One of the more helpful uses I have found for ChatGPT is creating case studies. I will demonstrate a prompt I used and the outline that took ChatGPT less than three minutes to generate. With the outline the bot provided, I could complete the case study in under an hour.

By integrating AI tools into your writing process you can focus more on the content quality and less on the manual labor of researching, brainstorming, creating outlines and generating first drafts. AI is not a substitute for your writing skills: it’s a tool to amplify your productivity and save you time.

Given a properly detailed prompt, ChatGPT will quickly produce the outlines for case studies  about your clients for your book, newsletter, blog, video, email or presentation. Fleshing out the content produced by AI, checking facts and citations is your responsibility.

In this example, I provided the fundamental elements of the marketing campaign I created and executed for a high net wealth accounting firm with a specialty in Crypto taxation.

***Note*** that I did not include the name of the company or the URL of the website because anything that you ask Chat GPT (or any other AI platform) becomes part of its Large Language Model and can potentially be copied or could give away business information that should not be made public.

Caveat: Garbage in, garbage out. Rather than simply asking ChatGPT to ‘Write a case study about my client, an accounting firm specializing in crypto taxation,” you’d get much better results with a prompt like the one below.

This is the prompt I provided to ChatGPT:

“I am a digital marketer who helps companies to increase their visibility online. This client’s  goals were to expand the reputation of the president of a high net wealth accounting firm as a thought leader, increase leads and web traffic.

To achieve these goals, I researched keywords, rewrote their website copy and worked with a graphic designer to make the site comprehensive, easy to read and engaging to  interact with. I ghost wrote and distributed 26 articles about crypto regulation and news for the president, who is a crypto taxation expert. I also handled their social media, increasing their following by 100 percent. Please write a case study about this client.”

The ChatGPT response

The following is the Case Study Outlineproduced by Chat GPT in a matter of seconds in response to my prompt. The only thing I’ve added is a testimonial that I already had received from the client.

ChatGPT wrote— “I’m creating a case study to showcase your success with the accounting firm. It will involve detailing the challenges, solutions, and results of your digital marketing efforts. Here’s an outline that you can use to form your case study.”

Heading: Digital Marketing Triumph: Doubling Online Visibility for a Leading Accounting Firm

Introduction

Briefly introduce the client as a reputable accounting firm specializing in crypto taxation, highlighting their need for an improved online presence to reflect their expertise and attract more clients.

Challenges

• The firm’s website was outdated and lacked engaging content.
• There was a deficiency in targeted keyword usage which affected their search engine rankings.
• Their social media presence was minimal, limiting their reach and engagement with potential clients and media.
• The firm needed to establish thought leadership in the niche area of crypto regulation and taxation.
• They were not taking advantage of their substantial LinkedIn following.

Solutions

• Keyword Research: Conducted comprehensive keyword research to identify terms that prospective clients were using to find services like theirs.
• Website Copy and Design: Created the wireframe for a new site. Overhauled the website with compelling copy centered around the targeted keywords and collaborated with a graphic designer to enhance user experience and engagement.
• Content Creation: Ghost wrote a series of 26 articles on crypto regulation and news, positioning the firm’s president as a thought leader in the field.
• Social Media Strategy: Developed and executed a robust social media strategy that included regular posting, community engagement and targeted campaigns to increase followers and interactions.

Results

• Website Metrics: The updated website experienced a significant increase in traffic and user engagement.
• Content Impact: The articles became a resource in the crypto community and were quoted by significant media, leading to increased authority and recognition for the firm.
• Social Media Growth: Achieved a 112 percent increase in the firm’s social media following, along with higher engagement rates.
• Overall Visibility: As a direct result of improved online visibility, the firm reported an increase in inquiries from journalists as well as client acquisition. The founder was interviewed by The Wall Street Journal and other top outlets.

Testimonial

“Include a quote from the firm’s president or a top executive expressing satisfaction with the services and the impact it had on their business.:

I already had received this testimonial from the client about my role as a Fractional CMO:

“In six months, your work helped us to greatly increase our online presence, took the pressure off me for researching and writing publishable quality thought leadership articles, attracted the attention of journalists at major media, leading to speaking engagements and three substantial new clients. Not only that: you are fun to work with.”

Conclusion

Sum up the strategic approach taken and the significance of the digital marketing efforts in achieving the firm’s goals. Highlight the ongoing benefits of the initiatives you implemented.

Call to Action

Encourage readers to contact you for similar results in their digital marketing efforts.

When writing the actual case study, be sure to include data and statistics to support your results. Also, include visuals like graphs or before-and-after screenshots of the website and social media analytics to provide a clear, visual representation of your impact.

