Successful Blog

Good, Better or Best?

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By Lisa D. Jenkins

How do you invite customer feedback on the products or service you offer?

Whether it’s through an online form, a digital survey or a personal conversation, the way you frame the request for feedback can affect the way your customer answers you — and the quality of the feedback you receive.

A story about food … and feedback.

cold cocktail glass

It’s no secret I’m a foodie. I’m always on the lookout for new experiences with food and drink, so when I noticed a relatively new restaurant had opened up near my neighborhood, I was all in. I’ve been there several times to try out different brunch and lunch items.

The unique menu isn’t overly large because the owner/chef makes it a point to prepare everything from local sources. The ketchup is made in-house, the coffee is roasted just four doors down from restaurant and the staff is genuinely interested in whether or not we’ve enjoyed our meal.

The servers are attentive but not in a hovering way. They take our order, serve our meals, then disappear for a couple of minutes. I’m not sure how they time it but they return after everyone has had at least two bites of their meal to ask, “Is everything delicious?”

Not “Is everything tasting okay?” or “How is everything?” or “Is there anything else I can bring you?”

They ask if everything is delicious.

And they wait for an honest reply from everyone.

If something isn’t delicious, polite but pointed questions are asked so the server can get to the heart of the issue as quickly as possible. What kept this dish from being perfect? Was it temperature, spice, or texture? Too savory or too sweet? What isn’t working?

Over the past months I’ve seen a couple of item descriptions change ever so slightly. I’ve also seen a few items disappear.

Because I’m friendly with the staff, I know this is due to customer feedback. If an item isn’t received as delicious 90% of the time, it’s adjusted according to the feedback servers get or it’s removed entirely. As a customer, I feel incredibly valued.

In this way, the restaurant has been able to stay true to its mission and vision while providing a better experience for the diners who ultimately keep the doors open.

It’s simple and brilliant.

Which brings me to the point.

When you ask for feedback, do want customers to help you be good at serving your market, or to be the best at serving your market?

Author’s Bio: Lisa D. Jenkins is a Public Relations professional specializing in Social and Digital Communications for businesses. She has over a decade of experience and work most often with destination organizations or businesses in the travel and tourism industry in the Pacific Northwest. Connect with her on Google+

Five ideas to supercharge Q4 for your business

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Ah, Q4.

This is when you told that vendor you’d get back to her.

This is when you were going to have saved enough to give out raises to your staff.

This is when you were going to have published that e-book.

Remember January and all of its promises?

In the early part of the year, “we’ll take care of that in Q4” is an easy answer.

Now those IOU’s are coming due. It’s September.

Don’t sit back and cry into your pumpkin spice latte. Roll up your sleeves and fly through the finish line like a sprinter at full speed.

sprinters lined up

Five Ideas for Finishing the Year Strong

1. Re-read and update your annual goals document

Hopefully at the beginning of the year you started executing on a plan, working toward goals for the year. Have you been checking in on those goals and updating your progress? If not, now is the time to do a checkup. Depending on the type of goal, use analytics, sales reports, financial statements, or whatever will help you measure.

For goals that are on-track, high five yourself and your team. For goals that are languishing, huddle with your colleagues and figure out what’s happened. Ask these questions:

  • Is the goal still important? (perhaps something has shifted in your strategy that makes the goal unimportant
  • If it’s still important, do you need to adjust the metric? Consider whether your original goal may have been unrealistic.
  • If the original goal was realistic, and it’s still important, have the difficult meeting. Gather the team and ask hard questions about why things went off track. Is there a process that must be changed? Did you not align the right resources? Do you have a staff problem? Was the goal unclear? Work through these and come up with solutions that will get you moving toward achieving the goal with renewed energy.

2. Find the thing you’ve procrastinated all year and do it

If you have that sinking feeling that you’re ending the year with a whimper, ask yourself why. Is there something you really hoped to do, but failed to commit to as a priority?

Take that one thing, break it down into a few steps, and put one foot in front of the other.

Tell a trusted colleague about the task and why you’ve found it daunting. Getting input from an outside perspective may be enough to get you unstuck. There’s a really great app called Unstuck that can help too.

