7 Things Good Communicators Always Do ~ By Jayson DeMers

Communicating is easy, but communicating well takes skill. Thinking beyond basic language rules and facilitating effective, positive exchanges of information is something not everyone can do. Fortunately, good communication habits come with regular practice, so if you know what it takes to sharpen your skills, you can proudly communicate like all the great orators and writers before you. Remember these seven things that good communicators always do, and make sure you’re doing them!

1. Get personal
Most of the time, people don’t care about what you’re saying unless you’re saying something they find valuable on a personal level. That personal level doesn’t have to be deep, it just has to exist.
Good communicators establish a personal connection by focusing on how their message may impact the other person. For example, good communicators in the marketing industry always explain how the company’s products or services will benefit the customer. This gives the audience a reason to listen and remember what the marketer has said.

2. Represent facts
Inaccurate information is worthless, so if you’re not sure about something you’re saying, either don’t say it or at least admit that you’re not sure about it. Sometimes, we can get carried away with a conversation and begin spewing out random things we’ve heard but don’t know to be true. Although this may seem harmless, regularly offering inaccurate information not only leads people to believe things that aren’t true, it discredits you as a valuable source of information, and sharing information is what communicating is all about.

3. Be specific
Good communicators cut to the chase and understand the value of brevity. You may love to talk, but that doesn’t mean others want to hear it. If you have something to say, say it. Ambiguity and superfluous words are likely to bore people and discredit you, causing your message to get lost in a cloud of noise. Good communicators always respect people’s time and choose simple, straightforward words.

4. Ask questions
Whether the conversation is with one person or many, good communicators always ask questions. Most importantly, they question their audience to confirm that their point has been understood.
Of course, it can get irritating if someone continually asks us “Do you know what I mean?” or “Get what I’m saying?” Such questions may come off as condescending, but there are friendlier, more subtle ways to ask for confirmation. Instead of putting the focus on your audience’s ability to understand, put the focus on yourself by asking “Am I explaining this well?” This invites the other person to ask for clarification without feeling incompetent.

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I de-mystify SEO and online marketing for business owners. 

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The Tyranny of the Queen Bee

By PEGGY DREXLER

                                                                                                 John Kuczala

Kelly was a bright woman in her early 30s: whip-smart, well qualified, ambitious—and confused. Even a little frightened.
She worked for a female partner in a big consulting firm. Her boss was so solicitous that Kelly hoped the woman—one of just a few top female partners—might become her mentor. But she began to feel that something was wrong. In meetings, her boss would dismiss her ideas without discussion and even cut her off in mid-sentence. Kelly started to hear about meetings to which she wasn't invited but felt she should be. She was excluded from her boss's small circle of confidants.
What confused Kelly was that she was otherwise doing well at the firm. She felt respected and supported by the other senior partners. She had just one problem, but it was a big one. One of the male partners pulled her aside and confirmed Kelly's suspicions: Her boss had been suggesting to others that Kelly might be happier in a different job, one "more in line with her skill

Tina Brown talks with Kelsey Hubbard about how she has survived and thrived through the ups and downs of her career and the importance of women friendships and how she's managed to keep "beating" the boys at their own game. (Nov. 7)

I met Kelly while I was conducting research on women in the workplace. She was trying to puzzle through what she had done wrong and what to do about it. (To protect the privacy of Kelly and others in the study, I refer to them here by first names only.) I wasn't sure Kelly had done anything wrong, and I said so. As I told her, "You might have met a queen bee."
Having spent decades working in psychology, a field heavily populated by highly competitive women, I had certainly seen the queen bee before: The female boss who not only has zero interest in fostering the careers of women who aim to follow in her footsteps, but who might even actively attempt to cut them off at the pass.
The term "queen bee syndrome" was coined in the 1970s, following a study led by researchers at the University of Michigan—Graham Staines, Toby Epstein Jayaratne and Carol Tavris—who examined promotion rates and the impact of the women's movement on the workplace. In a 1974 article in Psychology Today, they presented their findings, based on more than 20,000 responses to reader surveys in that magazine and Redbook. They found that women who achieved success in male-dominated environments were at times likely to oppose the rise of other women. This occurred, they argued, largely because the patriarchal culture of work encouraged the few women who rose to the top to become obsessed with maintaining their authority.

