Do you remember the most popular girl in high school?  She wasn't necessarily the prettiest, the most athletic or the smartest, but she was the one who told everyone that she was popular.  She walked around with her head held high and commanded attention.

Business can be much like high school in that those who are most successful, are often the very people who show confidence and tell others of their success.

Last week I wrote a blog about blogging; I know that sounds slightly ironic.  After speaking with a few people who read the blog , the one question I kept  receiving was, "How do I use this blog to help me generate leads?"  After you have spent your valuable time working on a blog, that you feel will be helpful to your audience, you need post that article in a place that will get read by your intended audience.

If you read last week's blog, you know that your blogs should be more informational and not a sales pitch.  Go with the 80/20 rule on informational vs. sales blog.  Add some personality, keep the word count at a reasonable level, make the blog readable and blog consistently.  You can find more about blogging here.

For this article, I'm going to assume you load your blog to your website.  It's not only a great component of your SEO (search engine optimization) strategy, it's the place you want to drive traffic (assuming you have a good website).  It's the website that will do your sales pitch, not the blog.

The blog is written and posted, now let's get the word out...

I was talking with a friend of mine the other day about customer service.  She is buying a new home and needed to speak with her bank.  She called the bank's automated line and listened for seven minutes of bank promotions only to get a message that said that the customer service number (for her particular issue) had changed.  And so the process began again as she called the bank's new number and listened to minutes of promotions, departments selections, just to be put in a waiting cue.

The two of us listening to this story, just shook our head in agreement as we had both left this particular banking instruction in the past.

I don't believe customer service is dead, but it is a rarity. Sometimes it is the little things that count.  My mom has been buying all her makeup and skincare from the same person in Dallas for ten years. Not unusual, except for the fact that she lives in Kansas and makes it to Dallas only twice a year.

Another friend recently made several 45 minute trips to a store for a particular product.  If you ask her why, it's because the boutique sent her a personal note when she stopped in the first time and they were out of the product she was wanting to buy. They invited her back for a visit and thanked her for stopping in. Guess what she did just that, found the item on her second visit and told our entire Saturday running/breakfast group. Several ladies in the group left breakfast to head over to the store. You know the drive was never necessary, she could have just went online, but the personal touch made the difference.

While bad service drives us away, good service makes us so loyal that we'll keep coming back, even if it means being inconvenienced.

Most business owners want to have great customer service, after-all keeping a customer is less costly than getting a new one, and referrals are golden.  

Here are a few things as business 
owners we can do to improve customer service, and maintain loyal customers.

With over 6 billion people in this world it appears that originality is dead.  It seems impossible to even come up with a new idea that has not been thought of before? Not only are business concepts being copied, music is being 'sampled' from great songs of the past. Is it possible to set ourselves apart and is that important?

In Peter Thiel's book, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, he states,  “ZERO TO ONE EVERY MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.”

I believe there is a way to both copy and learn at the same time. Sampling ideas of great entrepreneurs may be one of the biggest things impacting entrepreneurs today.

Here is how it is being done:

People are going to say what they will about your company or brand, or worse not talk about it at all.  Why not guide the conversation?  Blogging is a great way to start a conversation with your target audience, share helpful information and stay top of mind with your audience.

If you're going to go to the effort, why not make the effort count and write a blog that gets attention?

Here are some helpful tips to create a blog that doesn't suck.

We are barely through the first month of the new year and I quit. That's right, before I get too far into the new year, I quit and you should join me.  The key to living your best year and accomplishing your greatest goals is in saying, "I quit."

More and more I am convinced that success is not only based on what you do, but also  powerfully connected with what you don't do. So to break through the barriers of success and joy we must courageously quit!

Quitting is not a negative thing. It is an essential part of success. This is the year we stop living an inch deep and a mile wide. This is the year we go narrow and deep and set the foundation for the years ahead.

Here are 5 things I will quit doing and you should join:

Ironically, I started my career in the ad business, but have spent much of my marketing career identifying ways to increase credible sales leads without paying for advertising. When I began Marketing Eye Dallas over a year ago, I had the backing of a strong international brand. Unfortunately, the Marketing Eye International name was virtually unknown in my region and my client base started from scratch.  Since it takes time to build a name, network, referrals and  online presence, I started building my business through LinkedIn. 

Here are a few things I have learned in the last year as I have grown my connections x100, built a solid base, and landed some terrific accounts.

Where can you find 400 million business professionals at your fingertips?  The answer is LinkedIn and they are adding two members per second. Over a quarter of those individuals are right here in the US.  We know that LinkedIn is a great place to connect, but how do you stand out in a mass of professionals?  

There are many great things about being an entrepreneur... and a few not so great things.  One of the biggest challenges I find is getting away for a real vacation. I'm not talking about the trip where you bring along your laptop take conference calls and try to squeeze in family time.  I'm talking about really disconnecting from your business.  With my previous business I waited five years to take a full no-computer vacation.  No surprise it was great, not only for me, but also for my staff.

It becomes a win-win for everyone when you disconnect. For your employees it shows a level of trust that you are confident enough that they can keep the business running while you are away. You get to finally unwind.  As an entrepreneur, even when you are not working , you are working, you just keeping thinking of what you can do next.  Vacations that exclude being connected to electronics can really give you time to connect with family and friends.

Every year I buy myself a new journal to keep notes from my client meetings, business ideas and new technologies I'm planning to adopt.  There is something about a blank book full of opportunities and ideas to be noted and recorded that excites me.  What does the future hold and what will the journal say in December 2016 about the past year?

As I start my journal this year, rather than starting with resolutions and goals on page one, I'm going to begin with the last page.  Writing what has been achieved, writing what the year looked like, rather than writing what the year will look like. Here is my final chapter of an amazing 2016...