Dell has polled the views of a number of thought leaders on what might be likely to happen this year.
Looking at what sites are hot, what sites are not and what metrics are worthy of attention, Dell’s panel of experts offer some fascinating insights.
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I’ve just updated an article I wrote years ago on nonverbal communication.
Entitled, “The Five Key Elements to Nonverbal Communication in Business” it covers, well, five key components for good nonverbal communication.
Here’s a snippet of one:
Movement
Ever watch great presenters in action—men and women who are alone on the stage yet make us laugh, cry and be swept along by their words and enthusiasm?
Watch them carefully and you’ll note that they don’t stand rigidly in one spot. No, they bounce and run and stroll and glide all around the stage.
Why do they do that?
Because they know that we human beings, men in particular, are drawn to movement.
As part of man’s genetic heritage we are programmed to pay attention to movement. We instantly notice it, whether we want to or not, assessing the movement for any hint of a threat to us.
This, of course, helps explain why many men are drawn to the TV and seem transfixed by it. It also helps explain why men in particular are almost ‘glued’ to the TV when there is any sport on. All that movement!
But to get back to the stage and you on it… ensure that any movement you make is meaningful and not just nervous fidgeting, like rocking back and forth on your heels or moving two steps forward and back, or side to side.
This is ‘nervous movement’ and your nervousness will transmit itself to your audience, significantly diluting the potency of your communication and message.
So move about the stage when you can—not just to keep the men in the audience happy, but to help emphasise your message!
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When it comes to connecting with customers, how is your business doing? How does your team rate when it comes to connecting with and providing customer service to online customers? Do your outreach efforts include interacting via text, chat or similar software? They should; companies are using these tech tools to connect with potential and existing customers, and they will continue to be part of the overall marketer-customer relationship.
A recently released report looks at the needs and responses of online customers as they grow within that relationship. The Connecting with Customers Report is a comprehensive global look at the needs and responses of consumers across a customer support cycle. Two of its key findings: 83 percent of consumers stated they needed some form of support during their online journey and 59 percent of consumers wanted more options in how they could connect with brands.
The study was commissioned by LivePerson, one of the market leaders in chat software, and highlights key trends in online spending and online customer experience expectations. According to this study, 40 percent of us now spend as much money online as we do in stores. That’s not an altogether surprising statistic, is it?
But how many of us need customer support during our online experiences? The study showed that nearly three quarters (71 percent) of online shoppers expect a bit of help when shopping online; in fact, about half of us will give up on a transaction if we don’t get it.
So, your online customers want some help when they’re spending their hard-earned money on your site. That help can be a chat box or a live person asking customers if they want online help, or some combination of both. This is the kind of online help experience customers are seeking today.
Let’s take a look at Customer Trends for 2013, a report from the customer service software company Parature. Writer Tricia Morris highlights six customer service areas that marketers should pay close attention to this year:
Impact of Connectivity – Morris writes that connectivity is increasingly important as we work, play and shop online. The connectivity of social media is spreading across to brands, retailers and other merchants of commerce.
More Converging Channels – Marketers will soon be expected to have the same sort of customer service across all channels: Web, mobile, social and click-to-call. From phones to tablets to laptops and even TVs, we are connected. Data giant Cisco reports that by year end, there will be more than 7 billion connected devices on the planet. That’s more than the number of people on Earth. Morris also notes that nearly 70 million people will access Facebook from their phones each month this year, equaling 85.4 percent of the overall mobile social networking population. That share will rise to 87.4 percent by 2014, according to eMarketer.
Personalization – How well do marketers know us? Pretty darn well, the evidence suggests. As brands scrape, comb and combine our various data from accounts, purchases and social media, they discern our likes and dislikes, tastes and preferences. And Morris notes that most people won’t mind: "A recent Edelman study notes that almost 60 percent of millennials say that they are willing to share more personal information than they already do with the brands they trust," writes Morris.
Power for Customers – We are using social media to such an extent that our knowledge, opinions, words and voices are helping shape the brands we share about. It’s becoming less of who companies say they are and more of what we determine the brands to be. Messaging must be true and we must believe it for it to be accepted and shared by our connections.
