I wanted to ask this question to the people who follow my blog. I hope you will participate, it will only take a minuet or two and your input will help me craft the kind of content that you are looking for.

Ill share the results of the survey with you when it is complete.
Click here to take survey

What do you Struggle with Most in Social Media is a post from: A Passion for Connection

                          

Are we so busy that we don’t get to enjoy what we have?

I had the pleasure yesterday of taking a day off to go to share some time with friends at the shore. It was as close as you can come to a perfect New England day. The sun was shining, the water calm, the breeze cool and the conversation stimulating. A day where one could escape the confines of our daily lives and let our spirits soar. A day where we can look at our lives from a new perspective.

As I was enjoying each moment of this perfect day, my mind wandered to thoughts of the location. Tall grasses yielding to the breeze and the ocean teaming with life. Clear blue water with the egrets standing gracefully watched us watching them. An osprey perched high keeping watch over all of us. while beautifully maintained homes with manicured lawns stood guard in contrast to the nature.. My thoughts wandered to wonder what it would be like to live here, in this beautiful place. How it would be to enjoy the nature of it all. It was then that I noticed. The people who do live here, are not here enjoying this day or the beauty all around them.

Where were they, the people who owned these beautiful homes? Were they away on vacation? Were they off in the rat race trying to keep up with the mortgage payments, the utilities, the service people who maintain their property? .

Too Busy to Enjoy What We Have? is a post from: A Passion for Connection

                          

One of the most precious resources we have is our time.  It is the most often lament I hear from clients, “I don’t have time.”  Very often when I look at how and why they do things a certain way, it is clear to see answers that would free up time. Often time it is that they don’t use the tools they already have at their fingertips.

Photo by Orvalrochefort

While visiting a client the other day I had the opportunity to witness first hand, the flow of information at the company. I was shocked to see the work that was needlessly created because of lack of training on software and complacency.  The people in the company were used to doing something one way and were resistant to change. “This is how we do it” was the attitude. There was no one questioning , “why do we do it this way,” or “is there a better way”

This particular client is buried in paperwork as he downsized and eliminated the position of bookkeeper. His staff, as good as they are at what they do, are limited by old systems that he set up long ago and clings to. Old Ideas that hold him back. Old accounting systems weigh him down and he has his staff doing menial tasks that are easily automated and integrated into his accounting. He focuses on the small things that don’t matter instead of looking at the big picture.

I watched as one of his staff wrote a purchase order on a spread sheet form that she manually multiplied the quantity x the price of each item. Then she manually entered that purchase order into a spread sheet log, and printed out two copies of the purchase order. She placed one copy in the client folder, and one in the purchase order folder and proceeded to delete the purchase order spread sheet she created . “There was no need for it” was the argument, “we have the hard copies.”

All of this took her well over an hour. I am still shaking my head in disbelief. All of this could have been done in Quickbooks at the time of the order in a minuit or two at the most. I then started thinking of all the work that still needs to be done like entering the transactions into Quickbooks for which I am sure he will pull out the purchase order file and compare the agreed on price with the receipt he receives from then vendor. When he bills the client, he will have to pull out the file of purchase orders and receipts and manually calculate his hours and prepare a bill for the client. ALL BY HAND. He has Quickbooks but does not use it to simplify his life. Instead it is one more chore that needs to be done.

I know this may be an extreme example, but I also know that many people don’t use a fraction of their resources. Many times because they simply don’t take the time to learn the tools the have.  If we take a few moments and look at how and why we do things, we can come up with solutions that can save us time.

Do you have resources in your company or organization that you under utilize?

Do We Underuse Technology? is a post from: A Passion for Connection

                          

As I was reading Danny Brown’s, and Tanveer Naseer’s blogs today, I was thinking about my recent frustrations with Yahoo Mail. Danny spoke of being frustrated trying to cancel his blog on Posterous and Tanveer was talking about experiences he and his family shared while on vacation. In my own case, I was frustrated over the last few days that a service Yahoo offers ( importing your contacts from Facebook) does not work. In all three cases, the common thread was customer expectations.

