Category: Social Media
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A funny thing happened on the way to the forum, the NJSCPA forum
A funny thing happened on the way to the forum. That’s the NJ Society of Certified Public Accountant’s online discussion forum. I was involved in an online discussion about the unauthorized practice of law and how that affected me. What I discovered instead was how rapidly the positions of the U.S. bar associations have changed,…
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Only three things in marketing
Yesterday I heard a bright young businessman quip that “There are only three things in marketing: Free, Sex, and You Can’t Have It”. It got me thinking. The fact is that for years of writing about health care reform, I’ve been covering “you can’t have it”. For the past four years, most of my work has…
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Sources of my Freedom Benefits Web traffic
Over 85% of my collective Web visitors – typically 300 to 500 unique visitor per day – come from organic Google searches. The remainder come from a wider range of sources and referrers. It is interesting that the volume of traffic from Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter is almost identical, a handful of people from each…
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Recent criticism of my writing
I’ve written something, somewhere, intended for public exposure almost every day for the past 35 years. It started with the college newspaper then moved to electronic bulletin boards and early online class discussions. I was one of the first moderators for Financial Planning Online forum when peer-moderated professional groups thrived without spam. I wrote a…
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Reflecting on 30+ years of writing
Tonight, on the eve of my 54th birthday, I am taking time to reflect on the impact of more than 30 years of business writing. I’ve never doubted that the pen is mightier than the sword and that the internet-connected keyboard absolutely blows away the pen. I’ve done a little bit of good with my effort.…
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Personal branding vs. social media for CPAs
Yesterday during a ridiculously long drive home from the North Jersey office of the New Jersey Society of Certified Public Accountants I spent some time thinking about the issue of how personal branding intersects with social media. I concluded that I might be making some mistakes in both personal branding strategy and social media. On…
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“10 things that Google knows to be true” and how it applies to my OnlineAdviser business
OnlineAdviser.org is a consumer service I founded in 1997 that answers questions free of charge. Additional low cost financial planning services are offered as add-on and these are referred out to other affiliated firms. I estimate that I’ve handled more than 50,000 consumer questions by telephone, e-mail, chat, text, social media sites and other media…
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Cold calls that worked
LinkedIn reminded me that today is a business associate’s birthday. This got me thinking about how we met: it was his cold call. I gave his the usual skepticism on this first call and he had the right answers. The relationship developed into one that boosted my business for several years. I’ve come to place him…