Word Today • Refresh • 5 ways to make business better.

Posted on May 30, 2011 by Diane A. Curran

“Just hit the refresh button…”

Have you ever found yourself in a love-hate struggle with your computer? And doesn’t it act like a perfect symbol of what stops you in business? It can start pretty innocently:

You’ve been browsing around, doing research, seeing what’s new in your business, or what’s news in the world. The next thing you know, your desktop is a mass of overlapping windows and your history panel has zillions of pages listed, so just scrolling through all that data to find the needle in your haystack makes you crazy.

Or your browser is hanging, hanging, hanging, and won’t load your favorite website. It will NOT open, and you grouse, “Harumph, what an annoying web site,” even though it’s the one you visit faithfully 6 times a day.

Sometimes, your apps even start freezing, or your force quit button won’t work, and now you’ve gone beyond reason.

You think you might finally have fried your browser or computer with too much data, so you call your tech guru, or that friend who always talks you down off the ledge… or maybe gotten in cue for tech support.

What do they tell you? “Hit refresh. If that doesn’t work, we’ll just shut it down and wait a few minutes.”

“Whaaat?” you silently snarl while you hit the buttons as instructed, ” It can’t be this easy.”

We’ve all been there, probably secretly feeling sheepish when such simple solutions work.

Computers are programmed by human beings, so it’s easy to relate to what happens. They get overloaded, they crash, and they need a rest. They need to refresh, or maybe even a full stop. But they cannot do it by themselves, because they get stuck.

As independent business owners and solopreneurs, we need a refresh button!

We feel the pressure to work more, harder, faster, better, now! We race against time worried about keeping up with all the latest in our profession, our industry, our competition.

Do we “hit refresh” in our own worlds often enough?

I’m not talking major vacations here. Not even days off. Just moments throughout the day when we step away from the email inbox, the phones, the to-do lists, and the ever-present pressures of the day.

What does it take to refresh ourselves? Let’s choose to be “wow about business” whenever we choose, with 5 simple ways to make our own business better, using these easy ways to refresh:

  • Release tension before it settles: “How to Relax Quickly with a Sigh” by Roseanna Leaton in Ezine Articles
  • Retrain yourself for better breathing: “Breathing for Relaxation” by Claudia Cummins in Yoga Journal
  • Short walks clear the mind quickly, and do even more: “Short Brisk Walks Help Fitness, Heart Health and Mood” which is enticingly subtitled “Good news for sedentary persons who believe they have no time to exercise” from The American College of Sports Medicine.
  • Read your affirmations, and refresh your view of life. Start with: “The Wealthy Spirit” by Chellie Campbell, and you’ll laugh all the way to the bank while making your own life better every day.
  • Say your purpose out loud, every day. Refreshing your purpose every day is essential. It can also work in the moment, to clear your mind quickly when frustration hits. If the purpose statement you are saying does not move you, then commit to creating one that does. “Live Your life Out Loud: 30 Ways to Get Started” is a terrific  list by Sonya Derian on TinyBuddha.com. There is a lot about happiness and fun on this site, and what business owner doesn’t want more of that every day?
    These are all so great, and so quick to make a positive difference.

    I find the last technique— saying your purpose out loud— especially powerful and quick. I keep mine right next to my phone and computer nowadays, to help me stay untangled.

    Hint: A great way to test whether your business Vision and Mission statements are authentic commitments for you, is to test them out loud, too. Enjoy!

I feel refreshed and more inspired already!

— Diane A. Curran

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F.Y.I. • A Live Chat about Tweeting

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Diane A. Curran

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The New Yorker has a superstar of sorts on its staff, one Malcolm Gladwell.

His runaway hit The Tipping Point, followed by bestselling Blink, and now Outliers, made him a household name, at least among business owners, corporate mavens and appropriately-jealous pundits and culture mavens.

Today The New Yorker offered him up to its readers online in Live Chat, for an hour, to discuss his recent article, “Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted.”

The logic behind Mr. Gladwell’s opinions was well-presented in the article itself, and I was fascinated to see what more he would add in a virtual conversation. Happily, as of this posting date, the Chat transcript can be viewed in full here on The New Yorker site. Just click “replay” to read what transpired.

What catches my attention is the mashing together of  media: writing, online chatting and echoes of a fan-laden book-signing. He took his time to consider each question, answering more slowly, to present his thoughts cogently, succinctly, and very much in a writerly tone. After all, we were seeing his words, not hearing his voice.

