A Year's Worth of Information & Advice

For most of the publications in which my column appears, this is our first anniversary. A year of Internet-related thinking and writing feels like 5 years at the traditional speed of business, so this past year's been a rush in more ways than one.

Most importantly, thank you for your comments. After about a month of writing this column, and having heard nothing from readers (if there were any?), I was asking myself, one busy day, whether to continue. Then at the monthly meeting of a professional group, a man I know in the Internet business, a genuine professional, went out of his way to tell me how much he valued the articles. That one comment seemed to open the floodgates, because since then the positive feedback has been continuous and frequent. One consultant told me she prints copies of the columns and gives them to clients. One woman in a start-up company e-mailed me from New York (where she'd received a hard copy of the column by mail). One man said he clips every column and sends it to his boss (I'm not sure whether this is a good idea).

The funniest story I heard about clipping the columns out involved the article, "Cousin Billy Sites Again." A marketing director I know said that the day the article came out, two copies of the column, neatly clipped, appeared in his real-world in box. One clipping was delivered anonymously, the other with a kind of "for your eyes only" comment written on a Post-It note. The marketing director read the comment, then read the article for the first time, laughing, he said, until tears came.

"I nearly fell out of my chair," he said. In his organization, however, no one ever mustered the courage to mention the article out loud, much less hand a copy of it to the CEO. The CEO had hand-picked "Billy" to develop the company site. The site was a source of embarrassment, the perpetrator a family member.

When we use the term, "A Cousin Billy Website," most people smile and say "I know what you mean." At the same time, everyone still ask, What will make a Website successful? We look for answers to that question every day. This past year I've repeatedly seen proof that the 7 keys to effective Websites and e-mail are teamwork, technology, positioning, planning, design, commitment and detail. We've seen organizations struggle to get 5 of the 7 right. Some Cousin Billy sites go 0 for 7. Some don't.

What I've learned, more than anything else this past year, is that business people want to get the Internet right. They want to go at least 5 for 7. They want to understand how the Internet, Websites and e-mail will impact their businesses and their jobs. They want to know how they can take advantage, avoid unpleasant surprises, and get a competitive advantage. They're frustrated by the fits and starts technology subjects us to, but they know that technology will just keep right on being technology and doing that to us. They know the change won't change, so they have committed themselves to adapt and learn.

To make adapting easier, I'm developed a seminar, "The 7 Keys to Effective Websites and Direct E-Mail." The first seminar will be offered in Tucson, with seminars planned for Phoenix, Albuquerque and elsewhere planned in the coming months. For details, visit http://www.netoutcomes.com/Internet_Insights/.

The seminar aside, keep e-mailing me and calling. Your feedback's a high point of the day, whatever it is you have to say. Ask questions. Set me straight. Tell me what you'd like to read about. We know that change is here to stay. Let's stay with it together.

This article first appeared as a column written by Dave Tedlock, NetOutcomes' president, for Inside Tucson Business and/or the New Mexico Business Weekly.

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