Successful Blog

Positive Attitude Tips for Business

by

By Sarah Gotheridge

Starting a business requires a number of things, including the initial capital, a business plan, and a location. An equally important factor is the right attitude.

A negative attitude is always bad for business. It is bad for you, bad for your colleagues and employees, and bad for the work environment in general. Potential customers and clientele are equally put off by a difficult or negative attitude. They will quickly take their business elsewhere.

It is easy to become jaded in the world of business if you don’t have strong emotional resources to draw from. Having the right attitude in business requires a positive attitude towards life in general. A negative attitude in business is like a runaway train that increasingly picks up speed. It will be a constant drain on the energy, creative drive, and ambition necessary for keeping a business viable and profitable.

In other words, if you approach life with a gloomy or negative outlook, you are doomed before you start

Business Tips

Business Relationships

Establish cordial relationships with similar business operators and owners. This will provide a broader perspective by which to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of your own business. Establishing a good working relationship with your competitors will also provide ideas and insights for improving your business.

Know When to Take a Break

It is difficult to maintain a positive viewpoint if everything remains dull and boring. Knowing how and when to take a break is an important skill to hone and savor. Many new business owners feel guilty if they take time away from the business. This means late hours, missed lunches, and taking work home. Now and then it may be necessary to work excessive hours to cover all the bases, but knowing how to take a break will pay off in the long run.

Avoid Unrealistic Goals

While it is important to be goal-oriented, unrealistic expectations will disappoint rather than fulfill your business aspirations. It is sometimes difficult to discern the balancing line between whimsy and inspiration. Inspiration can lead to creative innovations and solutions. Whimsical ideas, on the other hand, can be a useless expenditure of money and time. This can easily lead to a negative attitude, self-doubt, and the inability to make the important decisions. It helps to have a way of critically and objectively evaluating business practices and decisions. Strategy meetings and/or bringing in an outside consulting firm are two such options.

Networking

Once the business is up and running it is important to continue networking and developing contacts. Connections and contacts will continue to be a good resource for ideas and insights. A good contact base will also help you to stay up-to-date and more objective about how well your business is functioning.

Life Tips

Self Reflection

Our personalities are not set in stone. It takes courage to confront oneself and deal with our insecurities and perceived flaws. The Greek philosopher, Socrates, said the beginning of wisdom is to “know thyself.” One of the insights of psychoanalysis is that many people choose to keep many aspects of their personality in the dark. Taking the time to be reflective helps keep things in perspective. You will have a much better appreciation and attitude towards yourself and life in general.

Enjoy Life

Nourish other interests and desires besides the passion for work. This could be any number of things such as playing your guitar in a band on the weekend, going white water rafting and hiking, visiting museums, or reading some of your favorite authors. It may simply involve spending more time with family and friends. A person that doesn’t find time to enjoy things will have a difficult time keeping a positive attitude about life.

Author’s Bio: Sarah Gotheridge represents a site called Monetise.co.uk. She enjoys writing about business online and giving advice to new businesses.

Learning By Doing

by

By Jeannie Walters

It’s sad to me how many people think they can’t do it. Whatever it is, they truly believe they cannot do it because they don’t have a rule book.

I remember interviewing a young woman who told me, in a job interview, that she could do whatever I outlined for her on a list and trained her carefully to do. “What if it’s not on the list?” I asked. Her answer was if it wasn’t on the list, she didn’t see it as one of her duties.

“It must be on the list.”

She didn’t get the job. Not because she wasn’t capable, because I believe she probably was, but because she was scared of the unknown. She was scared of trying new things. She felt she had to be taught every little thing before she would attempt it.

Baptism by fire is not a bad way to learn. It’s uncomfortable and scary, sure, but if you can survive, you can really make things happen.

There is no degree for customer experience. And yet that’s the focus of my career. Every day I’m doing something that scares me a little bit. And why not? Humans are awesomely unpredictable. What worked last time will not necessarily work this time.

How do you learn by doing?

Jump in, the water’s fine.

Next time you find yourself saying, “But I’ve never done that before” as an excuse to NOT do it – stop yourself. Rephrasing helps me. “I get to do this for the first time!”

Learn from the masters.

Since the dawn of time, humans have been learning from one another. If you’ve never hosted a webinar before, be sure to attend a few to see what works and what doesn’t. If you’re scared to start that kickboxing class, go to the gym the day before and scope it out a little. It’s ok to do research and recon.

