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Announcing the winners of the SmartBrief holiday giveaway

SmartBrief Editor — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:58:19 +0000

Congratulations to the following winners of our SmartBrief holiday giveaway! Thanks to everyone who participated in the contest!

The winner of the written entry is Mari Whitney, who left this comment:

“One Christmas, our large family made the decision to only exchange gifts that we made, and we drew names, which were kept a secret. At one point in the evening, my 82 year old father got down on one knee, and sang “their song” to my mother, who was seated in a wheel chair, with absolute love in both of their eyes. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house, and today, they are both deceased. I wish someone had been able to record this memory so we could watch it every Christmas, because it was the best Christmas gift I ever saw given.”

The winner of the Twitter entry is Leah Ekmark, who left this winning tweet.

Winners, please e-mail Web Editor Doris Nhan at dnhan@smartbrief.com with your contact information.

For more holiday cheer, check out our Gift Guides, a collection of more than 200 gift ideas for your friends, family, co-workers — and yourself.

SmartBrief on Social Media: Part 1 and Part 2
SmartBrief on Leadership: Part 1 (sign up for SmartBrief on Leadership t0 get Part 2 coming Dec. 15!)
SmartBrief on Your Career: Part 1 and Part 2
Restaurant SmartBrief: Part 1 and Part 2
SmartBrief on ExecTech: Part 1 and Part 2
SmartBrief on Sustainability: Part 1 and Part 2
SmartBrief for the Business Traveler: Part 1 and Part 2

A SmartBrief gift to get you in the holiday spirit: Win a $50 gift card

SmartBrief Editor — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 13:00:00 +0000

UPDATE: We have announced our two winners. A big congrats to Mari Whitney, who left this comment, and Leah Ekmark, who left this winning tweet. Thanks to all who entered!

Want a chance to win $50 and make your holiday season a little bit richer? Read on for details.

In November, SmartBrief produced an inaugural series of gift guides that compiled more than 100 gift ideas for industry professionals. Did you miss it? See the links below to see some of our favorite gifts from Part 1.

“Honey Badger” T-shirts for the Internet meme fan who reads SmartBrief on Social Media.
Tugo cup holder for rolling bags for the jet-setter who reads SmartBrief on Leadership.
Flying alarm clock for the weekday warrior who reads SmartBrief on Your Career.
Bacon Pickles from Unbound Pickling for the food and wine enthusiast who reads Restaurant SmartBrief.
Bluetooth keyboard for Apple’s iPad with built-in stand and case for the office ninja who reads SmartBrief on ExecTech.
Carbon offsets via The Nature Conservancy for the eco-conscious who read SmartBrief on Sustainability.
WineHug self-inflating protective travel pouch for the on-the-road reader of SmartBrief for the Business Traveler.

We realize that’s a lot of gifts to give and to receive. To help with your holiday shopping, we’re giving out two $50 gift cards.

There are two ways to win.

No. 1: Twitter entry: Click the “Tweet this!” icon, or tweet what you see below for a chance to win.

I want to win a $50 holiday gift card! http://bit.ly/t8A7C2 (via: @SmartBrief) #sbgifts

You can tweet as many as two times per day. Each tweet is an entry to win. We’ll randomly draw the winner Dec. 12. All tweets must have the #sbgifts hashtag.

No. 2: Written entry: Write about your favorite holiday story or gift idea, and link back to this page. Link to your post in the comments box. OR submit your entry by adding a comment to this page.

The SmartBlogs editorial team will select the best-written entry. Remember, you MUST leave a comment on this post for it to be considered an entry. You may post only once. Our decisions are subjective and final.

What you need to know

Tweets must contain #sbgifts.
The deadline is Dec. 12, and the winner will be announced shortly thereafter.
No purchase is necessary to win.

Want even more ways to get into the holiday spirit? Sign up for your favorite SmartBrief newsletter above and keep an eye out for Part 2 — and 100 more gift ideas — delivered straight to your inbox Dec. 8.

Live from #OPENNYT: Better safe than sorry is no way to approach social media

Brooke Howell — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 10:11:15 +0000

One of the mistakes American Express has made in recent years was being too cautious with social media, said Susan Sobbott, president of American Express OPEN, Monday during the panel on “Decoding the New Digital Consumer” at The New York Times Small Business Summit.

