From the NGLCC website, http://www.nglcc.org/BIZ/community/localchambershirepaidstaff 

When Jenn Tracz first volunteeredfor the newly formed NGLCC affiliate, Connecticut Alliance for BusinessOpportunities (CABO), in the fall of 2007, she told a friend that one day shehoped to be the LGBT chamber's first executive director.

In December of 2009, that wish cametrue.

While Tracz's position ispart-time—it is the first and only paid position at CABO—she says the chamberis hoping to make it a full-time position by the end of this year.

Tracz's story is becomingincreasingly more common. LGBT chambers and business organizations around thecountry are hiring paid staff members to respond to the record growth many LGBTbusiness organizations are experiencing.

Mark Guenther, the recently hiredexecutive director at the Capital Area Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce(CAGLCC), serving the Washington, D.C.-metro area, finds that there arechallenges particular to being a chamber's first executive director.

"So far I've been working a lotof hours. I love it, but it's managing all the different things and being thecenter point for everybody now. That can sometimes be overwhelming,"Guenther said.

Before taking the executive directorposition, which took effect in January, Guenther served on CAGLCC's board forfour years.

Like Guenther, Sam McClure, theexecutive director of Quorum, the Twin Cities GLBTA Chamber of Commerce, servedon the organization's board for many years before becoming president and thentransitioned into the role of executive director three years ago. McClure isalso the national chair of the NGLCC's Council of Chambers and BusinessOrganizations (CCBO).

"Chamber leaders are startingto fully grasp what kind of infrastructure and creativity is required in orderto maintain sustainable organizations that can foster programs and initiativesthat give our members the opportunities they need to dramatically grow theirbusinesses, create jobs and drive our local economies," McClure said."We've got to do whatever is necessary to level the playing field for LGBTbusiness people. We're all just beginning a long and powerful journey, and thistrend towards staffed organizations is an important barometer of where we arein the business equality movement. It's an incredibly exciting time to do thiswork. If one is lucky enough to get one of these leadership roles, you have togive all you've got."

In addition to McClure, three of theNGLCC CCBO regional chairs are also paid executives for their chambers,including Steve Adkins at the Miami-Dade Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce,Tony Vedda at the North Texas GLBT Chamber of Commerce headquartered in Dallas,TX, and Christina Pinson at the Chicago Area Gay and Lesbian Chamber ofCommerce.

The NGLCC sees the change as a signof the maturation of the LGBT chamber movement—and the commitment of LGBTbusiness owners to playing a larger role in their local communities.

"Local LGBT chambers arethriving for any number of reasons, but mostly because of the vitality andvision of LGBT business owners who feel that by coming together they can notonly help themselves but they can be a force for positive change in thebusiness community," said Kate Karasmeighan, NGLCC chief of staff anddirector of external and affiliate relations.

One chamber, the IndependenceBusiness Alliance (IBA) in the greater Philadelphia region, has chosen adifferent staffing path, turning to an association management company to handleits administrative needs, including answering phones during all work days,processing memberships and renewals, and assisting members with routine issues.IBA hired Alta Management in 2008, and has amended its contract with thecompany to increase the number of hours and responsibilities Alta provides tothe chamber.

"The association management companyprovides stability and continuity to various administrative functions, butprimarily it fulfills our high level of service to our members," said BillGehrman, president of IBA's board of directors.

IBA is now in the process ofestablishing a three-year plan, which, Gehrman said, includes increasing staffthrough its management company as well as the possibility of hiring its ownstaff.

"There will be many factorsthat determine the ultimate direction, but in the near future, we are veryhappy with the association management model and expect it will continue to meetour growing needs," Gehrman said.

And, of course, there are veteranLGBT chambers that broke the paid-staff barrier long ago, such as the GreaterSan Diego Business Association and the Greater Seattle Business Association,which have several employees on staff today to handle the day-to-day work ofthe chamber and its members.

When hiring the first executivedirector, it's common to look to someone on the board—a proven entity who hasalready shown terrific dedication to the organization.  Tracz becameCABO's marketing committee chair when the chamber first launched and alsoserved on the board. "As an all-volunteer board, it's hard sometimes toget all the chamber's events promoted properly and make sure everything isrunning smoothly," Tracz said.

It's a decision that CABO's boardhas not regretted.

"We felt we needed an executivedirector to help us grow throughout the state," said Dena Castricone,president of CABO. "We knew it was a risk for such a young organization tohire staff but we also knew that CABO had great untapped potential. We knewthat to reach that potential, we needed to go out on a limb and hire anexecutive director. In just a few short months, I can tell you that it is thebest decision CABO has ever made."

