December 2018 In This Issue 2 Inside Connections From the Editor 3 President’s Message Cindy Shamel 4 Unveiling the Program for the AIIP Conference 2019 Ulla deStricker 6 Internet Librarian International Conference Birgit Bauer 8 11 Starting Up: Getting the Most Out of Your Community Resources Claire Dygert 14 Local Search: What Is It and How It Works Rhonda Kleiman 17 Strategic Planning for Small Business Kelly Berry 20 Coach’s Corner: Are You 9-to-5 or 24/7? Mary Ellen Bates Volume 32 | Issue 4 connections The official member publication of the Association of Independent Information Professionals Research, Strategic Planning, and Cannabis Troy Wason
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In This Issue 2 Inside Connections From the Editor
3 President’s Message Cindy Shamel
4 Unveiling the Program for the AIIP Conference 2019 Ulla deStricker
6 Internet Librarian International Conference Birgit Bauer
8 11 Starting Up: Getting the Most Out of Your Community Resources Claire Dygert
14 Local Search: What Is It and How It Works Rhonda Kleiman
17 Strategic Planning for Small Business Kelly Berry
20 Coach’s Corner: Are You 9-to-5 or 24/7? Mary Ellen Bates
Volume 32 | I ssue 4
connectionsThe official member publication of the Association of Independent Information Professionals
Research, Strategic Planning, and Cannabis Troy Wason
2 AIIP Connections | December 2018
Inside ConnectionsF R O M T H E E D I T O R
Welcome to the final issue of AIIP Connections for 2018.
First question: have you already registered for AIIP2019 in Philadephia on April 11–14, 2019? If not you still have time to make the early bird deadline. If you need some encouragement, see Ulla de Stricker’s review of the program. There will be something for everyone.
We have an informative and educational issue for you with a focus on strategic planning to a client. Kelly Berry offers an overview and walks us through the process for a small business.
Claire Dygert shares some key resources to help new business owners to get up and running. And Rhonda Kleiman tells us how we can employ local search techniques to market our businesses locally.
Birgit Bauer is our eyes on the ground at Internet Librarian International 2018, shar-ing some of the highlights and key learning points.
Finally, Mary Ellen Bates revisits a recent AIIP-L discussion and muses about how available we should be—or appear to be—to clients.
As always, we start with a message from AIIP President Cindy Shamel who reviews some of the benefits of your AIIP membership.
Phyllis Smith
Editor, AIIP Connections
Halton Hills, Ontario, Canada
AIIP 8550 United Plaza Blvd., Ste. 1001, Baton Rouge, LA 70809
You may have heard about Canada’s very recent move to legalize marijuana for rec- reational use. We’re not just blowing smoke up here! Troy Wason blazed new trails when he provided research and strategic planning to client preparing to enter thelegal retail cannabis market. His case study proves that being an IIP is never boring.
This is the season to begin making plans for the next calendar year. Some of us are looking at our
marketing plans, our conference sched-ules, and our networking events. Your association, AIIP, is looking at ways to enhance the list of benefits offered, and to boost our members and their busi-nesses. Professional development and effective communications are always in season, so let’s look at what’s going on in these areas.
Professional Development Offerings
AIIP members work hard to improve their business processes along with their products and services. As a result, many of you are taking advantage of the many professional develop-ment opportunities AIIP offers. These include the annual conference (early bird pricing ends on February 15, so register now; AIIP Webinars; AIIP-L; AIIP Connections; the AIIP Mentoring Program; and more.
AIIP’s latest offering is the Virtual Meetup. On October 25 Judith Binder, George Puro, Kelly Barry, Jan Knight, and Jennifer Burke facilitated a wide-ranging discussion among members in the Research Practice Area.They talked about issues and challenges facing business owners in this specialty. I was very pleased to see participants from all over the world including Canada, Germany, the Republic of Korea, and the United States. This is an awesome way to undertake mutual problem solving, link up with like-minded colleagues, and enhance your ability to meet client expectations. Virtual Meetups are in a beta test of sorts. Your Board of Directors is testing the concept for both technical practices
President’s Message
and valued content. Plans are underway for the next Virtual Meetup. Please send your thoughts, comments, feed-back, and questions to Judith Binder. She looks forward to your input.
Communications Plan
With membership spread all over the globe, it is important to offer effective means to deliver professional devel-opment content, facilitate member interaction, and share the activities of the organization. As I write this, we have a team, led by Cindy Romaine and Anne Hengehold, evaluating our existing communications channels and considering best practices to meet the needs of AIIP members in the future. Right now, we rely on AIIP Connections, AIIP-L, the AIIP Blog, webinars, and the monthly President’s Message to keep members informed and on the cutting edge of the information industry. As this assessment of our communica-tion channels continues, we offer our thanks to AIIP Connections editor Phyllis Smith, AIIP-L manager Andrea Carrero, AIIP Blog editor Heather Carine, and the webinar team led by Chrissy Geluk.
Who’s Who
Have you ever wondered who has the longest tenure in AIIP? I have. Accord-ing to the sorting and filtering of our membership database, relying on the column headed “Member Since” our top 11 longest standing members include:
Susanne Bjorner, Bjorner & Associates, 1987
Marydee Ojala*, Ojala Associates, 1987
Lorna Dean, 1987
Marty Goffman, SequenceBase Corporation,
1988
Jan Goudreau*, Information Crossroads, 1989
Mary Ellen Bates*, Bates Information
Services, 1990
Judy Fair-Spaulding, JFS International, 1990
Amelia Kassel*, MarketingBase, 1991
Deborah Hunt*, Information Edge, 1992
Debra Kessler*, Kessler Associates, LLC, 1992
Cynthia Lesky*, Threshold Information, LLC,
1992
*Full Members; the rest are Emeritus
While I was in an inquiring mode, I looked at our newest members who joined last year and have recently renewed for another year. These mem-bers include Marj Atkinson, Claudia Beach, Robyn D’Arcy, Janel Kinlaw, Wolfgang Lutz, Joan Sullivan, and Ed Vazquez. Congrats to all and keep up the good work!
