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What better way to begin the new week with a clever 3 minute explanation on “What Leads to Success?”….
Do You Really Want to be a Leader?
“Too many leadership scholars and executives are obsessed by a pointless question: Are leaders born, or are they made? The answer is irrelevant. The truth is, you do not know what you are born with until you try very hard to express it,” say Prof. Bottger and Dr. Barsoux in a recent Wall Street Journal piece on leadership. 
The article is based on “three questions that executives should ask themselves to assess their own leadership potential: “How far do you want to go?”, “What are you willing to invest?”, and “How will you keep it up?”.
How would you respond to these questions?
Serving Up a New Gratitude this Thanksgiving
“Last Thanksgiving, it looked as if a hard year was coming and it was and it did. The holiday was shadowed by a sense of economic foreboding-Wall Street failing, companies falling and layoffs coming. It isn’t over-no one thinks it’s over. But the mood this Thanksgiving looks to be different,” writes Peggy Noonan in a recent Wall Street Journal opinion. She goes on to write about “a new gratitude we’re serving up this Thanksgiving and while I don’t often agree with her remarks, this particular piece is worth a few moments of your time to reflect on this holiday, 2009 style. Have an enjoyable day.
Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum
Thanksgiving is normally quite a busy time for travelers. I don’t know about you but things like baggage fees and energy surcharges on restaurant bills really seem to annoy me. Often times I wonder why these folks don’t just adjust their prices in order to avoid further “duck nibbling” customers. The following blog further amplifies that point.
Baggage fees have become nearly ubiquitous in the airline industry, and Southwest has capitalized on passenger hostility to the dreaded surcharge with its playful Bags Fly Free campaign. 
“Some airlines charge your bag up to $20 to ride in the bottom of the plane,” says the narrator of one commercial. “In the dark! No peanuts or nothin’. And then if your bag wants to bring one of its little bag friends, for company, they can charge up to another $30. That’s up to $100 roundtrip! Why do they hate your bags?”
Southwest has an excellent point—and one that resonates with its customers, Jackie Huba says. She even suggests that baggage fees might explain why Southwest and JetBlue (another no-fee carrier) continue to record an uptick in passenger miles and filled seats while rivals undergo significant declines.
“Those nickle [sic] and dime fees add up, the airlines will say, but really, they do little more than penalize customers with complexity and disguise the end price,” she says.
“It’s no different when a phone or cable company charges activation fees. May as well call them aggravation fees, as in ‘It’s aggravating to have a new customer.'”
The Po!nt: No matter how you position or justify a fee, many customers will consider it a penalty. As Kevin Krone, vice-president of marketing for Southwest, told BusinessWeek, “If we’re trying to get people to travel, we should probably let people take their suitcase.”
Source: Marketing Profs
Warning: Watching This Video May Lead to Work! [But It’ll Also Improve Your Blog]
I personally have been blogging for eight (8) months now. Needless to say it has been quite the adventure, challenge and yes, a passion.
Today’s interesting post comes from Darren Rowse at ProBlogger. Rowse’s video… “asks you ‘what is your blogging vice?’ and challenges us all to focus upon one of the most important aspects of blogging – creating content.” There are a ton of reasons why bloggers procrastinate and I certainly agree with Darren’s notion that there are many distractions that come with wanting to over analyze and tweak your blog which can easily get in the way of your content production. Take a look and let me know if you have experienced any of these inhibitors. What’s getting in the way of your blogging?
Tags: Blogging, Darren Rowse, Pro Blogger
Entrepreneurs & Inspiration
Here’s an inspirational piece that I came across at Sprouter.com.
“Sometimes it’s hard to see the impact that one person can have on the world. With a population of six billion, how can one person make a difference? This is especially true for entrepreneurs – it’s hard to see the larger impact you can have when you’re struggling to get your business off the ground. That’s why the video below is one of our favourites, and we watch it whenever we need some inspiration. The video is called “Entrepreneurs can change the world†and it was made by the folks at Grasshopper. The video focuses on the thinkers, innovators & doers who built our countries: otherwise known as entrepreneurs. As it says in the video, entrepreneurs have a clear vision of how life can be better for all of us, even when times are tough. Entrepreneurs are fueling the economy, helping people stay connected, and creating jobs – changing the world one idea at a time. The most powerful message is that an entrepreneur can be anyone – even you. You probably have that single brilliant idea – so what are you waiting for? Act on it – and see how the rewards are almost always worth the risk.”
Taking Your Business From ‘Good to Great’
Business expert and author Jim Collins spent five years researching his best-selling book, ‘Good to Great’…
Best from the Web
“You’ve got to do it, especially these days.  So you might as well make it fun (kind of). Read on to find out how…” Networking for People Who Hate to Network
Here are two interesting articles on leadership and social media:
No Escapin’ This
Ask 100 people for their opinion of social-media tools like Twitter and you’ll likely get 100 different responses—ranging from extreme enthusiasm to extreme derision. However you feel about social media, here is one simple fact: Even if you’re a naysayer who considers these tools inane and a waste of time, a large number of your most influential customers do not. And that means you must at least monitor the conversation for possible signs of trouble.
In a Premium article at MarketingProfs, Mack Collier outlines five such tools you simply cannot ignore. They include Google Sidewiki, a new add-on for Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers. Once installed, it can open a side panel where visitors are able to read other visitors’ feedback—and leave their own—on any page at any website.
“Every webpage now can be commented on,” explains Collier. “Every. Single. One. Potentially, your competitor could comment on your company’s website criticizing your products and services. So can your customers. Did you launch a blog and turn off comments? Now your readers can still comment ‘on’ your blog.”
In other words, you can no longer control the conversation, even on your own homepage—because for those with the Sidewiki tool, every site is a social-media site.
The Po!nt: “You need to familiarize your company with what this tool can do,” says Collier, “so that you can react to feedback left for your company and, hopefully, become proactive in using Sidewiki to connect with current and potential customers.”
Source: MarketingProfs.
Don’t Rev the Search Engines Yet
As more and more customers use the Internet to research purchases, you might assume that any online marketing strategy requires a significant level of search engine optimization (SEO). But if your target market is local, argues Kenton Newby in an article at MarketingProfs, that assumption may not necessarily apply.
“[A]lthough SEO has proven to be a profitable marketing channel for many businesses,” he says, “you should ask yourself a few questions before investing in a full-blown SEO campaign.”
Newby suggests several questions, including these:
- Are there enough people in your local area looking online for what you offer? He points to resources such as the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to determine how many people search for particular keywords each month.
- Does your page do a good job of converting visitors to sales? “No matter how much traffic you get or what your website rankings are,” he says, “you can’t cover the bills unless people are actually buying. So you need to know how well your site converts your visitors into taking action.”
- What is the lifetime value of your customer? Knowing how much the typical customer will spend over the course of the relationship helps to determine whether a major SEO campaign makes sense for your company.
The Po!nt: As effective as SEO can be for many businesses, it might not deliver the ROI you need to justify its expense.
Source: MarketingProfs.
Tags: Blog, Internet, Kenton Newby, Marketing Profs, SEO