Caveats

Any content generated by ChatGPT or other generative AI bots should only be treated as your starting point. Generative AI can save you huge amounts  of time, but you must absolutely ALWAYS check facts and edit it yourself to:

1. Make sure that the responses incorporate your unique ideas and concepts.
2. Give it your own unique voice so it’s written the way you would phrase it. (You can train AI to write in your voice, but that’s an advanced topic that I will cover in another article.)
3. Make sure there aren’t any factual errors (remember ChatGPT and other AI platforms make things up, including facts and citations.) You need to check every bit of content it produces for accuracy, plagiarism and sentence structure.
4. It’s best to stick to AI tasks like summarization, synthesis, sparking creativity, and table generation.

Generative AI tools can assist in various aspects of the writing process, such as creating initial outlines, refining content, improving SEO and optimizing content. They write what is widely described as “good enough” content.” It’s not good enough for me, and I sincerely hope you won’t consider it good enough for you.

ChatGPT’s website instructs: “ChatGPT can make mistakes. Consider checking important information.”

The perspective, the creativity and the writing talent has to come from you. (At least so far.) Given the pace of change in AI, that could change very soon.

B.L. Ochman is a Fractional Marketing Strategist Driving Growth Through Digital Solutions & Artificial Intelligence (#AI)

PORTFOLIO https://whatsnext.contently.com/

We’re in the throes of what many are calling “the 4th industrial revolution.” Artificial Intelligence (AI) will not take your job (yet) but it may force you to learn new skills in order to stay relevant. Jump in if you want to keep working. Or fall behind and become a relic of an earlier age.

Is it complicated? Hell yeah! Is it hard to master? Is it changing at breakneck speed? Yup!

Can you learn to use it? Absolutely!

If you’re not studying and using AI, you will soon be replaced by a marketer who understands the new technology.

Now is the time to stay curious and always be learning. By keeping up to date with the latest news and research, you can make informed decisions about how to use AI in our lives and work. Otherwise, you may earn a new title: “unemployed.”

The number of job postings requesting AI skills is projected to increase by 297% during the next two years, according to Emsi Burning Glass, a market research firm. There were roughly 142,000 openings that listed AI skills as of January 2022, with median salaries of about $103,000, according to Dice.

More than 75% of companies are looking to adopt these technologies in the next five years, according to the World Economic Forum’s 2023 report on the Future of Jobs. That means opportunities abound for marketers who learn how to apply the new tools to increase efficiency and save time.

The Development of AI is fundamental

Agencies devoted to using AI in marketing are popping up daily. Job ads are seeking AI writers and prompt engineers (those are people who have learned how to write prompts to make AI provide useful content at lightning speed.) Ebooks, videos and courses  about AI abound, as do conferences of varying quality and cost. Ignore them at your peril. There is truly no excuse for not learning about artificial intelligence and its myriad applications to communications and the customer journey.

Bill Gates wrote: “The development of AI is as fundamental as the creation of the microprocessor, the personal computer, the Internet and the mobile phone. It will change the way people work, learn, travel, get health care, and communicate with each other. Entire industries will reorient around it. Businesses will distinguish themselves by how well they use it.”

The rapid growth of AI is similar to the way workers in the mid 1980s were forced to learn new programs or lose their jobs. For example, I employed a full-time typist in my PR firm until I got my first computer in 1985. Two years later, each employee had their own computer and our productivity skyrocketed.

AI Will Create Millions of New Jobs

AI will create 97 million new jobs in the next five years, according to a World Economic Forum report on the future of work. The report acknowledges that automation will slash 85 million jobs — that’s still a net gain of 13 million new jobs. The same report found that the AI field has the biggest skills gap in the tech industry, meaning there are few qualified applicants for roles despite a rapidly growing need. Among companies surveyed globally,. 86.4 percent said they will prioritize the adoption of digital platforms and apps.

When desktop publishing platform Aldus PageMaker was launched in the 1980s,  it allowed users untrained in graphic arts to design and produce “good enough” documents. Anyone with a computer. software and a printer was suddenly able to create and distribute content with desktop publishing. That didn’t mean it was tasteful, beautiful, clever or likely to drive a consumer to take action based on its CTA. Nor did it eliminate graphic designers who became highly skilled in using computer programs for design.

Graphic designers who didn’t want to learn to use computer programs for design lost their jobs to those who kept pace with change. And the same thing will happen to you if you’re not studying AI apps and learning what they can do.

