I recently blogged about the movement by organizations toward a new CXO position: Chief Customer Officer.

As a consultant, you need to be aware of this new role in organizations for several reasons:

• Increase your value to your clients: if you see an organization that is suffering from customer churn and wants to do something about, you can raise the idea of adding a CCO to the org chart.  You will be sharing a leading edge idea and can refer them to resources such as the CCO Council for more information about how and when to think about such a move.

• Increase your relevancy to your clients: if you begin work with a client who does have a CCO in place, that says oodles about their strategy as it pertains to customer relationships.  You should make sure to reflect that in your discovery conversations with them as well as in any recom- mendations you make.  To not consider the implications on customers and to not include the CCO in discussions about any changes you want to make to marketing processes, corporate communication, etc. would be a huge miss in such situations.

• Expand your target audience: think about how the services you provide may support the efforts of a CCO, especially when it comes to measuring results.  CCOs are under huge pressure to provide metrics for measuring the impact of their efforts and could use your help!

For more information about the role of CCOs, explore the CCO Council site.  There are many tools there to help determine whether the time is right for an organization to create a CCO role and the success factors for doing so.

Please share any insights you have about this role and what experiences you/your customers may have.

By: Jen Berkley Jackson

Years ago, if you were in an audit, you were obligated to produce original receipts.  If you didn’t have original receipts, you lost the deductions.

Now that we are in the electronic age, the IRS recognizes the desire to go paperless.  Therefore, the IRS now accepts legible and readable copies of your original receipts.

The IRS has a Revenue Procedure Code 97-22 that provides guidance to taxpayers for maintaining books and records by using an electronic storage system.  Records maintained electronically must meet these requirements:

• Taxpayers can scan complete documents and store them electronically
• The taxpayer must ensure the integrity and reliability of the storage system
• The taxpayer must be able to reproduce legible and readable hardcopies
• All documents be accessible electronically
• The taxpayer is responsible for making any backups of the data either electronically or hardcopies offsite

If the taxpayer meets the requirements of this procedure code, the electronic storage of source documents will be treated in compliance with the recordkeeping requirements.  After the taxpayer has tested the electronic storage system and confirmed that readable hardcopies can be reproduced, the original receipt may be disposed.

Note:  If the taxpayer’s records are available only by electronic means and he/she fails to meet the requirements of this procedure, the taxpayer may be subject to applicable penalties.

Here are some practical ideas of how to organize scanned receipts:

Choose the format of your reports:  PDF, Excel, Word, HTML, Digital Images

Choose the way your reports are sorted:  By Date, By Amount, By Vendor, By Payment Type, By Tax Category

Questions regarding this procedure can be directed to the Office of the Assistant Commissioner at 202-622-5480.

Happy scanning!

By: Renee Daggett

Do you want your message to spread far and wide – without a whole lot of marketing effort on your part?

It sounds like a dream come true – the dream of going viral. Getting hundreds and thousands of clicks and opt-ins for your “thing” and having other people pass it along for you!

When your free gift goes viral, you get the credibility boost of having other people talk about it instead of you having to make all the marketing noise for yourself… which gets to be a little huffy and puffy at times.

The question is, how to make a free gift that’s hot, without sounding like you’re full of hot air?

I surprised myself last month when my new free gift went viral. Since I’m filled with curiosity, I wanted to know why… so I deconstructed the experience, looking for the lessons.

I asked some of the people who helped me go viral what was so attractive to them… and this is what I learned:

There’s a set of 7 strategies that I combined to go viral. Read on to see what they are and how they worked:

• Remarkable, cool technology

If you want to go viral, make a gift worth talking about. You can go about this in several ways – and the way I did was to make my gift with some very cool, brand-new technology. It’s innovative and has the “have you SEEN this?” factor that gets people talking! I created my gift as an iBook – an interactive eBook – which is very cool and new.

• Getting there first during that cutting edge moment

New technologies are only new for a short time… because before long, everyone decides to jump on the bandwagon and try them. To harness their power and go viral with them, you’ll want do them first before everyone’s using that technology and it becomes “normal”. There’s a very short moment in time where the new thing can be cutting-edge and that’s when you want to do it. You’ve got to do it before everyone else muddies the waters.

• A message I was proud of and that served my clients

To get your message out there, it needs to be something that you’re proud of. You want to feel like the message you’re spreading is your great work – that you’ve given it your all. That way, your energy will be aligned behind getting that message out and people will get the best sneaky-peek at your work possible.

Also, you want your gift to be truly useful to your clients and your tribe so that they’ll have a really excellent experience with it to talk about.

• Packaging your message in a beautiful, engaging, entertaining, & fun way

The “wrapping” of your gift can add that boost of specialness that helps get it talked about.

