28. Resources are limited. If you give something, be sure to get a return. This applies to everything. The return need not be monetary. It might be information you can use to build your business. Have a simple plan for every contact that outlines a simple goal you wish to achieve that will constitute your return on the time or money invested in the encounter. 

Now my young friend is prepared for success!

Follow, comment, contact me with your questions. I can be contacted directly at CMS4i by putting @TomO in the message section. At CMS4i, we help small companies build their brand and web presence, so contact us anytime.

While You Are In Pursuit of Success...

This image is actually related to the article.

Often enough, I catch myself pounding away at my business pursuits with that "I've got to get this done" attitude. For many of us, business takes up a big part of the day. In my work, I frequently rummage through articles and other content generated by others. This is mostly a quest to build and maintain my level of familiarity with the industries and companies that we serve here at CMS4i, but once in a while I come across a piece that stops me dead in my tracks and hits my reset button. This happened recently when I opened up the January newsletter from SVF Flow Controls. The company president, Wayne Ulanski, with whom I am not acquainted, penned up a list that he called "Little Rules of Life". I wanted to share the list with you, and give all the credit to Mr. Ulanski for a thoughtful and interesting list of things for us all to ponder. Sometimes it helps to step away, far away, from the daily mind grind and think a little about what we can do to make ourselves, and those we contact, a little happier.

Here is the list, and it's a little long but worth reading. There is something in it for everyone. You can also see the entire newsletter, or see what SVF Flow Controls is all about. My favorite, probably my credo, is number five.

1. Sing in the shower.
2. Treat everyone you meet like you want to be treated.
3. Watch a sunrise at least once a year.
4. Leave the toilet seat in the down position.
5. Never refuse homemade brownies.
6. Strive for excellence, not perfection.
7. Plant a tree on your birthday.
8. Learn 3 clean jokes.
9. Return borrowed vehicles with the gas tank full.
10. Compliment 3 people every day.
11. Never waste an opportunity to tell someone you love them.
12. Leave everything a little better than you found it.
13. Keep it simple.
14. Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures.
15. Become the most positive and enthusiastic person you know.
16. Floss your teeth.
17. Overtip breakfast waitresses.
18. Be forgiving of yourself and others.
19. Say, “Thank you” a lot.
20. Say, “Please” a lot.
21. Avoid negative people.
22. Buy whatever kids are selling on card tables in their front yards.
23. Wear polished shoes.
24. Remember other people’s birthdays.
25. Commit yourself to constant improvement.
26. Carry jumper cables in your trunk.
27. Have a firm handshake.
28. Send lots of Valentine cards.
29. Sign them, “Someone who thinks you’re terrific.”
30. Look people in the eye.
31. Be the first to say hello.
32. Use the good silver.
33. Return all things you borrow.
34. Make new friends, but cherish the old ones.
35. Keep a few secrets.
36. Feed a stranger’s expired parking meter.
37. Plant flowers every spring.
38. Always accept an outstretched hand.
39. Stop blaming others.
40. Take responsibility for every area of your life.
41. Wave at kids on school buses.
42. Be there when people need you.
43. Sing in a choir.
44. Don’t expect life to be fair.
45. Never underestimate the power of love. 
46. Drink champagne for no reason at all.
47. Live your life as an exclamation, not an explanation.
48. Don’t be afraid to say, “I made a mistake.”
49. Don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know.”
50. Compliment even small improvements.
51. Keep your promises no matter what.
52. Marry for love.
53. Rekindle old friendships.
54. Count your blessings.
55. Register as an Organ Donor.
56. Losing yourself in new surroundings is the best way to find yourself.
57. Call your mother.

Hey Industrial Manufacturer's, Rep's and Distributor's: Consider Web SEO When designing Your Literature!

Bad Web PDF SEO (click for larger)

Just about every company we deal with makes the same mistake with their online literature. SEO titles and meta information is commonly overlooked.

Literature is always done on some form of desktop publisher (Word, InDesign, Quark) and generally always done by people with print publishing backgrounds (not web design). The nicely designed brochures, line cards, and engineering documents are then sent to printers for handing out, and outputted to PDF versions for the Web.

The problem arises during the conversion to PDF from the desktop publishing software. These software packages almost always default the creator's file name as the "meta title" of the new PDF, leaving an often cryptic and useless SEO document title.  For instance, seeing a document name like "Jan 2017 Line Card" or Jan 2017 Eng Doc", or worse yet seeing "Doc.01012017.3425" is of no value at all for Web indexing.

Good Web PDF SEO (click for larger)

While Google and Bing index a PDF's full content, adding a good title, description, author, and copyright to these documents is very important for SEO.

Creators of literature need to be aware of these items before and during their design, and either input them to the right fields in the desktop publishing software, or later edit them in Adobe Acrobat.

Recommendations for good SEO for Web literature:

1. Start off with a good SEO title for the document including the company name and maybe even good search terms. Ex: "Line Card Jan 20, 2017" should be something like "ACME-Rep-Company-New-York-New-Jersey-Process-Control-Line-Card-1-20-2017"
2. Start off with a good SEO description for the literature. Ex: "ACME Flowmeter provides more accurate control in low flow applications". 
3. Make the company the author of the document.
4. Assign a copyright statement referencing the company, such as "All rights reserved ACME Widget Company".

