Nadine Vogel has a great article on marketing to people with disabilities, but it is not available online. Her article references a U.S. Census Bureau report that says 20% of adult Americans have a disability. 20%! That’s one out of every five people you talk to. With numbers like that, why would marketers want to overlook this market?

One reason Vogel provides is that “People are generally uncomfortable with disabilities.” True statement. This year, I am taking a break from doing PTA Web sites for two local schools. I’m friends with one of the women who does the webmaster job and she tells me about people contacting her with requests.

I never had this many or these types of requests in my five years as a webmaster for one school. It isn’t long before the tune sounds familiar. People who take over my job receive more calls, requests, and comments than I did when in the job. Over time, I have figured out that some people may not be comfortable telling someone what to do when that person has a disability.

It sounds silly plus I have friends who ask me to do many things for them, but it’s the only logical explanation. My friend takes her duties seriously — so I know it’s not a factor of she isn’t keeping up. In my corporate career, I saw co-workers receiving constant phone calls and visitors while I had a hardly a drop. I understood about the phone calls, but not stopping by?

Seeing this makes a girl question herself. Was there something wrong with my personality? Did my voice annoy them? Or did the plain fact I was deaf make them uncomfortable?

No matter. People with disabilities have the same wants, needs, and hopes as an average person. We want people to like us. We want to succeed. We want to have family and friends. We want to look stylish. We want to come across as smart and valuable.

Marketers did get one thing right — targeting the Baby Boomers. If they can target that market because of “age,” then they should be able to take a similar approach with people with disabilities. Guess what? Many of these Baby Boomers face disabilities that come with aging.

Don’t shy away. Talk to us. You might be surprised and you might impress the boss.

Participating in the Community

Reading other blogs or feeds is a great way to learn how to carry a discussion. Find other blogs covering topics similar to yours and check them out. Disagree with their opinions? Write about it and explain your reasons. Cross-blog discussions are common, and that’s where trackback comes in handy.

Trackback is a blog feature. If you decide to comment on another blog posting in your blog instead of in that blog’s comments page, then you link to the conversation through the trackback link. Trackback is similar to the permalink, the permanent URL for the blog entry, but it has a different URL for copying and pasting in your blog’s trackback box.

Aside from the technical aspects of operating a blog on a daily basis, subscriber list size and Web site traffic are good indicators of what kind of reaction you’ll get when opening a blog. Starting from scratch with little traffic means you have a long road ahead and lots of work to do. There is no magic formula anyone can sell you for $97 to make your blog an overnight success. But with some perseverance and ingenuity, your blog can engage many prospects and clients.

Pick a Topic… Any Topic…

Considering there are numerous blogs out there, pick a niche topic when starting a blog for a better shot at attracting and keeping an audience. meryl’s notes focuses on three areas: webby, geeky and wordy. In reality, this is too much. What I should do for my readers is create three separate blog entry points, so those interested in writing, newsletters and Internet marketing get nothing but the wordy entries. Those interested in Web design get the webby stuff and the technophiles receive the geeky content.

I also manage a personal blog separate from meryl’s notes. Bionic Ear about cochlear implants and deafness. This could fall under the geeky category, but it’s a personal blog and doesn’t belong in meryl’s notes. This blog is written for a different audience.

Blogs as Tools

The blogging tools for both of my blogs come with syndication capabilities so those using feed readers or aggregators can read the content through the software. When sending a new issue of a newsletter, comment on it or link to it in the blog, that way the blog and feed readers will get the goods, so all three bases are covered.

Blogging tools aren’t just for, well, blogging. Such tools are an excellent way to help you update your Web site more often than you otherwise would. I use it to manage the list of tableless Web sites. Using blogging tools is much easier than the way I managed it before, updating the HTML files by hand. Though using a blog tool, it isn’t a blog. In this case, the blog tool has become a content management system (CMS).

Small business owners don’t have a need for the fancy and pricey CMSes out there. They find it easier to use blogging software to manage their sites or hire someone to adapt the tool for their site.

