Each week I bring together a few articles that add value to our work of becoming better communicators in business. How Brands Rediscover the Lost Art of Conversation

“Brands and consumers are now in dynamic conversation.” Bingo. The question is, how good are most businesses at being conversationalists? Sadly, most suck. Read this and learn how to suck less. Read…

Love this: One of the best reads this week. Learn how to use social nurturing to build real connections with potential paying customers. And remember . . . → Read More: On Message: Your Weekend Business Communication Reading – Feb 4]]> Share/Bookmark

Each week I bring together a few articles that add value to our work of becoming better communicators in business.

How Brands Rediscover the Lost Art of Conversation

“Brands and consumers are now in dynamic conversation.” Bingo. The question is, how good are most businesses at being conversationalists? Sadly, most suck. Read this and learn how to suck less. Read…

Social Media: You Had Me at Hello, But Then You Lost Your Mind

Love this: One of the best reads this week. Learn how to use social nurturing to build real connections with potential paying customers. And remember your manners.  Read…

10 Comms Pros Who’ve Rocked My (Social Web) World in 2010

In social media workshops I`m often asked “How do you find out where the good stuff is? Who should I follow?” Articles like this are a great place to start. I found two people I’m going to start following here: Adam Vincenzini & Emily Leary . Read…

How To Be a Better Commenter

Commenting on the posts (blog and Facebook) of others is critical to a successful social media presence. But is there an etiquette around commenting? This article suggest some commenting manners. Read…

6 tips for bringing personality to your Facebook business page

How social is your social media presence? A lot of Facebook Pages send the message that the business is more about promoting than connecting. Have a freakin’ conversation! I’m working on tips 4 & 5. How about you?  Read…

Understanding Digital Body Language

Is your social media body language flirty, aggressive, or hard to get? Did you know social media had a body language? It does, and here is an article that introduces the subject. Read…

The Problem with the Social Media Opportunity

Is your organization suffering from BSOS? Is social media the next Bright Shiny Object? It’s too important for that. Read this for some good thinking on how social media can improve your marketing mix. This author also introduced the image of ‘haystacking’ to my very visual thought processes… I love it!  Read…

5 Tips on Leveraging Body Language at Work

Body language, together with tone-of-voice, communicates more than the words you use. Here are some practical tips on the role your body can play in improving your communication. What is the impression you would like to make before you open your mouth?  Read…

How do I praise thee?

On my no-doubt-top-10 list of ‘guaranteed to make business harder than it has to be“: failure to use strategic positive feedback to build your team. This short but excellent reminder of the importance of praise is a must-read. Read…

Sneak Peek at the New Freak Factor Book

Does what makes you freaky make you strong? David Rendall continues to make a compelling case that in our rush to capitalize on our strengths we may be overlooking that which makes us unique. In Seth Godin’s words, what makes us Purple Cows. And Rendall has a book coming out! Read…

Referral Generation Requires Both Strategy and Tactics

Is getting referrals an afterthought in your organization, or the heart of every tactic and strategy you pursue? John Jantsch argues that the highest level of commitment is required to really fuel the referral engine. As usual from John, worth a read. Read…

Want to improve your communication with employees, partners, and customers? I help organizations improve communication through social media strategies and management-level workshops.

Are you speaking TO your customers or communicating WITH them? Useful points in this article that would have been even more useful. It should have been 3 Ways to Effectively Speak with Your Customers.  #1 should be to listen well. You can’t speak effectively to a customer if you haven’t first listened well. It’s a non-negotiable prerequisite. Read…

‎”Treat Facebook like a coffee shop, not your living . . . → Read More: On Message: Your Weekend Communications Reading, January 15]]> Share/Bookmark

Each week I bring together and summarize a few articles that add value to our work of becoming better communicators.

2 Ways to Effectively Speak with Your Customers

Are you speaking TO your customers or communicating WITH them? Useful points in this article that would have been even more useful. It should have been 3 Ways to Effectively Speak with Your Customers.  #1 should be to listen well. You can’t speak effectively to a customer if you haven’t first listened well. It’s a non-negotiable prerequisite. Read…

Professionally Personal On Facebook

‎”Treat Facebook like a coffee shop, not your living room.” Bret L. Simmons Are you making a distinction between your personal and professional profiles in the online world? Read…

Google Analytics: 5 Tricks You Should Know

Did you know you can find out not only who is visiting your web site, but on which links they are clicking on each page? Even if you spend 5 minutes each day reviewing your basic stats, you will learn something about your fans and customers. You will become a better listener. If you don’t know how to access you Analytics stats, contact me or your web designer. Read …

The Words of the Year

How many of these words do you recognize? Have you over-used any of them? Do you work in a coffice? I do! Read…

7 Proven Facebook Marketing Tactics

If you do it right Facebook can help you turn customers into fans. What are you doing on your Facebook page to generate buzz among your customers? How does Facebook fit into your overall business design and communications strategy? Read…

Little Things Count!

