Being Empathetic Without Sacrificing Your Needs and Wants

Posted on October 9, 2011 by admin

Image via Wikipedia

Hiten Shah writes a very compelling story about entrepreneurial empathy. In it he uses the examples of being at a dinner with other people and having one piece of bread in the communal bread basket—who takes the last piece of bread on the table?. Something he said struck me as odd for such a magnificent thinker: “Does some self-important ass boldly grab it and devour every last morsel without a care in the world?” Bad language aside, this is a bad attitude and faulty emotionally wrecked logic. If everyone thinks only of the other guy the bread will go to waste because no one will take it and that is well…a waste literally and figuratively. There are empathetic ways of dealing with this and still get the bread for yourself.

I learned a lesson from a Logic teacher once that I have never forgotten. In logic you can break the left horn, the right horn, or go between the middle of the horns. Most people get so focused on the problems that they forget that they don’t have to break a horn at all because there may be a perfectly good passage through the middle of the horns. Some people may get overly empathetic as well and needlessly sacrifice and lose focus of the end goal. Being giving and understanding of others is a good thing, losing out because you are not willing to be giving and understanding for your own cause and needs is wrong.

In the case of the last piece of bread in most restaurants there is usually a free refill policy so the best thing to do is call the waitress and ask for more before taking the bread. In a home situation things might be different but if the host is empathetic they will announce there is more! Even in the situation where there is not more bread then you get into game theory and that becomes more complex, but there are relatively empathetic solutions as available as well. The point is as he said is that the last piece of bread mirrors life and consequently these examples do as well. You can be empathetic and still find a way to get the last bread in the basket for yourself without affecting your image or your conscience.

In life there are black and white situations but most situations have grey in them, in all situations consider the grey not just the black or white and you will win more frequently. Being able to see the grey situation where you can safely grab the bread because you found a good way between the horns without being negatively affected is very valuable. Self-sacrificing for the good of others is noble but seldom necessary and often wasteful because most times you can find a solution that can limit your sacrifice and make others winners too. To paraphrase a famous quote: Be Emphatic but carry a Big Dose of self-assurance by seeing ALL options not just the self-sacrificing one!

Takeaway

Balance your empathy with your own needs, don’t be overly empathetic and needlessly sacrifice and lose focus of meeting your needs.

Being giving and understanding of others is a good thing, losing out because you are not willing to be giving and understanding for your own cause and needs is wrong.

You can be empathetic and still find a way to get the last bread in the basket for yourself without affecting your image or your conscience.

In life there are black and white situations but most situations have grey in them, in all situations consider the grey not just the black or white and you will win more frequently!

To paraphrase a famous quote: Be Emphatic but carry a Big Dose of self-assurance by seeing ALL options not just the self-sacrificing one!

Self-sacrificing for the good of others is noble but seldom necessary and often wasteful, see the whole picture and think outside the box to make everyone win something.

Be empathetic to your own needs first, then with that strength you will have more empathy to give others!

Multimedia Content Creation is the Icing on the Content Marketing Cake

Posted on July 4, 2011 by admin

A Picture, a Video, a Chart, A Podcast, an Ebook, a Slide Presentation …ALL Make Content Better!

Yes I will use the old adage a picture speaks 1000 words and a video a million but in the Internet this happens to be true! This fact has been well studied and proven as I wrote here: http://bit.ly/kPZpY4 A picture can have a 60% improvement on click-through rates. In fact it is content marketing good practices to add at least an image to every blog and when possible a video. Just adding a tag of [video] can increase click rates as well! In Facebook and Linkedin a blog that has an image will stand out and one that has a video will stand out even more—giving your content an edge. eBooks and other FREE giveaway (though they do not have to be free) can increase a landing page form completion by a great deal as well! Podcasts and videos can increase your reach to people that do not like to waste time reading. Likewise Slide Presentation can bring you traffic from slide submission websites and present your offer in an easy to follow and often fun to view way. The added benefits of videos, slide presentations, ebooks and other forms of multimedia is that they have an interaction component that makes them fun as well as informative!

Saving Money with Our Graphical and Video Units

The less technically savvy part of content creation is the copywriting. It is not easy to do right and it does require talent but it does not require technical talent. Many businesses have this talent in-house and can easily manage the writing aspects of inbound marketing and as I have written in a blog http://bit.ly/iGnQ4L. They may even be able to find some royalty free imagesto use. However, creating super targeted cool images that pull attention can improve the click rate of the links and that is where talent is needed. Video can also be produced in-house as people really do not expect polished videos; however, a trailing animated logo such as http://bit.ly/lVC9qR can give you extra credit for going beyond the poor quality expectation. Producing larger videos or editing videos from longer material might not be technically possible for most businesses and this is where our video production can assist you! Also creating killer presentations and eBooks requires more graphical and multimedia skill than most companies have. For these jobs we can save you money creating the multimedia for you because you will not have to carry video editors, graphical editors, and sound engineers in your content marketing department and you will pay as only on a per need basis! No need to hire these very necessary but costly employees until your inbound marketing is in true need of a full time employee! Since we do all forms of content creation if you have overflow work we can also handle that too for you!