Beautiful: people love to share beautiful things. And, have you noticed that the “bar of beauty” has been raised lately? That things online keep getting prettier and prettier? You’ll want your stuff to be gorgeous to stay up-to-date.

Engaging: You want people to get absorbed in your gift. To get involved with it, to learn from it and to do the exercises. Putting the gift together in a certain way (like in an iBook) can make that happen.

Entertaining & Fun: People don’t want to learn from dry, boring eBooks anymore – they like videos that are entertaining, too. I embedded videos directly into my iBook to make the whole experience more fun.

• When you see your opportunity, move fast.

Waiting is not going to do you any favors when it comes to going viral. You want to move quickly to take advantage of the new technology. Plus, moving fast again builds up energy behind your gift so that it can spread more quickly.

• If you’re going to go viral, it helps to start in a bigger pond.

Sure, sending a new free gift out to your existing list and getting your affiliates to promote you helps get the buzz started – but what if you started in a bigger place? Like in a bookstore, or featured on a hot website? My iBook is published in the iTunes Bookstore, which has brought me all kinds of great traffic – because they have a wider reach than I do from the start. Where can you get outside of your circle?

• Become a published author. People dig it!

When I published my iBook in the iTunes Bookstore, I posted a little casual note to my Facebook wall. I was shocked at the response – dozens upon dozens of people liked it and commented on it. My conclusion is that publishing a book is a big deal, and people like to make a big deal about it. The iBook is an easy way to get published without printing hundreds of hard copies of your book!

These are the 7 strategies I used to create my free gift that went viral. How can you use these ideas to get more reach and create more buzz about your gift?

You can hear more about all the details in my training call, “How I Went Viral With My Free Gift and You Can, Too!”, here: http://www.brandstyledesign.com/ebook-class

By: Erin Ferree

As a WordPress web site developer, I hear so many clients say they want to use a free theme because they don’t want to spend money when you can get one for free.  I then explain why a premium theme is a good investment if you believe in your business and Internet success. Premium themes means paid for.  The premium theme companies continue to support their theme by offering updates for new WordPress versions and security fixes.  Most offer technical support for the annual fee.

WordPress themes developed by premium theme framework companies sell a core “parent” theme with “child” themes.  The developement of theme frameworks has been around for about 2 years but with the acceleration of technological changes and swift changes in social media marketing the need for a more flexible and expedient software platform is critical to stay competitive.  In my last post I discussed web sites for mobile and using a good solid premium theme framework can help you move into the mobile Internet more easily.

Premium theme framework companies provide a family of themes.  There is one core theme known as the parent theme.  This theme does not include any styling of colors page layout.  It strictly acts as the middleman between WordPress application software and the child theme.  The child theme has all the styling that you see on the front end (what you see when you look at the web site in your browser or mobile browser).  When WordPress has an update, the theme framework companies have already been testing the beta version of WordPress to make sure their framework themes will function properly.  They update the parent theme to work efficiently and correctly and then the same time a new version of WordPress is released a new version of the parent theme is released.  This ensures that you can update your WordPress site to the new version without fear of your theme not working.

Another differentiating factor in theme framework companies is the ease at which you can build custom web sites.  They offer tools that simplify the build process which saves time and money.

If you use one of these products for your site your theme you can be changed to a new child theme by the same company without a lot of work. The new child theme for instance could be one that is coded with responsive design to easily create a mobile web site.

The theme framework I use is Genesis by StudioPress. This WIC blog theme you are reading was reworked last year by me to use the Prose child theme from StudioPress. StudioPress has been the leader in reworking and building new child themes that incorporate responsive design coding for mobile. This WIC blog theme was built before responsive design was invented but if WIC were to upgrade this theme to the new Prose theme which incorporates responsive design it would only take about 2 hours to transfer.

I believe having a team of coders who understand WordPress working for me to keep my theme up to date with new WordPress changes is well worth the money I spent on my theme framework.

Do you have a free theme or do you have a premium theme on your WordPress site and if so who is your theme company?  Share your thoughts with a comment below.

By: Lou Anne McKeefery

Imagine that you are at a party explaining your consulting business to someone who has never heard of your business before. Think about what they might ask you. You would probably be asked about what your product or service did and the size or your business. There might be some questions about how your product or service serves your customers. Since this person at the party is new to hearing about your business, you’d most likely want to present your information in a way that would be easy to understand and you’d also want to explain how your product or service adds value to a potential customer.

By: Sherry Prescott

Have you looked at your web site on you tablet or mobile phone and wondered how you could get it to display differently so it was easier to use by the visitor?  Are you finding your analytics reports showing an increase in web traffic via mobile but your bounce rate is higher than non mobile traffic? You’re not alone and it’s likely one of the next requirements that web designers are going to be asked to include in building or fixing a web site is including a mobile version.