3. Start a project

This one sounds really counterintuitive, but it works.

Pretend it’s January first and tackle a new project. Breathe energy into your business by starting something that will take your business to the next level. Don’t fall into the trap of saying, “we’ll start that next year.”

4. Talk to all of your clients/customers before the end of the year

Talk about paying huge dividends. Challenge yourself to see every one of your customers or clients before the end of the year. It may not be feasible to travel to all of them, but it’s so easy to set up Google Hangouts or Skype conversations.

Taking this one step will build your relationships, strengthen your business, and end the year on a fantastic note. Reach out to your customers with no agenda other than saying hello and asking how they’re doing. Then listen.

5. Use the budgeting process to speak to prospects at the right time

The other magical thing about Q4 is that many companies go through their budgeting process for the upcoming year.

This is an excellent time to reach out to prospects or people who have expressed an interest in your services. Get the cost of your services built into their budget right now, and you’re ready to hit the ground running next year.

You also have an opportunity to act as a coach for a prospect at this time of year, helping them solve problems and end their 2014 on a high note. Make them look like a hero by providing advice at the moment they’re looking for it.

What steps are you taking to make sure you’re building momentum through the end of the year?

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Photo Credit: Lim CK via Compfight cc

In a content slump? Try these Twitter features!

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By Dorien Morin-van Dam

As bloggers, business owners, social media managers we know it’s just not OK to only share your own content.

I personally try to adhere to the 80%-20% rule for myself and my social media clientele, meaning 80% of the time I share other people’s content vs. 20% of the time, I share mine or the content of my clients. And on certain platforms, it quickly turns into 90%-10%.

Sometimes, however, it’s hard to find good content to share across your platforms, and it’s easy to get discouraged. Twitter has always been my back up plan and I’d like to share three ways I use Twitter to curate content to share.

figurine with bluebirds

3 Twitter Features To Curate New Content With Right Now!

1. Twitter Lists

Use your own lists or lists others have created. Here are the sequences I use to curate content Twitter lists.

a) From my own lists: I go to a list and click on ‘Tweets’. For example, I might go to a list called ‘Steamfeed Authors’. I know that every single author on that list talks about social media.

First, I might scan to see if I can find links to the same blog posts in my feed. If I do, I will go check it out. Usually, when multiple people Tweet the same content, it’s relevant to me as well.

Second, I look for patterns and trending topics. They are usually fairly easy to spot. It could be a new feature on a platform, or breaking news. I will RT if I spot a pattern.

Last, if I can not find anything right away in the feed of those authors, I can easily identify just one author by clicking on their name and then find their own latest blog post.

b) From others’ lists: To find new lists, I will find those who influence me (or my client) on Twitter and check out their Twitter lists. If it looks to be a great list, I will subscribe (that means that next time I will not have to go find it; it will now be shown underneath my own lists!). Then I might follow some of the people on this new list and take the steps outlined above.

2. Twitter Search

You can search anything and everything on Twitter. Just drop a topic in the Twitter search bar and go!

You can also use a hashtag in front of keywords. If that’s not enough, try advanced search on Twitter. Read more on how to search and what to search in these articles. Once I find something that I know my audience will love, I use the RT option, or I might go the article itself and share it on a different platform.

3. Trending Topics

Have you used it yet? In case you didn’t know, Twitter Trends are tailored just for you! Trends offer a unique way to get closer to what you care about. They are tailored for you based on your location and who you follow. I also noticed that what’s trending for me is different on my desktop vs. my iPhone, and that has to do with my location. So when in a content slump, check out trending on ‘Twitter’ and join the on-going conversations!

Now that you know more about Twitter and how to use it for content curation, I hope your content slump is over and you will start sharing awesome content once more!

Author’s Bio: Dorien Morin-van Dam is owner and social media marketer at More In Media, a social media consultancy in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Dorien provides social media consulting, management, training and education; she is passionate about teaching social media to small business owners. She services clients all over the USA and has worked in many different industries as well as with several NPO’s. In her spare time, Dorien manages four kids, three dogs and a husband. She runs marathons and loves to bake, travel and read.

