Barbara Walters Price

For a southern girl, you don't have much of an accent

What I've been told most of my life is apparently true - I don't have much of an accent.  I was born and raised in Tennessee and still reside in the Volunteer state.  I have some relatives that would be right at home on the set of the Dukes of Hazzard in terms of really thick southern accents.  And I enjoy a good-natured southern accent.  Yet, given this short quiz, it looks like I don't sound as southern as I am.  Or maybe I was trying too hard ... What type of accent do you have?

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The South
Philadelphia
The Inland North
The West
The Northeast
Boston
North Central
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

Blogging Best Practices: Should you (ever) reuse content?

Recently, I was speaking to a group of CPA firm marketing directors about blogging.  During the Q&A, someone asked "Should you ever reuse content?"   My answer was "welllll ... it depends." 

If you bring back an old post because the information is still relevant and useful to your audience, that's okay.  I've done it as have many others.  Just note that it's a reintroduction of a past post.

However, if you reuse posts because you either don't have the time or the energy or the proper respect for your audience, then it's a very bad idea.  I removed a blog from my RSS because I began to see the same posts again and again.  This blogger is very respected in his field but by recycling old posts, it felt like the blog was just a cynical marketing device rather than an attempt to create a dialogue with readers.  The best blogs create that dialogue, that community, and the most avid readers.  As such, they are a very effective marketing tool.   By cynically recycling posts, you are diminishing the marketing effectiveness of your blog.

My answer, I think, rang a little hollow because of the touchy-feely nature of it.  In order to give them something to hold on to, I gave the example of an old pastor of mine.  As he neared retirement, he started telling the same old stories in his sermons.  You could tell he was phoning it in.  Not good for pastors and not good for bloggers.

So, the moral of the story - don't phone it in.  If you are considering starting a blog for you or your firm, know that it is a commitment of time and, as a rule, the content should be fresh.  It is okay to repeat a post once and a while but only if you note that it is a repost and only if it is information that your audience needs.

Blog Roll updated - finally

It's been too long in coming but I've finally updated my Blog Roll.  If I had known it would be this easy, I would have done it months and months ago.

Notable additions:

• Michelle Golden's Golden Practices (this is a daily read for me)
• Dianna Huff's B2B MarCom Writer Blog (fould via Michelle and really enjoy)
• Escape from Cubicle Nation (a little off topic yet it's a fun read with good ideas)
• Build a Better Blog (we're working with these ladies on Mercer on Value and they're goooood)

A few others added were added as well and all are certainly worth a visit.

Now, I've got to do something about those categories ....

Making your problem my problem

You know you're on the wrong airline when the pilot wearily announces over the intercom:

"Ladies and gentlemen, we're in for a grueling 3-hour flight today."

He was speaking about the 100mph headwind that we would encounter throughout the journey from Memphis to Phoenix but given our experience thus far, he could well have been commenting on the expected level of service and competence of the airline.   This comment, you see, was after we were  late taking off because:

• the plane arrived late to Memphis; and, better than that,

• we were too heavy!

It seems that nobody paid any attention to the weight of the plane with passengers, luggage, and fuel.  While the attendants were going through the safety demonstration, an alarm kept sounding.  After some confusion, the captain, who is now standing in the cockpit doorway looking every bit as beleaguered as his words,  informs us that since we will have this 100mph headwind we need a lot of fuel and fuel weighs a lot.  As such, we're just too heavy to take off. 

All the passengers glance at one another looking for, I suppose, the heaviest folks on the plane to summarily dump back into the terminal because it seems as if we ALL had tight connections and no one was interested in being magnanimous.  We were, instead, ready to get in the air and hoping that we would stay there until our scheduled landing.

The airline pulled the last two standby passengers and their luggage off the plane and told us we were good to go.  Okay.  At least the alarm stopped sounding.

To top it all off, since so many of us had tight connections now, the lead flight attendant announced that there would be a gate agent in Phoenix when we landed to either tell us where our connecting flights were or to give us new boarding passes if we had missed those connections.  All was well we thought as we settled in for the "grueling" 3 hours. 

Once we got to Phoenix, we deplaned only to find no gate agent and the monitors that display departures and gates broken (we weren't surprised).  With ten minutes to make my flight that was departing from another concourse, I hurried over and, to my amazement, they were holding the flight for us. 

I made my connection and the 3-hour flight wasn't particularly grueling for me so I can laugh about it now.

However, the lesson in all this is don't transfer your problems to your clients.  I know it can't be fun to work for a major airline right now but that's your choice, not mine.  Don't take it out on me.  I'm giving you my money and my business. 

• So, if a client project  is difficult and tedious, don't tell them that.  Be respectful of the business they are giving you.  If you don't want the business, don't take the business in the first place.  But if you take it, provide great service and quality. 
• If you promise something, deliver. 
• If you promise something on someone else's behalf, make sure they deliver. 
• And be certain to keep the lines of communication always open.