Today’s mobile themes are now designed in a process called “responsive design”.  Responsive design uses a css technique called media queries.  Media queries scale an image and content block by a percentage of the height and width rather than a fixed size. This allows the same web site to automatically scale to display correctly on the many different size monitors and devices such as smart phone and tablet.  This means one set of coding instructions works for all size monitors and mobile devices.  That’s today and tomorrow’s  web site software technology.

In the past, designers built mobile sites using plugins.  The plugins for mobile require you to build a different theme for your different mobile devices which can be a bit time consuming. One of the better plugins is by Ithemes called Mobile. To use this plugin to build a mobile site, you build different themes for the different sized devices and the plugin detects the device accessing the web site and displays the correctly sized theme. The theme is designed to show your sidebars or not to show your sidebars and just where to display your images and links relative to the content text.  You can see that to implement mobile in this way is rather time consuming.

A better solution is to upgrade your web site theme to one that uses responsive design so you are ready to compete in the next wave in technology, the wave of the mobile platform of smart phones, tablets and ____ you fill in the blank because tomorrow will offer us something new.

My next post will discuss the concept of premium theme frameworks and why they are a cost savings to you even though they are not a free theme.

By: Lou Anne McKeefery

By: Jan Richards

I’m taking a stand… with a big, bold thumbs-down on boring ebooks and blah-blah gifts. 

You know the ones I’m talking about…

The ebook that you open, take one look at and sigh. You were so excited to download this free “amazing” thing and then when you got it, you felt let-down. Deflated!

Because this ebook turns out to be page after page of dull and droning text slapped into Microsoft Word and then made into a PDF.

Perhaps there’s an image or two sprinkled in, but it’s just not enough to make slogging through the content feel fun.

Maybe you manage to read a page or two, or half-heartedly skim through it.

Then you leave it cluttering up your desktop, thinking, “one day, I’ll be more into this…”

Until that fateful desktop-cleaning day, when you finally drag this poor unread ebook over to your trash.

Don’t let that poor, unread ebook be YOUR ebook.

You’ve invested your time, soul and brains into creating some hot (dare I say sexy, even) thought leadership.

Why not go those extra inches towards the truly great and create an eBook that’s worth reading?

That way, your audience will download your eBook and get wrapped up in it. They’ll devour every word that you so lovingly wrote. They’ll do the exercises you created.

And, then the very best thing of all will happen…

They’ll learn from you.

This moment of learning takes what has only been stories and social proof for them and transforms it into personal experience. They get to really benefit from your work and to get a glimpse into what you offer in a way that has a huge impact on their lives, businesses or even both all at once.

Personal experience will take your marketing beyond being just marketing into being valuable and valued by your subscribers and readers.

How to get a thumbs-up for your excellent eBook

1. Create your eBook to generously teach your readers something. Get them some results!

2. Follow this checklist to make sure your eBook’s up to par: http://www.brandstyledesign.com/?p=1143

3. Integrate activities, questions, photos, videos, slide shows and image libraries into your Interactive eBook to make it more engaging and interesting!

Want more? Come to my free call on 3/14:  http://www.brandstyledesign.com/ebook-class

By: Erin Ferree

You’re throwing your event to do all sorts of very exciting things for your business, right?

You want to increase your credibility, raise your visibility, get some industry attention, grow your list, position yourself as an expert, create a memorable and fabulous experience for your clients, attract new clients, build buzz, and oh-so-very-much more.

Oh, and of course, we all know that you’re hosting this event for one big reason – to make your offer and profit from it!

Guess how you can make all of these very exciting things happen?

That’s right, through your event brand!

The key to getting the results and profitability you want from your event brand is to go about designing your brand strategically.

You can’t just create some pretty pictures for your event and expect that you’ll get the full benefit you could from a planned-out event brand.

These are the first 3 secret strategies that you need to plan before you design anything for your event:

1. What’s the feeling you want to create in your event?

From the first time your audience hears about your event, you want them to begin feeling a certain way about your event.

Maybe you want them to feel excited and like they’re at a party. Perhaps you want them to experience your expertise on a deeper level. Or you could be going into this event to create an aura of respect and credibility for you.

Well, your designs are your big chance to start creating the feeling you want around your event.

There’s a reason that “look and feel” is another way of saying “design”.

It’s because your audience will feel a certain bundle of emotions the instant they look at your designs.

Decide how you want them to feel first. Then, design your materials to exude that feeling.