These small steps during the creation of the PDF will payoff in much better search results for your products and company brand.

To discuss in more detail, email info@cms4i.com and we'll start a dialog.

What is the Purpose of Your LinkedIn Company Page?

LinkedIn Logo

So, Small Business Owner, your marketing people or your nephew that's a computer wizard told you to get a LinkedIn page for your company. Without full understanding, or maybe with what you think is a full understanding, you have your internet marketing provider create a page for you. Check the box next to that item....done.

No, not done. While you may have completed the task, what you may not know is what that company page is really for. What is it going to do for you? Is it "just there", or do you need to have some ongoing program of posting, like with your other social media sites?

What is the goal of a company LinkedIn page?

Sell stuff, right? We want to sell product or service, somehow, through the presence of that company page. Well.....no, that's wrong. Very wrong.

Let me get right to it. Your LinkedIn company page is a primary public facing part of your organization. Your physical location continues be of less importance to potential customers when they are evaluating whether to bring you in to consult on a project, or offer your solutions to their challenges. Your customers want to make an assessment, before they meet with you, about whether you can provide or accomplish what they need. How they do that is by browsing through your online presence. Potential customers are getting their first impression of your company without your awareness, without even interacting with anyone from your organization.

Your online presence is comprised of your website, social media pages, blog, and any other internet locations identifiable and discoverable with your company name. Your website is of your own creation, but social media pages have general themes associated with them, each presenting your company in a different fashion. For example, Twitter is heavily weighted toward current events with it's constantly rolling news feed. Each location says something about your company that is presented to a visitor without any interpretation of context provided by a live company representative. Make sure that these pages present a clear and positive picture of your organization.

Back to LinkedIn. LinkedIn is all business, all the time. With great and increasing frequency, you will be judged by your LinkedIn page. In answer to the question posed earlier..

The goal of your LinkedIn company page is to show your company is professional, knowledgeable, capable, current, and involved.

Let's break that down.

• Professional - We all generally have a concept of what "professional" is, but it is important to display those aspects of your company and its people that support a professional image. That can range through publicizing charitable activities, project completions, trade shows, awards, and much more.
• Knowledgeable - Customers want to work with the smart people to solve their problems. Find ways to showcase, through posts on your page and articles that you author and publish on your page (underlined because it is important), the high level of industry specific knowledge that your company brings to each and every customer encounter.
• Capable - How do you show how capable your organization is? Having all your employees linked to the company page is one way. Make certain that every employee's profile is well done, providing a positive image of the person and their skills. Another way to highlight your company's abilities is to write your own case studies, articles that describe a real challenge and your company's part in solving it. Your creativity will help you discover more ways to portray your company's value.
• Current - This one is very important. Content on your LinkedIn company page, or any social media account, should show activity in the very recent past. A page with the most recent post being from a year ago looks like it has been abandoned. Keep posting and publishing, even with small items.
• Involved - Present content that shows participation in community activities, trade shows, standards committees, whatever endeavors and activities that pertain to your target market or industry. 

A LinkedIn company page should not be viewed by you, Small Business Owner, as a graphic poster about your company. Do not allow it to be static. LinkedIn is where other professionals, potential customers, and potential employees will go to make an evaluation of your company. Your time and effort invested in making and keeping up that online presence will reap dividends.

Follow, comment, contact me with your questions. I can be contacted directly at CMS4i by putting @TomO in the message section. At CMS4i, we help small companies build their brand and web presence, so contact us anytime.

Should You Promote a Legacy Brand Name, or Move on with the New One?

How to promote a legacy brand name

Consolidation, acquisition, and merger activity among corporations can create a challenge for local marketers, such as a distributor or representative. The dilemma concerns the value in continued promotion of the legacy brand name.

Here is the scenario. You represent the small, specialized, successful manufacturer of a product. A large company with an international brand acquires the small company you represent. Once you clear the hurdle of whether the new owner will maintain the current sales channels, there is then the question of how to present and promote the new brand to your customer base. It is likely that the legacy brand name is well known in the market, but conglomerates will have interest in the promotion of their own brand which may encompass the products of numerous other companies they have acquired. Here are some things to consider.

• If the principal abandons the legacy brand name, you can still maintain a legacy brand name presence on your website and social media channels. This can help customers unaware of the brand change make a connection with your company. A legacy brand name page on your website, a blog about the brand name change, other social media posts will all help customers link the legacy brand to your company and the new brand name. Effectiveness will be attained through repeated posts about the brand name for however long it takes to establish the new brand in place of the old.
• If the principal adds their name to the legacy brand name, similar to a hyphenated surname for a spouse, your interests may be best served by promoting both names separately, as well as combined. The newly created combo name will, by itself, have little recognition in the initial stages, and brand development efforts by the acquiring company may not produce the results needed to foster your local sales and promotion efforts. Solid branding does not develop overnight. It takes time, sometimes lots of time. Figuratively hanging some legacy brand name signs on your website and social media channels will enhance search engine performance and bring visitors to your sites where a transitional move toward the new brand name can be implemented.
• If the principal maintains the legacy brand name, an example of which would be "Legacy Brand Name, a division of Big Company" or something similar, you can mostly maintain your marketing status quo. In this case, the acquiring company is placing significant value on the brand name that they purchased (smart), and you should maintain promotion of the legacy brand.