For Guenther, the switch from boardmember to executive director has energized him—and the board. "The way ourboard set this up and the way we presented it really got everybodyenergized," Guenther said. "Honestly, I feel like there is moreparticipation right now. It just feels like everybody wants to help, and boardmembers are coming up with new ideas and they're excited, so it's been great sofar. I haven't felt like a one-man shop at all."

Guenther said he is still getting afeel for where his time is best spent, but he has already made some strides inthe chamber's corporate employee initiative by meeting with a Marriottemployee, who immediately signed on to be a sponsor for the CAGLCC's 20thAnniversary & Awards dinner in April.

"You're never sure which effortis going to have the most return," Guenther said. "If it benefits thechamber to make a connection, I'm going to try to make a connection withoutspending too much time on something that may [not work out in the chamber'sfavor]."

Ken White, CAGLCC's board president,sees hiring Guenther as a natural extension of the work all the volunteers havedone. He said the decision illustrates how the CAGLCC "has taken theorganization to the next level, a level that will benefit LGBT business ownersand entrepreneurs and open up new opportunities for partnership withcorporations and other businesses."

The same is true at CABO. Tracz hasbeen promoting the chamber in the community, working to bring more benefits toCABO's members and managing the chamber's corporate partners.

"As executive director, honingin on delivering our message and getting the benefits to our members is myfocus," Tracz said. "We've signed on Aetna as our cornerstonepartner, and that relationship alone requires a lot of work to make sure we'redoing everything we've promised them. I think the growth in corporations thatare interested in becoming partners, and the [continued] interest is where theneed truly came for an executive director."

Today social media and internetmarketing are very closely related. By definition social media is media that isdesigned to be disseminated through social interaction. Social media uses theInternet and web-based technologies to broadcast media monologues and dialoguesto the target audience. ¹ Internet marketing in its simplest form isthe marketing of products or services utilizing the Internet. There are manyfactors of Internet marketing including, search engine marketing, search engineoptimization, banner ads, e-mail marketing and Web 2.0. ²

Web 2.0 is where the heart of socialmedia lies. What every business owner or marketer must remember is that socialmedia is just one part of an Internet marketing strategy and should not betreated as the only item. The creation of an Internet marketing strategy allowsone to incorporate social media into that strategy therefore allowing theability to see what is or isn’t working for the company.

Social media has truly changed thelandscape of Internet marketing in many ways. Social media must be done rightto be a success. The amount of effort you put into it will show through in yourefforts. If you set up accounts, create one post, and then never go back, youare doing more harm than good for your business. You must become a valuablepart of the community and this goes beyond simply talking about yourself, yourbusiness or your products. You must embrace the community around you and engagethem on a more personal level. Part of this is by learning the etiquette andlanguage of the tools you are using without doing the proper research; youcan’t expect to gain the respect you are seeking overnight.

There are many facets of Internetmarketing all of which are touched by social media in one way or another. Thereare too many to go into them all, so this paper will focus on just a few;e-mail marketing/online newsletters and search engine optimization. Since thereare such close relations between the two the effects of social media varywidely.

There are a many great and effectiveways of combining your social media efforts into your e-mail marketing and viceversa. Since social media is all about creating your own social networks thatare comprised of colleagues, vendors, customers, associates, etc., everyone whois following you, becoming a connection or is a fan, has an interest in yourcompany and what you have to say. This gives you an advantage by having theability to e-mail or message them based on the outlet you are using. Yourmessage to fans on Facebook may vary from the message you send to yourconnections on LinkedIn.    

Newsletters have always been a popularform of communication from businesses to customers or businesses to businesses.Online newsletters are a great way to keep your customers, followers, and fansinformed of what you are up to. The innate feature of social media is that youcan provide status updates, which are just a snippet of what is going on inyour organization. Social media has allowed organizations to really publish andpublicize their newsletters to an audience that formerly may have not existed.With catchy titles, subject lines and captions and the ability to track clicks,you can really see what is and isn’t making an impact on your audience.

Another great asset is that social mediaposts are in real time, so if you see something being said about yourorganization, you can be proactive immediately. If someone were to use Twitterto say “I just had the worst service at X establishment,” and you are X theyare talking about, you have the opportunity to reach out to them to solve theproblem. Good customer service on your part is a way to turn a negative into apositive. This can also create a dialogue between you and your customers whereyou can learn valuable feedback and use that to enhance your company’s image.If you have a competitor who isn’t on the social media scene and the samescenario plays out, look at who comes out as the winner in the eyes of the customer,you – the business with proactive customer service reaching out to them inalternate ways.

Search engine optimization is anotherarea that has been affected greatly by social media. Search engine optimizationby definition is the process of improving the volume and/or quality of trafficto a website from search engines via organic search results. ³ Thereare a few main concepts as part of search engine optimization 101 that can betied in nicely with social media initiatives.