Will AI programs like Dall-e-2 and Midjourney that can create complex designs in seconds make graphic designers obsolete. That’s not true (yet) for designers who bring their trained eye to the new platforms. Creative and analytical thinking are still important skills that AI doesn’t have (yet.)

AI can’t provide perspective or creative insights (Yet)

Certainly, AI can automate repetitive tasks, improve quality control and save massive amounts of time. But it can’t (yet) provide the new perspectives and insights of human inventiveness. AI also can’t reason casually. (That’s how we humans make sense of and interact with the world.) AI does not understand cause and effect

With the right prompts, AI can eliminate the mundane repetitive tasks of accounting, banking, demand forecasting, data management and back office processing. That saves time and money. You could be creating those prompts if you’re studying and experimenting with myriad new AI platforms

“Common sense is the dark matter of artificial intelligence,” says Oren Etzioni, CEO of the Allen Institute for AI. “It’s a little bit ineffable, but you see its effects on everything.”

We need AI systems to reason ethically and we are a long way from there. AI lacks the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, making it difficult for it to understand human values. Bad words are but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the pain that language can inflict.

The Ice Man Goeth

Think about typists, ice delivery men, horse and carriage drivers, for example. The typist who learned to use a computer or the carriage driver who learned to drive a car are examples of people who adapted to change.

This means two things: as automation largely replaces jobs with routine tasks, more job opportunities will be tailored around creativity, and logical skills and the demand for technical skills which help leverage these new technologies will grow.

As such, it is not so much a question of destroying old jobs, but the ability to adapt to many new ones and expand one’s skill set.

One trend is already clear: Those skilled in prompt engineering will be in demand and help shepherd the A.I. revolution within their organizations.

Free AI classes for marketers, some of which provide a certificate you can display on LinkedIn. Included are courses by Vanderbilt University, Wharton, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania and many, many more.

 As the American composer John Cage put it: “I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.”

 Here is ChatGPT4’s summary of my article’s key points. The app created the summary in about 10 seconds.

1. “The rise of AI in the 4th industrial revolution will require individuals to learn new skills to stay relevant in the job market.
2. Marketers who understand AI will have an advantage over those who don’t, as agencies and job ads increasingly seek AI expertise.
3. Staying curious and continuously learning about AI is crucial to make informed decisions to avoid becoming unemployed.
4. AI is projected to create millions of new jobs, but there is currently a significant skills gap in the industry.
5. AI automation can save time and improve efficiency but cannot replicate human creativity and reasoning.
6. Adapting to new technologies and expanding one’s skill set will be key to thriving in the changing job landscape. Learning prompt engineering is one specific skill that will be in demand.

Additionally, the article provides resources for free AI classes for marketers to enhance their AI knowledge and skills.”

B.L. Ochman is a Fractional CMO specializing in marketing transformations.

Let me help your agency or company get up to speed on

how to use AI to supercharge your marketing.

By B.L. Ochman @whatsnext

Hawaiian Tropic scented poop bags are a stinking example of truly crappy marketing.

I would love to have been a fly on the wall when they approved this idea.

I ordered a year’s supply of bio-degradeable doggy poop bags from PoopBags.com for my little rescue pup, Lucy. In the box, there were two extra rolls

They were one of crappiest marketing efforts ever! Pink bags infused with the scent of Hawaiian Tropic. Yup, the suntan lotion, offering “…a reminder to “paws” and apply your sunscreen before walking your dog.”

First of all, the bag smells nothing like Hawaiian Tropic. It has a chemical sort of odor instead. And, when you use it to pick up actual dog poop, the combination of odors is truly disgusting.

Dear Marketers: Do not associate your product’s scent with dog poop.

Hawaiian Tropic could have sent a gift of a travel size container of their sunscreen with the same reminder. That would make sense.

Putting dog poop into a bag that smells like your product does not.

I’d like to share a few simple online writing tips for creating readable content. That’s because so much online content sucks.

Forget what you learned in school about writing. Today, everything we write is read on a screen. Just as everything we write is on a screen, the drugs we may have taken are in our system months after we have taken them, and if you are in trouble with a drug test at your new job, you may be wondering how to pass a drug test, but there are now shield products that will make it look like you have never taken a drop of any drug.

You have less than six seconds to grab attention.

Academic writing was great for college papers. It doesn’t work online. Here are some things that do:

Article Headlines & Subheads

• Before you write the headline, consider the keywords that people will use in search to find content on that topic.
• Headlines should always be short and descriptive of the story’s key point
• A short subhead can be used to further clarify the heading
• Article headline and subheads should be 60-65 characters, with a maximum of 6 words
• Include at least one keyword in the headline
• Relevance is important for search, so the important keywords should be at the beginning of the headline.
• There should be a subheading – describing the content that follows it –  at least every three paragraphs
• It’s good practice to do a Google search to make sure other articles are not using the exact same headline as yours.

