Today is Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Marketing and Sales

Colorado Auto Dealers Assn. fights onerous regulations that would slow the economy

Tim Jackson, president of the Colorado Auto Dealers Assn., posted a link to his executive memo to dealers on Facebook. It’s interesting because it shows how trade association executives communicate with their members and try to recruit more members to support their efforts to make their voices heard in Denver and Washington. 

When I was a member of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) and on the Colorado Assn. of Commerce and Industry’s (CACI) health care committee, I got to watch Jackson use the backing of his some 13,000 Colorado NFIB members to gain influence on key issues with state legislators. Having watched a lot of trade association executives over the years, I think Jackson’s one of the best and hardest working guys in the association management profession. Many auto dealers are small businesses, and others are regional and national companies. If you want to understand a little more about “special interersts,” lobbyists and the political process, take the time to read Jackson’s letter.

I’ve joined Rocky Mountain Alliance 2.0

Yesterday I was honored to be invited to join the Rocky Mountain Alliance 2.0 of Colorado bloggers.  Appreciate these kind words from Ben DeGrow at Mount Virtus:

For the first time in quite awhile, the Rocky Mountain Alliance has started to grow again. We have two new members who represent excellent additions. I invite you to check them out and add them to your regular blog reading (if you haven’t already):  The Business Word by Don Johnson has become a must-read for anyone seeking coverage of the unfolding major Republican primary races in Colorado, with great analysis and interviews Michelle Morin is a leader in the Teller County Tea Party movement, and her site Mom 4 Freedom has been a leading Colorado-based voice in the fight against Obama Care and other proposed costly government intrusions into our freedom

The alliance includes these active blogs:

 

Steve Rubel, Mari Smith blog on Twitter, Facebook, social networking

Trying to figure out how to use Facebook, Twitter and other social network strategies?

The Steve Rubel Lifestream looks like a good resource. And I hear Mari Smith is the Facebook guru.

Links:

A guide for Twitter newbies.

Mari Smith blogs on Facebook.

 

How to get search engines to index your site and blog

Political candidates and bloggers are always asking how they can get Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines to index their sites so that “Scott McInnis” or “Josh Penry” comes up when potential readers search for those names.

exp design, a consulting firm, blogged on the topic and offered a few basic tips and links to more articles. Also, see my blog roll in the third column, which includes links to sites that specialize in search engine optimization.

Link:

Search engine optimization (SEO)

 

Will GE sell all or part of its PR departments, NBC, CNBC and MSNBC?

Rumors that General Electric (GE) will sell all or part of NBC Universal if its joint partner, Vivendi SA, wants out are important not only to GE’s employees and shareholders, but also to the company’s critics who see its NBC, CNBC and MSNBC networks as extensions of its government relations and public relations departments.

GE is a vocal backer of President Obama’s climate control and green initiatives because the company stands to make billions if it wins government contracts generated by politically charged programs designed to spread pork and green jobs around the country.

The company’s use of MSNBC and CNBC to advance these causes and butter up the Obama administration is particularly blatant in the eyes of most critics.

Click on head for rest of the story.

Laid off managers use their brights, hobbies and expertise to start small businesses

Today’s Wall Street Journal profiles five laid off managers who’ve started businesses with varying degrees of success.

Their stories show it pays to have a fairly advanced business plan on your hard drive at all times. You never know when you’ll need it.

In addition to the ability to create a business, you need to know how to market and budget. Marketing a small business these days begins as it always has with networking. You network your colleagues, your competitors, your previous employer’s clients and customers and suppliers that you’ve worked with.

Networking also involves helping others build their businesses, exchanging leads and subcontracting with each other.

And it involves creating a small web site and using pay per click ads on Google and Yahoo. Using Google and Yahoo is easy if you’re a writer or marketer, and it can’t be too difficult for people who spend a fair amount of time on the Internet.

Use the Google and Yahoo search engines to research starting a business.

Key words should include those related to your business and industry as well as general terms such as “small business,” “business startup,” “consulting,” “selling,” “marketing,” “networking,” etc.

Also check out the new business leads groups at your local Chamber of Commerce and online.

There are tons of resources. The key is to get the business going and to generate cash flow as soon as possible. In other words, you’ve got to decide what you’re selling, get on the phone and start selling.

Most important, be flexible. If someone wants to use you for something that’s not directly related to what you’re planning, take the work. It may turn into a business.

6 years of blogging on health policy, economics and stock picking

Six years ago I began publishing this blog on health policy, economics and stock picking.

In the early years, I focused on health policy and economics. We were, after all, publishing

 

How could newspapers be more useful to small, local advertisers?

