The guy replied with a simple “Actually, no”, which seemed to catch the cashier off guard a little.  She quickly recovered and asked what he was looking for.  I’m not a plumber, but it sounded like he was looking for some sort of copper coupler, although he quickly followed up to say that they were getting harder and harder to find.

My ears kind of perked up at this point.  We hear the obligatory customer satisfaction questions all the time when shopping, from sales clerks to cashiers to roving “helpers”.   Finally a customer that took someone up on their implicit offer to be helpful.  I was very curious to see what happened next.

The cashier said she was sorry they didn’t have the part and something like it was odd they didn’t since they carried so many products.

No offense Lowe’s – but if this is your response, you’d be better off not asking the question.  I’m not posting this to pick on Lowe’s, it just happened to be where I was at the time, but too many companies try to appear as providing great customer engagement and simply fall short at best.  It seems to me the customer’s comments could have been the springboard for all kinds of genuine customer satisfaction outcomes:

• Give the guy a small discount on his purchase, or a store credit for his next visit.
• Call over a manager to capture the product he couldn’t find; if it’s that hard to find might it make sense to carry it?
• Enter him into some sort of monthly drawing.

You get the picture.

Instead, I was left wondering what went wrong.  Does Lowe’s really ask the question without a valid response?  Or is there a genuine response that the cashier either wasn’t trained on or didn’t execute?

Where does your company interact with customers directly or indirectly?  What questions do they ask?  Better yet – what do they do with the answers?

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Do your Customer Satisfaction questions have meaning?

The office where I work is very close to Cleveland’s Chinatown district and one restaurant in particular is so close it might as well be called our company cafeteria.  I go there when I’m in a rush for lunch, I go there with co-workers for lunch meetings, and it’s a very convenient location for introductory business meetings.  I was having a chat with one of the owners the other day who had asked where I work.  When I told him, he said “Huh, I thought you were an attorney.”

You can’t control initial impressions

Well, I am neither an artist nor an attorney, although for a variety of reasons both these initial impressions make a lot of sense.  The fact that I sometimes ate alone and sometimes had an intense business conversation was perceived by the restaurant owner as how attorneys acted.  At the wine bar, I usually visited over the weekend when my attire was much less business and more on the eclectic side; so pegging me as an artist type also made perfect sense.

The fact of the matter is we are all lots of “nouns” rolled up into one.  While it isn’t hard to see how one person saw me as an artist while another saw me as an attorney, I’m sure there are plenty other people who see me as an athlete, an executive, a tourist, a techie, their old friend and everything in between.  Initial impressions are an intersection between your actions and appearance with the observer’s background and biases.  That’s a roundabout way of saying it’s all about perception in an isolated situation.

So what CAN we control?

I was reminded of these two stories after the same comment was made to me by two different people over the last couple of weeks.  On two separate occasions, once by someone I knew and the other by someone I just met, a reference was made to this blog and the person asked if I had stopped writing.  While the comments on the blog were both flattering, it was the question on whether I was still maintaining the blog that really stuck with me, especially by the person I had just met.

Here was someone I didn’t know, but knew me – at least through my writings.  What I found interesting, and what made me think of the two stories I started this post with, was that through this blog I had influenced this person’s perception of me without even meeting him.  In fact, the influence probably extended well beyond what we might call an initial impression.

This is the concept of Personal Brand, one which I’ve written often on before and still greatly interests me.  We may not be able to control what someone thinks of our suit, but we can become our own Chief Marketing Officer and control to a large degree the information others use to form their initial (and ongoing) impressions of us.  With the advent of the Internet and the number of applications and tools available these days, it is easier than ever to establish your own personal brand.

The importance of consistency

While taking control of our personal brand and greatly influencing those initial impressions was the general observation I made, there was also an important lesson to learn – that once you take control of your personal brand, it’s yours to maintain.  I remember an article I read years ago when I was doing research on opening a restaurant.  The article touched on all aspects of restaurant operations.  When it got to talking about hours of operation, the message was simple; it matters less which days/hours you are open and more on always being open at those times.  People want consistency; if they get used to stopping by at 2:30 for a slice of pie, but sometimes your open and sometimes you’re not, eventually they are going to stop coming.

