Did you know you’ve only got 4-6 seconds to grab the attention of visitors coming to your website? That doesn’t give you much time to create a connection.
I want to share the 3 Critical Keys to Online Connection that are absolutely essential to establishing rapport with your potential customers. Just check out this Mindshare Minute video.
If you’re ready to make your website more professional and profitable – in just six hours – you’ll love the One Day Web Makeover. Don’t ever be held hostage by your ‘web guy’ again!
Catherine Carr compares being stuck in her work and life like constantly washing dishes. Dull, unchallenging and stagnant. That is, until she decided she was through being stuck and ready to dream big. Catherine’s metaphoric dishwashing days were over.
She went on the Doctors Without Borders website http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/ (known as Médecins Sans Frontières or MSF in most of the world) and, to her great surprise, found a job that fit her skills. It hadn’t even occurred to Catherine that there would be “normal jobs” like finance, operations and human resources within Doctors Without Borders. But just a few weeks later, she was hired as an HR finance coordinator and was off to Kenya to support the organization’s mission of international medical and humanitarian aid.
When’s the last time you went undercover in your own company to find out what’s working and what’s not? If you’ve seen the reality show Undercover Boss, you already know what I’m talking about. If not, allow me fill you in on this intriguing televised experiment. In the show, CEOs of huge corporations like 7-11, Hooters and Waste Management put on disguises and literally go undercover as entry-level employees.
Working on the front lines, they clean toilets, wash dishes and empty trash in order to find out what’s really going on inside their own organizations. A fan of the show after just one episode, I was delighted to be interviewed recently for the magazine of the National Association of Convenience Stores magazine. The reporter wanted to know if I thought the undercover boss phenomenon was a good idea.
As former PR chief and spokesperson for Sony, Universal and Turner Broadcasting, I did my fair share of spin doctoring and damage control with the press. So I’ve been watching Toyota’s media circus regarding the “sudden acceleration” in the Camry, Prius and Lexus like a hawk.
Yogi Berra said, “You gotta be careful if you don’t know where you’re going because you might not get there.” Despite his famously lopsided logic, I’m sure you get the drift. If you want to get somewhere, it helps if you know where somewhere is.
I’d like to take that one step further. If you want to get somewhere, knowing the starting point is just as critical (if not more) than knowing the end point. With your somewhere in mind, let’s take a look at where you actually are right now so you can create the shortest possible path from here to there.
Welcome to the Mindshare Minute, the first in a series of brief branding strategies. If you’re an entrepreneur, these weekly tips will help you brand and build your business without a lot of wasted motion or money. And if you’re a corporate employee, you’ll find strategies for building your personal brand to enhance your reputation and expert status with clients, customers and management.
Let’s get started with my all-time favorite guilty pleasure, American Idol. I must admit to being a latecomer to the AI party, but now it’s absolutely appointment viewing for me. And what I find so fascinating about this competition is that we get to watch the singers hone their unique style right in front of us, literally.
Have you ever noticed that when you drive the same route everyday you barely notice your surroundings? Or that your eye will skim right over a banner ad on a website without even registering the message?
This decreased response to repetitive stimuli is called “habituation.” It’s your brain’s way of separating essential from non-essential information, just another one of our instinctive survival mechanisms at work. The good news is that if you have to react in an emergency, like a kid running out in front of your car, your brain will translate that as danger, prompting you to respond very quickly. The bad news – for business owners anyway – is that if a routine is repeated too often, like that boring ad banner, your customers will simply tune it out as unimportant.
Now that we’re into the New Year, you’re probably reflecting on your resolutions or maybe you’ve fallen short of your goals already. My advice? Forget resolutions, they’re just prescriptions for failure and self-flagellation. Instead, choose a theme for the year and back it up with action.
My theme for 2010 is “Delivering Excellence.” I know, easy to say, hard to do, harder still to measure. Without defining the action components that give the phrase specificity, it doesn’t mean much. My challenge – and yours – is to identify the measurable steps that will bring our themes to life and make this year different from any we’ve ever experienced.
Here’s another video from my recent Mindshare Branding winery tour. Find out how the Napa Valleyvintners distinguish themselves in a competitive landscape to find their loyal wine-loving customers. Today, I’ll take you to St. Supéry so you can see how the old and new blend – with marketing strategies, that is, not grapes. Check out this video!
Join me for another stop on the Mindshare Branding winery tour where I’ll take you behind the scenes at a winery in Napa Valley to let you in on some of the branding strategies used in this competitive industry.
We’ll be stopping at the Miner Family Vineyards, where you’ll see how this savvy group of vintners turned what has historically been perceived as a low-end product, Rose wine, into a new and highly marketable libation. You’ll also learn how the Miner family turned a potential liability into a big advantage – and a signature taste – by the spin they put on the unforeseen result of the recent wildfires. A votre sante!
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