by Elle Ray | Mar 31, 2020 | Small Business Advice
How to Use Trending Topics to Your Advantage
The goal of search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing is to give the people what they want. The big daddy Google is so successful because it puts its users first:
“Google ranking systems are designed to … sort through hundreds of billions of web pages … to find the most relevant, useful results in a fraction of a second, and present them in a way that helps you find what you’re looking for.”
To make your blog and website relevant and useful to searchers, you must answer their questions. One of the most effective means is to tap into trending topics. Then you’ll know what questions to answer.
Follow the News
Water cooler fodder are those trending topics that people are talking about. For example, trending topics that most definitely are being searched today include:
- Breaking news like the 2020 stimulus package
- Ongoing events such as the coronavirus crisis
- Tips on how to stay sane during a quarantine
Put any one of those words or phrases in your headline and you’re sure to get clicks. Staying abreast of the changing attitudes and interests of your target market is one of the keys to effective search engine optimization (SEO). SEO helps consumers (i.e., your customers and potential customers) find you and your company online. SEO also helps you get picked for the first page of search engine results, which increases your visibility enormously.
Trending Topics and Your Content
It’s not enough, however, to put trending topics in your page or blog post titles. You must include appropriate and related content in the copy that follows. Search engine algorithms have been created to weed out potential cheaters long ago.
You can’t, for example, title your blog “Beat the Coronavirus” and follow it with an article about the value of bicycling. The search engines put a kibosh on the practice long ago. In fact, they now punish bloggers who even try to sneak in unrelated content into a blog post.
How to Find Trending Topics
Granted, not every day provides you with trending topics that everyone is following. Today, it’s easy: the entire world is talking about the pandemic, searching for news about that one subject. Normally, to get the most out of this tactic throughout the year, you have to know what interests your target audience.
If your market is retirees, sign up for AARP news alerts and follow senior news aggregates. If it’s new mothers you’re trying to reach, follow a similar tact and spend a little time each day on sites geared toward that market. It won’t take long to figure out what they’re most interested in on any given day in any given week.
Find the Key Words
Listen to your demographic. Then research the topics they’re interested in to see what pops up in the news, then use those few key words that they’re seeking throughout your writing. Of course, you can always use some complicated keyword trackers to see what’s trending, but there’s nothing better than going directly to the source.
Another alternative is to hire a public relations firm whose job it is to keep up with the news to find trending topics that impact your business. Content providers like Ray Access provide another good source for topic ideas that are sure to get you noticed. In fact, any time you contact the writers and editors of Ray Access, you’ll get an idea, which we’ll give to you free if you hire us to write the piece!
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business to succeed. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters, and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Mar 26, 2020 | Content Marketing
Even If No One’s Buying Right Now, They Will Soon
During the coronavirus pandemic, whole cities, states and nations are on lockdown. The United States economy is expected to shrink by as much as 30 percent. Unemployment is reaching record highs. Some states have canceled the school year. Even the Olympics has been postponed for a year. And as bad as things are now, they’re likely to get even worse.
And there’s no end in sight. In Asia, where the number of new infections has zeroed out, leaders have decided to relax restrictions. And no sooner has the population breathed a collective sigh of relief and ventured outside, free for the first time in two months, and infections started to rise again. The point isn’t to scare you, but that no one knows when this crisis may end.
So Why Do Any Online Marketing?
If no one is buying anything besides toilet paper and groceries, why do you need to market your business? If you don’t produce essential goods or services, your business likely is struggling to survive. Maybe you’ve had to furlough or lay off employees. Perhaps you’ve shut down operations. Online marketing efforts may seem fruitless during all this.
While it’s true the economy has ground to a crawl, opportunities for improving your business still exist. By keeping your brand relevant to your customers, you’ll be in a better position to return to your previous level of business once the coronavirus pandemic settles into the rearview mirror, whenever that may be. And you don’t have to spend lots of money to launch an online marketing campaign. In fact, online marketing is one of the least expensive and most effective marketing techniques available!