It’s the same with your personal branding efforts, whether they be twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogging, or any combination of those platforms and others.  Once folks get comfortable hearing from you now and then, even stopping by to visit, pulling a vanishing act only leaves them to wonder where you went, and what might have happened.  If life or business priorities change to the extent you no longer will be maintaining one or more of your branding efforts, then share that message with the community you have targeted.  They will appreciate knowing why you are “signing off”, and you have an opportunity to not only thank them for staying engaged, but possibly to bring them along with you to your next endeavor.

My next steps

I didn’t start this blog as a personal branding effort.  While this is not my first blog, it certainly is the most personal.  I enjoy writing, and when new career opportunities combined with a view on life and business I felt was under-represented, it seemed time to hang out a shingle.  I’ve had a great time writing on the blog, made some “internet friends”, and established some new connections with old contacts.

When my passion for running blossomed last year into a journey to transform into an endurance athlete, this blog suffered.  The initial effort of that journey, while a lot of fun, took most of my excess time and energy over the past year.  Things have begun to normalize and I’m looking forward to resuming my writing on this blog, in addition to the running blog I’ve linked to above.  There are many shared themes between the two blogs and I’m looking forward to continue to write about personal excellence, positive leadership and entrepreneurship here on DCO.

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A Personal Brand lesson worth sharing

Shortly after that I read a post by another blogger I follow.  He was recounting a lunch he had with a friend of his.  When his friend asks him what he’s been up to and he says blogging, his friend rolls his eyes and says “you’re still blogging?   When are you going to give that up?  Are you making ANY money?”  The guy took it as a challenge and read his recent blog posts, asking the question “If I wasn’t me and just happened across this blog, would any of this stuff mean anything to me?”

His answer was no.  (Kudos to that guy for the brutal self-honesty).

Well, I went through the same process and honestly – came up with the same answer.

I’ve had plenty of distractions, both personal and professional, over the last year to blame for both both the lack of quality and quantity of posts, and in some cases validly so.  But a quick review of my last couple months of blogging has really convinced me that not only have I been playing it safe, but I’ve spent way too much time on topics, or at least contexts within topics, that I’m either not passionate about or knowledgeable about.

So, some things are going to change. First – I want to re-focus on what I’m truly passionate about and can speak from authority.  So while that will still include plenty of business and personal topics, I’ll be mixing in a fair dose of technology articles, re-focusing most of my business writing on small to medium-sized companies, and speaking on Leadership more from the point of view of the individual, as opposed to corporate leadership.  I’m also going to write a little bit more about things that may be considered off-topic, but are interesting nonetheless.

Extending the conversation

If all this post did, was recap some personal musings on this little blog, then it would be of little value to you.  I think the bigger point is that if you are committed to continuous personal and professional improvement, then it helps to:

• Stick your head out of your shell once in a while and take a look around,
• Be honest with yourself about where you’re at, and
• Change course if necessary.

So what do you all think?  Make sense?  Is this something you do, and if so what’s the process you go through?  I’m interested in how others think through what they are doing in the moment versus the path they set out on and where they want to get.  How have you changed course recently and why?

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Rethinking / Refocusing

We believe in the separation of church and hate”

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Amen, brother!

It’s a pretty simple little mini-site.  Each week a management topic is covered.  Topics include some basics like “How to retain and nurture talent” and “How can teams make better decisions?“, to more interesting topics like “In a highly networked global world, has the meaning of leadership changed?” and “What do you do when you don’t know what to do?“  The topic of the week is then covered via a 30 second video Monday through Friday, with a different “faculty member” each day.

I watched a handful of videos on some of the topics and, as you might guess, there is only so much wisdom you can impart in 30 seconds, no matter how smart you are.  That said, the faculty members are all incredibly successful individuals and the 30 second format really forces them to succinctly present one clear thought per segment.  A bonus is that the site is basically ad free, expect for a small banner ad that pops up in the video for a few seconds.

So if you’re looking for inspiration, have a passion around a particular topic, or are just curious, check out Fast Company’s 30 Second MBA site, and let me know what you think.

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30 second MBA?

Recession 101:

It’s a test not a final

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Recession 101

So instead of stand around and say “twitter’s stupid”, I created an account a while back and gave it a spin.  I’m a pragmatist at heart, and in my mind there’s no better way to judge the value of something until you try it yourself.  Of course, there are limits to that philosophy (electric chair?), but the great thing about the state of technology these days is how easy it is to try things out.

