But That's Just Me

Notes from the Editor
D. Kevin Berchelmann
Editor, IMC Connector

Well, I'm putting together this edition of the IMC Connector while at the beach for a couple of weeks in Port Aransas, Texas. It's early; the rest of the house is still asleep, I'm having coffee and sitting in a balcony chair overlooking the water. Consulting is indeed a good life.

That is, it's a good life if we can keep "the machine" running smoothly.

This edition is loosely focused on PR and/or Marketing for consultants. In this hustle and bustle world of ours today, we can't be everywhere. We can't rely on direct, personal contact to handle all of our business development needs – we need some leverage; something that can work for us even when we're not working. Like me now. At the beach.

Enter PR, stage left. Enter Marketing, stage right. These efforts allow our name, brand, and reputation to continue making the rounds in the world of buyers and potential clients while we're sitting on the beach sipping an umbrella-adorned adult beverage. They carry our message to others, in quantities we could not otherwise reach, sometimes with credibility we could not achieve on our own. They become our proxy to the world.

Of course, not all of these messages are good, or even slightly effective. That's why we turn to people and colleagues, fellow IMC members, who know more about this sort of thing than we do.

In this edition, Loraine Kasprzak, my predecessor as Editor of the IMC Connector, provides some real guidance on word-of-mouth referrals for our businesses, and Leslie Shields gives us some practical tips for using whitepapers to market our business. David Norman introduces himself as our new Chair – great to have him leading our organization!

Stay focused, do the right things consistently, and enjoy the beach – the respites are a necessary part of our lives.

But that's just me...