Learning

Get Facebook Ads Right, Engage, and Stretch Those ‘Little Grey Cells’!! – Best of November

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November

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November allowed us all a chance to be Thankful, and then take a deep breath as we dive into the pre-Christmas / New Year period. Depending on your business, this may be the best and most hectic time of year, or things may cool down a bit while your customers work out their plans for 2019. This months’ “Best Of…” articles cover some important pieces to get right when using ads on Facebook, honing your LinkedIn presence, some recommendations for video-editing apps (since video is on your content list for 2019, right?), and several other goodies for you!

Of course, you don’t just slap something together, point it at your credit card and hit PUBLISH, right? Pause for a moment and go down this handy checklist, and your success rate is likely to improve….

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Social Media Do’s and Don’ts, Ensuring a Cohesive Team, and a Better You – Best of September

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Autumn

Autumn is Officially Here!

September brought more content about social media and website success, and how to keep up the continuous improvement process that is your business and your own professional growth!

Social Media Mistakes

Social Media Mistakes

Every single one of these mistakes is avoidable AND crucial to a vital social media presence for your business. Knowing WHAT NOT TO DO is just as important as knowing WHAT TO DO!

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Social Media Blunders and Challenges, GDPR, and Just Keeping Up – Best of May

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Best of May

Best of May

The month of May provided a bumper crop of great articles, and this is a concise digest of the best ones for your business!  They touch on meeting the challenges of social media marketing, as well as the things to avoid, the impact that the GDPR might have on your business, and how to keep up with the constant changes and new information available almost every minute (without going nuts…).

Blunders

OOPS!

It’s just as important to learn and know what NOT to do as it is to pick up the best practices….in many cases these kinds of tips have been gained by, shall we say, “learning the hard way!” Take advantage of others’ hard lessons and make the right moves.

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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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There are some CHANGES you should know about….

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Changes

CHANGE – And Now For Something Different

Change signifies life and the movement through time we all take part in. The dual focus I have taken within this blog has been about things I have a long-time and deep abiding interest in AND the phenomenon we loosely and broadly call “social media” and the business and more human aspects of it.

As of this past few weeks my more business-focused writing will take place on the blog that is part of my new Social Sapiens site. Some of those will be cross-posted here (and vice versa…) as they have aspects of my passion for being human online or how what happens online impacts us in real life. I intend to continue to write for this blog in broader areas that include many of the things I’ve written about before, but that business owners and entrepreneurs may or may not find as directly pertinent to their bottom lines (although my hope is that the work published here will be valuable and thought-provoking to whomever takes the time to read and consider it…).

Please join me on my other blog soon, and keep your eye here for more articles too!

 

FOCUS: Introducing a Summer Reading Sampler!

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Summer Reading

Ah….summer reading!

I frequent the Conversation Agent blog published by Valeria Maltoni regularly, and take away more food for thought than I get from any other blog. She recently posted an article containing a Summer reading list. Heading into the last full month of summer (although here in the Pacific Northwest it actually feels like the first full month, as the summer to date has been rather cool and moist….), I felt this was a great idea and opportunity to bring to light a number of works I have or am reading and the ways they have enhanced by thoughts and are enriching who I am and making my business more worthwhile.

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Is Your Tribe Remarkable, Unfocused or Mainstream?

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Which Tribe do you belong to?

That seems to be an over-riding, occasionally unsaid, concern in our society. Conservative or Liberal? Religious or Agnostic? One percent or ninety-nine percent? Blue collar or white-collar? Introvert or extrovert? College Graduate? Technical? Gender? Race? We have innumerable ways of identifying, classifying and limiting the understanding of ourselves and those around us.  Labels and categories carry assumptions and expectations, whether they’re true or not. And how much of this relies upon context? It’s something that has challenged our species for all time and it doesn’t seem to be getting better….

That’s a pretty broad brush with which to start a conversation.

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Do Your Passions Make You More Human?

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Signature of Richard P. Feynman

Signature of Richard P. Feynman (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It is much too easy to burrow into your business and go deeper into the knowledge, building more depth and expertise in that area so you can be an even better resource for your customers. But doesn’t this turn you into a “one-trick pony”? For example, in my social media consulting business, does it truly broaden my mind and stretch my intellect to become more facile in the inner workings of Facebook and Content Marketing…or is it kind of “more of the same”?

I have other interests. You do, too. How do I indulge them, push the boundaries of my interests, and maybe even develop new ones? I need to consciously expose myself to knowledge I probably wouldn’t otherwise, and I have to set aside the time to do it. This is a challenge as an entrepreneur, but to not do it means that I’m less likely to keep growing intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. There is also a much higher probability that, in exploring some of these new landscapes, I might come across a couple of new ideas that inform and impact my business in ways I have no way of anticipating now.

So, where do I start?

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Social Media and Being a Professional

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Illustration by John Tenniel of the Red Queen ...

Illustration by John Tenniel of the Red Queen lecturing Alice for Lewis Carroll’s “Through The Looking Glass” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have been in a number of conversations lately where my colleagues and friends are grappling with staying on top of their game, so to speak, both online and in the office.  Not only are we coping with the well-known information overload, but we have the desire to improve, deepen and expand our skills, knowledge and expertise.  Each of us is evolving a methodology to accomplish this, but it changes a lot and, with so much change, it can be difficult to feel like you’re really progressing.  It feels so much like the Red Queen‘s comment in Lewis Carroll‘s Through The Looking-Glass : “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

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MOOCs and Measurement

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Lees hier hoe je een MOOC kunt opzetten! Massi...

Lees hier hoe je een MOOC kunt opzetten! Massive Open Online Courses deel 1 door Inge de Waard http://t.co/RbLAijLd @Ignatia (Photo credit: Trendmatcher)

I’ve noted a sea change in education and learning about which there has been quite a bit of virtual ink spilled.  The phenomenon known as a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) has been added to the education lexicon, much to the joy of futurists, learners everywhere, and to the consternation of a number of university and college administrators.  Like most things, I can see the light and the dark, along with the difficult.

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