Ask for help.

While this seems to be an issue for many of us, it’s a critical part of learning. Ask for support and help, even if it’s just having a few friends there to cheer you on.

Keep up.

The best people I know are perpetual students. With so much information so readily available out there, it’s easy to keep learning. If you are in a role that is about marketing, make sure you read and follow and watch what’s out there about that role. Do your homework, but don’t let that be a crutch, either. Sometimes you have to stop the surfing and get stuff done.

Forgive your missteps.

Have you ever noticed we are often kinder and more forgiving to others than we are to ourselves? Doing things we haven’t necessarily been taught how to do means we will learn from our inevitable mistakes. If something doesn’t work, examine what didn’t work about it so you can improve the next time. Cut yourself some slack. Forgive and move on.

Give it your all.

Creating something from nothing requires brain power, stamina and determination. There will be times you want to give up, mostly because it’s outside your comfort zone. Don’t do it. Set a small goal and accomplish it. Then set a loftier one and accomplish that. You can do this.

The world is such a cool place these days. We can connect with like-minded people all over the world and create our very own dream jobs. Don’t let a lack of “a list” prevent you from accomplishing great things. Do it. The learning will happen.

Author’s Bio: Jeannie Walters is the Chief Customer Experience Investigator™ and founder of 360Connext, a customer experience consulting firm. Walters has been focused on customer experience issues for more than 15 years and works with organizations all over the world.

Walters now speaks, writes, consults and generally thinks about how the small experiences we have each day – going to the bank, ordering online, tweeting – create the greater experience of our lives. Walters lives outside of Chicago with her husband Mike and their two young sons. As such, her current hobbies include cheering on distracted t-ball players and building impressive Lego villages.

Business Serendipity Through Surfing

by

Surf the Internet

Remember surfing? That was how we used to discover interesting things on the web 10 years ago (and waste prodigious amounts of time).

But was that time really wasted? I’m beginning to think not.

Over time, we’ve all become much more accustomed to using the Internet as a tool. Go to Amazon to buy something. Look up something on Wikipedia. Post a blog. Update your business website.

Even if you visit Cheezburger, you probably do a quick furtive hit.

And our definitions have changed, too.

People used to spend more time in unfocused crashing around the web, going from link to link based on what looked interesting. Now, with all of the fantastic apps, social networks, and notifications, the web is a means to an end, rather than a pastime.

This statistic I saw recently really hit me hard–for the first time ever, Forrester found a decline in the number of people “using the Internet.” That’s not because people aren’t using the Internet, it’s because people no longer include surfing in their definition of “using the Internet.”

Here’s the thing: the creative spaces in between working are often where the action and inspiration happens.

Don’t spend all day reading your friends’ Facebook timelines, but this week, give yourself some totally unstructured time to surf again. You might find content ideas, topics to discuss, innovative products, or something completely unexpected.

3 Awesome Surfing Tools to Get You Started

  • Brain Pickings – This newsletter and website are a goldmine of inspiration and random thought-provoking ideas.
  • The “I’m feeling lucky” button on Google – When was the last time you clicked this button?
  • StumbleUpon – It’s been around for a while now, but sometimes people get so focused on getting “Stumbled” that they forget you can also randomly “Stumble” around. Do it by interest area, or in general, and see where you land. This can also be good for finding new blogs to read (fresh inspiration).

Do you still surf? What tools do you use?

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

Social Influence is a Myth and other Truisms

by

By Ovetta Sampson

A few weeks ago, I received a small candle-sized cardboard box in the mail. In it were four Red Bulls. I have never purchased Red Bull. I don’t consume it, and I certainly don’t have it on my grocery list. Yet, I got this present in the mail because of my Klout score.

Brands such as Cadillac, Red Bull, Home Run Inn, believe I am like some Internet imp, sprinkling virtual fairy dust transforming followers into sheep to buy their products. They dubbed me a social media influencer. Such a moniker should make me feel somewhat majestic, like some kind of ROI royalty until I realized one salient thought: the Social Media Influencer, as it’s billed today, is a myth.

The Rise of the Digital Influence Industry

Yes I know, an entire industry—the Digital Influence industry to be exact—has cropped up around this mystical creature known as the social media influencer. Klout is now the leader in a crowded field which includes:

  • Tellagence—which purports to find the “right combination of Twitter users,” to engage brand audiences.
  • The Mark Cuban-backed Little Bird—a Portland company which commands up to $2,500 per month for connecting you with “experts that other experts trust.
  • PeerIndex—a sort of vanity project for social media users which “measures interactions across the web to help you understand your impact in social media.”