AIIP has been here for you since 1987. Don’t forget to take advantage of all the value and benefits that the asso-ciation has to offer, and tell a friend! We’re here for the newest business owners as well!
The Conference Planning Committee is delighted to announce the contents of the next AIIP annual confer-ence, to be held in Philadelphia April 11-14, 2019. We
are grateful to all the presenters who committed to share their expertise with fellow members, and we can’t wait to be there for their sessions.
The conference program contains all of the session descriptions and presenter bios. Here’s an at-a-glance listing of what you are about to enjoy, organized by type of session:
Workshops: 2-hour intensive seminars• Compete with the Big Guys: Spend Less Time Writing
Proposals
• Data Analytics: Tools for the Indie Info Pro
Unveiling the Program for AIIP Conference 2019By Ulla de Stricker, Conference Chair
• Get a Grip on your Social Media Marketing
• Speak up – Speak out: Public Speaking & Presenting to Thrill
Sessions and PanelsThese 60-minute presentations/discussions provide in-depth coverage.
• The Roger Summit Lecture with Sue Feldman
• The Slow Down to Speed Up™ Guide to Unstoppable Success: A Pragmatic Toolkit for the Growth-Minded Pro-fessional (Keynote)
• Listening for Opportunity – Doing What Comes Unnaturally
• Proposals and Negotiations – Strategies and Techniques
In addition, the Board will orient attendees as to its activi-ties through an overview and Town Halls, and we’ll have the traditional introduction session where everyone gets up to the microphone for 30 seconds.
Don’t miss the “first timers” and “not-so-first-timers” ses-sions on Thursday, the Friday and Saturday yoga classes, and the Sunday Morning Send-off session.
There is plenty of time built in to the schedule for network-ing between the official events so you can make new connections and catch up with colleagues.
Finally, we certainly hope you will arrive in time for the Thursday evening welcome and opening reception at 6 pm.
See you there!
Did You Miss This?
In the previous issue of AIIP Connections, I provided an overview of the conference to orient AIIP members about the attractive features of the event, stressing such aspects as the ease of transportation, the many meals provided within the conference fee, the new “matchmaker” service, the dine-arounds, and more.
As noted in the earlier article, the program was designed to
More than 300 participants from 28 countries attended the Internet Librarian International
Conference, held the 16th and 17th of October 2018 in London. They heard some 60 lectures and case studies on current developments and visions in the library and information professions. There were three tracks running in parallel, interactive sessions, and social events, making ILI 2018 a stimulating conference, and an opportunity to meet with AIIP members in Europe.
The Library: A vibrant place where exciting things happenIn order to remain attractive to their users in the digital age, many librarians strive to offer pleasant, communicative places to encounter, learn, research, invent, and work. What a change!
In her keynote speech, “Cultivating Knowledge Communities,” Katherine Skinner, Executive Director of Educo-pia Institute (Atlanta, Georgia, USA) revealed what all communities need. The non-profit institute Educopia supports collaborative communities in creating, sharing, and preserving knowledge. It has now published its models for knowledge communities in the ebook Community Cultivation Model: A Field Guide.
Libraries of all types are cultivating their communities in a variety of ways. They shared their experiences in case studies. Several libraries showed how they foster learning experiences through literacy programs for all ages, such as Reading Ahead in the UK or the Helmet Reading Challenge in Finland. Espoo City Library in Finland has developed a journal-
ism project for school children, and 25 libraries in the UK offer Microbits coding clubs to mentor children.
Interactive fiction and literary game development initiatives, such as Off the Map, Playing Beowulf, Litcraft, and Gothic Novel Jam, are run in British libraries to open up collections. Colum-bus State Community College Library (Columbus, Ohio, USA) uses augmented reality to enhance learning, as do several universities in California and the De La Salle University library in the Philippines through the use of mak-erspaces. Besides expanding reading, writing, coding, maker, and social skills, and enhancing self-confidence of the participants, these programs increase the visibility of libraries, librarians, and their services.
The future in focusBohyun Kim, CTO and Professor at the libraries of the University of Rhode Island (USA) presented a case study describing current applications of Arti-
ficial Intelligence (AI) including machine translation, contract analysis software, writing news bots, and Google’s AlphaGo. But AI systems, in which the software programs learn from their human trainers, can fail due to learned human prejudices. One notable example mentioned was Amazon’s machine-learning recruiting software. After it had predominantly studied male CVs, it discriminated against female applicants and was therefore scrapped by Amazon.
In his keynote talk, Fantastic Future? Predicting Promise and Peril, Martin Hamilton, futurist at Jisc (UK), summa-rized new developments in technology with reference to Education 4.0, robotic engineering, climate change, and fake news. Other topics covered at the conference included cooperation of libraries, archiving the internet, reposito-ries, collections, and more.
Dwindling searchIn a pre-conference workshop, Search Skills Academy, AIIP experts Karen Blake-man (UK), Marydee Ojala (USA), and Arthur Weiss (UK) gave an overview on current search engines, Google features, other tools, social searching, and people searching. Only one other session, Next-gen Search Skills, covered search-related issues. Marydee Ojala, Online Searcher magazine and co-chair of the confer-ence, and Martin White, Intranet Focus Ltd., UK, talked about latest technolo-
gies like AI, text analysis, and predictive analytics. They also described the difference of content language (mostly English) to native language (usually not English), that already influences search today. Their advice was to update skills and “stay alert, stay flexible, stay awe-some.”
