Articles Feed

President Bush delivers speech from Insite Advice client

Mon, 05 May 2008 15:47:33 GMT

President Bush defended his choice of ethanol to help the nation meet its energy needs even though increased production of the corn-based biofuel has been blamed for contributing to sharp increases in food prices.

Bush gave his speech at World Wide Technology Inc., which he had planned to visit last October. He postponed the visit when he flew instead to Southern California to view wildfire damage. The company, in St. Louis, provides information technology to the government and private industry, particularly in the telecommunications field.

In 2006, according to the White House, World Wide became the first minority-owned company with more than $2 billion in sales, and it reported sales of more than $2.5 billion last year. In seven years it has added more than 500 employees.

Tourism is set for a detour

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 21:37:38 GMT

From the *Kansas City Star*

The tourism Industry’s long-term future is bright, but it will be different. Trends suggest the tourists of the future will be older and more ethnically diverse, Suzzane Cook, a senior vice president of the Travel Industry Association of America, told delegates to the 2004 Missouri Governor’s Conference on Tourism meeting in Kansas City on Wednesday. Increasing numbers of them will have physical disabilities, including obesity, which is becoming the nations top health concern, Cook said. “The travel industry has a great opportunity to improve the quality of people’s lives,” Cook told an estimated 200 who attended the meeting, which continues today at the Muehlebach Tower of the Kansas City Marriot Downtown.

As the U.S. baby-boomer population ages, Cook said, the popularity of various vacation destinations will gradually shift from “traditional family experience” spots, like theme parks and canoeing expeditions, to more sedate activities, like sightseeing and health spa visits. Casinos can also expect a business bump from the boomers. Cook said research polls found shopping and family events the top two vacation activities among all age groups of travelers. But that list changes significantly for travelers older than 55, said Cook. Gambling jumps from the ninth-most-popular activity for all groups to fifth for older travelers. Outdoor and beach recreation plummets from numbers three and six to eight and nine. Amusement parks drop off the list altogether, while travel to seminars and other educational opportunities jump to number six for older travelers. Meanwhile, Cook said U.S. leisure travel this summer was on pace for 3.2 percent growth to 960 million total trips by Americans, up from 2.8 percent growth last year. Those positive numbers are holding in Missouri. “Summer is going to be up,” said John Robinson, Missouri Division of Tourism director. Early trends show tourism spending statewide up around 3 percent, while hotel and lodging receipts are up 7 percent, Robinson said. “The indicators are strong” and the travel industry’s recovery appears to be for real, he said.

Cook projects domestic travel spending this year to finally return to pre-Sept. 11, 2001, levels. Tourism is the nation’s third leading industry, with 2000 spending hitting a record with 580.8 billion. That figure fell to $550.9 billion in 2001 and $540.3 billion in 2002 before climbing to $554.5 billion last year. Cook said that it is projected to hit $587.2 billion this year. “We’ve really had one challenge after another in this industry,” said Cook, after the Sept. 11 attacks, recession, war, SARS and weather calamities ranging from Missouri’s unusually wet and cool summer to the recent hurricanes. Also at the conference, seminar speakers and trade show exhibitors pitched their wares to Missouri’s travel industry providers, including local tourism bureaus and attraction operators. Melrose Kelly, Kansas City-based sales and marketing director for CTM, was hoping to sign up more clients to rent space in the company’s tourism brochure racks that are found in more than 200 area hotel lobbies and other locations. “Business has been very good this summer”, said Kelly. In fact, “I’ve had to turn people away” in the Lake of the Ozarks marketing area.

In Kansas City, Kelly said, brochures that disappeared off the shelves the fastest included Worlds of Fun, the Kansas City Zoo, local restaurant guides and the statewide guide to Missouri wineries. Matt Hussey, an executive with Olathe-based Ruf Strategic Solutions, a database marketing firm, said one good sign the travel industry was bouncing back from three years of decline was that his clients were budgeting more spending for marketing. “They know it’s getting better, but it’s still a challenge,” he said. Long range, one of the next big things in U.S. tourism will be the sesquicentennial observance of the Civil War in 2011. “Seven years isn’t really a lot of time” to plan and prepare, said Alexander Wolk, president of St. Louis-based Insite Advice, which runs the www.mocivilwar.org Web site for the nonprofit Missouri Civil War Heritage Foundation. The foundation already is proposing four Civil War-themed routes across the state for auto travelers. The proposed “Grey Ghosts” and “Western Border” trails encompass Kansas City and include area attractions like the Jesse James birthplace and the Battle of Westport. “Missouri is very unheralded” as a Civil War state, said Wolk, who noted the state boasted the third most Civil War engagements, after Virginia and Tennessee. “Nationally, the Civil War is going to be a big event, and Missouri should jump on the bandwagon now,” he said.

