Some of you reading this, might be thinking, “What the heck is ‘Twitter’?”,

while others might be thinking, “What’s the POINT of Twitter? Sounds like a pointless waste of time to me!”

while still others are thinking, “Twitter is so cool! I’ve built many wonderful friendships and collaborative relationships there, and have learned heaps!”

You can guess which camp I fall under! But there is still so much to learn about Twitter–not to mention the many applications and associated websites than help your marketing efforts and your market research, in addition to building and strengthening your relationships. That last point is the most important!

If you want to really be “in the know,” tune in tonight (June 13) as Deborah Micek, Biz Coach AKA mover and shaker in Hawaii and Warren Whitlock talk about the different Twitter Applications as they continue to create content for their Twitter Handbook. You can find out the details by clicking here! You’ll be glad you did! If you can’t make it live, I am almost certain that it will be archived for your listening pleasure later.

And if you don’t already have a Twitter account, sign up at twitter.com and start “tweeting” your expertise and interests and making your presence known.

Update June 17, 2008: If you’d like to listen to the show, click here. After ironing out logistics, they really get started about 15-20 minutes. Well, worth the listen!

–Carol Dickson-Carr

In the process improvement world of Six Sigma, the word Kano is associated with customer service—exceptional customer service—if you’re in the right quadrant!

The use of quadrants and matrices in business to gauge where you are is not uncommon. I immediately think of Robert Kiyosaki’s Cashflow Quadrant and Stephen Pierce’s Cycle of Success I heard about at the Dallas World Internet Summit a couple of weeks ago (as of this writing) to name a couple. And in both cases, there is a most desired quadrant of the four to be in.

Noritki Kano’s model is based on customer expectations, which are always changing right along with technology. There are levels of quality in a product or service that people expect implicitly (i.e., working windows & tires on a car) and explicitly (i.e., good mileage if it’s a compact car).

And then there are the bells and whistles associated with unexpected or “exciting” quality. In this day and age an example might be an SUV that gets 100 MPG! The following graph shows how to capture what I just described graphically. This is also known as the Kano Model:

That was a tangible product example. Let’s look at a recent real life service example:

The Unscientific Informal Grocery Store Focus Group…

My husband went out to a local grocery store this weekend to grab a few last minute items he forgot to buy earlier for a barbeque we hosted yesterday. When you go to a grocery store you expect a certain level of service, right? This may include speedy checkout in the 10-items-or-less express lane, for example.

He was in a hurry, and the lines were long everywhere and not moving. He guessed that everyone was doing their Saturday shopping at once, but the reality was that the computer servers were down and no one had made an announcement to the customers who were waiting. He eventually had to ask, and then he ultimately ended up leaving to get his items at another grocery store.

This is an example of being in the lower left quadrant of the Kano Model. You don’t want to be there!

So today, while hanging out with friends and Vietnamese food, we all sat around with our cuisine after a swim and talked about what we all believed fell under those various levels of quality in a grocery store. Here are a few of the thoughts we came up with:

Basic Quality Category-What we take for granted (implicit): a climate controlled building, working cash registers, shelves for groceries…

Expected Quality Category-Explicit expectations: Quick checkout in the express lane, fresh food, courteous staff…

Exciting Quality Category-Above and beyond: Free groceries, four-for-one specials, random cash awards of $X for the Xth customer who walks through the door…

You get the idea.

But keep in mind that there is always going to be competitive pressure to stay on top of innovation. To quote Tom Pyzdek, “Today’s exciting quality is tomorrow’s basic quality.”

So what are you doing to excite and delight your customers?

–Carol Dickson-Carr

Check out this entry from The Independent and this entry from Jim Turner’s Pit Bull Marketing Blog… And take heed!

“I don’t want to,” my eight year old daughter said sadly when I asked her to clean her room. I asked her why that was her typical response. Her reply, “Because no one ever seems to want to help me.” I’d asked her that same question three years ago and her reply was, “It’s [the task] too big!”

In each instance, my thought immediately went to her being overwhelmed. Even though the payoff would be an allowance, she often wanted to forgo the money to get out of doing it! That is, until I reminded her of strategies to getting it done without the task feeling as daunting, with the biggest tip being: take baby steps and prioritize by working on one area of the room or category at a time (i.e., school papers, then shoes, then stuffed animals, etc.). But truth be told, she has no real passion for cleaning her room.

When we coach our adult clients, or sometimes when we are being coached or mentored ourselves, there is also often a similar trend of resistance in some cases. This can be true whether we’re dealing with grunt work that doesn’t light us up (One word to that: Outsource!) or if we have been presented with quite a few cool tools that can help our businesses in the long run.

Let’s stay with the Web 2.0 theme: Introducing blogging, podcasting, video creation, talk radio, and social networks to people who are totally new to it in a six week period have sometimes invoked these types of interjections:

“I feel like I’ve been sprayed with a fire hose of information!”

