Successful Blog

Steve Shorts: ReTweets and Cranking on Gmail?

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Proud to Introduce you to Steve’s Shorts

A simple few minutes where a guy who is brilliant makes an observation about social media that you might have already been thinking. This column brought to you by the evil conspiracy that is Steve Plunkett and Liz Strauss.

Why I Don’t Thank for Retweet
by Steve Plunkett.

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When people say “Thanks for the RT,”, I always shoot back, “Thanks for the good info”.. I read it, I may have even blogged it. It was good info, so I passed it along, you don’t need to thank me for sharing and trusting your credibility. Believing in you enough to click on a link? That you earned anyways via engagement and professionalism. But you are welcome, again, thanks for the info. When you retweet me, you are saying “Thanks for the info”.

A Short Look at … What’s Next?

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Hope you enjoyed these moments with Steve’s Shorts.

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M/C/C’s Director, Search, Steve Plunkett, is responsible for all aspects of search engine optimization (SEO) and Internet user behavior. Plunkett’s competitive personality makes him a perfect fit in the competitive world of SEO. As a child and a gamer, he worked hard ensuring that it was his initials at the top of every arcade game unit in his neighborhood. Today, he uses SEO to ensure his clients appear at the top of the search engine results –and offers an array of optimization services that are scoring big for those clients.

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Uncertainty is Expensive!

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by Patty Azzarello

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Hidden Expense…

Uncertainty is a huge hidden expense in your business.

There’s the obvious expense of work not getting done — as uncertainty causes people waiting for decisions instead of working. But the more damaging and expensive side of uncertainty is the work that gets done the wrong way.

The wrong work

Unresolved strategic issues, don’t just stay in the board room until you finally get them answered.
Every unanswered strategic question leaves legions of people in your organization, less productive and more expensive than they would be with clear direction.

It’s the inconsistent work that comes from everyone taking their best guess while waiting for the strategy from above, that is expensive.

As a leader one of your biggest responsibilities is to remove uncertainty.

Strategic Chaos

What are the unresolved strategic issues in your company?  What are the decisions that are never seem to get closed?

Are we a product or service company? Should we do an exclusive agreement?  Should we be selling through different partners?  Should we upgrade our architecture, or build on the one we have?  Should we change our pricing for global customers or optimize regionally?

The true cost of indecision…

It’s not that strategic unanswered questions go answered that causes the problem. It’s that they get answered every day, differently, by front line employees who are making the best choices they can in the moment for how to implement their work.

A tale of 2 business units:

An interesting example of this is a company I worked with that had two business units.  At the executive level, it was a political war.

They could not commit to a decision if one or the other business unit was the primary mission of the company, or if both businesses should get equal attention and investment.

So what happened…

Hundreds of front line, individual contributors had to wonder, debate and make up their own answer to the most strategic decision in the company: What business are we in?

Yikes! A customer-facing, unsupported strategy…

A specific, downstream effect of this was that every trade show event manager had signs for both businesses in their inventory.  So they each had to decide on their own, Do we hang one sign or both?  Do we make one bigger? Put one on top? Or give them equal treatment?

They all did their best, but of course they all made different decisions.  And different local politics ensured that the company was never represented the same way twice!

Because the executives left this uncertainty, the most fundamental positioning of the company was executed differently at every event.

Failure to build value, and wasted time and money…

The company shot them selves in the foot at every event, failing to build their credibility and recognition consistently in the market.

Your job is to eliminate uncertainty, so that everyone can invest in executing in an aligned way, to build value, market confidence and brand.

This is true for every function and every team in the organization. And this has a huge ROI.  Failure has a huge expense.

How do you deal with uncertainty is in your organization?

This is at the heart of the work I do with my corporate clients.  It is so important, and profitable, to create clarity, concrete actions and motivation both at the executive level AND with all of the employees.

We all wish we got more clarity and strategic decisions from above. How do you remove uncertainty for your team?

Please leave your suggestions and experiences on this in the comment box below. It’s so important.

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Patty Azzarello works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. She has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at The Azzarello Group Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello

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Questions to Get Closer to You Question 26

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Get Closer to You

This is a series of questions, I don’t know how many. They are the ones I ask when I help folks get closer to their personal identity.

What sort of thinkers and advisors are the best to test your decisions?

I’ll answer first to get things started.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Check out the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

Related< Branding: 5 Ways to Help You Find Out Who You Are

Questions to Get Closer to You: Question 25
Questions to Get Closer to You: Question 24
Questions to Get Closer to You: Question 23Branding: 5 Ways to Help You Find Out Who You Are

Questions to Get Closer to Your Brand: Question 1
You’ll find the entire series of Questions to Get Closer to you on the Successful Series page.

When You Need To Reinvent The Wheel, Build A Hover Car

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By Terez Howard

Recently, I’ve felt like my blogging has become perfunctory.

The reason? It could be that my family took several vacations this summer. We were away for a combined total of three weeks out of three months. Each time that I returned home, I felt less and less energized to do my work. I wrote without a real purpose

My partner, Jael, and I have both been feeling like our blog needs a defibrillator.

Reinventing the wheel

What do you do when you feel like you are regurgitating the same information on your blog? Reinvent the wheel! What I mean is that you try something new to infuse life into your blog. What are your options?

