About Mel Taylor

Get Smart Digital is lead by Mel Taylor. With over 20 years of hands-on success with Newspaper, Broadcast & hyper-local publishing, Get Smart Digital has successfully trained over 5,000 local media executives from companies like Tribune, The New York Times, Philly.com, Fox-TV, Clear Channel Radio, Calkins Media, and hundreds of independent, hyper-local publishers.

As one of the industry’s high rated speakers, our keynotes and workshops can be attended through state organizations like INMA, Inland Press, NAB, America East, and NENPA.

What attendees say about Mel Taylor, Multimedia Key Executives Conference, in St. Petersburg, Florida.

  • “Mel Taylor was far and away the best of the presentations.”
  • “Mel Taylor’s presentation was exactly what I needed!”
  • “Wish they were all like his.”
  • “What specific info was of greatest value to me? Mel Taylor.”

When we heard Mel Taylor at the Mega-Media conference in St. Petersburg, Fla., we all agreed: “We need to hire him.” We’re glad we did. Mel created a strategic roadmap for moving faster and deeper into online media. Before he arrived, we didn’t know where to start. After he left, we had a clear, step-by-step vision of what to do, how to execute and how to generate more revenue!

Matt Walsh, Publisher / CEO; Sarasota Observer

That was a great presentation! Engaging, real world stuff you can use today. Since 1984, I have been through a million of these and some were better than others but none matches this one. You know you have “hit home” when staffers make comments such as those today and then actually engage in conversations after the presentation.

Robert Azevedo, Sierra Nevada Media Group

As publisher of The Vancouver Observer, my background is in journalism. I’ll admit my aversion to selling, but I knew I had to get over it. After due diligence, we hired Mel for his ability to simplify the digital sales process for hyper-local sites like ours. Mel refreshed our sales programs, pricing structures, our online inventory and support materials. Mel did in-depth sales training for our sellers using real time collaboration tools and video-Skype. Not only did Mel dramatically upgrade our sales efforts, but he helped us tweak our site design and editorial strategy. We did this in less than 30 days. It would have taken much longer if we did it by ourselves.

Linda Solomon, Publisher; The Vancouver Observer

Mel Taylor has sold web for newspapers, radio & television. He knows how to get past low CPM’s & remnant ads. We hired Mel at WTEN in Albany and saw immediate benefits. In addition to innovative internet training for our sales team, Mel worked closely with the news director and web developer. Our site is now more appealing to our advertisers as well as our viewers. The best part: revenue is up.

Mike Sechrist, WTEN Television, Albany, NY

Mel is charismatic, easily captures attention of the crowd and takes the time to build a story that can make the most difficult concepts seem easy. Before the client seminar (where Mel trained our sales staff) he addressed the most common objections. Our ‘Web 101 for Small Business’ seminar was a huge success; we generated over $132,000 in revenue and signed 26 new advertisers.

Dan Sarko, VP Interactive; Tribune Media

As an event planner, I have the opportunity to place many different types of speakers on various industry programs. Rarely do I encounter a speaker of the caliber of Mel Taylor. Not only is he extremely knowledgeable and well-prepared for his subject matter, he’s also a very entertaining speaker and pleasure to work with. He’s an asset to any program.

Marsha Stoltman; America East Newspaper Conference

Mel, your presentation was excellent! Your knowledge and experience in what works, and what doesn’t to generate online revenues is sorely needed in the Broadcast industry. Your recommendations are simple to follow, practical, and can be executed immediately. Feedback from attendees was as high as we’ve ever gotten for our webinar series.

John Potter, VP Training; Radio Advertising Bureau

Your presentation was incredibly beneficial. To have someone finally say it’s OK to ‘dumb down’ the internet sales process is something short of life altering, but certainly business altering. This was easily one of the best seminars I’ve seen.

Paul MacNeill, President, Island Press Ltd

Providing digital training for local businesses has been a goal of ours for quite some time, but we couldn’t seem to find the right person until we were introduced to Mel Taylor. His broad media background across many traditional and new media platforms coupled with his stage presence and ability to effectively de-mystify new media jargon made him the perfect man for the job. Our attendance figures for the day of the event were off the charts exceeding everyone’s expectations. His program plan was detailed and made our job in event management extremely easy. (See details of WEB 101 event here) We received rave reviews the day of the event and to put icing on the cake, met all sales goals for post-event digital ad sales on our web platforms. We’re planning now both for an encore event for the 101 course and introducing more intermediate and advanced courses. It was a home run all around.

Rhona Bronson, VP Marketing, Press of Atlantic City

We just closed our first package deal today. Website, Facebook pages, Banners etc. The client was paying the Austin American Statesman $850 a month for some crappy little banners. The Statesman just lost that business to us. Also, the SEO tip you gave us was gold. My SEO was already pretty good. But your SEO idea pushed it ahead. We rank #1 on a lot of big local stories ahead of TV and the newspapers. Thanks for all the help, Mel. I just paid off your consulting fee!

Jack H. DigitalTexan.net

I never knew I could sell anything, until I hired Mel Taylor. This man has an in depth understanding of the hyper-local business space and a natural way of helping me uncover my own inner salesman. Even better, he’s helped me develop an effective style of talking to potential clients that I own and that suits my personality. The ten hours I’ve spent with Mel (via Skype) have been 10 of the most enjoyable and best invested hours I’ve had since launching my start up.

Joe Dolce, Publisher & Founder; PaperandString.com, NYC

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