Barbara Walters Price

Quora - what is it and how do you use it?

Quora is "a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it. The most important thing is to have each question page become the best possible resource for someone who wants to know about the question." (per Quora)

I joined Quora a few weeks ago and am still trying to figure out the best way to use it personally and professionally since it seems pretty jumbled and very tech-focused. I may find that I should concentrate on other things, yet I want to give it a try.

As such, I came across this article on Inc.com entitled "10 Tips on Using Quora for Business" by Tim Donnelly.  Tim began the article with helpful info about Quora:

Quora, the easy to navigate question-and-answer service built on a social-media backbone, has soared in popularity since launching in 2009. Founded by a Facebook CTO, the site has already attracted high-level executives, journalists, industry insiders, and entrepreneurs, all eager to answer a vast array of questions for free. The site is rife with crowd-sourced queries, with a comprehensive listing and incentive to stay in touch with a network of people.

But on a site whose range of topics stretches from "Do Silicon Valley VCs invest in European early-stage startups?" to "Given our current technology and with the proper training, would it be possible for someone to become Batman?" how can you maximize its potential for your business? We asked to a few Quora pioneers who've quickly found ways to take advantage of the site for their tip.

His 10 tips (each by a Quora user) where helpful. As with any top 10 list, the explanation attached to the main point is where the meat of the information is so read the article. In summary, his 10 points are:

1. Find new ideas to talk about
2. Open the lines of communication
3. Sharpen your communication skills
4. Don't self-promote
5. Ask good questions
6. Build a presence
7. Monitor and engage
8. Do market research
9. Prove your worthiness
10. Don't over-promote yourself

I will give Quora a chance for a while.  Our competitors are not present (yet, maybe) but some clients are and there are certainly industries we have specializion in that are members of the Quora community.  Are you using Quora and, if so, what has been your experience? 

My boss has a blog

Chris Mercer, CEO of Mercer Capital, has a new blog and he's got some great content.  The blog, ValuationSpeak, covers business valuation-related issues such as statutory fair value, business damages, valuation theory, and professional development.  If you are interested in those topics, bookmark it.



"What happens when you take some of the most thought provoking quotes and pair them with fresh photography?"

I love this site.  PixPlacebo.  It inspires ideas and design.  Take a look and see for yourself (click on one of the quotes and scroll from there).

From the site:

What happens when you take some of the most thought provoking quotes and pair them with fresh photography and works of art?

PixPlacebo is a group art project dedicated to this task.We've collected and sourced great quotes from antiquity to the present day.

Contributors supply images and then select and format the quote to fit with their work. The end result, we hope, is a fresh take on an old idea.

This is an active project with photographers and artists from around the world contributing daily. Please join us and participate. Open enrollment in the project is still currently closed.

 

"The eight major offenders used by buyers and decision makers to stall your sales process"

In a post by Voss Graham of Developing Your B2B Sales Skills, he lists the eight major "BS excuses" used by buyers in the B2B sales process.  He then provides a few hints to overcome them.  Not all of them apply to business appraisers, CPAs, attorneys, etc., but several do.  Take a look. Those selling professional services can learn something here.

The eight excuses offered by buyers are:

1. No Money in Our Budget
2. Send me more information or brochure
3. Too Busy to Change Anything Now
4. We only Use Certified Vendors
5. We have a Contract now
6. Your Price is Too High
7. Tell Me in 10 minutes what you have to offer
8. Sounds to Complex for Us

How to be awesome on Twitter

I love this presentation (and should take its advice) from Marta Majewska.  Learn and enjoy!

How To Be Awesome On Twitter?

View more presentations from Marta Majewska

Open Source Fonts

For a listing of free and/or open source fonts, see Typophile.  Always check and respect the End User License Agreement.

Absolutely Positively ...

Seth Godin talked about "Date Certain" as a powerful marketing tool.  According to Seth:

A powerful marketing tactic: tell me exactly when I'm going to get it.

"This project will be done noon on Tuesday."

"You'll get the shipment at 4 pm."

Fedex has made billions shipping packages that didn't even have to be there fast, they merely needed to arrive at a time that we knew about in advance.

We don't want to hear, "up to 11 business days." We hope you care more about our project than that.

At Mercer Capital, we agree.  We promise delivery of a draft valuation report within 30 days of our on-site due diligence visit (if we have received all the necessary information from the client).  We work hard to exceed that promise and our clients and referral sources appreciate understanding the timing.  Because of the nature of what we do, we cannot always promise an exact date/time, but we can and do provide more information as to delivery than many of our competitors.

Promising delivery and then keeping that promise is a simple but powerful idea.  What can your firm do to take advantage of this idea?  What can you, as an individual professional, do?  It doesn't matter if you're a fee-earner working for the end-user or a marketing professional serving your internal client base (the firm's other professionals) - take advantage of the "absolutely, positively" mindset.

 

 

 

Don't be a powerpoint felon

Great presentation by Nick Smith of AdvanceYourSlides.com.

Don't Be A PowerPoint Felon

View more presentations from Nick Smith.

Does your firm's website have a press page?

My firm's website does not have a press page but the idea is intriguing.  Tim Donnelly provides information on how to create a press page at "Website Design Tips for Your Press Page" at Inc.com.  Take a look.

 

Slideshare - leverage it to make you smarter (and look smarter)

In a post on Inc.com entitled "Slideshare: An Easy Way to Present," author Curt Finch got me thinking.  He noted how Sally Hogshead uses Slideshare on her blog.  I confess that I had relegated Slideshare only to LinkedIn but that post got me thinking about other possibilties. 

Then, John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing (if you don't have his blog bookmarked, you should), provided another insightful and relevant post, "How to Keep Tabs on the Greatest Presentations Made Everyday."  He walks us through using Slideshare to search for the most recent presentations on a topic of our choice:

The way you make Slideshare show you the latest is to search using the tag attribute. Instead of using the search box just type your search into the address bar. So if I want presentations on small business I would type http://slideshare.net/tag/small-business into that address bar in my browser and presto – I get the most recent presentation in chronological order. But, it gets even better, I can subscribe to this search using an RSS reader like Google Reader and then each day I get the most current presentation sent my way. I can scroll through that day’s list and see if I want to view any or just ignore them all.

Check out both posts and begin to leverage Slideshare for your own purposes.