FREE Consultation

Please take advantage of our no strings attached absolutely FREE 30 minutes consultation to discuss your needs. Content Marketing is not about a sales pitch and you will not get one. During this call we will access your needs and illustrate our value to you only! Our first interest is to help you and our goal is to give you at least one advice that you can bank on!

Inbound Marketing Coach

Posted on July 4, 2011 by admin

Need Knowledge Fast? We can train you!

Sometimes your company has talent that can write but need to learn the entire social network marketing and content marketing arena fast. Anyone can learn this arena fairly proficiently in about 250+ hours, but there is a shortcut that will save you money and get you moving fast.

We can become your Inbound Marketing Coach. How will this save you money? Well even at just the low wages of $10 per hour it would cost $2500+ for just one person to train themselves to become a minimally proficient inbound marketer. Our training can save loads of time and cut the learning curve to just a 25-30 hours or so; however you will not pay us for 25-30 hours just 6,10, or 15 hours, the rest of the time the student will be doing assignments to demonstrate their proficiency.

What do we teach? First and foremost we teach organization to do things faster. Inbound marketing is not hard at all; it just takes a great deal of time. However, it can take a great deal more if you do not learn about shortcuts you can take to manage your time. What we teach in such a short coaching time is primarily where to go and what tools to use to make your super organized and start working right from the start. We also share a great deal of tools you can use to find ideas and do research that will also save you time.

There is no magic, content marketing takes time; but we can save you a great deal by teaching you to save time and work easier. Since we save you a huge learning curve we save you a great deal of money. The more people you need trained the more we save you! Start your training today!

Click here to ask for your free no strings attached consultation or call us at 786-315-9013.

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Save Money by Outsourcing Content Marketing

Posted on July 4, 2011 by admin

Outsourced Content Creation and Content Curation Can Cost Less

Very large businesses can afford a full content marketing department which is recommended, but SMBs are sometimes hard pressed to have full staff on the job. With a minimal staff of one copywriter, one graphical/video professional, and one researcher/social media content manager it can get pricy—and that is only bare minimum for a small operation. Perhaps you can produce a good deal of content but have trouble or no time for research, managing a content calendar, or producing supportive materials such as graphics, images, charts, videos, and more. Either way we can produce your content—and usually beat in-house content costs due to efficiencies we have created. Since this is our primary business we have ways to speed up research and can spin content creation and content curation faster. Of course we cannot do it alone; we will require a minimum of 2-4 hours a week of contact from you so we are in touch with the beat of your business. No way can we do a good job without being very close to your business.

Inbound Marketing and Content Marketing

While strictly not the same because inbound marketing encompasses many more things than content creation and content curation; content marketing is often used interchangeably. Both are much more than creating blogs. Our Content Marketing Package includes blogging, micro-blogging, videos, documents, and presentation and all of those things are important to inbound marketing. However, inbound marketing also has a host of other aspects such as email marketing, social media marketing, Q&A marketing, SEO, and several more—we can do these but they are not included in our standard content marketing services. Our affordable package has the core services you need to succeed, all other services can be added a la cart! No matter what other services are included in inbound marketing the core of social media marketing (yet another often considered synonymous term) is content creation and content curation.

Content Marketing and Social Media Sites

Social media is more than blogs and Facebook, it encompasses many different important sites. Our social media marketing packages addresses all of the major ones, Blogs, Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube, and Twitter. Cross platform marketing is very important. These sites are already relatively interrelated and when doing something on one it is a good idea to announce it on the others. After all content marketing is about talking to all of you audience everywhere that is appropriate. All of these sites have different requirements and marketing techniques associated with them. It takes a great deal of time to deal with all important social media sites. We help you save time with our affordable cost effective services.

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Content Creation Inspiration is Sometimes Inspirational!

Posted on June 26, 2011 by admin

Growing Loving Inspiration Come From Unexpected Places in Life!

As a business related content marketer sometimes you run into something while doing social networking or research that inspires you right away. This just happened to me yesterday and it paid off for me!

I was browsing my LinkedIn Blogging Groups and I came to a post about doing guest blogging for an inspirational site. The author of the request was the top influencer in the group and she struck me as someone special.

When I visited her site, I was hit with pleasant memories of my entry into the net since I did motivational pieces back then! I did just a bit of research since I knew the subject matter well and I quickly decided to write something for her. Because I was pumped, I finished it quite fast in fact. Inspiration did not come from her alone as I just met another amazing woman (Samantha) in that same group that inspired me and her unselfish giving to all her friends actually inspired the last tip on the blog. The blog was not only something good for my business that promoted me as a guest blogger but it was something that made me feel good. I was expounding my view of life with every word and I was being inspired by the person I was doing this for and by Samantha and my wife and all the people that bring happiness to my life! You can see the article posted here: http://bit.ly/kDOve2

This morning visited a group again and there was someone asking a similar request so I was motivated to revamp my inspirational blog which will become part of my new website—just to answer their question! That together with my Examiner.com Gig: http://exm.nr/lstcKv is making me very happy because inspirational writing and relationship writing are my favorite pastime!

In writing the personal development blog for Mari-Lyn’s site gave me a good feeling not just for the honour of being her guest blogger but because it felt like it was my contribution to the beautiful concept that her site promotes!