These companies throw around words like “influence,” “impact,” and “social reach,” like lollipops in a candy store. Yet few of these actually measure any of these terms.

Defining Social Media Influence?

As social media expert Jure Klepic says, “Marketers already have plenty of tools at their disposal that claim to measure online influence, but all these tools really do is measure awareness.”

What is social media influence? Well here’s what it isn’t: popularity, followers, or likes. A true social influencer is someone who can change behavior. It’s making Coke drinker switch to Pepsi. It’s wooing Nike fans to become Converse lovers. It’s pushing folks from Allstate to State Farm. A real social media influencer engages his or her audience over time and convinces them to do what the data says they wouldn’t normally do. A social media influencer must be seen by its audience as:

  • Trusted
  • Relational
  • Authentic

There is no doubt that digital influence exists. One million people don’t just like a Coke commercial on a whim. But the why’s, how’s and more importantly the “how can we replicate that lighting strike,” is more the future of social media marketing than the present. The jury is still out on that omnipotent, product pusher who commands millions of minions to buy in droves.

Instead, the research says influence spreads through social networks through a bunch of close, intimate relationship circles that connect via social media and influence each other to see a movie, pick up a Red Bull or beta test a new shoe-buying app. Let’s delve deeper:

MYTH: One Social Media Guru Affects Thousands

“There is little data to support so-called influencer behavior in social marketing.” – Jack Krawczyk, StumbleUpon and Jon Steinberg BuzzFeed

“No one has any real data on real influence.” – Mike Wu, Ph.D. data scientist at Lithium

“…it’s not clear whether, when, and to what extent different behaviors are truly “contagious.” – Sinan Aral, Ph.D., MIT-trained technology professor at NYU

Okay. There. Now, I don’t have to convince you that the social media influencer is a myth. These guys, much smarter than I, have done it for me.

In an AdAge article about content sharing, Krawczyk and Steingberg put the kibosh on the myth of the all-affecting social medial influencer.

“Our data show that online sharing, even at viral scale, takes place through many small groups, not via the single status post or tweet of a few influencers. While influential people may be able to reach a wide audience, their impact is short-lived. Content goes viral when it spreads beyond a particular sphere of influence and spreads across the social web via ordinarily people sharing with their friends.” – Steinberg & Krawczyk

FACT: Social Media Influencers More like Sewing Circles than Celebrity Gurus

So are these smart guys saying there is no such thing as a social media influencer? Well, not exactly. What they’re really saying is that social media influence is real but we haven’t figured out how to measure it just yet.

In his blog post, “Why Brands Still Don’t Understand Digital Influence,” Wu explains that no algorithm in the world can compute the complex psychology that goes into human decision-making. Sure, they can identify a person with a large social network, they can even determine if anyone listens to that person. But the idea that math has cracked the behavioral database is fiction—as of now.

“One of the reasons brands don’t understand digital influence is because they don’t seem to realize that nobody actually has ‘data’ on influence (i.e. data that says precisely who influenced who, when, where, how, etc.)…” Wu says.

What the data has shown is that influence is a personal, intimate and very small circle kinda’ of thing. It’s not one social guru casting a net of thousands. It is 10 social gurus casting a net of four or five. Buzzfeed reviewed content shared on Facebook since 2007. StumbledUpon looked at 5.5 million shares over 45 days. Here are some of their findings:

  • Sharing among friends outnumbered large broadcast sharing (sharing by a person with a large following) by 2 to 1.
  • The median ratio for sharing a piece of Facebook content was 9. That means for every piece of content shared, basically only NINE people saw that content when it was shared, and Twitter was 5 to 1. News sharing sites such as Reddit had a median of 36.
  • Viral content is created not by one person broadcasting to millions of followers but thousands of small networks broadcasting to their own intimate networks.

The Takeaways

So what does this all mean for you? Well, when you’re promoting your content you might want to stop star gazing or even ego-baiting gurus to get shares. Concentrate on making your content more authentic that will have that “water cooler,” quality prompting co-workers, families and friends to share it. So experiment with:
Creating resonating content – personal content that connects with content consumers in a way they feel personally obligated to share it.

Match your influencers and content. Don’t just share your content to influencers with large mass audiences but with audiences who have relevancy to your subject matter.

