Successful Blog

How To Prep Your Customer For A Killer Video Testimonial

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Sean Rosensteel

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Video marketing has become an extremely popular approach for generating interest in services or products offered online. With so many affordable tools in the marketplace, videos can be easily produced and distributed online for less than what other mediums (like TV) would cost.

Consequently, utilizing the ever-so-popular video testimonial has become a common approach to connecting with prospective customers. And the proliferation of video cameras installed on most computers manufactured within the last few years has made it easy for people to record their own videos. Businesses are starting to leverage this recent technology trend to gather raw video submissions from customers – without the enormous costs of doing an on-site or commercial production.

But preparing your customers to record a proper video is critical for gathering useful video clips that can be displayed as effective testimonials on your website, blog, etc. Here are some tips to ensure you get the most out of your customers when they hit that record button.

Don’t be afraid to give them some direction

A good testimonial doesn’t have to rely on fancy scripts to get the point across. But it can be to your company’s benefit to provide customers with some direction.

  • Consider giving them talking points, however broad they may be;
  • Encourage them to focus on their overall customer satisfaction, the ease of working with your business, or whatever other angle you want your testimonial video to take;
  • Encourage them to talk about any unique experiences or stories that reflect well on your company;
  • Don’t be afraid to ask them to talk about certain aspects of their experience that other customers aren’t likely to share.

Explain the real value of their testimonial

You’re probably seeking testimonials for one reason: they’re valuable to your business and can lead to more sales. Don’t sidestep this goal – let your customers know up-front how integral their relationship is to your business, and explain that their testimonial can be a big boost to your business’s future.

You don’t have to encourage them to exaggerate or lie for your benefit, but by understanding the value they have within your company, they will feel empowered to help – particularly if they are satisfied.

Strike while the iron is still hot

Timing is everything. The best time to approach your customers about recording a video testimonial is while they’re enjoying the benefits provided by your product or service.

If they’re actively enjoying your product or using your service, you have a better chance of getting them to agree to record a quick video than you will if you wait until their customer experience is weeks or months old.

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Author’s Bio:Sean Rosensteel is the Head of Business Development at Bravo Video, a web-based platform that enables businesses to easily capture video from customers, users and fans – right over the web.

Thank you, Sean, for adding to the conversation! Killer testimonials do so much.

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

Choose Your Winners Wisely and Invest Unconditionally

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Relational Reciprocity

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I don’t play with every new social media tool. In fact, I ignore most of them. I’ve decided my view is that tools are vehicles for problem solving or uniquely rare opportunities for new learning. The former I go looking for when I need them. The latter show up without warning, but are few and far between.

Once the decision is made to participate, I’m in with “both feet.” I’m a saturation learner, always have been. It shows in my 14+ years of dance training, my 8 years of theater, my 35 years of education and educational publishing … even in the way I took on blogging.

Reciprocity is Relational, Not Transactional

I’ve been exploring EmpireAvenue for one year now. The game and the sociology caught my attention and offered me something new worth exploring.

The premise of Empire Avenue is that a player buys shares in other players’ participation on social media platforms across the Internet. So at first what fascinated me was the idea of getting a more rounded picture of the people who were playing the game and what was driving them — and also what would drive me.

Soon enough the game pushed the question of reciprocity.

The way the game is engineered, the currency I spend to purchase shares in your activity doesn’t flows through to you at much less. Basically, if I buy 100 shares in you, you’ll get a deposit worth about 10 of your shares. So complete reciprocity — for you to buy 100 shares back — is nearly impossible, even if my share price is WAY less than yours.

Yet some folks hold an unrealistic expectation of reciprocity — one that hurts their own success.
Their expectations seem to me out of balance with their best interests.

The reason I invest in your activity is because your shares earn value and deliver daily dividends. If I buy you I grow and pass on that growth to my shareholders. It’s a perk if you buy my shares too.

If I wait for every winner in the game to come back to buy equal shares in me — some never will. Their share price will get higher as they grow. I’ll lose the dividends I could have been earned while I waited for some transactional reciprocity.

Who loses in that scenario?
Me … not the winners I believe are ignoring me.

It works that way in everything. If I invest in you as a person, it’s because you’re growing, you add value by who you are and what you’re doing. By investing in you, I grow too!

Reciprocity is relational. Not transactional.

Plant a seed.
Watch it grow.
Enjoy the flower.

Reciprocity is the flower — color, beauty, fragrance.
It’s not “I cared for the seed. Now the seed cares for me.”
The act of helping the seed grow provided a far more powerful payoff.