There are an unlimited number of variants to the three simple scenarios shown here. Your relationships with your principals are the lifeblood of your business. If they provide direction or guidance on how to promote a new branding, it is probably best to conform. 

Brand names that enjoy widespread recognition, good reputation, and identify with a narrow range of products or applications can have immense value. Unless there is a specific prohibition to continuing to provide a connection between your customers and principals through your company by using that legacy brand name, I generally recommend you maintain its useful presence throughout your digital marketing. Though, with a view to the future, keep in mind that younger and new entries into your potential customer pool are unlikely to share the connection strength of industry veterans to the legacy brand name. Over time, which could be years, you should transition your sales promotion to synchronize with whatever path the acquiring company uses. 

Follow, comment, contact me with your questions directly at CMS4i by putting @TomO in the message section. At CMS4i, we help small companies build their brand and web presence, so contact us anytime.

Should You Blog About Products You Don't Sell?

Sometimes, going against your long held beliefs can be helpful.

The relationships between you, my technical sales representative and industrial distributor friends, and your principals can be convoluted. Manufacturers prefer that you not handle products considered competitive with theirs, but it is inevitable that some overlap will come into play. As a work-around solution, it is common for a rep to handle only a portion of a manufacturer's product line. There are a number of other possible scenarios that may leave you authorized to sell less than the entire product mix. This creates something of a challenge when designing your website, but even more so when selecting topics for frequent blog articles.

Some blog posts come pretty close to being product advertisements, and close is generally acceptable. I keep these points in mind when I write about a product.

• Keep promotional speech minimized (preferably missing entirely)
• Tie the product to an industry practice
• Focus on technical aspects of a product or process
• Relay how it may be different
• Show how it can deliver benefits or improvements to the reader's work or process

Working toward these goals helps maintain your post as a useful and interesting piece. The goal is to provide value for the reader, netting benefit to the writer as a result of the reader's fulfillment.

You want your company to be noticed, discovered, found by individuals with common interests, since these are the people you will do business with in one form or another. If getting noticed or discovered is your goal...

Does it make sense to blog about things you do not sell, but are related to your business?

Of course it does! Remember, your goal with your social media portals is not to sell products, it is to "sell" your organization, by increasing subscribers and reinforcing their positive impressions. The more subjects you cover, with keywords for search engines to find, the better. It is useful to keep in mind that your potential customers have professional interests beyond your company's product offering. This takes a conscious effort. It is easy to myopically blog away about the products shown on the company website, and that's not entirely without merit. But there is more to write about. Being the source of interesting and useful information, being the "go-to place" for news or updates on a subject, adds tremendous social media value to your company. Here are some guidelines and ideas to consider.

• Avoid blogging about competitors directly, but be mindful of their concepts and approaches to solving customer challenges. You may be able to write about the generic concept without mentioning the competitor by name. Compare and contrast your company's approach to a similar issue.
• It can be productive to blog about facets or products of a brand that are unavailable for you to sell. For example, blog about a company's flow meters, even though you only handle their level controls. As long as you do not handle a competitive flow meter, getting the brand name out there can still be positive for you through links back to your site.
• Write about legislative and regulatory current events. There is a continuing flood of this information being released by federal, state, and local jurisdictions. Keeping up with it is difficult for your customers. Your position as an information source can yield positive benefits through followers and subscribers.
• For industrial settings, cyber security and safety are looming issues with universal impact. Find good sources of information and share them through your social media.
• Share an original viewpoint from someone in your company. It does not have to be the CEO. People that work in cubicles, people that turn wrenches, may have some very interesting and valuable things to say. I recommend you work an article such as this as an interview. Getting people to talk to you is generally much easier than getting them to write for you.
• Go completely off topic once in a while. If you have something to share that would be of interest to your industry or audience, but may not be directly related to your company's business line, publish it. This should be an infrequent event, to avoid having your blog appear unfocused.
• Write about things you do not sell, but are used by your potential customers. Your article can be non-partisan and provide insight not usually delivered by those that sell the particular product.

I think you see it now. The purpose of your writing is to serve the reader. If you serve the reader well, the reader will read another article or click on one of your links, increasing their recognition of your organization. That is your goal.

Follow, comment, reach out to me with your questions. I can be contacted directly at CMS4i by putting @TomO in the message section. At CMS4i, we help small companies build their brand and web presence, so contact us anytime.

Should You Keep Your Employees Off LinkedIn?

Encourage your employees to use LinkedIn, or not?