American Express is all caught up now and engaging on a variety of channels, but Sobbott’s advice to other companies is to not “let over-caution keep you out of the spaces where every business should be today.” For example, Facebook should be your first stop because “people are listening to their friends” there; the next stop should be Twitter.

But you know your business best, and you can identify the social media channels and technology that are best to help you get where you want to go, said panelist Claire Hughes Johnson, Google’s vice president of global online sales.

Although the lack of control over everything that happens on social media channels can be scary for company leaders — especially those who aren’t comfortable with the technology in general — social media can be a boon for business.

For example, all businesses face difficulties, and you can use social media to develop a good relationship with customers before you face a crisis, said Susan Lyne, chairman of Gilt Groupe.

You can also take all of the positive messages people post about your business and highlight them, said Chris Maguire, co-founder of Etsy, Waffl and Postling.

At the social media breakout session earlier in the day, Naked Pizza co-founder and Chief Brand Architect Robbie Vitrano told attendees they don’t gain by being over-controlling of social media and the conversation that’s going on there about their businesses.

Of course things can go wrong, but “if things go badly on social media, respond to it immediately with honesty and openness,” and have fewer secrets, advised Vitrano, explaining he and Naked Pizza’s other leaders have found it works better that way.

Image credit: Warchi, via iStockphoto.com

With a little help from technology, you can harness the power of social media for customer service

Brooke Howell — Wed, 11 May 2011 09:30:43 +0000

The second post in SmartBrief’s Spotlight on Customer Service series is brought to you by First Data, a global leader in electronic commerce and payment processing. Check out First Data’s white paper on using e-gifting to drive your social-marketing strategy and improve customer relationships.

Not only do people care about customer service received from businesses, but they also care more than they did last year, according to the American Express Global Customer Service Barometer survey released this month.

Seventy percent of Americans said they are willing to spend more money at businesses that provide good customer service, according to the February survey. That’s up from 58% who said the same in 2010.

Today, social media are an important vehicle for interacting with customers, but not in the way you might think. Ninety percent of survey respondents said when they have to have concerns addressed remotely, they prefer to speak with a representative on the phone rather than via social media, a chat program or another newer form of communication.

So where does social media come into play?

People like to talk about their experience with customer-service representatives, and social media are used to spread the word. Social tools can help comments spread faster and further than with traditional word of mouth.

The bad news is that the survey says consumers tell more people about a bad customer-service experience — an average of 16 — than about a good one — an average of nine. Think how much further those comments travel when they’re posted on social networks and can be seen and reposted.

Luckily, businesses can monitor what customers are telling others via social media and use that information to improve their customer service, something you can’t do with people’s comments to friends on the phone, during a baseball game or at a bar — unless, of course, you have the money to deploy a vast network of covert operatives. But you will need a little software to get the job done.

If you don’t want to invest much more than time, you can get started with a free, basic version of software by companies such as TweetDeck and HootSuite that lets you track comments posted on various social media from one convenient dashboard, available on your desktop and smartphone.

Another free option, InboxQ, allows you to find out who is asking questions about your business — or any topic you want — on Twitter. So if someone is wondering your location, you can tweet back your address. Or if someone is looking for customer service, you can ask the person to direct-message you a phone number, then call to help out.

If you want to be serious about monitoring what customers say about you online, you should consider paying for software by a company that offers a more comprehensive and customizable approach, such as Radian6 or Sysomos.

These tools are nice when you can give a customer an unexpected hand with a minor issue. But they become vital when a customer has a serious complaint, because social media have led to the expectation that people will get a response — and fast.

Consider the fallout of Domino’s Pizza a la “YouTube Boogergate,” which blew up spring 2009 after an employee posted a video of a co-worker blowing his nose into sandwiches and doing other disgusting things to customers’ food. Domino’s waited to respond and suffered because of it.

It’s a good reason to seriously consider taking advantage of the software available to avoid a similar fate.

Image credit: JohnnyLye via iStockPhoto.com

The 140-character comeback strategy

Guest Blogger — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:05:11 +0000

The other day I was talking with a highly accomplished HR consultant, whose business took a real beating during the market downturn. Before long, our chat morphed into a focused discussion around her expertise, and I found myself taking notes. “Say,” I said, “how’s about we make this official, and I write an article based on your advice and quoting you?” Instead of saying, “Gee, that would be swell,” she treated me to a 15-minute monologue about what a lousy marketer she is.