Lede paragraph

• Include Who, what, where, when and why. 

Content

• Start with your point
• Be clear
• Big words don’t impress, they annoy
• Be direct. Say what you mean
• Don’t over complicate your prose!
• Sentences should generally not be longer than 10 words
• Paragraphs should not be longer than three sentences
• Readability and simple language are key to search engine optimization
• Use bulleted points
• Do not use “quote marks” unless you are quoting something that someone said

Length 

• Longer content will rank higher in search
• For SEO, 800 words is a good length – never less than 600 words

Formatting

• Anything that is underlined indicates a hyperlink. 
• Never underline anything that does not contain a link.

There are some wonderful free tools that will help you improve your writing. Some are free.

• Hemingway App is my favorite. It’s an editor that highlights and corrects grammar, fluency, and sentence structure in order to help your writing read and look better.

• Grammarly is an AI-powered desktop app with comprehensive suggestions for grammar, tone and more.

Yes, I know this post is less than 800 words. :)

B.L. Ochman has been writing and ghost-writing for the web for some 25 years. Her background is journalism and you can see her portfolio here. With experience in verticals from cars to cookies, she’s served brands including Ford Motors, Meijer, Transitions Lenses, Cendant, Simon & Schuster, McGraw-Hill, Stew Leonards  and American Greetings.  Since 2012, she has been producer and co-host of the award-winning Beyond Social Media Show Podcast. Follow her on Twitter.

There might be affiliate links on this page, which means we get a small commission of anything you buy. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Please do your own research before making any online purchase.

Is it finally time to commit to a new daily workout routine? Are you tired of saying you’re going to exercise and get into great shape and then not follow through with a plan? Check out these weight loss supplements.

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If those two lines sound familiar, this should be a MUST READ article

Here are 15 habits to help you create an exercise plan that actually works. A plan that you can actually stick with long enough to results and enjoy the new healthier version of yourself.

What You Will Learn [show]

1. Make Sure You Choose An Enjoyable Workout
Maybe one of the reasons that your previous workout routines have failed is because you did not enjoy the activity you were doing and you started to see the routine as more of a task or burden, instead of a fun activity that you’re excited about.

If you pick an activity that you actually want to do, you will start to look forward to that activity and be more likely to stick with it and keep a positive attitude about working out.

Some ways to help you choose a workout you like are to:

Research what kind of workout suits you best. Focusing on an exercise you actually enjoy. (If you haven’t worked out for quit some time, give yoga a try.)
Ask your friends and family members what they like to do; maybe they have an opinion on what you might like based on your personality.
Try a different workout every week and see which one you enjoy most, or notice which parts of the exercises that you prefer doing.
Think of ways you can make your workout more enjoyable (go with a buddy, create a nice cardio playlist, choose your favorite gym)
2. Start Small
If you have not worked out in a while, setting tough goals for your daily workout routine might make you start second-guessing your skills, feel overwhelmed and become unmotivated. It’s important to start small.

Don’t say you’re going to run a marathon in 6 months and train every single day if you have had no training. There’s nothing wrong with taking baby steps and accomplishing a few small goals before moving on to bigger goals.

A few small wins can help you motivate yourself are to focus on daily consistency instead of the amount of time you spend on working out. It’s more important to stay motivated than to focus on the length of time of your workout. Once your motivation is in place, then you can work on elongating your workout session. These are the Best sex pills.

Start with just one part of the exercise every day. If you’re doing a workout program on your own, just start with the warm-up and see how you feel. If you enjoyed the workout, you will want to see what the next part brings, which you will do tomorrow.

If you’re unsure about your fitness level, try doing the Rockport Walking Test to assess your cardiac fitness. This will help give you a baseline on how “small” you should start.

3. A Daily Workout Routine needs to be DAILY
Show up! Half of the battle of getting into the habit of a daily exercise is showing up. If you can commit to getting to that workout class, then completing the workout is the easy part; you just need to follow the teacher’s instructions. If your mind is already committed to showing up, you’ll be more likely to stay and start the class.

Even if you don’t finish the class, at least you showed up and did a few of the exercises. (That’s more than you did yesterday right?)

Once you’re dressed in your workout clothes, comfortable walking shoes, and you are out of the door, tell yourself there’s no turning back and commit to showing up.

