Asked to Speak at a Conference

Attack Challenges as the Subject Matter Expert that You Are

Being a member of JAMA (Jacksonville’s Chapter’s of American Marketing Association), GREAT!

Being on the Board of Directors of JAMA, AWESOME!

Being given the opportunity to attend the AMA South East Region Conference in Atlanta, free of charge, FABULOUS!

Being asked to speak, at said conference, for 52 minutes on the subject of Membership, ugh – SCARY!!!

Our chapter won an award on the subject of Membership and so it seems fitting that AMA would ask the two who are attending from our chapter to speak on the subject. However, that was not one of the areas I covered. I’m the VP of Web and Interactive. My focus is the website and monthly publication advertisements, not Membership. Not to mention, I haven’t done any public speaking since my class in high school. No, I kid. Of course there were college classes, and, every job involves some amount of public speaking. Whether, it’s putting on a class to train employees or speaking to EVPs in persuasive manner as an authority on a website redesign technology subject, I’ve done it all before. It’s the time in between, the practice I’m afraid I haven’t had lately that makes it all scary. Along with no speak of “Membership” in any of my jobs…ever.

I think I’m going to attack this project by thinking of the subject of Membership as trying to attract and keep customers/clients/users and then I’ll have 16 years of experience in marketing to talk about. Now that’s less scary. I think I’ve got this.

Next, How to Attract and Keep Members!

Update: I skipped writing that post due to other priorities. Still, I hope you enjoy the next posts.

What Are You Saying?

Customer Perspective

Often at times we are so involved in the work we are doing that we don’t take the time to step back and see exactly what it is we are saying to the audience. This happens often in the marketing world when we are producing promotional pieces or advertisements. We are so focused on making sure each contributor has their verbiage or their say on how it should be produced and that their contributions are accounted for in the design or layout of the material, that we sometimes forget the target audience all together.

Recently I attended a marketing event and on my way out I met someone new. In getting to know each other I handed him my business card and I quickly explained what it is I do, he handed me a flyer for the current event he was working on. He continued telling me about the event and I continued to scan the flyer looking for anything that would give me a clue as to what the event was so that I could contribute to the conversation. The flyer had an event title, location, time, brief paragraph, event highlights, form and sponsors and yet I still didn’t fully understand the event. I began to think it was me, was I missing something and then I realized it was the “First Annual” and the editor in me realized he was too close to the project to see that a vital piece of information was missing. As the guy spoke to me, I could see he was smart, professional and sincere in his interest in networking with me and excitement for his event…it was contagious and rather than letting this go, as to not offend him, I knew I had to point out the missing piece. Not only as the audience but as a professional with a degree in Graphic Design and Advertising.

And there it was! He said it in his conversation, “Business to Business Networking Reception.” I said, “that’s it! That’s exactly the tagline this flyer needs to summarize the event for the reader.” He thought about it, and with delight asked for my contact information and said he could use my services. That wasn’t my intention. Solving the problem was the goal of the moment, but then again, that’s what these events are about…making connections to create win-win situations.

Hello world!

Website Design Pioneer

Hello and welcome! You might be asking yourself who is J. Lacey Taylor and what does she do? Well, I am the “go to girl” that helps you with your problems, questions, requests related to your website. Whether it is a creative or technical issue, I’ve covered it. Over the past 15 years, companies have come to me for my experience in leading website projects, whether it is maintaining a website, designing, redesigning a website or building a website from scratch, I’ve covered all aspects of online design (and marketing). Once described as a pioneer lady of website design, I’ve been a part of the online marketing teams from the beginning of the internet.I started this blog with the intention to simply start a conversation about design, marketing and art.