Category Archives: Communictions

Str8 Talk: Public Speaking, Google Tips and Customer Service

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In an effort to be helpful and perhaps foster further discussion, I thought I would launch a weekly blog post that would share some articles on a host of topics I found interesting throughout the week. Typically this will be between three and five things I came across that could make for some good weekend reading. Hope you find this approach useful. Here we go for the week of April 6, 2015:

7 Powerful Speaking Tips From One of the Most-Watched TED Talks Speakers

Even though the original post is from November, it showed up in my twitter feed this week. Simon Sinek is the author of great books like Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last. He is also a very inspiring speaker. Here he offers his approach to delivering powerful presentations. My favorite tip is: Show up to give, not to take!Continue reading→

Find Your ‘Free Shipping’

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Marketing has become trickier than ever and the same may be said for customer service. Why? I think the connectedness of the world has changed consumers expectations while widening the possibilities of brands and people to go beyond expectations when it comes to communications. A SlideShare presentation by Gary Vaynerchuk got me thinking about this topic and much of the data shared in it makes so much sense.

Consider that three out of four consumers choose a vendor based on free shipping alone (slide 47). I can relate to this stat as I have been pleasantly surprised numerous times when dealing with Amazon or Zappos and finding out at check out that my order qualifies for free shipping. I always pay attention to how much shipping will be so imagine the feeling when I find out it is going to be free!Continue reading→

Steps to Improve Your Facebook Shares

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One of the biggest benefits I realize with social networks like Facebook is the ability provided to share interesting and useful things I come across. I also enjoy when my connections do the same and find much of what is shared within my networks of great use or interest.

What I would like to help folks with in this post is taking shares to the next level by providing context and paying special attention to what is actually being shared. I would like to use a recent experience with many of my colleagues at Alure Home Improvements as an example.Continue reading→

Keeping Up With Your Digital Child

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I recently had the pleasure to speak with the parents association at my sons school about the connected society our children are growing up in and what all of this means. The topic has come to be a hot one with stories like Teen Twits Gone Wild where teenagers were sending inappropriate photos from teen parties to a tweeter that was maintaining a twitter account exposing the crazy things these kids were doing at high school parties. This naturally created a public outcry that was directed in many directions including the schools these children attend, the person running the twitter account to the parents.

I would like to share the presentation that I gave to the parents at my sons school as well as explain some of the points that I raise.

Why are kids so connected?

Because they can be. It is so easy to create accounts on social networks and many children are doing so without their parents knowledge.

FOMO – fear of missing out! What is happening on social networks often becomes part of the face to face discussion our kids are having during their school day. It’s only natural that they want to become a part of the online discussion.

Social Credibility – much of the outrageous content kids are posting on social are posted to gain likes, shares, comments and other reactions that seem to make the posts popular or credible.

Continue reading→