Today, I ran across this posting from Ragan.com by [...]]]> I’ve seen quite a bit lately about more effective uses of LinkedIn. Just recently, I sourced a new author for Intuit’s Accountant News Central blog, Mark Ginsberg, who contributed two articles, “How to use LinkedIn to Grow Your Practice,” and “How to Build Your Network on LinkedIn.”

Today, I ran across this posting from Ragan.com by Rebecca Corliss that talked about 5 great uses for LinkedIn. Some of these I knew about and some were new to me. Enjoy!

1. Products and services tab

LinkedIn’s products and services tab is a feature of its company pages. This tool allows a business to naturally feature its products and services. Within the tab are multiple opportunities to link directly to internal pages on your website, such as product pages or demo landing pages. You can encourage viewers to recommend your products and leave testimonials.

Get started: Activate your products and services tab and add five products. You will see further customization opportunities once you add five products, including the opportunity to feature a specific product. Drive traffic to that page from other social networks by posting about it—with a link, of course. Why not encourage your customers to recommend one of the products in your post?

2. Audience variations

Another component of the products and services tab—and not available on any other social network—is the ability to create variations of your page to target specific personas.

For example, you can define a persona based on LinkedIn profile information, and create a variation of your products and services page to resonate well with that specific persona. This tool allows you to display the information and products most relevant to your viewers, and thereby increase the likelihood they will click through to your website.

Get started: Create two personas based on your main target audiences, and create custom products and services pages that are relevant to those personas. Monitor your results with custom tracking tokens.

3. Status updates

Status updates are a familiar social tool for marketers, since they post them all the time on Facebook and Twitter. An update is a post that typically includes a link and a photo, and is a great way to drive traffic to your website. Unfortunately, many marketers don’t invest time in LinkedIn status updates, even though the opportunity to do so largely contributes to the strength this channel can provide to your marketing.

Get started: Post status updates regularly, and measure how well they drive traffic and leads to your website. Not sure what to post? Consider using the questions your customers regularly ask as fodder for your updates.

4. Company page statistics

Data, data, everywhere! Do you look at your LinkedIn data? As you use your company page more, you should measure engagement and track who visits your page. This data will help you determine whether you’re attracting the best audience for your business.

Get started: Visit your company page statistics and look at how many people visit your page each month, the job roles and industries of your visitors, and the tabs they view within your company page. Decide which metrics are most important to your business, and track monthly growth.

Bonus: LinkedIn offers great data for LinkedIn groups as well. The data is public to everyone, not just the group’s owner.

5. LinkedIn ads

There’s nothing wrong with using some paid ads to support your organic efforts. Just make sure paid efforts aren’t your sole focus! LinkedIn has a self-service ad product you can use to target specific personas and drive visitors to a landing page on your website. HubSpot has seen a significantly lower cost-per-lead for LinkedIn ads compared to other paid channels, so it’s worth a controlled experiment for your company.

Get started: Go to https://www.linkedin.com/ads and set up a limited campaign that drives visitors to a specific landing page on your website. Dedicate a small budget to a campaign test. Use tracking tokens to track the visits and leads the campaign creates, and then decide whether to continue based on performance.

To summarize the article, the mother of a man in [...]]]> Because it got MY attention, I took the title of my latest blog posting from the headline of an article that ran on March 16 in The Dallas Morning News. Here’s an online version of the article (with a different headline) from AP writer MIchael Avok.

To summarize the article, the mother of a man in Nebraska who died in a motorcycle crash tried to get access to his Facebook page, only to be stymied by Facebook who denied her access. She was able to get in to her son’s account, but only after a lawsuit and a 2-year “legal battle that ended with Facebook granting her 10 months of access before her son’s page was removed.” Facebook would have provided immediate access if – and this is Facebook’s wording, “if prior consent is obtained from or decreed by the deceased or mandated by law.”

