Be Social, Get Success

Content Creation, Productivity and Virtual Services

Cross Blog Conversation with Benecia Pondor – (Round 2)

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BeneciaFUN!  This blog post conversation is more fun than I anticipated.

A few days ago, I started a cross blog conversation with Benecia Ponder. We have been discussing our businesses and how we keep ourselves motivated and upbeat.  Benecia shared some strategies for staying positive in her last post.  If you haven’t read it yet, I encourage you to go back and read the post. She provided helpful information for all women.

If you missed any part of the conversation so far, here are the links to our previous posts

Round 2 of the Conversation

Thanks for your response Benecia!

I so enjoyed reading your responses.  I especially enjoyed the four strategies you shared for staying positive.  I am planning to put number 3 into practice today!

I loved the quote you provided of what you wished every woman knew.

“You were created to live your life with an abundance of passion, purpose, power, and prosperity.”

Your mission touched me….to inspire and empower women to have it all in a way that doesn’t sacrifice their faith, family, or themselves in the process.   So many of us feel we can’t have success without sacrificing something of importance.  Thank you for being there to help us realize that is a myth.

Now, it is my turn to respond.  You have provided some thought provoking and challenging questions.

Benecia asks:  How did you get started in your business?

Answer:  Several years ago, I noticed an ad for an online course in social media.  I loved facebook and I thought that might be a great little part-time endeavor.  I took the course, and another, and another but never did a lot with it.  I had a few clients to keep me busy, but it was more of a hobby than a business.   Then last fall when my son was going to college, I decided to stop the hobby attitude and make it a true business.  I found that people wanted me to write blog posts and curations more than they desired social media content, so I have focused more on the writing aspects.

Benecia asks:   What are some of the biggest mistakes you see entrepreneurs make when it comes to building their social media presence?

Answer:  The two biggest mistakes I see are:

  1. People assume because they are a business, they should just get on facebook and sell, sell, sell. They only post what they want to sell someone.  It is social networking and should be used to build relationships so people like, know, and trust you and the company and then if they decide to purchase something, their business comes to mind.
  2. Most people would not go up to something they see at a party and say buy this, buy this, buy this. yet they feel they can do that without any other conversation on social media.   For every 5 posts that are relationship building, you can post a sales pitch.  More than that ratio of sales posts and people will consider you to be spam.
  3. Posting infrequently.   Businesses should be posting at least once a day, preferably more often to be seen in the streams of their followers.   If you only post once a week, why bother?   No one is going to see your posts.  There is so much you can post about.  Ask a question, post a quote, showcase a customer, share a picture, share a video, share other people’s posts.  You should be able to come up with at lest 3 or 4 different types of posts to share each day.

Benecia asks:  If there was one piece of advice you could give to entrepreneurs about social networking, what would it be?

Answer:  Build relationships!  Honestly care of about the people that are following you.  Let your personality shine through and be real.  The companies that do the best with social media are those that have learned the secrets of building relationships.

The second piece of advice I would give is if you don’t have time to do a good job with your social media, then hire someone who knows how to do it and have it done for you.

Benecia asks:  One of the issues I struggle with most is being consistent with my social media interaction.  What strategies do you have for social media engagement?

Answer:  I have a few strategies that might be helpful:

  • Use a scheduling software such as Hootsuite, Co-scheduler, or Buffer to pre-schedule posts so you don’t have to sit on social media all day.  If you don’t have time to be on a day, you are covered with the pre-scheduled items.
  • Create a calendar or list of items you want to post each day and then find the things to fit for each day.   Example:  Post a quote each day, post a picture, ask a question, share your own or someone else’s information.  There you have 4 things.   So all of them could be pre-scheduled a day, week or month in advance.   Then you can add the day to day things as you wish.
  • Be patient and consistent.  At first it may feel like you are talking to the air, but with time and consistency people will start to engage.  Just be patient and don’t quit.
  • Post as though you were talking to a friend.  Make your information on social media conversational. People want to relate to a person.

I have lots more tips but I will stop there for now.

Benecia asks:   When you’re not serving  your clients or building your business, what do you most love to do? 

Answer:  This is the easiest question to answer.  I love to spend time with my family and to travel. Vacation time, various trips we have taken as a family around the United States and other countries have given us many wonderful memories.  My husband and I have always enjoyed traveling.  When our son was 6 months old we started traveling again.  He had his first beach vacation when he was 6 months, his first airplane ride at about a year old.  We have been traveling ever since.   We have seen most of the US, visited Canada, Mexico, Bahamas, Caribbean Islands, France, and England.

I have included a picture of us this past summer on our European trip.

Paris

Entertaining and spending time with extended family is also important to me.  I also enjoy cooking and of course writing!

Benecia, thank you for asking these questions and sharing in this conversation with me.

