Archive for the ‘Green’ Category

96 Free Professional Blog Topics

Posted on: January 27th, 2011 by Geoff Livingston 39 Comments

Thinking
Image by HansKristian

The following are 96 topic ideas for bloggers that need a little help figuring out what to write about. They are business centric topics, and there are two for each of the remaining 48 weeks of the year.

Rather than delivering a simple topic, these are proposed via Socratic method. By resolving a question, a blogger can write more authentically, and create their own thesis. This thesis — a one to three sentence answer — becomes part of the (or the entire) first paragraph. The rest of the post explains/defends the thesis from your point of view. There is no need for attribution or credit if you decide to use one of these questions; again answering the question makes the blog topic your own unique thesis.

By using a question-based model, a writer thinks and develops their own take on topics. Practicing with the question-based model empowers bloggers to generate their own ideas without assistance. Further, there are plenty of online communities from Quora to LinkedIn that offer questions for inspiration, too.

Only you know your specific business. Whether the owner of an accounting firm or a social media wonk, these general questions are meant to provoke answers about your views in a way that would interest your community. For more on blogging — in addition to the many great resources out there — please read Blogging Primer, 5 Tips for Blogging in the Post RSS Era, Blog Last, and Headline Writing Drives Traffic.

Here we go! Blog questions are listed by topic area; general business, marketing, media, talent management, causes and green, and civic engagement. There should be something for everyone. Please feel free to add your own idea in the comments section.

General Business

Honolulu

1. What’s your definition of success?

2. How do you harness innovation?

3. What are the biggest challenges facing your sector this year?

4. How has the sluggish economy impacted your business?

5. How do you inspire strategic vision?

6. When do you decide to fire a client/customer?

7. Do you believe in competition or co-opetition?

8. How do you choose strategic partners?

9. When does it make sense to bring investors in?

10. Which type of company is easier to work for, public or private?

11. Do you prefer entrepreneurial pursuits? Why?

12. When do you purchase IT products?

13. Does your company try to outsource as much as possible? Why?

14. What makes an ideal vendor?

15. What are the fundamental underpinnings of your business?

16. How do you protect your intellectual property?

17. Do you believe in Chris Anderson’s economic theories of Free and the Long Tail?

18. What do you think of Thomas Friedman’s the World Is Flat now?

19. What’s a good investment for you or your company?

20. How does physical location and/or real estate impact your business (or how does virtual technology allow you to avoid this expense)?

21. How much input do employees have on decision making?

22. How much impact do external stakeholders have on strategic direction?

23. Do you use an advisory board and for what?

24. How do you adapt your business rapidly in a time of change?

25. What’s the biggest challenge to scaling your business?

26. What do you do when your company makes an error?

Marketing

Pepsi Cola

27. What do customers want?

28. How do you create value for customers?

29. How does one differentiate themselves and rise above the crowd in your industry?

30. What are the best conferences in your sector? Why?

31. Do trade shows matter anymore?

32. How do you see marketing fitting into your overall operations?

33. How do you ensure customer satisfaction after the sale?

34. What’s your ideal customer loyalty program look like?

35. When do you invest in public relations?

36. What’s your process to get a product or service ready for market?

37. How do you involve customers in product/service development?

38. How do you measure return on investment for your marketing programs?

39. How do you balance lead generation with branding?

40. Do you believe influencers or customers are more important for marketing?

41. Can a celebrity spokesperson help your business?

Media

iPad & Friends
Image by Yutaka Tsutano

42. Does the continuing social media buzz represent a bubble?

43. Cries for civility online: What’s your take?

44. So you built a Facebook page and Twitter profile for your business. Did it help your business?

45. How do you build content creation (email, newsletter and/or social media) capacity inside?

46. What additional resources beyond people do you dedicate to media activities?

47. What’s the right mix of online promotion between email, advertising, social media and SEO?

48. Which traditional media still matter to your business?

49. How does online extend your offline networking (or vice versa)?

50. Does a partisan based media (FOX conservative, MSNBC liberal, etc.) hurt business?

51. Do weblebrities matter?

52. How has the Internet changed your business in the past 20 years?

53. Which online tools are helping your business the most?

54. How do you handle reputation issues in the media and/or online?

55. Do you believe that the Internet creates weak online relationships, that it develops strong communities, or somewhere in between?