I haven’t been a power-user of twitter, nor have I sat on the sidelines.  In this post, instead of talk about the value of the service, I thought I’d list four “truths” about twitter that I found to be misconceptions.

Misconception #1 – You have to post (yes, I know, “tweet”) a lot.

I didn’t find this to be the case.  I only log in to twitter two to three times a week, and I don’t leave a comment every time (but I may leave multiple comments).  Also, if I find something of particular interest I may log in very quickly just to leave that comment.  So on average, I’m putting up probably no more than four tweets a week.

I find this level of activity enough to get a general sense of how the service works so that I could make a determination of whether it’s a fit for my business and ways I might use it.

Misconception #2 – twitter is a huge time sink.

This is one that I always laugh at.  Neither twitter, nor facebook, nor LinkedIn are in charge of your time.  You are.  You can put as much or as little time into twitter as you’d like.  If you see/get value out of it, use it.  If you don’t, get off of it.  But it should only take as much time as you decide to put into it.

That said, there are a couple ways to use twitter without really even putting any time into it.  With the twitter search feature, you can set up a search for your company name, your brand, yourself, or whatever.  Once the search is setup the way you want, subscribe to it’s RSS feed and you can stay in the loop without ever logging in to twitter.  For example, here’s a search on my name which should show you some recent twitter mentions.

Of course, if you’re smart and you starting finding your company showing up in twitter, you’ll figure out a way to capitalize on that.  Especially if the mentions aren’t favorable…

Misconception #3 – You need a huge amount of followers to get any value.

Obviously, if your goal on twitter is to create a huge amount of traction for your website, company, events, etc. then the more followers you have the better.  However, don’t forget about the viral nature of the Internet.  Sometimes it’s the quality of your followers, not the quantity.  After a brief but valuable dinner meeting with an entrepreneur a few weeks ago, he started following me on twitter.  Turns out he’s fairly well-connected on twitter and I probably added ten new followers that saw that he had followed me.

Also, don’t forget about “re-tweeting”, where a twitter follower of yours re-posts your tweet, exposing it to their entire network.  You may have only thirty followers, but if one of them re-tweets to their one thousand followers it’s just the same as if you did it.

Misconception #4 – There is no business benefit to using twitter

We could debate this one all day long and many in the media and blogosphere have decided to do just that.

Here’s the thing – IT’S A TOOL!  No different than PCs, spreadsheets and bicycles.  If you can find a way to have it benefit your business, great.  If you think it’s stupid and the end of civilization as we know it, great.   Just decide if it works for you and get on with it.

Personally, I think there are some fantastic opportunities with twitter for companies both large and small.  Because of the intimacy of contact with your followers, and the fact that they choose to follow you – there are some very interesting approaches to using this tool.  Why not create a twitter search to find out when someone is bad-mouthing your product or service online, then have your customer service department resolve the issue online for everyone to see.  Why not offer specials of the week only made available to your online followers?   I follow @startupstudent on twitter who tweets an inspirational quote every single day.  What a great way to be memorable.

Bottom Line

I think the bottom line here is that you don’t have to be a big company to get value out of twitter, and you don’t necessarily have to put tons of time into the effort.  You do have to understand the tool and how it works, then figure out if it makes sense for your business.  Given the level of intimacy with your followers twitter offers to deliver, combined with exponential potential of your follower’s follower’s followers – I think any smart business owes twitter at least a look.

What about you?  Are you using twitter?  What businesses have you seen using twitter successfully and what have they done?

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4 twitter misconceptions (IMHO)

Many of the blogs I read have quarterly, or even monthly recaps.  Some of these blogs are personal some are professional, and the information in their recap generally reflects their orientation.

Personal blogs tend to focus on their best content, what keywords seem most relevant in their space, comments or discussions of interest, etc.  The professional blogs definitely highlight their best content (that is after all their bread and butter), and many also go so far as to talk about their site metrics and income for the period represented.

Learning a lesson from my peers, taking some time every three months or so to reflect on a couple high points seems like a good thing.  This is my third quarterly recap, so yes, DCO has been around for coming up on a year!  As always – thanks for dropping by (and hopefully subscribing).  We’re getting a few more comments here and there, which I appreciate.

