The mattress-in-a-box industry has caused giant disruption to the traditional in-store retail mattress industry. Yet how is traditional retail fighting back? It's relying mostly on a message of "Our prices are cheaper!" Sadly, what the traditional retail mattress industry is blind to, is that price has little to do with why people are swerving to buy mattresses online. Hint: It has everything to do with the EXPERIENCE is better. Listen to my full view in today's podcast. It has a lesson for everyone in retail today 

It's vacation season -- I'm unplugged most of this week -- and what better time to discuss the value of time and unplugging! I use a time-tracking app for my social media and I can tell you that it is essential. I value my time and it helps me makes better decisions about where I spend my time and how much. It is eye-opening to track time and even more eye-opening when you think about the return of all that time invested.

Ten years ago I lost my job. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. It started me on a path of discovery to growing the kind of career and life I wanted. It has taken a lot of hard work. But it also took other things, like vision and action. In this episode, I talk about what went into those early days of growing my own business, and the approach that still helps guide me today

Every business has a brand personality. Sadly, most businesses don't know what their brand personality is. That's because they ignore taking time to research and develop a brand personality and integrate it into daily marketing, social media, and communications. When you nail your brand personality, it helps you nail targeting the right target audience. When you fail to develop a brand personality, you're basically just plodding along without an identity and throwing stuff against the wall and hoping something sticks. That's insanely wasteful and costly for any small business.

Learn more at WorkCabin Creative

Why do some small business owners insist on going on social media to talk politics and post comments that are deliberately intended to hurt, humiliate and belittle other people in the community? It makes no sense. Yet many continue to do it, without ever taking a step back to think about the repercussions of their actions.

With consumer skepticism over brand content at an all-time high, the big shift in video storytelling on social media for many smaller brands is an emphasis on being real, raw, natural and authentic vs over-choreographed, over-scripted and over-produced. Consumers crave seeing the real you. That's how authentic bonds are formed. They don't want to see something you're not or something that smells and looks like a push-marketing TV commercial.

Everybody makes mistakes. It's human. But not everyone will admit mistakes and take ownership of those mistakes. Here's the real power of taking ownership of mistakes: It demonstrates courage, honesty and integrity, and it elevates your own leadership abilities and status as a true leader by taking charge of the solution to your mistake. That immediately helps you build a team for long-term success vs refusing to own your mistakes and instead embracing confrontation.

It seems to be becoming more common today, especially in small towns, once beacons for decency, being neighbourly, and showing kindness. Lately, reading comments on Facebook posts, especially media sites that report the news has become painful and distressing. It's an everyday occurrence to see commenting deteriorate into public personal attacks, bullying, insensitive comments, and ugliness the likes of which most of us are not used to in small towns. It gets even more ugly when someone tries to take the high road or point out an opposing view. The vultures descend with even more vicious attacks and venting. Most never bother to read the actual news articles. It's simply another opportunity to attack. It becomes even sadder when you start hearing more and more people saying offline, "What has happened to our community?"

One problem negatively affecting storytelling in the social era is that everything still has to be epic, scripted, dramatic, overly planned scenes..... Ack! Well, you get the picture. Today, overproduced storytelling can render small businesses or small nonprofits as unauthentic. For businesses, things that are too slick can make them look like bog box stores, which is EXACTLY what they don't want

As a social media strategist who works with a lot of organizations and businesses, I always advise treading carefully with banning people from Facebook pages. So, now that I've banned someone from one of my own business pages, I thought I'd share why I did it.