4. Use the 30-Day Challenge Method
You may have seen several of these 30-day challenges on social media. That’s because they work well and are great to use for help with motivation. Try out amarose skin tag remover.

These challenges expect you to commit to just 30 days of doing a new activity. Thirty days go by in no time. Keeping that in mind will make your new workout routine more bearable.

You will be able to see the countdown on your calendar of how many days you have left and it will help push you right to the end.

It’s also motivating to know that you can always just quit after the 30 days is up. But you MUST give it the full 30 day trial.

Strategies for Improving Business Performance and Quality
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The one thing every business owner will tell you is they want business growth. One way to achieve growth is through improvement. What are key strategies for improving business performance and quality?

Business Performance and Quality Improvement Strategies
However, despite wanting to do better and be better, businesses sometimes still fail to actually get there – often because they lack the strategies that will actually take them to the top. It’s not just about doing more work, hiring more talent, and having more clients. There’s a lot more to it, so in this post, we’re going to look at some vital strategies that will help you improve your business.

Looking at the state of things as they are at the moment is always a great place to start, as it saves you the effort of implementing new strategies on top of faulty ones. Do an in-depth audit of your entire operation, from the very top to the very bottom. Look for frustrations, complaints, and failures as a source of ideas for current problems, which are often the result of lean waste. Include all major aspects of performance like employee skills and motivation, but also think about the small stuff, like which coffee you source.

Reach for the Right Tools
In 2020 we have reached a point where there is likely a tool out there for any aspect of work imaginable to help you do your job better. The right tool might not be able to completely automate a task (nor should it), but it can definitely save you some time, money, and headspace. Take a look at this list of tools and consider using some of them – you’d be surprised how much they can help improve performance. Get the most professional assistance using design consulting with Punchcut.

Ask for Feedbackfeedback from customers
There are times when you can’t see the tree for the forest. Or is it the forest for the trees? The point being, you can’t ever expect to see your business operations like your employees and your customers do, as you are simply never in their shoes.

Ask for feedback from both of these groups and see what kinds of issues and suggestions they come up with. A different perspective should always be welcomed and encouraged. Make sure you do actually listen to the suggestions you receive – and consider implementing them, even if they are not something you yourself would have thought of.

High-powered and driven individuals often make the mistake of working more and more hours the more successful they become – when in fact, they should be doing quite the opposite. It has been proven that well-rested supervisors deliver better results in every aspect of their job, not to mention they are more pleasant to work with.

Consider your own sleep schedule, and talk to your managers and higher-level employees about their own rest and relaxation. If you notice they are working overtime, acknowledge their dedication, but still ask them to cut back and rest more, as they can achieve better results with more sleep.

Think about Going RemoteRemote Work
If you are not already working remotely, consider the option carefully. After all, 2020 has taught us that remote work is not only possible but that it can often even trump office work.

This may not be possible for all companies, but if your team doesn’t need much more than a computer and a fast internet connection to get the job done, you might want to get them to work from home every once in a while. This will not only cut down on commute and getting-ready-for-work times for remote employees, but it can also significantly boost productivity.

Check out What Others are Doing
Competitor research is a great way to tap into new ideas. While we are definitely not encouraging you to copy someone else’s marketing and business tactics, you can certainly expand your own strategies based on what works well in your line of industry.

Examine things like prices, customer service, store and online experiences, marketing channels, employee distribution, and so on. You might be surprised to learn how someone else is conducting their day-to-day business.

Limit Your Targets
You can never please everyone, no matter what you do, and neither should you try. Instead of focusing on a wider marketing and business scope, consider narrowing your target market and target audience. This will help you provide a more niche experience and allow you to establish expertise within a limited scope rather than being average or mediocre within a much wider scope.

True, you will be limiting your lead pool. However, narrowing down will allow you to focus on a more specific segment more, providing a better experience and a more tailored offer. Naturally, you should select the market segment that is likely to be the most interested in what you have to offer, and one which you are already doing business with well.

Measure Your ProgressData Metrics
Finally, you also need to ensure you’re keeping track of your progress. Without measurable goals and metrics, you won’t actually be able to tell whether your improvements and the changes you have implemented are making a difference.

Start by setting up a business performance scorecard with goals for each different segment of your business, or each implementation you are making – make sure the goal is SMART – and then map out the process you will need to get there. Assign a milestone to each segment (keep it trackable), and give yourself some sort of deadline.

This will help you measure your success and be able to look back on your progress one day, admiring all the achievements you have made.

