It’s October and time to check your EQ!
October is Emotional Intelligence Awareness Month, which may be news to you if you aren’t 100 percent sure what emotional intelligence is. However, emotional intelligence – or EQ – can be the key to leading your team to a more successful year if you use it correctly…and it is often especially helpful as we enter the high-stress holiday season. Your emotional intelligence, or your “EQ,” is your ability to both identify and manage your emotions. Sounds pretty simple, right? EQ is made up of three key skills. You need to be able to correctly identify what you are feeling, You need to be able to apply what you are feeling to tasks or problems at hand, and You need to be able to manage and regulate your emotions, as well as to use what you are feeling to motivate someone else to feel a specific way. Let me give you some easy examples for each skill: If you understand that the urge to throw your stapler at the wall after a difficult phone call means that you are experiencing anger and frustration, then you have the first skill. If you are able to then apply yourself to the solution necessary to heal a relationship or mend a service issue, channeling your emotions to fuel you to work faster, you have the second skill. If you can rein in your anger while you give the team a speech to put them on the right road and motivate them, and they feel a fresh burst of energy to get going, then you have the third skill. The reason that EQ is so important for team building is that emotional intelligence touches virtually every aspect of your business. EQ is a part of hiring, working, supervising, and leading. When a team has a good EQ, the team members trust each other, develop a sense of belonging to the group, and work together efficiently. You need to view fostering EQ among your employees as one of your important jobs. For most people, EQ is developed “in the field” rather than learned before coming to the job. You can help your employees understand their own feelings by using tools like personality assessments. In addition to that, creating an environment and culture that allow team members to effectively regulate their emotions, and then modeling for them how to properly use emotions to positively impact others, are the best ways to boost the EQ across your team. Think of EQ as an undeveloped energy source; when you can tap into it and use it effectively, your business will really start to gain some speed as it moves...
read moreThis one simple strategy can boost Facebook video shares 1055%
Video is the driving force on Facebook today and this is something every marketer needs to fully appreciate and leverage. I am sure many of you are embracing this fact and using video on Facebook as well as on your other online platforms – your website and various social media. An updated study by Quintly uncovered a mind-blowing statistic and if you want your Facebook videos to engage your audience you must take this into account. Here’s what they found: Facebook native videos are shared far more often than YouTube videos posted to Facebook. Facebook native videos are videos that are created on or directly uploaded to Facebook. YouTube and other videos are posted on Facebook by copying their URL into a status update. The difference in sharing is startling. According to Quintly, Facebook native videos are shared 1055 percent more than videos posted from other websites, most often YouTube. Why do these videos command such a greater engagement rate than the others? I think the answer is simple: They auto-play within Facebook’s News Feed. This creates a small dilemma. As an online marketer, you want your videos featured on your YouTube channel, Facebook, your Website, and other places. This leads us to the simple strategy you need to follow when you’re posting videos: Create your video within Facebook or directly upload it to Facebook: Do not merely copy and paste a video’s URL from another website! When you do this, you’ll get that coveted “auto-play” and if your content is good, it will grab your audience and they’ll start “liking” and sharing your videos more often on Facebook. What about the other sites and older YouTube videos? There are two more wrinkles to cover before we leave this topic. As I said above, you want to post your videos on as many online properties as possible, yet I’ve just given you information that in many ways encourages you to create videos on Facebook. How can you get these videos over to YouTube and your website? Also, how can you get existing YouTube videos posted natively to Facebook? I go through the steps necessary to accomplish copying Facebook videos to YouTube this in my post How reuse, repurpose Facebook Live videos for your content marketing. There are a few hoops to jump through, but after you’ve done it one time, you’ll get the hang of it. If you want to go the other way – post YouTube videos as Facebook native videos – there are two possible ways to get this done: Grab the original video file (if you still have it) and upload it to Facebook, or Download your YouTube video and upload the downloaded file to Facebook. If you need to download one or more of your videos from your YouTube channel, the process is more involved and you’ll need a third-party tool to get it done. YouTube doesn’t make it easy because there are many copyright issues involved. However, if you’re downloading a video you have created, you own the copyright (unless you’ve copied another creator’s work), so that issue should not be a problem. The software to accomplish this changes fairly often but fortunately Eric Griffith has a how-to article on the PC Magazine website that is kept updated, so you can go there to get the...