Photo Credit: Mira Pangkey via Compfight cc

Life Lessons in Branding from Five Female Celebs

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By Diana Gomez

We’ve all heard the saying that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but is it possible to go too far?

With information spreading farther and faster than ever, it can take just a few moments to tarnish a reputation, something countless celebrities have proven possible.

Here are five lessons we can learn from spotlight-seekers — and how to apply them to your own business.

artistic Marilyn Monroe face

Miley Cyrus: From Hannah Montana to Wrecking Ball

The baby-faced daughter of country star Billy Ray Cyrus won over our hearts as a Disney Channel star, but quickly grew into a magnet for scandal by getting high on camera, posing nude and engaging in X-rated antics onstage. While the star has alienated her loyal young fans and enraged protective parents, she’s whole-heartedly embraced her risky new image as a pop provocateur — going so far as orchestrating a fake storm of controversy surrounding her Bangerz tour.

Miley got the attention she wanted, but many fans have been left scratching their heads about what exactly she’s doing. Is she a marketing genius or just a hot mess? Either way, she’s standing on shaky ground.

Lesson learned: If you change your company’s image in a wholesale way, do it after careful consideration and full awareness of former customers you may alienate in favor of attracting new ones.

Sinead O’Connor: If you don’t have anything nice to say…

After being cited as an inspiration for Miley’s racy “Wrecking Ball” video, Irish singer Sinead O’Connor shot back with a series of open letters expressing her disapproval of the pop star’s actions. “You have enough talent that you don’t need to let the music business make a prostitute of you,” Sinead wrote in one letter. Miley responded by reposting a series of tweets Sinead had written two years earlier when she was seeking psychiatric help. Sinead followed up by demanding an apology and threatening Miley with legal action if she didn’t take down the tweets, saying she’d been subjected to media bullying.

This wasn’t Sinead’s first time in the hot seat. Most memorably, the buzz-cutted singer drew scorn for ripping up a photograph of the pope on Saturday Night Live in 1992. Her career fizzled out soon afterward, and her only headline appearances revolved around her personal life — most notably, a suicide attempt and a custody battle.

Lesson learned: Don’t start hurling criticisms unless you’re prepared to receive a few of your own.

Gwyneth Paltrow: Is honesty always the best policy?

When Gwyneth and her rock star hubby Chris Martin decided to separate, there was nothing quiet about it: The actress announced the split via her popular blog, GOOP. Gwyneth painted the divorce as a “conscious uncoupling,” then proceeded to explain their decision as a new, more progressive way of being in relationships. She may have been attempting to control the spin on the separation, but many people responded negatively, taking it as an example of how out-of-touch Gwyneth is.

Lesson learned: Tell the truth in times of crisis, but keep it simple. Spinning the story and adding details can dig your company into a hole.

Martha Stewart: Moving on

The world was shocked when domestic diva Martha Stewart was sentenced to five months in prison after lying to investigators about selling stocks. Ten years later, Martha’s media empire is still going strong — so strong, in fact, that it’s easy to forget about her prison stint altogether. Her magazines, books, TV shows and product lines are thriving. And while many doubted her ability to bounce back, Martha always knew she would.

“I was very confident,” she said in a rare interview with Matt Lauer last year. “When you know inside that you’re good, that you’ve done well, and that you are an honest person, you know you can live through disaster.”

Rather than focusing on the negative, Martha chose to remain confident and carry on with business as usual as soon as she’d served her term. And that approach has certainly worked out in her favor.

Lesson learned: If you suffer a setback, take the fall with grace and style, and your rebound will be that much easier.

Taylor Swift: The power of loyalty

Taylor Swift’s country-pop tunes dominate the airwaves, and it’s not just because they’re so darn catchy. The young star is frequently lauded as a marketing maven. For one, her ability to understand and cater to her massive fan base represents a valuable lesson in contact marketing.

And that connection with her fans is a huge part of her success.

Taylor is known for tracking down her most passionate followers and rewarding them with memorable experiences, and she’s extremely active on social media. When Taylor asks her army of fans to call in to radio stations and politely request her songs, you can bet that DJs across America are immediately bombarded.