When we expect something and the results do not meet our expectations, we are disappointed, frustrated and even angry. That annoying feeling can linger. We loose faith and trust. We wonder if other things will go wrong.

In business we must be able to look at our own products and services from the eyes of the consumer. Are we delivering what we promise? If we are not, our customers are left with bad feelings. Some will let us know. Others will let a lot of others know.

Yahoo is promoting the idea that people can import their Facebook contacts. I have heard stories that some have been able too. I have heard from others that they have not been able to. I am in the second group. The frustration I feel reinforces my image of Yahoo as a company of well Yahoos. It is not that I can’t import my contacts, it is the ideas that I am told that I can and my expectations are that I should be able to, but the reality is that I can not. Yahoo is promoting it, The system exists to do it, but it doesn’t work. AHH I want to pull my hair out. I left comments on my frustration and they have so far gone unanswered.

The funny thing about expectations is this. They can be managed through open communications. Even when the possibility exists that they wont be met, communicating that information in a timely manner can turn a possible nightmare into a very strong advocate for our business.

My experience with Discus, the blog commenting system, is similar but the end result is 180 degrees in the other direction. With Discus, I have the ability to customize the comment area CSS to match the blog it is installed on. But, I have learned that some items can not be styled. Ryan and the people at Discus stuck with me through my questions and followed up with honest answers. Even though my original expectations were not met, the addressing of the issue and explanations along the way has left me with positive feelings about the company. My expectations were managed in a good way. Trust has been built.

We are all different and as much as old school marketing tried to guess on product and service design. The marketing would attempt to control the release of information to appeal to a large group. Today, through social media, we are unbound by that restraint. In Social media we can directly ask the people we work with what their expectations are. We can tailor our products and services to meet or exceed those expectations, and we can communicate with our clients along the way. That communication can mean the difference of  a sale, or a customer for life.

Managing Expectations: Communication Creates Clients for Life is a post from: A Passion for Connection

                          

How can I get over my fear of commenting online?

I have noticed personally and read studies indicating that between 50 and 90 percent of the people who are in communities don’t participate by commenting. There are many reasons for this ranging from feeling like they have nothing to add, not being interested in the topic, to fear. If it is fear that is holding you back this post is for you.

Start by listening first – You probably already do this naturally. I usually recommend when you are new to a community to kick back and read posts and comments for some time so that you get a good feeling of the tone and topics of the community and learn a little about the personalities that make it up. Some fear of voicing opinions is justified and normal. If you don’t feel safe or feel that the people in the community are judgmental then by all means trust your instinct.

Start easy- If you feel like it is a nurturing and supportive community but you are still uncomfortable commenting publicly, you can start by asking questions or stating opinions in private. It will give you a chance to add value to the community in a safe way. There are some very real positive reasons to participate in communities by commenting and joining the conversation. Studies have shown that people who participate in communities feel more like they belong than others who don’t actively participate. By your participation the others involved in the community get to know you and start to build trust in you, and you in them. You start to build relationships. Relationship building is one of the most powerful aspects of social media and communities online. That is why it is called social media and not some other name. You begin to take some ownership in the community and feel more connected when you participate.

The Upside of participating for website owners.-A positive reason for participating in a community is to build inbound links back to your own site. Inbound links are a sort of social proof to search engines and other visitors to the popularity of your site. There are no real effective short cuts to building inbound links. Yes there are services that submit your site to many directories. But those directories don’t carry as much weight in search engine ranking as do links from sites that are relevant to the topics on your site. It is a quandary that new site/blog owners need to get over.. The more popular your site is to others, the more followers you will attract and the more weight your site will carry with search engines .You can create links back to your site through your comments in communities, blogs, and websites.

