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Follow, the Leader
Posted on May 31, 2005 by Sarah Eaton.
We're all enlightened. We all know being a quality leader's got nothing to do with telling people what to do. It's about creating a vision that others are excited to get behind.
And what about being a follower? Now there's a dirty word. Nobody wants to be a weak, pathetic, spineless follower when they could be a creative, exciting visionary of a leader.
But I would go so far as to say that to be a good leader, you must, at heart, be a good follower.
The reason? Leaders aren't infallible. Sometimes it's necessary to step back and listen to what the followers are saying; in many cases they're a lot closer to the situation and know in a very real way the consequences of whatever decision that is made.
There's nothing weak, pathetic, or spineless about that.
May 31, 2005 in award winning blog, award winning magazine, award winning newsletter, Award winning publications, Blog Outsourcing, blog publish, Building Customer Intuition, bulk email marketing, company newsletter, company newsletter sample, Company newsletters, Company publication, create a newsletter | Permalink | Comments (0)
To Manage or To Lead?
Posted on May 27, 2005 by Sarah Eaton.
To Lead, mais oui!
But, as it turns out there are lots of micromanagers out there--according to NPR's Morning Edition, nearly 3/4 of Americans are being micromanaged. Yikes.
Listen all about it.
May 27, 2005 in award winning blog, award winning newsletter, Award winning publications, bulk email marketing, business credibility, Business editorial, business magazine, Business Marketing, Business publications, Business relationships, CMO, company blog, corporate magazine, create a newsletter | Permalink | Comments (0)
Nobody Likes a Butt-Kisser
Posted on May 25, 2005 by Sarah Eaton.
Maybe you're the leader of your team, or maybe you're just really self-motivated and could say you're the leader of yourself. Maybe you're Vice President of Something Really Important. Maybe you're a lowly bottom-of-the-totem-pole-type. Chances are, unless you're the owner of a company, you've got someone around the office who is your boss.
How do you interact with that person? Are you a butt-kisser? A spy? A yes-man/woman? Do you get all tongue-tied and stupid when they're around?
Here's something I found (from CNN, via ChicWIT), in which Liz Ryan gives you the scoop: what to do and what not to do to look better to your boss. Hint: stop with the insincere compliments; give him/her substance and quality instead.
May 25, 2005 in award winning design, award winning magazine, award winning newsletter, Award winning publications, Blog Outsourcing, blog publish, Building B2B Relationships, Building Customer Intuition, bulk email marketing, company blog, company magazine, company newsletter sample, Corporate Blogging, create a newsletter | Permalink | Comments (1)
Am I Enabling Your Time-Wasting?
Posted on May 24, 2005 by Sarah Eaton.
Heaven forfend! Not one precious second of your workday should be spent in pursuit of anything other than work--good work, better work, the best work, thereby allowing you to be the best you you can be.
Please sense the irony with which the above paragraph is riddled.
While I agree with Dr. T here about many of his ideas for the elimination of wasting time, and his argument for how time-wasting can affect the waster, I would also contend that time-wasting is an essential part of every worker's day.
During activities like:
10. Allowing conferences and discussions to wander
you might run across something quite by accident that gives you that a-ha!-type moment that allows you to become a veritable machine of efficiency.
Because it's your own thought that allows you to be more efficient, that thought shouldn't be curtailed, but rather explored. (Within reason.)
May 24, 2005 in award winning blog, award winning design, award winning magazine, award winning newsletter, Award winning publications, Blogging Tools, Building B2B Relationships, Building Customer Intuition, company magazine, company newsletter, company newsletter sample, corporate magazine, create a newsletter | Permalink | Comments (0)
Listen Up, Dummies
Posted on May 20, 2005 by Sarah Eaton.
If you haven't run right out to purchase "Syndicating Web Sites with Rss Feeds for Dummies
May 20, 2005 in award winning design, award winning magazine, award winning newsletter, Award winning publications, Blog Outsourcing, Building B2B Relationships, Building Customer Intuition, bulk email marketing, business credibility, company newsletter, company newsletter sample, Corporate Blogging, corporate magazine, Corporate publications | Permalink | Comments (1)
The Seventh Time's the Charm
Posted on May 19, 2005 by Sarah Eaton.
On the "don't give up" tip, here's an interesting theory:
...it takes, on average, 7 contacts between a buyer and seller before the buyer feels comfortable enough to do business with the seller. Therefore the marketer should try to establish 7 points of contact (emails, direct mail, face-to-face appointments, etc) within a specified time period in order to further the sale. (from Jay Lipe)
I like it, but I think the question isn't necessarily "is there a magic number?" Instead, I think it's what kind of contacts are those? How do you find and create the right mix of meeting someone face-to-face, providing them with useful information through emails, webinars, or newsletters?