Several large newspapers are going too be closed if they can’t be sold, and potential buyers are trying to figure out how they might bet into the newspaper business cheap and change the business model in ways that preserve the papers’ editorial products while profitably competing with the online advertising services that are driving some papers out of business.

In addition to our Rocky Mountain News, the Miami

E.W. Scripps (SSP) may outlast competition in Denver newspaper war

E.W. Scripps (SSP) may not have to close or sell its Rocky Mountain News in Denver because its joint operating agreement partner and competitor, MediaNews Group, is in a lot worse financial condition and may have to sell or close its Denver Post.

This assumes that

 

What will replace metro daily newspapers, mass communications?

The more I think about the death of metro newspapers, the more I try to figure out what entrepreneurs will come up with to replace them.

We’re seeing more than the death of metro dailies. We’re seeing the end of so called “mass communications.”

While consumers are spending less time reading newspapers and the national networks’ nightly news programs, they’re spending more time searching for more news about the iPhone, Apple, Dell, specific hi-tech games and toys and their professions, employers and industries.

And the internet allows Yahoo, MSN, Google, craigslist.com, eBay, Monster.com, careers.com and many other pay-per-click and auction sites to put readers in touch with advertisers who want to reach them.

So if you have a clean sheet of paper, $300 million in venture capital from investors who won’t put you deep in debt, what kind of business would you create to help advertisers reach their prospects and customers and consumers to find what they want to buy, keep informed about and discuss?

Would you follow CNN, which is considering taking on the Associated Press and Reuters, which are the primary national news providers?

Would you try to create a local news and advertising vehicle that focuses on community news and merchants rather than trying to cover a whole metro area?

Would you create an all news and commentary sight like a blog and count on readership that would make running Google’s Adsense profitable?

Or would you create an all advertising business that goes after local niches such as entertainment, foods, real estate, autos, sports and health care?

Maybe you’d try to do all of the above. If you could pull it off, you might have a local monopoly that would be close to legal. If you did parts of the service poorly, you could fail.

Who will be the first movers? Who will let others innovate and then come along with a better business plan? Who will be the Dairy Queen and who will be the McDonald’s, the Sears vs. the Walmart?

McDonald’s and Walmart are successful not because they invented fast food restaurants or retail discounting, but because they executed their plans so much better than their competitors.

In the communications world, the next big idea is still to emerge, much less a McDonald’s or a Walmart.

We still have the old fashioned, ancient, obsolete mass communications companies trying to re-invent themselves. We’ve yet to see a real innovator that will take us to the next generation beyond newspapers, network news, nightly news, weekly magazines, blogs and social networks.

I’m thinking the new communications entrepreneurs will begin to make their moves during the next 36 to 60 months. With the economy and credit markets in the dumps, the time is ripe.

No bailouts for Tribune, NYT, Miami Herald,  Enquirer, News, Rocky Mountain News

Many of the nation’s leading newspaper publishers are on the verge of bankruptcy and are making drastic moves to deal with the continuing credit crisis and the long-time shrinking of their classified advertising markets.

So far, unlike the financial, housing and auto industries, nobody is recommending government bailouts for major media companies.

The Tribune Co., publishers of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, today filed for bankruptcy. And, The International Herald Tribune adds, “The companies that own The Inquirer and The Daily News in Philadelphia and The Star Tribune in Minneapolis recently suspended debt payments but have not filed for bankruptcy.”

Reuters reports that the New York Times plans to borrow up to $225 million “against its mid-Manhattan headquarters building, to ease a potential cash flow squeeze as the company grapples with tighter credit and shrinking profits, the New York Times reported on its website Monday.”

Two major papers are on the block, the Rocky Mountain News, and the Miami Herald. Sacramento Business Journal reports, “Financially strapped McClatchy Co. is attempting to shed The Miami Herald, one of its largest and most-respected newspapers, according to news reports.”

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune is also being mentioned as being in financial trouble. It recently asked its unions for $20 million in cuts to help it meet its long-term debt obligations.

Gannett (GCI), publisher of USAToday and some 85 papers in the U.S., is being watched for signs of more cost savings moves. It reportedly already is in the process of cutting 2,000 jobs.

Here are daily charts for newspaper publishers, including GCI, NYT, MNI, LEE, WPO, MEG,  SSP, TCMI, MDP and NWS. One-year views are here. Click on a chart for more views.

I don’t own any of these stocks.

For educational purposes only. Investigate before you speculate. I am not recommending any trades and take no responsibility for how others trade stocks, ETFs, commodities or anything else.

 

Rocky Mountain News is for sale; how can newspapers make money?

Chicago’s American, The Chicago Daily News and The New York Herald Tribune all failed while I was a young reporter at The Wall Street Journal and Chicago Sun-Times.