I have been a proponent of having employees on LinkedIn. From my viewpoint, there is value associated with a network of industry invested individuals providing social network connections between their employing company and other industry related individuals. Creating and nourishing pathways for your company to be discovered is a very positive thing, right?

Surprise, Marketer, not every business owner thinks so.

CMS4i does not have a brick and mortar presence. Everybody works remotely, so we arrange to meet periodically to accomplish things better done face to face. Recently, we invited a customer to meet with us, provide some feedback on our social marketing services, and allow us to generally interrogate him (not  really) in an effort to learn something valuable. One of the striking points made by our esteemed customer concerned his desire to avoid having employees active on LinkedIn. Of course, this is near heresy to a social media marketer and, after regaining my composure, I queried as to his reasoning.

Workforce protection.

My customer viewed LinkedIn as a human resource market, where his competitors or other industry related companies could find his trained and experienced employees, then target them for recruitment. True, LinkedIn certainly is a go-to venue for both hiring managers and job seekers. The business owner seemed to have a valid point.

Surely, there was some analysis that could be done, some balance to be struck? Not in this case. The business owner valued the human assets represented by his well trained technicians far in excess of any marketing sizzle that could be delivered by extending his LinkedIn reach. As a marketer, I needed to recognize that there may have been other strategic or tactical goals than mine. There was more to a business than just getting business.

The takeaway here is to remember that, as a marketer, we view and participate in only a small slice of the businesses we serve. We need to be flexible and accommodative with other facets of the business in our pursuit of growth.

Follow, comment, contact me with your questions. I can be contacted directly at CMS4i by putting @TomO in the message section. At CMS4i, we help small companies build their brand and web presence, so contact us anytime.

Do It Today! - Review Those Inbound Links!

Let me quickly establish, once again, the target audience for my articles. I write for technical sales professionals and marketers, modest in size, that operate in the commercial and industrial arenas. A more focused description can be found in my previous article Signs You Might Be On The Wrong Social Media Marketing Track.

Two primary functions of your social media efforts are:

• Discovery, by providing multiple paths through which your organization can be found on the internet.
• Presence, which can be thought of as your public facing digital business front.

An important part of both is the inbound links that bring visitors to your web pages from web pages that are not yours. If your company represents or distributes for ZZZ Manufacturing (a fictitious company), ZZZ might have a link on their site that leads to your site. This makes sense because your company is a vendor source from which ZZZ products can be purchased. The link to your site on ZZZ's site is an inbound link to your site. These can have substantial value because potential customers may be directed to your website, even though they were not specifically searching for your company.

You should review known inbound links on a regular basis. How often you do it should be a function of what you find. If there are numerous errors or omissions, frequency should be higher until everything appears in order. There are some basic things you should do.

• If possible, have an inbound link from every company for which you sell products or services.
• Where inbound links exist, make sure they go to the correct landing page on your site.
• Take steps to try and get incorrect or missing inbound links remedied. This can be challenging in some cases, but the effort is worth the investment of your time.
• Inbound links should generally land on your website pages that will not be deleted or have their URL (the page address) or subject changed when your website is periodically updated. It is possible to map old web page URLs to a new site, but if the operation is omitted the links could be lost forever.
• Reciprocate to those providing inbound links to your site with a link from your site to theirs. Many of you already have examples of these on your sites (a link to the website of a company your sell for).

While your are checking for inbound links from your represented companies, review how they might portray your company on their site. If there is a listing for your distributor firm, click on every link shown and review what your potential customers will see. One of our customers was listed on their principal's site along with a click that would ostensibly show the distributor's place of business. The site did not contain actual photos of the distributor's place of business, but used a sort of Google Earth setup to show what was located at the address provided for the business. In this particular case, the map service returned and displayed a picture of a vintage looking donut shop, clearly not our customer's place of business. This is an example of the potential inaccuracies you need to discover and take steps to have corrected.

Do it today. Have someone else at your company do it today. If you put it off, it's too easy to forget. Inbound links and listing information about your company will be the first impression some have of your business. You need that impression to be as positive as you can make it.

Follow, comment, contact me with your questions. I can be contacted directly at CMS4i by putting @TomO in the message section. At CMS4i, we help small companies build their brand and web presence, so contact us anytime.

Signs You Might Be On The Wrong Social Media Marketing Track

A small departure before I get to my subject for today...

Marketing is not as glamorous as many believe it to be. Many of my business schoolmates leaned into marketing because they thought it would not involve much of the math that tortured them all through school. Surprise! Marketing, at least beyond the smallest scale operations, involves lots of math. How else are you going to determine if what you are doing is working. You gather data, crunch it like a mouthful of peanuts. It tells you something. Then you need to crunch some more to try and determine if the answers you just got are actually usable. Do they apply universally to your target market, or are they somehow related to something else, some other smaller set. We like to think that mathematics delivers certainty, oh yes, that one plus one equals two feeling. Too often, there is a nagging element of uncertainty and doubt in the numbers. But, even on its worst day, stark quantitative presentation and analysis grounds our decision making on something other than pure intuition.

