Remarkablogger

Author, speaker, and consultant Steve Yastrow, an expert in cultivating customer relationships, recognizes the power of blogs to help foster and strengthen customer relationships. Steve frequently writes for the Tom Peters blog, and is the author of two books, Brand Harmony and the newly published We: The Ideal Customer Relationship.

Why a blog?

Steve’s a master at face-to-face customer interactions and consults for a long list of prestigious clients in this area. But as life and business migrate onto the internet, Steve really felt he needed to engage in some online methods for demonstrating his ideas and sharing them with others. He felt that this was an obvious extension of what he already believes and teaches about customer interactions. A blog is just a natural fit.

Working with Steve

When I work with a client who doesn’t have a blog at first, the first stage of our work with each other involves determining objectives for the blog, recognizing the needs of the intended audience, and putting together a design. Steve and I worked together through phone conversations on Skype to determine requirements and consider the design. The second stage involves regularly scheduled coaching sessions, in which we see how things are going, address problems, engage in training for various aspects of blogging, and set goals for the next session.

Steve already had a website. One of the challenges of “blogification” is to integrate a blog into an existing site. We agreed that having the blog on the home page was the way to go, but he wanted to preserve the original site’s static pages as they are for now, rather than move them into WordPress pages (which we might do at a later time).

We also really wanted to showcase Steve’s well-established authority by highlighting his books and the Tom Peters quote (if Tom Peters said that about me, I’d probably get it tattooed on my chest, and I’ve never ever had a tattoo, so that tells you something). Like any blog, we also wanted to prioritize our main conversion goal: subscriptions. Steve has an email newsletter you can subscribe to in addition to the blog posts by email or RSS.

I’ve read both of Steve’s books and the guy really knows his stuff. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you are in business, period, you should read his newest book, just published, We: The Ideal Customer Relationship.

Show Steve some love

Steve’s no stranger to the blogosphere. His posts on Tom Peters get tons of comments. But since now he’s got a blog of his very own, let’s give him a warm welcome! This is not just me pimping out my blog consulting services. Steve’s content is highly relevant to freelancers and business people. I think that if you read his initial posts, you will find his writing to be on-target and useful.

So please pay Steve a visit and I encourage you to leave a comment or two and subscribe. Bonus: if you subscribe, you get a free ebook that Steve formerly sold for $10, called Encounters: The Building Blocks of We Relationships. It’s a great free way to dive into this man’s thinking (it’s really the whole second chapter of the new book).

Check out my latest client success story: Steve Yastrow.