Blindspots are something we all have based on our past experiences, interactions with others, and the opinions and values we’ve formed over time. I remember learning early in my career about the Johari Window in a leadership seminar I attended. It’s a model designed to help us understand and improve communications through the recognition that we all are impacted by the things we don’t know. Human nature is such that each of us has biases and blind spots that we’re generally not aware of.
Archive for September, 2021
Battling Blind Spots to Boost Management and Marketing Effectiveness
Thursday, September 30th, 2021Best Practices for Managing Remotely (You Already Know These…)
Tuesday, September 28th, 2021Over the past several months I’ve been very interested, even excited, to see how well the forced experiment with remote work has evolved. Since 2008 I’ve been working remotely. Even prior to that, I had several writing clients that I worked remotely for; most I’ve never met. (more…)
What Your Employees Don’t Know Could Hurt You: How Effective Communication Builds Strong Brand Ambassadors
Thursday, September 16th, 2021I’m often surprised that the most overlooked audience, when it comes to communicating with key constituents, is the internal or employee audience. Companies are generally pretty good about recognizing that they need to communicate with customers and prospects, but employees tend to be an afterthought. This may be because of the assumption that since employees are part of the organization they somehow “know” what’s going on. After all, it was in the newsletter or on Slack, wasn’t it? The fact of the matter, though, is that companies can’t leave it to chance that employees are paying attention to the messages they’re sending, or that they understand which are the key messages that they should be paying attention to. (more…)
Why Your Company, Product, or Service Name Doesn’t Really Matter
Tuesday, September 14th, 2021Throughout my career, I’ve been involved in numerous naming and branding initiatives and am always struck by not only the intrinsic challenges of getting a group of people to agree on a particular name/brand for a company, product, or service—but also by the enormous amount of angst and emotion that becomes part of the process.
In truth, the process of coming up with a name—whether for a company, a product, a campaign, a department, or whatever is a process that is virtually destined to be an emotional and difficult one from the get-go. Why? Because everybody has an opinion, everybody has an emotional stake in the outcome and everybody wants their brand to be the next Nike.
5 Quick Tips for Writing Headlines for Digital Marketing Efforts
Friday, September 3rd, 2021In the newspaper business, the above-the-fold headline is a crucial aspect of grabbing a potential reader’s attention and enticing them to pick up the paper and read on. The same is true of online headlines – the hyperlinks that come up in a list when you search for something in a search engine. In addition to page ranking, an enticing headline is an important way to drive traffic to your site. With that in mind, here are some tips for generating great headlines. (more…)