Successful Blog

How Was Your Day as a Customer?

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Whatever You Did Today

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Whatever you did today — enjoy a cup of coffee reading the paper, watch TV, work on your computer, clean the house, go to the mall, drive a car, eat lunch, read blogs, take a shower — you used a product. You were a customer.

How was your customer experience? Did anything about it leave you wishing that some business knew you better?

What percent of your experiences leaves you feeling more than satisfied, makes you want to tell people what a great experience you had?

It’s hard to miss when you’ve bumped into a business that values a customer. It’s hard to forget the name of their brand.

Brand you and me.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Feeling a Customer’s First Response
Customers and Credibility
The Customer Think Series on the SUCCESSFUL SERIES Page

Belated — State of the Blogosphere 2

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Move Over English

Though I was at a conference, then deathly sick (note the use of hyperbole), when David Sifry came out with his State of the Blogosphere Part 2 — On Language and Tagging, think there is still important data here to get reported for the record. David’s ability to cut through information on the index of 37.3 million blogs to bring coherent thought to the table is a gift he shares several times a year and we should take advantage of it to get the big picture of how our lives are changing.

For this post, I choose to focus on the analysis of the language data.

David Speaks

He begins by offering a few disclaimers about the data set he’s about to offer. Three important caveats he reminds us to keep in the foreground when studying his data.

  • First that the automated language software they use may not be perfect and my over- or undercount a particular language or group of languages, due to bugs wthin the software. He follows that comment with a statement that Technorati, however, still feels fairly confident in its reliability across the millions of blogs and posts they index each day.
  • One part of the blogosphere, Mr. Sifry is certain that is being under-reported is posts and blogs written in Korean. This is due to the fact that the main services are not indexed by Technorati at this time. A second that is being undercounted to a lesser degree is French language blogs and posts, because Technorati has not yet got a good system for indexing skyblog.
  • This third caveat is that Japanese bloggers write shorter posts. This could be due to their predilection to posting from mobile telephone. This fact could be skewing the results of the data that follows making the numbers higher, as the data tracks quantity of posts not length.

Within these caveats, Dave Sifry aso offers this invitation,

if anyone at these (or other) blogging services is interested in being indexed, please drop me a line.

[Read more…]

5 Type Turn-Offs that Are Exit Only

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I’m Only 1 Reader

Spend enough time as a publisher and when you read for fun, you can’t help seeing publishing things . . . if they’re great I comment on them. Reinforce good behavior is what I learned in teachers’ school. If they’re not good typography, I try to overlook them and keep reading. If I simply cannot, usually I just move on shaking my head. I go back to my own blog to make sure that I’m not doing the same thing.

YET when I see the same type issues happening from one blog to another, I think folks can’t see how the type looks and feels from this side of the computer. So I’ve started taking notes on what it’s like to be the reader. Of course, I’m only one reader, but I AM one reader. I’m one who will come back or I won’t. [Read more…]

Feeling a Customer’s First Response

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An Opportunity

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A customer’s first response runs deep and lasts long. One way I keep myself close to customers is to monitor my first response to new information whenever I can — you know, that initial response that occurs without thinking. I’ve made habit of looking for such responses as I move through my life.

Information has no positive or negative value until I respond to it.

This morning I encountered information that you might use in the same way. Ready? [Read more…]

Don’t Fear the Blank Screen — Be a Miner

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Staring at a Blank Screen

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Staring at a blank screen does nothing for me. In fact, I recommend against it. In my way of thinking, blank things encourage more blank things. When I want my head filled with information and ideas, not with blank, emptiness I do this. [Read more…]

Jonathan Schwartz, CEO, Expert Corporate Blogger

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CEO of Sun Microsystems

I’m sure that Jonathan Schwartz has plenty to do. After all, he’s CEO of Sun Microsystems, traveling the world and talking to the media comes with the job — not to mention running that Fortune 500 company. When he took on the role, people wondered whether he would continue his other role as writer of Jonathan’s Blog.

His answer was a lengthy post that said emphatically, “YES.”

That’s because Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems gets what blogging is about. In fact, he takes his blog to the state of the art in corporate blogging. If you’re working with new corporate bloggers or are one yourself, this is the blog to watch. [Read more…]