Interaction Is Important in Social Networking

Social networking sites, like Twitter and Facebook, have proven to be highly beneficial for many businesses and brands.  Most will argue that social networking is the future of marketing, and most businesses and brands have taken advantage of the ability to collect followers and fans by taking ten minutes to set up an account.  But contrary to popular activity, these sites are not just for the mass distribution of special offers and advertisements.  Members are not just looking for content, but community.  Communities involve interaction.  And like any other community, there are social etiquettes and expectations.  If you choose to basically ignore your followers and fans, you will still get exposure, but you will not get the full circle benefits…

Is Your Customer Telling The Truth?

Dishonesty is an annoying side effect of doing business.  Whether it is simply to cheat the system or because they honestly need help with a legitimate problem, unfortunately, customers lie sometimes.  The argument is already won that lying is unethical, but it still occurs and in the end business must go on.  As a customer service representative, it is usually not in your job description to cleanse the moral capacity of the public, but you still have to deal with dishonest customers and be able to sleep at night.  Here are a few tips on how to deal with customers that refuse to tell you the truth.

Cut Them Some Slack

It is easy to take offense when you know that the…

Dale Carnegie: Win People to Your Way of Thinking

In a previous article, “Being Friendly: A Dale Carnegie Business Solution”, the importance of being friendly was discussed from Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.  Being friendly is part of doing good business, and winning people to your way of thinking is a great way to overcome the many barriers that can come along with doing business, too.  It is not always easy to get things done when everyone has a different idea of how to approach business operations, like marketing projects, collecting on invoices, earning new clients, etc.  Further, when a dispute is in place, it can be challenging to get other people to do the things you ask of them.  Dale…

Three P’s To Boost Productivity

Although there may be many projects to complete, managers can get distracted with meetings, emails, phone calls, planning and organizing.  At the end of the day, you may not accomplish any of the projects requiring your attention.  Increasing your own productivity can be a major struggle when so many other things take you away from your assignments.  Soon enough you may face a mountain of tasks that may have lingering deadlines.  Sometimes, the struggle may be finishing what you have already started, and sometimes the biggest battle is getting started.  Where do you start when the mountain of work seems bigger than your desk?  One way to avoid becoming overwhelmed is to remember three P’s to boost productivity: Pinpoint, Prioritize, Pitch.

Pinpoint:

Identify…