Participation is valuable to the community-Often times we feel like the answers we will provide to the community will not be accepted by the group. The reality is if you raise a possible answer or question, others in the group probably have the same question. Social media is a place for two way communication. It is the reason it is more powerful than old push media. Your voice in that two way communication is critically important to the group. If all the views are not represented, then any solutions created will be less than optimal..Your participation will stimulate new ideas and new opportunities for further discussion.

Finally, I can guarantee that the facilitator of the community very much wants you to participate. Like the quandary of inbound links, the more that people participate and comment, the more people will comment. Your input adds the possibility that new topics will be sparked and will invite even further participation. It is important to the community and needed so comment away. If you are ever unsure, you can always ask questions or add comments in private via direct message or email to others in the group.

Overcoming Fear of Commenting Online is a post from: A Passion for Connection

                          

Sarah Robinson

If you have not yet heard of Sarah, let me introduce you to this amazing woman. Sarah is a “small business strategy coach” but don’t let that title fool you. The businesses she works with may be small but there is nothing small in any of Sarah’s ambitions for herself and her clients. Sarah passionately and enthusiastically inspires her clients to achieve success in all areas of their lives in a balanced way.. She accomplishes this with very honed skills of community building and engagement in social media. Sarah also masterfully engages amazing people who she invites into the “Tribe” she has nurtured. ( Notice I said the tribe and not her tribe. ) All of this is executed in an environment of excitement.

Community Building- Right from the start you notice something different on Sarah’s blog “Escaping mediocrity. “The community that thrives there participates heavily, commenting and sharing stories not just with Sarah, and this is the point, with each other. The community that thrives around Escaping Mediocrity is not Sarah centric. She works to make sure that it is about the community. It is not about Sarah. It takes a pretty fair amount of self confidence and trust to let go of the control necessary for this. She trusts in the community and they trust back.

Social Media is about relationships. Sarah skillfully inspires and nurtures relationship building within the community. You immediately sense it when you are in the presence of the people who gather around her blog. Sarah and her community take inbound marketing to the place it should be. Nurturing mutually beneficial relationships.

So far this year she has presented the community with three ambitious opportunities of deep value, “30 Days to Changing your Game”, “Get your Rear in Gear”, and her latest effort, “Creating Irresistible Presence.” With these efforts, Sarah engages amazing people to write blog posts around the topic of the month. By sharing other authors with a plethora of views, the people who gather around Escaping Mediocrity get to know the authors and they get to know and interact with each other. Her magic is keeping a very fertile field where relationships can flourish.

Am I biased? You bet. . It is for a good reason. Sarah is able to accomplish these amazing things while maintaining a healthy home life. She does not live and breath her work. She lives and breaths beauty. That inner centered beauty that allows her light to shine bright to many. She has Irresistible Presence and has shared that to inspire others to shine theirs bright too ( and never in her shadow.)

Resources to learn more about Sarah.

Resources to learn more about Sarah.

My Recorded Interview with Sarah.

If you want a very clear “ IT “ That Irresistible Presence” and a very clear business model built around “IT” Sign up for her upcoming event. It is 3 days of hands on work that you will walk away from it running! – Her upcoming event: Creating Irresistible Presence your you and developing a business model around it is scheduled for September 23,24, and 25 in Atlanta ,GA

Sarah Robinson-Irresistible Presence is a post from: A Passion for Connection

                          

Do you have multiple email accounts and find that you bounce between them during the day? Do you ever struggle trying to find an email and can’t remember which account it was sent to? Gmail is a great tool on its own. But with a few minuets of set up, it can be an excellent email management tool.

Consider this: You can have all of your email from other accounts forwarded to your Gmail or Google Apps email account, sort them by account as they come in, and have them displayed in their own inbox using the multiple inbox feature in Gmail. Even better you can set up filters to have the emails tagged as they come in.

The benefit to this is when we are searching for an email, it can be found in one place using Gmail’s search. Another benefit is that ALL our email is available from any access point, any computer, any phone, or any other device that can connect to the web.