In the world of search engineoptimization content is king. There are many strategies involved in getting thebest content on a website that range from honing in on specific keywords, usingthose specified keywords multiple times, and keeping your content readable toyour audience. ⁴ Social media assists in this process a great dealdue to the sheer volume of content provided. If your business goal is to getyour website to rank higher in the search engines, driving traffic to your sitevia Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter is possible. All of these services providewidgets that you can install on your site that allow the visitors to your sitesee your status updates on these networks, while at the same time increasingthe usage of keywords.

Link popularity is also a very criticalitem in the realm of search engine optimization. The more places your websiteis listed and linked to the better. If you are on the social media scene youcan easily ad links to your sites in a variety of different places and helpboost those results. There is a method in how to do it though. You want to makesure that you are posting on relevant sites; the more relevant their content isto yours the better.

Overall it is very clear that there hasbeen an impact on Internet marketing as a whole by all of the social mediatools available today. This is an ever evolving landscape that is bound to havea variety of changes in the future.

The new year has begun and it's time to get back to the grind! The best way to start off 2010 is by determining what's on your marketing agenda for the year but putting together specific objectives.

For those of you who do not have a marketing background, a marketing objective is basically what you plan on accomplishing in a set period of time, using a pre-determined marketing plan. So what should your marketing plan include? Take a set back from your business and look at it from your prospective customers point of view. What do you see? Do you see an amazingly well run business that people just don't know about? Do you see a business whose website is poorly built that may be deterring customers?

Whatever it is that you see - put together a plan of action to solve the problem or to create something better. To start a marketing objective you must be specific, the more specific you are the better. The more specific the better you can track the results on your efforts.

A few sample marketing objectives that I may use for my business in 2010 could be;

To increase the visibility of JTracz Designs on-line by 10% by June 2010. - A way to track this would be to set up Google Analytic's on your website and look to see website traffic is on a month to month basis and then again over a 3 month period of time, then 6 months. If your online efforts are working you should see an increase in site traffic and can determine what the 10% would be. By saying you are going to increase on-line visibility that doesn't help much, because you don't have a determined number to compare against to see if you are successful.

Another marketing objective could be - to increase the JTracz Designs Facebook presence by 50% by the end of 2010. I currently have 180+ Fans, so my goal would be to achieve 360+ fans by the end of 2010. To break it down into more manageable terms, I could say I need to get 15 more fans per month for the year. This gives you a clearly defined goal of 15 fans per month, which could even be broken down further by saying roughly 4 fans per week. Now doesn't roughly 4 fans per week throughout 2010 seem more manageable than to increase by 50%? 

This is the purpose of creating a well thought out marketing plan with specific objectives. As you think about what you are trying to achieve you will realize how easy it is to put them down into easily obtainable goals. Rather than looking at it as a daunting big picture, think of it as smaller steps to achieve your end goal.

As always I am available for a consultation to help put your business on the right track for 2010. Send me an e-mail at info@jtraczdesigns.com and I'll gladly assist you where I can. After all, one of my objectives is to obtain 2-3 new clients per month. ;) Good luck in 2010!

I received an e-mail last week and it rang a bell with me and I hope it resonates with you. There are so many software programs available, all to help you better organize yourself, keep your budget on track or to help you design a website. At the end of the day you really only need one simple program that comes standard on every computer.

There are two kinds of people in the world, those who make executing a daily part of their routine and those who don't. To help you execute all you need is Notepad on the computer, or a physical notepad which is what I use. It seems like common sense that if you have an idea, you sit down and do it. But many people have great ideas and don't spend the time to see them through. What separates people is their willingness to sit down and get the job done!

I was put to the test and want to relay the message and put you to the test. Every night before you go to bed open up Notepad and write down 5 tasks that must get done the following day, make sure to organize them in order of importance. Within 30 days you will be a more accomplished productive you. It has worked for me and I'm certain it'll work foryou.

My to do list always exceeds 5, today it happens to be 19. Here are a couple of items that are on my list for today.

1.     Write new blog (what I am doing right now)
2.     Write upboard minutes
3.     Followup with Kathleen
4.     Write anarticle for November newsletter
5.     Fixwebsite problem
6.     FinishPPT presentation

The reason why this works so well, is that I wrote this list at 11pm last night and was able to get a good night’s rest,knowing that I put down all of the things I had to accomplish today. My subconscious was able to think about it all night, so the moment I woke up this morning, I knew exactly what had to be done and how to get right on track. I started my day focused, energized and knowing exactly what has been laid before me for the day. It is easy to be distracted, even more so when you are working out of your home, but having this list makes the day start off on a great foot! 

I hope this information is as refreshing to you as it was to me. It’s so simple and has truly transformed the way I do things. Send me an e-mail and share your results, maybe I’ll share your story in the November newsletter! info@jtraczdesigns.com