Blogs have found a place in businesses and people are finding creative ways to use them. Some companies have a blog on the intranet for communicating project status, jeopardies and metrics. Some use them for knowledge management. With information pouring in, blog applications provide a way to share, organize and process the information.

Being a follower can be good or bad. No one wants to walk off a cliff with the lemmings, but everyone wants to succeed. Best practices won’t help, since the decision to blog depends on the organization’s mission, needs and goals along with its target market’s desires and needs. A blog about lemmings? There is one, sort of. Or maybe you’d like to start your own and talk about dumb business moves.

Part I of article is here.

Lemmings are cute, but dumb. If you tell them to jump off a cliff, they will. Just like the people who start blogs because everyone is doing it. After a little while, the blogs die. While cleaning a list of blogs, I deleted countless sites because the sites and blogs no longer existed. The people ran out of steam or had no reason to start them in the first place.

How do you know when a blog is right for your business? Learn why people start blogs, how they find their niche and how blogging tools do more than just hold blog entries.

Some people like to read blogs, others like to read newsletters, still others like to rely on feeds and some read a few or all of them. No matter the method the information is distributed, each medium has one thing in common: content. Having a blog connects your newsletter, your Web site and your business with all of these readers and delivers important content in a particular style.

Blogging Topics

I’ve been blogging since June 2000. If you review my early blog entries in meryl’s notes, you’ll notice they’re more personal. When blogs first hit the scene in the late ’90s, they were personal diaries and journals. Like the blog business, my blog has transformed from personal to business speak, although I still add personal notes here and there.

A few bloggers tend to talk about their work, their products and their little world. That might work for celebrities where fans want to know everything about them, but it doesn’t work for the average business person.

Other business people want information on how to succeed and when a blog spends time hawking products offering information of no value, few people will return. The people whose products sell well are the ones who provide valuable information. Readers already know what kind of information they’re getting, so they trust that when they buy something, it will be of the same or better quality. They reflect this value in their blogs.

Questions to Ask

No one wants to be a lemming (I would hope). How do you decide whether or not to set up a blog? The answer isn’t black or white (what did you expect?). Ask these questions:

• Can you regularly update it — at least a couple of times a week?
• Do you have something to say other than just linking to others?
• Do you read other blogs or feeds?
• Can you provide information of value to others not just to yourself?
• How large is your newsletter subscriber list?
• How many unique visitors do you get on an average day, week or month?

The big decider is whether you can write in the blog almost daily. The people behind the high traffic blogs post multiple times a day. Though resourceful, merely linking to other sites doesn’t give visitors much reason to read yours.

Read Is a Blog Right for Your Business? Part 2

• I love Wikipedia, but I know it’s not 100% reliable and sometimes you need more than one resource. Beyond Wikipedia: 20 References You Can’t Do Without points to other resources.

• I started reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, but wasn’t impressed. 10 Overrated Business Books (and What to Read Instead) also thinks 7 Habits is overrated.

• In addition to 10 Tips For Marketing Your Book Online, check out Plug Your Book.

• 5 Tips to TRULY becoming your OWN BOSS

• Proofreading Test and Tips — I prescribe to the “put it away for a day” proofing method.

• Contests (writing) and Agencies to Avoid [Thanks, Sage]

• Marketing Lessons from Apple

• “You Ain’t All That!” — A Marketing Copy Autopsy

• Games for the Brain

Pareto’s principle states that 80 percent of a company’s business comes from 20 percent of its customers. Therefore, businesses invest time and money into building and maintaining customer loyalty. Loyalty Myths says that organizations focused on traditional loyalty programs won’t succeed and explains why the 53 customer loyalty beliefs are myths.

Businesses that work to keep “loyal” customers may be actually losing money from such customers. Furthermore, traditional marketing emphasizes retaining customers instead of seeking new customers, a belief that could wipe out some businesses or prevent them from reaching their highest potential.

