8 Assets to Boost Your Likeability

“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.” ~ John Wooden

This not some secret sauce, code or insider information and it’s not complicated. Likeability is a powerful, intangible super power to have.

I’ve been stepping up my networking lately to open up new relationships and communities. In observing how people approach networking, I clearly see how powerful likeability is. It opens doors and it doesn’t hurt that you bring a smile to someone’s face when they meet you or talk about you to others.

As a small business branding and social media strategist, people are always asking me how they can generate more connections, leads and make more sales. Likeability is a big key in achieving this.

Truth is likeability, trust, character and the experience we create for people and each other are absolutes. Likeability has won presidential elections, has fueled comebacks and has sold millions of movie tickets.

Likeonomics: The Unexpected Truth Behind Earning Trust, Influencing Behavior, and Inspiring Action by Rohit Bhargava begins and ends with the idea that:

Personal relationships are the only currency that matters.

Remember companies don’t hire or refer you, people do. So likeability is a great way to get things started.

Aside from the obvious things that consultants, experts, authors and psychologists recommend, below are the top assets that I believe make us more likeable and trustworthy to each other.

Be Knowledgeable

Smarts, emotional intelligence and being knowledgeable about what we do can apply to carpentry or engineering. Be a student of your industry and know the most you can about it. Don’t try to fudge your way through things because they are “hot.”  You’ll be exposed for what you don’t know quickly.

Your goal is to be thought of as “the best of” in your field.

Be Credible

Establish your expertise over time and leverage all the results, testimonials and people you touch and help.

Publish a book, blog, speak, write, volunteer or take on a project so people can see you in action.

Be Honest

Stick with the truth and it will always set you free. If you screw up or make a mistake, come forward and come clean as soon as you can in the most appropriate way.

Take a cue from Tiger Woods, Martha Stewart, Robert Downey Jr. or Bill Clinton.

Be Pleasant

Create the most enjoyable experience you can with people, so that they remember you for that.  Deliver it whenever you have an opportunity to.

Be Optimistic

Nothing is worse than negative complainers who always see the glass as half empty. It’s a downer and won’t advance your charisma. Find the silver lining, the ray of light in the clouds and work on your positivity.

Good energy is viral.

Be Consistent

I would say this one quality has more impact on success today than most. Consistency allows people to know what to expect from us and keeps us in front of  them.

Even moderate consistency of good work can yield results and work really well.

Be Engaged

Meet Generation C, the connected culture and customer. Being digitally and socially connected is valuable capital today.

Using  influence, clout and community to educate and inspire is a brand asset that can advance not only you, but colleagues, ideas, issues and yes - sales.

Be Caring

The power of kindness, caring and tolerance never, ever goes out of style, so make it a brand accessory daily.  Especially in the Generation C (connectivity) culture and younger generations, it is indispensable.

So build character and reputation around this.

If you think about people that you like a lot, what are the qualities and assets that you like about them?

Popular Concept Photo via Shutterstock

Sponsored Content

Docstoc Improves Website to Offer More Resources to Small Businesses

Docstoc, which has been around since 2007, today launched a redesigned and enhanced website.  The new design and functionality adds additional content.  The content is presented in an up-to-date “Pinteresty” style â€"  boxes with an image and minimal text (see above) linking to each content piece.

More importantly, Docstoc has improved the way small businesses find and retrieve content to help solve problems.

In an interview, Docstoc founder and CEO Jason Nazar told us the biggest change is that visitors to the site aren’t just presented with a typical search function.  Instead, they get a guided experience using semantic search. “It’s an evolution to solving entrepreneurs’ core problems,” he said.

“The promise we deliver on is that no two Docstoc experiences are the same,” Nazar added.  ”The more you do, the smarter our algorithms get at learning what kinds of documents and content will solve your problem.”

When you visit the site you can search for traditional categories such as videos.  But if you click the big “Get Started” button you are walked through a decision tree that asks questions such as:  ”Are you looking for help with starting a business or growing your existing business?”  You get presented with this simple choice:

From there you are asked increasingly more-specific questions until you find the help and resources you are looking for.

