February 9, 2010

Why Businesses Still Aren’t Engaging Online With Their Customers

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 8:54 am

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

A Guest Post by Frank Angelone

Are you a business? Whether you are a large corporation or a small business, you should be engaging with your customers. As many already know, the best way to engage with your customers is through social media. There are so many sites available at your disposal to be an active participant, yet many businesses still aren’t using social media to its full potential.

Why is this? Well, I believe it can be answered in 5 bullet points…

1. Laziness. It’s as simple as that. If you don’t engage in social media, your sales for your business aren’t going to be as high as Toyota who are actively engaging with their customers. Don’t sit around and wait for social media to come to you. You have to go after your customer base and see what they want. If you don’t, you are leaving money on the table for your competition.
2. Time Constraints. So many businesses say they are too busy to create accounts on Twitter or Facebook. That’s a poor excuse and a simple solution is hire someone to engage with your customers.
3. Unfamiliar with social media. This is probably the worst reason for not engaging with your customers online. If you know how to talk to your customers in person, then online interaction isn’t any different. You reach an even larger customer base online. If a business says, “We are unfamiliar with using social media.” My response is, “how come Toyota can do it?” Everyone starts at the bottom and learns more as they participate.
4. Fear of the unknown. To many business engaging with their customers online is a new form of business that older business owners simply won’t understand its benefit. An easy fix, just do it! The more a business puts off engaging with their customers, the quicker someone will take those customers from them.
5. Pride. There are many business owners and companies out there that feel the way that they do things is the only way it can be done. The minute you let pride get in the way, the sooner you will be bankrupt. You need to accept that the business world is always changing and if you are not willing to adapt because of pride, then get out the playing field. There are plenty of other businesses that will put int the time to make their companies better.

My takeaways for companies refusing to engage with their customers online are…

• Business in general is bigger than YOUR company. You need to adapt to changing times to be a big player.
• Engaging in an online capacity is the same as in person. The two shouldn’t be mistaken as different and the same amount of effort should be put into both.
• For your company to survive, you NEED customers. Treat your customers as your number one concern and you will see your profits increase. Always build trust and relationships with those people.

Find the social site where your customers hang out. Set a goal. Invest a little time. Learn a tool. Get familiar with what’s going on… Chances are you’ll find yourself proudly connecting to the people who love what you more and more.

—–
Frank Angelone is the founder of Social Tech Zone. He helps individuals and businesses with news and tips to better themselves in social media and technology. Frank is also the author of the Computer Speed Blueprint where he helps PC users increase the speed of their slow computer. You’ll find him on Twitter as @FrankAngelone.

Thanks, Frank! Great information on how we do more than survive.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Filed under Marketing, Successful Blog | 2 Comments »

February 8, 2010

3 Simple Steps to Add Irresistible Influence to Your Brand

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 9:20 am

Magnetic from the Very First Minute!

What makes a person or a company unforgettable from the second you interact?

Why do some folks motivate and energize us? What is it about some folks that attracts people so powerfully?

What makes a magnetic personality? Is it possible for a company or a brand to have those qualities? Can we carry them online and off?

3 Simple Steps to Add Irresistible Influence to Your Brand

The brands and the businesses we love don’t just deliver on a promise. They make us feel good about working with them and feel good about being part of what they’re doing. If you have a favorite brand or company you might find that they have the same qualities that we find attractive in individuals we first meet.

Try these three steps to develop an irresistible influence brand image online and off.

• Live positivity with a bias toward service … When someone lights up our minds with the joy of living, it’s hard not to notice. Companies are learning to do the same thing. It’s fascinating how positivity and “can do” pulls us to it. We’d all rather be around someone who stands in the sun than someone drenched without an umbrella. We’d rather use products and work with brands who inspire us. Somehow we know they’ll be around when hard times come too.
• Share your intelligent thinking without an agenda … It might be fun to watch someone who’s silly, but it’s hard to invest in their unpredictability. People and companies who visibly sort problems into great actions are valuable. We know that they can help us make clear decisions, and they pass on useful information when we might need it. Folks who help us clarify our thoughts are priceless.
• Make us part of your meaningful mission … People and companies with a passion guiding them are attractive. We can see their values and how those values align with our own. Companies and individuals will solid values stand on solid ground and when we stand with them, we know we do too.

Whether we’re a corporation, a small business, or an individual, our brand comes through in our positive bias, our intelligent problem solving and meaningful mission. People want to participate with folks who are on a great path that is bright, generous, and passionate. Even if it’s only for a short transaction, it beats out the folks who are just going through the motions. On Twitter, on our blogs, in person, it’s those characteristics that make us uniquely different.

