The Wax Blog

23 May

Posted at 09:57h in Public Relations, Sales by
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I was in a meeting a couple weeks ago with a bigger agency for whom I occasionally do work as a subcontractor. As I sat there, listening to them talk to their client it occurred to me that public relations and advertising agencies make the same mistake salespeople do. They don't understand that the most powerful meeting in the world is one in which they really listen to their clients. Then, another potential client asked me if I minded being called a publicist. I asked why, and apparently they had just met with a PR agency that told them they were no longer publicists...they were storytellers.

17 May

Posted at 06:35h in Uncategorized by
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With these columns, we focus a lot on tips that help you get your blog started – things that will help you generate that readership, get them to engage and so on. It isn’t often that I talk about what happens AFTER you’ve got a captive audience available and how it should change your content.  Like anything good you do in life, your blog content needs to evolve. Once you’ve got that interest of readers, you need to keep it, and evolving your content is the only way that will happen. To help you better understand what I am going to explain (in my next post) with regards to content for highly established blogs, let’s look at what I typically suggest you do with a blog that is just getting started.

16 May

Posted at 09:36h in Public Relations by
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On Thursday, I"ll start a small series on taking your message to a national level - what it takes and how to get there. But first, let's look at the three biggest obstacles to gaining national recognition. I work with a lot of business owners, authors, entrepreneurs and others who are quite well-known in their local markets. Virtually all of them dream of creating a national platform at some point. And some of them do make it, like my friend Michael Schneider who is well on his way as a travel expert. Others do not. And I have to say that I can spot them almost immediately. There are three reasons why people do not (and cannot) move to the next level. Here they are:

12 May

Posted at 09:27h in Integrated Marketing, Small Business by
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As many businesses grow, the hassle of managing employees grows along with it. Two of the hardest groups to manage for me were outbound sales and customer service.  In the technology industry in the 1990's (which is where my management career started and ended) had few processes developed for inbound and outbound calls. In a small business, your "super admins" end up dealing with most of these things and often get burned out. Many, many call centers existing in the United States that are affordable, well-managed and easy to integrate into your business. It's not all the stereotypical Indian or Malaysian call center that we've all come to dread. If you're overwhelmed because you've got more business than you can handle, you might want to consider outsourcing call centers as an option. But just what do they do?

09 May

Posted at 06:14h in Public Relations, Small Business by
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I hear those who commented on last week's post on reasons NOT to do your own PR - it CAN be really expensive to hire a PR person.   If you're not living in NYC or LA (or even if you are) you'll find there are some really affordable agencies and freelancers that could make all the difference for your business. Before you pooh pooh the idea of hiring a PR professional, let's look at what your costs might be.