What a shame. Her recent troubles had punched the spirit right out of her. And now she leads with her weaknesses, instead of her strengths. She’s not the only one. To some degree or another, we all derive at least a little bit of our self-worth from how much we’re wanted in the marketplace. And in the past 18 to 24 months, our collective self-worth deficit has taken a hit. So how do we get that mojo back so we can job hunt, market our business or promote ourselves effectively?

Here’s where social media can come in very handy. We know about the advantages of LinkedIn and Twitter as tools for landing the next gig, but social media is also invaluable for helping us change our minds about ourselves. Are you a hammered survivor of some really crappy times, limping, wounded and ineffectual? Or are you a sharp-thinking, highly productive, thought leader who is passionate about your life’s work? With social media, the choice is entirely yours as to which image you want to build up.

It’s the ultimate self-esteem recovery plan. “Tweet as if,” so to speak.

For advice on this topic, I called my friend, Libby Gill, an executive coach and author of the book, “You Unstuck: Mastering the New Rules of Risk Taking in Work and In Life.” Here’s what she had to say:

“Social media is like moving to a new high school. You can leave everything that’s negative behind you, and put everything positive that you want to feature in the foreground,” Gill says. “The people you meet via social media don’t know you’ve been out of work for 2.5 years and just lost your house. And they don’t have to. That information isn’t valuable to them. What you have to offer them is. And you can reinvent yourself by focusing on that.”

The keys to using social media to mend your self-esteem are pretty much the same keys you would use to build out your networks and find new work. Add value to conversations already on a roll. Contribute eye-opening insights into topics that might have gone a little tired. Tell brief, witty stories about some aspect of your world that will make people laugh and follow you. Get active in new groups that are tangential to the ones populated by folks who already know you. Be retweet-worthy but also be generous in spreading the word about others. Discover other people whose work you admire and tell the world about them. By the time you’re ready to emerge, you will have cultivated a circle of relationships with people who will be so glad to tell the world about you, too.

“Success has always been about relationships,” says Gill. “And social media is such a great way to build relationships with people who know you mainly as a generous source of valuable information. When the time comes to meet those people in person, you have that rich relationship already in place. You will be known in the context of who you are now, instead of what kind of past you just survived.”

Image credit: Creativeye99, via iStock

Today’s bonus tracks: Building a team that works

Guest Blogger — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:39:40 +0000

Instead of trying to make the process shape the team — why not let the team shape the process? “Give your team a bit of time to play around and figure out where you want to go before officially launching anything,” Celine Roque writes. Once you’ve got your team set up, focus on cultivating a collaborative, engaged group and the rest will follow, she suggests. For more great workplace stories, check out SmartBrief on Workforce.

Photo credit, Nikada via iStock

The cruel hand of Twitter

Mary Ellen Slayter — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:35:38 +0000

Last week’s SmartBrief on Workforce poll: If “Cisco fatty” were your hire, would you rescind the offer?

Yes — 90%
No — 10%

I’m with the vast majority of you — that guy would have been out looking for another job. Maybe I’m too harsh, but I think his decision to broadcast his derision at his soon-to-be employer speaks volumes about his judgment. There are way too many awesome people out there looking for work right now to waste my time — or my employer’s money — on people like him.

I’d love to hear from the 10 percent of you that said you’d still keep his offer open. What was your reasoning?

This week’s most clicked

Mary Ellen Slayter — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:44:55 +0000

The 5 most-clicked links in SmartBrief on Workforce this past week:

Image credit, iStock

A Twitter role model?

Mary Ellen Slayter — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:10:41 +0000

Twittering can help you find a job. It can also cost you a job. Maybe even a relationship. How do you draw the line? Andy Blumenthal, the chief technology officer at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, seems to have found the right formula. In this short, punchy interview with OhMyGov, he spells out his agency’s mission in under 140 characters, touches on how the federal government is going Web 2.0, and explains how he balances his personal need for expression with representing the federal government. “I use my own judgment. Fortunately I have a great boss who trusts me,” he says.

Image courtesy of Andy Blumenthal

This week’s most clicked

Mary Ellen Slayter — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 13:32:50 +0000

The 5 most-clicked links in SmartBrief on Workforce this past week:

Image credit, iStock

SmartBlog on Leadership » Twitter

Announcing the winners of the SmartBrief holiday giveaway

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