#H2H

What is the ROI of an Awesome Quality Relationship?

/ Jeff Hora / Leave a comment

Like you, I have a hard time balancing “all the stuff I need to do” as an entrepreneur with things like spending time with my family, detaching from the Internet and screens, and nurturing a creative hobby that doesn’t entail playing Civilization for an afternoon. One of my halfway measures is I take a little time on the weekend to catch up on my reading: I’m three weeks behind on my stack of The Economist, I want to make headway on at least a couple of the books I have going on my Kindle that DON’T have to do with social media, business, or consulting, and catch-up on the handful of truly magnetic posts from my favorite bloggers.

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Do You Know The Truth About Connection and Appearance?

/ Jeff Hora / Leave a comment
Connect Four

Connect Four (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I belong to a few business and networking groups, as well as a service organization. Only at one of them do I have the luxury of spending time with the members (about 25) on a weekly basis and the ongoing encouragement to get together with a couple of them every week to really get to know them, their businesses and their lives. I am able to connect and as a result I feel almost as invested in their work as they are (I’m still working on birthdays and favorite foods, but, hey, we’ll get there!). I am fans of them and their work and actively seek out ways to promote and assist each one, if I can.

How can the Silent Majority Unlock your Bottom Line?

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Silent Majority

The Silent Majority


Do you remember “The Silent Majority”? While the phrase has been around for a very long time, it was popularized by Richard Nixon in 1969 in a speech, and also referred to by journalist Theodore White as the “mute masses.” In a different context, this phrase also represents the voices you hear (or don’t…) on social media. Research shows that almost 90% of what you hear there comes from less than 30% of the most vocal users….and they are different from the the quieter folks that make up the bulk of your online audience.

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How to unlock your authentic and remarkable voice!

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A spectrogram (0-5000 Hz) of the sentence &quo...

A spectrogram (0-5000 Hz) of the sentence “it’s all Greek to me” spoken by a female voice  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You have an untold number of things that make you different from the next person. Just ask your roommate, significant other, or neighbor!  You may feel, like I do sometimes, that you don’t have something truly unique to say.  Don’t get hung up on that.  Just say it better and say it your way.

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How Do You Set the Table for Unparalleled Awesomeness?

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Can you remember the single best dining out experience you’ve ever had? Whether it was the best steak ever, stir-fry to die for, or that anniversary dinner at the Killer Italian Place, do you remember what it was that made the meal memorable? The company probably had a lot to do with it, but the context and environment had a BIG part in the whole thing, too.

This same principle holds for your content and whether it is share-worthy or not. If that serving of shrimp linguine had arrived in a Styrofoam container with a packet of generic grated cheese and a plastic fork, the night might have been memorable for entirely different reasons! You expect premium content to look like premium content, too.

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Say What?! Do You Know The Odd Truth About Reviews?

/ Jeff Hora / 1 Comment

How often do you get honest feedback about how you’re doing? I mean, honest….it doesn’t NEED to be brutal, just a truthful, balanced opinion from someone, based on their experience. A large number of businesses are scared of feedback and reviews on their various social media pages. This is despite the fact that this is an important form of social transmission and enhances the word of mouth referrals they value so much in the off-line world. These can make or break a business.

Social proof is a fuzzy concept to some, but basically it is an accumulation of the clues in our environment we use to make decisions when we don’t know the truth (a H/T [Hat Tip] to Mark Schaefer for this clear definition!) Reviews are one avenue for prospects to check you out if they’ve never heard of you before and are considering buying what you offer. Nielsen reports that 84% of people say that online reviews influence their buying decision.

There are two components to successfully working with customer reviews.

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How To Approach Fun Numbers and Shrewd Sizes

/ Jeff Hora / 1 Comment

Here’s the deal: I don’t go onto the web to be sold to. I look for information. I look for content that will tell me something I don’t know and satisfies my curiosity. I want to be intrigued. I want to learn and join conversations.

Mostly, however, I want to have fun.

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Don’t just write. Ignite.

/ Jeff Hora / Leave a comment

English: Buttons with just three holes. Italia...

You work like a crazy person, obsessing about the appropriate, attractive graphic, the relevance and utility, even entertainment value, of the content, the “grab” of the headline, inclusion of targeted hashtags….everything. Now, ready to post….how do you light a fire underneath it?

You’ve heard a lot from me about Content Shock…now I’m going to move onto what Mark Schaefer (whom I quote in the title of this post…) calls Content Ignition. Over the next few posts you’re going to find out about some very specific actions you can take. Not every one is right for each post, but there are enough options to cover most every scenario you run into. Overall, you need to do whatever you can to make it easy for others to share what you publish.

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Want the Ultimate Quickie List for Social Media?

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I’ve been writing a lot about the cognitive research around sharing, content shock and emotions. You’re ready for that to be done. You want the “5 Things You Can Do Today to Rock Facebook!” post.

Sorry….it’s just not that simple.

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How To Be More Contagious

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Consuming and sharing content normally creates an emotional benefit, not a financial one. Hence the obstacle: companies try to use content to create financial benefits for themselves instead of emotional benefits for their readers. This completely overturns the traditional business view of what content should accomplish.

Studies show we’re hard-wired to talk about ourselves. Around 50% of what people talk about on social is ‘me‘ focused, and it’s not just vanity (although there are an ENORMOUS number of selfies and/or pictures of the food in front of you out there, but I digress…). Harvard neuroscientists Jason Mitchell and Diana Tamir discovered that disclosing information about ourselves is intrinsically rewarding. They found that sharing personal opinions activates the same brain circuits that respond to rewards like food and money. So how do you climb aboard those conversations?

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