read moreThis week in small business: Short cuts, long views, and bridging generations
Some interesting – and often divergent – points of view are on display this week. Jayson DeMers gives us seven shortcuts while Kimanzi Constable puts the emphasis on being patient in order to achieve success. So, no matter how you’re wired, you’re going to find expert writers who appeal to you in this week’s collection of curated content. Leadership, management, and productivity Let’s face it, not every day is smooth sailing, so that’s why Eric Samson’s five ways to keep your head when things get testy is worth a read. Laura Emily Dunn talks to Dictionary.com CEO Elizabeth McMillan in this edition of Women in Business Q&A. How much difference can one person make? Nora T. Akins says that productivity goes up 13 percent on average when you replace a poor manager with a good one! And while we’re on the topic, Nina Zipkin share’s a successful entrepreneur’s scheduling secret for boosting productivity. But if you’re a visual learner, you might do better with the productivity tips from seven small biz owners in this infographic by Kim Lachance Shandrow. Need a lawyer? First you need to check out Mona Bushnell’s tips on how to find a small business lawyer online. Roll back your ego! That’s just one of the six strategies Louis Mosca provides for getting the results you deserve in your small business. Marketing and sales Search Engine Land columnist Stela Yordanova outlines five ways to capitalize on Google Tag Manager to help improve your online marketing. If you aren’t being seen, you can’t be selected, so check the seven shortcuts to building early brand visibility as explained by Jayson DeMers. You have to love bridges between the generations and that’s what Ty Kiisel gives us in his article, 7 Ways Boomers Can Market Their Small Businesses To Millennials. Do you think small towns are not the right place for entrepreneurs? Garrett Moon says you can use your small town location for an advantage. The sooner you stop believing in magic formulas for success the better, says Kimanzi Constable, as he introduces his seven “patient” strategies for growing your business. Writing for the Online Marketing Institute, Chris Raulf gives us a “simple guide” to SEO keyword research. Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation If you don’t think insurance can be exciting, you need to read Elaine Pofeldt’s Forbes piece about San Francisco startup, Bunker. Before you start the business of your dreams, to be sure it doesn’t become the focus of your nightmares, ask yourself the nine questions suggested by Victoria...
read moreThe genius of using benefits as a strategic tool for competitive advantage
By Susan Solovic, THE Small Business Expert If you’re a small business owner, staying ahead of recruiting and retaining top talent is one critical way to grow. Yet, when MetLife conducted its most recent Employee Benefit Trends Study (EBTS), it found that only 16 percent of small business owners are planning to change their benefits package in the coming year. This suggests that 84 percent are planning to maintain their “status quo” – and that can impede attracting and retaining top talent. Don’t miss opportunities As our economy has become information-based and service-based – and with technology constantly evolving – operations within small businesses require employees with much more knowledge, flexibility, and willingness to learn. Finding and keeping this kind of talent can feel challenging. Not long ago I was holding “Outrageous Success” sessions at locations for small business owners across the country and more recently I’ve been conducting a series of webcasts in advance of my new book: The One-Percent Edge: Small Changes That Guarantee Relevance and Build Sustainable Success. As I’ve talked to small business owners, they tell me how quickly markets and technologies are changing and how they alone can’t keep pace. They need to bring in others who are willing to share the load, grow, and change as the business moves forward. This is a far cry from the days of the neighborhood shopkeeper or even the corner garage, where owners could generally handle all aspects of the business. Move forward Here’s my question: Are you part of nearly 20 percent of small business owners looking to improve your employee benefits strategy? This will give you a marked advantage over your competitors who are satisfied with what they’re doing. Let me show you how this can pay off in real terms. According to the MetLife survey, having the ability to customize the benefits you offer goes a long way toward recruiting and keeping the talent you need to run your organization: 67 percent will be more loyal to their current employer, and 70 percent will be more likely to accept a job with a new employer (one who offers custom benefits). Differentiate your culture I often talk about differentiation and its relationship to business success. Usually I cover the topic from the point of differentiating your product or service from the consumer’s perspective. However, the same principle applies to the culture you create in your business. Here’s another question for you: Throughout your professional life, have you discovered companies that people really want to work at? I bet you could list some. A few things can make a company desirable in this way. They are perceived as the industry leader. They pay well. They treat their employees great. Now here’s the secret: Usually all of those attributes have come together in the organizations where people want to work. That’s not an accident and the most important single reason is third on my list: They treat their employees great. When employees are happy and loyal, you put yourself in the position to become the industry leader and when you become the industry leader, profits increase and salaries alongside them. This positive triad of organizational attributes creates an unbeatable company culture. Check your attitude Understanding all of this, I want you to do a quick attitude check....
