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Suppose you used to be a blogger with a healthy blog, but because of some unforeseen accident, your site has suffered a blog heart attack. Your content production has collapsed and there are only faint indications your blog is still alive.  If that sounds familiar, here are five steps you can take as part of your blogging strategy to administer CPR and try resuscitating a near-death blog.

If it’s a personal blog, start at Step 1. If you’re evaluating what to do with a business blog, start at Step 2 – you simply need to get it going again!

Step 1. Evaluate whether you REALLY want to resuscitate your blog

There must be some reasons – good or not – why your blog needs resuscitating. As a result, it makes sense to see if your blog might not be dead already. Maybe the topic or format has run its course, and whether you realize it or not, there are “do not resuscitate” orders you should heed. Check your Google Analytics. Is the blog is still getting traffic? Is anyone asking what happened to the blog? If not, maybe it’s simply time to move on to another project.

Step 2. Move into action and re-establish some pattern of content flow

If you’re moving ahead to save your blog, start with some type of regular content, even if it’s once a month. It’s imperative to demonstrate – more to yourself than to anyone else – you can sustain a regular pace. One way to do this is to go with very short content, even if that’s a break with your past practices. At this point, consistency with whatever schedule you decide upon is an important step to re-establish life in your blog.

Step 3. Go light on the explanations at first

Rather than making a big production about your absence, simply restart publishing. Unless there’s been a significant brand promise you’ve breached with your audience by letting your blog flounder, just get started publishing again as if nothing happened. After you see some signs of life and decent vital signs, then perhaps go back and catch readers up on what was going on during the blog’s absence.

Step 4. Reinvigorate your content distribution channels

Unless your blog is deeply introspective and doesn’t depend on anyone ever seeing your content, you need to get your old audience back in the game. Get the word out on your typical social media channels (assuming you haven’t let those flounder too) and start the work of re-building your readership. Perhaps tweak the blog to ensure more than ever it’s easy to subscribe via email and simple to share your content on appropriate social media networks.

Step 5. Once you stabilize the blog, consider a re-launch as part of your blogging strategy

If you’ve kept up with your blogging lite schedule and starting to see reader interest once again, think about re-launching your blog. Is there a new design that better fits where you’re going now? Are there new types of content that fit better with your interests and schedule? Do opportunities exist to add new channels to your social media sharing that will help dramatically grow what you’re doing with the blog? If so, go ahead and dive in with a big splash and a dramatically different approach to what you’ve done before.

Do you have experience resuscitating a near-death blog?

If you have been successful at resuscitating a near-death blog, what worked for you? And I you’re thinking about the need to get a blog of your own going again, what’s been standing in your way? - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

If you’re struggling with determining ROI and evaluating its impacts, download “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” today!  This article provides a concise, strategic view of the numbers and stories that matter in shaping, implementing, and evaluating your strategy. You’ll learn lessons about when to address measurement strategy, identifying overlooked ROI opportunities, and creating a 6-metric dashboard. Download Your Free Copy of “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track!”

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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I met Nick Kellet through the monthly #Ideachat Twitter chats hosted by Angela Dunn. Intriguingly enough, after we got to know each other, it turns out Nick had included Brainzooming blog content on list posts in one of his presentations about how his company List.ly is changing lists to make them more collaborative. With a new release in the works, this is a great opportunity to hear from Nick on the next generation of lists:

9 Reasons List Posts Are Broken by Nick Kellet

So what is a list? Lists are simply a collection

We use lists to organize our lives online and off. We make lists of just about anything.

Lists are the backbone of the web. Lists exist on every web page to organize content from menus to blogrolls and so much more.

Lists are a construct that hasn’t evolved since the inception of the web, given all the changes in our social norms and the way we share, interact and engage online that feels wrong.

Lists and list posts are too important to be ignored. From here on I’m going to talk specifically about “list posts.”

Why are list posts broken?

Image Credit: marcobellucci via Flickr.com and Creative Commons

List posts are things such as:

• 5 Ways to Not Screw Up Focus Group Input 
• 6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track
• 18 Blogging Ideas You Haven’t Read on Brainzooming
• 7 Ways to Share to Build Community & Create Collaboration

List posts are a subset of all the types of lists that exist on the web (lists of videos, songs, slides, friends etc). List posts account for 30% of the content and 50% of page views. Even those who dislike list posts agree list posts work.

