Trade your shoebox full of receipts for Shoeboxed

With the annual tax return ritual in the U.S. just a few months away now (gah!), it seems the right time to review Shoeboxed, a new receipt-management service.

If you tend to gather receipts in large piles, or aren’t a fan of scanning them (or do and then find it difficult to organize the scanned documents), Shoeboxed may be particularly helpful to you. It presents itself as the alternative to those two approaches.

Shoeboxed works like this:

1. You create an account via their website.
2. You mail Shoeboxed your printed receipts and email them your digital receipts.
3. They scan into digital format and categorize them.
4. You go online to sort by vendor name, date or amount.
5. You export your receipts to Excel, Quicken, PDF, or CSV if you wish.
6. You can download copies of any receipts you need for IRS, store returns, proof of purchase, etc.

View the 5-minute Shoeboxed demo video for more information (same page has customer testimonials and screenshots of the website interface you’d use).

It does seem Shoeboxed has tried to be thoughtful about security and privacy, including how they minimize who sees your receipts and how they maintain online security. Shoeboxed pricing plans run from free to $49.95/month U.S., depending on usage needs.

My sense of Shoeboxed is that it’s well thought through and the interface is designed for ease of use. But I can’t help but wonder what happens if the young guys who founded it move on to something else? I suppose you can download a comprehensive digital file for safe-keeping.

If you’ve tried Shoeboxed, I’d love to hear your thoughts about it. And by the way, I’m not a Shoeboxed affiliate nor do I gain if you try it.

When marketing ADR, focus on benefits, not features

Would you choose a hospital because its surgical suite features “non-halogen lighting for accurate color rendering”?

I’ve written before about the value of selling benefits instead of features when marketing mediation and other ADR services.

Today I came across a great example of an ad written about features and written from the orientation of a surgeon instead of from the patient. Here’s an excerpt:

These [surgical] suites will offer:

• In excess of 600 square feet; 700+ square feet for robotic and cardiac suites.
• Non-halogen lighting for accurate color rendering.
• Three flat-panel monitors for x-ray images received via electronic PACSA for on-the-spot consultations.
• Individual sound systems and no in-room paging.

Sure, I can extrapolate what some of it might mean for me as the prospective patient, but the point is that I shouldn’t have to. Spell it out for me instead of making me guess. I may not take the time to guess or I may guess wrong.

Why should I care about the sound system in a room where I’m under anesthesia? Why should I care about accurate color rendering at all?

Is all the jargon meant to impress me? I don’t want to be impressed so much as I want to be told why I should care and how the electronic PACSA capability sets them apart from any other hospital that does similar surgeries.

When you talk to prospective mediation clients, or network at business events, or write copy for your print and online marketing materials, do you tell them why they should care? Do you write from where they sit or from the mediator’s (surgeon’s) chair?

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MediatorTech.com.

SOBCon 2009 for ADR bloggers and would-be bloggers

SOBCon, the biz school for bloggers, has announced its 2009 conference dates: May 1-3 in Chicago.

I’m a huge fan of SOBCon – short for Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference – and have attended each year since its creation. It’s been one of those rare conferences that was worth every penny of my registration fee and every second of my time.

SOBCon is for you if:

• You blog and want to learn how to get better at it.
• You blog and want to increase the ROI on your time and energy.
• You’re thinking about blogging for business and want to ramp up your readiness to start.
• You like hanging out with and learning from other small business owners from around the world in an informal and human-scale environment.

Need even more reasons? Gah! You’re a tough nut to crack. Well, ok. See my 10 reasons for attending SOBCon 08.

And believe it or not, registration for SOBCon 09 is already open. There’s a before-the-end-of-2008 special rate and since they limit attendance number, it’s smart to consider holding your space now. This is a popular conference with many folks returning for more.

Chicago’s lovely in May. And you couldn’t find a better group of folks to hang with and learn from.

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MediatorTech.com.

All aflitter about twitter: answers to your social media questions

Judging by the number of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and other social networking questions I’m receiving from Mediator Tech readers, it sounds like online networking is on your mind. Here are the answers to the questions I’m asked most frequently, followed by additional resources to help you learn more.

What social networking tools do you use?
I primarily use Twitter and LinkedIn, though I keep a Facebook profile too. Why the first two? They’re the spaces my market hangs out in, I find their annoyance factor pretty low, I have fun with them, and I learn something when I’m hanging out in them.