Greater Telepresence – As 4G networks get faster and more widespread, there will likely be more video interaction between customers, brands and customer service agents. According to Cisco, the average mobile connection speed will surpass 1 Mbps in 2014 and will increase nine-fold by 2016. Cisco also predicts that mobile video will account for more than 70 percent of total mobile data traffic by the end of 2016. "As brands strive to be more ‘human,’" Morris writes, "video customer service interactions will become a growing complement to the current multi-channel customer service offering." There’s no doubt mobile is changing the way business is done; respond accordingly.
Rise of Home Agents/CSRs – As the world becomes more connected, the number of customer service agents working from a centralized location may diminish. CSRs can now take calls on their own smartphone from any location, which Morris believes will lead to “happier customer service reps.”
Technology is winning the race. As business marketers, we are compelled to keep up. As we increasingly shop for goods and services online, we can expect to interact more with messaging and live chat services. If you are serious about providing quality customer service and maintaining strong customer connections, then it’s time to seek opportunities to interact with your customers using live chat software, messaging services, live video hosting and more.
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A great infographic from KISSmetrics has just arrived, showing the transformative nature of mobile technologies.
++ Click Image to Enlarge ++ 
Source: How Mobile is Changing Business – Infographic
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I’ve just finished reading a superb introductory textbook on social business, invaluable reading for those executives who are thinking of taking their organisation into the social space.
The Spredfast Social Business Textbook syllabus covers several important subjects, from social listening history to the chemistry of combining paid, owned, and earned media. This 46-page Textbook provides an in-depth review of key concepts, strategies for success, planning action items, and brand examples for practical application.
I thoroughly recommend you download a free copy for yourself and put it on your kindle or ipad for evening reading.
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Everyone knows that the web is not a good place to have a short, weak password. And everyone knows that you should never use the same password twice. But humans are humans and we all do it.
Some of us are more geeky than others and use password software like KeePass or other, similar tools (I have KeePass on my desktop and laptop, syncing to a password database stored in Dropbox so that I always have a secure, backed-up copy of all of my passwords – aren’t I a teacher’s pet?!).
But my favourite tech blogger Amit Agarwal has another system that he created himself that you might want to try.
The tool is called Secure Passwords and it generate unique and strong passwords for your various web accounts using using the secure bcrypt algorithm.
The advantages are that your passwords aren’t stored anywhere, the passwords are hashed using bcrypt (irreversible) and all you have to do is remember is one master pass phrase. The password generator works on both desktop and mobile screens.
To be honest, I’m not sure how it all works, but I implicitly trust Amit, so if he reckons it’s good enough for public consumption then I reckon it is too.
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The web is going a little bit nuts at the moment for the latest craze: the six-second video.
Download the Vine app onto your smartphone and start taking and sharing videos of six seconds duration.
You can also watch others’ videos, although early versions of the app didn’t have a porn filter so videos definitely not safe for children were turning up in their app to watch. Ooops!
Thankfully the developers have seemingly sorted out that major hiccup and it’s much more friendly entertainment that greets you these days.
But is there any business value in Vine? Influential blogger Chris Brogan seems to think so.
11 THINGS A BUSINESS COULD DO WITH THE VINE APPLICATION
- Help prospects see your offering’s dimensions before buying. Demo a really simple how-to that’s eluding a customer.
- Do quick personal introductions via virtual meetings.
- About a million uses at a trade show.
- Booth stuff.
- Identifying prospects.
- Pointing out meeting locations.
- Demonstrate room-ready housekeeping checks in hotels.
- Super brief product show-off videos.
- Fastest house walk through ever for real estate pros.
- Field site visit checklist in visual form.
- Before, during, and after shots of the great haircuts and styles you give.
- Headshots for talent agencies or hiring agencies. (Hat tip Steve Garfield).
- Share your new website design.
Of particular interest to me is the idea to create headshots of a business’s leaders and a brief six-second outline of one aspect of that company’s culture or philosophy. Or a six-second elevator speech.
The rapid-fire video format is not new; 15second.tv got there before Vine, as have Tout and Viddy.
Vine’s offering won’t replace the short, concise video that is so useful on the front page of corporate websites, but it is definitely provoking some companies into being creative, which is a great thing.
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More businesses are going to the cloud to back up their data – in fact, the entire cloud market could be worth $150 billion by 2014, according to the information technology research company Gartner. With this increased use of cloud services comes a renewed emphasis on better data backup practices.