Actions to Consider for Your Business
Your business, like any relationship, requires nurturing. Although you work hard to make your business relevant to your customer base, you also have to keep your company name on the top of their minds. Assuming you want your business to continue post-COVID-19, you can get a head start doing that by:
- Redesigning your site, especially if you haven’t touched it in the past three years
- Revamping your website content to reflect the new reality or better express your value proposition
- Beginning or restarting your blog to share insights, tips and advice with your customers and potential customers
- Sending out a monthly newsletter to your contact list
- Revisiting your business plan to adapt to these changing times
Once the coronavirus pandemic subsides, people will be looking around for the things they need and want. After people go back to work, they’ll want life to go back to some semblance of normal. Certain aspects of everyday life are likely to be altered forever, though. Shopping online may not fall off, even as local shops reopen. Now that consumers have experienced the ease of shopping online, they’ll likely continue the practice.
Maintain or Improve Your Online Business Presence
Online marketing is simpler and more effective than advertising on television, radio, newspapers and even billboards. It’s also less expensive. You can easily spend five figures on a new website, but it costs a fraction of that to refresh the content on your site, which works equally well for visitors and search engines. And while you can spend thousands on advertising, you can get a blog post every week for as little as $475 a month.
Hire Ray Access to research, write and edit the content that empowers your business. If you spend any money on your business during the coronavirus crisis, spend it on online marketing. That’s where the world is migrating to buy the things they need, to learn new things and stay informed. That’s where they’ll stay even after the pandemic. That’s where your customers will be looking for you.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business to succeed. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters, and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Elle Ray | Mar 21, 2020 | Announcement
Remaining Sane and Healthy in Crazy Times
It’s difficult to impossible to write a normal blog post when the world may be coming to an end — at least according to some people. In the age of community journalism, it’s difficult to separate the truth from the rumors and flat-out misinformation.
Is the population being culled so only the strong survive? Did the government plant this little bug on societies around the world to show us who’s the boss? Do politicians have even bigger secrets than we ever imagined? And is social distancing really a thing?
Boiling It Down
Just a few weeks ago, we were told that we’re becoming a society of isolationists, what with our social media addictions and reliance on technology. Mental illness and mass shootings were being blamed on people not being hugged enough and for listening too long to internet trolls.
Today, we’re told not to touch, to go online for any human interaction and to rely on social media for our personal interactions. Meanwhile, many pundits and politicians are taking advantage of the coronavirus plague to boost themselves as saviors with golden tickets and lifesaving cures.
The only sane step for those of us who believe we still have free will and an ability to think critically is to find the kernels of truth to believe, while trusting our instincts to survive. In fact, many of the measures we’re asked to take are just good practices for any day of any year, such as:
- Wash your hands after being in public
- Don’t kiss strangers
- Stay away from contagious sick people
- Boost your immunity with healthy foods
- Exercise and get plenty of rest to stay in tip-top health
How to Get Right-Sided
When you live in an upside-down world, all the blood rushes to your head, threatening to make you dizzy at the very least — or make your head explode at the very worst. In these dystopian times when we’re told not to trust anyone, to only visit friends and family online, and to stay home alone to obsess over the latest news and statistics, it’s important to find your true north.
To maintain your sanity and your good health, we recommend that you just take a beat, breathe deeply and relax. There’s lots of good advice for how to weather the upside downiness of it all:
- Clean your closets and your computer files
- Work in the yard to plant flowers or tidy up
- Join exercise classes online and Zoom in with your besties
But it may take a bit more to ride this thing out to its final destination when the world turns back on its own right-sided axis. Until that happens, perhaps one of these ideas can keep you from tipping over so far that it may be hard to get right again:
- Respect everyone’s right to choose. As if there isn’t enough on TV to get all worked up about, don’t add to your stress by freaking out about how others, including your loved ones, choose to react. Know that everyone responds to disaster differently. Some may feel the need to shelter in place, while others prefer to be out where they’re still able to go. Take care of yourself and your family as best as you know how and allow your friends, families, neighbors and colleagues to do the same without sending your stress levels through the ceiling.
- Share your good fortune. While it’s unhealthy to always compare ourselves to others to measure our own success, this may be the best time to practice a little comparison, because chances are you have it better than many others. And you’ll get by with one less roll of TP if it means your neighbor gets one roll from your stockpile. Just as the COVID-19 virus pays it forward by making people sick, so the world heals by paying forward the little things — one roll at a time.