Newspapers fail every year for various reasons.

Last week, the owners of our Rocky Mountain News announced that it is for sale.

This probably means that large display advertisers will quickly drop the Rocky and that it will close early next year. No buyers are in sight at the moment, but miracles do happen.

The Rocky’s innovative and unusually communicative editor and publisher, John Temple, laments here. Note the comments by readers who are mostly unsympathetic and unhappy with newspapers in general.

Today, newspapers, which historically have been among the most profitable businesses, are failing because their business models have been rendered ancient by the Internet.

The question that newspaper industry executives and consultants haven’t answered is, what will make papers viable?

That some very smart people haven’t come up with a real answer tells how difficult the question is. So the still surviving publishers are holding on for dear life, hoping that their slide in advertising market share will bottom out at a level that allows them to be at least modestly profitable and relevant.

I have a few thoughts. None, new, I assume.

Newspapers are tanking due to their loss of most of their classified advertising to eBay, craigslist.com and various jobs and auto sites on the Internet.

Classifieds historically have attracted almost as many readers as business news stories and the comics. Almost 39 years ago, a couple of bright young guys in Chicago started the Weekly Reader, which allowed anyone to publish classifieds FREE. They made a fortune, publishing one great feature a week along with a few fillers and hundreds of ads.

Even today, alternative weeklies are filled with ads and one or two interesting stories. I’m not sure they’re thriving. Indeed I think some are hurting.

But they present a business model that daily newspapers might adapt.

Print free classifieds for individuals. Charge affordable prices for commercial and job ads. Craigslist charges $15.

Since the Internet has a tough time beating local display ads published in newspapers, wrap the classifieds around the display ads. 

Cut editorial costs to the bone while increasing readership of the paper and its related web site.

Publish one or two major investigative and trend pieces a day. You might also publish comics and puzzles that aren’t easily accessible on the net. Publish briefs on national, local, sports and business news with refers to the paper’s web site. Make sure all stories include tons of links to source materials and related stories. Keep it simple.

Invite all governmental agencies to submit their news releases and related propaganda. Group by town, county and school district. Publish the lede graphs in the paper. Publish the whole thing on the paper’s website. Open every item to comment by readers. They would provide the content that people would want to read.

Support this venture by selling affordable advertising to local merchants. Some would buy links to their web sites. Others would buy banner ads and text ads and others would buy display ads in the paper.

Automate ad sales, letting customers buy the ads on the web site. Advertisers would be responsible for writing, editing and submitting ads ready for publication on the web and/or in the paper. Payment would be by credit card, improving cash flow and collections as well as profitability.

Buy the software and systems needed to make the business work. Self-development is a huge waste of money. Not invented here is stupid.

To survive, newspapers have to make money on display ads and circulation. This means they have to cut editorial and advertising sales and admin costs while producing products that serve some need that can’t and won’t be served by the Internet. While millions of us read most of our news online, we still like to read newspapers and subscribe to them. That fewer people read newspapers means that they have to be made attractive to those who do read them and to advertisers who want to reach newspaper readers.

Solving this puzzle won’t be easy. I don’t know of a major paper that has adjusted to the new market.

The smartest or luckiest publishers are those that serve small communities, cover local news well and attract local advertisers. But even Gannett which owns some 85 papers, mostly in small towns, is hurting. So who knows.

Just some thoughts by a frustrated journalist, newspaper junky and entrepreneur.

Comment here.

 

Google’s Adsense is a waste of time for serious bloggers

Google’s Adsense is a waste of time for major bloggers who don’t think Google is giving them the revenues they should be getting.

The Big Picture’s blogger, Barry Ritholtz, is pretty open about his frustration.

And he confirms my concerns, which have kept me from putting Adsense on this site. At the moment, it costs me only $240 a year for hosting this site, but since I’m not a techie, I have to hire a consultant to do some of the coding and site maintenance. So far, I get paid by my own investing activities, which are enhanced by the thinking and research I do as I write my blog posts. But a little revenue would be welcome if it didn’t require too much time, which I prefer to spend on blogging as opposed to selling ads and administration. I assume a lot of bloggers feel the same way.

If anybody has some advice, please e-mail me at thebusinessword (youknowthesymbol) yahoo.com.

 

Independent banks reassure, appeal to small business owners

While the mega banks like Bank of America (BAC), Wells Fargo (WFC) and J. P. Morgan Chase (JPM) buy up their failing competitors like Countrywide, Merrill Lynch (MER), Washington Mutual and Wachovia (WB), small independent bankers are trying to retain their small business customers.