Most popular content

• My full length article A Personal Branding Primer continues to be one of my most popular posts.  For those of you writing a blog or considering starting a blog, take this as concrete proof of the “content, content, content” mantra for developing an online presence.  It’s easy to get lost in the online jungle of SEO, SEM, analytics, backlinking, etc., etc.  However, if you like simple rules to follow here’s one that truly works: consistent write dense, value-added, relevant content and your site traffic will grow.
• My entrepreneurial survey got pretty good traffic for a while.  I was shooting for 100 responses this year and if you haven’t taken the survey yet, I’d appreciate your input.  I’ve dropped my ambition to get 100 responses however.  There are so many entrepreneurial surveys out there that to just be “one more in the crowd” didn’t seem like it was satisfying my goals of value-added content.  The reponses I’ve had so far though, have got my creative juices flowing on how to make the topic not only more value-added, but more entertaining to boot.  This one may take a while to germinate, so stay tuned.
• Periodically, I’ll write a piece centered on a lesson learned or singular example of entrepreneurship from my daily dealings with entrepreneurs.  I call these Stories from the Field. One in particular that I wrote seems to get a lot of traffic “Passion and Commitment“.    I’d love to think it’s because of my best in class writing style.  More likely it’s because these two traits tend to generate a lot of search traffic.  (It is a pretty nice read though.)
• Finally, the article on the One Page Strategic Plan also continues to get a fair amount of traffic.  This one I’m not so sure on.  I can’t tell from the search traffic it’s more related to general strategic planning, or the one page strategic plan specifically.  Either way, a good overview on the process and the book that served as the inspiration.

Visitors

While visitors in general grew a bit over the quarter, traffic overall was down a bit.  No mystery here, I did not post near as often as I wanted to over the quarter (content, content, content, remember!).  While I’ve learned my lesson about posting too many personal details on the blog, my last couple months have been pretty busy.  By the end of April, I will have:

• Refinanced my house
• Divorced
• Sold my house
• Bought a house
• Turned 50
• Moved into my new house
• Attended a 5 day out of town conference

So – NO excuses, but I have been a bit distracted during the quarter.  Once I’m back from the conference and have my new house in order, I plan to get back into a regular posting schedule.

What’s New?

The past quarter saw two updates to the blog that I personally thought were pretty fun.

First, I updated the blog with a new theme.  I’m now using the WP Premium Theme by R. Bhavesh.  If this is of interest to you, feel free to follow the link over to my original post.  I have lots of WordPress-related theme links.  I really like the new theme and I’m thinking of upgrading to the paid version that Bhavesh just released.

The other update during the quarter I also really liked and fits the goal of offering value-added content.  About a month ago, I added a “great posts” widget to the sidebar of the blog.  Using an RSS feed ranking services, I combined several entrepreneurship- and leadership-related blogs, then picked out just the “great” posts from those combined feeds.  The results I display in a tabbed widget; one tab for great entrepreneurship posts, one for great leadership posts.  I check it out once in a while and there are truly really good posts in the list.  Unfortunately, this content does not show for my RSS and E-Mail subscribers, you can only see it on the blog.  As I wrote earlier, if you are interested in what’s showing up in the list, an easy way to check it periodically would be to just click through to the blog whenever you get a new post.

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The Quarter in Review – 2009 Q1

A few posts back, I wrote about a new feature I had added to the blog, the “Great Posts from Around the Web” widget.  Using free ranking services available from Postrank, I built an automatically updating list of great blog posts on the topics of Entrepreneurship and Leadership.   I only used those blogs I have followed for a while and felt really did offer good content that you would want to read, and left it to Postrank to then only display the best individual posts.

As a blogger, I usually don’t see the front page of my blog unless I’m playing around with the design, or I’m proofing a published post.  However, since I put up the great posts links, I’ve been checking in every once in a while.  Today in particular, I was really impressed by the list of Entrepreneurship posts that were listed, as you can see in the image to the left.

That’s a nice list of articles, broadly focused on a number of topics of interest to entrepreneurs both large and small.

The Leadership list is pretty good also, although it suffers from not having as many blogs providing content.  Frankly, I haven’t been able to track down many good blogs on the topic.  “Leadership” seems to be one of those topics that attracts a great number of bloggers more interested in hyping their latest book or seminar date, than offering true insightful commentary.  If you have a favorite leadership blog, please send me the link for my review.