56. Are you finding video to be more important?

Talent Management

The Awakening

57. When is the right time to hire?

58. How important is talent in your mind?

59. How do you recruit talent?

60. Which executives do you admire the most in your sector?

61. Which female executives do you admire the most in your sector?

62. Which minority executives do you admire the most in your sector?

63. What’s the state of the glass ceiling in your business?

64. Which schools provide the best education for your profession?

65. What is the mark of professionalism in your mind?

66. Do you provide employees the fish, or teach them to fish themselves?

67. How does your business engage in continuing education?

68. What’s the best way to inspire positive morale on your team?

69. Do “personal brands” help or hurt business?

70. What makes an ideal employee?

71. Who was your best mentor? Why were they so special?

72. How does your organization better employees’ lives?

73. How do empower other people in your organization to shine?

74. How do you manage staff virtually?

75. What’s your vision for work life balance?

76. What’s the best way to reward a great employee?

Causes and Green

At Work in the Capital Area Foodbank Warehouse

77. Do you integrate causes into your marketing?

78. Which causes are most important to you or your business?

79. Is there such a thing as altruism in business?

80. Should nonprofits run like businesses?

81. Should companies donate, participate in cause marketing, or both? Why?

82. How does your company work towards sustainability?

83. Is the sector’s future green? Why or why not?

84. Can green innovation be profitable?

85. Should tax codes be used to encourage more environmental action within the sector?

86. What do you think of hybrid social enterprises, businesses (at least by tax code) that engage in social change?

Civic Engagement

Library of Congress Great Hall

87. Does federal government policy positively or negatively impact your sector?

88. What political issues concern you the most?

89. Which trade organizations do you recommend in your sector? Why do you like them?

90. How do your trade organizations work for you?

91. What’s your take on U.S. competiveness compared to the rest of world?

92. Do you use your elected representatives to help your business? Why or why not?

93. How should government help businesses?

94. Should businesses provide healthcare like they used to?

95.What do you think of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, giving companies the same rights as individuals?

96. How important is net neutrality to the future of business?

Popularity: 5% [?]

Marketing Causes Harder Than Products

Posted on: January 9th, 2011 by Geoff Livingston 15 Comments

Homelessness_3942
Homeless Image by Raileen Viorel

Marketers love telling nonprofits how to market their social solutions. They get miffed when they see a perceived slow road to change, an underfunded website written by someone in their 20s, and a general failure to resolve society’s ills. Of course, the answer must be the crappy marketing. Having worked with both types of organizations closely, it’s easy to definitively say social change marketing is much harder than marketing a product or service.

Quora Response

Look, whatever your experience is — Procter & Gamble, Old Spice, Cisco, start-up sold — great! Yes, selling domain names and marketing organic strawberries is hard. But the difference between marketing and activism will always revolve around this truth — People want stuff, but they don’t want to change. Getting people to want to change themselves is much, much harder.

Think about it. Do you want to change? Do you want to buy a more expensive electric car (kudos to Ford for announcing the world’s third major electric car at CES)? Yeah, most Americans get sustainability — it’s one of the most over-marketed words out there. But when push comes to shove, people don’t want to change, otherwise green legislation (forget electric cars) would be a top priority in the United States.

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How about cigarette smoking? In spite of every marketing trick in the book including severely negative product packaging deployed by the best minds in the business via the Ad Council, in spite of every piece of cancer causing knowledge out there, 20.6% of U.S. adults still smoke.

Beyond that core communications difference, causes are not businesses. They do different things than shilling burgers or IT services. Causes and people fight to affect social change. They have to make every donor dollar count. They don’t have the resources, staff or the wherewithal that a business does.

Quora Responses

There are too many causes because every entrepreneur who made a little scratch goes off and starts yet another Foundation or cause to do it “their way.” And for every fat well-known cause out there like Komen, there are dozens fighting an avalanche of apathy, scrapping to make ends meet.

Yet business people think they suck because they don’t market right. Maybe the marketers are that good, but there’s only one way to find out… By doing some actual field work. Please report back the research!

What do you think? Is it easier to communicate for causes or for-profit endeavors?

Thanks to Florian Engel, Jennifer Rosenberg, Stacey Monk, Kevin Vine, and Joe Waters for their answers on Quora.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Six Months Later: BP’s Oil Spill Still Stains

Posted on: December 27th, 2010 by Geoff Livingston

It has been six months since the height of public outrage about the Deep Horizon catastrophe and ensuing oil spill. Periodically, news bubbles up about potential lawsuits against BP and partners, but for the most part, the media has moved on to more current pastures. Meanwhile the damage left behind still ravages the Gulf Coast environs and economy.

Earlier this month, ABC News reported on University of Georgia’s Samantha Joye’s findings that Deep Horizon oil carpets the Gulf of Mexico floor. At 5,000 feet below the surface there appears to be an 80-square mile kill zone. “It looks like everything’s dead,” Samantha Joye said.

Meanwhile economic relief efforts seem to be hitting some walls. While tourist centric business like casinos located far away from Gulf shores are getting Gulf Coast Claims approved by the government, fishermen are being denied after one of the worst shrimping seasons every recorded. These fisherman fall into four classes:

  • Small vocal number who have presented Feinberg with strong documentation.
  • A much larger group that has been paid, but far less than their emergency claims called for.
  • Another group of more than 30,000 claimants, led by an organized Vietnamese contingent in Louisiana.
  • Thousands who can’t produce enough documentation to satisfy the Gulf Coast Claims Facility.

The government dismisses these as suspect or fraudulent. Somewhere in between lies the truth. And on the interwebs, the BP PR machine continues.

No one asked BP to negligently contract and manage the operation of the oil Deep Horizon rig and its ensuing damage. Regardless of how the government and BP spin it, Americans, and the global environment will suffer for years to come.

2010 will go down as one of the worst years ever for environmental disasters. And BP’s negligent actions before and after the oil spill will go down as the largest lump of coal in the lot. The novelty of this has not been matched by the actions necessary to reverse the affects of manmade climate change. In fact, at least in the United States, environmental regulation seems to be moving backwards. Again, action to change falls to the individual.

If you would like to take action to help the fishing families of New Orleans, please consider Citizen Effect’s CitizenGulf project. Money goes to provide fishing children after school education programs.

Popularity: 1% [?]