- Follow your instincts. If it sounds crazy, it probably is. Getting worked up about conspiracies and doomsday predictions is worse for your health in the long — and short — run than any super-bug. When you hear so-called news that just doesn’t ring true for you, then make up your mind not to buy it. You can bet that one thing is not upside down right now — and that’s the fact that shysters and fear-mongers are in their glory, and they’re out in full force. Don’t believe everything you read and don’t get taken by scammers who use this fearful time to boost their own bank accounts.
- Go easy on yourself. If you happen to wake up one morning in the full grip of fear, know that it’s OK to spend the whole day under the covers crying. When a day goes by and you’ve done nothing but binge-watch Netflix, give yourself a break and let it be. If you turn to comfort food for a day and find yourself eating mashed potatoes and fried bread for dinner and consuming an entire half-gallon of ice cream for dessert, don’t beat yourself up. As long as your unhealthy habits are sporadic responses to stress for a day or two, it won’t hurt nearly as bad as the self-loathing that accompanies the splurges.
Balance, flexibility and moderation are the key principles that help get you through each day. And while you may stress out about three days: yesterday, today and tomorrow, we still have only one day to live at a time: this one. So live it to the best of your ability. Don’t worry about what happened yesterday and realize tomorrow will come soon enough.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business to succeed. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters, and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Mar 17, 2020 | Agency Advice
How to Mitigate the Fallout of Missing a Deadline
If you’re in business to deliver products or services, chances are you’ve heard at least some of the reasons for missing a deadline, including these gems. There may be a few legitimate reasons to miss a deadline, but in the long run, keeping your word is much more important to your business than excuses. Missing even one deadline damages your company’s reputation if you don’t make amends.
So while you must do everything in your power to avoid missed deadlines, you also have to know how to deal with the consequences when it does occasionally happen. Missed deadlines can sometimes be unavoidable, especially if you over-promise your deliverables and then a key employee gets sick or the scope of the project changes. Learn what to do next to handle the situation.
Lots of Moving Parts
If you’re the leader of a web development team, a project manager or an agency owner, you have to manage — and trust — others to do their jobs and do them well. Usually, your office may run like clockwork, pumping out great work on a tight schedule. But one incident — which can include not just an illness, but a defection or retirement — can throw your office into chaos.
Everything on your schedule usually trickles down and affects everything else. If you miss one deadline, every other project in the works or in the pipeline suddenly becomes in danger of being delivered late. Missed deadlines should be unacceptable to you and your business. Consistently missing deadlines is a recipe for a loss of work and a negative reputation.
Don’t Point Fingers
If you missed a deadline, don’t point someone out as the cause. Blaming others, even if you’re correct, does nothing to rectify the current situation. Instead, follow these steps to get the work done and delivered as quickly as possible, while you placate your client:
- Assess what work still needs to be done. Regardless whether it’s a lot or a little, this work should be your company’s priority until it’s completed.
- Immediately assign the work to someone you know will make it happen, including yourself. In other words, “get ‘er done” and get it done with the highest level of quality possible.
- Meanwhile, communicate with the client that the work has been delayed as soon as you know you won’t make the deadline. Own up to the problem and take responsibility. Again, don’t point fingers or make excuses.
- Offer to make it up to the client in any number of ways, such as a discount off the top of the current project, a valuable free extra or a deep discount on a future purchase. If your company is to blame for the delay, make sure your client understands that you value the business and will do what it takes to make it right.
- Deliver the work as soon as you can, making doubly sure that it’s correct, accurate, complete and of the highest quality. Don’t disappoint a client you’ve already made wait for your product or service.
Honest and forthright communication is always the best approach. Don’t wait for the client to contact you, asking about the product or service. Reach out and alert them as soon as you know you’re going to experience any missed deadlines. Customers appreciate the personal touch in these instances. Even if they’re initially angry, you often can overcome this with a sincere desire to make it right and clear communication that you can always provide in a timely manner.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business to succeed. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters, and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Elle Ray | Mar 10, 2020 | Agency Advice
Here’s How to Manage Your Deadline Junkies
Not all junkies use drugs. Junkies, loosely defined, refers to anyone addicted to a substance, like food or drugs, or to a habit, like exercising or driving fast. Junkies live for the thrill, the rush of adrenaline that comes from practicing their addiction. And there is no greater addiction for deadline junkies than madly working and hitting their deadlines just in the nick of time.
