Successful Blog

Words Matter

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Rosemary O’Neill

The Words Matter

The words you use every day surrounding your customers do matter.

Are you “driving eyeballs to a squeeze page?” Or how about “shutting down a trouble ticket?”

Used over and over again, these images start to permeate our corporate culture. And how do you think the “traffic” feels about being a tiny cell on your spreadsheet? Yes, they can tell.

Even the kitchen lunchtime conversation can have a long-term impact. Are you constantly hearing “war stories” about crazy or stupid customers? If you’re hearing that on a regular basis, it’s time for some vacation and re-thinking. Was that customer stupid to give you her credit card number?

Inject Positive Energy

The best way to address this issue is to start injecting different words and mental images into your daily conversations with colleagues.

Think of how beautiful Guy Kawasaki’s word “enchantment” sounds (and his book is full of good ideas). Instead of “trouble tickets,” what if you had “rescue missions?” What if you hung up photographs of your customers’ faces in your hallway?

Today, as you go about your business, try to capture the negative, destructive words and think of alternatives that uplift, inspire, and energize.

How do you talk about your customers when they’re not in the room?
Do your words matter to them and to you?

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

Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss

Be Your Own Digital Secret Shopper – 5 Ideas

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Rosemary O’Neill

When’s the last time you called yourself?

Go ahead, pick up your phone right now and call your business line. What happens? Is it a friendly greeting, or is it the third ring of voicemail hell?

On a roughly quarterly basis, it’s great to do a little secret shopping on yourself. It can be very revealing to step into the shoes of someone trying to get in touch with you. And you do want people to be able to reach out to you, right?

Here are 5 quick ideas for your secret shopping project:

  1. Check out your business cards. Do the URLs, email, and phone numbers work? If you have something fancy on there like a QR code, does it work correctly? Has your title changed?
  2. Log out and look at your websites. Go to a friend’s computer and look up your website, your Facebook page, other social accounts…how do they look from the “outside?” Sometimes it’s different than when you’re the account owner.
  3. Call your voicemails. If you’re still using the robot voice that came with your account, change it to something warm and professional. Unless you sell robots.
  4. Try to buy something. Go through the whole buying process for whatever you sell, as if you are a new customer. If it’s an online ordering process, take screenshots at each step, so that you can go back and update things if you need to.
  5. Put in a support ticket. If you offer customer support, put in a ticket using whatever mechanism is appropriate. Post in your own ticket system, send an email from an outside account, and/or ask a friend to Tweet for help (including an @mention of your company).

I gave this list a quick trial run, and noticed that I hadn’t ever changed my personal greeting in the company phone system!

What did you uncover?

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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

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Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss

How Much Digital Clutter Can You Delete Today?

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Rosemary O’Neill

It’s Not the Equipment. It’s You

The garage is filled with racquetball rackets, tennis rackets, several bags of golf clubs, jump ropes, a dusty Bowflex machine, and stacks of exercise videos in formats ranging from Betamax to Blu-Ray. This is the debris of good intentions.

Is your hard drive full of unread PDFs, video training sessions, free eBooks, and email offers that you thought would help your business? Yup, mine too.

We need to clear the decks and make room for real progress. The only “equipment” you really need is your brain. So if those digital support systems are creating mental drag, hit delete. I promise you’ll feel better.

In 2011, The Princeton Neuroscience Institute released a study that concluded (I’m paraphrasing in English), “too much clutter in your visual field prevents you from focusing effectively.”

All of those unorganized files are like mental clutter. They are in your subconscious “to read someday” list, which grows every day. Eventually you’ll be that guy who has 10 years worth of National Geographic magazines saved in the basement. Don’t be that guy.

Do these three things today. It will allow you to start next week with a clear field of vision.

  1. Do a full search of your computer for anything with a .pdf extension. Any PDF that’s more than two weeks old, delete. Be ruthless. If you haven’t read it yet, you’re not going to read it.
  2. Any emails that you’re holding on to because they have links to interesting videos or white papers, run through them quickly and delete as many as possible. If there are very useful items in them, go to the web page and use StumbleUpon, Digg, Pinterest, Instapaper, or some other bookmarking tool to save or share them.
  3. Once you’re purged, create one central location for things you want to read (an Evernote folder, Dropbox folder, or just a folder on your computer). Put things in there when you run across them, and once a month, clear it out. I like to use the last day of the month, so that I can start fresh each month.

Here’s your challenge: how many unread pieces of digital clutter can you delete today? Post your results here, if you dare.