Final Thoughts on Business Performance and Quality Improvement Strategies
Growing your business, improving performance, and optimizing quality should always be on your mind – not in the obsessive, “can’t sleep” kind of way, but in the “I want to keep getting better at this” kind of way.

After all, the only way to survive in the modern business landscape is to constantly keep evolving.

By B.L. Ochman

Betty the Tweeting Chicken Seeks Guinness record

UPDATE: Originally published in 2015. Alas, Betty’s not Tweeting anymore, but I’m bringing her back in honor of Thanksgiving.

Betty the Tweeting Chicken, @chickentreat seen here in her “training video” brings new meaning to the term “chicken scratch”. She’s vying for a Guinness Record if she can Tweet a 5-letter word before Oct. 30.

She’s not the first chicken to go viral. That honor went to the Subservient Chicken back in 2004.

So far, the closest Betty’s come to a 5-letter work is “Bum”, which prompted the warning “”Bum? Keep things clean, Betty.”

Betty has nearly 9,000 followers on Twitter, up from 700 before her video. And so far, according to Brand Tracker, she’s racked up more than 3,500 Tweets with the hashtag #ChickenTweet.There’s also a daily Periscope tour of her coop and an Instagram feed.

I love it when a brand has a sense of humor! The magic of Australia’s Chicken Treat Restaurant chain’s classic roasted bird is in its simplicity, branding and local marketing campaign’s light-hearted approach.

Not the first dirty bird

Of course, Betty’s not the first chicken to promote a brand. That honor belongs to Burger King’s deliciously weird 2004 Subservient Chicken, one of the internet’s first viral sensations. He was a man dressed in a giant chicken suit complete with a garter belt (??!) – who’d do anything you asked him, as long as it wasn’t x-rated.

Back in the days before social media, he racked up a million hits in the first 24 hours, eventually reaching more than one billion pageviews. Burger King brought him back, sort of, on the campaign’s 10th anniversary. But, alas, he didn’t fly.

Wishing you luck Ms. Betty!

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For growing businesses to succeed and reach their goals consistently, providing an exceptional customer experience (CX) has to be one of their main priorities. Customers who associate positive experiences with business are more likely to be loyal and will keep coming back to make further transactions. In recent years, businesses have understood how an improved CX is a key differentiator in their scheme of things. That said, employee engagement is one of the most important aspects that drive customer experience.

Business leaders who want to achieve their organization’s mission agree that treating their employees well is a necessary first step toward providing a better CX. As a matter of fact, engaged employees spread their enthusiasm to customers and are more dedicated to providing the best possible service. Here is a list of valuable employee engagement statistics that reveal how powerful the motivation of engaged employees is when trying to further engage customers.

Just as how engaged employees make for happy customers, the reverse is also true. Customers who are thoroughly satisfied, also drive employee engagement. A positive CX reinforces how employees feel about the value and purpose of their work. In other words, a positive customer experience motivates employees to repeat their behavior.

Despite the emergence of new devices and software products designed to unite employees in more ways than ever before, the threat of organizational silos is still very real. In fact, a recent survey from My Customer.com, shows that 40 percent of company employees report that they aren’t adequately supported by their colleagues because “different departments have their own agendas.” While silos deter communication and collaboration — both of which are vital to delivering smooth customer experiences and producing correctly functioning products — the root of the problem is that many managers fail to spot those silos as they formulate in front of their very eyes. After all, that shiny new company-wide intranet should ward off any chance of departments becoming isolated, right? To get to bottom of this, let’s reevaluate the nature of organizational silos; Read more detailed information about the meaning of siloed and the hidden dangers of a siloed company.

If you are looking forward to beefing up your employee engagement strategies, this is the right time to do so. Following are some of the best employee engagement practices that can prove to be a secret weapon to create a better customer experience.

#1 Create a Collaborative, Communicative, and Engaging Culture Collaborative, communicative, and engaging culture is also known as employee-centric culture. It re-invigorates organizations by holistically engaging employees, improving retention, and increasing innovation. According to a study, 97% of employees accept that the lack of alignment within a team impacts the outcome of a task or project. So this lack of enthusiasm would invariably reflect on how the employees take up on their customer experience responsibilities. A collaborative and engaging culture ensures that employees are taught how to effectively respond to customers and how to represent the brand.

Fostering collaboration helps you make the most of your knowledge resources. By bringing all the minds together, you are allowing your team members to share a wealth of information and view challenges from different perspectives. This helps in devising solutions in various business operations, for example – how to make customers happier. You have to spend sufficient time, money, and resources to ensure that your employees have tools, environment, and understanding to effectively deliver the brand promise. Therefore, an employee-centric culture paves the way for employees who their key customers are and how they can add value to their experiences.