The company’s semantic search technology was all built in-house by the company’s team of 12 engineers.  All of the company’s core technology is built in-house, Nazar added.

The company’s sweet spot is the small business with 1 to 10 people in it.  While Docstoc serves businesses of various sizes, these smallest businesses have the most need of help when it comes to documents and guidance.  ”When we got our first round of funding, we went to a law firm and they gave us a packet of documents. Those documents included standard non-disclosure agreements and other documents that saved us time.  But what if you are a business of one?  How can you get those kinds of resources?” Nazar said.

That’s where Docstoc’s mission comes in. They want to be known as the go-to resource for starting a small business and growing it.

Docstoc today has over 38 million registered users.  It has 20 million documents, many of which are crowdsourced and shared by the community.  But it also has 20,000 pieces of premium content.  Over the past three years, the company has spent “literally millions” Nazar said, creating documents, videos, training courses and other premium materials to help business owners step by step.

Today’s revamped website experience follows a steady string of improvements and acquisitions that Docstoc has been making.  In August,  it acquired software recommendation site BestVendor.  Earlier in May it launched ExpertCircle to find products recommended by your peers.  And last year it launched License123 to help businesses identify needed licenses and permits.

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Understanding the Virtual Receptionist: Interview with Jill Nelson, CEO and Founder of Ruby Receptionist

In the ever changing world of small business and the conventional workplace, new services are constantly rising to fulfill the new needs that companies may have. One such service is the virtual receptionist.

I recently sat with Jill Nelson, CEO and Founder of Ruby Receptionist to talk about what a virtual receptionist is and how they work with businesses. She explained how companies are using their service and the pain points that they eliminate, particularly in small businesses and for solopreneurs. Compared to pure technology solutions, they offer a ‘human’ aspect to business, which helps to nurture a company’s culture and provide a sense of ‘realism’, that automated solutions don’t offer.

You can view the entire video interview below, or click here.

One Small Business Shows The Advantages of Offering Facility Tours

 

Allagash Brewing Company is a small craft brewery in Portland, Maine, employing around 65 people.   Faced with the challenge of marketing what is essentially a manufacturing business, the company started holding facility tours.

The facility tours took off and became a hit.  In the summer months brewery tours are often sold out.

But the facility tours raised another issue: how to overcome the noise involved in a tour.

“Breweries are loud places,” Jill Sacco, who is in charge of Allagash’s tour marketing, told us in an interview.  ”At Allagash you are right there, not up on a catwalk or behind glass.”  She said the brewery’s tour guides “had to scream” in order to be heard.  That, she adds, was stressful for the guides and for the visitors straining to hear.

That’s when Allagash tapped into technology for a solution.  First they considered (unsuccessfully) a microphone.  The microphone was still hard for visitors to hear, and it wasn’t good for employee satisfaction, either.  ”If we were doing 8 or 9 tours a day, the guys working on the line had to listen to the tour 8 or 9 times a day,” she pointed out.

Then, Allagash hit on the solution of a wireless headset system. They tried one from Listen Technologies called the Portable RF System.  The tour guide wears a transmitter system, speaks into a microphone headset. The guide can speak in a normal tone without the need to shout.  The guide’s voice is transmitted wirelessly, and those on the tour with receiver earphones can adjust volume up or down, for a quality experience.

Initially, Sacco says, the Allagash team wasn’t sure that using such a system was the right decision.  ”We were hesitant to try it at first,” she said.  The company wanted to maintain a personal touch, and they were concerned the sets would seem too corporate or too much like Disney World.

However, the result has been the opposite.  Using the portable tour guide system, visitors on the tour can hear even if they are in the back of the group. Tour guides are now more relaxed. Line workers don’t have to endure listening to the same tour over and over, day after day, Sacco says.  ”We tried it and loved it.”

Allagash was founded in 1995 as a one-man operation.  Founder Rob Tod had worked in a brewery, but thought there was a void in the craft brewing movement.  So he started with a small 15-barrel brewhouse, and began producing traditional Belgian style ales.   Along the way, people started spontaneously dropping by at the brewery wanting tours.  Gradually the company started getting more formalized for the tours.