Plain and simple, the mother was trying to piece together her son’s life to understand more about his last weeks and days – and retain an online archive in memory of her son. I understand that Facebook has its policies, but come on, Mr. Zuckerberg! This is both ridiculous and sad that the admins at Facebook couldn’t see past the end of their nose to enact the more-human perspective and grant Karen Williams access to her son’s property – and I do believe a Facebook account IS personal property.

This story reminds me of my most recent post about Wikipedia and how the PR profession is prevented from helping improve Wikipedia entries. Why? It ties to the Nebraska case in the sense that owners of social media content are making up their own rules instead of exercising the contents of the First Amendment.

I don’t think I’m alone in my thinking. I’m trying to think what would happen if I were to cease existing and my loved one wanted access to my accounts (there’s more than Facebook; I also have LinkedIn and Twitter). Unless they know my user name and password (which Ms. Williams didn’t, of course), is there no way they can gain easy access unless they go to court?

I know this debate will continue for quite some time. My hope is that Facebook will come forth with its own solution. Surely this cannot be the first time this has happened.

Coincidentally, I am in the process of redoing my will and am meeting this very day to sign the final version. I DO plan to ask my attorney what she thinks about all of this with regard to putting something in my will about access. After all, to me, social media is a chronicle of our lives, even if you do not believe it is nothing more than a time drainer.

I have to confess that, like so many other people I know, I access Wikipedia on a pretty regular basis. I know it’s not always accurate and it does have some flaws, but if you want to know an answer to [...]]]> I can now add one more skill to my bag of tricks: working with Wikipedia.

I have to confess that, like so many other people I know, I access Wikipedia on a pretty regular basis. I know it’s not always accurate and it does have some flaws, but if you want to know an answer to something and want that answer quickly, there’s nothing like putting “What is …” in Google and having Wikipedia pop up at the top of the page.

However, I wasn’t really very familiar with how Wikipedia worked. I knew it was driven by real people who could make changes to entries. In fact, I saw a rerun just the other day of “The Big Bang Theory” in which Sheldon found delight in making bogus changes to various Wikipedia entries – just for fun. As amusing as that sounds, working with Wikipedia to try and post something was anything BUT fun.

I have a client who asked me to work with him to get his company listed on Wikipedia. After all, competitors had their companies listed, so he naturally also wanted to be listed – and totally understood the value of being found on Google and Bing. To make this long story short, or try to make it short, we submitted, rewrote, resubmitted and did the same thing again and again until we went through five rounds of copy. It seems that each time, Wikipedia’s editors wrote back to tell us that the entry was not “encyclopedic enough” for their standards and did not contain enough third-party, non-biased references.

Finally, we just gave up. Defeated, yes – and still a bit in the dark as to why the entries were rejected.

In the middle of the revisions, I received a survey from PR News asking me my opinions as to the influence of public relations on Wikipedia. In other words, what role should PR play in refining and promoting Wikipedia entries? Now that I’ve been through round after round of rejection – I felt like a wallflower at the prom – I can truthfully say that I think PR would help Wikipedia better realize its potential, not in the “spin” people think PR is, but in the way PR professionals can maintain a strategic eye for their clients to help them produce a factual entry that would make a difference in either a professional or personal capacity.

I’m sure neither all Wikipedia aficionados nor PR professionals would agree with me. Yet, I felt I was able to demonstrate my PR acumen by having my client understand how to write a Wikipedia entry so it 1) gained attention, 2) was factual and not smoke & mirrors, and 3) made some kind of impact.

It’s a shame we gave up; I’m not one to give up easily for anything, but sometimes you have to redirect energy elsewhere. I hope I have the challenge again with this client or another one, in a PR capacity, to help them get listed and get the word out. It’s worth the effort.

The 5 most hated include:

There were distinct reasons why each one was included on the list, but suffice it to say that the majority of the rankings [...]]]> MSN Money and a number of other news outlets reported on a story this morning regarding the 5 most hated companies, research conducted by 24/7 Wall St.

The 5 most hated include:

1. Facebook
2. American Airlines
3. AT&T
4. Nokia
5. Goldman Sachs

There were distinct reasons why each one was included on the list, but suffice it to say that the majority of the rankings had to do with complaints due to bad experiences for customers, the public and stakeholders/shareholders.