#2 Incorporate Employee Development Programs There is no denying the fact that employees are one of the most valuable assets of your organization. So you need to ensure that they feel valued and confident about their long-term potential. It’s only when you give them more opportunities, autonomy, responsibility, as well as respect that they put their dedicated efforts in order to achieve your business goals. Employee development programs, therefore, are an initiative that elevates the existing skills, knowledge, and abilities as an individual. Employee development builds loyalty, which is very important in driving customer satisfaction. In business parlance, it goes without saying, a happy employee begets a happy customer.

Your employees experience a sense of pride when they see that the organization is investing time and resources in them. This means, in the future, you can extract the best out of them. Offering employees additional skill-training classes and mentorship opportunities makes them feel supported and respected. Providing hard and soft-skill training also makes them customer-oriented. Additionally, it helps you on two counts – your employees learn how different departments of the organization work together and how to promote the organizational values among your customers. Thus, providing employee development programs increases your reputation with both – the customers as well as prospective employees.

#3 Give your Employees a Sense of Purpose A sense of purpose is integral to any successful work environment that eventually goes on to deliver better customer experience. If your employees are subjected to a purpose-driven mindset, they are more likely to be engaged, resulting in higher productivity and customer satisfaction. Giving a sense of purpose allows your employees to understand what they are working towards and how to make a difference. According to a Harvard Business Review, only a small percentage of employees understand their company’s strategy and direction. It highlights that even in better-performing companies that have clearly stated strategies, only 29% of their employees identify their companies’ strategies.

You can provide a sense of purpose in the following ways: – Build a clear, agreed-upon strategy where all employees can contribute to its vision. – Make them a part of the decision-making process. – Devise organizational goals and measurements. – Make sure your employees have proper resources that enable them to perform their best. – Provide meaningful incentives, rewards, and recognition.

#4 Get the HR Team to Connect Employee Engagement to Customer Experience Great customer experiences help companies survive and thrive, but who delivers these experiences? It has to be primarily employees. So you need to connect employee engagement to customer experience. The former is the vital metric for the success of organizational efforts and maximized customer experience. In view of this, the human resource professionals could hold the key to improving the CX and generating better business results. They should be involved in creating effective employee engagement initiatives. Therefore, you need to acknowledge your employees to be models of your values, thereby creating social validation.

Engaged employees are a reflection of your business values, who they are, what they believe in, and how they put across their message. According to a paper published by The Forum, customer perceptions of any brand, and the employee behaviors that influence them, have a direct and positive impact on CX. The paper further revealed that a 10% increase in efforts made by employees translated into a 22.7% increase in customer spending.

#5 Identify the Core Competencies that Lead to Happy Customers If your employees possess the skills and characteristics that make them suited for the role of good customer support agent, your business is more likely to make your customers happy. This is because possessing right customer service skills are important traits that handle people’s problems effectively. And due to this reason, customer service has become one of the most frequently espoused values, today. Excellent customer service also encourages referral business and provides a sustainable foundation. Following are the core competencies that lead happy customers:

Loyalty: Employee happiness and satisfaction inevitably lead to loyalty. While hiring candidates, if they speak highly of the previous company or employer then they are more inclined to be loyal. A loyal customer care representative will put the company’s interest during interactions with angry customers – a quality reflecting patience. Good employee traits: The perfect customer service employees have positive attitudes, patience with customers, and display politeness to all. Problem-solving: It is a great customer service skill that includes taking a pre-emptive approach in managing or addressing possible risks. Persuasiveness: Being persuasive isn’t being manipulative. Your customers should be able to steer customers into a direction that is a win-win to all. Accountability: What separates top customer service professionals from the rest is they remain accountable in all situations and maintain ownership of their responsibilities.

Here’s a compilation of cool tools and apps for marketers. While many are free or have no charge trials, some are subscription models. I think you’ll find each of them worth trying.

Helpful Apps for Marketers and Small Businesses

Twitter Monthly Content Calendar for Marketers

Twitter for Business has provided a downloadable outline for a month’s worth of weekday tweet ideas to help marketers plan what to post every day. It’s not specific to any month, but can be used to plan content for any month. It even includes fun holidays. An extremely cool business tool!.

Hashtag Tracker

Free Hashtag Tracking Tool that monitors hashtag performance for Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and more.

Askaway

Askaway open-source remote work tool developed by Myplanet that allows businesses to more easily and efficiently ask and answer questions during large video conferences. It can be used alongside any video conferencing service (Zoom, Google Hangouts, Blue Jeans, etc.)