Indeed, with the increase in FDIC protection for bank customers to $250,000 on savings and checking accounts as well as certificates of deposit, independent banks may win some small business clients away from the big, impersonal national chains. It’s well known that the financial conglomerates like Citigroup (C) haven’t been particularly successful, to put it mildly.

Therefore, the recent and pending acquisitions by BAC, WFC and JPM may not only make them less attractive to investors but also to small businesses and wealthy individuals.

But, then, these companies didn’t get where they are by serving only big organizations. And they may actually win a greater share of the small business market. It’s hard to predict.

As an owner of a small business, I felt better dealing with an independent bank than I did when I banked with a couple of the national and regional banks.

Here’s an example of the public relations efforts small, independent banks are waging to retain and win over owners of small businesses.

Jay Davidson, CEO of First American State Bank, Greenwood Village, CO, placed this article in a local business magazine.

I don’t own any of the above stocks. Their daily charts are here. Click on a chart to see a variety of charts.

For educational purposes only. Investigate before you speculate.

Apple’s (AAPL) Steve Jobs leaks news his cancer hasn’t come back, but he has other health problems

Look for Apple’s stock to jump a few bucks Monday on the news leaked to the New York Times by Steve Jobs himself that his rare form of pancreatic cancer hasn’t returned as rumored. But he confirmed to the Times’ Joe Nocera that he has had surgery for some kind of stomach problems and and some post operation complications that people noticed when he appeared in public last month. The story is here.

After recounting the rumors about Jobs’ health, the speculation that Apple’s stock (AAPL) would drop as much as 25% if he were to leave unexpectedly and a little history of how other CEOs have disclosed and not told shareholders about their serious illnesses, Nocera drops the bomb in these concluding graphs:

On Thursday afternoon, several hours after I’d gotten my final “Steve’s health is a private matter” — and much to my amazement — Mr. Jobs called me. “This is Steve Jobs,” he began. “You think I’m an arrogant [expletive] who thinks he’s above the law, and I think you’re a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong.” After that rather arresting opening, he went on to say that he would give me some details about his recent health problems, but only if I would agree to keep them off the record. I tried to argue him out of it, but he said he wouldn’t talk if I insisted on an on-the-record conversation. So I agreed.

Because the conversation was off the record, I cannot disclose what Mr. Jobs told me. Suffice it to say that I didn’t hear anything that contradicted the reporting that John Markoff and I did this week. While his health problems amounted to a good deal more than “a common bug,” they weren’t life-threatening and he doesn’t have a recurrence of cancer. After he hung up the phone, it occurred to me that I had just been handed, by Mr. Jobs himself, the very information he was refusing to share with the shareholders who have entrusted him with their money.

You would think he’d want them to know before me. But apparently not.

Nocera does a good job of covering the ethics of Jobs’ secretiveness about his health. He doesn’t discuss the ethics of allowing Jobs to go off the record with him, and he doesn’t directly discuss the deal they made that allowed him to break his big scoop.

Having been in such situations as a reporter and as a source, but not anywhere near as important stories as this one, I can speculate about how the conversation probably went.

Jobs said he wanted to talk off the record. No reporter wants to go off the record, but many do, as Nocera did in this case.

Off the record means none of the information disclosed can be reported. The reporter is supposed to use the information to help him dig into the story and to keep his facts straight.

Not for attribution means a reporter can use the information disclosed without attributing it to the person who is being interviewed.

Nocera’s interview with Jobs was both off the record and not for attribution. They obviously agreed on what would be off the record, and what would be disclosed but not directly attributed to Jobs. During the interview, Jobs obviously shot down the rumors that his pancreatic cancer has returned, and he confirmed that he’s had surgery and suffered from some complications.

That he doesn’t have cancer was the big and important news that Jobs wanted Nocera to publish on Sunday when the markets were closed without attributing it to him. Done deal.

That Jobs has had surgery and complications was rumored. Nocera already had that information. His conversation with Jobs confirmed those rumors and he reported them. Nocera probably wouldn’t have reported the rumors the way he does in this story if Jobs hadn’t given him the confidence to do so.

So this is first, a big news story about Jobs’ health. It’s a market mover.

Second, this is an ethics story. It shows how business ethics converges with journalistic ethics.

And third, this is a public relations story. Jobs is one of the most PR savvy CEOs around. He knows the PR game and how to manipulate the media, analysts, shareholders, customers, employees and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Jobs obviously concluded that the line that his health is “a private matter” could no longer stand. The pressure from investors, his advisors and his board to be more forthcoming was just too great.

But, as always, Jobs had to do it his way. He didn’t reinvent the wheel with his approach, but he certainly has made sure the world knows that he is Apple and that he’s cancer free at the moment, if not without health problems.

I don’t own AAPL.

For educational purposes only. Investigate before you speculate.