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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

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Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss

You Are an Investor

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Rosemary O’Neill

Yes, you are a big-time investor. Like, Warren Buffet big. What? You don’t see it?

Every morning you wake up with 24 hours to invest. You’re rich beyond compare.

That 24 hours has a value that can’t even be measured. When you stack up a whole week of those, you’re talking about 168 hours!

Will you invest in Facebook? (No, not the stock shares, the status checking). Will you invest in your children? Your business? Will you choose to invest in yourself?

There’s a reason it’s called “spending time.” It feels like an unlimited resource, but it’s truly not. We all have an unknowable limit.

Sometimes people get caught up in believing that social media is “free” because Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ don’t charge our credit cards. But in fact, you are investing a far more precious resource when you use social media—your own time or that of your staff.

Furthermore, by choosing to invest your limited resource in social media, you are de facto choosing not to spend it elsewhere. Should you ignore your customer newsletter to post pictures on Pinterest? Only if it’s getting you an outcome you want. Should you cancel your sponsorship of the local 4th of July fireworks display so that you can record a YouTube video?

When you manage your time, whether it’s putting together a life plan or a business plan, remember that it’s all about where you choose to invest.

If you invest wisely, you’ll see dividends!

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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

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Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss

How to learn from your mistakes

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by
Rosemary O’Neill

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What? You’re not perfect? Nah, me neither. But here’s a little secret: it’s what you do after a problem, crisis, or failure that really counts.

As an entrepreneur or small business owner, every day offers new opportunities to learn, grow, and strengthen your enterprise. When you take the time to document your learning experiences, you’re getting leverage for the future. I’m the child of an Army officer, so I refer to these as “after-action reports.”

Once you’ve weathered the storm, and the dust settles just a bit (not too much), do the following:

Bring together all of the players
It’s essential to get together in an atmosphere where there’s no blame assigned. It should be in the spirit of doing things better next time.

Figure out whet led up to the crisis and whether it could have been avoided
Was there a broken process that led to the problem? Perhaps you’ll decide that the problem could not have been avoided, and focus on how to respond next time.

Assign someone to document and make recommendations for change
Ask someone on the team to write a summary, and suggest ways it could be done better next time. If you’re a solo entrepreneur, this would be an ideal time to tap into your mastermind resources or your mentor. It’s possible they have already been through a similar situation.

Share the recommendations
Be sure to share the recommended changes with everyone on the team. Sometimes retraining or new training is necessary. Reinforce the training with some roleplaying if it’s helpful.

How do you formalize your “lessons learned?”

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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 their blog. You can find her on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee
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Build a house made of bricks

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by
Rosemary O’Neill

cooltext443809558_authenticity

When my dad used to read me The Three Little Pigs, he’d put a lot of gusto into the Big Bad Wolf’s famous threat…”I’ll huff, and I’ll puff….and I’ll BLOW your house down!” He’s an amazing storyteller, and that one has stayed with me. I always strive to assemble bricks, rather than straw.

Every day on the internet, status updates, blog posts, pins, and various pieces of social flotsam and jetsam flow by. You’re probably contributing to the flow yourself. (I know I am!)

Today’s question is…

Are you contributing anything of lasting value, either to your business or to the world?

Take a look at last week’s social output and see whether any of it will:

  • Be true 3 years from now (evergreen content)
  • Add beauty to the world (original artwork)
  • Teach someone a valuable skill (how-to)
  • Build a searchable resource (SEO)
  • Help make your business case (customer support)
  • Lift others up (inspiration)

You’ve heard of the Three Little Pigs …
Which little pig are you?

The house made of straw – you’ve got a Facebook page, which you haven’t updated in a couple of weeks, and a website that’s “brochure-ware” from 2005. They aren’t linked together. You think you’ll get around to fixing it “someday.”

The house made of twigs – you’ve got an up-to-date website, and social accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, but the content is not connected, and there’s no editorial calendar, no plan behind it. You spend the day flitting around from one platform to the other, ignoring your core business.

The house made of bricks – your website is an interactive, social hub, with deep resources for your customers. It’s optimized for search, and you put out a steady, consistent stream of varied content. Your audience responds and shares their own related content on your site, building a valuable asset that’s under your control. Your social streams are all accessible from one elegant, branded home.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day social whirl, and never take the time to make a blueprint for your house. My recommendation is to set aside a few hours a week to work on the plan, build an editorial calendar, and be sure you’re building with bricks.

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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 their blog. You can find her on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee
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