What social networking tools should mediators use?
It’s not for me to say. The right social networking sites for you will be determined by what you want to achieve, where your target market hangs out, and how you like to interact with the web. I recommend getting clear on your goals for social networking (help on this below), picking one or two social networks, and experimenting over a period of 90 days.

How do I get the most out of social networking?
What you get out of social networking is in direct proportion to how much you put in. The more of a resource and participant you are, the greater the outcomes for you, generally (assuming you’ve invested the time to learn how to use it well).

Do people who use social networks online have lives? They seem to have way too much time on their hands.
Yes, we have lives. Most of us, I hope. I can’t speak for others, but I am judicious in how much time I spend and very clear what I want to accomplish when I am on Twitter and LinkedIn. Except when I’m eating lunch and want to be entertained, when I do act like I’ve got more time on my hands than I really do!

How do I get started?
Good that you asked. Here are some resources to guide and inform you. And if you have other questions, be sure to leave a comment on this post and I’ll follow up with some thoughts in reply.

Recap of select social media articles here at Mediator Tech

• Twitter 101 for mediators (be sure to scroll down to see the resources list below the video)
• Build a business network with LinkedIn
• Networking online: using LinkedIn to make connections with clients
• Social media: join the shift from monologue to dialogue
• Micro-blogging goes mainstream says Wall Street Journal
• Blog commenting as a mediator networking activity
• 4 reasons online networking is valuable for mediators even if your market is local

New Twitter and social media resources elsewhere

If you take the Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace or other social media plunge (go ahead, pick one and just try it out), check out these tools and pieces of wisdom:

• Twitter and personal branding: The BIG mistake I see people make every single day – Superb advice from marketing thought-leader David Meerman Scott.
• Twitter alerts – TweetBeep, a useful tool for tracking Twitter conversations you’re interested in.
• How I use Twitter at volume – Chris Brogan answers the Twitter question everyone asks eventually.
• How not to be a jerk in Facebook – more smartness from Chris Brogan.
• Twitter, the soundtrack – Smart and funny list of music inspired by and for Twitter use from my friend Terry Starbucker.

Happy tweets,

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MediatorTech.com.

6 good reasons mediation marketers should skip the brochure

I’ve just put up a new reader-only resource for those of you who’ve purchased my book, Making Mediation Your Day Job: How to Market Your ADR Business Using Mediation Principles You Already Know.

Reader-only resources are a special thank you for those of you who’ve bought the book and supplement some of the ideas discussed in its pages.

Here’s an excerpt of the new article:

Before you print up more or new brochures for your mediation marketing, consider the waste of most brochures:
 

• Brochures are static. They capture you for a moment in time only.
• If you’re new in the mediation business, the likelihood’s pretty high that your print materials will be out of date within 6 months. That’s because you’ll refine the way you describe what you do as you hone your practice and your marketing.
• Brochures tend to be generalist, trying to say everything to everyone, so you can use them for multiple purposes. If you’ve been a reader of Mediator Tech for 6 months or more, you know I believe that trying to be everything to everyone with a broad generalist market is the kiss of death for too many mediators.
• Brochures eat trees. At a time of growing interest in minimizing the environmental consequences of excessive paper use, more and more of us are printing only when we know the resource will serve someone effectively.
• Done well, brochures are not inexpensive. Paying for quality graphic design, quality printing, and perhaps even quality copywriting can add up quickly. The ROI with brochures is unclear enough to suggest your money may be better spent elsewhere.
• Done poorly, brochures do more to harm your ADR business than help it. Designing them yourself with stock logo and printing them on your home printer can convey an unprofessional image you don’t intend.

I usually advise mediators to forget printing brochures and take an alternative, much more effective marketing materials path instead.

Read the rest of the article at Forget the Brochure and Use Customized Resources Instead. You’ll need to own the book to gain access.

Odds and Ends

For those of you interested in joining one of my workshops or seeing me speak, I’ve got several gigs coming up around the country in the next month:

• Making Mediation Your Day Job, Maine Association of Mediators Annual Meeting, Augusta, ME, November 19
• The Sustainable ADR Career: What Mediators Can Learn From Hybrid Cars, Southeastern Mediators Summit keynote address, Nashville, TN, December 1
• Marketing Your Mediation Practice: Craft Your Plan for the Next 90 Days, Southeastern Mediators Summit 2-day workshop, Nashville, TN, December 2-3
• Client Relationship Management: How to Track, Groom and Grow Your Client Base, New England ACR Annual Conference, Shrewsbury, MA, December 11

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MediatorTech.com.