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Four decades later, the syndrome still thrives, given new life by the mass ascent of women to management positions. This generation of queen bees is no less determined to secure their hard-won places as alpha females. Far from nurturing the growth of younger female talent, they push aside possible competitors by chipping away at their self-confidence or undermining their professional standing. It is a trend thick with irony: The very women who have complained for decades about unequal treatment now perpetuate many of the same problems by turning on their own.
A 2007 survey of 1,000 American workers released by the San Francisco-based Employment Law Alliance found that 45% of respondents had been bullied at the office—verbal abuse, job sabotage, misuse of authority, deliberate destruction of relationships—and that 40% of the reported bullies were women. In 2010, the Workplace Bullying Institute, a national education and advocacy group, reported that female bullies directed their hostilities toward other women 80% of the time—up 9% since 2007. Male bullies, by contrast, were generally equal-opportunity tormentors.
A 2011 survey of 1,000 working women by the American Management Association found that 95% of them believed they were undermined by another woman at some point in their careers. According to a 2008 University of Toronto study of nearly 1,800 U.S. employees, women working under female supervisors reported more symptoms of physical and psychological stress than did those working under male supervisors.

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Office Conflict: Women and the "Catty Trap"

Something is clearly amiss in the professional sisterhood.
Erin, another participant in my own study, was a food writer at a glossy magazine. Her supervisor, Jane, seemed out to get her from day one—though never quite to her face. Jane liked playing hot and cold: One day she would pull Erin close to gossip about another colleague; the next she would scream at her for not following through on a task Erin hadn't known she was expected to perform.
Erin eventually found out that Jane was bad-mouthing her to mutual contacts in the food and restaurant industry. Jane would casually slip barbs into business conversations, telling others, for example, that Erin had engaged in an affair with a married man (she hadn't) or was giving more favorable reviews to restaurant owners who were her friends (she wasn't).
Jane's campaign against Erin wasn't much more than mean-spirited gossiping, but Erin felt that it caused her peers to think of her differently and certainly made her professional life more difficult. But how could she lodge an official complaint? "What would it say?" Erin asked me. "Jane is talking about me behind my back?" At various points, Erin thought the only way to fight back was to play along and start trash-talking Jane. But was that really the solution?
As the old male-dominated workplace has been transformed, many have hoped that the rise of female leaders would create a softer, gentler kind of office, based on communication, team building and personal development. But instead, some women are finding their professional lives dominated by high school "mean girls" all grown up: women with something to prove and a precarious sense of security.
What makes these queen bees so effective and aggravating is that they are able to exploit female vulnerabilities that men may not see, using tactics that their male counterparts might never even notice. Like Jane's gossiping about Erin's personal life. Or when Kelly's boss would comment on her outfit: "Who are you trying to impress today?" Or not-so-gently condescend: "Did you take your smart pill today, sweetie?" Their assaults harm careers and leave no fingerprints.
That is one reason many victims never see such attacks coming—and are powerless to prevent them. In Kelly's case, she had assumed her female boss might want to help foster her growth out of some sense of female solidarity. Erin had specifically sought out working at the magazine because she admired Jane's writing and wanted to learn from her. Why wouldn't Jane be eager to teach? It is women, after all, who are hastening the table-pounding male bullies toward obsolescence.
But both Kelly and Erin's superiors seem to have viewed the women under them not as comrades in arms but as threats to be countered. In a world where there are still relatively few women in positions of power—just 2% of Fortune 500 CEOs and 16% of boards of directors, as noted in Deborah Rhode and Barbara Kellerman's book "Women and Leadership"—it is an understandable assumption that the rise of one would mean the ouster of another. One for one, instead of one plus one.
Though it is getting easier to be a professional woman, it is by no means easy. Some women—especially in industries that remain male-dominated—assume that their perches may be pulled from beneath them at any given moment (and many times, they are indeed encouraged to feel this way). Made to second-guess themselves, they try to ensure their own dominance by keeping others, especially women, down.
The result is a distinctive strain of negative leadership traits—less overtly confrontational than their domineering male counterparts but bullying just the same. Comments on appearance or dress are part of their repertoire—something that would be seen more obviously as harassment when coming from a man—as are higher, sometimes even unreasonable, expectations for performance. Women who have risen in male-dominated fields may want to tell themselves that their struggle and success were unique. As a result they sometimes treat the performance of females who follow as never quite good enough.
It cuts both ways, though: Women aren't always the best employees to other women either. Female subordinates can show less respect and deference to female bosses than to their male bosses.

Queen bees are less overtly confrontational than their male counterparts, but they are bullies just the same.