How to do this:

1. Visit each of your email accounts and have the email forwarded to your Gmail or Google Apps Email address.
2. In your Gmail account, Click “Settings” in the upper right hand corner and click the “Multiple Inbox” link.
3. In the Search query box ( I leave “Is:Starred” in the first box for quick access to email that I tag with a star.) enter “To:YourEmailAddress@Domain.com” in the panes in the order you would like the inboxes displayed.

Your done. If you like you can go ahead and create some filters while you are there. I suggest doing it on the fly as emails come in. There is a little checkbox at the last page of creating the filter that will allow you to apply the filter to emails in the past.

Google allows you also to change the “Send from” mail address so it appears that you sent the email from the original email account.  This “From” email address does not even have to be a Gmail address. Under Settings, Click “accounts, then click the link “add another email address you own” You will be asked to enter your email address. Follow the instructions carefully to confirm you own that email address. You will be sent a confirmation code to the added email address that you need enter to complete the setup.

If you are using Gmail and want access to the past email stored in your other accounts you can import them. You contacts can also be exported and imported into Gmail Contacts. If you are using Google Apps, ask your Google Apps administrator.

3 Steps To Taming Multiple Email Addresses Using Gmail is a post from: A Passion for Connection

                          

Why did you go into business in the first place? If you can answer this question first, your direction forward will be clear.  The answer will be a great place to start in creating your own story.

People do love stories as highlighted in a recent post by Danny Brown on Apples recent release of the new iPhone. Every one of us who has gone into business, did it for a reason. Some of us for the hope of making money. Some, for more emotional, more passionate reasons. Our prospects and customers can sense the difference.

The distinction is critical. The reason simple. People who buy our products or hire us for services base their decisions not only on rational thoughts or analysis, but also with emotions. We put heavy weight on our emotions. We make decisions from the our limbic brains. Our emotional center.

As Simon Sinek points outs in his blog , Start With The Why, and his “Golden Circle” Most companies build and promote themselves on that “What.” and the “How” Even our conversation reinforces this. We ask, “ What do you do?” We answer, “ I’m a Doctor” or, “I’m a builder.” Less often do we ask ourselves, “Why?” We are even less likely to answer with, “ I feel deep compassion with someone who is ill and I feel a deep need to help them heal.” ( You can Watch Simon Sinek’s talk on the introduction to the golden circle on TED.)

As human beings we relate to each other from that emotional center. We relate through emotions. We have intuitions, we sense whether we trust each other or not. We feel. Those feelings carry a lot more weight then we realize in the buying decision process. We make decisions based on how we will feel with the outcome. If that new iPhone helps us connect to those feelings, we not only want the phone, but how we feel with it.

Why did you go into business in the first place?

Take a look at this video from Apple and ask yourself, “ Why am I in business?” The successful business today and into the future are those who can answer this question, and act on it with their whole being. If you are passionate about the why, then how we do it will be better, and what we do, evern more so. Most importantly that passion will pervade everything you do. Your clients and customers will know it.

Want Success? Answer This Question. is a post from: A Passion for Connection

                          

It takes a lot to get me really riled up. Spending over 12 hours getting rid of a virus that snuck through really pisses me off. Security,especially internet security  is often something we don’t want to think about until we are forced to. Often when it’s too late.

I recently had the hard drive replaced on my Dell Mini ( just before the warranty ran out) It meant that I had to reinstall everything including Internet Security. In the past I have used Mcafee’s Internet security which had worked fine. For whatever reason, I could not load and run it properly . I was told that a fix was in the works. In the meantime, I installed a free version of AVG thinking that I would reinstall Mcafee once it was ready.

Then WAMMO- I was hit with a very tenacious piece of malware that took over all my browsers and would not let me update virus protection software, blocked the new installation of virus /malware protection and would not let me install other fixes. I tried everything sort of messing around with the  system registry.