Fast forward to today.  The company has been recognized for the quality of its brews.  It’s even been recognized by Trip Advisor as having the #2 brewery tour in the nation â€" beating out such nationally-known names as Samuel Adams and Anheuser Busch for facility tours.

In 2013, Allagash will have an estimated 22,000 people tour its facility â€" with sometimes eight or more tours each day in the summer. A typical tour has up to 25 people each.   The company offers beer tastings to legal-age adults after the tours. And they also have a retail store where Allagash sells such branded items as T-shirts, glassware, bottle openers, hats, water bottles, frisbees and, of course, beer to take home.

According to Jill Sacco, holding facility tours makes sense as a marketing strategy.  Allagash doesn’t have a bar, pub or restaurant on site.  The tours, free tastings and retail store give people a reason to come to the brewery.

More importantly, facility tours reinforce the brand and give visitors something to remember the business by.   She says, “People leave with warm fuzzies â€" they have an emotional connection to the brand after being here.”

That leads to increased sales for the business, she notes.

It does, however, require an investment before it begins to pay off.  In the early years, running the tours and hosting the tastings were not self-sustaining activities. But this year, says Sacco, for the first time the tour operations will break even. Earnings from the retail store are now roughly covering the cost of staff (5 full-time people year round, more seasonally), and well as the tasting supplies and overhead allocation.  And that doesn’t even take into account the increase in sales that the company attributes to the tours.

But doing tours at that scale takes a good strategy, planning and execution. And it takes technology, also.  In addition to the Listen portable sound system, other technology that Allagash uses includes Eventbrite on the company’s website for tour reservations.

And the company’s website is itself a marketing attraction, and integrated with other aspects of the company’s marketing.  The website is visually exciting, featuring beautiful imagery of the company’s products.

But the website with its integrated marketing goes beyond that, with pictures of fine food from fine restaurants (even though the company itself has no food operations).  There’s also a section for a food competition that Allagash Brewing holds each year at the Culinary Institute of Education, to “further the awareness of both pairing and cooking fine foods with beers.”  The website then features the recipes, such as BBQ Glazed Pork Chops using Allagash Interlude ale as one of the ingredients. The company even has its own cookbook.

Holding facility tours can be a powerful marketing technique, provided you consider all details, including sound.  Also, you get more impact if you integrate the tour program with other aspects of your marketing for a compelling well-rounded experience.  For the right kind of small business, facility tours are powerful marketing.

Images: courtesy of Allagash

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3 Apps for Designing Mobile Friendly Email Campaigns

We know that customers are increasingly consuming online content on their mobile devices. Designing mobile friendly websites has become imperative for business. But what many small businesses are failing to realize is that they also need to create mobile friendly email campaigns as well, or their information will simply be passed by.

In a recent post we reviewed applications for mobile friendly websites. The good news is that designing mobile friendly email campaigns also just got a lot easier. You no longer have to design two emails, one for desktops and other for mobiles. Email service providers now provide responsive email design templates that are compatible across viewing platforms.

GetResponse, the global email marketing company, has recently upgraded its email design application to what it calls the first ever ‘truly responsive email design’ tool. All newsletters and e-mailers designed with GetResponse’s  Email Creator application will by default be adjusted for mobile viewing so that the reader gets the best possible experience in terms of email navigation and readability. The responsive feature is automatically activated regardless of whether you design emails from scratch or using the existing design templates.

GetResponse Founder and CEO Simon Grabowski said, “Today’s busy consumers are quick to embrace new technologies and quick to develop strong expectations of how they should work. So unlike other providers, we made this feature available as a standard feature rather than a paid add-on”. GetResponse email design pricing starts at $15 a month for 1000 subscribers.

As part of our research we also contacted the two other major players offering email marketing services.

MailChimp in fact reverted stating that they launched mobile friendly email templates in November 2012 and their fully responsive application was launched in June of this year. The upgraded application has drag and drop features and editable content blocks for easy email design. You can also preview the mobile friendly email in real-time as you make the changes in content and design. They have also recently made updates to their iPhone and Android mobile apps and even more recently introduced an editor app for the iPad. MailChimp ervices are free of cost for up to 12000 emails and 2000 subscribers a month.