Personally, I patronize 3 of the 5 – American Airlines, Facebook and AT&T. In fact, I want to be transparent in admitting I’m actually an AT&T stockholder. Yes, it’s true. I own a wastebasket somewhere on the 3rd of floor of the company’s Dallas-based headquarters.

If these companies are SO hated, why do we continue to do business with them?

Reason: We can’t find what they offer anywhere else.

Fact: Not true at all. There are many other airlines, other social media sites and other communications’ companies.

Reason: Convenience.

Fact: Because I am in the DFW area, American Airlines IS convenient, but so is Southwest, and it flies to most of the business/leisure destinations I fly. AT&T really isn’t convenient other than it would be a pain to switch my entire family plan to another provider, let alone try to get out of contract. As far as Facebook goes … well, lately, I would say that Facebook is anything but convenient with the way it keeps changing its interface.

Reason: They provide a good value.

Fact: Value is based on the cost/benefit, which is different for most of each provider’s customers.

Reason: It’s fun to do business with each company.

Fact: I can’t fully offer my definition of fun, but if it means waiting for the crew of an American Airlines’ jet to show up or experiencing WAY too many dropped calls from AT&T, then my definition of “fun” is really different from your definition, probably.

Still, I continue to do business with these companies. Why? The bottom line for me probably has more to do with not wanting to change than anything else and being satisfied with some level of customer service/perks. No, I can’t get a direct flight from DFW on Virgin to Denver, but I can get my AAdvantage points on American. I could probably survive very nicely on Twitter or LinkedIn, but I’ve come to enjoy the interaction I have on Facebook with my friends, even if the experience isn’t as gratifying as it once was.

As far as AT&T goes, I’m a shareholder, so I’m here to stay. Still, I wish the company would work on getting its act together with respect to service and support.

At the end of the day, I think most of us don’t want to change – and that’s just fine with me as long as I can be happy with what I get.

In recent years, I have provided a year-end blog of thanks for my good fortune, so here goes. Here’s what I was thankful for in 2011:

During this year’s annual trip – while I was knee-deep in some kind of fried food [...]]]> There is a tradition in Dallas that goes back 125 years … the GREAT State Fair of Texas. Yes, it’s larger than any other state fair in the country – and I’ve been going every year since I was very young.

During this year’s annual trip – while I was knee-deep in some kind of fried food – I begin to think about the environment around me and how even the simplest fair attractions compared to practice management at an accounting firm. OK folks – this might indeed be a stretch … but I think you will get my point.

Try Your Luck on the Midway Games – generally, the odds are really against you to win one of the many random Midway games, but men and women, young and old, try their luck regardless what the outcome may be just to win a stuffed Homer Simpson. The way an accounting firm fires a rifle into the air – hoping to hit a prospect to convert the prospect to a client – is very similar to a Midway game. The only skill required is the ability to pull the trigger without any thought to how the firm strategically goes about finding clients. If you’re content with casting a net to see who you can catch without some kind of forethought on how you can refine your strategy, then good for you. I have a feeling, however, that your approach doesn’t work very well.

The Annual Pig Races – also known as the “Swine Follies” (I couldn’t make this stuff up – check for yourself), four to five pigs race around a track to see who can get to the bacon first (really, they do). While I was watching this year’s races, it called to mind the competition firms face and the need to compete, head to head, for business. Who will win the race? The firm with the impressive set of credentials? The most experience?

Probably not. The firm that wins the business does so by becoming a partner with its clients. Not only does the firm deliver quality tax, accounting and advisory services, it does so by establishing a one-on-one rapport with its clients. Where do you think the words, “Trusted Business Advisor” come from? They come from firms who are known to be more than just accountants; they are “trusted” by their clients to provide great advice, certainly, but in many more ways than just the traditional set of services.