May 19, 2005 in award winning magazine, award winning newsletter, Award winning publications, Blog Outsourcing, Building Customer Intuition, bulk email marketing, company magazine, company newsletter, company newsletter sample, corporate magazine, create a newsletter | Permalink | Comments (0)
I Want Everything to Be Beautiful
Posted on May 17, 2005 by Sarah Eaton.
Including e-newsletters. Chances are you do, too. (Let me qualify that: not all art should be beautiful, and I understand the benefit of ugly things, but when it comes to design...well, I think it should be pretty.)
Interesting article in Icon about design as art:
We seek retinal pleasure, things to run our eyes over, colours, lines, textures and shapes to explore and inhabit, and design has no hesitation in supplying these experiences. Design is becoming more elaborately layered, more spectacular, more pervasive in our lives. Design, rather than art, is foremost now in embodying the visual spirit of the age. Millions get by without going anywhere near an art gallery, but everyone is touched in some way by design.
Found via Tom Peters(!) Wire Service.
May 17, 2005 in award winning magazine, award winning newsletter, Award winning publications, Blog Outsourcing, Building B2B Relationships, Building Customer Intuition, bulk email marketing, company blog, company newsletter sample, Company publication, Corporate Blogging, create a newsletter | Permalink | Comments (0)
Blogging Bold or Blogging Careful?
Posted on May 16, 2005 by Sarah Eaton.
So "blog" is short for web log. When you think of a log, what do you think? Personally, I think of sea captains.
The blog is a tricky creature, because it seems so casual--you can write up a post and get it published in under a minute, and nobody cares too much about grammar. It's a loose medium, and that makes it easy to forget that consequences can arise from what might seem to be flippant remarks.
Ephraim Schwartz spoke to some law firms and attorneys to "get the skinny on where your life as an employee stops and your life as a private citizen begins, according to the law." Find out what they said here.
May 16, 2005 in award winning design, award winning magazine, award winning newsletter, Award winning publications, Blog Outsourcing, Building Customer Intuition, bulk email marketing, business credibility, company blog, company newsletter sample, corporate magazine, create a newsletter | Permalink | Comments (0)
Spam Scoring: It's Like Golf
Posted on May 13, 2005 by Sarah Eaton.
You want a low score. B2B offers these tips to keep your spam score down. Most of it is common sense (keep those lists clean, people, and don't say the word "free"). But it's good to review every now and again.
One tip:
Watch your image-to-text ratio. Spammers, hoping to avoid filters, converted their messages to a single image, Popov said. Eventually the filters caught on to this tactic, assigning multiple points for a message that contains a single image. Spam Assassin, a popular spam filter, will assign four points to such a message. (A score of five is enough to label something spam.) Keep image size low and make sure any image-heavy message has plenty of text to balance it out.
May 13, 2005 in audio publication, award winning blog, award winning magazine, Award winning publications, Blogging Tools, Building Customer Intuition, bulk email marketing, company blog, company magazine, company newsletter, company newsletter sample, Company publication, Corporate newsletter, Corporate publications | Permalink | Comments (1)
Marketing: Contagious and Magnetic
Posted on May 12, 2005 by Sarah Eaton.
As marketers, we want our work to catch on--we love for our campaigns to be contagious. But it's something that seems to happen only once in a little while. What is it that catapults a campaign beyond being merely interesting and causes people to pass it along to their friends and co-workers? Could it be...magnetism?
(Via Mind Hacks):
The researchers [physicists Quentin Michard and Jean-Philippe Bouchard] noted similarities in the way magnetic fields influence the spin of electrons in an atom. One atom can influence the next, and with enough effect, the direction of spin in all the atoms can suddenly align.
Modelling each atom as a person allowed the creation of a mathematical model that can accurately predict how, like atoms, human behaviour can suddenly align.
And, if you're interested in seeing what it is, exactly, that has spread successfully before, check out this review of "Contagious Media," an exhibit of just that, in the NYTimes. It lists the Web sites in the show so you can create your own artsy experience.
May 12, 2005 in award winning magazine, award winning newsletter, Award winning publications, Blog Outsourcing, Building Customer Community, Building Customer Intuition, bulk email marketing, Business publications, Business relationships, company blog, company magazine, Company newsletters, Corporate newsletter, Corporate publications, create a newsletter | Permalink | Comments (0)