Thinking about starting a podcast?

One thing I discovered, in working through the process of planning a new podcast, is that it is good to spend some time coming up with a suitable name for the show. What I’ve found in a current exercise of this kind is that to my surprise it seems less about creative brainstorming and more about a systematic process to cover various aspects of how the name can contribute to audience building.

After all, a great name with no or few listeners is not going to be a good look, is it?

As the screenshot above from the Business category on iTunes Podcast section shows, people use a variety of approaches to naming their podcast, from naming after themselves, through addressing some need, to focusing on their product or service.

Six areas to address

I found there were six key areas or issues I needed to address and I phrased them in terms of criteria (in no particular order of priority) for choosing the name:

• appropriate to the focus and scope of the podcast
• not duplicating an existing podcast title
• easy to remember and share
• web domain available (not necessarily as primary url but at least for “insurance”)
• includes keywords likely to bring more traffic
• lends itself to good graphic – esp iTunes badge

If you are interested in knowing more about how I have addressed, and am addressing, each of these points, you might like to check out the longer post I’ve done on the topic on my Des Walsh dot Com blog, Naming a New Podcast.

And while I’m at it I should mention my current podcast, Linking Edge, a weekly show that deals with how to use LinkedIn more effectively.

Do you have a podcast you would like more people to know about? Or one you find particularly helpful, interesting, fun. Please share the address in the comments (usual caveat about appropriateness, civility etc).

One of the many recent changes in features and functionality on the LinkedIn professional networking platform is that the company page is now able to be configured and adjusted in various ways that can help us amplify our LinkedIn presence.

And all at no cost if you are a basic member, or no extra cost if you have a Premium membership.

All it takes is a bit of time. How much time depends on how well you want your company or brand to look. But you can do a lot in under two hours, depending on how uploadable and configurable your content is.

It’s not hard to do. In my blog post LinkedIn 101: Company Pages, for the MYOB blog The Pulse, I explain the basics of setting up your Company Page.

In that post I make the point that the “company” does not have to be an incorporated entity, such as an LLC in the United States, a Pty Ltd company in Australia, etc.  You can set up a company page just for a brand.

Don’t stop at just a description of the company

A lot of companies, large and small, set up company pages on LinkedIn, then neglect to provide any information under the tab for products or services. That’s like saying, “Hello, we’re here, but we don’t want to sell you anything.”

Put some work into the image

Depending on your graphic skills and tools, the only thing you might need help with is the image at the top of the page.

If you or a team or family member has Photoshop or similar, you will be able to put something together.

I’m no graphic designer, but I made the image below using Photoshop Elements (an ancient version, 2.0).

And in case the Photoshop or Photoshop option is out of reach, in another blog post, Don’t Waste the Picture Space on Your LinkedIn Company Page, I’ve explained about how to set up the image and some options other than Photoshop.

It’s a no-brainer

When you check on what your competitors have done – or not done – about LinkedIn company pages, you might be surprised at how few of your competitors are seizing this opportunity and at how simple a matter it is for you to use this extra way of getting your story out.

Does opportunity knock for you here?

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Des Walsh provides a range of LinkedIn coaching and “done for you” services.

Contact details for Des at this link.

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Image credit: LinkedIn pen from The Seafarer – Sheila S via Flickr CC BY 2.0

I’m no exception. I don’t like being “sold to” and I did not like the idea of being seen as a salesman.

Before I go any further, I acknowledge unreservedly that there are plenty of people in sales who are responsible and ethical, and also very successful at what they do.

At the same time, I have to acknowledge that my learning to sell was hampered by my sharing in some common prejudices about selling and sales people.

Prejudices that are frequently reinforced by shock-horror media stories about people being tricked by sales people.

And we all know, don’t we, about those surveys about respect for different professions or avocations that show sales people down at the tail end?

For instance, the 2012 edition of the annual Reader’s Digest New Zealand Most Trusted Professions annual survey shows the last seven of the top 40 as, in order of declining trust: journalists, real estate agents, insurance salespeople, sex workers, car salespeople, door-to-door salespeople, telemarketers

Wouldn’t most of us rather be up with the nurses, doctors, teachers and other more respected categories?

Even bankers are up at 26 in that survey!

But without selling there is no business.

So, unless we have the working capital to engage sales people, we have to learn. And even then, it is surely in the nature of small business that as business owners, for the really strategic, high-profit deals we will have to be the ones who carry the day, or otherwise lose the sale.

