Heads up:  there’s another trend besides Gen Y out there.  Several industry reports show that the 65 and older group is the fastest growing category of job changers.  (Newest buzzword:  “re-careering.”)  Interesting finding according to Trend Letter:  they care less about pay and prestige.  Growing fields in nursing, education, and social services already have an above average percentage of these folks.  Great opportunity for all you OD, workforce, recruitment, and multigenerational folks out there.  Watch for more need for finding, hiring, and engaging in this category.  Want to know more?  Here’s a study from the Urban Institute:  http://www.urban.org/publications/1001272.html

It’s conventional wisdom by now — having your own community is a fail-safe strategy for this economy.  And everyone is jumping on the bandwagon, even the big-boy media, such as Business Week.

And they are the poster child of the dark side.  The New York TImes article last month unveiled some ugly math:  BW invested $16 million in 2007 and 2008, but generated just $600,000 in revenue last year.  Ouch!

Moral of the story:  “build it and they will come” strategy does not guarantee revenue.  Building a community can either be a bright shiny object to pour money into or a way to solidify your base of support.  Let’s explore the difference and how to create the latter on Tuesday’s Here’s the Deal call.  Here’s the link to sign up.

Everyone’s talking about building a community these days.  Why?  Because we all know that relationships are important.  The key question:  how to turbocharge relationships, especially if you’re not the perky “people person”  (guilty as charged).  According to Maribeth Kuzemski — one of my favorite people — having a killer toolkit makes all the difference.  Her newest book The Connectors:  How the World’s Most Successful Businesspeople Build Relationships and Win Clients for Life (Wiley, September 2009) has uncovered the details, the tangible how to’s of creating better business relationships.  My personal favorite:  how to be a connector even if you’ve never been a people person.  Makes me want to get out of the bat cave and make some friends…

Seriously, Maribeth is doing one of those promotions, so if you order the book today you get tons of goodies.  Go to www.theconnectorsbook.com to order and get your cool, free stuff.  And I’m drilling down on the strategic use of communities in my upcoming Here’s the Deal call on October 13th.  Here’s the link if you want to join the fun:  www.sullivanspeaker.com/HTDcommunity.htm

Due to the econmy, Sponsorship.com has issued a first-ever, mid-year spending forecast. Sit down for this. The horrible news; corporate sponsorships have increased by only 1.1 percent this year. Gasp!! That’s right, sponsorship spending by U.S. and Canadian organizations will be a mere 16.79 BILLION dollars for 2009.

I’m almost speechless. Folks over there need to get a grip. Yes, this is a huge change from the double-digit growth in the boom times. Bothered by an increase when almost six million people have lost their jobs? When the meeting and training industries are suffering major cuts? When advertising and sales promotion budgets were hit with 4.2 and 2.3 percent cuts? I can here the violins playing from here…

Biggest winner: Association spending, with a 3.3 percent increase for a total 2009 spent of $498 million. Another favorite – cause marketing – came in at a respectable third place with a 2.9 percent increase for a total 2009 projection of $1.5 billion. Sports deals took the biggest hit, increasing less than one percent.

One of my biggest points from last week’s Here’s the Deal call on web sites: buyers today are looking for tools to implement your great ideas. Just throwing up content like white papers won’t cut it. Here’s a great example from the intense tradeshow industry: a calculator to determine your cost per lead and cost per closed sale. How handy is that? It’s specific, it’s simple. And best of all, it gives the user an industry benchmark to compare themselves with. If we had more of this stuff on our sites, I just know user experience would soar. Moral of the story: give someone a way to use your expertise and they will want more of it.

Check out this cool calculator here: http://tinyurl.com/msbdee. And if you want the mp3 file from last week’s call, you can buy it here for only $59.