The Corny Dog is King – The all-time favorite Fair food is the corny dog; in fact, it was invented at the Texas State Fair by Mr. Fletcher in 1942 and has reigned supreme every since. Why? Because it’s unique, yes. Because it tastes good, of course. Because you can slather mustard (hope you’re not one of the novices who puts ketchup) all over it.

Bear with me on this analogy. The corny dog is like a firm’s practice management because it is special. Imitators are all around the corny dog, but there is only one Fletcher and only one corny dog. That’s what it’s like at the really great firms; those who go above and beyond with unparalleled service, a transparent, no-nonsense way of doing business, and incredibly high ethics. These are the firms who excel – and, again, win the business.

So what’s special about your firm? Think about it and you’ll be amazed at what you come up with … just like Fletcher was when he invented the corny dog in the early ’40s. By the way, rumor has it (I wasn’t living at the time) that he had to give away the dogs that very first year because no one was buying them. Go figure.

The Rides are a Jip, But They Make Money – OK, so I’m old fashioned. I don’t see the point of paying $5 for a two-minute spin on the Himalaya, but goodness knows there are thousands and thousands of people who don’t mind it at all. That’s good for the Fair because it brings in bucketloads of money.

Why? Because the Fair has “value-billing” instead of the flat-fee approach for services. I’ve been seeing more and more firms move to value billing where clients are charged a monthly fee for services because the firm works with its clients throughout the year – not just once a year during tax time or on major filing deadlines. So instead of paying a flat fee at the Fair gate and riding all the rides for that one price, the Fair knows it will make more money if they charge per ride because attendees think they are getting something extra for their money.

If any of these points strike a chord with you, please comment. I’d love to hear how you think a Fair compares to firm practice management.

(Note: This blog post originally ran on CPATechViews.com)

That got me thinking that if she had some questions, others might as [...]]]> I had a very interesting conversation last week with a colleague in an accounting firm about PR agencies. She knew I had previously worked in two agencies, so she wanted my input as to whether I thought PR agencies were worth the cost.

That got me thinking that if she had some questions, others might as well.

First, there is much more that should go into evaluating a PR agency relationship than just cost – although I completely understand that cost should (and is, by all reality) be a major consideration. What you want to measure in addition to what it’s costing you is 1) value and 2) efficiency. Here’s what I mean.

Are you deriving value by outsourcing work to a PR agency? As sure as I’m sitting here writing this, you should be able to answer this question. If you’re in a firm (could be any kind of company, software developer or reseller, for example) that’s larger, your managing partner or shareholders will want to know the answer. After all, part of their potential earnings are paid to the agency, so they’ll want to know if the firm is receiving any value for the cost. What you’ll want to do is measure the value in a few ways;

1. Simplest way: Is the work being done by the agency adding to your bottom line? Are you retaining clients because of the agency’s work or are you gaining prospects – and converting those prospects into clients? I say this is the “simplest” method because it comes down to pure dollars – and this is most obvious when you can track a prospect conversion.
2. Not-so-Simple way: Did the work change someone’s mind? I’m not going to go into PR 101 here, but PR campaigns should be persuasive and intended to change someone’s mind about something. I know that’s vague. but think of it in this example. If Congress followed through with its 1099 requirements, it was up to them to persuade the public (and the accounting profession) that the requirements were a good idea. Of course, most accountants I know were opposed to it, but let’s just say for now that one accountant’s mind changed because of Congress’ proactive PR campaign – orchestrated by a PR agency. One mind changed isn’t going to matter, but I think you can see my point.

As to efficiency, the examples above certainly have their roots in efficiency, but what I’m talking about is the ability to save time by hiring a PR agency. The basic question is this: Was the firm able to take the time it would have spent on PR and bill it elsewhere? I know that’s not so easy to measure, of course, but you have to think in these kinds of ways in order to figure out whether a PR agency is worth the time it takes to work with them …

… which leads me to the final point. The most successful PR agency relationships I’ve either dealt with or encountered were the ones in which the client (firm) properly managed the agency relationship. I think it’s up to the client to manage this relationship rather than the PR agency calling the shots. When this occurs, the client usually feels as if it hasn’t been influential in helping control the outcome.