What do you do to adjust your work and communication habits to be more respectful of clients’ priorities? Great quote from this article: “To me a time commitment is as important as a commitment about a product or service someone is trying to sell me.” Read…

Straight Talk About Word-Of-Mouth Marketing

What are you doing to generate WOM? Decades of research consistently show that Word of Mouth marketing is more profitable. Close rates, per-customer-sales, and retention are all better than for customers from out-bound promotions. Yet where do most businesses spend their marketing dollars? Is it logical? Read…

That’s all the articles for this week because my time was committed to two projects. One was the 2011 edition of my eBook BUILDING CONNECTIONS For Small Business; Connect Your Branding, Planning & Social Media Strategies, and the other was developing a version of my Social Media for Small Business workshop for an upcoming presentation for community and not-for-profit organizations.

Have a great weekend,

Clemens

Want to improve your connections with employees, partners, and customers? I help organizations improve communication through social media strategies and management-level workshops.

Each week I bring together and summarize a few articles that add value to our work of becoming better communicators.

Writing a blog is about more than just getting your ideas out and establishing authority. Writing is one part of the communication cycle, and to quote the author Jason L. Baptiste “It Is A Rapid Accelerator Of Serendipity”. By themselves, the articles are only old school web 1.0 content. It is the connections and the conversations that make blogging a social medium. What has your online writing brought you? Read…

Is writing to trending topics just to drive traffic a good practice? Not if you are engaged in long-term authority-building. Your audience wants answers and challenges, not trends.

As a marketing tool Twitter still has a long way to go, even in the softest sense of relationship building and sustaining. With only 7% penetration in North America there are just not enough active users to connect . . . → Read More: On-Message: Your Weekend Communications Reading, December 18]]> Share/Bookmark

Each week I bring together and summarize a few articles that add value to our work of becoming better communicators.

What Does Your Audience Want to Hear?

Is writing to trending topics just to drive traffic a good practice? Not if you are engaged in long-term authority-building. Your audience wants answers and challenges, not trends.

Why I Was Wrong About Twitter

As a marketing tool Twitter still has a long way to go, even in the softest sense of relationship building and sustaining. With only 7% penetration in North America there are just not enough active users to connect with! That said it is still a powerful B2B networking and learning tool. For those businesses that are looking at Twitter, this is a very good article about the practical benefits this channel does bring.

10 Tips to Drive Foot Traffic to Your Business

Want some great ideas for bringing traffic to your door? This article has a practical list of tips, with useful examples. In an age of online-everything, these are great old-school tips for driving foot traffic.

To Make a Strong Case, Don’t Be a Data Dumper

Never let the facts get in the way of a good riposte. By Harvard’s John Kotter.  He focuses on the not-often-talked-about art of responding to critiques and questions during presentations.

Want to improve your connections with employees, partners, and customers? I help organizations improve communication through social media strategies and management-level workshops.

Image by Clarita

Each week I bring together and summarize a few articles that add value to our work of becoming better communicators.

How do you communicate when your team and your clients are scattered across North America? This excellent article is a comprehensive look at some of the technologies and behaviours that make long-distance relationships work.

Love it! This is the most fun demo of communication and web 2.0 I have seen. While fun, this demo . . . → Read More: On-Message: Your Weekend Communications Reading, December 13]]> Share/Bookmark

Image by Clarita

Each week I bring together and summarize a few articles that add value to our work of becoming better communicators.

How My Team Stays Connected With No Office and No Face Time

How do you communicate when your team and your clients are scattered across North America? This excellent article is a comprehensive look at some of the technologies and behaviours that make long-distance relationships work.

Hotties Use Google Translate to Conquer the Language Barrier

Love it! This is the most fun demo of communication and web 2.0 I have seen. While fun, this demo also illustrates the power of tools at our fingertips. And it also demonstrates that just when you thought there were no more cool ways to use this stuff, someone has a branium! I love this. The relentlessly positive nature of a bunch of these Google Slams is infectious. I’ll be posting more on them.

Communication Overload: What Would Emily Post Do?