Deadline junkies share certain characteristics, such as:
- Obsessive planning around various deadlines
- Procrastinating because they know they can
- Waiting until the last minute to complete tasks
- Using deadlines as motivation
- Feeling energized as the due date approaches
- Functioning best when the clock is ticking
- Stressing out over interruptions at deadline time
Deadline Junkies’ Pros and Cons
If you’re a deadline junkie, you’re very aware of that big red circle on your calendar that indicates when a project is due. Unfortunately, life doesn’t always follow your timelines; it sometimes interferes with your carefully laid-out plans. While some people get sick with worry about the stress of a deadline — and the potential threats to getting it done on time — deadline junkies feed off that stress.
Deadline junkies don’t miss their marks. Others who don’t respect the deadline as much as a junkie, however, too often dismiss due dates as mere suggestions. A deadline junkie engraves those dates in stone, and God help the person who gets in the way.
Creativity vs. Completion
There are those who claim that creativity goes out the window when the deadline becomes more important than the quality of the finished project. But deadline junkies argue back that their muse lives in those shades of static electricity that seem to emanate from their brains as deadlines loom. While some proclaim that their creativity doesn’t work on a schedule, deadline junkies declare that their senses become even more heightened at just the thought of making a deadline.
They don’t wait for the “mood to strike;” they’re sure it will strike when they need it most. Stress for deadline junkies is intimately intertwined with the creative process. Without a deadline, they flounder and find it difficult to focus. On the other hand, they sometimes are so devoted to the due date that they become closed to options and new ideas.
Finding a Balance
Your clients always appreciate your commitment to meet their deadlines, and they usually don’t really care about how much stress you endured to meet their timetables. But what if they could get an even better product because you’re more focused on the quality of your work than on its due date?
If you believe you fall under the spell of the calendar and find that you regularly wait until the last minute to complete projects — especially because you live for the adrenaline rush — there are ways to manage your condition and still reap the benefits that deadline junkies live for. To find a balance between waiting until you’re in the mood and living on the edge, consider these tips:
- Set deadlines with built-in room to spare. You’d be surprised how you can feel the excitement of meeting a self-imposed deadline and still have the time to make adjustments, add additional input and make your completed project even better.
- Choose deliverables that don’t require your ultimate best to make a client happy. Use those projects to get your “fix.” Place other projects that may require more thoughtfulness outside of the harried, adrenaline-inducing deadline process. Work on them when you feel particularly creative.
- Break a project up into shorter mini-deadlines so you can experience the rush of hitting the mark while building in time for each stage, time for collaboration with others who may not share your passion for deadlines and time to just take it easy as you reach the finish line.
- Manage employees accordingly. If you have some that enjoy the thrill of the deadline and understand its importance, then by all means, give them space to work. If you have other, more laid-back employees, check in on their progress and make adjustments to their workload when necessary.
- Tame your inner beast with relaxation techniques like deep breathing or slow walks outdoors so that the stress you bring on yourself at deadline time doesn’t interfere with the quality of work you produce. Prepare for deadlines with sufficient sleep and healthy meals. Let others know when you’re on deadline and won’t appreciate interruptions.
- Partner with a peer who doesn’t share your addiction to adrenaline rushes. Give each other permission to poke and prod when necessary. Make sure it’s OK to point out when the other’s character is out-of-whack so you can meet a deadline and not lose your clients’ trust. You want them to know that you have their best interests in mind at all times — deadline or not.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business to succeed. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters, and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Mar 3, 2020 | Agency Advice
How to Keep Your Online Reputation Positive
Every business has a reputation, including yours. The question isn’t so much what your reputation is, but rather how well you manage it. The online world presents an opportunity and a challenge. If you ignore it, you’re just setting your business up to fail. So you need to develop a plan for your online reputation management.
Thanks to Google My Business, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yelp and all those other online review sites, anyone anywhere can leave a review or recommendation for your business. Good reviews are of course golden. But a bad review can fester like an unwashed cut, bleeding your business of potential customers. Unless you can afford to pay a company to repair your reputation, it’s on you to practice sound online reputation management techniques.
How to Foster Positive Reviews
If your business is successful and growing, you have clients who love what you do. For web developers, web designers, online marketing agencies and website content writers, each project you complete is an opportunity to ask for a positive review. Make it easy for your clients by sending them the link (or links) to online review sites, where they can leave their glowing comments.