Marketing is tough and demanding because it is intangible, and requires dedication and discipline to make it work.

Now, to what I really intended to write about today. 

If you have read other articles in this series, you probably have come across a description of my target audience. In case you missed it, I have poached it from a previous article and deliver it here.

Technical sales firms and professionals conduct their business with a high level of personal contact. The products sold by these professionals generally require consultation between buyer and seller to establish the suitability of the product for its intended purpose. Technical sales is strictly a B2B endeavor, with customers relying on recommendations and expertise that the sales rep brings to the relationship. I write for them, to build their comprehension of modern social media marketing activities and how their business can benefit from thoughtful application of these techniques.

I write for small to modest sized distributors, tech sales rep firms, and manufacturers, mostly in the industrial process measurement and control space. Many have owners that work at the business everyday and perform many functions throughout the operation, including marketing. For them, and possibly you, being aware of unproductive behaviors and activity on the marketing front can be helpful. Here are five items that keep coming to my mind.

• Commenting on other blogs or social media, especially those of your competitors, with a reference or link to your website.
  
  Face it. You are trying to climb on somebody else's marketing train. Do not do this. Patiently and diligently build your own following through your own social media channels. Making productive or informative contributions is acceptable, but leave any references to your website or company out.
• Not generating original content on your social media channels.
  
  Believe it or not, your customer base and anyone interested in doing business with you wants to know what you think is important enough to write about and share. This is an important component of your brand, your company image. It is good to share relevant useful content that you find, but be sure to mix in your own presentations of thought, opinion, even entertainment.
• You are not at least considering producing some video content for your social media channels.
  
  Let me summarize. Video is the king of content.
  
  Though many do not realize this, everyday something happens at your place of business that is content-worthy. Remember, what may seem commonplace to you might actually be a valuable revelation to someone outside your place of business. Businesses are specialized. They do unique things. Learn to recognize the unique tasks performed at your business. Learn to make short and simple informative videos showing what you do. There is likely more interest out there than you imagine. I also wrote an article about DIY video that may be helpful in getting started.
• Not connecting the dots between social media, inside sales, and field sales.
  
  One function of social media is to serve as a vehicle for establishing and maintaining connections between your customer facing people and your customers. There are many paths to follow in this realm, but the important element is creating some synergy among the sales staff and the social media marketing. The sales staff boosts the social media exposure and the social media exposure attracts more prospective customers. If you are not doing this, there is opportunity awaiting.
• Not actively soliciting useful ideas from employees at every level of your company.
  
  Figuring out the next move to make. Building more efficient ways to accomplish necessary tasks. These are the things that build the value of your business and assure its longevity. Accept that you do not know everything and that the viewpoints, ideas, and opinions of the other people immersed in your business along with you have value. Getting your employees to take an active contributory role can be a challenge, but the results could be staggering.

If you get the feeling that I am writing about you, instead of to you, this may be your call to action to make some changes.

Follow, comment, contact me with your questions. I can be contacted directly at CMS4i by putting @TomO in the message section. At CMS4i, we help small companies build their brand and web presence, so contact us anytime.

Are You A Marketer?

The spark of a new idea

I write for a somewhat limited, or should I say targeted, segment of the business world. Technical sales firms and professionals conduct their business with a high level of personal contact. The products sold by these professionals generally require consultation between buyer and seller to establish the suitability of the product for its intended purpose. Technical sales is strictly a B2B endeavor, with customers relying on recommendations and expertise that the sales rep brings to the relationship. I write for them, to build their comprehension of modern social media marketing activities and how their business can benefit from thoughtful application of these techniques.

Are you a salesperson, or are you a marketer?

How would you answer this question? Your job title probably implies that you are a salesperson. When hired, the job description likely focused on bringing in business, getting purchase orders. Your performance is quantified in terms directly related to revenue generation. You may feel that marketing is an admin or office function, while you are the one in the field making the personal contact necessary to secure an order. So, are you a salesperson, or are you a marketer?

The answer to the question is .... Yes.

You, as a technical sales rep, are responsible for securing business for your company. You are also an integral part of two brands; one of the firm that employs you and the other of the company represented by your firm. Everything you do creates an impression on someone that relates back to those two brands. That is what makes you a marketer, too.

Keeping your marketing function in mind, capitalizing on it, will help you boost your personal and company presence in the minds of your customers. The goal of your marketing efforts is to have your customer base associate and think of you whenever they think of the types of products you sell. To the extent that you build and nurture that association throughout your customer base, you will succeed. Ever hear the adage "It's not what you know, it's who you know"? Remember this....

It's not what you know or who you know, it's who knows you.

Certainly, if your products are poor quality or do not meet customer needs, you are not going to do well. The reality, though, is that most products are of adequate quality and do fulfill the needs of their targeted customer. As a product specialist, you should be adept at matching your product offering to your customer's application, also at differentiating your products and their attributes from those of your competitors. That is tech sales 101, and there is one significant limitation to that activity. It relies upon the timely connection of the sales rep and the customer, and it is difficult to impossible for the sales rep to know when the time is right and to get an opportunity to make the connection with the customer.