Is shorter always better? Sometimes you need a few more words to get it right. In the social media world of shortershortershorter, important information gets left out (as it always does in data compression). Thoughtful post. Notice that dependable team members play an important role in getting your message out ‘right’ as well.

Why Women Have Trouble Negotiating for More Money

Pow: ““Society expects women to be strong advocates for other people, but it’s more ’socially costly’ for women to advocate for themselves.” Its the 21st century and women are still asked to overcome communication barriers men don’t have to. I have spent a lot of time on cross-cultural communication, but it is useful to remember that the genders are themselves sometimes different cultures. I’d love to hear thoughts from both sides of that border.

Four Professional Editing Techniques that Boost Post Value

One way of ensuring return traffic to your blog is to assure the ‘communication value’ of the content. How digestible is your writing? A strong article with ‘must do’ practical tips.

Being Persuasive Across Cultural Divides

We live in a multi-cultural nation. You wouldn’t know it from the training our students receive.  More content like this needs to make it into our high schools and MBA programs. Understanding cultural differences matters when your goal is effective communication. Assumptions about what will influence or persuade someone need to be checked against cultural norms. This is a well-written and practical article about communicating well in different cultural contexts.

Each week I bring together and summarize a few articles that add value to our work of becoming better communicators.

Facebook has made a number of changes to Pages. If you use Pages for your business, this article is worth checking out. Two that stood out for me are the live insights (including number of times your post was seen) for administrators, and the ability to change your Page name if you have fewer than 100 fans.

Is it OK . . . → Read More: On Message: Your Weekend Communications Reading–December 4]]> Share/Bookmark

Image by Clarita

Each week I bring together and summarize a few articles that add value to our work of becoming better communicators.

8 Recent Updates for Facebook Business Pages

Facebook has made a number of changes to Pages. If you use Pages for your business, this article is worth checking out. Two that stood out for me are the live insights (including number of times your post was seen) for administrators, and the ability to change your Page name if you have fewer than 100 fans.

Technology and Emotions- Are Text Message Apologies Acceptable?

Is it OK to apologize via Twitter? This article presents some good current thinking. Two reflections stand out for me: Gen Y and younger are normalizing emotional communication via social media; and what the sender thinks doesn’t matter, it is the recipient who gets to determine ‘acceptability’.

14 Management Dos And Don’ts To Motivate Employees

Less than 1/4 of employees are fully engaged. What about the other 75%? Surprise: it’s a failure of management! This excellent article details 14 management behaviours that impact employee engagement. #3: don’t send mixed messages. If you don’t walk your talk, you’ll walk alone.

10 Ways to Stop Communication Overload

Productive, momentum-building communication is the heart of what I do. But can we overload on ‘communication’? Yes. This article provides 10 things to look at in controlling ‘communication overload’. One message comes through loud and clear: we use too many channels just because we can.

Do CEOs Need Acting School?

At what point does being highly successful shut down real communication? Far too soon. Acting as an artistic discipline is not about faking it any more than great sales is about making people buy stuff they don’t need. Great acting always gets to the truth of something. Increasingly I am feeling like it is not power that corrupts, it is the ignorance created by expulsion of any voice other than those in our heads. A new thought? Nope. The story of the Emperor without any clothes is a lot older than I am.

Real Leaders Use Social Media to Shut Up and Listen

Listen, learn, respond, and share. Social media is not a sales tool. Are we clear on that yet? It is painful watching an old paradigm die so slowly and painfully. Watching people try to straightjacket social media communication into the Mad Men restrictions of shouting, jingles, and slogans is sad. The new day will dawn when we realize that good communication is 80% listening and 20% speaking.

Each week I bring together and summarize a few articles that add value to our work of becoming better communicators.

The space around you not only reflects you, it shapes you. Of the four constants in my practice, the 4th, space is the most neglected and least understood. The space you are in when you work and create has a powerful but subtle influence on your performance. This is a good piece on a little-understood area of business success. In the context of communication, the visual . . . → Read More: On Message: Your Weekend Reading – Nov 27]]> Share/Bookmark

Image by Clarita

Each week I bring together and summarize a few articles that add value to our work of becoming better communicators.

An Overlooked Secret to Business Success: Leverage Visual Cues

The space around you not only reflects you, it shapes you. Of the four constants in my practice, the 4th, space is the most neglected and least understood. The space you are in when you work and create has a powerful but subtle influence on your performance. This is a good piece on a little-understood area of business success. In the context of communication, the visual cues around you both say things about you and say things to you. We listen with our eyes.

