My Personal Branding Dilemma And New URLs

When I first started social networking, I used the nickname LouisvilleSoup. I never had a problem getting that username when registering for web sites. My given name, Mike Campbell, on the other hand, was always taken. Michael has been the number one or two most popular boys' name since the fifties. Campbell is in the top 25 last names. A Google search of Mike Campbell results in over 7 million hits.

With the explosion of social media, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, I decided to start using my given name for personal branding. My name is my brand. Since it is already taken on just about every web site, I had to come up with a suffix or some way to differienate my name form all the other Mike Campbells of the world.

I started using MikeCampbellCPA because that is what is on my business card, Mike Campbell, CPA. It didn't take long to realize that CPA is a brand in and of itself. The AICPA and state CPA societies have done a phenomenal job of promoting and protecting the CPA brand. Although it is a well-respected and trusted brand, it is too often associated with public accounting. That's not a bad thing, but it is not my brand.

Then I started using the next title on my business card, CFO. Chief Financial Officer, or CFO, also carries a certain brand. This brand is a little more elusive based on individual experiences with CFOs. It coiled be bad from reading about Enro or conjure up images of Scrooge or Potter. Although they weren't CFOs, they were 'finance guys' and influence what a lot of people think about finance guys. Not only can I not control how people view the CFO brand, I don't want to be a CFO forever. I may want to become a COO, CEO, or even start my own business. Even if I stay in the finance role, my title may change to VP of Finance or other.

CFO arbitrarily narrows my brand. Being the CFO of a small business, I have taken on many roles in the Firm. I am the IT director and chief compliance officer. I founded and developed the human resources department. I grew it to the point of being self-sufficient and answering directly to the CEO. At one time I even did some marketing during a few week hiatus between marketing directors. Furthermore, my online brand is also includes being a husband, father, runner, blogger, and avid reader.

Now I have the dilemma of having four brands out here in cyberspace: remnants of LouisvilleSoup, MikeCampbellCPA, MikeCampbellCFO, and (rarely) MikeCampbell. I own and have been using the URL
MikeCampbellCFO.com, but recently purchased MikeCampbell.biz. Then I played around with forwarding and realized that it doesn't matter what username I'm able to obtain for these web sites because I can just create a forward and use MikeCampbell.biz for my brand. For example, there are a few forwards I setup:

http://blog.mikecampbell.biz
http://twitter.mikecampbell.biz
http://linkedin.mikecampbell.biz
http://books.mikecampbell.biz
http://youtube.mikecampbell.biz
http://dailymile.mikecampbell.biz

This looks so much cleaner on a business card or on email signature than the full URL; and it promotes my brand. Plus it enables me to broaden my brand beyond CPA or CFO. My online goals are still primarily business related, so I am okay with dot biz. Plus, my blog's mission is to share thoughts and ideas about small business growth and leadership. I think I have finally settled on an online brand name I can use for a while.

Posted via email from MikeCampbell's Posterous

Your Clients Are Huge Investments

Image by Tracy O via Flickr

Your clients are huge investments; treat them as such. You’ve invested a lot of money in purchasing your client base. You’ve produced marketing materials and sales activities. You know it is not easy nor cheap to find leads and convert them to sales. You’ve spent a lot of money on your own education and professional development to provide a service to your clients. You’ve spent a lot of money on computer equipment, software, furniture, rent, etc. to serve you’re clients. Now you want to keep your clients, or do you?

Just like any other investment, you want to achieve a return on your investment. If the investment ceases to provide a return, sell it. If the return increases, buy more. And if it’s stable, hold. Your clients are no different. If a client ceases to produce a return on the investment you’ve put into it, let it go. Spend your time and money on the clients that are giving you the best ROI. If you’re too skittish to let go of a client, raise the price.

Why not? Why can’t you charge one client more for your service than another? It happens all the time in other busineses. Some customers are charged more simply because they failed to negotiate a lower price. Some are charged more because they purchase very little volume. Professional services firms must get away from the billable hour trap because it creates price based on cost. As Ed Kless puts it, Price is not based on cost. Price should be base on value.

I’m confident your client base follows the 80/20 rule where 20% of you clients produce 80% of the revenue. It’s probably more like 90/10, but that’s still meets the 80/20 rule. Focus on your top 20% and develop new offerings from their needs. Focus on the middle 75% and try to move them to the top 20%. Get rid of the bottom 10%. They’re probably not in your niche; whether too small, too big, or just not a good fit. Partner with another firm with a different niche and share leads. After you finally let them go you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.

Whatever you do, do NOT treat your bottom 10% any differently than your top 10. Do NOT provide them any less customer service and care. Your reputation and brand are at stake. Your customers have a voice and will use it.

Posted via email from MikeCampbell's Posterous

How To Use Posterous As A KnowledgeBase

As a professional services firm of over 170 employees, we have a huge knowledge base. This knowledge base is spread over two dozen cities in eight states. Accumulating this knowledge in a centralized location can be a challenge. And this knowlwdgebase is built over time as our professionals seek knowledge from other professionals.

Employees are so familiar with email and it is so efficient that it is very, very difficult to change that habit. If someone has a question, they email it to an email group and get several responses within the hour. It just works.

The problem is that this knowledge base that is created is trapped in users' email. It is not accessible to the whole company, new hires do not have the benefit of it., and there is no searchable database for all this knowledge.

The biggest challenge to change that I have experienced is habit. It takes 30 consecutive days to develop a habit. Change that requires a user to perform daily is fairly easy. Change that does not require daily use is much more difficult. A knowledge base is something that is accessed and referenced once or twice a month. So to change the habit from email to a new web site such as discussion board, wiki, or LinkedIn group is daunting. Training a very busy group of professionals on a new web site makes it even more daunting. Furthermore, if it’s harder to use and slower, it’s not a worthwhile change.

We needed a service that provided posting and commenting via email, security, and a searchable database. Posterous is built on posting via email and provides the solution we needed. Here’s how:

• Signup for Posterous by simply sending an email to post@Posterous.com.
• Create new Posterous such as mygroup.Posterous.com.
• Enable the group feature. This enables you to use company logo and group description instead of your mug and profile.
• Add contributors. Contributors can post by sending an email to post@mygroup.posterous.com.
• Enable password protection.
• Instruct users how to subscribe via email. They will receive daily updates.
• Add post@mygroup.posterous.com to the email user group.

When you send an email to Posterous email, it is immediately posted to the web. Subscribers receive an email with the posts and can click a link in the email to comment. For example, a investigator sees something in the field that he is unfamiliar with. He emails a photo of the finding to Posterous with his question. Users receive an email notification and comment on the post.

We don’t have to form a new habit. We can use the engrained, tried, and true habit of email.

Posted via email from MikeCampbell's Posterous