Lately, I’ve been reminded that business Web sites often come in one of two flavors.  Perhaps you can recognize them:

1. What we do – These are sites that focus on attracting business.  They devote most of their pages to describing their services, human capital resources, success stories and the like.
2. Who we are – These are the sites that have chosen to focus on attracting talent.  A significant percentage of the site is devoted to recruiting, so they showcase the work experience, profiles of their office locations and career opportunities.

These are broad brush-strokes and there’s nothing inherently wrong with either approach.  Of course, some overlap occurs when talking about the work experience (showing a potential client how thorough you are) or describing your services (showing potential recruits the level of impact they can have).  Many sites dedicate space to both services and recruiting.  But they could be so much more.

The best sites offer a third option, one that combines the flavors above with a way that keeps clients, prospects and potential new hires coming back again and again.

The knowledge site

Call it the Neapolitan solution because it’s three flavors in one – services, recruiting and knowledge.

The difference, of course, is in what knowledge you make available.  The idea is to make the knowledge you share valuable and useful without giving away the store.  Give them just enough new information on a regular basis – or provide access to a database of information if that aligns with what you do – to whet the appetite or keep you top of mind when the time comes to actually purchase your services.

If you’re a design firm, for example, you could offer case studies on how good designs have made a difference between success and failure in a campaign, or offer tips for how to approach branding, color or layout.

Professional services firms can present examples of best practices in operational efficiency or performance management.  Publishing companies can offer reviews and insights culled from their latest editions.  Industry news, white papers, articles, summaries of round table events – the opportunities to position your organization as a valuable resource are endless.

This isn’t a difficult or particularly new concept but for some reason it’s a rare one to see being utilized.  But examples can be found: just look at what Paladin is doing by publishing these blogs.

What kind of a Web site are you?

It’s not easy to do this.  It takes imagination, management appetite, resources and, just as important, maintenance.  It takes collaboration over the long haul to create the content and promote its existence on a regular basis.

It’s long past time when a company could get away with being an electronic brochure.  The war for talent and the fight for business demand that you reach out to clients and prospects – or give them a reason to reach out to you.

Small businesses are especially vulnerable these days and are looking for ideas to generate revenue.  The good news is that those ideas are right in front of them, in the knowledge gained through the experience of their people, the tools they use, and the services they provide.  The not-so-good news is now that knowledge needs to be transformed into a format where it can be shared.

But it can be done.

Do you have any examples of favorite sites that exemplify the Neapolitan approach?  Remember what your mother said about sharing…

How you communicate can say as much about you as what you communicate.

For example, you may have noticed that people often fall into either one of two contact categories – e-mail or voicemail.  You would do well to find out which one that new client or manager prefers as soon as possible.  Your lines of communication will be that much more secure.

Yet when it comes to e-mail, voicemail, Instant Messaging and even Twitter, there are traps waiting for you.  The way you use these vehicles on a day-to-day basis can be particularly revealing.

Here are some best practices – reminders for some, news for other – to keep in mind.  Don’t worry – they’ve all been field tested:

• You say goodbye and I say hello – It’s a typical scenario: Someone sends you an Instant Message at exactly the wrong time.  Sure, it’s nice to get an unexpected missive from a friend once in a while.  But IM’s can arrive just when you don’t have time to engage with them.  And the sender doesn’t know when to get off.  If the IM conversation needs to go on for more than five or ten minutes, call.  And if someone writes that they’re in the middle of something, let them get to it.

• In cyberspace, everyone can hear you scream – Everyone can tell how you really feel when you dash off that e-mail/IM/Tweet response to something (or someone) that really bugs you.  Write the e-mail if you must, but save it as a draft and read it again later.  Better yet, delete it and start anew.  The ancillary to this is the e-mail written so quickly that it becomes the electronic variation of bad handwriting.  No one will know what it means, so it wastes everyone’s time and says “I’m too busy to care.”  Not a good message.  Take your time, use spell check and review before you send.

• It’s all personal – On a subliminal level, hearing your voice say that you can’t come to the phone right now tells me that you will get back to me.  Hearing your assistant or a “standard greeting” tell me you can’t come to the phone says something else entirely.  Seriously, is it that hard to set up a voicemail greeting using your voice?  Set it up once, keep it brief and you’ve demonstrated a personal touch that speaks well of you.

• Can we change the subject, please? – By now we’ve had e-mail long enough to know that in a long e-mail series, the topic will change.  So either stop replying and start anew or change the subject line to reflect your current topic.  Be specific in the subject line (e.g., “Statistics on sales for October”) rather than general (e.g., “Information requested”) to make it easier to scan and identify.  And like the IM conversations mentioned above, if the series threatens to go on for more four rounds, pick up the phone.

• “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you” – Alexander Graham Bell had just spilled battery acid on himself when he made that first telephone call.  Not all of your voicemails are quite so urgent.  Don’t mark them as such unless it’s truly vital.  When every voicemail is special, then no voicemail is special.

I could go on but now it’s your turn.  What are your best practices?

Contributed by: Frank McGee
Writer, trainer, coach

As recruiters, we expect to see specific hiring trends during economic downturns. Historically, we anticipate increases in contract/freelance staffing because corporations, which are in the midst of hiring freezes, have laid-off large numbers of marketing and communications pros. With a skeleton staff and the same daunting workload, the inevitable outcome is that organizations bring on contract/freelance staff to fill the gap.