read moreTake out your virtual broom and clean up your virtual desktop
The third Monday of October is “National Clean Up Your Virtual Desktop Day” – a day which should be highlighted in any business owner’s calendar. If you are like most computer users, your desktop and various computer files are a mess. Documents that you haven’t touched in decades are mingled with pictures from your last vacation, which are – for some reason – filed under Music. You’ve got a dozen apps that need updates and your desktop is cluttered with the documents and scans from your last project. If the wood or metal desk you sit at is a mess, it is hard to concentrate fully on what you’re doing; spending a few moments each morning clearing off your desk will make your day significantly more productive. The same principle applies to your computer desktop. Clean it up to help yourself maintain a calm and efficient work zone. A clean desktop and tidy files are also imperative to good record keeping and good computer maintenance. It’s hard to do regular backups on your most important data if you can’t find your data. First, get organized by setting up a filing structure. Create master folders for departments or areas of business, with sub folders for months, quarters, projects, or other divisions according to how your business operates. Be sure to keep financial records separate and protected! Be sure that your file names are always unique, match up with your standard company file-naming rules, and are easy to scan in a hurry. Regularly reinforce your naming system to be sure that your whole team is using it properly. That will make file sharing easier and really help when employees change positions and new employees are added to your team. Tip: If you download or create files you KNOW you won’t need beyond one use, store them in a file named something like “Throwaway” so you can dump them in the trash without having to give them a second thought. Also, don’t let important files linger in a “Downloads” folder – immediately rename them and store them properly. For files you don’t want to delete entirely, create a backup of a zip file, or store a zip on the cloud in a service like Dropbox. Then delete the originals from your desktop and breathe a sigh of relief at the lost baggage. Set aside some regular time in your schedule to keep your files and folders organized. It would also be a great time to regularly change passwords, check security, and give your system a quick assessment to be sure it’s still serving all your needs. National Clean Your Virtual Desktop Day is a fantastic time for getting everything in order so that you can focus fully on your passion. Finally, this advice applies to your employees as well. When they have disorganized and cluttered computers, you are losing productivity and it’s the kind of lost productivity that you never see. It’s a constant drip-drip-drip of time lost to hunting down files or recreating files that already exist but can’t be found when...
read moreThis week in small business: How to beat your fear and cash in on a 1-start review
Get your productivity boosted, your hiring strategies improved, and your fear beaten into submission with this week’s collection of excellent business articles from around cyberspace. Leadership, management, and productivity Lauren Liss, who spearheads digital partnerships with companies like U.S. Card, Capital One, Uber, Netflix and others is the subject of this entry in Laura Emily Dunn’s Women in Business Q&A series. In this post sponsored by MasterCard Biz I explain how understanding five crucial financial ratios will give you a good understanding of the health of your company and what management moves you need to make. Here are Alan Taylor’s mind-opening (and maybe mind-blowing) tips on how to boost motivation and productivity. Never trying because you are afraid is the only failure you can’t learn from, says Jyoti Agrawal in his article outlining the five actions you need to take to beat the fear blocking your success. You don’t have to be able to computer coding guru to be your own chief technology officer (CTO), as I explain in this sponsored post. Jonathan Wu, partner at Tomo Ventures, outlines hiring strategies for a growing e-commerce business. Marketing and sales If you can’t measure it, you can’t control it. That holds true for everything, including your social media channels. That’s why Mindi Rosser’s piece on how to audit your channels is quite timely. Anyone engaged in influencer marketing should read what Kristina Libby has to say about how much you should spend. Are you sitting down? You might want to before you check out Pia Silva’s Forbes article, What No One Wants To Tell You About Marketing A Small Business. Think you can’t feature a one-star review in an ad for your business? Luke Trayser gives us a brilliant example and it should help you get your creative juices flowing. Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation Five top e-commerce experts give their best advice for future entrepreneurs in this piece by Lucas Miller. Time to branch out? Matthew McCreary identifies the five best retail franchises to buy right...
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