Author: Jeff Hora

Best of February – Competition, Local Online Tips, Customer Experience and Content!

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competition is beating you

Is your competition beating you?

You’re probably at least mildly aware that the Internet is in constant flux. Changes you made to your web site or digital strategy last year (let along last week…) may already be defunct! This great article gives you five points to check and find out if you’re falling behind your competition.

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Must-have features

Must-have features for Local Business Web Sites

You’re not global, but you ARE in a very healthy and opportunity-filled market. You are also aware that one requirement for business today is an awesome web site….so  how do you make sure that YOUR site has all the right bits? Check out this tip-filled article and then hire a simply INCREDIBLE web site designer (if you’re not sure who you could talk to, contact me and I can give you some top-notch recommendations!)

Online Reviews and Comments

Online Reviews and Comments

Knowing when and how to respond to reviews and comments online is crucial to customer experience. This article tells the true story of one business’s experience and how they worked through it successfully.

Stock photo sites

Under-the-Radar Stock Photos

Every business only has so much budget for content creation, including one of the more challenging pieces: images. It’s not that there aren’t tons of great images and videos out there, it’s just that a lot of them are beyond the budgets of many entrepreneurs and start-ups. This article lists out some great photo sites you never heard of….

Real estate tips

Social Media for Real Estate Pros

The opportunity for and competition within the real estate industry is to have you, the agent, become the “go-to” name in your market. It’s not easy, it takes resources, but the pay-off is HUGE! This article covers ten tips that the most successful agents do…

Common Questions

Pay Attention to Common Questions

Writing content regularly for publication can occasionally make you run up against “the white page” – ideas are just not there! Figuring out the various facets of topics that your audience is passionate about can seem overwhelming. But, sometimes the most common questions asked can really help provide the seed of a LOT of great ideas….this article goes over a number of tips and tools to help.

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Doing Specifics the Right Way

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specific

Be Specific!

The challenge of being specific is that it seems impossible to scale.

What does being specific mean in your business? It’s the truth behind perception, communication, understanding, prejudice and the barriers presented by a kind of ‘telephone’ game space between people. It means that if you can connect with one person, that doesn’t mean you can connect with the next one, no matter HOW much alike they are. And that is the end point….how do you plan or strategize for this kind of connection?

Going by previous data and experience will only get you so far. And sometimes it doesn’t even work for the same person! Think about how your own thoughts and feelings have changed over the years. If the “younger me” tried to convince the “today me” of a number of things about people, places, beliefs, prejudices and things I’ve learned more about over the years, well….I would have walked away as a younger man.

So back to being specific…in business, I’ve learned that a focus on “anybody who” as a customer is actually no one. Even honing it down to “A small business owner with a company that has 5 – 100 employees and has been in business for at least 5 years” is too broad. What do they care about? What are those 2 or 3 things that are nagging, painful problems they just can’t seem to crack? While each business is unique and has its own problems, there ARE business norms and trends in the U.S. There is a certain amount of consistency.

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When Should You DO Something?

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Online Reviews and Comments

Online Reviews and Comments

A while back I wrote an article about how customer online reviews and comments can actually enhance and grow your business….and that you don’t need to be afraid about what people post on your various business social media pages. In that article I described a process with which you can work through any kind of review or comment, and you will end up looking like a hero! This turned into a VERY POPULAR article!

This week a colleague (I’ll call her Tonya…) told me about another friend’s case where a comment was made on a Facebook page that was negative concerning this friend’s business. The friend (I’ll call him Rob…) didn’t find out about it until several days after the comment was posted (he found out via a different friend, who mentioned it to him….). It wasn’t on Rob’s business page, but just someplace else on Facebook that this other person happened to stumble upon, and so mentioned it to Rob in passing.

Rob nearly flipped! He went onto this other page, read the comment, and started to agonize about whether to do anything about it….I mean, this was a surprise! Upon further inspection, Rob noted that others on the page had begun to respond to the comment in positive ways, and, in fact, the incident had pretty much resolved itself in a good way. Rob still didn’t know whether he should hop on the thread and say something, just to show that he cared, but was also afraid that it much churn up the discontent afresh. Tonya thought I might be able to help Rob “climb down off the ledge”, so to speak, and then I could help him understand what he should do.

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How Hard Is It To Actually Listen Online?

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Listening

Listening

Listening to the various voices online looks very different from listening to someone sitting across from you. You don’t get visual cues, body language, tone or very much context. Valeria Maltoni has written that “Listening is the most valuable skill nobody teaches.”

I’ve written in the past about the difference between “listen-to-respond” and “listen-to-understand”. Much else has been written and discussed about the importance of active listening, listening without judging, and the like. We concede its importance, but where is it taught? How is it learned? If learned in some way, do we use it, or do we fall back into “listen-to-respond” or, worse, blocking what others have to say because it doesn’t align with what we already know or believe? Do we actually believe that we can’t be wrong or include new information that will clarify or change what we know?

Are we REALLY THAT ARROGANT?

In business, you can play the role of a Subject Matter Expert (SME) online, which is quite helpful for your customers and audience. Doing so builds your reputation and gains recognition for you as someone “with the answers.” Of course, you have to keep working on that all the time, especially if you work in an area that is constantly in flux (which is most professions….). But, as long as you honestly work to deliver true and helpful answers, you’re good.

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Start by Engaging in the New Year! – Best of January

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Social Media Engagement

Social Media Engagement

This case study, while focusing on the use of Post Planner as a tool, provides a number of terrific strategies on going full-tilt to build engagement across your social media channels. Take note of his advice at the end of the article….understand the importance of a solid yet flexible strategy!