While list posts work well, they are still broken. At best lists use a simple HTML construct of tags. Lists are essentially dumb HTML. Lists need to be smarter.

So let’s explore. I’ve noted 9 reasons why lists need a makeover:

Am I missing anything? Vote for those you agree with, and feel free to add your own suggestions.

The Dawn of Interactive Lists

Lists are a wonderful concept for engaging people. Humans love to skim lists, but our social norms and expectations have changed. Lists need to change with the times.

This is the thinking that drives our vision at Listly.

The best way to experience an interactive list post is to create a list and embed it in a blog post just such as this one.

So what’s stopping you? – Nick Kellet

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming blog email updates.

Download the free ebook, “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” to help you generate fantastic creative thinking and ideas! For an organizational innovation success boost, contact The Brainzooming Group to help your team be more successful by rapidly expanding strategic options and creating innovative plans to efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can deliver these benefits for you.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Last weekend’s Wall Street Journal “Review” section teemed with wonderful reminders of creative ideas. These reminders were helpful for providing a handy creative thinking skills refresher on ideas that can become easy to overlook.

Check out these thirteen creative ideas pulled from three of the Wall Street Journal “Review” articles.

Pick one of these creative thinking ideas and do something about it this week – even if that is as simple as thinking about it for a few moments today. You get bonus points if you actually take action on any of these ideas to enhance your creative thinking skills this week.

13 Creative Thinking Skills worth Remembering

Each creative idea is followed by a reference to the list of articles below from which it came.

Creative Perspective

• How readily do you suspend your cynicism to be able to imagine possibilities? How do you consciously force yourself out of a cynical perspective when that’s needed? (1)
• How often do you give yourself the permission to be “new and stupid”? (1)

Creative Inspiration

• If you derive a lot of creative stimulation through online interactions, how are you regularly creating equal creative stimulation through in-person interactions? (1)
• Do you keep going back to the same creative wells repeatedly? Or do you continually seek out new creative experiences where you do not already know the whole story? (1)
• Do you know where your best ideas come from? (It is okay if you don’t know.) If you can recall where your ideas come from, are they originating from different creative inspirations? (2)

Creative Process

• When you take on a new creative project, do you have a “total immersion” process you go through to become fluent in the new subject? (3)
• As you imagine a new creative project, how are you creating a “look book” with inspiration, depictions, and prototypes for your strategic and creative approach? (3)
• When addressing a traditional topic, are you asking, “What doesn’t matter?” This helps identify unnecessary elements ripe for elimination. (3)
• Are you growing the number of people you know that face similar situations to yours? These are the relationships where you can have candid, deep conversations on challenges and opportunities you both face. (1)
• How are you leaving room for surprise and unexpected twists and turns in your creative projects? (2)
• If you enjoy planning everything out on a creative project, are you willing to pursue your next creative project with less upfront exploration? (2)

Creative Experience

• When trying to convey large amounts of information to an unfamiliar audience, how are you using design to simplify the information and draw in audience members while letting the design fade into the background? (3)
• To anticipate a major creative experience impact, ask, “What’s going to stop (the audience) in its tracks and (make them) think about this completely differently?” (3)

Creative Inspiration for these Creative Ideas:

(1) “Bordellos for the Brain (Conference Mania)” by Holly Finn

(2) “In the Beginning,” by Ron Rash

(3) “Creating – At the Side of an Expert Exhibitionist” – Melanie Ide, Museum Planner

Next Week’s Creative Thinking Skills Assignment

I hope you enjoy working one of these creative ideas this week. While you’re at it, bookmark this page and come back to it next week to refresh even more creative thinking skills! - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming blog email updates.

Download the free ebook, “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” to help you generate fantastic creative thinking and ideas! For an organizational innovation success boost, contact The Brainzooming Group to help your team be more successful by rapidly expanding strategic options and creating innovative plans to efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can deliver these benefits for you.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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What to blog about is a frequent content marketing topic on the Brainzooming blog. People are always looking for new blogging ideas. Responding to a tweet on what to blog about, @InnervateTF requested a comparable piece on “what to tweet about.” Since responding to audience questions is a great source of ideas for blogging topics, we’re covering their Twitter content marketing question – which amazingly, we haven’t done previously.