“Librarians make the world a better place”Phil Bradley, co-chair of the confer-ence and renowned British information consultant, closed the 20th ILI with his passionate final keynote. He said, “Being a librarian is not about books, is not about magazines, is not about searching the internet. What it is about is our community. What it is about is protecting that community and empow-ering that community.” He closed with, “and you do know how to make the world a better place, because that is what we do.”
AIIPAs in previous years, AIIP exhibited as a sponsor of ILI and the Taxonomy Boot Camp. AIIP President Cindy Shamel attended the conference and hosted a reception for members and guests at a pub. It was a great opportunity to speak with other AIIP members, from other countries, in person.
Birgit Bauer is the owner of Bauer Busi-ness Research and a veteran information
professional in Austria. She ran the infor-
mation service of the development bank
for small and medium-sized companies
of the Republic of Austria, then managed
a group with a globally active research &
analytics provider in India. Birgit is a long-
standing member of AIIP.
Left to right: Birgit Bauer, Marydee Ojala, Cindy Shamel, Deb Hunt
In addition to the pre-conference work- shop “Marketing Your Library Service: Principles and Actions” a number of case studies demonstrated that libraries use all kinds of events and media to attract newcustomers. For example, Loud in the Library (UK) shared how established and young musicians were invited to perform in rural libraries, creating a win-win-win situation for the libraries, musicians,and the public. At the University College Cork (Ireland) a crowdsourced initiative researched the history of a popular music club and present the results in anexhibition. A series of case studies was presented in “Promoting the Library and Library Services” to share interesting techniques libraries are using. For example, the librarians of the Vejen Library in southern Denmark employ catchy headlines and recommend books in the articles they write for a regional weeklynewspaper.
Research. Strategic Planning. Cannabis. One of these things doesn’t belong. Or does it?
When our company, Axxess Point Inc., was approached in January
Research, Strategic Planning, and Cannabis
By Troy Wason, Axxess Point Inc.
2018 to provide research, analysis, and strategic planning for an expe-rienced and recognized medical cannabis counselling service operator in western Canada, we were clearly apprehensive. That they were prepar-
ing to enter the retail cannabis market for non-medical, recreational use in Canada only added to the trepidation. Did I mention they were potentially our first client?
9AIIP Connections | November 2018
There were countless reasons to run away from this project. Our prelimi-nary environmental scan warned us of the potential pitfalls and enormous challenges we would encounter even before the federal government fixed the date of national legalization, which would occur sometime after July 1st, 2018. (Marijuana became legal as of October 17th, 2018.)
Without the benefit of legislative precedence or a template, the clos-est proximity to real-world events we had to work from was the Canadian historical experience with the evolu-tion from government-operated liquor retail stores to privately-operated establishments—an event that took over 100 years to happen and still evolves today. We were asked to do something similar in less than a year. We decided to dive head first into an opportunity of a lifetime.
Preliminary Environmental ScanBased on our discussions with our new client, and our initial research and intelligence gathering, we understood the following, which formed the back-bone of our ongoing environmental scanning:
OUR CLIENT
The client is an experienced and rec-ognized medical marijuana counselling service operator who was preparing to enter the retail cannabis market for non-medical, recreational use across Canada as soon as such operations were legal. They had engaged an experienced retail partner from the United States as part of its Canadian retail operations.
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF CANADA
This is the responsible government entity to enact legislation that would make the personal use of cannabis
completed all of their requirements, and as a result, municipalities were lagging behind in regulation and policy approvals. This resulted in many municipalities not being ready to approve retail outlets in concert with the official federal legalization date and provincial approvals.
We had anticipated that munici-pal regulations (by-laws, land-use, separation distances, consultation requirements, and other operating factors) would vary by municipality, from an all-out exclusion of retail sales to limited early access. These local operating factors would evolve over time, but at the outset it was expected that municipalities would proceed cautiously and slowly. Our approach to the problem and our subsequent research and analysis has proven to be the right one to take from the onset.
Core TasksIn our initial proposal brief, we parti-tioned our projected work into three core tasks, which we could work on separately or together depending on local, provincial, and federal regula-tory progress. It is important to bear in mind this path had not been trodden in Canada or any other G8 country, for that matter, and much of what we were planning to do had not been previously identified nor mapped. We were going in blind, but so was everyone else. Thus, we formulated our strategic plan and took actions as follows:
DEVELOP AND POSITION THE OPPORTUNITY
• Research and develop public/gov-ernment relations strategies and establish contacts with federal, pro-vincial, and municipal governments to achieve a full understanding of the regulatory requirements in each of the primary retail market munici-palities, provincial regulations and regulators, and federal policy impacts to the business case.
products, including but not limited to cannabis flower, oil, seeds, and edibles, legal in Canada.
THE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT OF ALBERTA
The provincial government had devel-oped the Alberta Cannabis Framework. And it had introduced and passed Bill 26: An Act to Control and Regulate Cannabis that gives the Alberta Gam-ing and Liquor Commission (AGLC) the authority for oversight, compliance and retail licensing of cannabis. The Act enables online sale, and creates restric-tions on youth possession and public consumption.
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENTS
There are 352 municipalities in Alberta that are in various states of readiness to move forward on local by-laws and regulations related to legal retail sales of cannabis products.
As we are based in Alberta, I provided the environmental scan for one of the possible ten provinces and two territo-ries, and it includes the municipalities recognized by the provincial govern-ment. We were also asked to look into British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario. The size of the challenge was not lost on us.