Social Media Changes

Social Media Changes

There are number of lesser known changes to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn that are going to impact your activities and those of your audience, so you should definitely become familiar with them. This article goes over 8 of them that are most likely to make a difference.

Video Tools

Video Tools

You’re already aware that video is HUGE online, and 2017 is only going to see its influence increase. You need to figure out how to leverage it and world-class story-telling for your business. The 6 tools described in this article are each just different enough that you should be able to find the one that will work for you, even if you think are, shall we say, “ability constrained”…

David Ogilvy

David Ogilvy

This excellently focused article by Valeria Maltoni underscores the clarity and wisdom of this list of guiding tips by David Ogilvy on writing well. Much harder than it seems, if you’re looking to up your content writing game, you can’t do better than this.

Facebook Cheat Sheet

Facebook Cheat Sheet

I and most all my clients constantly refer to cheat sheets for image sizes online. To neglect this bit of information means you’re more likely to post a graphic or photo that gets cropped or, as one of my clients says, “Schmooshed”! Don’t let that happen to you…
Awareness

Awareness

This article confronts the challenge of getting noticed online despite all of the noise on the Internet. Building awareness, especially in a crowded industry, is tough. Think differently about how to do this and your chances improve a LOT!

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Do You Win or Do We Win?

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Winning

Winning

Winning.

It is an obsession across cultures, sports, politics, businesses, you name it. If I win, you lose. There is no common goal or understanding. There is only I WIN.

There are, of course, different definitions of winning for different situations, players, and time. By time, I mean that no “win” is permanent.
  • The Romans won until the Goths won.
  • The Royalty of France won until the Revolution….and then there was Napoleon….he won until he didn’t.
  • The Russian Czars won until the Revolution, and that Revolution won until it collapsed.
  • Alta Vista (a search engine, for those of you who remember…) won….until Google.

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FOCUS: How Do You Compare Awareness vs. A Noisy Internet?

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Awareness

Awareness

Moving from Awareness (I sometimes call it Discoverability…) to Reputation, and then to some kind of Economic Engagement (Sales, Donations, etc…) is a well-known path for many businesses.

The first stop on this journey is gaining Awareness of your business. Sadly, there are still a number of businesses who feel and act as though the best way to get attention is to YELL A LOT ONLINE! This number is shrinking, but they are still there. What the rest scatter into are versions of:
  • Semi-random posts based partly on the business and partly on when whomever is managing the online activity has time or interest to post something. Hence pages that will have four posts in one day, and then go 3 months before the next one.
  • A steady stream of “We’re Great! Everyone Says So!” and “Buy Our Stuff!“. These folks generally post a lot, and descend into “Internet Noise” pretty quickly…
  • The “Cats Rule the Internet” strategy, where a large number of posts are entertaining GIFs and Videos of Pets, People and Fun things, but without any balancing of content that’s valuable to the customer, except for those who find filling their day with looking at this kind of stuff valuable. May drive a l lot of traffic, but no business.
  • Patterns that ALMOST come together into a coherent plan, but lack the real strategy to make progress in their marketing and business goals. Sometimes the owner is a regular use of some channel like Facebook, and so knows kind of what others do, but hasn’t worked through how that looks for her business.
  • Some solid execution plans that are moving the needle for the business and producing value. These companies are intelligently investing in and leveraging digital/social media to MAKE MONEY.

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What’s The Truth About Your Big Bang Theory?

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Big Bang Theory

Big Bang Theory

The Big Bang Theory.

No, not the TV show or the Universe Origin theory. I mean what’s your plan (personal and business) for when something catastrophic takes place? Not only that, but, as anyone who has lived in the world of business for a while knows, there is likely some distance between “theory” and “reality.” That’s the problem…

Many businesses have a disaster plan. Call it crisis management, emergency management planning, or what you will, if you have spent time identifying likely disaster scenarios, you have invested in creating plans for them that will mean less disruption to you and your business. There are an enormous amount of resources available for the Small Business Administration here, which are helpful in the process. However, it is impossible to plan for Every Single Crisis you could confront. Not only that, but the test of a plan is how it works when the event takes place, and this is where a lot of businesses fall down. Business catastrophes are many times predicated on natural disasters of some sort. That is well and good. There are other disasters, aside from death (dying is a real problem, obviously, but not the focus of this article….), that take place. Many of these are personal, and can have a huge impact on your business, especially if you are a solo-preneur.

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Are You Ready for Wrong?

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Wrong

Wrong

Nobody likes to be wrong. Guys have an especially hard time with failure. My wife knows me well enough now that, when she asks me about something and I start an answer, about 80% of the time she can tell if I’m just piecing together something from opinions, random thought, and floating bits of semi-related rubbish in my head (what guy doesn’t want to the The Answer Man?…) rather than an ACTUAL answer. While “getting caught” this way in a personal discussion is embarrassing, it is REALLY not a great way to approach business decisions, regardless of their size.

There has been a lot of digital ink spilled over the past years about the importance of Failure in Business. Most everyone gives it some level of lip service, but when it comes right down to failing, the shivers and the pointing fingers/assigning blame begin, and the lessons that can be learned are muddled or lost. As human as it is to make mistakes, being wrong in public is still a key source of shame….so we avoid it or ignore it at all costs. Sadly, even at the cost of figuring out what can be learned and applied to the program, process, product or relationship.

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Best December Articles: Get An Edge Before 2017!

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Even with shorter days and the perceived acceleration of time toward the end of the year, the search for the best social media articles for December provides the chance to focus on the business opportunities of 2017 before you head out for the egg nog!

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12 Step Process

12 Step Process

It seems most things can be broken down into a step-by-step process. Getting everything lined up for a successful strategy or campaign is no different. Start here and you’re a lot more likely to hit those objectives.

 

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