We had our regular meeting at the Hibernia Diner on Thursday morning.
In attendance:
Dan Gehrig – Vice-President
Michelle Clevenger – Membership Chair
Robin Wolfe – Tip Mistress
Peter Herbst (subbing for Bimal Gupta)
John Tully
Janet Navarro
Joe Nugent
Joe Troy
Lee DeCarolis
Dan Linkletter
Jeff Jones
Kevin Dulio
Absent
Greg Angelillo – Chapter President
Martha Paravati – Secretary
Justin Marcus Smith
Marianne Jones
Rudy Riveron
Joe Bellistri
Andy Krauser
Unfortunately we had a bunch of absences this week including our planned speaker Andy Krauser. John Tully was pressganged / volunteered to speak in his place.
John gave the assembled members a brief history of his background and a summary of the services that he and his company, dsm-llc, provides to small businesses. He works primarily in three areas:
- Production of printed marketing materials. Although desktop publishing is very popular many companies don’t have the time or resources to do this work themselves – the software that John uses costs ~$2500.
- Trade show planning and management. 3 or 4 day trade shows can cost between $10-30,000 for small businesses and can entail a lot of planning and management. John handles this on a consulting basis and handles all the aspects for his clients.
- Web-based solutions. For small businesses this encompasses getting on the web for the first time, improving their existing web presence through Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing, e-mail marketing, blog posts, etc.
John Tully addresses LeTip of Denville
John spoke today on an issue he feels very passionate about – Small Business Invisibility. He discussed how small businesses can be invisible on the internet deliberately and accidentally. Nowadays a company that chooses NOT to be on the web is choosing to be deliberately invisible – although some people (Joe Nugent) still cling to paper advertising in the Yellow Pages, most people today search for products and goods online, and if you are not online then you are invisible!
Accidental invisibility comes about if you have a website but you don’t pay attention to certain written & unwritten “laws”. Not paying attention to these laws can severely affect your online presence.
John and dsm-llc helps both groups of people get back on track. He helps people either get online for the first time or helps them revamp their sites to get more out of their web presence.
Special thanks to Janet Navarro for taking such a lifelike photo of the presenter!
The meeting wrapped up with our commercials and the passing of the tip jar.
Posted by John Tully
