Why Communications and Training are Essential for Community Banks
July 30, 2009
Communications and training are essential for any company. Based on my experience as SVP Marketing Director of the Bowery Savings Bank, I have direct knowledge of how important it is for community bankers. If you’re interested, you can read two blogs I wrote for the Community Bank Consulting Blog “Why Community Bankers have never had it so good and 10 things they can do to make it even better ” and “Why banks can’t afford not to train their employees .” Your comments are welcomed.
Jeff Simpkins, CEO of Community Bank Consulting, also hosts a free weekly webinar Free Webinar Wednesdays that features guests who talk about a variety of topics of interest to all businesses. Recent topics included Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in Plain English” and “Using Facebook for Promotion — Both Personally and Professionally.” Click on the link to register for the webinars.
My colleague Amy Dean, president of Key Word Communication , and I will be presenting “Inside Out Public Relations” on Wednesday, August 19th. Stay tuned for more details.
Ideal Clients: What Every Business Wants
July 29, 2009
My colleague Jeff Simpkins recently wrote a post, Ideal Clients , that was quite touching in its definition of an ideal client. Jeff is CEO of Community Bank Consulting and Book Yourself Solid and here is what he said: Read more
Does Your Company Have a Social Media Director? Take The Poll
July 26, 2009
I’ve posted a simple 5-question poll on Linked-In: Does Your Company Have a Social Media Director to Manage the Company’s Social Media Strategy? Click on Social Media Poll if you would like to take the poll.
I’ll be posting the responses. Also, please use the Comment section in this post if you would like to add your thoughts on the topic. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks!
Fortune 100 CEOs are Social Media Slackers, Says New Study
July 23, 2009
The website UberCEO (All Things CEO) conducted a study last month that we just discovered. The study of the Fortune 2009 list of the top 100 CEOs found: Read more
How to Solve Problems in 8 Easy Steps
July 21, 2009
Learning to become a proficient problem solver is the key to becoming a successful manager or entrepreneur. That is because problem solving is at the heart of the planning process. Read more
Nonverbal communication in a social media world
July 16, 2009
Has social media and the Internet eliminated the need for — and importance of — nonverbal communication? When you think about it, there are three ways to communicate: Read more
How Judge Sonia Sotomayor Mastered the Broken Record
July 14, 2009
It is a rule of media training that despite the questions a reporter asks, you return or “bridge” back to your original point. Like a broken record, you repeat your message over and over again as a fact that can’t be disputed. If you stay “on message,” as they say in politics, eventually your point of view becomes embedded in the minds of your target audiences, moving them to your side of the argument (hopefully). Judge Sonia Sotomayor has learned this lesson well. Read more
Why the 10,000 hours of practice rule doesn’t apply to social media
July 11, 2009
I recently posted a comment to someone’s question on LinkedIn’s Social Media Marketing Group. She wanted to know, “How Do You Engage a Social Media Guru?” There were several thoughtful replies with what I would call the standard advice: look at their social media projects and communication experience, the processes they use, how they measure their results, etc. All worthy goals. But I disagree with this approach. Here is what I said in my response, with a few new thoughts:
Why Can’t WordPress Tutorials Be Written in Language for Regular People?
July 6, 2009
I have a WordPress blog. I’m a regular person. That is, my technology skills are ordinary (actually, quite ordinary). That is why I find tutorials about WordPress blogs so confounding. Why can’t they use regular language for regular people? Today, I tried to add a subpage (or child, in WordPress-ese). I thought it would be simple, but no, I ended up with my subpage as my parent page on the tool bar of my blog and my other subpages had disappeared. Are you confused yet? So was I.
So, I Googled “How do I create a subpage in Wordpress?” I read a few of the search items that came up that were completely unintelligible. Then I looked at a tutorial from WordPress that must have been written for an earlier version than WP 2.8 because the first place they told me to go was not where they said it was. Here is what I found and how I thought it could be written so regular people like me could figure it out.
WordPress:
Just as you can have Subcategories within your Categories, you can also have SubPages within your Pages, creating a hierarchy of pages.
To begin the process, go to Administration > Write > Write Page panel, in the upper right corner of the panel and click the “Page Parent” drop-down menu. The drop-down menu contains a list of all the Pages already created for your site. To turn your current Page into a SubPage, or “Child” of the “Parent” Page, select the appropriate Page from the drop-down menu. If you specify a Parent other than “Main Page (no parent)” from the list, the Page you are now editing will be made a Child of that selected Page. When your Pages are listed, the Child Page will be nested under the Parent Page. The Permalinks of your Pages will also reflect this Page hierarchy.
Regular Person Version:
(Note: my parent page is Business Writing)
To add a subpage:
1. Under Pages click “Add page”
2. Write the page and give it a title, i.e., Branding
3. Look over to the right column under “Attributes”
4. Where it says “Parent” “Main Page, No Parent’ (in the little box), click on the drop down arrow and click on “Business Writing” which will now appear in the box
5. Publish page – which will now appear under Business Writing
Now, do you understand how it’s done?