@brainzooming Enjoyed this piece. Thanks. How about one on “what to tweet about”? #blogging #Twitter

— Innervate The Future (@InnervateTF) March 2, 2013

Step One: Review Your Last Twenty Tweets

Before figuring out what to tweet about, review your last twenty tweets to see:

• How many tweets were intended to benefit readers (with valuable information, links, highlighting others, etc.)? ___ of 20
• How many tweets were free of sales-oriented mentions of what you do? ___ of 20
• In how many tweets were you interacting with others (i.e., answering questions, conversing, initiating dialogues)? ___ of 20

The higher the numbers, the better your tweets are already!

Low numbers mean you’re focused more on yourself, selling things, and not engaging. Using your initial answers and re-asking these questions in the future provides another social media metric for how you’re doing on Twitter.

Content Marketing on Twitter – The Basics of What to Tweet About

There’s no single answer for what to tweet about that works for everyone. What’s important is having a rich understanding of your audience’s interests and delivering social media content that addresses those interests and fits your objectives. That said, here are 37 ideas for adapting your content marketing strategy to Twitter.

Information Sharing

Information sharing is a primary opportunity to create a positive impact on Twitter. While you can squeeze beneficial information into the 140-character Twitter limit, ideally you have a place to point people for a deeper treatment on the information you share. That could be on your blog, website, or other online presence.

The best information sharing comes when you take advantage of the full range of content marketing sources available to tweet:

• Interesting factoids
• Ideas and valuable improvement tips
• Information about activities – yours or others of interest to your audience
• Links to photos and videos
• Content from other social networks – LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, etc.
• Updates and content from relevant events
• Intriguing information and stories from your organization
• Updates on where your brand or people will be – events, activities, etc.
• Relevant topics & content you find during online searches

Two-Way Interactions

While information sharing on Twitter may largely be one way, there are tremendous benefits from interacting with others. How to adapt your content marketing strategy for Twitter during these interactions?

• Participate in conversations
• Answer questions tweeted by others
• Retweet relevant and/or intriguing content shared by people you follow on Twitter
• Share answers, questions, and observations with others during Twitter chats
• Swap links to interesting and relevant materials, events, etc.

Personal Sharing

Twitter is personal (as is any social network) whether you’re sharing as you or for a brand. How you express your personality, however, may differ. Ultimately though, if you don’t have an engaging online personality, it’s much tougher for people to find compelling reasons to follow you. When it comes to personal information, tweet:

• Intriguing personal news and happenings
• Rhetorical questions (and maybe even some answer to them)
• What you’re thinking about
• Observations about current events
• Photos and videos from daily life
• Links to what you’re sharing personally on Instagram, Facebook, or other social networks

Tweeting with Hashtags

Hashtags on Twitter are created by putting a pound or hash sign (#) in front of a word (or string of words without spaces) in a tweet. A hashtag makes similarly themed tweets searchable. Simply clicking on a hashtag within whatever Twitter application you’re using should open a new window with all current tweets containing the hashtag.

Tweeting with hashtags allows others to easily find your content, especially if they aren’t following you already. Using the same hashtag repeatedly signals you’re sharing similarly-themed content. Hashtags are also the underpinning to track what’s being shared on Twitter chats. In this way, hashtags allow you to revisit topics in multiple tweets or link tweets to topics many people are addressing.

What to Tweet About – The Self-Help Magazine Approach

I was on a webinar where the presenter suggested looking at self-help magazine headlines for blogging ideas. This works for ideas on what to tweet also. Select any self-help magazine, especially those related to the three F’s (fitness, finance, food), and review headlines for Twitter inspiration. Some self-help oriented tweet ideas include:

• Easy Ways to Meet Challenging Goals
• Ways to Achieve Very Desirable Results
• The Financial Benefits of Taking a Specific Set of Actions
• How to Come Out Good While Being Bad
• Jaw Dropping Benefits from Doing Something Simple
• Celebrity Name Dropping
• Things to Not Do (with a Subtle Threat Attached to Doing Them Anyway)

Use hashtags with these ideas to create a series of tweets themed to a particular topic.

