by Scott Howard | Nov 30, 2011 | The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
Why wait until January 1st to make resolutions?
The end of something is almost always the beginning of something else. After all, the most successful and the least successful have more in common than most would believe. Each of them has only 24 hours a day, and the same number of days per year.
All that is different is how each of us spends those 24 hours. Yet even within that context, everybody takes time to sleep, eat, take care of personal hygiene, so what really makes a difference is what occurs in those other minutes of the day.
So what makes the difference? It is not something you can easily measure, it is attitude, it is deep inside, most people unless they become introspective, don’t even recognize what makes them the person they are.
And if you want to make changes in your life, the best way is…. now listen carefully, make some changes.
You can do it any time, any day, any hour.
As Nike told us “Just Do It!”
by Scott Howard | Nov 23, 2011 | ScLoHo's Web World
My co-worker, Kevin Mullett does a LOT of speaking engagements.
One topic he talks about is measuring the right things, and that was one of my reasons for joining Kevin at Cirrus ABS and working in the web world of marketing instead of the broadcast world where most of my career was previously.
7 years ago, I didn’t measure the results of my online activity. I didn’t know what to look for and I was experimenting anyway. I was writing a couple of blogs and the results were not important to me at the time.
But when you are using your online presence as a part of your marketing or as the hub of your business, you should consider measuring the results.
Because the web tracks what you and others do, it is one of the easiest marketing platforms to track.
The downside is all that you are getting is a bunch of numbers, stats and sometimes worthless information unless you know what to look for in all this data.
And most folks don’t.
They don’t know what to look for, so they don’t look.
Or if they do look, they don’t connect the dots.
To be truthful, there is no “one and only” way to do this.
There are lot’s of ways to attempt to do it which falls short.
Seth Godin wrote about but I disagree with parts of what he says is important.
Instead, I see lot’s of problems with people analyzing the data and tracking a customer to the final transaction, which can be done if you know how.
And I’m not just referring to e-commerce sites.
Before you even start your next social media campaign or launch your next website, let’s talk.
We’ll dig deep and discover what your goals are and why.
We’ll ask the tough questions and determine the options for reaching those goals along with the costs in time and money.
And we will stick with you and help you measure all the important stuff, the stuff that matters to your success. It’s not a cookie cutter approach.
Contact me on on the contact page of this website and we’ll begin.
by Scott Howard | Nov 16, 2011 | ScLoHo's Web World
Storytime.
This is a story about starting a blog or two a few years ago then hopping on Twitter in 2008 without knowing for sure what the outcome would be.
I’m going to refer to some folks by their Twitter handle because Twitter was instrumental in this story.
2003, I started a blog after watching my kids Rachael @greenglasshero , Josh @gandhizero and Tiffany @phanniejay start blogs.
All four of us stopped blogging but the next year I launched two blogs, one a personal site, and the other a work related site.
ScLoHo’s Really was the personal site now featuring a Fort Wayne area website of the day every morning to promote the city I live in, and then an update every afternoon, with what ever I want to feature. Saturday nights I featured a Classic Music Video.
ScLoHo’s Collective Wisdom featured information on Marketing, Media, Advertising and Sales; was updated 3 times a day, 7 days a week, which sounds pretty industrious, but the concept is that every article features Wisdom from others (that’s where the Collective comes from), with a few words of introduction or commentary from me.
My wife suggested I write a book on Marketing, but instead I simply started another site, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo. The self-imposed rule was that the words are all mine, which separates it from Collective Wisdom. This blog-site was updated weekly.
Then at the end of 2010, I contemplated, planned and launched one more blog-site, ScLoHo’s Social Media Adventure which was updated 5 days a week at noon.
During all of this time, I never received any significant financial reward for all of this activity. My paying gig was working for a group of local radio stations as a sales person and manager.
The past few years I have been invited to give presentations, seminars, been interviewed and have written articles about marketing and even spoke to a college class a few times about Social Media & Branding.
All of this was simply a creative outlet for me. There was no master plan except I needed a way to share ideas that I felt passionate about.
At the end of 2008 I started a Twitter account and after playing around with it, made some connections both locally and worldwide which have now opened doors.
Chad Pollitt @CPollittIU and Amy Stark @AmyStark who both have ties/roots to Fort Wayne were there in my beginning Twitter Days and then Kevin Mullett @KMullett became a friend who I grew to respect.
In January 2011, Kevin revived the Fort Wayne Social Media Breakfast @SMBFW and asked me to be one of the panelist along with Heather Schoegler @HSchoegler; Lee Hershberger @LeePings; and Randy Clark @RandyClarkTKO .
I had known Heather for a couple years and Lee & Randy for a few months, but this was the first time I met Lee & Randy face to face.
Fast forward to April 21, 2011.
Randy Clark, who is in Indianapolis, invited various social media friends to a monthly gathering in Indy for the past couple of months and I planned my regular radio station sales rep life to be in Indy for business during the day and meet with Randy and friends that evening for what is now called a FriendUp.