It’s the same with people.

Choose Your Winners Wisely and Invest Unconditionally

An unforgiving belief in transactional reciprocity is a skewed form of not seeing the whole picture. When we close our eyes to seeing all point of view, we defeat ourselves — or as my mom would say “Cut off own nose to spite our face.”

And you can’t smell the flowers without a nose.

So if you’ve been hoarding your attention because someone’s not paying attention to you … could be you’re at the losing end of that idea. Look for the flower in the attention you’re giving. Not the seed of attention that you think you’re owed.

Build relational reciprocity by investing in what you’re willing to grow.

Choose your winners wisely and invest in them unconditionally.

Value the resources you’re investing dearly. Then offer them without fear.
For the most important, don’t hold back the blood, sweat, and tears.

See the flowers in the seeds even before you start helping them grow.
And keep your nose.

Be irresistible.
— ME “Liz” Strauss

Getting Organized Without Wasting Your Time

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Ann Smarty

Binders in a row
click photo for source

A System to Save Time

When you run a blog, there are some things you can’t help but spend a ton of time and energy on. Coming up with new posts, fiddling with the template, talking to readers, publishing videos of funny cats you found on YouTube and just had to share…these are the important elements in the life of the average blogger.

Certainly, the last thing you want to waste time on is organization. Yet every time most of us set out to organize things, we tend to spend all day on the process. Getting sorted turns out to be more of a hassle and hour eater than remaining in a frazzles state of chaos!

This is one of the biggest traps that bloggers tend to fall into. What you need a system in place for organizing things in a timely matter. Here are some tips to help you do just that.

  1. Create a List – When you have a list to follow, you will be less tempted to veer off into unnecessary or unimportant areas in the name of organization. This will keep you from wasting time you don’t have where it isn’t needed. Try to keep your list of goals sorted from most to least important, and never move from one item to the next until you have completed that goal.
  2. Set A Timer – Calculate how much time you can dedicated to fulfilling that list, and stick to that time. If there is too much to do, break it up over the course of several days or even weeks, and follow by that schedule. You don’t have to get everything done at once, after all.
  3. Don’t Allow Distractions – I am a huge procrastinator. I can’t help it, as I tend to have the attention span of a fruit fly. Sometimes I start doing something else without even realizing I have taken my eyes off my work. A simple way to avoid this while organizing is by using a program like LeechBlock or StayFocused. This will keep you from surfing the web and getting distracted while you work.
  4. Have Background Noise – This might sound a little silly, but I have always found it much easier to remain focused if I have the right kind of background music playing while I do my task. Whether it is better for most to have something classical in the background for its gentle tones and lack of lyrics, anything that motivates you and lets you think can work. Try a playlist site, like 8Tracks or Last.fm.


  5. Keep Things Organized – The easiest way to keep from wasting time on organization is by keeping things organized. Spending a few minutes here and there making sure everything is as it should be has the same effect as spending fifteen minutes cleaning an area a day. It keeps it from getting overwhelming.

Three Tools For Organization


  • Evernote – Keep track of clippings from anywhere on the web, and view it in your browser, on your desktop or on your phone. Easy to use, and it can save small bits of text, pictures, links or full pages.
  • HootSuite – Monitor all of your social media accounts, stats and followers in one place. This is a social media dashboard that can save a lot of time and effort.
  • Pocket – Originally called Read It Later, this is a plugin that works by saving pages you wanted to read for when you aren’t busy. You can access it through your browser, on your phone or any media device connected to the web.

You don’t have to spend a whole lot of time organizing your blog. It just takes a bit of planning and thought, and you will be done quicker than you thought possible.

Author’s Bio: Ann Smarty is a blogger and guest blogger with 6 years experience. She is a control freak and she loves when she is busy, so her hands are always full. One of her largest projects is My Blog Guest, the free community of guest authors and blog owners who preach the “high-quality” approach to guest blogging. Follow Ann on Twitter at @seosmarty and Google Plus


Thank you, Ann, for this Monday motivation!

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

3 Things I Learned, Lost, and Earned Being Off Social Media for 10 Days

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People or Screens

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Every morning for almost a year, I’ve been publishing photos of the sunrise over Lake Michigan. Sometimes when the afternoon is worth a photo graph I also publish a photo of the sunset too. On Twitter I greet my friends with a “Good morning, Twitterville” and a kind word. I try to check in with them via Facebook and Linkedin too.

