Each week I bring together a few articles that add value to our work of becoming better communicators in business. Short on time? Watch for the *Must Read* where I think you’ll get the best bang for your reading buck!
How Well Do you Know Your Buyer’s Story? *Must Read*
Do you want to sell successfully? Learn to listen to your customer’s story. We focus too much on telling *our* story at the expense of understanding the motivation and desires of our customers. This excellent piece proposes a process for creatively writing your customers’ stories. Do that right, and your role in that story becomes clear. Read more…
Which Social Media Sites Are Most Beneficial?
Which social media sites are most useful for small business? This article reviews some new stats on which social media sites small businesses are most using, and for what purposes. Lead generation tops the list. Brand development is absent from the list, which I think is a huge lost opportunity. To me this just shows that most businesses have still not understood that for all of its power to connect for Current Cycle growth, social media’s real power lies in long term Deep Cycle brand development. Read more…
Social Customer Relationship Management with Rapportive
Another CRM/Social Media management tool worth looking at. If you use Gmail as your primary email tool in your small business, read this review of Rapportive, from Harvard Small Business Trends. This looks like an excellent tool, similar to what Xobni (still my favourite Outlook plugin) and Gist (recently purchased by RIM) offer for Outlook. Read more…
Your Own Kind of Moneyball: The Metrics that Measure You *Must Read*
“If you can measure what you do best, you’ll get paid what you’re worth.” With any design or change activity, including personal branding, if you don’t know what success looks like, the activity is a shot in the dark at best. Getting at meaningful metrics in the field of personal branding can be very challenging. This article from the Harvard Business Review does an excellent job of proposing some ways of developing those metrics. Read more…
5 Ways to Prepare for the Future of Email Marketing
Does email newsletter marketing have a future in the world of social media? Yes. Done right email newsletters can’t be beaten for targeted communication with customers. This article does a nice job of tying in the value of social authority in getting your newsletters opened. This connection alone is worth the read. Read more…
Not on Facebook? 5 Reasons You Need to Be!
I know. It’s hard to believe that convincing a business of the value of Facebook is still a topic worth writing about. For those looking for more solid arguments to use Facebook in business, this is a good article. Of particular value is the reminder that “Facebook is a two-way conversation.” Want to know what your customers are thinking and where your business matters in their lives? Invite them to get into the conversation on your Facebook page! Read more…
6 Ways New & Emerging Music Artists Can Make The Most of Social Media
Are you a musician or performer looking for ways to make your social media promotion even more effective? This thorough article touches on some tools you may not have thought of. Read more…
Using Personas to Shift Your Focus to the Customer
If you don’t know who your audience might be, your writing will miss its target. This is a good short piece on a strategy to develop audience focus for your stories. Read more…
Dear Bloggers: You Are Making it Too Difficult to Share Your Content
Are you making it easy for people to share your blog posts after you have spent all that time writing them? If a reader needs to search around your site to find ways to share you on Twitter or Facebook, they won’t do it. It’s ‘click right now’ or ‘no click at all’. A good article with some practical checks for your blog. Read more…
Small Business News: What’s Your Brand? *Must Read*
Branding matters; and really understanding how branding works can transform your business. This is an excellent overview of 10 articles that will seriously add to your understanding. If you are new to branding this is as good a place to start as any. If you are a pro, the mix of social media branding specifics and big picture topics is of real value. Read more…
Want to improve your communication with employees, partners, and customers? I help organizations improve communication through social media strategies and management-level workshops.