Generally the most common need is for mid-level talent with 5-10 years of experience.  The senior level positions are less often requested because strategies have been set and companies want simply to execute on plans.  But 2009 has not played by the standard rules.

While we are seeing an increase in contract/freelance hires, we’ve been surprised that another trend has emerged: our staff is recruiting for a significant number of senior and executive level marketing openings across a broad range of industries.  

Most recently, we’ve recruited for a CMOs, VPs and Directors of Marketing across a wide variety of industries including retail, telecom, health and beauty and tech.

 The question: Why the change in upper management at this time?

Are these executive level openings a result of the company taking their business in a different direction, and, thus, needing a new leader with fresh thinking? Perhaps this recession has provided management with the opportunity to clean house and let go of senior marketing staff that have not been able to make a measurable impact. It may be a case of organizational growth despite this challenging environment. Some suggest it may be a case of attrition. Or perhaps it is simply an anomaly that we alone are experiencing within our recruitment practice.

To find the answers or at least further the conversation, we are reaching out to our community of Marketing Professionals. As marketers on the front lines, we’re interested in hearing directly from you. Click here to take a five question survey about hiring trends within your organization. We’ll be sharing the findings with our readers, and individual responses will remain confidential. And feel free to comment on the subject here. We value your insight, your questions and your feedback. 

Take the red pill.

In fact, take it now before you really need it.  That’s the lesson I’ve learned about networking.

In The Matrix, our hero is given a choice: take a blue pill and continue on with his life or take the red pill and see life as it really is.  Of course, he takes the red pill (wouldn’t be much of a movie if he didn’t), the veil is lifted and he becomes aware of things that were always there but never seen.

Lately I’ve begun to build on my own network of friends and professional colleagues, coaxing it to take form, and develop.  Actually, I’m helping it grow.  The network was always there; I just never saw it.  Then I took the red pill.

It was April 2006 when I was first asked to join a friend’s network through LinkedIn.  Sounded like fun and a good way to stay in touch with people.  But I rarely looked at it.  The next request came in October 2007.  I was flattered someone would ask me to join a network and, yeah, I felt hip.

But it wasn’t until this past February that I began to build my network in earnest.  I had to; my role had been eliminated and along with so many others folks I was in the market for a new position.

As so many at Paladin attest, you’ve got to get out and network.  This may seem rather obvious but it isn’t something all of us do when we’re employed.  Of course, some roles – from sales to marketing to politics – require networking and maintaining relationships to achieve their goals.  Networking within the organization was key to my last role.

Many job descriptions, however, do not ask you to stay in touch with people who don’t directly affect you or your work.

Because so many people are new to this networking gig, it seemed like a good idea to ask some friends from my network what they have learned along the way.   This list is by no means comprehensive, but it is road tested:

• Get out of the house – My friend Buzz put it as a simple, Nike-esque rule: “You just gotta be out there!  Go out and go to things anytime you can.”

It’s okay, everybody’s doing it.  And by “it,” I mean looking for work.  Here’s the yin and the yang of it: We all know that this isn’t the best time in the history of humankind to be looking for work.  On the other hand, the stigma of being out of work isn’t what it used to be, not when so many people are in the same position.  There’s no shame in being unemployed but somehow it seems a little easier to say “I’m in transition” when the headlines are always talking about yet another round of lay offs.  Just ask all of those former headline writers.

• Don’t be so shy – Of course, once you’re out of the house you’ve got to meet people.  “People want to help,” as my friend Katherine put it, but don’t make it difficult for them.  Give them your personal marketing plan or your newly updated resume to review.  Suggest meeting for coffee so there’s an understanding that the meeting doesn’t have to last for hours.  (And note that just because you say “Let’s meet for coffee” doesn’t mean you need to drink coffee at every meeting – especially if you have several lined up in one day.  Trust me on this one.)

Job seekers and their friends might want to read this article in The New York Times that provides some suggestions for how to give and receive help.  “The most important corollary to this rule,” Katherine points out, “is to thank people for their time and respect their schedules.”

• Be prepared – It’s not just for Boy Scouts anymore.  “Never show up unprepared even for a quick networking meeting,” said Katherine.  “You have to do your research in advance, or you waste people’s time.”  This means knowing about your contact’s business and providing something for them to use (which can be as simple as meaningful article referrals, for example, suggests Leslie).

• Back to basics – It’s all about the prompt follow-up and the personalized, hand-written thank you notes.  Making sure to write down unique reminder information on business cards. (“No,” says Leslie, “you won’t remember who all those folks are when you’re sitting in front of your computer doing the follow-up.”)

• Don’t just do something, stand there – “A lot of people don’t know how to listen,” says Buzz.  It’s not that you just sit back and watch the show.  “If you ask somebody for help, shut up and listen!  Don’t ask for advice and then overwhelm someone with your expertise!”

Here’s a surprise: You’ve already started.  As I mentioned earlier, my network was always there.  Sure, it was a little fallow and needed some tending and weeding.  But at the risk of taking this gardening metaphor too far, let’s just say you’ve bought the land already; employed or not, you need to start tilling the soil.

At a meeting of job seekers I attended, one participant put the benefits of networking this way: “I’ve lived in Chicago for 20 years.  Now it seems like a small town.”

Take the red pill.

Contributed by: Frank McGee
Business writer, trainer, coach