Practice What You Teach!

The other day, in a local art studio, I picked up a flyer for a “Marketing Online Workshop” – very basic stuff (web site, blog, social media), a reasonable fee, and an instructor whose name I had not heard before. A few minutes’ search told me that neither teaching nor online marketing are her areas of expertise. I have no questions about her effectiveness and success as a business owner and suspect that she is very good at what she does, but I wonder why an online marketing course should be taught be someone who launched her own blog in January 2009, has posted only 4 times (most recently on January 16, 2009) and has only 1 “follower” (herself).

Shouldn’t we all, as business professionals, practice what we teach?

Improving your LinkedIn profile and your e-mail address

How often do you review a LinkedIn profile of a colleague or a potential business partner or new hire and you see that he/she has the following under “Websites”:

My Website
My Company
My Blog
My Portfolio

Often, right?

It would so much better project a professional image, if this section instead revealed:

The web site’s name or expertise (e.g. orchids for every occasion)
The company’s name (e.g. Sailing for Fun, Inc.)
The blog’s name (e.g. The Accidental Gardener)
The portfolio’s focus (e.g. business coaching around the world)

This is easy to accomplish (just change the name, retain the URL) and the profile owner comes across as being more professional than most. If this is a tweak you should make, do it; it will set you apart from the competition.

Sort of the same thing with e-mail addresses.

If your e-mail address is info@xyz.com, or your web site offers contact choices of info@, sales@, quotes@, etc., you may miss inquiries that could lead to sales. Business depends on personal relationships; people want to do business with people, not with characters. sam@xyz.com or suzie@xyz.com is bound to generate more interest than info@xyz.com.