Getting a Good Read on Your Business

SIPA 2011 speakers bring their books and knowledge to the table

Josh Bernoff, co-author of “Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers, Transform Your Business,” delivers a keynote on The Dynamics of Peer Influence. Monday, June 6, 8:30-9:15 a.m.

“Empowering your employees doesn’t work unless you have actually designed a management framework that enables them to work together and go from, I have a great idea, to, I am actually doing something that can help customers and it is in line with the company strategy,” he said.

As for the customers, Bernoff greatly respects their power to tell their friends and social connections about you, good or bad. Simply put, impressions people get from one another are far more believable than ones from a third party. “This is why you need to tap into what customers are saying,” Bernoff said.

Jennie Phipps, publisher of “Fits, Starts & Matters of the Heart: 28 True Stories of Love, Loss & Everything in Between,” leads a Roundtable Session on Managing Outsourced Employees/Freelancers. Monday, June 6, 4:15 – 5:15 p.m.

“Two years ago, our subscribers started talking on [my] Freelance Success Forums about the frustration of writing good essays that magazines just don’t have room to publish. One thread led to another, until finally, I said, ‘Let’s publish our own book of essays.’ A long list of people raised their hands and volunteered to do everything from submit essays to edit and help promote the final product. Freelance Success survives as a subscription-based community of writers and editors because its members feel a sense of camaraderie, so this response was and continues to be good for business.

“A long time has passed since that day, and one thing we’ve all learned is that it is a lot easier to decide to publish an essay book than to actually do it. But ‘Fits, Starts & Matters…’ has been [a success]. We chose the print on demand (POD) method of publication. Thanks to POD, anyone can be a publisher—do it well and indistinguishably from books published conventionally.”

Bob Bly, author of “How to Write & Sell Simple Information for Fun and Profit,” co-leads a session (with Italy expert Kathy McCabe) titled The Holy Grail of Online Conversion Strategies: The Landing Page – Best Practices for Creating Awesome Landing Pages. Monday, June 6, 2:10 – 3:10 p.m.

In his new book, Bly offers seven ways to build your ezine subscriber list:
1. Create a “squeeze” page – a separate web page providing an online subscription form that visitors can use to request your newsletter.
2. Offer a free report or other bonus as an incentive to subscribe.
3. Include one or more links on your homepage to your squeeze page.
4. Have an exit pop-up on your site. When the visitor leaves, a window pops up offering her your free bonus report in exchange for opting into your subscriber list.
5. Use a floater or interstitial—a window that floats over and blocks the user’s view of of your homepage, promoting a subscription.
6. Use Google AdWords pay-per-click ads to drive clicks to the squeeze page.
7. Ask joint venture partners and friends to promote your free newsletter to their list.

David Meerman Scott, author of “Real-Time Marketing & PR: How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect With Customers, and Create Products That Grow Your Business Now, ” delivers the SIPF Awards Luncheon keynote. Tuesday, June 7, noon.

Scott responds to our new “real-time” world with this lively read. In this excerpt, you can see why we are all looking forward to his talk:

“The conference as we used to know it was stiff, structured and didactic. It’s been the same since Cicero—the speaker spoke and audience listened…But then something interesting happened. The ploddingly slow physical-event business picked up some real-time speed. Now at conferences all over the world, audience members connect with one another in real time while speakers are up at the podium. This ‘back-channel’ is truly revolutionary because it allows listeners to discuss content as it is being delivered. What’s more, it brings a new virtual audience into the room—sometimes from the opposite end of the Earth.”

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There’s still time to book your place at SIPA 2011!
It’s one Conference you can’t afford to miss!
SIPA’s 35th Annual International Conference
SIPA 2011: Cashing in on Content –
Models for a New Decade
June 5-7, Capital Hilton, Washington, D.C.
Register before it’s too late!

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