Picking Your Spots for Tweeting on the Sales Continuum

When you’re active on social media on behalf of an organization (even if it’s your solo operation), you’re looking to generate business. How salesy can your content marketing get on Twitter? It all depends.

Setting up a Twitter account that’s clearly going to be all offers / promos can work if your deals are so good that you can attract followers with 100% sales-oriented content.

If you’re trying to balance general and business-building content though, heavily overweight toward general content (i.e., all the other ideas shared so far in this post). When you introduce more business building content, consider this continuum from light to heavier sales focus, determining where you want to be on the sales continuum at any one time:

• Tweet a non-exclusive promotion or discount
• Announce a giveaway
• Feature a link to downloadable content
• Provide insider information or a sneak-peak at a new product
• Tweet a snippet about what you do with a link to a webpage with more info
• Provide an exclusive offer for followers
• Promote a link to your e-commerce page (on your own site or Amazon, etc.)
• Proactively tweet people whose tweets suggest a need for your product or service
• Tweet a link to an affiliate marketing program in which you participate
• Use a Twitter account to tweet promotional offers all the time

Decide for Yourself What to Tweet About!

Brainzooming blog readers know we’re not big on, “There’s only ONE WAY to do this” blog posts. We’re strategists, so we see the importance of variability and aligning with what fits your organization’s strategy. This is a starting point, however, to begin determining what strategic direction is right when it comes to how your content marketing strategy applies to Twitter.

And you thought it was a simple question, didn’t you? - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming email updates.

If you’re struggling with determining ROI and evaluating its impacts, download “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track” today!  This article provides a concise, strategic view of the numbers and stories that matter in shaping, implementing, and evaluating your strategy. You’ll learn lessons about when to address measurement strategy, identifying overlooked ROI opportunities, and creating a 6-metric dashboard. Download Your Free Copy of “6 Social Media Metrics You Must Track!”

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Kansas Citian, Sarah Wood tweeted last night that she would like to read a blog post about ways to make sure you are staying focused while working at home during a blizzard. Since Kansas City is having its second blizzard in a few days, staying focused while working at home is a natural topic to address, at least in the center of the US.

@brainzooming I’d love to read a blog post about how to keep focused while working at home (in a blizzard).

— Sarah Wood (@hidama) February 26, 2013

Staying Focused While  Working at Home during a Blizzard

Here are my eight ideas for staying focused when your whole work team is “working” from home during a blizzard. And as was pointed out when I sneak previewed the list on Facebook last night, this is definitely oriented toward those without kids also at home for the day. That’s unfamiliar territory for me since we don’t have kids. While our feline Director of Enthusiasm demands attention, it’s every now and then, not fourteen hours straight. Because of this, your actual results may vary with these eight ideas!

1. Get up at your regular time.

Sure, you’re not going to have to commute, and you may not spend nearly as much time as you normally would getting ready, but the earlier head start you can get on your day’s to-do list, the sooner you’ll feel the warm glow from a sense of accomplishment.

2. Don’t watch updates about the weather.

You’re home. You’re not going anyplace. You have no need to be monitoring reports about ½-inch increases in snow totals or all the crap happening on the roads with people who didn’t have the sense to stay at home. So no Weather Channel, no local weather, no scanning endless Facebook photos of patios being covered in more and more snow. They’re all unnecessary time wasters today.

3. Work from a to-do list, but don’t go crazy with it.

Yes, if you play your cards right, you have a great opportunity to be more productive at home than when you’re at work, but it’s a marginal level of productivity improvement. Try to be ten or fifteen percent more productive (whatever that may mean for you). Forget about being 3x more productive; it isn’t going to happen.

4. Test your boss early.

At some point early in the day, ask a question or even better, send some type of update with a question attached, to your boss. This is the epitome of putting the ball in your boss’ court to see if your boss is focused on work tasks during the snow day. It’s all about being “visible” even during white out conditions.

5. Step your way through the day.

Set interim goals for throughout the day, i.e. by mid-morning, you want to have completed some specific to-do items or some number of them. Using a few interim goals, you have beneficial productivity stepping stones to help you focus throughout the day.