A 2007 Syracuse University study published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology found that both men and women were less satisfied with female managers who were not empathetic. In my experience, women also tend to resent female bosses who adopt a brusque and assertive management style, even as they find it perfectly acceptable for male bosses. And so they question and push back, answering authority with attitude.
One woman I encountered in my research, Amanda, faced this problem when she began a new job as a vice president at a Manhattan ad agency. The role was her first in management and included overseeing three women who were her age or younger. She knew she was qualified for the position, but from the very first day, Amanda had a difficult time feeling that she had their respect, or even their attention. Though deferential and solicitous to her male colleagues, they openly questioned Amanda's decisions. They went above her head, made comments about her wardrobe and even refused to say good morning and good night. She felt like she was back in high school, trying to break into an elite clique.
Amanda tried various tactics: being overly authoritative, being their "friend." Eventually she stopped trying to get them to respond or encouraging them to do their jobs as directed. Instead, she fired all three.
Queen bees are creatures of circumstance, encircling potential rivals in much the same way as the immune system attacks a foreign body. Female bosses are expected to be "softer" and "gentler" simply because they are women, even though such qualities are not likely the ones that got them to where they are. In the more cutthroat precincts of American achievement, women don't reach the top by bringing in doughnuts in the morning.
Men use fear as a tool of advancement. Why shouldn't women do the same? Until top leadership positions are as routinely available to women as they are to men, freezing out the competition will remain a viable survival strategy.
—Dr. Drexler is an assistant professor of psychology in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and the author, most recently, of "Our Fathers, Ourselves: Daughters, Fathers and the Changing American Family."
Corrections & Amplifications
A 2007 study published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology found that both men and women were less satisfied with female managers who were not empathetic. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that the study found that women were critical of female bosses who were not empathetic, and gave the incorrect name of the journal. The earlier version also implied that some findings of the author of the article were part of the 2007 study.

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Dangerous Youtube Marketing, Sales Training and Tutorial for Men Only

 

by marketing on 01/25/2013

You do what you do to put food on the table. To you, it’s second nature. You get a kid out of college- even a fancy ivy league college to try to do what you do and it will take him years of additional blood sweat and tears to do it well. Then another decade to do it as well as you do.
That’s because for you, what you do as a pro is autohabit.
For him, every little step and every little decision is a nerve racking stressor.

So, now that you’ve decided that you’ve got to start producing you tube videos to promote your firm, products, and services, what have the most effective Youtube video marketing pros picked up along the way that drives the highest number of conversions and sales? If there was a Youtube marketing tutorial or a sales training video that could raise your sales by 5%, would you watch it?
The above tutorial will raise your sales by at least 25%. It’s for manly men only.

 

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Facebook Graph Search Is Here. What Do Marketers Need to Know?~By Michael Lazerow

           Social Graph Combined With Intent Data Is   Powerful Mix for Marketers... 

When Facebook announces something, people listen. And  when  the words "Facebook" and "search" are mentioned in one event, people really listen. And when marketers learn the possibilities presented by this new search product, called "Graph Search," they'll listen even more.

While Zuck did not focus on brands, it's clear where Facebook is going with its search strategy. And businesses large and small will be one of the primary beneficiaries.
What Did Facebook Announce?
Zuck announced the social networking giant's foray into search in Menlo Park Tuesday. Instead of pages and links, the heart of Facebook search is called Graph Search, which is the love child of its scantily clad search bar and Facebook's humongous social graph. And it's the third child of the Facebook ecosystem, which already includes News Feed and Timeline.
Zuck made clear that Graph Search is not a search engine. Instead, when people go to search for a term, they'll be directed to people, places, or Pages that already exist on Facebook, instead of a series of links. And because Facebook has its massive social graph to flex, search results will be displayed based on personal relationships that you've established on the network.

So How Does it Affect Marketers?
Think about the potential in terms of sheer volume of search queries. With over a billion people on Facebook, creating more than 240 billion photos and more than a trillion connections, imagine how many search queries will be performed each day. Every time someone searches for something, your branded content will have an opportunity to appear to Facebook's vast user base. Though users can only find content that has been shared with them, Graph Search makes it much easier to find track.

Consider that by creating a tie through the social network between a user and your Page, you are now providing another chance for you to reach people; this time, in the form of a branded search result.
This points to a larger trend in personalization.
I've said many times that people are people, and need to be treated as such. We're done with the days of people being labelled as expiring cookies or data points; instead, marketers need to treat people like human beings. Graph Search is the next logical step in this process for Facebook and social marketing. By building a fan base, creating engaging content and building a community, you can ensure that you're there when your fans and the friends of your fans are searching for something on the site.
The secondary benefit to marketers is that Facebook will now be conditioning its billions of users to search for what they're looking for. Does this sound familiar? Yes! It's intent. And Facebook has never been able to capture intent. The combination of social context (what your friends like) and intent (what you're looking to buy) will make it possible for advertisers to take Facebook's already amazing targeting to the next level.
I don't want to blow your mind just yet, so I won't go much further down this path. But imagine what happens when you combine intent, social context and custom audiences (i.e. the data you have about your customers). All of a sudden, Ford can advertise to friends of their current customers who are in the market for a car today. That's exciting and opens up many possibilities to take loyalty and social referrals to the next level.
Graph Search is only available to a few Beta testers. So for now, you should continue to focus on creating great content and buying sponsored stories to amplify the resulting engagement across the social network. Connecting to consumers using today's strategies will turn out to be the best form of SEO down the road as Graph Search takes off, and will ensure you aren't trying to play catch up when the functionality is launched to over one billion people across the social network