We were inspired to look at the problem as an inverted pyramid. There were a series of legislative and policy events at each of the federal, provin-cial, and municipal government levels that needed to occur prior to the com-mencement of retail sales of cannabis products for personal recreational use. At each subsequent level, there was a host of process steps that had to be completed. Further, each level of government needed clarity from the level(s) above it to complete its work. Consequently, the federal government legislation, regulations, and other pro-visions would need to be completed before the provincial government
10 AIIP Connections | December 2018
• Monitor government initiatives, local media, business media, and cannabis-related media sources, to understand the current and evolving cannabis retail market trends, regulatory initia-tives, and operating environment. This was part of our larger environmental scan that we periodically updated to help ensure the best intelligence was available for action.
• Attend conferences, public events, municipal events and anything else related to cannabis retail to further understand the overall operating environment.
BUILD REGULATORY AND PUBLIC ACCEPTANCE
• Support our client and partners in working through the regulatory, permitting, and approval process established by federal, provin-cial, and municipal legislation or regulation.
• Work with our client and partners (retail, legal, and other) to develop and execute public government outreach initiatives to combat oppo-sition and to smooth the regulatory road for retail operations.
• Foster or conduct public awareness initiatives that support the applica-tion for retail licensing. This could include company-initiated outreach efforts in response to federal, pro-vincial, or municipal requirements, hearings or the like.
BEGIN RETAIL OPERATION AND EXPANSION PLANNING
• Support the efforts of the new retail outlets to develop brand awareness and acceptance and build on the good will established in the initial retail markets to increase market penetration and expand to other markets.
• Use the successful strategies and tactics for the initial establishment of retail outlets and tailor them to meet local priorities or requirements in municipal areas outside of the major centres.
• Tailor the work to the size and scope of the retail expansion initia-tives.
As mentioned above, much of the research, analysis, strategic plan-ning, and execution happened over months in varying order and tasks overlapped each other depending on the circumstances. And client requests for information, clarity, or additional intelligence would take us off in a different direction than otherwise planned, with often unforeseen results.
In one such instance, a rumour being circulated among a few less-than-scrupulous commercial realtors, if true, could have inflicted a substantial financial hardship on our client. In a panic, our client asked us to confirm or put to rest the industry gossip. Within the hour, we had proven the rumour to be unfounded and saved the client over a million Canadian dollars, cementing our long-term relationship with them. It was a good day for our team.
ConclusionOur inauspicious venture into the once-illegal world of cannabis in Canada has, ironically, proven to be the auspicious beginnings of Axxess Point Inc. The past ten months have offered us one learning experience after another. What we didn’t expect was that the advantage of working in an otherwise unknown environment would be that we could be adventur-ous and daring in our work and delve into places beyond our imagination.
Our quality research, critical analysis, and strategic planning throughout this project has brought us closer
to our client. Since legalization, we have helped them to develop their corporate social responsibility (CSR) guidelines in a further quest for greater public acceptance of cannabis across the nation. It has also brought us new and exciting word-of-mouth clients from the fields of clean energy and telecommunications. Cannabis legalization in Canada has proven to be a blessing in disguise for our com-pany. Who would have known?
The final irony was that a year ago I would not have been able to tell anyone the difference between CBD (Cannabidiol) and THC (Tetrahydro-cannabinol). Today, I feel comfortable writing about research, strategic planning, and cannabis in the same article. Such is the wonderful life of an independent information profes-sional. I can’t wait to see what 2019 brings for Axxess Point Inc.
Starting a business can be a daunting prospect, but you don’t have to do it on your own. Most communities in the United States have a variety of resources to support
your business start-up process, many of which are free. Even if you are not in the U.S., some of the resources are online and can be accessed from anywhere. In this article, I share experiences from my own recent start-up effort and the community resources that I benefitted from along the way. I hope those of you just starting out on your own journeys to independence find it helpful!
Starting Up: Getting the Most Out of Your Community Resources
By Claire T. Dygert, Cdygert Solutions
12 AIIP Connections | December 2018
Your local Small Business Development CenterThe first thing I did when I was getting serious about starting my own business was to contact my local Small Business Development Center (SBDC). Part of a national network, SBDCs are often hosted by universities or col-leges, or by state economic development agencies, and provide free face-to-face consulting sessions. My consul-tant helped me determine the best legal structure for my business and provided me with information and advice on getting my business registered as a minority (woman-owned) business. After our initial meeting, my SBDC counselor followed up periodically to see how I was doing and to discuss where I was in my process. I found that just knowing there was someone I could call on at point of need was of great help.
In addition to free con-sulting services, SBDCs offer free and low-cost training opportunities. And the national SBDC website offers America’s SBDC Professional Development Courses, which include webinars on coaching, Quick-Books, business planning, marketing strategy and planning, cash flow and balance sheets, and Google Analytics.
See what your own local SBDC has to offer by going to the America’s SBDC website and searching by ZIP code or state.
SCORE ResourcesAnother local resource that I benefitted greatly from was my local SCORE office. SCORE is a non-profit partner of the U.S. Small Business Administration with over 300 offices across the country. SCORE’s main mission is to provide mentoring and education to small businesses, and they have thousands of working and retired business professionalswho volunteer as mentors.
My experience with SCORE has been excellent. I initially contacted them when I was still employed full-time but had already registered my business, thanks to help from the SBDC. I was in the middle of responding to a couple of RFPs (Request For Proposals), and if I won either of them, it would allow me to launch my business full-time. Both jobs would have required large amounts of money to pass through my company, and I needed advice on the best way to handle that. I submitted a request to SCORE for an in-person mentor meeting and received a reply the same day. Within a week I was meeting with my local mentor
and getting the advice I needed. Later, when I had some questions about intellectual property issues regarding my business’s use of some documentation and workflow tools I had created for my former employer, my SCORE mentor connected me with both a human resources professional and an intellectual property lawyer who provided advice at no cost. Finding and consulting a lawyer on my own would have cost hundreds of dollars.