Many of my online social interactions help me keep my day moving … as I transition from one task to another, it helps me to stop by Twitter to give my friends a shout out or to take time for a short read and a retweet. Being social online is a natural part of how my day goes by when it’s just me and the keys.

But when I’m with people, I like to be with people.
I find it hard to be where I am, if I’m looking at at screen.

What I Learned, Lost, and Earned Being Off Social Media for 10 Days

The theme of #SOBCon this year was Creating and Leveraging Opportunity. I challenged myself to do what I believed.

  • Be balanced. In this case, have my head and heart in the same place as my mind and my feet.
  • Go deep. Be a saturation learner. Meet people where they “live and think.”
  • Build a business not a birthday cake. Allow for the fact that a business is not a closed system — that flexibility is a key component to strategy.
  • People ARE the opportunity. Buildings, companies, products, technology do not have the stability or the reach of human-to-human relationships.

Last Wed., May 2, I left home with a suitcase to head downtown in preparation for our annual #SOBCon event in Chicago from there I would be speaking at CMSExpo in Evanston to arrive back home on May 10th. But things being what they are it ended up that I was hardly around on social sites until the 12th.

Before I left, I loaded up my blog with the blog posts that I had planned for the week. I also loaded up my Twitter account with some great posts I’d been reading on other blogs — articles on small business, strategy, weird science, and cool brain stuff — my favorite information to share via tweets.

When I got down to the hotel, I did some last minute planning. I went over to the event center to check a few things and pick an HP Folio Ultrabook that the Small Biz Folks at Hewlett Packard had sent for me, thinking maybe if I set it up, I’d be able to Tweet some, or post some, or connect some like a good social media do-bee. I got the computer up and rolling in no time. It’s light, intuitive, and has a huge battery life — can’t say how long it lasts yet, because, well, once I got it going, I kept turning it on and then getting involved in other things.

And in the course of 10 days, here’s what I about social media, the Internet, and me.

  • The social is more important than the media. When the choice comes to talking to the people live and in person, take it! Be where you are. Look them in the eyes. Listen actively. What I saw and experienced in the richness of a hug, a tone of voice, smiles shared, and glasses clinked is something I carry back to the Internet. I hear the voices of those same people when I see them again this week on Twitter.
  • Being in the story is faster, easier, and more meaningful than reporting it. I can only speak for my experience, but seconds I spend trying to share something with people online turn me into a reporter. When I shed the reporter’s role, I see, hear, and feel so much more. I am mindful and present. I am also calmer, more flexible, and more fluent because I can attend to and respond to the world I’m in rather than trying to translate to the world I can’t see.
  • The Internet got along fine without me. As far as I know, no one suffered greatly by my absence. The world didn’t stop turning. I had no more than 3 “must respond to” emails daily – I’m just not THAT important.

What I lost is easy to measure …

Yes, my blog traffic went down a bit. I didn’t attract as many Twitter followers as I had in the previous 10 days. My stock price on Empire Avenue dropped. My stats on Facebook now need some attention. My email inbox took about two hours to get back in order.

Laura Fitton and Liz Strauss, SOBCon 2012 by @adrants

What I earned was more lasting …

Deep real connections.
Deep real memories.
A whole lot of learning and fun.

The actual business directly attributable to these particular 10 days outpace ANY 10 days ever.

Working or playing, showing up is most important.
How can they see you, if you don’t stop long enough to be you?

#justsayin’

Be irresistible.
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Buy the ebook. Buy the Insider’s Guide to Online Conversation.

Is Your Business Pinched at the Pumps?

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It isn’t just the everyday consumer that still gets anxious when they pull up to the gas pump these days.

Since reaching $3.94 a gallon in early April, the national average for a gallon of regular unleaded gas has dropped to $3.75 as of early May, according to the AAA national motorists club. Despite prices heading in the right direction, many motorists are still bleeding at the pumps each time they fill up.

That issue also holds true for many small businesses that rely on one mode of transportation or another to remain in business. Whether it is transporting goods, going out on service calls, or having employees like salespeople meet in person with current and potential clients, a large number of companies are seeking ways to trim their gas expenses.

Businesses That Have to Deliver the Goods Feeling the Pain

Some small business owners most feeling the pinch are those such as florists, eateries, cleaning services and more that have to deliver products and services in order to remain profitable. While it might have cost $100 or so for weekly deliveries only a few months back, that expense has easily increased to double or triple that for many businesses across the country.

