Category: Tips

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Does Arrogance Come With Success

This is a question that I have been pondering. Does arrogance come with success? Possibly arrogance will lead to your downfall. My husband and I have a private joke… we call business arrogance the “Waldorf Mentality”.

We’ve lived in several different states over the years – Ohio, Florida, Texas, and now Maryland. When we moved to Maryland just outside the DC area we were amazed at how unfriendly the people in the area were in comparison to the other places that we have lived. We’ve lived here now over 10 years and our perception has not changed. In fact, as we have chatted with other transplants, we’ve found that they share our viewpoint.

I am not sure whether it is a “clannish” kind of Southern Maryland thing, where natives have never lived anywhere else and feel that the unfriendliness and outright rudeness sometimes is the norm, but it can be shocking to say the least. For the two of us, we call it the “Waldorf Mentality”. That means, “we are so busy and so000 very important that we do not have time for you or for your little need”. Man, I have to say for businesses who embrace this arrogance, this is a real growth crusher.

It is easy to slip into the “Waldorf Mentality” – hey I live here and I see that sometimes I even get that attitude too. When business is great and clients are really rolling in, you can forget your best business model which by the way my husband and I used to call the “Southern Suck Up”. (This one is the opposite extreme where the customer is always right and you do anything to keep a customer.)

Now, I strive to stay humble and focused on what the customer needs. I may not be the best match sometimes for a customer and am not afraid to say so, but when I am a match, I roll out the red carpet and work my best to be the best “partner” for success ever. So what mentality have you embraced? Is success and the arrogance that comes with it becoming your downfall?

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Facebook Vanity URLs

There’s still time, but you should act quickly. You can get an easier URL to remember and share for your Facebook page. Facebook launched the vanity URLs several weeks ago, so many of the best and smallest names are already gone, but there is no time to waste.

Next time you log into your Facebook account you will probably see a list of URLs that Facebook suggests for you. You can even check some of your own selections. If you are like some of our clients, you clicked this closed and now that you want a vanity URL you cannot find where to get one in the Facebook control panel settings.

Here’s how to get your vanity URL:

1. Log into your Facebook account.

2. Enter this URL in your browser: http://www.facebook.com/username/ 

3. This will bring up the Vanity URL screen and allow you to select your vanity URL.

So what’s the big deal? Well my vanity URL is www.Facebook.com/nancy.mccord that is a whole lot easier to remember than what it was before with a huge string of numbers and characters.

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HootSuite Reviewed

Do you have multiple Twitter profiles like I do? Then HootSuite is just right for you. I have a Twitter account for my business under the name mccordweb and due to popularity and name recognition I now have a second Twitter profile – nancymccord. For me it is a problem to do tweets in two places – too time consuming.

HootSuiteWith HootSuite, I can post to both Twitter accounts or just one account with one click. I can even schedule tweets to one or both whenever I want from one online control panel. In fact that is the beauty of HootSuite, it is an online application that really saves you time. You can have as many Twitter profiles set up as you desire. Then when you want to tweet, just click on the profile icon to assign where your tweet will be published. It’s easy!

HootSuite even allows you to review @ replies and direct messages for each profile on one very handy screen. For me, the power Twitter user, this is excellent news!

Now the reality of the situation is that HootSuite does not replace TweetDeck for me at this point, hopefully TweetDeck will add a multi-profile management option in the future, but for now does not. Typically during the day I will have TweetDeck open to monitor Twitter traffic and topics and also a browser screen open with HootSuite. This way I can rapidly tweet with one click yet monitor my groups and traffic.

HootSuite is not an application to replace TweetDeck, which is still hands down the best Twitter aggregator that I have tried, but it does make posting to multiple Twitter profiles easy which you simply cannot do with TweetDeck.

Just be careful if you have multiple Twitter accounts in posting the same content to all. Twitter can consider this spamming and will close your account so be judicious about when you tweet about the same topic on multiple Twitter accounts.

You can sign up for access to HootSuite for free and check it out for yourself.

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Google Wave Is It The Next Big Thing?

You can sign up for early access to Google Wave here.  What is Google Wave? Well to me, it looks like Twitter-Google.com-AOL IM-Flkr-Facebook all rolled into one interface. You can read what Google says about it and see screen shots on the Google website for the application.

To me it looks like the next generation of social networking and team collaboration using many of the same applications that we use separately right now. I am thinking that Google should call it Gitter or maybe GFace, or how about Instant G. But no-o-o-o, they have named it Google Wave.

Well I will be riding the crest of the “Wave” when it is released and will keep you posted about this revolutionary new web application that will be out later this year.

The application is being created in part by the same team that has been responsible for Google Maps. With Google Friend Connect, Google is really looking to break into the social networking phenomena and now with Google Chrome in place Google Wave may just be the application that will be positioned to be the tidal wave that will crash the competition in the social networking field.