Throughout the year, my local SCORE chapter provides a wide variety of workshops that are not only educational but also provide good networking opportunities. The first workshop I attended was on best practices for running a small business, and featured a panel that included an insurance agent, a lawyer, and an accountant who all gave
advice from their areas of expertise. I hadn’t thought much about insurance needs at that point and chatted with the agent after the meeting. Today she is my insurance agent. Other workshops I’ve attended include one on using QuickBooks and another on writing an effective business plan.
All were well-presented and of value. SCORE also has an online library with a wealth of free business resources, including some Pre-Start Resources.
Due to SCORE’s non-profit partnership with the U.S. Small Business Administration, the mentoring services are free no matter how many times you meet with a mentor. And SCORE makes finding a mentor easy. You can request one online by searching the SCORE mentor database, which allows for searching by keyword, industry, location, or expertise. Find your local SCORE chapter and learn more about SCORE at www.score.org.
Local Library ResourcesWhen I quit my job to start my business, I left an academic environment where I had a wealth of online databases and other resources at my fingertips. I was pleasantly surprised to see the extent of online resources available through my local public library. One I was very glad to find is Lynda.com. Lynda.com makes video tutorials available on an extensive array of business topics and software, from proj-ect management skills to using Microsoft applications and QuickBooks. I’ve used Lynda.com to explore the invoic-ing features of QuickBooks before deciding to subscribe, and I watched hours of tutorials on web development in Drupal that allowed me to recreate a contract portal tool I had used in my previous job. In addition to tutorials on
makes available to their members helpful. Resources include a series of webinars on a variety of topics, includ-ing some targeted to those in their first year of business. The AIIP webinar, Writing a Winning Proposal 2011, presented by Linda Rink, helped me improve a proposal I was in the middle of crafting, and gave me some ideas for refining my proposal template to make it look even more professional. Members-only publications avail-able online include a series of FAQs that address issues of getting clients, marketing, and pricing. AIIP also has a mentoring program for new AIIP members starting an information professional business as well as established members needing a fresh perspective.
Not yet an AIIP member? Check out AIIP’s Getting Started page. From there you can request a copy of the AIIP Guide to Getting Started as An Independent Info Pro.
Claire owns CDygert Solutions, a results-driven consulting
company that provides services to all types of libraries and library
consortia. Her areas of expertise include e-resource acquisition and
management, statewide contract negotiation for online content,
digital services, strategic planning and organizational change. Claire
individual tasks and software applications, Lynda.com has “Learning Paths” on numerous topics, including becoming a small business owner and improving your presentation skills. Many public libraries subscribe to Lynda.com for their communities, so check to see if this valuable resource is available at yours.
In addition to resources from your public library, most state libraries provide a host of online resources that are avail-able remotely to users across the state. In my state, the Division of Library and Information Services has resources designed to help small businesses, as well as subject databases in business, demographics, communications and mass media, criminal justice, health and wellness, military and intelligence, and much more.
Finally, did you know that most libraries in public higher education systems have provisions in their online resource license agreements that allow on-site use by “walk-in” or “occasional” users? You should be able to preview the resources available at your local public institution at the library’s website. These databases, however, are not to be used in place of paid access to the research databases required to meet the needs of your clients, and many license agreements specifically prohibit use for commercial purposes. AIIP members should always use these publicly funded resources in accordance with the AIIP Code of Ethical Business Practice.
AIIP ResourcesIf you are reading this, you may already be an AIIP mem-ber. If you are not, I encourage you to become one. I recently did so, and I’ve already found the resources AIIP
I recently attended a four-hour seminar on local search hosted by the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce & Industry. It was presented by a group of Local University experts, including
representatives from Google Places and Bing Local. This seminar was designed for small and medium businesses (SMBs) to help market themselves online. I was introduced to the concept of local search several years ago by Steve Wolgemuth, owner of a local digital marketing agency, YDOP (Your Dream, Our Project), who coined the term Near-User Marketing®, and first brought a team of experts from Google to Lancaster County to intro-duce the concept to businesses in our area in 2014.
What is Local Search? Local businesses such as retailers, contractors, service providers and other typical main street-type businesses, use the Internet to attract customers from a driving distance within a limited geographic area. Here are a few examples of local searches: ‘jewelry stores Park City Mall,’ ‘art galleries Queen Street,’ or ‘pizza restaurants nearby.’ Revlocal.com states that 72% of con-sumers who performed a local search visited a store within five miles. In the past these types of businesses relied on traditional advertising vehicles such as newspapers, radio and yellow pages to attract customers. However, there has been a decline in use
Local Search: What it is and How it Works
By Rhonda Kleiman, MLS, Rhonda Kleiman Group LLC
of these mediums as shifts in consumer behavior show that people are turning more to online search. As a result, SMBs are putting more of their advertising dollars into digital market-ing, which is proving to be a more effective way to promote themselves. Search results frequently come from online direc-tories and maps. The major search engines for local search are Google My Business, Yahoo and Bing.
Mike Blumenthal, Co-Founder of Get Five Stars and Co-Founder of Local University, and Mike Ramsey, President, Nifty Marketing and Local University faculty member gave excellent insight into what makes a great website and home page for local SMBs.
• At least 50% of local search is mobile, due in large part to immediacy of need to locate these types of businesses. According to a recent study, The ROBO Economy, con-ducted by Bazaarvoice, 82% of smartphone users consult their phones on purchases they are about to make in-store and 45% read reviews before making a purchase, with scores varying by category.