I was running out of options and becoming increasingly frustrated. I can only imagine how people who don’t work with computers all day feel.  It is rare that I get really frrustrated , but I was ready to run my  netbook over instead oft wiping out the operating system and starting for scratch again.

It was then that I stumbled on a very useful utility, called Vipre Rescue Scanner. from Sunbelt Software, Part of the GFI Software family.  I downloaded to another computer and installed it via a remote drive where it opened a command window and started its magic. I crossed my fingers and saying prayers in hope that it might actually work. I am still thanking the world that it did.

The Resuce Scanner worked well enough to allow me to install the trial version of Vipre Antivirus Premium which also includes a firewall and manually install their current virus definitions. It was easy to install and lacked the ” mystery” that other internet security programs have. Why I chose Vipre is what impressed me most. Vipre was built from the ground up and uses very little resources. Other internet security programs can use 20% or more of your system resources. It is easy to set up and runs between $29.95  and $39.95 depending on whether you opt for the firewall or not. The company also offers, for under $70.00, a version to cover all the computers in your household including your home office computer. If you own a company, they can cover your systems with their enterprise versions. The products impressed me so much that I inquired about becoming and affiliate.

Whether you choose to use Vipre or another Internet Security provider, make sure your protect is in place and your virus definitions are up to date  on all your computers. $39.95 is a cheap compared to 12 hours working to fix problems. While you are at it, make sure that you password protect your iPhone or Android phone. If you ever lose or forget it somewhere, at least you have a chance of blocking your data from prying eyes.

Is your computer protected? is a post from: A Passion for Connection

                          

I have been watching in horror as the oil from the BP rig spews into the GULF.As an American, I am as guilty as the next person in my addiction to oil and other petroleum products. I am laying that out right from the get go. We need to accept our responsibility.

I want to set things straight and put them into perspective. Lets start with the idea that water is abundant. It is easy to think in relation to vast oceans, the Gulf is a drop in the bucket, right? Wrong!

Although 70% of Earths’ Surface is covered by water and only 30% by land, it appears on the surface that we have plenty of water. This is a thin mask, literally.

If all the water on earth was gathered into a ball, it’s diameter would be 869 miles in diameter. Contrast that with the diameter if the earth and the image would look like this image by Adam Nieman.  As you can see from this dramatic image, our perceptions of water being abundant, needs to be challenged. ( Note: 97.5 % of the earths water is salty leaving less than 2.5% of clean water for land animals and plants.)

Back to our responsibility. The United States of America consumes ( and yes we are all consumers of it in one form or another) a disproportional am0o0unt of petroleum. Americans make up about 5% of the entire world population while we consume 25% of the worlds petroleum, and produce 72% of the worlds hazardous waste.

The Petroleum we use as Americans is not limited to fuel. Less then half a barrel of oil is used for fuel the rest is used to make products ranging from solvents and grease to toothbrushes and food preservatives to plastics. http://www.ranken-energy.com/Products%20from%20Petroleum.htm

I would guess that it is virtually impossible to go into an average US home and not find a considerable amount of products produced from petroleum products, or the energy used to create them.  The US Consumes 19.5 Million barrels of the stuff per day. To bring that home that is about 23 barrels each year for every person in the US.

We as Americans are responsible for the demand for petroleum products. Each of us. I think we must accept that responsibility and take daily action to use less.  At the same time we can work to ensure that companies that drill holes into our earth act responsibly. They can no longer operate under their own rules. If it means higher prices, so be it. Those higher prices will drive down demand and offer the chance for alternatives to flourish.

Sources :http://www.theresilientearth.com/?q=content/water-not-new-oil http://maps.unomaha.edu/peterson/funda/sidebar/oilconsumption.html

http://www.mindfully.org/Sustainability/Americans-Consume-24percent.htm

Taking responsibility – Our part in the Gulf Disaster is a post from: A Passion for Connection