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36 and Counting Business Development Cultivating Positive Relationships Customer Service General Marketing Opinion Social Media

Customer service is your company

Fundamentally, customer service always has been vital to company success. A salesforce.com article captures the enduring essence of good customer service: “…the core of providing customer service hasn’t changed even considering it’s been close to two centuries. Even with the speed of technology, many of the same approaches that Marshall Field made famous back in 1852 are […]

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Business Development Cultivating Positive Relationships Opinion Social Media

Saying ‘sorry’ can cut both ways

Mea culpas can be helpful or off-putting Depending on the circumstances and perceived sincerity, apologies can help solve a reputation problem or exacerbate it. Reputation management specialists hold a variety of views about if, when and how to apologize. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is the latest bigwig to apologize for his company’s actions. Whether or not […]

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Empowerment Techniques General Marketing Good Content Social Media

Time for scare tactics to become scarce

Diabetes affects your heart, so take this drug to decrease your odds of dying. Identity theft is right around the corner. Coffee is good for you…wait, bad for you…uh, good for you. (Repeat for eggs, coconut oil, etc.) We are deluged daily with “scary” information—much of it designed to goad you into buying a particular […]

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Customer Service Opinion Social Media

Fake news, flawed data and phony claims

Time was, big ad agencies held sway over consumers with grandiose claims of product and service excellence. Quite often, the claims were exaggerated or downright false. But, until a groundswell of consumer sentiment hit the headlines, a grassroots activist went on the warpath, or an investigative reporter uncovered falsehoods, the ads, PR campaigns, and promotional […]

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Customer Service Empowerment Techniques Opinion Social Media

Don’t know? Don’t care? Just make up something!

That’s the standard set by Donald Trump, and it’s being emulated in businesses and interpersonal interactions across the land. Of course, this is nothing new. For example, how many times do you ask a question of a retailer and get an accurate, complete response? But, it’s indicative of a deeper malaise—lack of regard for the […]

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General Marketing Social Media

Cutting through the Clutter

Adapted from an Article by Mark Lusky Originally Published in The Denver Business Journal Small business owners trying to stay current on new trends and tips have quite a challenge. So how do you sift out the helpful, usable information from this vast repository, often referred to as big data? If you’re like many small business owners, […]

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General Marketing New Media Branding Social Media

Tips for Identifying client personas

With advancing technologies and a dizzying array of choices, identifying client personas that target buyer sweet spots can be challenging. For companies considering their buyer personas, this issue prompts an important question: How do you address multiple audiences whose needs and wants may be radically different from one another? Do you find ways to appeal […]

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Cultivating Positive Relationships Customer Service Social Media

Tips for Being Proactive with Online Reviews

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Instead of just spreading the word in a specific community, as was the case hundreds of years ago, consumers in communities all over the world can become informed about favorable and unfavorable buying criteria in seconds through online reviews. In many ways, this continuing trend […]

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Social Media

Social media is a many-splendored thing to some, a necessary evil for others.

Social media fundamentally is traditional connecting, communicating, referring and sharing of opinions — on steroids. One way to address social media’s potential use is to quit viewing it as some monolithic monster waiting to gobble up all who don’t embrace it. Long before social media came upon the digital scene, a similar process flourished in […]