Whenever you deliver a finished project, you feel great at the accomplishment, and your clients are flush with excitement. It’s the perfect time to ask them to review your work in an online forum. You can even copy and paste the testimonial to your website and social media accounts. In fact, that’s a step you must take to spread the word.
How to Deal with Negative Reviews
At some point, however, someone may leave a negative review on social media or on one of the review sites. You have to deal with it. If you don’t, it becomes more than a nuisance; it becomes a liability, encouraging potential customers to choose your competition. Fortunately, there are strategies for dealing with negative reviews, such as:
- Reply to the negative reviewer, seeking to make it right. Whether the reviewer is right or wrong, if you publicly try to make amends, your business earns points when others see your response. But you must respond within 24 hours, which means monitoring your reviews. Online reputation management requires constant surveillance of your social media channels.
- Encourage your existing clients to flood the review site with positive reviews. You can never make a negative review disappear, but you can bury it in a sea of authentic positive reviews.
- If the negative reviewer is holding a grudge or trying to harm your business without a valid complaint, address the issue head-on. Ask for details. If none are forthcoming, explain to others that the negative experience couldn’t have happened (and why). Reputation-harming inaccuracies damage your business even if the claims are false.
You can use all of these strategies, as appropriate. Don’t just stop at one. The more active you are performing online reputation management, the more likely you’ll have a stellar reputation that draws customers to your website and your business.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business to succeed. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters, and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Elle Ray | Feb 24, 2020 | Communication
The Pros and Cons of the Compliment Sandwich
The compliment sandwich is a tool you can use to soften the blow of criticism. People, including your peers and employees, often cringe at criticism (unlike professional writers, who relish feedback). But when you learn to use this sandwich technique properly and in the right situations, you’ll discover it’s an effective way to get your negative remarks across while you:
- Leave the other person’s feelings intact
- Keep their ego unbruised
- Avoid acquiring a reputation as a jerk
- Appear encouraging rather than disparaging
However, there’s always the risk that your compliment sandwich falls flat, especially when it’s insincere. Don’t use it to hide your criticism in a veiled attempt at savings someone’s feelings. Above all, be honest, or your attempt may cause the opposite of your intended effect — and make you out to be an even bigger jerk.
A Good Sandwich
A tasty sandwich is made with two pieces of good quality bread or inside a soft, mouth-watering bun. It’s typically filled with hearty items like cheese, soy protein or meat — and piles of condiments and complementary vegetables. Think of a juicy steak burger on a delectable, fresh-baked artisan bun with lettuce, tomato, onion, mustard and relish.
A proper compliment sandwich is composed of a meaningful compliment on the bottom, followed by a substantial and practical critique or flavorful advice, topped off by concise, worthwhile praise. And while the bun should be warm and appetizing, it needs to be strong enough to hold the sometimes slippery ingredients that sit in between. Maintain the integrity of the compliment sandwich by ensuring all the ingredients are related and go together well.
A Bad Sandwich
Not too many diners appreciate peanut butter and jelly on a burger. Likewise, few believe that a harsh criticism lodged between two superfluous, unrelated compliments is very palatable either. A poorly delivered compliment sandwich leaves the recipient more confused than motivated. Too often, it feels like the proverbial back-handed compliment — which is just as dangerous when delivering negative feedback. A bad sandwich leaves you with someone who’s not very receptive to your feedback.
When you’re served a bad sandwich in a restaurant, you’re usually going to do one of three things:
- Send it back
- Leave it on the plate untouched
- Throw it out
The same is true of taking a bite out of a compliment sandwich — if you take a bite at all. You may go on the offensive and send back the offensive remarks, totally ignore the entire statement or toss it in a pile of useless information that eventually ends up in the trash.
Sandwich Delivery
It behooves you to think about the contents of your compliment sandwich before you deliver it. For example, a staffer creates a new website that has some striking flaws that need to be fixed before you can present it to the client. You can be direct and brutally honest (as some management gurus suggest) and say to your developer:
“I can’t give this mess to the client, fix the content and the layout and get it back to me by the end of the day.”
You can try a slapped together compliment sandwich:
“Your work area is so clean today. This website sucks. But you’ve really been doing well to get to work on time lately.”
Or you can give it a little thought. Look for what the website developer did right first and think about qualities she has that you admire. With the bun in hand, you might say:
“The graphics on this site are amazing. I especially like the charts you inserted. But the rest of the content falls flat and doesn’t say what we need the reader to hear. It kind of jumps around too, making it hard to follow. I know you can fix this in no time because you want to make sure the client is really satisfied. I look forward to your revisions.”