At the meeting at the downtown Scotty’s Brewhouse @BrewHouse we are eating fried pickles and other goodies and the 5 of us are all answering the question Randy asks, “What do you need/want & how can we help each other?”
I decided to go last and listen to what the others were saying.
My answer was that I would like to explore leaving the radio world and earn my living in the social media or web world, but I was not willing to leave Fort Wayne. That evening was my 8th anniversary at the radio stations, and with the exception of a couple of the air staff, I have been there longer than anyone else.
Everyone’s “wish list” was complied in an email, then posted on a private website, so others who had attended Randy’s previous FriendUps could join in.
Kevin Mullett saw what I said and contacted me with the message, “We need to talk”.
Kevin has done multiple things over the years and his current title is Director of Product Development for Cirrus ABS @CirrusABS . And so we had lunch.
Which lead to more questions on my part so we had lunch again.
It was after this second lunch where I learned more precisely what Kevin had in mind and I went from curious to excited about the possibility of changing employers and direction with my career.
A week later, I met with Matt Nickols, the founder of Cirrus ABS over lunch and was offered a position with his company.
June 1st, another meeting, (this time without food!) to discuss details, review a formal offer and accept with a start date of June 20, 2011.
What struck me was, there was no formal application process, no resume I gave them, no job posting that I saw anywhere, this was all due to the accumulation of my 7+ years of social media involvement, and the connections that I made via Twitter.
But it wasn’t just the connections, it was the relationships that were built.
My returning to the world of radio advertising in 2003 was sort of a default.
My real passion is to help businesses (and people) connect and be successful with what I know about marketing, advertising, sales and a bit of psychology.
In other words, build meaningful, profitable relationships.
Since radio was my chosen “fall back career” since I was a teenager, that’s why I’ve worked in that arena the past 8 years.
Now I use my passions with a new, growing media with a strong leader in all things web related and continue to help businesses (and people) connect and be successful.
My thanks to all that I’ve mentioned and many others too.
Shortly after joining Cirrus ABS this year, I decided to reorganize my various blogging activities into one website and launched this site officially on October 3rd, 2011.
You can continue to contact me at Scott@ScLoHo.net.
And recently for those of you who prefer to follow along on Tumblr, I am now feeding updates to my Tumblr account here.
by Scott Howard | Nov 9, 2011 | The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
“If you don’t have time to do it right the first time, when will you have time to do it over?”, said Don Howard (my Dad) repeatedly during my youth.
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”, said Al Einstein
Okay, if you are not making mistakes, you are not trying hard enough. The key is to recognize and learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of others.
When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, ‘Did you sleep good?’ I said ‘No, I made a few mistakes.’
Author: Steven Wright
A married man should forget his mistakes; no use two people remembering the same thing.
Author: Duane Dewel
Mistakes are something we need to learn from, not be afraid of.
Risk is a part of life that we need to balance. Too often I have seen folks retreat from risk to avoid mistakes and instead they need an outside adviser, mentor, coach, consultant or accountability partner.
This is one of the things I do, reach out to me if you need help or guidance. Just use the Contact form on this site.
by Scott Howard | Jul 6, 2010 | ScLoHo Sales Tips, Uncategorized
The easy ones sometimes aren’t.
Unless you are prepared and know what you are doing.
Around the group of radio stations I work with, I am the fix-it person. About four years ago when I moved into management, I took over our Hip-Hop Station and increased sales to hit our budget within 4 months.
Then I took over the sales management of a different station with the same result… 4 months later, it was on budget.
April of this year, we launched a new station and by June, it was on budget. Now I’ve been assigned a different station and by September or October it will be exceeding its budget too.
The station I’m focused on improving now just launched a morning talk show 3 weeks ago. A well known afternoon talk show host from another station in town became available and after doing research, we brought him on board.
He had a list of about 40 local businesses that he used to do testimonial commercials for and they were our first target for increasing revenues. Yesterday I met with another one on the list and it was fun. Not easy, but fun.
For the past eight years, this local business owner would never agree to meet. The door opener was the talk show host we hired.
When I was ushered into his office, he introduced me to his marketing team, one of whom I’ve known for about 3 years. It was clear that the final decision was going to be the owners, but he wanted input from his team.
I brought with me, a few papers, one with the price for advertising, and a blank contract along with a credit application. I’ve renamed it a terms agreement because it sounds friendlier.
The conversation was back and forth, like a real conversation. I involved everyone in the room, and they basically sold themselves on what I was offering them.
But I’ve seen others who were put in similar situations, who would have blown it. They talk too much about themselves, or why they are better than others. They give unnecessary price discounts, they appear nervous, pushy, and they project zero confidence.
I did the opposite. I even gave them an idea on how to get better results with the radio station they were still on.
Sales shouldn’t be a battle, or a game of trickery. Successful sales people know that their mission is to help solve their customers problems. And when you do it with the right attitude it can pay pretty well too.
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