If high gas prices seem to be more common than rare, that is because both consumers and businesses have had to deal with them more often the last couple of decades.

It was just as recent as 2008, when the cost for a gallon of regular gas ballooned to a national average of $4.11. Even though the recent AAA report indicates prices have been dropping, the summer driving season is right around the corner, meaning they could just as easily rise as quickly as the summer heat.

If your small business has been feeling the pain of the prices at the pump, there are ways to bring the costs down and still meet the needs of your customers. Practices to think about for your business plans include:

  • Trimming delivery services for a period of time;
  • Requiring employees operating company vehicles to not take them home for the remainder of the day once their shift has ended. Installing GPS systems on the vehicles if they do not already have them is a great way to track how far the vehicle has been driven;
  • Making additional deliveries during a stretch of time in concentrated areas instead of several trips out;
  • Shopping around where your business is located for the best prices at the pump. A number of Web sites provide weekly and even daily information on which gas stations have the best deals available;
  • Taking some time to rethink how you do business. Do you really need to make all those deliveries and service calls or can more things be done online in order to cut fuel costs;
  • Consider providing your customers with deals in return for not having to make deliveries. If you run a floral shop as an example, instead of having to make a large amount of deliveries, provide customers willing to come to the shop to pick up flowers with coupons that they can redeem during an upcoming purchase.

As politicians and the oil companies blame one another for high oil prices, it is the consumer, including the business owner that gets caught in the middle.

Photo credit: app.com

Dave Thomas, who writes on subjects such as office equipment and supplies, writes extensively for San Diego-based Business.com.

Top Five Industries to Start a New Business

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Where Do You Start?

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Starting a new business is a big decision, which has to be taken with much thought and diligence. No two years are the same and with changing trends one has to be vigilant enough to tap the right business opportunities at the right time.

The year 2012 is the year of the retail business, personal care, hospitality and education. While these are not the out-of-box industries that seem to be providing good potential for growth, but it is the way one propels their business using the right techniques catering to the modern times. Success lies, not in what you sell, but how you sell it. Here is a brief overview of the top five industries to start a new business:

Health and wellness: a healthy lifestyle is something which every one aspires for. The health and wellness industry covers a large domain including healthy eating, fitness centres, fitness consultancy, personal grooming, care of the elderly and to an extent hospitality. Consumers are growing aware of what they are eating, the sources of their food, keeping fit by visiting gyms and fitness centres, consulting with yoga gurus and experts and even opting for stress management activities. All these areas of health and wellness offer opportunities to start a new business.

You could start a franchisee that offers healthy snacks or open up a fitness centre or a gym. If you are good at providing consultation, you can go for a health and fitness centre with expert consultants offering tips on healthy and nutritious eating. The corporate sector too is urging its employees to be more fit, healthy and stress-free, which means that you can introduce wellness plans for the corporate sector.

The beauty industry: trends are indicative of the fact that the beauty industry is a growing sector and so it has made the list of the top five industries to start a new business. As per the surveys conducted worldwide, it has been seen that consumers have more disposable income, allowing them to spend more on personal grooming and healthcare. For this reason, there has been a surge in beauty salons, spas and centres for beauty treatments. Barber schools and cosmetology are the growing sectors in this industry with more and more people becoming interested in looking and feeling good.

Clothing industry: clothes have always been a favourite with women. However, with the new trends pouring in, it is seen that even men are getting more particular about the way they dress up. For this reason, the clothing industry along with the clothing accessory industry is a very good area to tap into when looking to start a new business.

Education: with increasing globalisation and the need for highly trained and skilled professionals all over the world, education has come to the forefront as one of the top industries to start a new business. Whether it is a business school, language school, a trade school or an educational consultancy, you are sure to receive a very good response.

Food industry: with recession almost gone now, people have higher levels of disposable income. This means the capacity to spend on healthy and organic foods and snacks has increased. Taking up franchisees of a frozen yogurt, healthy snacks, organic foods can be a way to start a small business.

So, if you are interested in starting up a new business, one of the safest bets would be in one of these mentioned industries. However, these are only 5 of the many industries out there. So, if these don’t take your fancy, there is a plethora of other industries to choose from.

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Author’s Bio:
Working as business & finance analyst in Brisbane, Jim is very much interested in management consulting for finance projects. He writes about new challenges coming up in next year’s in the industry. You can find more information at bsbdc.com or follow Jim on Twitter at @JamesForrest8

Thank you, Jim!

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