Deeper, not just longer, content gets shared. So experiment with longer videos and blog posts that are rich content.

So what do you think? Are you still stuck on finding the Social Media Influencer?

Author’s Bio: Ovetta Sampson is a freelance digital writer for BlueSodaPromo, a promotional marketing company based in the Chicago area. BSP offers an amazing selection of eco-friendly tote bags and thousands of stress relievers. An avid triathlete, she still finds time to run her own content marketing firm and blog.

Can You Put a Price on Your Reputation?

by

What would you do if your business reputation was suddenly turned upside down?

Many small business owners are lucky that they never have to answer that question, yet others are confronted with that very scenario more often than they would like.

Whether it is dealing with something they manufactured, perhaps an event that was initiated by an unhappy customer or employee, those who own businesses should always have one eye on how they and their business are viewed by others.

With that being said, how can you best position your online reputation and that of your company before problems arise?

Some tricks of the trade include:

* Positive promotion – Use the different tools at your disposal to promote all the good things you and your business can do. This can be done via press releases, blog posts, social media, online forums, and more.

* Community involvement – As a small business owner, you hopefully have already established yourself in your community. If not, get active in your community, this through things like sponsoring local events, attending local events, working with other area businesses to promote them etc.

* Knowing what is being said about you – While your daily business tasks undoubtedly take up much of your time, you can’t turn a blind eye to what folks are saying about you and your company, especially online. Have your ears to the ground as to what the chatter says about you and your business, how you treat customers, what products and/or services work and which don’t etc. If you don’t listen, your customers may deliver a message that ultimately you will hear.

In the end, there is no price you can put on your reputation other than it is priceless.

As a small business owner, have you ever had your reputation called into question?

If so, how did you go about letting current and potential customers know that they should do business with you?

Photo credit: webseoanalytics.com

About the Author: With 23 years writing experience, Dave Thomas covers a variety of small business topics, including looking at how I need online reputation protection.

 

You Might Be the Problem If…

by

By James Ellis

Sales sluggish? Traffic down? Conversion rates dipping? Boss seeming a little gruff with you lately? Fewer smiling customers? More customer comments than you’d like?

They all have a root problem and a root solution, but sadly, you’re not going to like it.

The problem is you.

Not the editorial you, the plural you, the groupthink you, or even the royal you. You. The person reading this. You’re the problem.

That’s not 100% true. You didn’t cause the housing crisis and the fiscal cliff. You didn’t create all the public uncertainty slowing economic growth. But you are still the problem.

Why? Because the only person you can control is you. If you claim it’s your boss’s fault, that means you get to pass the buck. If you decide lower conversion rates are because your customers are dumb, that’s an excuse to not try and fix it.

But you can’t just “fix it,” can you. Especially if you believe that the fault lies with someone else. Making it your fault and your problem means that you get to do something about it, not just blame and move on. Making it your fault means that power lays in the one place you can use it: within you.

And that’s not just some self-help/new age/zen-esque notion. The problems with your business and site are usually you, in that you haven’t figured out how to build a site for your customers. You built a site for you.

The joke among web designers and graphic artists is that the client always wants to logo bigger. Why? The logo doesn’t ever help the customer, it’s bigger to stroke the ego of the client. Every pixel of space added to the logo is a pixel taken away from something the customer might actually want. Every interstitial ad is ten seconds you stole from your user. Every home page that touts how much you appreciate your customer is a another click the customer has to slog through to get to their order status.

When you send marketing emails, do you fill it with junk that you want the customer to know, or do you fill it with what the customer actuality wants? Is your web site showing products that you want the customer to know about, or the products your customers came for?

Do you even know the difference?

Don’t you love it when two airlines merge and they tell you that they did it for your convenience. It wasn’t to lower operating costs and increase margins while bringing standards of customer service to ever-falling levels? This is what a company calls convenience?

Do you know the difference between “important customer emails” and “spam?” I bet the standard you have for your personal emails and those your company sends are different.

And that’s why you are the problem. Because you are the only person who can stand up for what your user wants and actually give it to them. They will reward you later with more sales and better word of mouth. But for right now, as the calendar changes over, the burden falls on you to fix your problem.

How will you become the solution?

Author’s Bio: James Ellis is a digital strategist, mad scientist, lover, fighter, drummer and blogger living in Chicago. You can reach out to him or just argue with his premise at saltlab.com.