Managing the agency is very simple, actually. It all boils down to effective, two-way communication with your agency team – and this starts at the top of the agency food chain. You have to establish this relationship from the very beginning, too; otherwise, you’ll lose valuable time and money.

PR agencies are definitely worth their cost – if they are properly managed and you derive value to your organization. Enough said.

Boy is it getting hot in here!

Yes, I live in Dallas where we are on our 36th or 37th straight day of 100+ temperatures, but it’s also hot as Hades based on some of the recent news, including this new story on CPA Trendlines about how the accounting sector just [...]]]> (This posting originally appeared on CPATechViews.com)

Boy is it getting hot in here!

Yes, I live in Dallas where we are on our 36th or 37th straight day of 100+ temperatures, but it’s also hot as Hades based on some of the recent news, including this new story on CPA Trendlines about how the accounting sector just lost 3,600 jobs following four months of gains.

Argh! This is so frustrating. Add to that the fact that Congress finally agreed to a band-aided debt ceiling solution only to discover that Standard & Poor lowered the U.S. credit rating.

I ask, then, when is enough going to be enough? When are we going be through with the bad news?

I’ll bet some accounting practitioners are thinking that now is the time to cut back, either in terms of staffing, spending or something else. This is kind of like looking at your 401(k) or SEP – should you stop contributing just because the market dropped more than 500 points last week?

Of course not. You shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater any more than changing the focus for what you’re doing just because of some bad news. If we lived our lives like that, all of us would be in bed with the covers pulled over our heads.

Enough cliches. I say SNAP OUT OF IT! The larger issue should be this: What are firms and companies doing to 1) retain the business they have, and 2) finding new business through conversions, referrals and networking. Instead of focusing on the negative, focus on how to turn around a now-weak economic picture into something more positive.

However, there’s still room for growth, so I am once again on [...]]]> Anyone who reads my posts on CPATechViews or my own blog, AbsoluteCytron.com, is probably tired of one of my recurring themes. I know I am … I am as tired of writing about it as John Irving is of writing about passing open windows!

However, there’s still room for growth, so I am once again on my soapbox about CPA firm client service. I was watching CBS Sunday Morning on July 2; the cover story was about customer service call centers, and while it was kind of a tongue-in-cheek summation of how companies need to pay more attention to customer service, it nonetheless struck a chord with me in how the same concepts apply to CPA firms.

It’s not entirely hopeless! Sure, there are many, many firms that get this right, beginning with the initial call to the receptionist all the way to the managing partner personally reaching out to talk with the firm’s clients. Yet, even in a firm that preaches client service, I think there’s still something to learn.

How can we do that? Here are three recommendations, none of which are original, but still apply to most, if not all, CPA firms:

1. Focus on solutions for the client instead of telling the client how great you are. Most firms only talk about what THEY can do instead of discussing issues more pertinent – and bottom-line oriented – to the client. I see this all the time in firm brochures and website copy. If a firm were to zero in on what the client needs, then I guarantee you will see increase client retention and even more prospect conversions.

2. Stick with the personal touch. This one gets to the basics of great communication. Most clients will sincerely appreciate a phone call on a semi-regular basis instead of a random e-mail. Turn the clock off; now is not the time to charge for the call. Instead, ask about the client’s business and even his or her personal life, if applicable. This is a an important call for even the newest accountant or CPA. You can’t underestimate the importance of a phone call. Better yet, schedule a time to meet in person, either for lunch or coffee. Make it clear you don’t have a set agenda. Remember: you’re want to be thought of as a business partner.

3. Instill the “client-first” attitude in all staff. This starts at the top, of course. If the managing partner, shareholders or partners aren’t practicing this, then it just won’t happen. EVERYONE needs to maintain a client-first mentality. This sounds like an easy concept, but in reality, we all know how difficult it can be to sway some staff who are comfy and entrenched in their positions.

I hope not to write about this topic again for a long time! Help me make that come true by reassuring me that client service IS a firm’s top priority.