• How does your site look on mobile? Make sure your phone number is visible. How does the look of your site vary by type of device, such as Android, Apple, iPad, etc.
Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels
15AIIP Connections | November 2018
• Local SMBs must think differently about their websites. It should be all about usability for your customers and not about what you think the site should be. It should be comfortable and easy to navigate.
• With Google as the home page, what matters most pre-sale are things such as driving directions, Facebook messages, contact form, and click to call. Likes don’t drive sales. The days of Google sending traffic to your website are declining as more is driven through local search. Google is com-mitting massive resources and dollars to local search.
• The navigation bar should be across top of page and should have a visible ‘contact us’ link.
• If your business serves multiple geo-graphic areas build out pages for each of them and provide content to poten-tial customers in the various markets.
• Be original. Don’t copy competitor websites.
• Be real. Use real imagery, and don’t ‘Photoshop’ images. Refresh your photos often. You need to let people know what you do on your home page.
• What experience are you using to showcase your work? Do you have videos of people working at your com-pany? Do you have photos and bios?
• Show what makes your business trustworthy by including badges from organizations you belong to, highlight-ing what awards you have won, and including testimonials, preferably in the form of customer videos.
• Optimize your listing. Add a geo-graphic reference, state what you do, and include a phone number. Make sure that every page shows up the way you want it to. For example, on your testimonial page make sure the
word ‘testimonial’ is used as a tag. Include H1 tag, that is similar to a title page tag, and H2 tags for sup-porting topics.
• Make sure your content tells the same story for your events, blog, email, products, videos, etc. Everything needs to be consistent and local.
• Include a call to action, such as free estimates, quotes, or consultations. Look at your competitor sites to see what they offer and try to differenti-ate yourself.
• Measure your success with Google Analytics, Google My Business Insights, or call tracking if it is impor-tant to your business.
Google My Business In 2012 Google introduced what was then Google + Local and was replaced by Google My Business in 2014. At the top of the search results page anywhere
from 3-10 listings, known as a ‘local pack,’ are displayed. These listings are the best matches and appear before the organic search results. You will also notice when you click on a link to a local business that a profile, including a photograph and map, may often appear to the right. This is known as the ‘knowl-edge panel.’ It appears based on search engine optimization results.
Presenters of “Grow Your Business with Google,” Allyson Wright and Marissa Nordahl, Google My Business Commu-nity and Social Media Managers, walked us through the steps to set up a business profile.
Get your business on Google Search or Google Maps• Sign up for Google My Business,
click ‘start now’ and log in through your Gmail account. If you don’t see your business listed in the dropdown menu, create your listing. If the listing you want is not owned by anyone you can claim it and enter your information. If it is already taken you will have to go through a process to request ownership.
• Enter your business information: name, address, phone number, URL, business description, and business categories.
• Verify your listing. The most common method is through the mail. Several days after signing up you will receive a postcard in the mail that contains a PIN that you will then enter to verify your account. In some cases, you will have an option to verify by either telephone or email.
Optimize your listing• Add photographs. It has been found
that business listings with photos get 42% more requests for directions.
• Read and respond to customer reviews. Google has escalated the prominence of reviews on the knowl-edge panel and has also elevated
every directory that shows reviews, according to Mike Blumenthal. Users receive notification anytime you respond to one of their reviews. Seminar presenter Mary Bowling, Co-Founder, Ignitor Digital and founding member of Local University, told the audience that 93% of consumers read local reviews and that 95% share bad customer reviews. In addi-tion, 77% of consumers believe that reviews older than 3 months old are no longer relevant.
• Use Insights, which are the analytics that show how many people find your business listing on the web (on search and maps) and what actions they take after finding it.
New features• Google Posts added to your business
listing let you share special offers and promotions.
• Q&A allows customers to ask ques-tions directly from a Google listing. This allows you to pin the most frequently asked questions and highlight the top answers. Accord-ing to Mike Blumenthal, this feature has huge reputation implications, especially for businesses with many locations, because things like cus-tomer service, for example, might not be consistent in all locations. Reviews emanate from the customer side and are crowdsourced, thus potentially opening a business up to more nega-tive comments. 11% of questions are reputation-related.
• Website Builder creates a customiz-able website using information from your business listing which is opti-mized for mobile devices. As of June 2018, Google was building 6,000 websites a day and has already cre-ated over 2 million sites.
• Menu/service editor, which is only available for specific verticals.
• Messaging allows customers to con-tact you directly from your Google listing.
• Bookings lets you take reservations.
• Small Thanks, which is available for storefronts, turns reviews into graphics.
• Notifications alerts you when custom-ers post photos or reviews on your business listing.
• Attributes allow you to give potential customers helpful information about your business. Your business cat-egory will determine what attributes are available for your business, for example, type of payments your busi-ness accepts.
While some AIIP members will not find this to be the best way to promote their own businesses, they might have clients for whom this would be benefi-cial. In addition, we are all consumers and customers of local businesses in our own cities and towns, so having a good understanding of the local search concept may be of interest.
Local University covers the basics of internet marketing and especially Local Search. It’s aimed at beginners to help them to thrive online. Look for upcom-ing events on the website and consider bringing them to your city.
Rhonda Kleiman is President of Rhonda Kleiman Group LLC in Lancaster, PA. She
Strategic Planning for Small BusinessBy Kelly Berry, ResourceAbility
Benjamin Franklin famously said, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!”
As a consultant and facilitator, I have worked with many small businesses and nonprofits in the development of a strategic plan, but it can be a challenging process for many solopre-neurs or small nonprofits. So why is it so important to have a strategic plan? And how can a business owner or nonprofit get started in the process?
