January 20th, 2010
I hear the phrase “time is money” often. Less often, I hear “money is time.” I’m beginning to think the latter is most important.
Many of us look back at 2009 and think, what WAS that? If you’re like me, the new year brought a really nice, clean slate that is a wonderful thing. Why we (or maybe I should speak for myself) needed January to arrive in order to get this feeling is something I’ll have to ask while laying on a couch, because I have yet to figure that out. What I do know is that I took the end of December and the first week of January (three weeks total) to just let myself decompress. I didn’t push myself to work over the holidays. I didn’t stress about work. I put off tackling those goals. I actually took a breather. I reflected on the last 12 months and came to some major conclusions. My biggest conclusion isn’t rocket science, but it is something we all tend to forget: Wisely spend your money to buy back your time.
In my process to figure this out, I was able to answer “yes” to way too many questions. Questions like:
- My important relationships were going down hill (sorry friends)
- I felt overwhelmed way too often
- I skipped meals to work in more stuff (ha, just kidding, I never skip meals)
- I cannot stop thinking of work and the next thing
- and if you ask my husband, the worst thing was: I was getting moody! I tend to be evenly calm, but not toward the end of 2009.
Obviously money cannot buy everything, but it can buy you some time. We primarily work with business owners who, like me, possibly feel or felt some of those very same things. I challenge you to take three days and write down your activities (yeah, this will be annoying and painful, but trust me). On the fourth day, pull out your list of the past three days and give it a really good eye ball. Where are you putting time that isn’t well spent or isn’t touching the money in your business? Delegate it! Move it out. Outsource it. Find a way to manage it or create a process to make sure it’s created and maintained just at your precise desire, but move away from it. Use your money to buy back some time, focus on the bigger goals of your business or personal life, and wisely make choices that improve your personal quality of life… money is time.
December 15th, 2009
I was excited to read on the Twitter blog yesterday that Twitter is bringing a new feature for businesses – a way to “deepen engagement” with your audience. This new feature also tackles a major question we’re often asked, so you should be excited too…
The new feature will allow businesses to tag their employees, or those using Twitter on their behalf, to send Tweets for the business, but, with their name as the byline so you can see just who, exactly, sent that Tweet from that company. I like this feature because this means multiple people in the company can still use Twitter for that company but each person still has their own byline. This helps you build realtionsihps with those indivdiuals in that business, not just brand in general.
In our Twitter workshops and speaking engagements, we’re often asked “Who should Tweet; the company or the people?” We think everyone should be using Twitter if it makes sense for your business and goals, but now you can have your cake and eat it too once this hits the masses.
While this feature isn’t ready just yet, it’s coming. Stay tuned and keep an eye out for Tweets from Silver Square with bylines from Angela and Clay. Sweet!
December 1st, 2009
I’m thinking I should lead with some hard facts…
- Companies that blog greet 55% more visitors than companies that don’t
- They generate more external web links, in some cases 97% more web links
- This adds up to an insane amount of indexed pages (legal term, i.e. insane)
- Which means the search engines like your company a whole lot more than those lame companies who aren’t blogging
These facts (from Hubspot, 2009) help me reiterate what I’ve been saying for at least two years – you need a company blog. Especially in light of our economic times, where marketing budgets are haulting or maintaining at best. Looking to resources that give you the big boom for your investment, and in a blog’s case that may potentially only be time (and trust me, I know the value of your time, and mine), you cannot ignore the potential, the facts, and ultimately the increase in traffic.
Another big push back I hear often is that you don’t have enough to say, or what would you say, or who would write it as your biggest concerns in accomplishing this task. Let’s take a step back here and look at the larger picture. Do you want your company to grow? Are you looking to establish, build or create loyal audiences to your brand? Has your web traffic hit a nice dull, low riding line on your analytics report? If you answered no, no, yes then by all means run far, far away from considering a blog. If you answered yes, yes and no, well then, let’s pretty much say the rubber is meeting the road.
