Today is Word Carnival day, that once-monthly event where a bunch of business bloggers get together to write on a theme. This month’s topic: the secret to my success.
Rather than talk about tools or tricks or mindsets or practices, I decided to have a little fun and turn this into a love letter because there really is only one thing I can’t live without: my business partner, husband and love of my life. I hope you know someone like this, too, because you really can’t succeed alone.
It’s Thanksgiving week here in the U.S. which means if you’re not planning the turkey or cooking the turkey then you’re certainly thinking about eating the turkey – or whatever favorite Thanksgiving treat you eat enough of to put you into a weekend-long food coma.
So rather than give you a lesson in my marketing processes, social media management plans or how I segment email lists (we’ll save those for January after the hangovers have worn off), today I’d like to share a little fun – because when we’re down in the trenches of business and marketing it can be very easy to forget that there is such a thing.
Web.Search.Social has been reborn! I’m both proud and relieved that we’ve relaunched our site, with a new design, new content and new free resources (more on that at the end of the post, so stick around). And my whole team – plus a few friends and colleagues – deserve a pat on the back. I’ll get back to that in a second, too, because first I want to share what I learned from the experience so that it can help you the next time you’re thinking of designing or redesigning your own website.
Let me start by sharing the shortest story ever. I once went to KFC and was told they were out of chicken. I was pissed. The end. The moral of the story? KFC committed the single biggest blunder a business can make. KFC may have the luxury of repenting, but do you? Read more to find out about their mistake and how you can avoid it.
Today’s businesses must plan and budget for ongoing marketing in a marketplace that is always changing and often unpredictable. The key ingredient in any ongoing marketing brew is to continually monitor customer needs and adapt offerings to those needs. That doesn’t have to be as hard as it sounds. It just means listening to your customers, paying attention to what they need, and delivering it. Here’s how Triberr did that for me. And how other companies did it for their customers. They’re examples worth following if you want to stand out in a crowded world.
I was talking with a prospect about ghostwriting blogs for her clients. When we finally got to the topic of price, she told me her main resource for content had been charging her $15 per post. After I threw up a little in my mouth, I asked what kind of quality she got for that price, and she said, “Well, it’s just for SEO.” Translation: The quality of the content really doesn’t matter as long as the keywords are in there, and it’s okay that people find crap when they get to my website. Here are the three most common things I hear people say that make their competition ecstatic.
It’s a marketing cliche. Maybe someone has even said it to you (we’ve known customers with whom we’ve disagreed that remind us of it). But is it true? Should you really conduct business as if the customer is always right? Maybe a better mantra would be, “The customer should always be treated respectfully.” That’s absolutely true. But let’s be honest. The customer definitely is not always right. Here’s why it matters that you don’t pretend otherwise.
This is an unusual post for me and comes as the result of a happy surprise. Turns out two of my online friends and faithful blog readers have nominated me for the “Sisterhood of the World Bloggers Award”. The first thing I wondered was, “Does that come with chocolate?” And the second thing I did was thank them profusely. (Guess I should’ve done that in reverse, huh?) It’s pretty simple – share a little something about myself then pass the award to someone else. While you’re there, how about sharing something about YOU and passing along the link to your blog?
If you’re familiar with the Sabotaging Success series, you know we’ve tackled some serious things that can derail us. I’ve gotten a lot of comments from people who have said, “Been there, done that!” and it made me realize that it’s pretty much impossible to stop people from falling flat on their faces. We all do it! So the question came up: then how do we cope? Which brings us to this post. Since we’re inevitably going to do something bad, wrong, ill-informed or head-smackingly stupid, we need to be equipped to deal with those things when they happen. If we let our failures get the best of us, we won’t learn and we won’t move our businesses forward. So don’t cave. Cope. Here’s my story, and the lessons that can help you cope with yours.
In honor of Mother’s Day and mothers everywhere I wanted to do something a little bit fun that’s also a tribute to all those unappreciated lessons moms have to teach. My mother raised six of us – me plus five brothers – and somehow came out the other side still sane (though sometimes she may beg to differ). Here are some eternal momisms and the takeaways that can help us be successful in business – and in life.
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