“How can I incorporate it all?”

“I don’t have enough time.”

“I am not a techie!”

“AAAAAAHHHH!”

The baby steps and prioritizing come in handy again. And so does breathing. If rotating between using all the tools while learning them doesn’t float your boat after getting introduced to them, try this: Figure out which tool interests you the most and carve out a specified time daily or every other day to become one with it until you master it, and then move on to the next favorite and repeat the process.

And remember, you don’t have to take this journey alone. Take advantage of all the resources out there. The ones I listed in the previous blog post are just a starting point.

So tell me, if you have a favorite Web 2.0 tool, what is it and why?

If you haven’t tried out any of the tools, I’d also like to know why?

My inquiring mind wants to know!

–Carol Dickson-Carr

The video clip below shares the remaining seven of ten tips to maintaining balance while learning about or currently employing any or all of the Web 2.0 technology to your business model.

Once you dive into the tools (Bea & I can help you with that too!), here are a few more resources worth checking out in the Web 2.0 community–these are people I’ve built relationships with in a social networking framework:

Facebook Goddess: Mari Smith

For Business Blogging Experts: Denise Wakeman & Patsi Krakoff of The Blog Squad

Twitter Experts: Deb Micek and Warren Whitlock

Video (and integrating all the tools): Sherman Hu

Wordpress Expert: Kim Beasley

Folks who know me know I am the hugest advocate of storytelling. Check out Carla Young’s program for more on that!

And for more on time mastery, check out Ann Rusnak (The Time Diva!).

And the list goes on!

This clip will share three of ten tips to maintaining balance while learning about or currently employing any or all of the Web 2.0 technology to your business model.

Check out our comprehensive multimedia Business Pulse library!

Blogging, podcasting, vlogging, internet radio, social networking, internet media–all of it, we believe is here to stay and will only become more popular and mainstream over time. This is what Bea and I talked about in our preview call for an hour.

So listen in as Productivity Coach, Carol Dickson-Carr and Executive Coach, Bea Fields, lead a group of modern day biz leaders on the topic of how to grow their businesses through the power of Web 2.0!

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I know I’m dating myself, but I loved A Different World, the NBC spin-off of the Cosby show as a youth in the 90s. Hearing Whitley say, “Relax, Relate, Release!” was something I just adopted even when it was hard for me to relax, relate or release!

Lately, I was starting to think the moon or some cosmic force was having an effect on so many people in my sphere: In my academic world, I had some students freaking out about their grades as the semester nears an end, fellow professors stressed about publication and tenure and general overwhelm… In the coaching world, a more-than-usual amount of clients have been experiencing a sustained sense of overwhelm.

And today! Today, I can’t remember how many times I had to tell someone to BREATHE, whether it was my daughter, one of her teammates, one of the parents of the teammates, or yours truly (uh-huh!) when all was said and done.

So after I got back from dropping off my daughter at one of her friends’ houses for a sleepover this evening, I immediately turned on my recording software and started to speak a meditation around overwhelm and stress. Rather than the usual gregarious tone some of you may have heard in my podcasts (particularly the storytelling one for Six Sigma), my voice is quite even and calm in this audio.

There was some irony in my process because of various interruptions and false starts while I was recording. I was so glad when I finally finished my vocals and could move on to mixing the ocean waves and my relaxing music in!

So if you, or someone you know is starting to feel the pinch, or if you just want to do some preventative maintenance, I invite you to get in a quiet place and treat yourself for 14 minutes by downloading the MP3 below and listening:

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is a fresh (albeit second-hand) account, but my source (who asked to remain anonymous since this is a small world) is quite reliable as he’s been a very dear friend of mine for almost 18 years. The following are the snafus of various conference participants and paid speakers.

No-No #1: Agree to be on a panel but book your flight so that you miss the panel and others end up carrying you

No-No #2: Show up for your presentation unprepared (extemporaneous is great as long as you’re not rambling and you stick to your promised topic; being unprepared isn’t!)

No-No #3: Deliver a 40 minute presentation that was only supposed to be 20 minutes, thereby cutting into the time of other participants (and the moderator is at fault here too!).

No-No #4: Take it for granted that because you’re an award-winning author that you can take a $5,000 plus fee and do a reading (from the worst chapter in a book that’s been out for a number of years mind you) when the participants expected a keynote.

As my eight year old daughter would say, “What NOT to do!”

I’ve loved my iPod for almost three years now, and sheepishly admit that I can’t imagine my life without it (many say the same thing about the internet).  I just read a quick blurb in the Wall Street Journal by Nancy Matsumoto about protecting your ears. It talks about how volume-control settings on MP3 players can help reduce the risk of hearing damage. I just might invest in some new headphones in short order now!