Which wayIt may seem as if a small business doesn’t really need to go through the exercise of strategic planning. If your main mis-sion is clear and you are busy with customers or clients, what more is needed? You don’t have a board to report to, and you are in control of your own fate, so why bother setting aside time to craft a detailed strategic plan?
Let’s look at it this way: your business is a car and you are the driver. Forging ahead with your business without a plan is like driving your car without a destination in mind. It might be fun, and you could run into some grand adventures, but you never end up anywhere, and at each fork in the road you are picking randomly rather than with intention. So instead of going for a joyride, define what success looks like and plug it into your business GPS to pick the best route to get there.
Getting startedThe first step is to consider who should be involved in the process. If you run your own business with no employees or partners, then you can begin the planning process on your own. For a nonprofit, the process should involve the board, but also any key investors, members, or employees.
Next, set aside some uninterrupted time to work on your plan. Also consider scheduling some strategic planning check-in time regularly—every month or quarter—to assess your progress. Many of us spend all of our time working in our business when it would be better to set aside regular time to work on our business. Once you’ve created some of the key components of your strategic plan for the first time, your focus should merely be on whether there have been substan-tive enough changes to completely re-create the plan, or if you can just update what you’ve already got.
18 AIIP Connections | December 2018
Plug in your directionOnce you’ve got all the right people in the room, it’s time to do some brainstorming to settle in on a mission statement for your business, which simply put, should explain why you are in business. Not what you sell, but why you chose to do what you do—the meaning behind it. It should be really just a brief statement or sentence. For example, I worked with my local nonprofit curling club on a strategic plan, and our com-mittee came up with this mission statement: To provide an exceptional experience through the spirit of curling. My own mission statement for my consulting business is also pretty basic: Helping small businesses grow through research. Ideally, your mission statement should emphasize your “why.”
The mission sets your direction—where you want your busi-ness to be headed. You should be able to ensure any new work offered to you is true to that mission. Many times, when you are just starting out, it can be easy to agree to take on projects that aren’t a good fit for you, just to get yourself established and earn some money. The mission statement you establish for your business can help you determine if a project is the right fit for your business, or if you are diluting your brand and confusing things (for you or for your prospective customers) by taking on work that doesn’t fit your mission.
Assess your capabilitiesYour mission statement is a good starting point. Use it to set your destination into your business GPS and determine the best route to get there. Before you go much further, you need to do a self-assessment of your own capabilities. In other words, can your vehicle get you where you want to go?
The best way to perform this self-assessment is through a situation analysis; for example, a SWOT (strengths, weak-nesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis. It requires you to first look internally at your own strengths and weaknesses as they relate to your business. Then you look externally at the environment around you to determine any potential oppor-tunities or threats that could help or hurt your success. An honest assessment of each of these four components will help point your strategic plan in the right direction. It will help you capitalize on your strong points, seek ways to minimize your weaknesses, and then forge ahead to take advantage of opportunities for growth around you while protecting against threats.
To complete a quick and simple SWOT Analysis, create a 2x2 grid on a piece of paper, with each of the four areas in a box:
STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES
What do you do well? What do you need to enhance?
OPPORTUNITIES THREATS
What can you take What can you protect against? advantage of?
SWOT Analysis
Then fill each box with as many thoughts as you can come up with. Use the following prompts for each category:
• Intellectual property, patents, other technical expertise
• Brand names, image
• Location/access to customers
• Customer relationships/loyalty
• Cost advantages from partnerships, subscriptions, preferred vendor relationships
• Preferred access or exclusive access to additional assets, skillsets, vendors, pricing
• Tangible assets including capital, credit, technology, soft-ware, equipment, facility
• Other competitive advantages or R&D capabilities
Opportunities & Threats • Changes in the economy
• New technology
• Legal, political, regulatory environment
• Social/cultural/demographic shifts or trends
• Unfulfilled customer needs in the market
• Competitors leaving or joining the market
• New customer types added to the market with different needs
• Changes in customer tastes
• Emergence of substitute products
• Potential changes in vendor or supplier pricing
19AIIP Connections | November 2018
This process of self-assessment will drive your strategic plan-ning goals forward. It can help you prioritize areas that need attention and opportunities that should be seized.
Core valuesNow that you have a clear mission and a good idea of your own strengths (and weaknesses) and see some potential opportunities in the marketplace, you need to identify core values.
What does your small business or nonprofit stand for? The mission should drive your core values, and then in turn, those core values should drive your strategic plan to the next step.
In the case of our local curling club, we selected three key values that club members felt were the most important: positive curling experience, shared commitment, and sustain-able growth. How did we come up with these three? It took several brainstorming sessions and a whole lot of sticky notes!
The committee members spent an hour writing down values we each thought were important for the club. Then, we grouped them into general categories in order to come up with our broad values. Finally, we prioritized what we thought were the three most important values to our club.
Your values can help drive your strategic planning goals, which are developed during the next step in the process. For the curling club, we came up with some specific outcomes we’d like to see for our club, and then categorized them into a handful of key goal categories to help us start to assign responsibility and accountability to members.
To do this, we once again broke out the sticky notes and did some brainstorming to think of all of the great outcomes we’d like to see for the club. From there, we tried to focus on how this list of outcomes might be grouped into a small number of categories. We finally settled on five key goal categories: communication, volunteer management, member retention, member recruitment, and the future of the facility. Each one of these goal categories stayed true to our mission and values. But each focused on a different area that we felt needed more attention than it had been getting in the past.
Now, think about your own business. What are the outcomes you would like to see? If you were as hugely successful as you’d like to be, what would that look like? What services are you offering? Who are your customers? What is your service area? Can you set some broad goal categories—whether by customer type, service, or component of your business (finan-cial planning, marketing)?