What makes the difference between getting the order and not getting the order?

 And the answer is....being known, at least being discoverable. This is where your marketing efforts, especially those on social media, serve to directly boost your revenue generation. Conduct social media activities that make you visible and showcase your professional skill, knowledge, and interest in your industry. Serious customers want to deal with serious sales reps. Be persistent in your promotional activities because the impact of a single activity can fade quickly. Make social media marketing a part of your personal business plan, or your firm's plan, to increase sales performance. Here are some points to start you thinking about your own plan.

• If you do not have a social media presence, make one. Start with Twitter (What You Should Be Doing With Your Twitter Account Everyday, Making Twitter Part of Your Success - You Gotta Do It ), then expand to LinkedIn (LinkedIn - The Value You May Not Realize), Facebook, and others you select on your own.
• Produce or find content (articles, books, pictures, videos, and more) that are interesting and useful to your customer base. Whether your customers may have already seen the article is not important.  That they associate your name with interesting and useful content is.
• Be consistent in your posting. You want your customers to see what you are doing, so you need to post well and post often.
• Follow other social media sites and personalities that are relevant to your industry. It is a good way to see examples of valuable content, but be sure to seek out some unique sources of your own.
• Find and follow customers with whom you have a justifiable business relationship. Be aware that on some sites, like Twitter, it's generally acceptable to follow anyone and you do not need their permission to do so. Other sites may require the permission of the other party to create a connection and you may be looked upon unfavorably for your exuberant efforts to connect with people who do not recognize you.
• Mention some aspect of your social media presence to your customers when you speak with them. If you want to send them a useful article that was mentioned in a conversation, send a link to your Twitter or other post that contains the article. Your goal is to build connections with potential customers that will expose them to your posts, building your stature as an industry professional.

We are always in search of ways to turn the slope of our sales revenue line upward. Being the tech rep that is contacted to help solve a problem or participate in planning an upcoming expansion is what we all crave. Incorporating an effective social media strategy into your personal business plan has a high probability of getting you known and keeping you top of mind, producing increasing returns for you over an extended time. You are a salesperson. You are a marketer.

Follow, comment, contact me with your questions. I can be contacted directly at CMS4i by putting @TomO in the message section. At CMS4i, we help small companies build their brand and web presence, so contact us anytime.

Work Your Company's Social Media To Make It Work For You

Let me set the stage for this article. This post, while generally applicable for all interested in social media marketing, is mostly for smaller firms engaging in technical sales. My definition of technical sales...

Technical sales is the art and practice of promoting products requiring consultation between buyer and seller to assure that the delivered product or service will meet the requirements and expectations of the buyer.

If you are a technical sales practitioner, you speak with your customers directly about their challenges and work toward a solution that matches specific products to each application challenge. Your challenge, as a sales professional, is to be known, be the person that gets called to help develop a solution.

Social media can repeatedly reach out and touch your potential customers with a level of efficiency you, as a breathing entity, cannot even hope to achieve. It will put your company's name and brand in front of your customer base, reinforcing your presence and keeping you top of mind when the time comes for your customer to reach out for assistance. Sounds good, right? There is a catch though.

You, technical sales rep, must promote your company's social media presence in order to get the most personal benefit from it.

If you are a tech sales rep for a company, you are a stakeholder in that company's social media marketing program. Increases in recognition of the company brand, products, and capabilities will translate into more opportunities for you to ply your craft directly with potential customers. A successful social media effort requires nurturing on a continuous basis to keep it visible, relevant, and useful. Here are some activities that you can (and should) do:

• Be a registered follower of every company media site. Your marketing coordinator will gladly provide you with a list of links to every one.
• Once a follower, start liking and/or commenting on company posts. Your comments should add something interesting or useful to the post.
• Follow all of the manufacturers and suppliers your company represents.
• Follow trade groups and other accounts that post content that is relevant to your industry.
• Find and share good content on your company's social media accounts. You will likely need to coordinate with marketing folks to do this, but the recognition you will receive will be worth it.
• Mention the company's social media presence to your contacts and encourage them to follow one or more accounts. There is an art to doing this without being boorish. Start small and develop a useful delivery. Keep in mind that your contacts are more likely to follow your recommendation if it provides something of value. The value will likely reside in the content you recommend, so make it useful or interesting.
• Mention the company's social media presence....I said that already. Do it twice as often as you think you should. It is the most important part of expanding the reach of your company's social media presence.

None of this is difficult, but it takes discipline to incorporate these tasks into your baseline activities every day. If done well, your efforts will win recognition from your employer, as well as your contacts. You can become a go-to source for industry and product news, with your contacts recommending you to others. 

Don't overthink this, just do it. It will work.

Follow, comment, contact me with your questions. I can be contacted directly at CMS4i by putting @TomO in the message section. At CMS4i, we help small companies build their brand and web presence, so contact us anytime.

Social Media Marketing: You're Not There Yet?