The Final Review
The developer may not like what she hears. After all, she thought she had nailed it and was done. But she’s not completely defeated and feels like she got some praise for her hard work. And if she really does care about her work — and about pleasing you and the client, she’ll give it her best to make the corrections you pointed out.
Used wisely, the compliment sandwich serves its purpose. The person to whom you’re providing the feedback hears what you’ve said and takes it in context. You’ve framed your criticism with compliments and provided specific feedback for the person to add a little polish and shine it up. You’re considered thoughtful and kind, while maintaining your high quality expectations. Forgive the cliche, but that’s a win-win.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business to succeed. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters, and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Feb 18, 2020 | Communication
Use Every Tool Available to Say What You Mean
If you’ve been reading our blog posts, you already appreciate the value of clear communication. You already know how to give an effective compliment. And you already understand the power of body language.
When you have something to say — whether it’s an energizing presentation to your team or a big sales pitch to a new client — how you say it matters as much as what you say. Your actual words may go in one ear and out the other, but your attitude and demeanor leave a lasting impression. How you say it involves your:
- Body language
- Hand gestures
- Facial expressions
- Tone of voice
- Eye contact
- Environmental circumstances
How You Say It with Body Language
We’re writers. Words matter to us on many levels. So when we tell you that your spoken words to a group or even one-on-one convey very little, you have to believe it. We’d prefer it to be false, but it’s been proven again and again, and we can’t ignore it. Your body language when speaking says much more than the words you utter.
The number, in fact, is seven percent. What you say contributes only seven percent of your message. How you say it with your body language and other unspoken cues provide the other 93 percent. Be conscious of your body when you speak. Use it to convey and reinforce your message. When people listen to you, they’re watching your body language. A confident posture lends weight to your words.
How You Say It with Hand Gestures
Some people tend to talk with their hands. Their extended pinky and thumb become a telephone receiver. A pointed index finger and thumb become a pistol. Sometimes, a conversation consumes their full reach. But gestures add emphasis to your words, just as a conductor punctuates the music with his gesticulations.
Your audience wants to know that they can trust you. Yet no one trusts a speaker whose arms hang limply. Your hand gestures can win an audience over. Watch any great speaker; every one of them use their hands to sweep meaning into their words. So help your listeners understand the full extent of your message by incorporating hand gestures into how you say it.
How You Say It with Facial Expressions
Like body language and hand gestures, your facial expressions communicate lots of information on their own. Think of the very different messages you express when you say, “I love to write blog posts” — once while smiling broadly and once when scowling. The same words take on opposite meanings. No matter what you say, people are watching your face for clues to your attitude. Use your expression in conjunction with your words. Put the whole package together to make your point stronger.
You can convey your mood, your emotions and your attitude with just a look. Even if your audience doesn’t consciously process your expression, it sticks in their minds. They can’t help but understand it. That’s just part of human nature. You’d do yourself a disservice if you didn’t use your facial expressions to guide your listeners toward a deeper understanding.
How You Say It with the Tone of Your Voice
Communication is a multi-sensory experience. When people listen, their ears naturally open. Their eyes observe. Their noses are actually on alert for pleasurable or foul smells. The brain puts the input together into a package that helps the brain not only accept the information provided, but also to decide whether to trust the speaker.
How you say something — how you use the inflection, pitch and tone of your voice — engages your audience directly. It’s so important in the art of storytelling that it’s become part of how we communicate. You can express tension, surprise or gravity through the tone of your voice. When you use it to reinforce your message, your message has a more lasting impact. Use your voice to connect with your listeners.
How You Say It with Eye Contact
To connect with someone, you have to look them in the eye. That look conveys trust and honesty. While it’s easy to do when you’re talking one-on-one with someone, it’s a feat when you’re speaking to a group. But spread the love around the room. Maintain eye contact with individuals for several seconds before moving on. That connection opens the brain to be more receptive.
Eye contact is a necessary part of building trust with people. But you have to create a delicate balance. If you don’t maintain eye contact long enough, you lose any good will you intended. Look too long at one person, however, and it becomes a weird power play between you and the audience member. Make your presence real by connecting with your audience through eye contact.