He chatted about the limits of tweeting,  referencing his article’s evidence of twitter as a “low-risk’ communication platform, the opposite of what galvanizes social movements. It brought to mind Marshall McLuhan’s observations in his book, The Medium Is the Message in the 1960′s about TV as a “cool” medium.

I have been viewing Twitter more as a broadcast medium, with millions of local channels shouting their message. It strikes me as a “cool” medium,  blurting their steam-of-consciousness into the virtual airwaves, a bit like our Seti investigators, hoping their beams of data will land somewhere that can generate an intelligent response.

Do I dislike Twitter? No! It does seem a bit like keeping the TV on all day, though. Background noise, until and unless it suddenly catches your attention with something out of the ordinary— usually some fast-breaking event or super-rival sports playoff.

The early adapters came to Twitter for the conversation, and then, it exploded when online marketing technicians got the hang of it. Finally, with the help of Ashton Kutcher and CNN, it truly became another mass media outlet. Now, the Twitter execs are cogitating over whether to allow political ads in their new paid advertising service.

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F.Y.I. • Driving Traffic with Repeat Tweets – A Test Case

Posted on August 18, 2009 by Diane A. Curran

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Guy Kawasaki, a major figure in high tech marketing circles, in his regular ”How to Change the World” column on Aug 18th, writes a very interesting post on a hot topic:

“One of the dogmas of Twitter is that you should not repeat your tweets.”

Read the full post here.

Guy’s point about what I will call a “tweet-blitz” is an interesting one, and makes sense for business users from a market testing standpoint.

By the way, I tracked part of his test live from the ground up on Facebook, and was fascinated by the comments he got on both sides of the fence. He did indeed get both cheers and jeers.

What makes all the difference in his results?

In my opinion, it’s that his repeat tweets were just frequent enough to get noticed as repeats, thus gaining in positive recognition, but not so often as to drive people to “unfollow” him on Twitter in significant numbers.

His repeat tweets (not to be confused with re-tweets) were no closer together than 8 hours, and as far apart as 24 hours. Take a look at his results charts.

Food for Thought: Effective marketing takes discipline, and continually tests to find better ways to address changing market conditions and shifts in audience perception.

While you may not be able to control all the variables in your test, setting up your marketing to isolate as many variables as possible gives you the edge you need, and a proper through-line for improving results across time as you roll-out, and even repeat, successful campaigns.

— Diane A. Curran

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Word Today • Headline • 6 Tips to write a good one.

Posted on August 17, 2009 by Diane A. Curran

wowaboutbusiness-headline

“Read all about it!”

Thinking about headlines always brings the image to mind of a fast-paced 1940′s movie: Music blares while a newspaper spirals toward me at dizzying speed on the big screen, its fat block letters blazing a dramatic plot point, as a kid in a wool cap shouts the news, peddling his story “Hot off the press!”

Heck, I’m old enough to remember when Boston was a 2 newspaper town, with the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald competing hotly with morning and evening editions!

Great headlines sold papers, often with intentional puns, bad grammar and non-sequiturs generously applied.

These days in L.A., the local champion of pun-filled headlines is none other than Daily Variety, which cheekily plays footloose and fancy-free with its show biz fodder, relying upon clever copy to sell stories, just like in the olden days, to a very savvy, often jaded, audience of industry insiders.

Does small business need headlines?

In a word, yes. But why?

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Word Today • Brevity • When less is more in business.

Posted on August 14, 2009 by Diane A. Curran


I have just 4 quick things to say:

One: “Brevity Is the Soul of Wit”

Thus spake Shakespeare’s Polonius, in a speech full of voluminous verbiage, yet parched for wit.

We’ll cut him a bit of slack, as he is the bearer of bad news to Hamlet’s royal Mum and Daddy. Perhaps his news about their son was more than Polonius could handle with the emotional clarity needed to communicate elegantly. Or maybe Shakespeare had some private joke going, giving Polonius the classic symptoms of stage fright and fear-of-public-speaking.

How many times have any of us, even all of us, blathered on and on, completely unaware of the glaze building in our audience’s eyes and minds?  Or, aware of it, but unable to stop ourselves?

Two: “Less is more.”

Indeed. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then that might be the secret to keeping our soliloquies short in business conversations.

• Can you paint the picture in a brief, smart story, and trust your audience to get it?

• Can you give them just enough so they wind up wanting more?

• If you are blessed with your audience then asking you, “Tell me more!” … can you stay focused, stay just as brief, and ask them a question to draw them into real conversation with you? Aha!

Three: “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”

How’s that again?

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