Ted Rubin

Have you ever had a job that you simply couldn’t stand, due to a poor relationship between the decision-makers and the employees responsible for carrying out those decisions? It feels like no matter how strong an effort you make or how much you like serving the customers despite the poor work environment, it’s hard to perform at your best with so much negativity in the air. As a business owner, apathetic, disengaged employees can spell real disaster for the quality of your customer service, and the data consistently show how disengagement correlates with poor customer service. This is an age-old problem that has always been a hurdle for business.

The biggest mistake brands make when trying to engage influencers is not first trying to understand who they are and what they stand for. They think it is all about the money, and simply the number and reach. I write a lot about Looking People in the Eye Digitally… so for me the most important influencer marketing tool is building relationships.

Relationships are like muscle tissue… the more they’re engaged, the stronger and more valuable they become.

I have come to form an incredible distaste for the arrogance and hubris of so many executives. The courtesy of a reply to an outreach, from someone you know, is just not that difficult. Just a simple acknowledgement is not that hard and really should not be too much of a demand on your “incredibly valuable” time.

Business AI isn’t just coming, it’s here. Einstein AI is now integrated into Salesforce’s cloud-based CRM, IBM’s Watson has gone commercial, and we’re only scratching the surface of how artificial intelligence will impact the business world. Like any other advance, it will be a mixed bag. Our current generation of AI is already helping businesses solve problems, but like any new solution, AI generates as many questions as it does answers.

Chelsea Handler and Mary McCormack are angry about the state of the country, and they’re not alone. If you’re familiar with Ms. Handler’s work, you may be expecting a very boisterous, well-informed, and humorous monolog on the subject. You would be wrong in that assumption, but only about the boisterous part.

In 1997 when I joined Seth Godin at Yoyodyne, people were calling the internet new media. But there was nothing really new. It was simply traditional media in a new wrapper — nothing new at all. We are now entering the era of “new media.” Media is now aggregated, not a place, a.k.a. the website destination is dead. People choose their media vs. being beholden to media schedules, formats or those who we “should” be listening to. Publishers are people, not oracles, and print is most certainly unsustainable, and therefore as good as dead. User-generated content, the democratization of content, publishing and the ability to share consume and publish anytime, anywhere is setting the stage for each and every one of us to be the center of our own media channel.

What is influence, exactly? And what does having influence mean in today’s world? According to Merriam-Webster, influence is:

Come on folks… when you reach out and ask for someone’s time, pay attention for the reply. #Respect