How Environmental Circumstances Impact What You Say
It’s not so much what you say as to what your audience hears. If you’re holding court in the midst of a crowded subway station, few are going to pay you any attention. If you’re speaking to your crack management team in a pristine conference room, on the other hand, you can be sure that everyone is hanging on every word.
By providing an environment that’s conducive to the meaning of your message, you encourage your audience to better absorb that message. A comforting environment puts all the focus on your speech, as there are no distractions. And then, if you’re using all your nonverbal clues, you can reach your audience more effectively. And that’s the key to communication.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business to succeed. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters, and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Elle Ray | Feb 10, 2020 | Communication
Are Your Compliments Backfiring on You?
Everyone loves getting compliments. And they can be very useful as you try to win friends and influence people. So while you try to insert compliments into your repertoire, be careful how you throw them around; don’t abuse the power of the compliment. For when the people around you get used to the two poles of “suck up” or “put down,” that power can turn against you.
A sincere compliment does its job and does it well. In fact, the power of the compliment, when given in the spirit of true admiration, is immeasurable. A well-placed real compliment:
- Shows a level of respect that’s hard to dispute
- Acknowledges the receiver as someone of significance
- Leaves the other person with a lasting impression that they can draw upon on dark days
- Affords you a true sense of humility
- Builds trust
- Puts everyone, including you, in a positive frame of mind
Beware False Starts
You’ve most likely heard that communication is largely made up of body language and tone of voice — to the tune of about 85 percent! Most people aren’t tone deaf to insincerity and dishonesty. The power of a compliment given in haste, with little thought to the truth, carries equal amounts of distrust, negativity and disrespect.
Instead of feeling grateful for your attention, the receiver of a backhanded compliment or one that obviously is not sincere just leaves the person feeling annoyed and even resentful. Instead of garnering goodwill, as you’d hoped the power of the compliment would deliver, you end up being the boy (or girl) who cried wolf. In other words, the next time you offer your appreciation, it’s going to be received with an air of doubt by those who received that previous misguided compliment.
Consider the Source
Make sure you’re using the power of the compliment for good and not to put someone in their place or make yourself look superior. So consider your motivation for extending the approval. You could ask yourself the three questions that circulate as social media memes on a regular basis:
- Is it true?
- Is it kind?
- Is it useful?
If you answer “yes” to all three, then use the power of the compliment with a deft touch and beware of falling into one of categories below before finally letting it rip:
- Patronizing. The definition of “to patronize” is to be helpful, and when you adopt this form of compliment, you may have answered yes to all the ethical questions and truly have your heart in the right place. It’s usually the delivery that falls short for some reason. Since you know the power of the compliment, you may believe that it actually may help someone feel better about themselves. At the same time, however, you feel slightly better than that person and at least a little superior. And it shows in your tone as you talk down to him or her. A patronizing compliment may actually be a sibling of the South’s well-known put-down of “Bless your heart.”
- Too Frequent. For many people, once they discover the power of the compliment, they wear the heck out of it. And subsequently it wears out its usefulness. Too many compliments delivered too often actually begin to have the opposite effect. Think about when you truly enjoyed a fine, expensive piece of chocolate on Valentine’s Day and because it was so good, decided to eat 10 pieces every day. It soon loses its specialness and may even make you sick.
- Not Quite Appropriate. Sometimes, you may have to struggle to find something nice to say to certain people. But you still want to exact the results that come from a well-placed compliment. You know it needs to be sincere, but you don’t know exactly what to say. Be very careful about complimenting people about certain subjects unless you know them intimately — like the fit of their clothes, their weight, their latest facelift, their choice in partners or any other intimate topic that could land you in HR with a harassment charge. Shoot instead for safe topics such as work-related efforts on the job, their handling of a difficult situation or their cooking.
- Unclear and Questionable. The last thing you want is to waste the power of the compliment on an ambiguous statement that allows you to feel great about yourself, but leaves the other person scratching her head. For example: “I finally get to read well-written copy,” may in fact be heard as “You’ve been delivering crap all this time.” If the endorsement may be taken as an insult in disguise, rephrase it so it’s clear and unmistakably positive with something like: “After reading everyone else’s poor submissions, it’s refreshing to read your great copy.”
