2011 New Year's Resolution

Another year, another resolution. This year, my New Year's Resolution is to listen to at least one book on CD in my car per month. I'm almost half way done with my resolution for January!

If you haven't made yours yet, here are some other suggestions for New Year's Resolutions:
-Read one book per month in your area of work
-Watch one hour less of tv per day
-Get involved in an industry organization
-Volunteer some time to a cause close to your heart
-Let other people help you when they offer to help
-Say "thank you" and leave it at that when people compliment you
-Put the Blackberry/iPhone/PDA etc down during meals and when you're spending time with family

Now those are just a few, but New Year's is the time to assess what's going on in your life and focusing on making it better for yourself.

Have a happy and prosperous new year.

You're Fired!

Now that The Apprentice has returned, it's important to remember one of the things that Mr. Trump values in a potential employee: integrity. There are many things the add up to what integrity means, including being loyal, trustworthy and telling the truth. Think about the things you want out of a business. You want to trust a business before you make a purchase and you also want to feel like you're paying a fair or less than fair price for the product or service.

There are many ways you can build your integrity in the eyes of your clients. Remember that it does take time to build a relationship with your clients so that you can show them that you are loyal, trustworthy, truthful and have integrity.

Do What You Say You Will When You Say You Will

It's really important to do what you said you would do, when you said you would. Why is this so important? Think about when someone told you they would do something and they didn't deliver. What did you think of them? Probably not very good things.

Doing things as promised makes a powerful statement to people, especially your clients or future clients. A tactic I learned from the book, The Power of Focus by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Les Hewitt, was to deliver as promised and tell your client, "As promised, I completed this for you." People want to be able to count on you, and when you deliver it only adds to building your character in the eyes of your client.

New Year's Resolution Check

How is your professional New Year's Resolution going? We're more than half-way through the year now and is a good time to check in and assess how your resolution is going. As far as my resolution, I have actually been doing well at my attending a networking event each month. I've met a lot of people in different circles through my resolution this year and look forward to attending at least five more networking events.

If you always do what you've always done...

I'd like to share a recent experience I had on the driving range last week. I was having a little trouble with my fade and someone walked by to offer me his extra bucket of balls and asked if he could give me some advice. He said that if you continue to have trouble (fade or draw) that you should immediately shoot your next shot the complete opposite. Why you may ask? Because you don't want to train your body to do the same thing over and over again.

Translating this principle to business, it might be better said, "if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got." If you have a part of your business or tasks that doesn't seem to work the way you envision it, take a step back and look at the process. Can it be adjusted? What are the outside factors? Sometimes having someone not familiar with the process or situation can offer some a different perspective.

Email Blasts - Day of the Week

Today I attended a "Power of Email Marketing" seminar hosted by Paige Cahill with Constant Contact to see what's new in email marketing. In talking with some of the other attendees, one of them mentioned something to me that really caught me off guard. This gentleman said, "I used to send out emails on Friday afternoons." That shocked me because people have a shorter attention span on Fridays, especially Friday afternoons. They are thinking about the upcoming weekend. I think he's realized that there is a little bit of science behind when to send those email blasts to your distribution list.

Back in 2004 when I began my journey in marketing, one of my first responsibilities was being an editor for a newsletter with a distribution list of 1,300 contacts. Through research, our technical writer found out that the best time to send an email blast was Tuesday evening so that it would be in our contacts' email inbox to be opened Wednesday morning. Back then, most people weren't pulling up emails on phones and accessing information 24/7. Today with most mobile devices able to access email, when is the best time?

Obviously the number one goal with your email blast is to get people to open it! In general, Mondays and Fridays are out. That leaves you Tuesdays through Thursdays, but what time during the day? My suggestion is the afternoon. The morning is used to go through the emails from the previous day, what was sent overnight and preparing for your day.

Of course each business has a different target market that have different needs and habits. Think about your habits with reading emails and think about how that differs from your target market before you send your next email blast.

Social Media Guidelines for Your Employees

It's inevitable. Your employees use social media and may check their profiles at work. How do you regulate social media checking by your employees? Take the first step by stating your expectations with social media guidelines. Create a document called "Social Media Guidelines" that you can distribute to employees that lay out what your company thinks is proper social media usage at work. Why call it "guidelines" versus "rules?" Your employees will most likely be more receptive to guidelines rather than mandated rules.

To create your Social Media Guidelines document, make sure you answer the following:

• Why you're publishing the guidelines
• How is the company using social media
• What social media sites are appropriate to use at work
• What purposes are social media usage appropriate at work
• Who should employees contact if they have further specific questions

Social Media Guidelines are going to be different for every company. What you choose to do will depend on what your employees' job responsibilities are, if you offer products or services, and how concerned you are with what your employees are doing with their time at work.

In many cases, LinkedIn is the most appropriate social media site because it's a professional social media site. Not only can you showcase your employees' backgrounds but they can connect with customers that they work with. They can also see who their peers and customers are connected to.