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Free Backlink: How to Get to a PR 3 Ranking in 90 Days

By Marc Marseille

Climbing to the top of the search engines is the goal of every home base business owner that own a website. A well optimize website alone may help you achieve those goals if you are a niche market with little competition. On the other hand if your niche market is one shared by many marketers, you will have to prove to the search engines that you site has more relevance. The way to differentiate your business from the many on the internet is by creating high quality backlinks.

Many website owners are deterred from generating high quality backlinks to their website either from lack of time or lack of money. The truth is that creating thousands of backlinks does not have to be time consuming or costly. In fact there many ways to generate high Pr backlinks to you website for free. Using the methods I am about to share with you will be able to generate a PR 3 ranking in 90 days or less.

The first thing you must do to create free backlinks is to join five forums related to your niche. Once you have joined five forums, make sure you make a least 10 post per day to each forum. Forums usually have a high pr ranking and they are indexed by the search engines. Furthermore, every one of your post will equal to a high quality backlinks as long as you make sure you include you website's url in you forum signature.

The next step you will need to take is to submit your website to as many directories you can that are relevant to your websites content. You can either submit

your websites manually or you can use a submission service to speed up the process. In addition to the backlinks, you will also generate a great deal of traffic.

The third step will be to write three articles per week and submit your articles to fifty article directories every week. This method is one of the most effective, because once you submit your articles, chances are they will get picked up by other article directories creating even more backlinks to your website.

The fourth method is to post to one hundred social sites at least three times a week. There are hundreds of social networking websites like Digg, Sphinn, Stumble Upon and Mixx. These social web 2.0 sites have a high Google ranking and also can create a heap of traffic. I suggest posting to one hundred social networking and social bookmarking sites daily. To make the submission faster you should use a social bookmarking software to post to multiple sites at one time.

The final step is to submit your RSS feed to one hundred RSS directories. If you do not have an RSS feed for your website, you should look into creating one. RSS feeds are important in generating backlinks and traffic to your website. In the meantime you can substitute for not having an RSS feed by posting comments to ten do follow blogs daily.

The steps provided will take you approximate 3 hours per day to complete, while establishing a PR 3 website will bring you tons of traffic from the search engines. You may also receive offers from advertisers to display their ads on your PR 3 website thus increasing your income dramatically.

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The Thorny Question of Marketing Attribution: Does It Apply to B2B?

By Ruth Stevens

Have you noticed how marketers are focusing on attribution these days? Which media channel is really driving the sale, they ask. What touch sequence is most productive? Where should we assign credit? There is much confusion and gnashing of teeth on this subject, but I say that in B2B, these are the junior questions, and just a building block to the bigger issues. Sure, we business marketers want to know where to invest our precious dollars. But what we really want to know is: 1) How do my prospects buy, and how can I make their journey easier, faster, and more likely to result in a sale for my company? 2) What’s the ROI on the sale, meaning how much sales and marketing investment do I need to close the piece of business?

I’ve been looking into this attribution discussion recently, and find it pretty frustrating. In the purely digital marketing world, marketing attribution analysis actually makes a lot of sense, and the various methods that are being talked about are worth looking at. To summarize, they boil down to 4 general techniques:
First touch, last touch. This means all credit for the sale (or whatever is the desired outcome, like becoming a qualified lead) goes to the media channel that acquired the prospect (the first touch) OR the channel immediately before the outcome (the last touch). While many consumer marketers find last touch to make sense for attribution, in B2B, it’s more likely that marketers will be keeping close track of the first touch, since that is so useful for analyzing cold prospecting investment decisions.
Weighting. All recorded touches are given some credit, and weighted equally, or according to some reasonable factor, like where they lie in the path to the sale. In B2B, this method becomes problematic very quickly, since the sales cycle is so complex, involving a long series of touches, to multiple contacts in a target account, through multiple channels, many of them offline, and difficult to capture in a database.
Modeling. Statistical analysis of purchase patterns against touch sequences provides insight into the relative impact of each media channel, which can then be used for more reliable weighting. According to a 2010 Lenskold Group study, only 3% of business marketers are modeling for attribution. And even if they do, models tend to provide guidance only at a fairly high level, which doesn’t much help with granular touch-sequence decision-making.
Test and control. Hands down, the most reliable method of sorting out the impact of an isolated single variable. But well nigh impossible to execute across a multi-channel, multi-touch relationship.


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