2. What’s the impression you want to make?

You’re going to be making a big splash with your event – with your newsletter subscribers, clients, attendees, your speakers, your competition, and of course, everybody in the universe who’s on Facebook.

And here’s the thing – you get to design the impression that you’re making.

If you want to make an ultra-professional impression, showing you’ve “got this all together”, you just have to put the pieces in place to make sure that your event brand looks, sounds and is very well-put-together. That things are consistent and every detail has been attended to.

If you want your event brand to make a more “real”, down-to-earth or authentic impression,  then you have more room for flexibility.  You can go with the flow a bit more.

The impression that you make, though, will filter directly into strategic secret #3, so choose wisely!

3. What’s the value of your offer?

Chances are, you’re making an offer to your attendees to continue working with you. In fact, your event’s probably designed around that offer.

You want your event brand to position that offer in a way that creates value and justifies the price – and even makes it a no-brainer.

The quality of your event brand has to be in alignment with the price and package you’re offering from the stage.

Let’s look at a branding scenario where that alignment’s not happening:

If you’re offering a high-end mastermind package, and your signup forms are cheapie black-and-white copies on flimsy paper held together with a bent-up staple.

Attendees make up their minds about what that offer is worth to them before they even flip to the pricing page – and then nearly fall out of their chairs when it’s a five-figure investment.

The packaging of the offer isn’t in alignment with the pricing.

The same can be said of every piece of your event branding strategy – from the sign-up website, to the posters or banners on-site, to the quality of your PowerPoint slides and even your handouts.

If your offer is high-end, then your event brand has to be high-end as well.

Taking the time to strategize on these event branding secrets will pay off!

By: Erin Ferree

Basic Rules: Here are some basic rules you need to know to ensure that all your entertainment expenses are deductible:

1. Do you have an ordinary and necessary business reason for the entertainment?
2. Did you have a quiet business discussion before, during or after the event? No discussion, no deduction!  You’ll need to explain why the entertainment would benefit your business in the future.
3. The discussion must be conducted in a business setting that allows an active business discussion.  This could be a restaurant, for example.  If the main entertainment is done in a non-business setting such as a bar with loud music or a cocktail party, you must speak about business before or after the event in a business setting.
4. Do you have proof?  Keep documentation of who, what, where, why and how much.  This documentation must be written within one week of the meeting.

Reasonable, Lavish, and Extravagant: So does the entertainment need to be reasonable?  Can you get in trouble if the entertainment is lavish and extravagant?  Actually, no.  The only rule is that it is must be an ordinary and necessary expense.  There are no parameters on how much you can or cannot spend.  In fact, a self-employed business person spent over $60,000 on entertainment (rock concerts).  His entertainment expense was disallowed – not because of the amount – but because he did not have documentation to support the deduction.

The IRS looks at how much business was generated as a result of the entertainment. There is no rule regarding the number of times you may entertain a potential client, but a wise business person would limit the frequency within reason.  But then again, what is reasonable?  Taking your spouse out on a date once a month would not qualify.  However, you could consider taking your mother out if she is a potential client/customer who will buy services or products from you – nothing wrong with that!

50% vs. 100% Deductible: Almost all entertainment is deductible at 50%, meaning that if you spend $500, you receive only a $250 deduction.  Here’s the good news – any entertainment that revolves around a sporting event is deductible 100% ; that includes any ticket  or sports event, only if:

• It is organized for the primary purpose of benefiting a 501(c)3 charity
• It donates all the net proceeds to a 501(c)3 charity
• It uses volunteers to put on the event

So a PGA tour event would be 100% deductible because they donate the net proceeds to charity, but a ticket to a college or high school sports event does not qualify since that usually goes toward the coaches’ pay.  Other events that may qualify for a 100% deductible are tennis, skeet shoots, ski tournaments and fishing tournaments, just to name a few.

Another thing to keep in mind is that generally, you will get a better deduction if you list an expense to a sporting event as a business deduction rather than a charitable donation.  For the contribution to a charity, you can deduct only the amount that exceeds the benefit you received from the item (the value of the entertainment).

Additional 100% deductible entertainment expenses are employee holiday parties, annual picnics or summer outings.  For example, a service corporation rented a powerboat and was able to deduct 100% of the $41,000 expense since it did not discriminate between the owners and employees and it was deemed ordinary and necessary.

*Note:  Create two accounts in your books – one for 50% and the other for 100% deducible entertainment.

Be strategic:  Plan a business meeting for a substantial amount of time (say two hours) and then go skiing.  You cannot deduct your personal skiing with your family (unless your spouse is active in the business), but you can deduct the entertainment with people who you plan to do business with.  After skiing, resume your meeting for another two hours and one minute.

Happy Entertaining!

By: Renee Daggett