What your talking hands say

Something less than 25% of what you communicate you do so with words. The rest is via body language and paralanguage. Only paying attention to the words you use when you try to improve your communication game means you are leaving 75% of what is required for successful communication unaddressed. Why does Steve Jobs present with his hands behind his back?

Fear-Based Messaging May Influence Skepticism of Global Warming

Negative fear-based messaging is less effective even when the subject matter suggests that approach. If you are using communication to convince, keep your message focused on positive solutions. Another underlying message of this research for me is that again, the ‘facts’ are not enough in constructing great communication. The emotional spin ultimately matters more.

The Future of Learning

Do you want to communicate in a way that results in real learning and changed behaviour? Find out what problems your students/customers are really wanting to solve in their lives right now, and speak to that. Demand-pull learning is powerful because it is driven by the student’s ‘prior need to know’. An excellent article from Coaching Ourselves about social learning.

Secret to Virgin’s success: saying no to Dr Yes

Without someone to tell you what you sometimes don’t want to hear, you will eventually fall off a cliff. Its the fastest way to become the next CEO doing the ‘perp walk’ or the next celebrity rehab-freak-show. Most stories about sustained business success have a “Dr. No” somewhere in the background. In this great article on Richard Branson’s (Virgin Group) own ‘Mr. No’ Stephen Murphy, the critical importance of this kind of relationship is clearly spelled out.

How Facebook Messages Will Boost B2B Sales

Its all about content. Again. How would you like it if your email to a client or potential customer was ranked not only by the content in the email, but all of the content you have published online that supports that content. In other words, if your email was about some great SEO work you could do for the customer, but the ‘GoogleFace’ bots determine you have no prior online publishing history on that topic, your email gets called for ‘bullshit’ and gets sorted lower in your customer’s inbox. This article just underscores that the future of the USP and branding will be in relationships fuelled by richly developed, always current, nuanced and focused content. Where Facebook starts, others are sure to follow.

How Article Frames Show Readers a Clearer Content Picture

Clarity draws readers. If you want to create a blog article that draws readers in, learn how to develop an angle. This is an excellent practical article on how to ‘frame’ your writing to make it more attractive and compelling. This article also touches on another valuable technique writers should use: give your articles a number of ‘passes’ allowing the main focus to become clearer every time.

Each week I bring together and summarize a few articles that add value to our work of becoming better communicators.

How to Build Your Business by Walking Away from the Sale Building sustainable, profitable relationships with customers sometimes means you have to walk away from a quick sale. “ Giving up a few sales that will make your customers unhappy isn’t just good karma, it’s also a good long-term strategy for customer loyalty.  Tell someone the too-small shoes look great on her, and you’ll sell a pair of shoes your customer will always regret buying. . . . → Read More: On Message: Your Weekend Reading 10.11.20]]> Share/Bookmark

Image by Clarita

Each week I bring together and summarize a few articles that add value to our work of becoming better communicators.

How to Build Your Business by Walking Away from the Sale Building sustainable, profitable relationships with customers sometimes means you have to walk away from a quick sale. “ Giving up a few sales that will make your customers unhappy isn’t just good karma, it’s also a good long-term strategy for customer loyalty.  Tell someone the too-small shoes look great on her, and you’ll sell a pair of shoes your customer will always regret buying. Tell the same person the shoe doesn’t really fit, and you’ll have a customer for life.”

How to Hone Your BS Detecting Skills Knowing how to listen for BS is a useful skill. Not only will it help you make better decisions about whom to follow and avenues to take, but it will also train to you listen for traps in your own communication. Sometimes we rely on something that comes across as BS because we lack confidence, not because what we are saying isn’t true. A great article to read to check your own communication for BS!

Low Risk Ways to Speak Up in a Meeting I am always looking for ways to support my clients in communicating control, agency, and authority. Improving your ability to speak at a meeting definitely supports this, especially when you want to raise your profile as a key team contributor. This article provides some very practical tips.

9 Strategies to Make Selling Your Ideas More Successful Whether we are selling a product, service or idea, we can always benefit from a checklist of strategies. I especially connect with strategy #2: link emotions to the facts. If your client or your audience isn’t falling in love with your product or idea, you’ll struggle to close.

Tina Brown’s Triumph Lessons in acquiring power. An excellent essay on the lessons taught by the career of celebrity editor Tina Brown. Lesson #3 “reputation and having a large and powerful network mutually reinforce each other” is bang on the money for both CEO’s and small business owners. Get out there and build your network. Being good is important, but it’s not enough. The investment you make in being excellent has to flow out through your network before it accrues power to you.