Constant Contact currently offers seven mobile friendly email templates at no additional cost. These templates can easily be customized to match your brand. Joel Hughes, Constant Contact’s Senior Vice President, Strategy and Emerging Businesses says, “Our top priority with mobile email marketing is making sure our customers’ emails look great regardless of what device they are being viewed on. Along with our Quickview mobile app, which allows customers to create and edit mobile-friendly emails on the go, we continue to focus on super easy ways for our customers to mobilize their email marketing.” Constant Contact pricing is based on the number of contacts stored in the account, with the number of emails you can send being unlimited. Pricing plan starts at $15/month for between 0-500 contacts.

A 2012 survey by Litmus concluded that 48% of all emails are read on mobile devices. A 2011 study by Google called the Mobile Movement (covering more than 5000 on online US adults) revealed that 89% of users access their smartphones throughout the day, with 82% using their smartphones to check and send emails. Email marketing is known to be the most effective online marketing technique and mobile friendly emails will only enhance its potency as a business promotion tool.  

Thanks to these mobile friendly email apps growing businesses can maximize benefits from their email campaigns at no additional cost.

 

3 Apps for Designing Mobile Friendly Email Campaigns

We know that customers are increasingly consuming online content on their mobile devices. Designing mobile friendly websites has become imperative for business. But what many small businesses are failing to realize is that they also need to create mobile friendly email campaigns as well, or their information will simply be passed by.

In a recent post we reviewed applications for mobile friendly websites. The good news is that designing mobile friendly email campaigns also just got a lot easier. You no longer have to design two emails, one for desktops and other for mobiles. Email service providers now provide responsive email design templates that are compatible across viewing platforms.

GetResponse, the global email marketing company, has recently upgraded its email design application to what it calls the first ever ‘truly responsive email design’ tool. All newsletters and e-mailers designed with GetResponse’s  Email Creator application will by default be adjusted for mobile viewing so that the reader gets the best possible experience in terms of email navigation and readability. The responsive feature is automatically activated regardless of whether you design emails from scratch or using the existing design templates.

GetResponse Founder and CEO Simon Grabowski said, “Today’s busy consumers are quick to embrace new technologies and quick to develop strong expectations of how they should work. So unlike other providers, we made this feature available as a standard feature rather than a paid add-on”. GetResponse email design pricing starts at $15 a month for 1000 subscribers.

As part of our research we also contacted the two other major players offering email marketing services.

MailChimp in fact reverted stating that they launched mobile friendly email templates in November 2012 and their fully responsive application was launched in June of this year. The upgraded application has drag and drop features and editable content blocks for easy email design. You can also preview the mobile friendly email in real-time as you make the changes in content and design. They have also recently made updates to their iPhone and Android mobile apps and even more recently introduced an editor app for the iPad. MailChimp ervices are free of cost for up to 12000 emails and 2000 subscribers a month.

Constant Contact currently offers seven mobile friendly email templates at no additional cost. These templates can easily be customized to match your brand. Joel Hughes, Constant Contact’s Senior Vice President, Strategy and Emerging Businesses says, “Our top priority with mobile email marketing is making sure our customers’ emails look great regardless of what device they are being viewed on. Along with our Quickview mobile app, which allows customers to create and edit mobile-friendly emails on the go, we continue to focus on super easy ways for our customers to mobilize their email marketing.” Constant Contact pricing is based on the number of contacts stored in the account, with the number of emails you can send being unlimited. Pricing plan starts at $15/month for between 0-500 contacts.

A 2012 survey by Litmus concluded that 48% of all emails are read on mobile devices. A 2011 study by Google called the Mobile Movement (covering more than 5000 on online US adults) revealed that 89% of users access their smartphones throughout the day, with 82% using their smartphones to check and send emails. Email marketing is known to be the most effective online marketing technique and mobile friendly emails will only enhance its potency as a business promotion tool.  

Thanks to these mobile friendly email apps growing businesses can maximize benefits from their email campaigns at no additional cost.