Backup, you say? Do we need to do that anymore? Yes, you most surely do. As individuals, we back up our important data to image folders, music sites, storage servers and more. But for small businesses to major corporations, it’s a whole other world of data backup and storage in the cloud. Losing critical data can halt a company’s entire business. If data gets lost, it may be lost forever. There are processes for data retrieval, but these can’t always restore data back 100 percent – the retrieval process itself can corrupt data, making backup vital in any-sized operation.
Any layman’s guide to cloud storage can lay out its benefits, but if you’re still not on board, consider this: In Vanson Bourne’s survey of 650 IT decision-makers across the U.S., U.K., France, Germany and the Netherlands, 25 percent admitted to not telling their chief executives they don’t back up all files. Another 38 percent worry whether their firms’ data was being saved securely or backed up at all.
As businesses increasingly move to online backup, the cloud services industry has responded by increasing support, developing mobile apps to back up data on the go and providing forums to discuss the different processes and steps to consider. For business and large corporations, you’ll see why companies should not be cavalier about data backup integrity.
Yes, now the matter even has its own “holiday,” so to speak: World Backup Day is on March 31. Aimed at raising awareness among companies and individuals of the importance of data backup, World Backup Day is especially geared to businesses considering taking their data backup needs to the cloud. Check out the World Backup Day Facebook page to have a little fun in this arena, too – there are photos you can download to encourage officemates and a data backup game to play.
Small Business Computing offers these timely tips for data backup and storage:
Know your options in storage drives. Cost, capacity and speed of access are the three key components of storage. The storage drive options are:
Know the fundamentals of your data. Companies need to take a hard look at their data and ask what would happen if they lost crucial data. Consider:
Small business should consider using a professional IT data backup service that’s more reliable and secure than you can usually achieve in-house. Reducing the in-house manpower required to deal with automated backup can take an additional stress off management, and many prefer to pay a monthly retainer to top online data backup firms like Carbonite, Crashplan, Mozy and Zetta than it is to manage internally.
From large enterprises to small businesses, data backup is an important consideration. Being careful with company data and data backup in the cloud can be among the most important decisions for thriving enterprises.
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Guest post by Ian S Lauder
Creating a successful business proposal is much more than simply editing documents and shipping them off to a prospect. There may be many reasons why your business proposal did not get accepted. If you are new to proposal writing, try to look at each proposal project as a learning experience, and plan on altering your strategy and presentation as needed along the way.
After you’ve found out that you didn’t win the job, you should try to tactfully interview the prospect. When possible, communicate directly to the employee responsible for determining the winning proposal. Explain that you want to learn the reason(s) why your proposal was rejected so that you can make improvements in the future.
Give careful consideration to what they have to say and thank them for their advice. Do not forget, however, that they may not tell you the actual reason behind your loss. Some people may be wary of coming across too negative, and of course there are always times where an acquaintance or family member was picked for the job instead of using a true competitive process.
While you can learn from mistakes, you should try your best to win with every attempt. Don’t let sloppy mistakes keep your proposal from getting noticed.
A failure to land the client or get the project approved is often due to the some of these common reasons:
#1: Writing style: your style was not appealing to the prospect. To avoid a style mismatch, do some research to find out about the style of the person and/or company you are writing to. For example, if you are writing a proposal for a banking institution where all employees dress in business suits, it would not be a bright idea to write your proposal in a folksy, casual style.
#2: Missed the intended target: your proposal was not delivered to the right person. Take a moment to call the company and find out the proper person to address your proposal to. Make sure you spell that person’s name correctly and get his or her position correct, too. You might also want to follow-up to ensure they received your proposal.
#3: Your timing was wrong: your proposal was not made at the right time. In general, it’s not a good idea to send a proposal ‘out of the blue.’ The proposals with the best chance, of course, are those that are solicited through RFPs, but if that’s not the case for you, then try to tie your pitch to something real like a recent event or news article so it will be more relevant.
#4: Sloppy writing: your spelling or grammar was incorrect. If your proposal doesn’t look or sound professional, why would the prospect think that your work would be any better? If spelling and grammar are not your strongest qualities, then hire an editor to perfect your proposal language before you send it.
#5: You did not address the prospect’s concerns and objections. Your prospective customer wants to be certain that you will do what is best for their organization. Prove that you have listened to their issues and have the solution for each of their needs.