So I’m certainly not suggesting you check out the blog every morning, but if great writing on the topics of Entrepreneurship and Leadership are of interest to you, I would suggest you drop by every once in a while to see what has popped up in the list.  One of my E-mails or seeing a new post from me in your RSS reader would be a great reminder.  Click on through to the blog to read the latest post and use it as an opportunity to find even more great content.

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Shameless self-promotion

One of them has to do with a change that should make it easier to find more posts on the site you want to read.  Thinking through that change also got me to thinking on my current tag structure.

As you know, tags are another way to group blog posts to help describe the content and facilitate searching.  In fact, tags are very similar to categories and the two can be very hard to separately define for most Internet users.  Without getting into a debate over it, the combination of categories and tags gives bloggers a great degree of flexibility over how to segment, present and organize their blog content.

On this blog, I’ve tried to keep the categories tied to major content themes for the most part (Entrepreneurship, Personal Excellence, and Positive Leadership).

Tags then I tried to use to offer a finer segmentation of information under each of those themes.   The trouble with tags is much like the trouble with tribbles, they just seem to grow and grow and never do anything.

So I have two general questions for readers of this blog:

1. Did you ever pay attention to the tags used in blog posts?  If so, did you ever click one to see more posts with that tag?  On other blogs that you read, do well-crafted tags offer value to you as a reader?
2. If I were to re-think the tags I use on this blog, would you have any input or thoughts you would like to share?  More tags?  Less tags?  Hey Dave – I’d like to suggest the specific tags you should use for a category.

I am serious here that I am looking for your input.  I know I won’t get many comments or responses, but if you have an opinion or comment, please share it with me via a comment on this post, or my contact page.

Another way of asking this question would be:  “For the category that most interests you, what kinds of specific sub-topics would you most like to read about?”

As always – I thank you in advance for your replies.  For those of you that would like to contribute a quick thought, but don’t have the time to leave me a written comment or reply, following is a quick poll whose responses will help me think how to approach the topic.  (Feel free to check multiple options).

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Re-tagging comments welcome

The theme I had been using on the site as the Revolution theme by Brian Gardner, a very nice basic theme.  While Brian does great work, the theme itself was beginning to look a bit dated, and in fact he no longer offers it.  So a couple weeks ago I started looking around for a new one.  I eventually narrowed down to two “professional” themes (meaning they were not free): the Flexx theme by iThemes, and the Thesis theme by DIY Themes.  Both themes were very clean and modern looking.  More importantly, both themes were designed from the ground up to be flexible, allowing for fairly drastic layout changes to your blog simply by changing some basic settings from your admin panel.

Ultimately though, I happened upon the WP Premium theme by R. Bhavesh, a theme that was just recently made free of charge.  The theme does not offer the flexibility of the other two themes, but I don’t anticipate changing the layout all that much either.  Plus, I like free.  The best part is the layout “out of the box” is very nice.  For any bloggers out there looking for a free theme with a crisp, modern look, I definitely recommend you check this one out.

I did have to make some minor changes though.  So if you don’t feel comfortable making some basic CSS/PHP code changes, then this theme may not be for you. If however, you have access to anyone with basic technical knowledge at work (or access to any child under the age of 17), then they can most likely help you with anything you would need.  In particular, here are the changes I had to make right away (and where I looked for help):

• I had to tweak the E-mail subscription form at the top right hand corner (with help from this post).
• The sidebar by default displays three ad block positions that I had to comment out.
• I re-thought my current widget and information layout in the sidebar given the functions offered by the new template (in particular, taking advantage of the “tabber” box at the top of the sidebar).  I’ll be taking more advantage of the tabber for one of my upcoming surprises.
• This may not be completed by the time you read this, but the only three color schemes in the template are black, red, and brown.  My site was previously branded with a deep blue color scheme, so I need to research some color codes and update the CSS.  Luckily, the theme designer isolated each color scheme in it’s own stylesheet, so once I determine my color scheme it should be a simple copy and replace.
• The theme does not come with CSS support for the default WordPress classes image alignment classes and they had to be added (here’s some simple instructions).