How do you add irresistible to your brand image?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

I’m a proud affiliate of

Isn’t it time you registered for

Filed under Marketing, Successful Blog | 12 Comments »

---

February 7, 2010

Beach Notes: What Goes into Effortless?

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 9:25 am

by Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh

A couple of times recently we have seen this man at our local beach, Rainbow Bay, with a didgeridoo ( or yidaki), the traditional Australian Aboriginal musical intrument.

This day we saw and heard him playing with the end of the “didge” submerged at the water’s edge.

My thought was that there might be some spiritual explanation, connecting with the spirits of the sea, etc. A bit of a web search suggests something more mundane. Evidently the exercise of playing the instrument in this way trains the diaphragm and builds the player’s ability to maintain the constant pressure to produce the long drawn out sounds that are such a feature of didgeridoo playing.

So we think he was not just blowing bubbles or even communing with the spirits of the sea, so much as practising, training his body to support his playing.

Of course, we could have asked. But when we came back, he was gone and we have not seen him on subsequent days.

Inspirational thought from this? When you watch and listen to an indigenous or even a skilled non-indigenous Australian play the didgeridoo for an extended period, it seems so effortless. And maybe it is. But as with many apparently effortless displays of high level skills, such as those of a champion sports person, there is usually many hours of practice, training and self-discipline that have gone into that “effortless” performance.

Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh

Filed under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | No Comments »

---

February 6, 2010

Thanks to Week 224 SOBs

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 10:56 am

Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

---

---

---

---

---

They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Filed under SOB Business, Successful Blog | No Comments »

---

February 5, 2010

SOB Business Cafe 02-05-10

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 9:03 am

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking — articles, books, podcasts, and videos about business online written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Doc Searls Weblog
What you have to appreciate, even admire, is how well Apple plays the vertical game. It’s really amazing.

What you also have to appreciate is how much we also need the horizontal one. The iPad needs an open alternative, soon. There should be for the iPad what Google’s Nexus One is for the iPhone.

Up the creek without an iPaddle

---

10e20
I help clients brainstorm different content ideas for linkbait and viral spread. Oftentimes I’m brainstorming for the same niche, meaning I have to come up with dozens of ideas for one industry. This process can get tricky, as it’s often hard to come up with fresh ideas for one topic week after week. I thought I’d share some things that I do to try and get the creative juices going.

6 Tips on Brainstorming Viral Content

---

Servant of Chaos
You know what it’s like – the brief hits your desk and you know it’s going to hurt you. The client wants impact. Results. Creativity to burn. It needs to be original, classy and out of left field – but you also need to bring this baby in on budget. And quickly.

Rethinking Branding through Radical Innovation

---

TrendWatching
As we wanted to keep things straightforward and hands-on this month, we’re highlighting “FUNCTIONALL”. Which is all about a new breed of products that are simple, small and/or cheap (with a dash of sustainability), giving them global appeal, from India to Sweden. Now, if that doesn’t warrant a brainstorming session…

“FunctionALL” Why Simple and Small Appeals to All

---

Skelliewag
I am always the first person to advocate studying blogs you admire to learn their techniques. I’ve dedicated a lot of time to spreading the word about blogs that are doing things right, and how you can emulate them.

But in this post, I want to talk about how we can learn what no to do from the evolution of popular blogs. Because they’ve learned from their mistakes, we have the opportunity to learn without ever having to make the same mistake they did.

What Popular Bloggers Got Wrong - And How You Can Get it Right

---

Web Worker Daily
About a week ago, I noticed that my task list had this distribution for prioritization: 95 percent “highest,” 4 percent “high,” 1 percent “normal,” and no tasks at all at the “low” and “lowest” priorities. Is this because I am so important that everything I do is of the utmost importance?

My Dirty Little Task Management Secret

---

Related ala carte selections include

Brand New
Based in Philadelphia, the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage is a collective of seven grant-making initiatives dedicated to supporting local artists and heritage organizations. Originally, each initiative had its own logo, lacking any consistency with the others. Because of that, there was no indication that it was part of a greater entity. Another problem was the absence of an umbrella logo for the Pew Center. The challenge for London-based johnson banks was to solve a rather specific client brief.

The Hue Center

---

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like. No tips required. Comments appreciated.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

I’m a proud affiliate of

Filed under Great Finds, Successful Blog | No Comments »

---

keep looking »