Now, I have a few more questions for you…

  1. I find your passion so interesting.   What made you decide to go into this area?
  2. How do women respond when you begin to empower them?
  3. Do you find some women push-back to this type of motivation?
  4. I notice you have started adding video to your blog.  How is that going?  Do you like video?
  5. Ultimately what are your long range career goals?
  6. What kind of products and services do you have to offer my readers?
  7. When you’re not serving  your clients or building your business, what do you most love to do?

Looking forward to your responses as we begin the 3rd round of our converstaion.

Until next time..

Robin Sig

What Do You Do Best?

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Do you have the opportunity to do what you do best EVERY day?   Very few of us are so fortunate.  Some of us don’t even know what we do best.   Do you?

So often we have talents that go unused.  Untapped by us and our employers.  These are natural strengths we should be building upon. We spend a lot of our time trying to fix our shortcomings and hiding our weaknesses instead of developing and improving our strengths.

People who have the opportunity to focus on their strengths every day are six times more likely to be engaged in their jobs and have a good quality of life.

If you do not get to focus on what you do best, it can cost you, the company you work for, your family and your community.  You will find a current of negativity in your life.

Several years ago, I read a book titled, Now, Discover Your Strengths.  It was very eye opening and revealing. The book basically focuses on how society has traditionally trained us to spend all our time trying to improve our weaknesses and imperfections and rarely focuses on what we do well.  Most learning programs help us to become who we are NOT.   If you don’t have a talent with numbers, you’re still forced to spend time in that area to attain a degree.   From infancy to adulthood, most people devote more time to their shortcomings than to their strengths.

In reality regardless of how much a person practices and studies if they struggle with n umbers, they probably won’t make a great accountant or statistician.   Someone with little empathy will not be good at comforting agitated customers.  We each have our own areas of strength.

Instead of trying to improve something we are naturally NOT good at, the book suggests we spend that time developing and honing our natural talents or strengths.

While I agreed with everything the book was saying and the theory of it all, it was hard to do since real life takes over and job pressures force you back into that mold of trying to improve yourself.   Most employers don’t overlook the weaknesses and simply focus on what you do well.    In time I totally forgot about the strengths.  Occasionally I would read an article and be reminded or I would do something that others thought was very difficult and I found it easy and I would attribute it to one of my strengths.

Strengthsfinder 2.0Recently, our administrative team at work was assigned to read the new Strengthsfinder 2.0 by Tom Rath.  It is updated and now measures your strengths against 34 possible themes.   Some of the themes are Achiever, Adaptability, Command, Competition, Deliberative, Empathy, Harmony, Input, Maximizer, Restorative, Significance, and Woo.  These are just a few.   You take an online assessment and it measures your natural strengths against each theme.  The test code is included in the book.

The assessment takes about 30 minutes and is multiple choice.   You don’t have to study for it, you just give your natural answers.   An example would be, “Which do you prefer to do, go to a ball game or read a book?”

Once you know your top five strengths, then you can use the personalized development guide to align your job, goals, and life with your natural talents.

At work we are using this as a team to map out the entire team’s strengths and who is best at doing what.   Why have someone who is weak in strategy handling the strategic aspects.  Let the people who are strong in communication handle that aspect, let the people who are strong in Woo be on the front lines to impress people. The list goes on.   We feel this will make our team stronger if everyone is working in an area of strength and cultivating that talent.

Reading the Strengthsfinder 2.0 has been a huge reminder of what my natural abilities are.  They have changed slightly over the years.   I am using them in my personal life to be a better wife, mother and business owner.  I realize that forcing myself to do the tasks I am weak at and hate doesn’t benefit anyone.

So what happens if you do not use your strengths at work?   There is a good possibility you

      • Dread going to work
      • Have more negative interactions with colleagues
      • Treat customers poorly
      • Complain to friends about the company you work for
      • Achieve less on a daily basis
      • Have fewer positive and creative moment.

Do any of the above statements apply to you?   Are you working from an area of weakness or strength?

So why aren’t we all working with our strengths.  Most people are unaware of, or unable to describe their own strengths.

“Most people think they know what they are good at.  They are usually wrong…..And yet, a person can perform only from strength.” ~Peter Drucker

I thought I knew where my strengths were, but found out that I had natural talents in areas I was overlooking.   Now I am making sure I include time to work in a strength area every day.   A small amount of time doing what I am naturally good at helps to build confidence and deal with the times when I have to do things that are not part of my talents.

I feel happier about work and at work.

Our passions and natural talents last for a lifetime.  But all too often, our talents go untapped.  It is up to us to figure out what those strengths are and how we can build upon them.   A great place to start is by reading the Strengthsfinder 2.0 and taking the assessment.

Are you using your natural talents every day?  Please let us know how you use them in the comments below.