- From the Heart. While the power of the compliment offers great benefit to the giver, when it’s delivered with no ulterior motive, you can usually be sure it’s from the heart. Rarely is the sentiment taken wrong when it’s clear you have nothing to gain by giving it. In fact, you may not even feel the same flood of endorphins that the receiver of your praise gets from a sincere compliment. But know that you are building a well of goodwill and respect from those on the receiving end of your honest acknowledgements.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business to succeed. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters, and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
by Mark Bloom | Feb 4, 2020 | Agency Advice
Do Popular Companies Get More Business?
In school, the popular kids always seemed to be the most successful. They were often smart, funny and attractive. Maybe they were outstanding athletes. Maybe they also got good grades. They were adored and envied by everyone, including teachers.
Does the same hold true for businesses? Think of popular businesses, such as Amazon, Apple, Tesla, Google, Microsoft, even Facebook and Twitter. Each one of these companies is (or in some cases, was) led by a charismatic leader. Therefore, you’d assume that popular companies do get more business.
There’s More to the Story
Popularity in business today is measured in likes, mentions, followers and clicks. These are among the many metrics tracked and logged by search engine optimization specialists. Touted as showing market penetration, each like, mention, follower and click is collated according to age, gender, location and even income level. Big data is the means through which businesses measure their popularity.
In this kind of popularity contest, the goal isn’t necessarily to get more business, but to exceed your competitors’ numbers. It’s no longer a means to an end, but an end to itself. If being popular were the ultimate goal in business, you’d see fewer accountants and more marketers. There would be bigger and bigger discounts to woo fans — because the team with the most fans wins, right?
Comparing Businesses to Sports Teams
In some ways, companies and sports teams are similar:
- Both put an enormous effort into branding and name recognition.
- Both actively engage in winning and keeping fans.
- If successful, both enjoy a solid foundation of diehard fanatics.
- Sports teams, like businesses, need positive media coverage.
- Sports teams have a devoted local following, similar to successful brick-and-mortar businesses.
- The most popular teams, like companies, are considered winners almost no matter what they do, unless and until they make an egregious marketing error.
But in other important ways, the two differ wildly. For example:
- Sports teams can experience a bad year — or even a bad decade — and still be a viable enterprise; businesses can only sustain a certain number of annual losses before they have to throw in the towel.
- Sports fans still attend games, even if it’s to root for the competition.
- Sports teams, unlike businesses, need wins on the field to give their fans something to cheer about.
- A championship trophy can sustain fans for a decade; business must constantly adapt and grow — their fans more commonly ask, “What have you done for me lately?”
- Even though they are businesses, sports franchises don’t measure success in dollars. All other companies don’t measure success in wins.
The Value of Popularity
Businesses spend hundreds to thousands of dollars every month on social media. Some post daily or even hourly. And then there’s the responsibility of responding to comments. It takes time and money to manage an active social media account. Now multiply that by 10, to include all the various social media platforms, and you get an idea of the true cost.
But what’s the true value of those likes, mentions, followers and clicks? Do they actually funnel real people toward sales? The answer is complicated, but it relies less on likes and followers and more on website traffic.
Does Popularity Get More Business for Companies?
Social media generates brand awareness, no doubt, as it gets a business’s name in front of millions of people, if they’re successful. Social media is also a great place to manage a business’s customer experience. In the very public platform of social media, your business can mitigate complaints and foster ambassadors. All of these are positive things.
But most ecommerce takes place on a company’s website. So website traffic and online sales tell the story. To get more business, a company has to urge social media followers and fans to visit their website. Without that connection, being popular is no more relevant than being named Mark.
Tipping the Scales
The final part of the equation to get more business is balancing the cost of all social media engagement to actual sales from all that activity. It’s great if your company can generate $10,000 in gross revenue from social media contacts. But it’s substantially less exciting if you’re paying $8,000 a month to maintain that website presence. It’s still a win in terms of hard numbers, but the ratio isn’t promising.
Of course, it depends where you are in the cycle. If you’re just starting your social media campaign, you may have nowhere to go but up. But if you’ve been at it for a year, that $10,000 in revenue may represent the high-water mark. There are factors to explore, such as reducing the costs while maintaining the revenue stream. Only you, as the business owner, can determine if it’s worth continuing in this case.
Popularity, in general, doesn’t get more business for your company. It is only a sign of brand awareness and brand acceptance. Both of those are positives, but they don’t always translate into more profits. Beware the social media game.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business to succeed. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters, and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