Service fixes up nonprofits with volunteers for boards

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 17:09:22 GMT

by Bill Smith from the *St. Louis Post Dispatch* Washington University and the University of Missouri at St. Louis have gone into the online matchmaking business. What's that - WU and UMSL competing with Match.com in the Internet dating game? Well, not exactly. Over the past several months, the universities have joined with the United Way of Greater St. Louis, the Regional Arts Commission and several other local groups to form a different kind of online dating service. The aim, ultimately, is not romance, at least not in the traditional sense. Instead, the new group hopes to pair local nonprofits with men and women interested in serving on their boards. Dubbed BoardLinkStL, the service recently launched its own Web site. So far, 30 area nonprofits and more than 100 potential board members have filled out online surveys. Organizers hope that number will swell to 200 agencies and 300 individuals by the end of BoardLinkStL's first year. As part of an online questionnaire directed to nonprofits, the site asks the organizations what they are looking for in new board members. The site also asks the organizations how they hope to diversify their membership in such areas as geography, religious affiliation, gender and ethnicity. A separate questionnaire, for potential board candidates, asks them to list their skills and areas of interest. Interest areas range from international health to crime prevention to civil rights. The information is then used to get the best possible matches between nonprofits and potential directors. Lasting relationships Rick Skinner with the United Way of Greater St. Louis and Barbara E. Levin with Washington University say the similarities between BoardLinkStl and online dating services are intentional. But Levin says BoardLinkStl will mark its success not on its number of short-term matches, but on the development of strong, lasting relationships. "We want marriages, and we want long marriages," she said. Skinner and Levin say area nonprofits see BoardLinkStl as a way to attract fresh faces into public service. Jennifer Estes, president of Metropolis St. Louis, was among the first to register on the BoardLinkStl Web site. She said she is looking to join a group that works with children, possibly economically disadvantaged or disabled. In her role at Metropolis, Estes says, she works to "get young people engaged in the community." "This could be a huge asset, a tremendous tool to get young people involved," she said of the new group. She said a nonprofit already has contacted her via e-mail, hoping to explore a match. Martha Uhlhorn has served as chair of Paraquad for the past four years. The nonprofit offers a wide range of services to people with disabilities in the St. Louis area. Uhlhorn says that while the group has had little trouble attracting board members with disabilities, it has had significant difficulty attracting ethnic minorities. That, she said, is a major reason why Paraquad's board decided to join BoardLinkStL about two weeks ago. She also said BoardLinkStl's training programs are critical to a successful match. "There are a lot of people who would like to volunteer, but they don't know exactly what that means," Uhlhorn said. As part of its program, BoardLinkStl offers what it calls "readiness to serve" and "readiness to recruit" workshops for both nonprofits and potential board members. BoardLinkStl's Levin and Skinner say the organization charges a nominal fee for its services to help pay for the program. For prospective board members, registration is $50, which includes access to the Web site and workshops for one year. The registration cost for a nonprofit ranges from $100 to $300, depending on the size of the organization's budget. Organizers say the group is still in its infancy and no matches have been made. Other groups involved in the program are Family Support Council/Family Resource Center, Nonprofit Services Consortium, FOCUS St. Louis and Volunteer Lawyers & Accountants For the Arts. Information on the program is available at the group's Web site at www.boardlinkstl.org or by calling the United Way at 800-VOLUNTEER, FOCUS St. Louis at 314-622-1250, Ext. 117, or Levin at Washington University at 314-935-6661.