6. Make yourself take worthwhile breaks.

Don’t let yourself take a bunch of single-purpose breaks (i.e., stop to get a drink and then go right back to work). When you take a break, make it a worthwhile one. If you’re getting up to go get something to drink or go to the bathroom, look out the window, stretch, walk around, and then go back to work. Far better to take ten minutes and go back to work refreshed, than to take twenty breaks during an hour to stare out the window for 30 seconds each time.

7. If you have to visit Department Z, go ahead.

If you need a nap, take a quick nap. You know you catch a few winks during meetings (especially conference calls) or facing away from the opening of your cube when you’re at work, so go ahead and do it at home. Set a timer / alarm and crash during the afternoon if you need it.

8. Plan to wrap up the day early.

Take advantage of your early start, your to-do list focus, and your refreshing breaks to shoot to get your day’s work done 60 or 75 minutes earlier than you would if you were at the office. That’s the payback from your fifteen percent productivity improvement. Shovel, make a snowman, throw snowballs, or take a nap. Whatever you’ll enjoy doing, have at it!

How do you handle working at home during a blizzard?

What things do you do to make sure you are staying focused when you are working at home, especially now that you don’t have to spend time checking out job openings at Yahoo!? If you have kids, how do your staying focused strategies vary? - Mike Brown

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the free Brainzooming blog email updates.

The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your strategy and implementation efforts.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Some people seem to suffer from serial career challenges. Not just nuisance issues or problems related to every business working with fewer people and more to do. No, these career challenges come in the form of never being able to get things done effectively, and being surrounded by team members who don’t apparently seem to cooperate, contribute, or carry their own weight. And typically the same issues follow these individuals from job to job.

If this scenario sounds like someone you know (or even sound like you), it could very well be the person in question simply can’t get out of their own way and allow other talented people to help them achieve success.

Signs There Are Career Challenges with Letting Talented People Help You

There may be several signs someone has a problem letting talent people among their team provide meaningful assistance. These include:

• Higher than typical churn among team members and / or staff
• A personal sense of having too much work to do
• An ongoing challenge in meeting important objectives
• Self-frustration with having to handle too many details to be able to get projects completed
• An inability to effectively involve others in key projects to move them ahead

If a few of these signs are familiar, it’s smart to try (or to impose) corrective actions to fix the ongoing career challenges.

8 Ways to Let Talented People Help You

Here are eight behaviors to address, all of which can let others help a boss or team leader be more effective. If you’re the person looking to improve on your career challenges, focus on:

1. Pinpointing areas where you have weaknesses and identifying who on your team is stronger and can compensate for your personal weaknesses
2. Making sure to simply state project objectives without telling / showing others HOW the effort should be accomplished
3. Making sure you are hitting your own deadlines and not causing undue delay to others by delaying project decisions or natural delegation points
4. Providing others background on how you make decisions and judge performance to allow them to act without having to constantly check with you or have their work closely supervised
5. Allowing people who have demonstrated appropriate responsibility and ownership to take on more leadership
6. Being open to listening to ideas from others and then responding quickly and clearly when your team seeks input
7. Sharing your input when it’s needed and there is still time to act, but then forever holding your peace
8. Sticking with the decisions you make so others have the latitude to act on them

These behaviors can lead to those you work with being able to use their own talents and meaningfully contribute instead of being in the frustrating position of order taking and / or being continually second guessed. While improving in these areas requires determination, as one improves, there are tremendous benefits from suddenly finding there ARE people around who are freed up to perform better for all involved. - Mike Brown

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Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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Today’s question seems like a straight forward one: Who is your customer?

First a Little Background

I was excited Tuesday to be having lunch with Social Media Club of Kansas City president, Aaron Deacon, and Barrett Sydnor because Aaron always picks great places to eat. He selected a restaurant with a Mardi Gras feel (appropriate for the day), and I was eagerly looking forward to beignets. I even had my wife look at the restaurant’s menu online early in the morning to see which type of beignet she wanted me to bring home.

Arriving and parking in the restaurant’s lot across the street, I was greeted by Aaron and Barrett walking to a different nearby restaurant. It turns out the restaurant we intended to go to was closed, so Aaron had another suggestion. Since the original restaurant was closed and the parking lot was adjacent to the new destination, I followed along for the short walk without a second thought.