Becoming ‘the Face’ of Your Business: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Should your face become the face of your business? This is a question that gets asked a lot as small and medium-sized businesses set up their initial branding strategies. This is a good article that makes a very strong case for becoming the face of your business.

The Psyche on Automatic: Amy Cuddy probes snap judgments, warm feelings, and how to become an ‘alpha dog.’ “A lot of what reveals lying happens below the neck” Amy Cuddy. I love that line. This is an excellent, evidence-based article on what really influences our thinking about leadership, competence, and likeability in others. Cuddy is a leading academic in the field of social psychology and business at Harvard. Is being the ‘alpha dog’ important to you? Read this.

Embracing the upcycle instead of the downcycle Seth Godin is often good, but this is the best thing I have read from him in a while. This is an excellent description of what I spend a lot of time talking to clients about: positive and negative feedback loops. Finding ways to create positive loops and interrupt negative ones is an ongoing search. This article is not about communication specifically, but it does speak to the behavioural framework in which so much negative or positive communication is formed.

Have a great weekend!

Clemens

I help business leaders and managers learn how to hear and get heard. Whatever language your organization or your customers speak, I can help you connect in ways that fuel growth. clemens@clemensrettich.com

Bosses: Give Frequent and Usable Feedback Frequency matters. We talk a lot about quality time, but the truth is in management that frequent touches, frequent feedback, is critical to keeping the bus pointed in the right direction. If you don’t set aside time for frequent and helpful interactions with your team, you have no one to blame but yourself when things start to slide sideways.

My Life as a Mac Savvy Agent Make your activities matter. More. I am always reminding clients to . . . → Read More: On Message: Your Weekend Reading 10.11.13]]> Share/Bookmark

Here are the communication articles that made me think or gave me a lift this week!

Bosses: Give Frequent and Usable Feedback Frequency matters. We talk a lot about quality time, but the truth is in management that frequent touches, frequent feedback, is critical to keeping the bus pointed in the right direction. If you don’t set aside time for frequent and helpful interactions with your team, you have no one to blame but yourself when things start to slide sideways.

My Life as a Mac Savvy Agent Make your activities matter. More. I am always reminding clients to recycle their activities. Why just get one unit of return out of an activity when you can get two, or three, or more? This article and its description of ‘Activity Based Marketing’ nails this. This is that now-meaningless phrase ‘work smarter’ given some fresh blood, and real, practical examples of what it actually means.

13 Qualities of a Good Social Media Voice Sharing matters. In fact it is the very heart of finding a voice in social media that really connects. And it doesn’t just matter to the readers we are trying to attract, it matters to us. In fact it can matter as much as good food and sex! Don’t believe me? Read the article!

Useful Dog Tricks performed by Jesse Positive feedback works. Without getting into weird side-bar conversations about ‘is it right to compare employees and pets?’ this is a great illustration of how consistent positive feedback yields astonishing results. I’m not a big dog person, but the love and enthusiasm (and mind-blowing things you can train a dog to do) just puts a smile on your face!

The Conversation – How to Become a Thought Leader in Six Steps To lead in your organization or to lead the market in your field you must become a conversation driver, as well as a conversation topic. This is probably the most useful and elegant article I have recently read that lays out how to do this in concrete steps. Want to take your career as a specialist in your field to the very top? Read this.

Twitter Content Strategy: 4 Reasons Why Everyone’s Content is King on Twitter Want to stop being a social media newbie? Share. This excellent article reminds us of the fundamentals of creating a leadership position in social media, Twitter in this case, by connecting and sharing the content of others. If there is one thing in my work that I constantly have to prompt people to do is to connect and share. The instinct to talk about ourselves is powerful, but crippling. If you want to claim a leadership role in this world, you must retweet, repost, create blog rolls, leave comments on Facebook Pages and blogs, and through aggregators like Networked Blogs and Google Friends. Social media creates one of the best proving grounds for the dictum ‘the more you give, the more you get’.

Have a great weekend!

Clemens

I help business leaders and managers learn how to hear and get heard. Whatever language your organization or your customers speak, I can help you connect in new ways. clemens@clemensrettich.com

You have a group of employees who are mastering their fields but every once in a while you have to provide some ‘correction’. When you try to reward the positive performances as all the research says you should, your team seems to do worse the next time out. When they blow it and you comment on their failures in a loud voice, they seem to do better next time out. Should you avoid positive reinforcement?