Social media marketing has many moving parts

Social media marketing can be an amorphous and vexing subject for many small business operators. After all, it's probably not your trade, along with tuba playing. You have specific skills which, combined with an avid pursuit of success and your own secret business sauce, move your business forward, day after day. Staying current within the business environment is important, as you do not want to be branded as a paleolithic company, flogging away with methods and means long abandoned by other market or industry participants.

For perspective, some clarification about my target audience. This article, while useful in a general sense to all interested in social media marketing, is directed at smaller firms that engage in technical sales. Technical sales is not merely the sale of technical products, though that may be part of it. It is the art and practice of selling products requiring consultation between buyer and seller to assure that the delivered product or service will meet the requirements and expectations of the buyer.

How does this impact the applicability or focus of the article?

My viewpoint reflects that of a typical technical sales professional or firm. Many firms and individuals engaged in technical sales are small and localized, often acting as representatives or distributors for larger national or global brands. The goal for the technical seller's social media activities is to create lasting business connections on a one-to-one basis. This differs from what many larger or non-technical selling companies desire. Their objective is to create a one-to-many connection that is generally of an anonymous nature and without much desire to forge a lasting beneficial business relationship. In a non-technical sales instance, customers can obtain all information necessary to make a purchase without any personal contact with the seller. Technical sales pros, because of their size, localized focus, and method for delivering value, benefit from social media activities in a manner that can differ from the more conventionally accepted thought. As the reader, keep this viewpoint in mind.

Technical sales pros should recognize two overarching things about social media marketing.

Social media presence will be an increasingly important element of business success.

Resources that may not currently exist in your organization will be required to implement an effective social media strategy.


For a business owner or operator, the first statement raises the question of whether theirs will be a business of the future, or one of the past. No longer are social media and internet based marketing cutting edge. They are now the plain vanilla mainstream standard. Your aging customer base is already being replaced by individuals with little to no experience dealing with printed promotional materials, supplier directories, and other bygone methods for gaining brand recognition, including static billboard-like websites. If your company is not actively pursuing the creation and maintenance of an effective web presence, let this be your final warning.

Get with the program or face brand oblivion.

"Resources that may not currently exist in your organization will be required to implement an effective social media strategy." Let's break that down some, as there are still many of you technical sales pros out there who have yet to fully digest the social media marketing concept.

To be effective, a social media marketing endeavor requires continuous nurturing. New and interesting content must be located or created. Analytics should be gathered and assessed for their applicability and usefulness. There are innumerable small tasks and considerations that combine to make a successful program.

Two basic resources are needed to launch and maintain a useful social media presence. One is time, the other is money. It is possible to execute a useful strategy with any mix of these two resources. A candid and careful evaluation of the skills available within your organization, as well as the available budget for marketing, will move you toward the best resource allocation. 

Marketing activities are time sensitive

An obvious solution for the social media marketing challenge is to outsource the whole program and let someone else handle it. Your function would be to select an appropriate vendor and evaluate the general results, assuring your company's brand is being promoted well and that a solid social media presence is maintained. A distinct advantage of outsourcing is that it will detract little from the revenue generating activities of those currently on staff. Outsourcing is less disruptive and allows you to move forward quickly.

For most small organizations, the decision to save on direct expenditure and run the social media operations using existing staff is a perilous one. 

Effective social media plans are developed and executed by marketers. 

It is essential that social media be done well and done continuously. Otherwise, results are likely to be minimal to negative. Yes, it is conceivable to get negative promotional results from poorly conceived or executed social media activities. Turning over the day to day social media marketing activities to the only person at the firm with a Twitter account does not qualify as good decision making. Rigorous scheduling discipline is needed to maintain the quality and currency of the content, and to complete tasks at times that will produce good promotional results. Creativity, along with a marketing skill set, are also traits of a successful candidate for this position. Selecting a staff member to accomplish all that is necessary, without assuring they have the proper skill set and available time, sets the probability for failure higher than that for success.

Get your social media marketing going in the right direction

If you have not yet started a serious social media promotional effort, or feel your program is lacking in impact, it may be time to create a new effort. Learn from what you have already done and make your next social media marketing campaign more successful. If you are starting from ground zero, proceed slowly and gain knowledge as you progress. Avoid making big moves until you gain some experience.

Follow, comment, contact me with your questions. I can be contacted directly at CMS4i by putting @TomO in the message section. At CMS4i, we help small operators build their brand and web presence, so contact us anytime.

Social Media Marketing DIY Tip - Do You Ever Look at Yourself?

Social media allows you to "touch" your network

I had cause to conduct some business with a real estate agent recently and stumbled upon some social media phenomena that gave rise to this article. My experience with Molly (not her real name, of course) was entirely positive. I would recommend her highly to anyone and hold her in high professional esteem. You need to keep this in mind as I break down a few elements of social media presence for your benefit and self-improvement, using Molly's presence as illustration.

I came to know Molly in a decidedly old school fashion, by coincidence. I did not "discover" her through social media, Google, or an advertisement. It was only after I had committed to doing business with her that I decided to take a tour of her social media presence as an academic exercise related to my marketing work. One point stood out in my mind as I threaded my way through Molly's social media pages.