Here are few that I came up with:

  • Invite guest bloggers to share some fresh ideas.
  • Spotlight notable individuals in your niche market.
  • Include a different medium in your blog, such as video or audio.
  • Expand your niche, or add another.

As you reinvent the wheel, you need to have a plan. I recently got to speak with Liz, and I’m sure that she would not mind me sharing this priceless tip she shared with me.

Get organized

Liz suggested to create a weekly or monthly calendar for a blog. It could look something like this:

  • Monday – Inspirational post
  • Tuesday – Business post
  • Wednesday – Review
  • Thursday – Guest blogger’s post
  • Friday – Interview

Every week would have the same routine. Now, I don’t claim to be an expert, but I like to think of myself as a reasoning person. I consider myself a very organized person. After she told me this simple idea, I had one of those “Why didn’t I think of that?” moments.

It’s OK that I didn’t come up with this and that my organizational skills did not spill into my blog. I’m just grateful that someone wised me up to this level of organization.

My plan for a hover car

So, I’m going to reinvent my wheel by scheduling a certain type of post each day I publish a post. After I get that established, I will create a detailed monthly calendar, which outlines what I’m going to write about. Of course, if I’m struck by a lightning moment, I will blog about that and push my prescheduled post to the next week or month.

I figure that if I get very organized about my writing, I will maintain my excitement for writing, rather than fall into the perfunctory state I was in. Also, when I have a plan and a purpose, I feel more driven to reach my goal.

How do you keep your blog filled with fresh ideas? What’s your plan and purpose?

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Terez Howard operates TheWriteBloggers, a professional blogging service which builds clients’ authority status and net visibility.  She has written informative pieces for newspapers, online magazines and blogs, both big and small.  She regularly blogs at Freelance Writing Mamas . You’ll find her on Twitter @thewriteblogger

Thanks, Terez!

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

Win Brand Loyalty and Get Free Word of Mouth at the Same Time

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Research proves that customer investment and word of mouth marketing are most effective business development initiatives any company can have to build a brand, to build sales, to build lasting value. It’s true that a word from a friend we trust makes a huge difference in what gets our attention.

Getting my attention doesn’t mean I’ll buy.

If you want me to buy your product or service, show me

  • how it makes my life smarter, faster, more efficient and you’ll win my thinking.
  • how it makes my life more fun, more entertaining, more meaningful and you’ll win my emotional investment.
  • how it seamlessly and easily integrates into my life and you’ll win my participation.

It’s the last one that most products and services leave out. Build a great product that’s meaningful or fun, but make it hard to get to, too expensive to buy into, or just plain something that doesn’t fit into what I already do — I might remark on it, but it’s unlikely that I’ll use my discretionary income to try it out. A chance at converting me into a loyal fan is a far stretch.

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If your product makes me feel smart, makes me feel better about myself, and fits easily into my already crowded life, chances are great that I’ll buy if I can. And if your product lives up to those promises, chances are even greater that I’ll be telling all of my friends. That’s free word of mouth from a new evangelist. And when I bring my friends back with me to try out your product the cycle will happen again.

How can you make what you’re offering fit more easily into your customer’s life?

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

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Four Free Ways to Motivate People … When Money Isn’t Free

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by Patty Azzarello

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Motivation is Personal

Money is the easiest and least personal way to motivate people (if you have money). If you don’t, you need to get down to the real business of making people actually care about what they are working on.

In any economy, it’s important to focus on the non-financial motivators for three key reasons.

  1. Those are always within your control
  2. They work better than money – people work for meaning, not money
  3. Money doesn’t buy loyalty, it only rents effort

Free motivators that work wonders

1. Remove Uncertainty about the work. The biggest de-motivator you can have is when people don’t know exactly what to work on or why it matters. Make sure you keep people engaged in meaningful work, and always connect the dots of why it matters. Just because you are waiting for answers from above, don’t keep your team waiting. Never pass uncertainty downward.

2. Communicate a lot, on a regular cadence. Clear consistent communication from above is a magical motivator that so many leaders miss. You get huge points for leadership and credibility when you communicate well. People are always more motivated to work for people they know and respect, than invisible, or checked out leaders. Even if you are not checked out, if you fail to communicate regularly, you will appear to be checked out.

3. Don’t guess what people care about, ask them! Personally ask each person that works for you. You’ll be amazed at the answers, and how many things you can do without money that will make a material difference to them.

4. Say Thank You. Create a habit in your organization to recognize contributions. Don’t over complicate it with processes, nominations, reviews, and spreadsheets. Just make it clear to your staff that you want to know when anyone in your organization does something remarkable, and then have one of the executives say, “thank you”.

Want to know more?

I’ll talk more about each of these and share some great stories about what really works (and what really pisses people off) in my free webinar: Motivating Without Money, Wednesday, Aug 25.

Sign up now to learn more great motivation techniques.

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Patty Azzarello works with executives where leadership and business challenges meet. She has held leadership roles in General Management, Marketing, Software Product Development and Sales, and has been successful in running large and small businesses. She writes at The Azzarello Group Blog. You’ll find her on Twitter as @PattyAzzarello