Break it down into stepsThe next step is to move from the broad to the specific, as illustrated in our strategic planning pyramid above. Your general goal categories will help drive more specific strategies to meet each goal. For example, if you set a goal to increase your visibility in your town, then a strategy might be to attend Chamber of Commerce events that you haven’t attended before. Once you have created a few strategies for each goal category, give some thought to how you will measure success. What are some indicators that you have successfully com-pleted these strategies?
Be realistic with your indicators. For example, if you set a goal of increased visibility and a strategy of attending Chamber of Commerce events, a key indicator of success would be the number of events you attended as compared to last year, quarter, or month. however, even if you know that your ulti-mate goal is to bring in new business, setting a revenue figure or a number of new customers as a success indicator for each event you attend is too ambitious and might encourage you not to go at all. Just showing up might be how you measure success. Or, you might make introducing yourself to three new people at the next event your indicator.
The success of your strategic plan is based on those indica-tors. If you can continue to set goals, establish strategies for meeting them, and come up with indicators to measure your progress, then you are on the road that leads to a successful business.
One of the AIIP membership benefits I value the most is AIIP-L, our always-active
members-only discussion list. A recent conversation—started over a weekend, of course—was what we do when we find an interesting article over the weekend that we think a client would like to see. Do we fire off an email right then, or wait until Monday morning?
As is often the case with infopreneurs, there were as many opinions as there were discussion participants. The conversation brought up a number of issues around client focus, client management and work-life balance, including:
• If I send the email on the weekend, it will get lost in all the other mail that arrives after close of business on Friday
• The client will think I am accessible on the weekend, jeopardizing my ability to maintain a healthy bound-ary between my work and the rest of my life
• If I don’t get the note out immedi-ately, I will lose interest with it by the start of the work week and won’t send it at all
• If I postpone sending the email, it will stay in my thoughts and interfere with a relaxing weekend
As I thought through these concerns, I realized that my own response to this question has changed dramatically over the years, based on both my client base and my approach to life. When I launched my business, it absorbed all my energy and focus. Sure, my only client was my last employer, but I spent all day in my office building my network, writing articles, lining up local speaking engagements, and volunteering with AIIP. In fact, I’d often wander back to my office after dinner, ostensibly to check email one last time, but I often wouldn’t emerge again until hours later, caught up in an email discussion or an interesting article.
Eventually, I realized that my business wasn’t benefitting when I was stressed and burned out. I decided to set firm office hours and I turned my computer off at the end of the work day to
make it less enticing during off hours. I would occasionally work on the week-end but would consciously set a cap on how long I would spend in the office. While I would hardly call this a 9-to-5 schedule—it was often more like 7:30am to 6:30pm—I had rediscovered my evenings and weekends.
Fast-forward a decade and a new thought occurred to me. One of the biggest benefits of being self-employed is the ability to decide what kinds of clients to attract and therefor what kinds of hours I need to keep. If I focused on getting clients with short deadlines, who needed to reach me on a moment’s notice, or who would tie up all of my available hours for long stretches of time, I would be as tied to my desk as I would have been as some-one else’s employee. Instead, I focused on finding clients with projects with enough flexibility that I could take time off during the week to handle elder-care responsibilities, volunteer at a local non-profit, or take a hike in the moun-tains. Sure, that meant that I would be back in the office on the weekends, just like the bad old days when I felt like I never had a life. The difference
Coach’s Corner
by Mary Ellen Bates, Bates Information Services
Are You 9-to-5 or 24/7?
21AIIP Connections | November 2018
Coach’s Corneris that I have taken a more expansive view of my available time. Instead of having work hours and off hours, I just have weekly hours, which I can spend any way that works for me. Some-where in those seven days of 24 hours each, I need to fit in 40 or 50 hours of work. The rest of the time is mine to do with as I want, and whether that falls on a weekday or weekend doesn’t bother me as much.
If, during my off-hours reading, I see something I’d like to pass along to a client or incorporate into a presenta-tion I’m working on, I will pause to capture my thoughts. I might email myself a pointer to the article with a few sentences about what I thought was notable or with whom I might share it. I keep a few index cards with me wherever I am, in case the easiest way to capture a thought is to just jot it down. And yes, I have even stepped off a treadmill mid-session to text myself an idea sparked by the podcast I was listening to. When I get back to the office and revisit my note,in what-
ever format and medium it took, I have enough clues to repeat my thought process and finish the idea. I don’t always have the same sense of ah-ha; the passage of time helps me weed out the inspirations that are not ready for prime time.
Getting back to the discussion on AIIP-L about whether to send an email to a client on the weekend, here is how I would address the concerns raised.
• I pause to capture my thoughts as soon as I can in whatever format is most convenient; I don’t want to try to hold onto a thought until Monday morning.
• If it takes under five minutes to compose an email to complete the thought, I put myself in work mode and just write it up.
• If I do decide to send an email to a client over the weekend, I delay the delivery until at least mid-morning on Monday, to ensure it isn’t lost in the
weekend’s incoming email and to mask the fact that I was working on the weekend. Just as I don’t brag to my cli-ents that I am taking a work day off for a beekeeping event, I don’t highlight the weekends I spend in the office.
• I accept that, when I revisit my inspi-ration during work hours, I may not feel as excited about it as I did initially, and will decide to just drop the idea. That’s OK too.
Do you take a 9-to-5 approach to your work week or are you 24/7? Join the discussion on AIIP-L and let me know.
Mary Ellen Bates has
been an infopreneur
since 1991. In addi-
tion to her business
research and analysis
services, she offers
strategic coaching to
new and long-time
solopreneurs. See more at Reluctant-Entrepreneur.com or email her at
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