Follow Trends While Doing a Juggling Act!

With 24 hours in a day and so much to do, how do you get your work done, take care of family responsibilities, and stay on top of trends and news in your industry and that of your clients?

Well, let’s do an accounting of the hours in a day. Let’s assume you are an average person who exercises on most days, commutes to and from work, and works an 8-hour day.

• Total hours in a day: 24 hours

• Average time sleeping: 7 hours … now you’re left with 17 hours

• Getting ready in morning: 40 minutes … now you’re left with 16 hours 20 minutes

• Breakfast: 20 minutes … now you’re left with 16 hours

• Lunch with client, friend, colleague: 1 hour … now you’re left with 15 hours

• Dinner at home includes prep time and clean-up: 1 hour … now you’re left with 14 hours

• Exercise time: 1 hour … now you’re left with 13 hours

• Commute to and from work: 2 hours … now you’re left with 11 hours

• Work: 8 hours … now you’re left with 3 hours

• “Free” time with family, friends, running errands, etc: 3 hours … there goes the day!

Now, I know you might be saying “I don’t sleep 7 hours a day” and granted, many of us don’t. However, for a 40-55 year old research indicates 6.8 hours are needed and for a 20-30 year old 7.2 hours are needed. So, let’s just say 7 are needed. Now, I’m not going to tell you what happens when you don’t get your needed sleep, but do the words “cranky”, “forgetful”, “tired”, “foggy” mean anything to you?

Now, how can you make the most of the time available to stay on top of the trends in business, in your industry, and in your clients’ industries without spending a lot of time searching for information? Well, here are two tips for you.

• First, subscribe to SmartBrief newsletters. Smartbrief compiles the top stories in specific publication or by industry. You select the publications or industries to follow and those stories will be delivered to you via email either daily or weekly depending on the frequency of the newsletter.

• Check out “LinkedIn Today” on LinkedIn under “News”. Here you can select the publications and/or industries to follow and you’ll see the most shared news stories and blogs on LinkedIn.

So, you might be wondering “Do these tips work?” Absolutely! I follow a number of industries and like being able to read articles and blogs on those industries in one or two places without having to hunt down every publication that may cover that industry.

Give it a try and let me know how you get your business and industry news in an efficient manner.

The Many Ways to Communicate with Customers

Phones, e-mail, texts, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube are all tools businesses use to communicate with their customers. How do YOU communicate with and market to your customers or prospective customers?

Now you may be wondering, “Do I need to communicate with my customers using all these mechanisms?” Quite simply, the answer is “No”. Yes, I know that’s a relief!

However, what you would want to do is really understand who your customer is, his or her age profile, and where or how your customer wants to interact with you. Let’s take a quick look at some of these communication tools.

Phone: clearly the overwhelming majority of people have access to phones; however, there is a growing trend in the U.S. away from landlines. In fact, younger customers are more likely to rely on a cell phone exclusively.

E-mail: this is a cost-effective way to communicate with customers. It’s also important to note that those under 44 years of age are less likely to use e-mail compared to those at least 45 years of age (according to a survey conducted in 2010 on internet usage by SSI).

Text: great way to communicate with customers under the age of 25 according to the same study in 2010. Also, promotional information can also be sent out via text messages.

 Facebook: another great way to communicate with all customers. Younger customers are most likely to communicate via Facebook. However, do NOT rely on this media exclusively and Facebook posts should be done in concert with other types of communication to establish trust. Although many messages are done electronically, people do not automatically trust these messages. Think of possibly participating in local events to make that human connection and post about the event on Facebook.

LinkedIn: good communication tool if your customers are other businesses or business people. One of the ways to use LinkedIn is to either post questions or answer questions in the “Answers” section.

Twitter: great way to reach a large number of people, but important to remember your message needs to be concise and clear at a maximum of 140 characters.

Just remember, the key is to make it easy for your customers to connect with you on their terms! Also, keep in mind these are all two-way streets of communication. If your customers post or tweet something, acknowledge them with a post or tweet and respond to their question.

Your goal with any method of communication is to keep the conversation going! Where have you had the most success in keeping the conversation going?

Diana Meyer
President, Meyer Marketing Intelligence
661.254.6141
dmeyer@meyermktg.com