That’s about it.  I did notice that the big orange RSS icon at the top automatically linked to the internal WordPress blog feed and started to change it over to my Feedburner feed, but my feedsmith plugin did it’s job and over-rode it properly.

All in all I really like the new look.  The theme is nice, crisp and I think a lot more readable than the old one.  Look for a couple more surprises over the next week.  I think you’re going to enjoy them.

So, what do you think of the new look?

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How do you like my new suit?

Time investment: 10 seconds.  DCO gratitude: Priceless.

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Polls are still open

I’ve been giving a lot of thought however to one specific aspect of the blog; the Weekend Readers.  Simply put, it is not an insignificant task to pull them together every week (although I do it happily), and I’m not sure they add any real value to you, my readers.  I have received a few positive comments here and there on this feature, so part of me would hate to discontinue something you find enjoyable, even useful.  On the other hand, while I can’t see usage statistics from those of you receiving E-Mails, I can see them for the website, and there are very few click-throughs for the links in the Weekend Readers.  This leads me to believe that perhaps their value isn’t worth the investment.

I haven’t made any final decisions yet and I’d like your input.  I’ve inserted a small poll below.  You E-Mail readers may have to click through to the blog.  Please take a quick minute to cast your vote and help decide the fate of the DCO Weekend Reader.

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Rethinking the Weekend Reader

One of the conditions for posting I was given was citing a particular book that provided much of the foundational thinking that went into the plan.  The book in question is fairly well known in business and entrepreneurial circles and even if the One Page Strategic Plan doesn’t work for you, you may find the book itself to be an invaluable tool.

I’m sure I’m making more of this than is necessary; perhaps even creating an issue where there is none, but I tend to error on the side of too much information so bear with me.

It’s customary when citing, reviewing or recommending a book, to provide a link that you can easily click to purchase the book.  That’s called “instant gratification” and is one of the 7 Wonders of the Web.  Starting with next week’s post, the book links I provide will be what’s known as an Affiliate Link.

What does that mean?

Basically, if you were to click the link I provide it will take you directly to the book’s page on Amazon.  If you were to then purchase the book, I would receive a small commission.  How small?  Well, Amazon’s model depends on how many actual purchases are made from the traffic you send them, but at the lowest level where I will be operating it works out to about 4% of the basic cost (excluding S&H, gift wrapping, etc.).  So if you were to follow a link and buy a $30 book, DCO would rake in a little over a dollar.

Why am I adding Affiliate Links?

The primary reason is simple self-education.  Many of the IT entrepreneurs I work with operate online; friends and family consider me somewhat of an expert in online networking and marketing, and one of my personal goals for 2009 is to start an online business.  So it makes sense to develop more than just a passing understanding of affiliate marketing.  Since I’m a believer in “learning through doing”, this blog seems to be a obvious place to gain an understanding of the basic ins and outs of these links.

What will I do with the money?

First of all, let’s put this in perspective.  You’re not reading Pulitzer Prize winning stuff here on DCO and I have no illusions about becoming the next Huffington Post.  This blog is a way to express myself on topics of interest, hopefully add value to my readers, and potentially create a community discussion around the topics of entrepreneurship and excellence.  Not to mention have a little fun.  While any reasonably well-written and maintained blog will see it’s readership grow over time, I don’t anticipate, nor is it my goal, to make this blog a “business”.

That being said, as I will only be discussing high value, high quality books on this blog, I’m sure there will be some click-throughs here and there resulting in some purchases.  My intent would be to use income from the affiliate program to purchase “resources” of interest to this site that I might not purchase otherwise.  One example might be an online leadership assessment program.  I’ve run across several over the last year, all requiring a modest charge to use.  Most of them come off as scams, but there have been a couple I thought would have been interesting to purchase, evaluate, and report back to you.

Am I making more out of this than necessary?

I sure hope so, but it would have felt weird using the links without explaining them up front.

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Full Disclosure

I have some interesting posts planned for next week, and am once again mulling over the focus and content of this blog.  In the meantime – have yourself a great weekend.  For those of you in the same region as me (Northeast Ohio) – stay warm.  Remember, at -26F flesh freezes in 30 minutes!

We’ll talk next week.

This is a post from: DaveCrainOnline.com. If you liked this post, and haven't done so already, you can sign up to receive future posts via E-Mail. If you prefer RSS, here's my feed.

Don’t freak out…