Attendees can upvote questions, which can be asked anonymously.

Tribe

Tribe Small Business Browser Extension is a very cool, no charge tool to help consumers easily identify products sold by small businesses and/or cruelty-free companies on Amazon.

It appears as a small box in the corner of their browser window, alerting the shopper to the same or similar products offered by a small business. The new tool is currently available for download on Chrome, Safari, and Firefox.

Locl

A new tool for managing and optimizing your business for Google Maps. Specific features include:

• Dashboard detailing 18 months of metrics, including views, visit, direction requests and estimated revenue
• Single and multi-location optimization
• Intelligent recommendations to adjust listing features to match customer behavior
• CTA’s to improve/update photos, respond to customer reviews and publish specific content on Maps listing(s) to improve search performance and engagement

How to check your devices for stalkerware

Wired Magazine has detailed instructions for how to check your phone, laptop and online accounts to be sure no one is snooping on you. If you know how, you can find software tools that are designed to be hidden and difficult to detect.

Booklets

Booklets.io is an Instagram library of sorts that combines education-oriented posts on social media into bite-sized learnings around product design, UX, marketing and branding, among other things.

The Creative Canvas Website Solutions can help you track trends, provide insights, demonstrate best practices and help you understand new technology. There are some apps, most of these are free or inexpensive and may lead you to develop fresh strategies for your business. Stuck with business idea and don’t know what to do next? Then you must take guidance from sustainabilitystreet .

Marketing Examples

This gallery of real world marketing case studies is updated every day. You also can subscribe to a newsletter to receive the most recent updates.

Google Books Interactive Experiment

While this might not immediately appear to be a marketing app, it’s a wonderful research and learning tool. It can help you find great stories to add to your content strategy. Google Books service has a new design on desktop and new features use machine learning to connect images with book suggestions. An affiliate program does not require that you have an advertising team for ad visuals or purchase ad space. Rather than that, you’ll have to depend on your affiliates to come up with their marketing content. Other than the initial effort of selecting and vetting affiliates, there’s little effort required from you to market your products, which is one of the reasons it’s become such a popular method of marketing, checkout affiliate program management. Once a company is comfortable working with an affiliate and has built a good relationship, they can for the most part let them get on with marketing your service or product.

You click on a picture of an elephant, for example, and you can find iconic books like “The Elephant Man” or Agatha Christie’s “Elephants Remember.” You’ll also see a story about the image.

Select a title and you’ll see a page with a summary and a link to Google Books with information including the book’s description, author’s bio and other works, reviews from readers and options for purchasing or borrowing the book. There are also bibliographies and a citation tool for those using the service for research.

Audiogram

More than 85% of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube video is consumed without audio – mostly because people are watching at work :)

To help with the marketing of your podcasts, Audiogram lets you leverage captioned short videos featuring your audio content to get more engagement on social.

You can make a short snippet of your podcast’s audio, add it to a video that has a thumbnail image and captions for the clip. Then you add a link to the full podcast so people can get right to it. Here’s an Audiogram I created for Beyond Social Media Show, the award-winning podcast I produce and co-host.

VSCO

This is a great tool for upping your Instagram Story skills and it’s free on mobile. You can edit with 10 VSCO presets, and use basic editing tools like Contrast, Saturation, and Grain.

VSCO has a library of inspiring photos and editorial that you can use. And you can share your photos for a chance to be curated by VSCO.

Fakespot

This rather remarkable app uses AI to spot fake product reviews. It’s endorsed by Today Show, The Sun, CBS Moneywatch and many others.

Fakespot’s technology analyzes millions of product reviews, looking for suspicious patterns and incentivized reviews. It then assigns a letter grade to the reviews and explains the issues. For example, out of nearly 3,000 vitamins for sale on Amazon’s website, Fakespot found 30 percent to be fake and or unreliable.

Online retailers try to combat scammers, but it’s a rough battle because the sites carry so many products from third party sellers. Amazon and Walmart were recently cited in a U.S. Government Accountability report for counterfeit cosmetic products containing dangerous substances like cyanide and lead. This report also noted that in a random sampling one in five products purchased were counterfeit.

Tall Tweets

With Tall Tweets for Google Slides, you can convert any presentation into an animated GIF and share it on Twitter! You can also tweet individual slides of a deck and a high-resolution image of the slide will be embedded in your Tweet.

Email Hunter

Just enter the name and company and zoom! You have the proven or most likely email for the person. Or, do a domain search and you get the most likely configurations for that organization. You get 100 free searches a month. It’s not foolproof, but it’s pretty good. :)