Your social media presence leaves a more lasting impression than a face to face meeting.

Think about this a minute, as it struck me initially as counterintuitive. However, while face to face interaction remains a most powerful means of communication and impact, it is a non-repetitive occurrence. Even if you meet with someone multiple times, they appear and act originally each time. On the other hand, every time someone views your profile picture you look the same (at least until you change it). Those repetitive identical impressions can have the effect of etching that image into memory.

In addition to the profile picture's visual aspect, consider the profile summary or bio. It sinks deeper into a reader's mind than many may suspect. The presentation of the summary, its writing style, subject matter, grammar, and spelling, all have impact on the reader. Note also that spelling mistakes, improper grammar, and awkward style may leave a stronger impression than the positive attributes of the summary. The reader expects a positive commentary and views negative attributes as extraordinary, possibly creating an indelible impression.

Once you make an impression on someone, it is difficult to "unimpress" that remembrance. It follows that keeping your social media presence brightly polished is an important component of your professional success, the success of your business. Here are some points to stimulate your own consideration of how well you are maintaining your social media presence.

Any image of you should be perfect in every possible way.

The importance of your visual presentation cannot be overstated. When a prospective customer, employer, friend, date, or whatever finds you on social media, they cannot hear you, smell you, touch you, or be impacted by your body language. All they have, initially, is your picture. Make it count.

If you are not sufficiently skilled at producing high quality images to use on your pages, pay someone to do it for you (outsource). Image attributes that you should pay attention to include...

• Dimensions - Edit images to match the size requirements of each site with which you are working. Spend enough time on this to get it perfect, not just good.
• Definition - Avoid all but the sharpest, most in focus, images. 
• Color - Distinct and vibrant color rendition will make a photo stand out. I suggest avoiding black and white unless there is a compelling reason to use it. 
• Facial Expression - Present a facial expression that is appropriate for the target audience and will be perceived as neutral or positive by the greatest number of viewers.
• Clothing and Appearance - Dress and adorn yourself appropriately for the type of work at which you are representing yourself as a competent professional. Keep the target audience in mind. If you catch yourself trying to standout from the crowd by appearing "individual", you may want to reassess. 

Know what you look like.

After you post any image of yourself, review it using more than one device. Make sure it appears the way in which you intended and delivers a positive impact. It is not a bad idea to get a few confidants, those who tell you the truth even when it hurts, to provide a critique of your image.

Check your social media pages periodically, making sure your image appears as you intended. The providers of our social media environment, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and others are continuously tinkering with the applications and may make changes that impact your online image.

Below is a screenshot of one of Molly's two Google+ landing pages. Do you think she intended to use her torso as the background photo for her landing page? If so, what was the plan, the intent, the rationale behind its deployment. I cannot get this out of my mind and will likely forever remember Molly as the perpetrator of this faux pas. I did some research and discovered that it was not Molly's intent. Google released a new version of Google+ that sort of "re-cropped" Molly's original image. The screenshot below shows what the image looks like with the new Google+ app. If you view the same page with the old version of Google+, which is still in use, Molly looks just fine with a head and shoulders shot. The lesson is to check all the different ways in which your target audience might view your image, making sure that all are presentable and deliver the impact you desire.

Was this intentional?

Edit for success

Most are familiar with the expression "dress for success". Your social media images are important because they are your appearance and that online image of you will likely be what is remembered. Potential customers or employers will make decisions based upon your images, making them worthy of your valuable time spent producing perfect pictures. 

Your social media presence is not a "set it and forget it" proposition.

I have heard social media sites compared to billboards along the highway. In some cases this may be true, but it should not be that way for you. Remember the purpose of  your social media endeavor. You can watch a short video about it in a previous article. Here are some valuable goals for your personal or small business social media activities.

• Get discovered by individuals and organizations important to your business
• Develop a presence in your field
• Demonstrate your involvement in relevant activities
• Show you are knowledgeable and current
• Present yourself as someone that can provide value in a business encounter

You will not achieve these goals with a static social media presence. Look at your social media pages. If your last post or share was a year ago, a month ago, you are not following a social media plan that will lead to success. Learn about how to use Twitter, LinkedIn, and other sites that appeal to you. Develop a plan that has you devoting the necessary time to find or produce relevant and useful content and share it on your sites. If you cannot execute a useful plan on your own, outsource it, or reduce the number of sites to a level you can manage. My friend Molly had more than eight profiles on various sites, in some instances more than one on the same service. A look at the posts reveals that she only maintains two of them regularly. Some of the sites had not been updated in more than two years. These stagnant sites can provide negative impressions. They are not harmless.

Your social media sites that do not appear current and active are more likely to make a negative impression than one that is positive or even neutral.

Social media marketing, done right, is no trivial undertaking. It takes time and effort to develop proficiency at producing and locating useful content, then sharing it in a manner that will get the exposure and results you deserve.

Follow, comment, contact me with your questions. I can be contacted directly at CMS4i by putting @TomO in the message section. At CMS4i, we are here to help you make things work, so contact us anytime.