Creativity, marketing, and playing like a child

Two videos crossed my path today within 30 seconds of each other. Though they come from different sources, the link between the two is perfect.

While you watch the first, ask yourself, How would I approach my mediation marketing if I thought like this guy?

While you watch the second, ask yourself, What if I played with my mediation marketing idea-generating like a child plays?

One Day Like This

Tim Brown: The Powerful Link between Creativity and Play

[Obligatory note: If you can't see one or both of the videos in your email or feed reader, click on the post title to head straight to the page and you'll find them there. Some feed readers and email software don't translate the video embed code well.]

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MediatorTech.com.

Top-notch conflict resolution blogs written for public consumption

A mediator recently asked me for examples of top-notch conflict resolution blogs written for prospective clients. Absolutely terrific question and deserving of a thoughtful answer.

There are a number of excellent mediation and ADR blogs now, of course, and I link to and reference many of them regularly in my posts here at Mediator Tech. But there are far fewer that focus exclusively and in a very focused way on the public market (i.e., not all or in part for fellow attorneys, mediators, arbitrators) many mediators are trying to reach.

What makes a top-notch conflict resolution blog for the public market

The blogs that I’m naming here have a number of characteristics in common:

• They are clear about the audience for whom they’re writing.
• They stay on message.
• They have content that’s substantive and speaks to their audience’s questions and interests, not content that’s more of interest to mediators and lawyers than to the lay person.
• They have a unique voice. You can tell there’s a person behind the blog and can feel like you get to know them a bit.
• The focus of the content is on the prospective client, not on the mediator-blogger’s brilliance.
• They post regularly enough to stay relevant and are active at present, meaning they’ve had new posts within the last 30 days.
• The writing is competent and professional.

5 top-notch ADR blogs for the public market

1. Resolving Conflict in Teams – Guy Harris does a great deal right with his blog. His intended audience can’t be missed because it’s the title of his blog. His posts consistently offer genuinely good and interesting content for his audience and he stays on topic – his readers know what to expect from him and they get it. He writes regularly enough to stay in people’s minds. And the blog’s layout is clean and navigable (I note he uses WordPress, which I consider the best of the blog software options).
2. Campus-ADR Tech Blog – ACR just awarded Bill Warters the 2008 William Kriedler Award for Distinguished Service to the Field of Conflict Resolution and when you visit his blog, you begin to understand why. Bill’s blog is one of the few that’s stood the test of time – just take a look at that archives list. He’s relentless about staying on topic and he knows his audience extraordinarily well (and as someone who’s been in higher ed as both a professor and a dean, I can say that with some authority). Bill has a knack for finding cool stuff that makes his readers want to stay subscribed.
3. Colorado Family Solutions Center – This blog’s audience and focus is crystal clear in 10 seconds. If I were a divorcing parent looking for a mediator who could help me navigate co-parenting, parenting plans, and negotiating child-rearing issues with my soon-to-be ex, I’d feel like I’d come home when I landed at this blog. Posts provide careful and creative details on the kinds of topics divorcing and divorced parents care about because they’re dealing with them every single day.
4. Pace and Kyeli: Authentic Communication – This blog has a unique design and tone that set it distinctly apart, and the authors don’t bland-ify themselves to try to speak to everyone. When you read Pace and Kyeli’s posts, it’s easy to see that they write in a way that conveys real consonance with their “authentic communication” tagline. They speak with passion about what they believe and honestly about their own attempts to live those beliefs.
5. Real Divorce Mediation – Nancy Hudgins’ and Debra Synovec’s blog is shiny new and it’s joined the blogosphere with a bang. Nancy and Debra are abundantly clear about their intended audience and the blog’s content echoes that clarity beautifully. Their posts so far provide a nice balance of resource and advice and I can imagine prospective clients getting a very good scan of what it would be like to work with either of them.

The limits of this list

I hesitated before sharing this list, because I know, inevitably, I will have missed some blogs that are equally due celebration but that I don’t know about yet or don’t have the time to follow carefully. And the list is English language-oriented because both my German and Spanish are just rusty enough to make discernment difficult in those languages.

Kudos to those who write these blogs for creating sites that do a terrific job of conveying their styles, competence and knowledge for clients. Do you know of a conflict resolution blog that’s well done for the public market? Please share it in the comments!

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MediatorTech.com.