Few argue against the premise that today’s environment in which lets customers be choosier and indifferent when it comes to products and brands. Consider the fact that having the most loyal customers doesn’t guarantee a company the highest market share.

Do you believe that customers over the age of 50 stay true blue to products and brands? The authors have successfully proved otherwise. Think about the different loyalty programs to which you belong. Several airlines have loyalty programs in place, but do you cash in? Do the programs influence your decision on which airline to take?

The book contains a great example from The First National Bank of Chicago, a bank that needed to find ways to overcome the low equity that affected many banks in the ’90. The bank took an unpopular approach in charging $3 when customers went inside the bank for transactions instead of relying on the ATM or doing it over the phone. Sound disastrous, but it paid off.

Unsurprisingly, the media posted negative stories about the bank’s method, and competitors jumped in by paying customers to use the teller and other incentives. The result? The bank’s profits went up by 28 percent with over 80 percent of the transactions done electronically.

The book doesn’t stop at loyalty programs we encounter in our daily lives. It also looks at loyalty myths associated with company goals, management practices, market share and profitability, and employees. In addition to breaking the myths, the authors also provide a chapter on how to do loyalty the right way.

The authors do a nice job providing the rationale for every myth backing it up with data and case studies. The only annoyance with the book is the cartoons that appear throughout the book. They’re corny and ugly. Adding cartoons into a business book is fine, just not these.

This type of book can be dry and academic, but not this one. Loyalty Myths is an engaging and valuable read for anyone who wants to get positive results from customer loyalty programs or turn around their broken loyalty programs.

Title: Loyalty Myths: Hyped Strategies That Will Put You Out of Business and Proven Tactics That Really Work
Author: Timothy L. Keiningham, Terry G. Vavra, Lerzan Aksoy, Henri Wallard
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN: 0471743151
Date: September 2005
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 272
Cover Price: USD: $24.95 Amazon: $17.22

Businesses especially small businesses expect employees to do more than their main job and this often includes sales and marketing. Book Yourself Solid contains activities that business people most likely already know. However, Michael Port brings these activities together and organizes them using lists and questions to help the reader find the answers.

The author writes that he gathered the ideas from multiple resources to build his Book Yourself Solid system. Port shares first-rate advice like dropping clients that sap your energy leaving you with more stress than enthusiasm. Let go of clients? How can you afford that? Think of how much work you’d finish if you enjoy working with every client. Maybe you’d be able to add a few more by letting go of deadweight clients.

The book provides guidance to find your target audience. Anyone who has read books and researched the target market thing may be skeptical about discovering new information in this book. Port breaks down the process of selecting your target market into doable steps, something few resources do.

At times, the book starts reading like those “hyped up” sales materials you see online or in infomercials. In spite of this and a bit of off the mark advice, the book is a worthy and useful read. If you check out Port’s web site, you’ll encounter this hype. Don’t let the web site influence your decision to read this book. The book and web site have little in common.

Small business owners and employees will find the book’s ideas simple to understand and easy to put into action. In fact, they’re most likely doing some of the activities, but the author takes the activities a step further with the goal of booking more clients.

The book benefits business people who want to make marketing and sales an everyday part of their job for a couple of hours a week. Some especially new businesses and service-based businesses will value the book as it saves time that’s involved with trying to determine how to do marketing and sales.

Title: Book Yourself Solid: The Fastest, Easiest, and Most Reliable System for Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even if You Hate Marketing and Selling
Author: Michael Port
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN: 0471783935
Date: April 2006
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 258
Cover Price: USD: $24.95 Amazon: $16.47

One of the more enjoyable ways to market is by holding contests. They’re fun, they encourage folks to spread the word, and they make a few people happy. Imagine my surprise when I saw a package from DeveloperOne on my doorstep yesterday. I didn’t remember ordering anything. I opened it and found a lovely and professional holiday card with the note, “Meryl, congrats on your prize!”

