If you are anything like me, you are troubled by the amount of meetings one must attend in a given work week. It’s not that we don’t want to be a part of the team or do the work, it’s that generally speaking, meetings tend to… well… not much gets accomplished, or if it does, it’s not documented and shared with the group in follow up. And believe it or not, there is one thing worse than a wasted meeting… A wasted meeting that starts 15 minutes late.
I was very pleased to learn that my employers has not allowed these habits to go unnoticed and yesterday we had a meeting to discuss meetings (which was NOT a waste of time) – but they started off with some tips (you may have heard these before) on how to waste time in meetings. So here are the 8 tips provided by Mike Rogers:
1. Invite everyone. We all need to time to waste, and you wouldn’t want to hurt anyones feelings by not including them. However, be careful about inviting people who might try to accomplish something during the meeting. On the other hand, make sure you invite people who tell good jokes, like to goof around and are generally entertaining.
2. Don’t start the meeting until everyone has arrived. Starting a meeting on time would be rude to those who are late. Plus starting a meeting late helps everyone feel more comfortable about being late next time, which almost assures you will start the meeting late everytime.
3. Never, never, never have an agenda. Agendas create structure that can stifle tangents.
4. Leaders should do most if not all of the talking. Since the leader knows best, it makes the most sense that he or she talk the most.
5. Only those with “good” ideas should provide them. Anybody who submits a “stupid” idea should be laughed at, mocked and generally spit upon.
6. Give people freedom to “multitask” during meetings. Let everyone know at the start of the meeting that if they need to do other things such as texting, reading email or answering calls to go right ahead. It will make the meeting all the more productive for everyone.
7. Never make assignments. Assignments mean work will need to be done.
8. Never end a meeting on time. Doing so means you didn’t apply items one through seven above!
I have to admit, I laughed out loud at the absurdity of several of these tips from Mike Rogers, but in reality – it’s quite sad when you realize how much of problem some of these really are, and sometime all of them may apply. I will admit, I try hard to start my meetings on time and not allow folks to go down rabbit holes. I try to come prepared with agendas, and I do try to follow up with meetings notes. I have particular project team that does show up on time every week now (which maybe is because the first several weeks I was vocal about the fact that we never seem to start on time)- Yeah team! But I am not a perfect meeting facilitator either and am excited to learn ways to improve.
To address these things (at least in our company), we’ve kicked off a book club and our first read is “Death by Meeting” by Patrick Lencioni. I am looking forward to reading this book, and working to improve my meeting skills. Do you have any good meeting tips?
My work mantra lately has been “content is king… content is king…” I repeat this to myself silently over an over as I continue to monitor traffic on my company’s blog Fifth Gear Analytics. This blog has roughly 10 content authors who contribute articles on a fairly regular basis. When I came on board at SIGMA in May of this year, it became evident that our blog has great potential as SIGMA Marketing Group employs several incredibly knowledgeable people in the area of marketing analytics, strategy and technology.
John Munsell, CEO of Bizzuka nailed it in 8 simple words… “If content is king, conversion is queen.” YES! To better utilize our space on our blog, and improve our interaction with our readers/subscribers, it became clear we needed a well executed content strategy for our blog.
In my mind, it boils down to 2 questions you must answer in building a blog content strategy. Who is your audience? Why do you have a blog?
They may seem like simple questions, but you must truly consider both of these, and realize that there may be several answers to both questions. Lets dig a bit deeper… These two questions go hand-in-hand. Ask yourself what you hope to accomplish by blogging.
- Do you hope to generate sales through a retail site?
- Do you believe you can generate leads, perhaps in a B2B environment?
- Are you looking to raise funds or capital?
- Is it just purely for fun or out of passion for a particular topic?
- What is YOUR reason for creating a blog?
- How do you want your readers to interact with your blog? (What action will they take?)
Examine why you are creating a blog, then you can begin to look at who you hope to attract to your blog. Keep in mind that depending why you are blogging, there may be several audiences to consider. Look at your reasons for blogging and consider who you want reading/subscribing to your content. Specifically in a business environment there are many elements to consider about your readers.
- Does my business apply to several vertical markets?
- If yes, which vertical markets am I trying to reach?
- Does my business apply to only one reader type, or are there several?
- Am I writing for C-Level readers?
- Am I writing for less technically savvy readers?
- Am I writing for students or teachers?
- Who will benefit from my content?
- Is it purely educational?
- Is there a service you provide?
Answering those questions is not enough. There are a few more key elements to consider in content strategy… How will your content physically support the answers to the above questions? How will you track your results?
FIND YOUR KEYWORDS
Now that you know who your targeted readers are, and what you want to achieve, you can create a solid keyterm strategy that will support your content and optimize your site for search. You’ll want to do some competitive research on the search terms you want to focus on. Keep in mind the audiences and reader types. You may have groups of search terms based on your audience(s).
Once you’ve figured out a keyword strategy to support your content, this can be your guide to generating content. Create content around the keyterms you want to promote. It’s not about spamming a page with a keyword over and over, it’s about building and linking relevant content that supports the keyterms you want to be found under in the search engines.
Set your metrics in motion, by creating actions to track your goals. Using tools like Google Analytics you can create specific goals.
- Will you track a click through to a retail site?
- Will you follow it through to the sale, or track where they exit your site?
- Will it be a click through to another site where a user completes a form that generates a business lead?
- Is your end goal an email-opt form completed to build an email list.
- How will you track your goals?
A good content strategy puts all these things in motion before the first post is published. If you know how you are writing for, how those readers will search out your content, and what you hope those readers will do while on your site, you now begin writing! You armed with information you need to write content that will convert! You can apply this to your online store, by optimizing product pages, or any other content on a website.
One final note: A content strategy should live, breath and grow. They way people search for content continues to change – stay on top of that. Keep up to date on your keyword research and modify your content strategy to support that.
By creating a solid content strategy – you can help your King find his Queen!
I have to admit, I laughed out loud at the absurdity of several of these tips from Mike Rogers, but in reality – it’s quite sad when you realize how much of problem some of these really are, and sometime all of them may apply. I will admit, I try hard to start my meetings on time and not allow folks to go down rabbit holes. I try to come prepared with agendas, and I do try to follow up with meetings notes. I have particular project team that does show up on time every week now (which maybe is because the first several weeks I was vocal about the fact that we never seem to start on time)- Yeah team! But I am not a perfect meeting facilitator either and am excited to learn ways to improve.