Lesson learned: Know your audience, give them what they want and never take them for granted.

What other celebrities have stories with lessons that businesses can learn from?

Author’s Bio: Diana Gomez is the Marketing Coordinator at Lyoness America, where she is instrumental in the implementation of marketing and social media strategies for USA and Canada. Lyoness is an international shopping community and loyalty rewards program, where businesses and consumers benefit with free membership and money back with every purchase. Check out Lyoness on Twitter.

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Best practices for building an integrated business community

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What is an online community?

Online community is an organized group of people connecting and sharing online on a regular basis. It’s generally accepted that members of an online community have the ability to communicate with each other as well as with the operator of the community. Most communities also have their own set of guidelines or rules, visual signals, and peer support.

A true online community builds equity over time, and can be classified as “owned media.”

welcome mat

What is not an online community?

Broadcast-only or broadcast-centric platforms, such as an emailed newsletter list, Twitter accounts, or company Facebook pages do not constitute communities. Those tools, while worthwhile, do not make good standalone community platforms because they do not allow full expression of interpersonal relationships, and their content tends to be transitory. Participants in those platforms are more audience than community member, even when they are given the opportunity to comment…it’s generally in response to a trigger from the operator, not a topic of their choosing.

When a business decides to invest in managing an online community, ideally it will take advantage of the tools that suit the business purpose best. But there must always be a home-base, or core, to which the other social accounts contribute. This home-base should be part of the business’ own website, where it can control the branding, messaging, features, customer data, and analytics.

Social tools like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are great for reaching the audience, but then there must be a place for members to return again and again for deep-dive content and lasting relationships.

A very high percentage of users abandon Facebook fan pages after a campaign is over; however members stick around brand-owned communities for years, building equity and value that endures. In addition, and most importantly, you have no ownership of the community data or content on these third-party networks.

“Facebook is more effective at driving brand sales via a brand’s website than on Facebook itself.” The Evolution of Facebook Brand Fans, AdAge White paper, Sept. 2011

Best Practices for Building a Thriving Business Community

Destroy the internal silos

Prepare all departments to participate: marketing, PR, customer service, sales, product development, and management (for example, if PR is planning a big social stunt, be sure to bring the YouTube viewers back into the home base for discussion and long-term mileage from the event).

Find a champion

Dedicate one overall administrator with authority to take corrective action. Even with the silos gone, someone needs to manage the community, from a strategic, technological, and staffing perspective. If the lights are on and no-one’s home, the community will not succeed. Ideally, the department whose budget is paying for the community platform is the same department responsible for administering it.

Remember the prime objective

Tie business objectives to the community, and for each objective, come up with metric for success. For example, if the primary objective of the community is to offer tech support to customers, it would be logical to evaluate the number of call center tickets/phone calls to determine whether the community is lowering that number. If the primary objective of the community is something more nebulous like “brand awareness,” then you could choose some indicator metrics like number of brand mentions, site traffic numbers, or reputation indicators.

Choose your platform(s) with the goal in mind

If you are using a flexible online community platform, you will be able to select which specific tools, singly or in combination, will support the goal. It could be a commented blog, it could be forums with the occasional chat event, or it could be some combination of tools. Consider how your audience prefers to interact and choose accordingly. If you are starting a community from scratch, sometimes it’s best to start with commented blogs and add forums once there is a core of active participants.

Along with the home base, determine which external social tools will be integrated. If your audience hangs out on Facebook, choose a platform with Facebook Connect and content sharing. If they are Twitter maniacs, incorporate a Twitter feed widget into the home base. Plan a two-way communication–encourage sharing content outwards, and promote the home base on the external social networks as well.

Don’t have a split personality

Think about convenience for your members, and they will love you for it. Use a single sign-on if possible, across your community tools. The same cohesive feel applies to the branding across platforms; use the same colors and theming on your home community and in external profiles.

Integrate social monitoring and measuring

Be sure to include your home base within your social monitoring dashboard. Whether you’re using an enterprise listening system, Google Alerts, or another tool, make sure that you are monitoring all of your key indicators across your social networks, including the community on your own website.