#6: Your personal appearance and presentation did not match the prospect’s ‘style’. Take the time to research the company or individual you will pitch your proposal to. Does the decision maker wear a suit, or jeans and casual shirt? Show up similarly dressed and that person will automatically feel comfortable with you.
#7: Internal politics at the prospect’s organization influenced the decision. There’s not much you can do about this situation, but if you are aware of internal conflicts before presenting your pitch, try to address them within the proposal.
#8: Hidden agendas at the prospect’s company influenced the decision. There is a good chance that you’ll never even find out about this reason.
#9: Your proposal estimate was too low or high. Many clients simply pick the cheapest proposal, especially if there is a low risk of failure. But more seasoned ones may actually pass over a proposal with an unreasonably low estimate, because they are concerned that the proposal was made by someone who didn’t truly understand the project or was too inexperienced to estimate accurately. An estimate that is too low may also be a red flag to an experienced client that low grade materials will be used or quality will be sacrificed.
#10: You were too persistent or not persistent enough with the customer. It’s never a good idea to pester a prospect; you wouldn’t appreciate someone who interrupted you or showed up every day, and neither will your potential client. But it’s also not a good idea to simply ship a proposal and never make contact again. If possible, call or set up a meeting in advance to get as much information as you can, and then, after you’ve delivered the proposal, call to make sure it was received and inquire whether the prospect has all the information needed from you to make the decision.
This top 10 list is by no means a complete list of every possible reason why you may have failed to win the proposal. There will always be scenarios that you can not control. You may never find out the reasons why either. Focus your energy on the things that you can control, and use basic common sense. Sometimes the key to winning can be as simple as a personal touch – in a business environment that is continually becoming automated.
Ian Lauder has been helping small businesses and freelancers write their proposals and contracts for over a decade. => For more tips and business proposal and legal contract writing best practices go to http://www.proposalkit.com
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From Jeremiah Owyang at Altimeter – read it.
Companies are quick to deploy the latest social media technology, yet most have not prepared for the threat of social media crises, or long-term effects on business. While the incidence of social media crises is on the rise, we found that more than three-fourths (76%) could have been diminished or averted had companies invested internally.
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Business Proposal Software - Accurately quote your business proposals, multiply your profitability, brand yourself as a top professional and close the sale. Proposal Kit helps you demonstrate that you are the right professional for your customers. Proposal Kit has been proven for over a decade as the mission-critical, easy, customizable and accurate solution for how to write a proposal.
Measuring the Impact and ROI of Social Media - NEW
Making Social Media Work for Your Business
Social Media: The New Communication Landscape - for Ark Group
How to get started with podcasting in your organisation - for Melcrum Publishing
Contributing author to:
Best practices in social media governance
How to use social media to solve critical internal communication issues
How to communicate with hard-to-reach employees - for Melcrum Publishing
How to use social media to engage employees - for Melcrum Publishing
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Tactical Transparency by Shel Holtz and John Havens.
A belter of a book and a 'must read' addition to any communicator's bedside reading table if they are serious about introducing social media into their communication plans. It includes a fabulous chapter on transparency and business (hint: you want to photocopy it and give it to your CEO!)
Qualitative Communication Research Methods by Thomas Lindlof and Bryan Taylor.
Not just a book for academics, it's chock-full of great ideas on how to effectively and efficiently research your employees, customers, the marketplace and other stakeholders
The Twitter Book by Tim O'Reilly and Sarah Milstein.
A fabulous book that gives a clear, clean overview of what Twitter is and WHY you should be engaging with it. THEN it goes into depth with so many tips and ideas that they should have sold the book for twice the price!
Practical SEO Copywriting: a ‘must get’ book. My mate Glenn Murray has written a bottler of a new book on search engines and copywriting.
In a cunning twist of bizarre nomenclature, he’s titled it Practical SEO Copywriting. The cheeky little fox! It’s a DIY guide to writing online copy for both human readers AND for that 400kg gorilla we lovingly call ‘Google’.
The danger, Glenn quite rightly …err …writes is that focusing too much attention on all of the supposed SEO ‘tricks of the trade’ will make your copy all but unreadable by the human brain. You know, all that stuff bandied about by the so-called SEO (search engine optimisation) experts: keyword frequency, exact string versus individual words scattered across the page, page length, alt tags, header tags, and so on.
Not that this stuff isn’t important – it all is, and more besides – but Glenn argues persuasively that by far more important is the ability to write copy that people will actually want to read – and link to!