As Barrett and I left the second restaurant later, we discovered my car had been towed at the original restaurant’s behest (although it was clear they hadn’t cleared the lot of all the cars there).

After a few calls, we found ourselves in a dingy office in Kansas City’s River Market, waiting in line behind a very angry woman who was mouthing off to the tow people about exactly the same experience. She had intended to go to our destination restaurant, found it closed, wound up at the same restaurant as us, and had her car towed. Based on her angry interaction with the tow people, it was clear anger wasn’t getting her anywhere. In fact, they were screwing her around to make it longer to get her car, delaying the process in every way imaginable.

When it was my turn, I quietly said I was in the same situation. The previously mouthy tow guy politely got me handled right away (especially after I was reaching over the half-door to pet the office dogs) and had me “fast tracked.” That meant driving me to the tow lot while the other woman had to sit and wait for someone to go there and get her car and return it to the office. While it cost us both $205 to get our cars back, our customer experiences, by that point, were VERY different.

Who Is Your Customer?

So back to the question: “Who is your customer?”

Clearly this question is open to debate. Looking at a post on the restaurant’s Facebook page, it offered an explanation of sorts about its towing policy laced with a hint of “stick it to you” contriteness.

In the post, the restaurant makes it clear that ITS definition of a customer is limited to the person who is currently sitting in the restaurant eating . . . sort of. I say “sort of” because one comment on the post mentioned a current patron that was about to have his car towed when he had to rush across the street to stop it.

Fair enough, that’s certainly an obvious definition of what a customer is, and it makes the restaurant’s tow policy (apparently) easily enforceable.

From my perspective, however, I had become a “customer” of the restaurant earlier that morning and for several hours before showing up at the location. Anticipating it for hours and already pre-planning what to bring home to my wife had me squarely in the customer camp. I was hoping we’d be able to return together in the future even though we have to be very selective about restaurants because of food reactions she has.

Even after I parked and had to settle for another restaurant, I’d have told you I was there to be a customer of the original restaurant.

It’s Not All that Clear, Apparently

Certainly there was a disconnect between the restaurant and me in defining “who is your customer.”  Clearly, the restaurant doesn’t even view money changing hands as part of a customer definition since it got some cut of my several hundred dollars (which is an interesting business model for a restaurant that doesn’t want to open during the day . . . simply have people towed and increase your average lunch check vs. actually being open).

While the restaurant has a very pragmatic definition of “who is your customer,” it suggests no understanding at all of that whole customer lifetime value thing. Maybe that’s fine, because having spent $205 to “not eat” at the restaurant, their cut of the fee used up my full customer lifetime value for their restaurant.

At least now the restaurant and I are on the same page and both agree – I’m not a customer and never will be.

Think About Your Business – Who Is Your Customer?

What types of definitions do you put around who your customer is in your business? Do you have to see someone before they become a customer? Do you have to actually be serving them? Or might someone be your customer well before you have any idea they are considering YOU first? That’s a big part of the Google Zero Moment of Truth work that potential customers are seeking out information about your business before they make a move in your direction.

But, What’s the Restaurant’s Name?

You may wonder why I didn’t name the restaurant and flame them. It crossed my mind. On the way to the tow place I found the @Brainzooming Twitter account has about 60 times the restaurant’s Twitter followers. I followed them, and they blocked me on Twitter even though I didn’t tweet one thing about them.

Ultimately though, trying to flame them on social media gets the restaurant more attention with a global audience of Brainzooming readers. Why would I want to do that?

Far better for the angry woman in front of me – who works for a local TV station – to try and work up the story for her TV station. The story of towing scams in Kansas City should be ripe for revisiting. If you live in Kansas City and want to know the restaurant, however, message me, and I’ll let you know where it was. And emphasize why you should join my boycott! - Mike Brown

Subscribe for Free to the Brainzooming blog email updates.

Download the free ebook, “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” to help you generate fantastic new ideas! For an organizational creativity boost, contact The Brainzooming Group to help your team be more successful by rapidly expanding strategic options and creating innovative plans to efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can deliver these innovation benefits for you.

Mike Brown

Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.

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