To summarize, your social presence should be an elegantly integrated, comprehensive ecosystem that encourages brand evangelists to re-visit again and again, and share messaging outward as well.

By bringing the conversation home, you solidify the relationship and provide lasting value to both the customer and the brand.

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Photo Credit: chrisinplymouth via Compfight cc

Whole health series for business owners: reading The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron

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Editor’s Note: We’re so excited to welcome back Teresa Morrow, a past contributor to Successful Blog, to share her spiritual insights for business owners. She will be doing a monthly series to help business owners and entrepreneurs leverage the world of mind, body, and spirit books in order to boost overall health. (Welcome back Teresa! ~Rosemary)

By Teresa Morrow

As the first book in this monthly series, I want to share with you—

“The Artist’s Way,” by Julia Cameron

cover of The Artist's Way book

You may not think of yourself as an artist; however, if you are ambitious, curious, and creative like most entrepreneurs, this book will help you on your path in life and in business.

The line on the top of the book cover reads:

“A course in discovering and recovering your creative self.”

The subtitle is:

“A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity”

Then…the line on the back of the book reads:

“For writers, poets, actors, painters, musicians and creative people in all walks of life.”

I believe no matter what business you are involved in or starting, you and I could always use a bit more help with our creativity. Our creativity allows us to birth those great ideas, explore new opportunities and strive to be our best selves.

Here are a few things I loved from this book:

  1. First, author Julia Cameron shares two tools to bring out your creativity —the morning pages and the artist’s date.

    The morning pages are three pages you write each morning. In these pages, there are no wrong words, sentences, paragraphs. Just writing. Just to keep up the creative flow of allowing your ideas, thoughts and feelings to be expressed outward. It’s an exercise in giving yourself permission to vent, share and give to your creative self.

    The artist’s date is a set amount of time you set aside for you to be creative. This can be an hour, a half day or whole day where you immerse yourself in what you find creative—writing, singing, cooking, drawing, etc. And you make a solid commitment to setting this time aside for your creative self.

  2. Art is born in attention. This sentence is found on page 21 and was one of the many powerful statements Julia makes in her book. This statement rings in truth. Without the attention to your art (your business), it would cease to exist. You have to be paying constant attention to what you want from your business, where you wish it to grow, how you want to affect your customers, and the purpose of your art in the world.
  3. In week 7, the sense of connection, Julia Cameron talks about how art is sometimes thought of as “thinking something up” and she says is more the art of “get something down”. She states, “Art is not about thinking something up. It is about the opposite—getting something down.” The directions are important here:

    If we are trying to think something up, we are straining to reach for something that’s just beyond our grasp, “up there, in the stratosphere, where art lives on high…”. “When we get something down, there is no strain. We’re not doing: we’re getting.”

    WHOOHOO! The last line is profound to me because as a creative, I have felt like I was reaching many times and that’s when I was not able to write much. When the flow was natural, I could write for a long while because I was getting not reaching.

I also appreciated the quotes I found in the sidebars throughout the book. Here are a few I enjoyed-

  • “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us” Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • “Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist” Rene-Francois-Ghislain Margritte
  • “Learning is movement from moment to moment” J. Krishnamurti

The Artist’s Way is divided into twelve main chapters, and each chapter is one week of the “course.” Each chapter dives into a section of our being to bring out our more creative self within the parameters of professional and spiritual life.

Week 1: Recovering a Sense of Safety

Week 2: Recovering a Sense of Identity

Week 3: Recovering a Sense of Power

Week 4: Recovering a Sense of Integrity

Week 5: Recovering a Sense of Possibility

Week 6: Recovering a Sense of Abundance

Week 7: Recovering a Sense of Connection

Week 8: Recovering a Sense of Strength

Week 9: Recovering a Sense of Compassion

Week 10:Recovering a Sense of Self-Protection

Week 11: Recovering a Sense of Autonomy

Week 12: Recovering a Sense of Faith

To get your own copy of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, find it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Author’s Bio: Teresa Morrow is an inspirational author, blogger, poet, and author of ‘Life Lessons from the Heart’ and ‘Healing from Broken Trust: A Journey of Transformation.’ Visit her website at http://TeresaMorrow.com.