In our blogging seminar, I use a video that has two of my most favorite business leaders. Seth Godin is a big marketing guru, and Tom Peters is a business thought leader. Both individuals can pretty much use any tactic they could dream up to reach out and communicate with their audiences. Tom Peters says, however, that blogging has had the biggest impact on his buisness and media presence than any other medium. Then they note together that… it’s free! So ignore me if you wish, but again, step back and see the global community we’re all playing in and take note to who is blogging and who is not. Which companies are thriving? Which are introducing new services and products? You will see a reoccuring ring to these successful companies. It’s humming a bit like a blog.
September 3rd, 2009
They’re talking about you on Twitter. They’re talking about you on Facebook. They share an experience on a blog post. They use Flickr to post a gallery of photos from your event. It’s happening, and you need to listen.
So often marketing discussions lean toward what activity should be done next. What should be implemented? What tactics should launch next? What should we present this fall? How should we run our campaign for Q1? Sometimes, it’s simply better to listen.
As the marketing outlets available continue to grow at a remarkable pace, with albeit sometimes not as remarkable means, it gets overwhelming. I’ve noticed more often than not that our clients get caught up in what to do next. They read of the next new thing and they think and tell their marketing partner, we have to be here. Get us a plan for working this medium. Really, though, we need to put listening parallel to this push activity in order to really create value in our respective markets.
Step one in all marketing planning should include active listening. Monitor your brand, monitor your market’s activity and trends, monitor your competition, keep an ear to the ground on it all. There is so much value on understanding the needs in your market and then creating a specific plan, product or service to meeting those needs, that it rarely happens anymore. When Apple set out to create and market their iPod, they listened to the need in the market place. They knew there were people out there who wanted to have their 10,000 CDs with them to play on demand, but that they didn’t want to carry them around. They listened to the need and filled it.
We have to begin conditioning ourselves to recognize, account for an reach that need in each of our respective fields. Finding that need doesn’t happen from pushing your product and service more often or in a different way. It happens from listening.
July 28th, 2009
This one is going to be short and sweet – but the message is as solid as they come:
Tearing others down is never as helpful to a movement as building your followers up. – Seth Godin in Tribes
We have been working on a book for a client and thinking of an array of subtitles; some good, some really bad, some jabbing fun and some very matter-of-fact. I think I must be more sensitive than I let on, because when I read about bad things, even when they are suppose to be funny or trendy, I just cannot feel good about them. Something in my core says woah, that just isn’t nice and therefore it never sits well.
Next time you’re brainstorming a message, copywriting or theme for a project, remember that statement. It will work in your favor and sustain your efforts far beyond a quick-jabbing line.
July 20th, 2009
I attended a Vistage meeting last week and made the commitment to call some of my clients and find out what they can buy from Silver Square that they cannot get anywhere else. The goal in this exercise is to understand what our clients are thinking about us, because really, it doesn’t matter what we think we do well or bring to the market place, it’s what our clients think we do well and bring to the market place.
When we work with a new client, we work hard to get inside the minds of what their clients think about them; do they have the time to read long newsletters, are they even in front of their computers all day, do they enjoy being outside, do they care about keeping up with the industry news, do coupons motivate them, does a freebie now and then build loyalty? We understand this practice, but we haven’t done super well at monitoring it for our own clients.
In our communication audit and marketing plan services, one of the steps in the process are to speak with clients about their thoughts and feelings on the client’s work, style, value, etc. We also facilitate a one hour strategy session with employees, sorry leadership team, you’re not invited, to further gather information about what makes the client tick and how the strategy of the company is or isn’t hitting that mark.
I challenge you to think about how your clients are thinking. If you’re not 100 percent sure what they think (which you won’t be) you need to begin asking. Make the time to work on youself, it will pay off!
July 14th, 2009
I’m sad to see Smith & Hawken must close their doors… but I’m glad to see they are maintaining their brand and style to the end. If you have to go, go out in style.
This image below was in my inbox this morning for the company’s farewell message. It’s a good reminder that even when exiting an agreement, a relationship or anything else, keep up your brand. Stay true to who you are and how you function, either as a person or a company. It will bode you well in the future.
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