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Hi, I'm Larry, and I'm happy to be a new member of this group.

Let's see... I usually freeze up a few seconds when I have to introduce myself, but here goes.

First of all, I'm a lifelong Chicago Cubs baseball fan. If you follow baseball or American sports, you know the Cubs have not won the World Series championship in over 101 years. Yes, that's a full century! Cub Fans know how to suffer. Yet, from every winter, hope does spring eternal. We arise from our slumber and think, for at least a few cold months, that this may be the year.

When I'm not at the Cubs game (or imbibing with friends at one of the pubs that surround Wrigley Field), I'm an online marketing expert. I manage the online marketing programs for a fast-growing company in the insurance industry. The bulk of that entails search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to generate marketing leads for our sales team. But it's not enough to drive traffic to our websites. We also have to make sure that our sites converting as many of our visitors as possible into sales prospects (i.e. leads). I then have to nurture those leads, primarily through email marketing, using drip marketing tactics. I also do all this, and more, as an online marketing consultant. Am I good enough to be called an online marketing expert? That's another discussion.

At heart, I'm a writer. It took a while to learn copywriting, which for creative writers is a whole new language. In many ways, however, I've found that effective sales copywriting can actually improve my creative writing. I tend to write cleaner and in a more conversational style...until I need to be more formal. But I have to be careful, because copywriting also often pushes the boundaries.

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