Why do these things, which are really pretty easy, seem so hard to so many?

PSF Marketers: Experts or Irrelevant?

Last week there was a "conversation" among bloggers (Suzanne Lowe, David Maister, and Michelle Golden) on PSF marketers.  Suzanne started the ball rolling with a post entitled "Is Marketing Talent Overrated?"  In it, she commented:

I have spent a career helping professional service firms market their experts and their collective expertise.  But I have yet to hear a single person refer to their MARKETERS as experts.  It's as if the only expertise resident in a management consulting firm, say, are the management consultants!

David then riffed on that along with a very cogent observation from Seth Godin regarding the seeming irrelevance of marketing professionals when he stated:

My own tentative hypothesis is that professional business marketers (and consultants) probably know quite a bit about the processes of marketing (listen to your clients, get feedback, build relationships, form client teams, manage media relations, etc.) But I suspect we actually know very little about marketing itself, ie major breakthroughs in positioning, actually achieving differentiation and branding (as opposed to claiming it.)

Thinking back, I don’t know what I would point to as a major MARKETING achievements in the professional world. Just as Seth Godin has pointed, I can think of many professional businesses built by the professionals themselves (i.e. the marketing amateurs), but it’s very unclear (at least from the outside) what the marketing professionals contributed.

Michelle responded to David's post with a good list of ten challenges that in-house marketers face every day.  She prefaced the list with these comments:

I have some pretty strong feelings about the topic of in-house marketers, having been one, and from being in very close contact to hundreds of colleagues in my present business and 11 years with Association for Accounting Marketing. Maybe it's just me, but the conversation seemed to be missing a large part of the picture of the world in which in-house marketers work.

I've considered these posts and thoughts over the weekend and have to say that everything that has been said is, well, right.  But, it all begs the question of: so what?

Michelle's top ten list is pretty much right on the money yet, again, so what?  You sign on as a marketer for a professional service firm and you mostly know what comes with the territory.  You do your best to get better every day.   If things don't work out for you or if you're not valued, then you work like a dog to change your circumstances or you go elsewhere.  I know it sounds harsh, but it's true.

As for David's post, I hate to say it but he's probably more right than we PSF marketers would like to imagine.  We all give lip service to positioning and differentiating but precious few of us know how to make it happen. 

Here's the reality I've found in a PSF:  it can't happen without the fee-earners.  This dovetails into Suzanne's post.  The fact is that we PSF marketers are not as close to the clients and prospects as the fee-earners.  That means that often the great ideas come directly from them, not from us.  That means that new initiatives often come from them, not from us.  They see the market in a way we can't.  A fee-earner with a marketing bent is a blessing from God!  

Does that make me less of an expert?  No.  Do I contribute by taking these ideas, adding my insight and talent, and pushing them until they become reality?  Yes.   But if the idea wasn't mine in the first place, does that make me useless or irrelevant?  Of course not. 

We are all part of one body and if the body is to work efficiently and effectively, all parts have to be working together.  Yes, I am sometimes seen as less than an expert within the walls of Mercer Capital.  But that's often true of our fee-earners as well.  I don't worry about this.  Even Jesus noted that a prophet is without honor in his own country.  If it can happen to Jesus, it can certainly happen to me.

The truth is if I quit and hung out my shingle tomorrow, I would automatically be seen as an expert in the eyes of many people.  That's just the way it works.

Maybe it's my age and experience, but I've reached a state of philosophic calm about a great many things and one of them is this issue.  Over the years, I have talked with a great many PSF marketing directors, many of them younger than myself, and listened as they complained about the lack of respect afforded them by the partners in their firm, about their tight budgets, about what they saw as insufficient compensation.  The list is long and, for the most part, useless, as is the complaining.

PSF marketers have to understand that we are part of a greater whole.  We need the fee-earners as much as they need us.  In fact, without them, we wouldn't have the jobs and opportunities we do.  We will earn respect when we've shown we deserve it by our knowledge, our character, and our results. 

That's my two-cents.  Take it as you will.

Where is the real networking happening?

Our firm is exhibiting at the 2006 Tennessee Tax Institute today and tomorrow.  The meeting attendance is getting smaller each year which has been the trend with these type meetings in numerous states for several years.  The declining attendance is not due to the Institute itself.  The program is first-rate as is the location and organization. 

Is the advent of so many other, less expensive CPE and CLE choices making traditional meetings such as this less attractive?  And more importantly:  where is the real networking going on?  Several clients and referral sources attend and support this meeting and we are happy to be here.  These clients and referral sources are some of the premier attorneys and CPAs in the city.  This is a prime networking opportunity so why is the meeting attendance getting smaller every year?  We are not the only ones asking this question.  The Trustees of the conference are asking it as well.

It seems to me that if a company makes a decision to opt for less expensive CPE and CLE opportunities for their professionals at the greater expense of lost networking opportunities, it is short-sighted.  But maybe I do not see the whole picture.  What are your thoughts?