Like so many professionals who have started their own businesses, typically small businesses at the outset, I had to learn to a system of selling.

And one of the hardest parts of that learning was about how to close a sale.

Because, as I was quickly to learn, and often the hard way, without closing there is no sale, there is no deal.

Problem was, I found a lot of the traditional ways of closing the deal were just too tricky for me to use with a good conscience – or maybe was it at least partly because I’m not a capable enough actor?

I did try. But it wasn’t me and sometimes I could see that people I was trying to sell to were actually embarrassed that I was making such a goose of myself!

So I was highly motivated to come up with some basic strategies that worked for me.

Four of those strategies are:

• Enjoy the game
• Link your solution to the prospect’s pain
• Ask for the sale
• Find out what it takes to get to 10

I go into these in some detail in my recent post over on the MYOB blog, Selling 101: Closing the Deal

What strategies do you find work best for you in terms of closing the deal?

 Image credit: Handshake, by buddawiggi, via Flickr, CC BY 2.0

And some do it as a temporary thing, until they can put together the resources and the sustainable profitability that makes it feasible to move the business out of home and into premises they regard as more suitable for business.

Some of us love running our business from home.

And with the technology now available and the ubiquity of outsourcing resources,  it’s easier than ever before.

Four years ago I started a series of posts here on the theme “Working from Home and Loving It“. Although the title was about “working from home”, which could still, and often does mean “working for the Man”, my focus there was on running a business from home.

Other posts in the series were:

• Working From Home and Loving It: The “Not a Real Business” Myth
• Working From Home and Loving It: The Isolation Myth

In that first post of the series I mentioned that over half the businesses in the USA are run out of people’s homes. I don’t know how many that is, but as of 2009 there were 27.9 million businesses, we could assume it’s somewhere over 13.9 million.

So while some people might think it’s an exception to run a business from home, from those figures it looks to me like it’s perfectly normal. At least as far as the US Government’s Small Business Administration is concerned, the “not a real business” myth is just that.

Do the people running those businesses from home love doing it that way, or at least like it? I don’t know of any statistics on that, but it would be interesting to have an idea.

And it would be interesting to know just what some readers of this blog might love – or like, if you prefer – about running their business from home.

For me, a few of the things I like most (actually *love*) about running my business from home are:

• 30 second commute
• dress as I choose (sometimes dress up a bit for onscreen conferences!)
• integration of “what I do” with “who I am”
• more modest outgoings on overheads mean more profitability

Care to play? What do you like best about running a business from home?

(And if you haven’t yet taken the plunge, what do you think you would like best about it?)

Image credit: New Home Office by Zach Beauvais via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0

Not everyone in business, by any means, subscribes in practice to the idea of business values being crucial, or even just important, for a business. 

From what we learn of the more egregious examples of corporate misdoings, and personally from some of the negative experiences I’ve had as a business owner and as a customer over the years, I believe the term “business values” is for some business owners and executives an oxymoron.

As for me, I no more wish to do business with such people, or to have a values-free business myself, than I would wish to live in a values-free society, with everyone for themselves and the Devil take the hindmost.

It’s not just a matter of pragmatism. I firmly believe it is a key part of how most of us want to live our lives.

For those of us in business, we spend a lot of time at it, and to an extent and to varying degrees what we do or don’t do in business defines us and is going to be our legacy.

Do we want to be, and be remembered, as shysters and tricksters, for whom business is solely about making a profit by whatever means we can manage, or as as business people of principle, with high values, with alignment between our stated values and how we actually run our businesses on a day to day basis?

Does that sound serious? Well, it’s meant to be.

But does it exclude having fun?

Far from it.

Every now and again I remind myself of a set of business values adopted and applied by legendary entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson.

In one version I read of those, for his Virgin brand, the list was:

• Value for money
• Quality
• Reliability
• Innovation
• Sense of fun

One reason I like travelling on planes with the Virgin brand is that the cabin crew practise that sense of fun.

Without in any way creating a sense that they don’t take their job, and the passengers’ safety, completely seriously.

It’s a nice balance.

Not that we should expect to always get the balance right.

But in my business, if there is a risk that sometimes people will mistake my intention to have fun doing business for a lack of appropriate seriousness of purpose about providing great service, then that’s a risk I’m prepared to take. I reckon in the long run it will play out well for everyone concerned.

Is a sense of fun, or something similar, one of your business values? Or doesn’t the idea appeal?

Image credit: “Branson posing with the band”, courtesy riz94107 on Flickr, Creative Commons