It clicked that I had entered the Developer One Holiday Traditions Giveaway! The company asked for stories of favorite traditions. My prize? Wisconsin’s famous product: Cheese. I received cheese in the shape of beer mug and a package of beer bread mix. The mobile software company is located in Milwaukee.

The best contests are the ones that fun for everyone. I had fun trying to think of a simple tradition while I assume DeveloperOne enjoyed reading the stories. Some contests are a burden requiring more work or giving away more information than needed. A few provide extra credit if you forward the contest information to a friend. The company gets more names while the contestant gets more entries.

I’ve been playing 1FunThing, but it took too much time. The questions are challenging and I spent more time that I should have in seeking the answers. I’m stuck on #32 and need four more to complete the tour, but #32 killed me. It was fun, frustrating, and takes too long.

Making Online and Offline Connections looks at how the virtual world changed how we connect to others. In it, I state that the online world made it possible for me to become a full-time freelancer. It got me thinking how I met people in this virtual world.

I met a few through blogs, especially in earlier days. We bloggers left comments or sent emails to each other. Over time, we learned about each other and became friends. Another is a client who became a friend. I found the client because I interviewed (by email, of course) a co-worker of his who connected us.

Two other clients come from referrals from someone I met on the Internet; one through his own blog and the other from working on a Web site together. IVWCC, an online networking group, also brought in more clients and friends.

I completed an online certification program at New York University. One of the professors asked me to be his TA (teacher assistant). Eventually, I lost the job because there were not enough students enrolled in the program to warrant a TA as a result of the dot com crash. Over a year later, NYU contacted me again (a different program) because someone from the previous program recommended me.

A recent gig came from the editor’s using the search engine to find me. He did a great job because my experience fit well with what he needed. I’ve also gotten gigs by replying to online ads.

Obviously, the Internet offers many routes for meeting people and finding gigs (emphasis on gigs as the chance of finding a full-time job is only about 8% as reported in a career-related column). Possible ways to meet others online:

• Blogs: Leave a comment and link to another person’s entry from yours.
• Forums and email mailing groups: Join discussions.
• Email newsletters: I respond to all emails and survey responses. I’ve also connected with people with their own newsletters.
• Online groups: Like IVWCC. Or you might be one of many bloggers like Blogcritics. The site also has a mailing list for its writers and editors.
• Website: One that’s content-rich and frequently updated (this is where a blog or blogging-tool can help). Even having a profile in Amazon can lead to meeting people. People have contacted me that way even though I haven’t quite made it into the top 1000 reviewers list.
• Emails: Contacting people. Email a writer to pay a compliment on an article. Email a business to congratulate on a recent success. Many business people write articles and include their bylines.
• Articles: This is the flip side of emails. One of my first freelance gigs came from a guy who contacted me based on an article I wrote. There, I met another editor and we recently connected and helped each other (she submitted an article for one of the newsletters I managed and I answered interview questions for her blog). I’ve got a huge list of article banks. Need to post them here.
• Chats: You might attend a chat where there’s a guest. Usually chats are secondary — meaning you meet the person some other way before you talk in instant messenger.

You never know who you’ll meet through the Internet. Just interact with the virtual world and enjoy the surprises that come your way.

This Is Broken looks at KFC’s ad for its “NEW! KFC famous bowls.” The submitter correctly points out that you can’t be “new” and “famous” at the same time. One reader says games can become famous before they ever hit the market. True. Look at Nintendo’s Brain Age and Big Brain Academy. My mom was clamoring for the Nintendo DS and the two games just because she read about them months before their release.

Sorry, KFC, bowls don’t get that kind of advance press to earn “famous” in their names.

Get ready for serious laughing (oxymoron, I know). Vote for Signspotting’s Sign of the Year. My favorites are the McDonald’s and George Bush signs. I voted for the McDonald’s sign because the George Bush is mainly an American (Democratic) joke while McDonald’s is international. As I understand it, the word in the sign means the same thing in many places.

Why can’t I ever find signs like these?