There are a few phrases I hear as a customer that really get me. They include: “We’ll do this as a one-time courtesy.” (You’re only courteous to me, your customer, one time? Really?) “That’s not our policy” or the variation “That’s just our policy.” (Well, my policy is not to do business with people that…
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I might get fired for this post. I’m a little burned out on social media. Every day, thanks to Facebook, Twitter and a dozen or so other online communities in which I’m involved, I am awash in a sea of noise. And that’s all it is: noise. Sure you might manage the noise with any…
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Today it was announced by Cisco that they are discontinuing the manufacturing and marketing of the popular Flip camera. (Here’s the story as reported by Mashable this morning.) I own a fairly new Flip camera and, as a self-proclaimed video hack, I enjoyed the ease of travel and the quality of the video on the…
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Whether you are tweeting for yourself or tweeting for a brand/company it is important to make sure that you are putting the right message out there. Since Twitter allows you to send just about any message in 140 characters or less, that is plenty of space to influence your followers. However, it also leaves plenty…
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I had a professional fit done on my road bike last summer. They did not change any single thing by more than one inch, but in the end, it was like getting a new bike. That’s what the iPad 2 is like. No major changes, but the little things add up to something big. I…
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I rented a car from Thrifty this week in Las Vegas. I like Thrifty, and the woman who waited on my was great. Until… As I told her I didn’t want to pre-pay for gas, she informed me that I was required to bring a receipt from a gas station within 10 miles of the…
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I think the Kenneth Cole Twitter comment this morning is a great example of how fast social media can damage a brand and how a quick response is key to effective damage control. This blog was posted about eight hours after the original @KennethCole Tweet and it will be interesting to see how things evolve…
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I often remark how social media is not a new set of behaviors, but just a new set of tools. We’ve always just wanted to talk to each other, and social media makes that easier than ever. As a professional communicator, social media has provided me with a myriad of new outlets—and challenges—but I believe…
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I decided I needed (OK, maybe not needed, but certainly could use… OK, I just wanted) the new 120GB iPod, so I put my 80GB iPod on Craig’s List. The first email I got was from a “doctor” in Boulder who was in vacation in Hawaii, but wanted to pay me via PayPal and have…
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