Blogging for Business Consultants

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 21:00:15 GMT

by Jeremy Nulik from the March 2007 Issue of *St. Louis Small Business Monthly* October 10, 2004, is a day that Scott Ginsberg will never forget. On that day, Seth Godin, the Web's most popular blogger posted a link to Ginsberg's website. Ginsberg, author, speaker and entrepreneur, also known as "the nametag guy" received millions of hits to his website. His email inbox overflowed, and his voicemail was full. With response like this from a simple blog post, Ginsberg decided to start his own blog and his business hasn't been the same since. â€œBlogging is absolutely the No. 1 most important part of my entire business,â€ says Ginsberg. â€œSince I started blogging on a daily basis, my business has tripled every year.â€ Blog is short for â€œWeb log.â€ It is an online journal that is written in common, everyday language. Unlike typical websites, they usually lack a flashy commercial look and avoid overt marketing messages. A blogger simply posts his thoughts or advice, and readers are encouraged to comment and offer feedback. The medium is growing at an incredible rate. According to Technorati.com, a website that tracks blog activity, there are now over 55 million blogs. Almost 40% of Internet users read blogs daily. Thatâ€™s about 57 million American adults, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Business consultants have much to offer these readers that are starved for information and expert advice. Sometimes without even realizing it, consultants who jot down a few thoughts and post them online are becoming the venerable rock stars of their industries. And that Web buzz is turning into real dollars. â€œI can track $100,000 from one blog post,â€ says Ginsberg. â€œI posted an article in 2005 called â€˜Whatâ€™s the Most Important Word in Marketing?â€™ It was a simple article to write, and it got great response with a lot of interesting comments. Then, some newspapers picked it up. Another person saw the blog and hired me to do a speech, and that one speech was in front of a room full of buyers, which led to me securing about 20 customers. That led to more customers, book sales and more speaking events for the next two years. All of this from one blog post. Needless to say, I donâ€™t have trouble getting motivated to write something every morning.â€ By giving first and offering helpful information, consultants are doing more than selling their expertise. In fact, they are not selling at all from the blog. They are creating an environment where readers can become buyers. Dennis Kennedy is another such blogger. He just turned â€œ400 years oldâ€¦in blog years.â€ He has had at least one blog since the dawn of blogging, about four years ago. In that short time, Kennedy, who created the blog for his business, The Dennis Kennedy Law Firm, LLC, has dramatically increased his potential customer reach. He has turned clients into his fans and fans into clients. He now has a worldwide audienceâ€”some of his most loyal blog readers are in Indiaâ€”and is now considered an expert on technology and lawâ€”the topics he writes about. This community of readers has affected the way Kennedy does business. He reflects, â€œIt used to be that I would get a phone call from a listing like the Yellow Pages, and the first question that person would ask is, â€˜What are your rates?â€™ Now people call me, and we just talk about my last blog entry for a few minutes. Sometimes, it is not until the end of the conversation that the person mentions, â€˜Oh, by the way, I was going to ask you about your rates, but Iâ€™m sure theyâ€™re fine.â€™â€ While not all blogs have been as successful as Ginsbergâ€™s or Kennedyâ€™s, they definitely are an indication of where the Internet is heading and how consultants can be a part of this medium. Here are some of the common questions that consultants usually have on the subject of blogging. I already have a website, do I need a blog? Compared to a static website, which can be difficult to update, the blog always gives your clients and readers something new every time they return. â€œA blog creates a mechanism for people to publish content and engages the reader in a way that websites cannot,â€ says Nicolas Farley, a business technology strategist with CIO Services of St. Louis. â€œIt stresses the social interaction and allows someone to feel engaged.â€ Also, since the blog is updated regularly, it actually generates more traffic than most websites and creates a more loyal readership. Ginsberg notes, â€œI get 20,000 hits a day to my website, and my blog gets even more. The Internet is no longer about having a website. It is about establishing a Web presence, which is everything on the Internet that is not your site. A good way to test your presence is to type your name or your industry into Google and see how many hits come up with your information. If I type in â€œapproachability,â€ thousands of sites come up. The first 10 are pages on my website, my blog or articles I posted to the blog.â€ I donâ€™t know HTML, can I still blog? If you can use a word processor, then you can start a blog. Part of the attraction to this medium is the lightweight technology. Many blog administrators allow you to start one free of charge. â€œYou can set one up in 15 minutes, just go to blogger.com or typepad.com,â€ says Ginsberg. â€œThey have tutorials and design templates to choose from. Also, there are a million articles and books on how to do a blog. Getting started is not the hard part. There are millions of blogs started everyday. It is keeping it up that people struggle with.â€ *What if Iâ€™m not a good writer?* The mechanics of the writing do not matter nearly as much as the quality of the content. This quality is closely followed by how often the blog receives new posts. Some blogger experts say daily posts are necessary, while others say weekly. Frequent updates are part of what makes a blog a benefit to the readership, so it only follows that nothing will turn an audience off faster than a blog with no recent posts. *Alex Wolk*, owner of *Insite Advice* and a Web developer, agrees, â€œPeople can always think of something to write about. It is more important that something gets posted than nothing. A post does not need to be a soliloquy. A few paragraphs are better than nothing.â€ *Bad content* This does not mean bad writing. This means writing that is not conscientious of a target audience. Keep the writing fresh and pertinent to readers, or they will go elsewhere. â€œWhere people mess up on their blogs is that they post stuff that is boring or that is completely irrelevant,â€ says Ginsberg. â€œNobody cares what you had for lunch yesterday if it is not somehow helpful â€œ â€œIn a consultant business, you need to focus on your expertise and your field. You can throw personal things in if it works,â€ says *Alex Wolk*, owner of *Insite Advice*. â€œA blog should offer unbiased advice and not your services. It is an extension of what is done when you meet with a client. Demonstrate your expertise. Show them how to save time or money. Be helpful.â€