by Heather T. | Sep 19, 2023 | Business, Operations, Security, Websites
One of the first steps in starting a new business after you have chosen your business name is registering a domain name (or names).
(estimated time 2 hours+ (10 minutes to register the domain, additional time searching for the perfect one (or more) + spend a few minutes on the https://archive.org/ and see whether the domain has been used before and for what* )
-Cost-Your time spent plus $15-30 per year, depending on the registrar**)
Make sure you (the business owner) “own” it. You have sole access to the domain registrar, and it gets billed to YOUR credit card. *make sure to keep track of login information, what email is used to access it, and that your credit card information is up to date (very important!). If someone else registers it for you, ensure it ends with you as owner and full access.
Make sure any domain registrar you use (for example Godaddy and Namecheap) have 24/7 phone and email support. Stay away if it’s only email support and/or a submission form on their website.
**Many legitimate domain registrars will offer you an introductory price for the first year of domain registration. Just be aware of this when writing your business and marketing plans in terms of expenses. A first-year registration could be $2 but it will generally go up to $20 or more per year with internet fees and taxes.
Having an SSL certificate is very important for Search Engine Optimization. Some domain registrars include a free SSL certificate with the domain name, and some offer it at a low cost. There are also a few who only let you add a free or otherwise purchased SSL to the registration if it’s done through the registrar company, so investigate this prior to settling on a service.
Some hosting companies offer free SSLs as part of website hosting services. If you register your name with Godaddy (as an example), who charges for an SSL certificate, you can get your SSL through your hosting company instead.
If you want more information on SSL Certificates, Hubspot has an excellent beginners guide to understanding SSL https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/what-is-ssl
Always make sure you keep your login information in a safe place where you can retrieve it, and VERY IMPORTANT, make sure your credit card information on file with the registrar is up to date. If you change your email address and no longer will have access to the email address on file, make sure that it is updated.
If your domain name expires, there are companies out there who will buy your domain, and make it either impossible to get back or try to charge you thousands of dollars to retrieve it (many times unsuccessfully).
Your domain registrar will NEVER send you a snail mail reminder to renew your domain. Many fraudulent companies and scammers send snail mail to try to trick you into switching your domain name to them using scare tactics.
If you get a letter in the mail from (to name a few common ones), shred it, it’s a phishing/fraud scheme.
- Domain Listings
- Domain Info
- IDNS
- Domain Registry
- Domain Registry of America
- Web Listings Inc
- Domain Networks
- United States Domain Authority
A good reference article is Domain Name Solicitation Fraud – brand owners beware https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/domain-name-solicitation-fraud-brand-8729877/
*A domain may have been previously registered, and the business attached to it may have closed or just not renewed the domain. One: if it was used prior; were there any bad connotations attached to it? Two: There may be websites out there on the internet that may have the old domain listed. You want to track these down and see if this is something that could cause brand confusion or other issues down the road. Not every website and directory will have contact information (or the attention) and allow you to remove outdated information.
Example. Your business is in Manchester, NH, and you own an auto repair shop (you do not work on classic cars, and you do not do auto restoration. The domain was previously registered to another business; the old business was in Illinois, it was an antique car restoration shop, and the domain is listed on multiple websites.
You can also have private domain registration, which hides your personal information (i.e., name, address, phone, email, etc.). This option is more expensive, and while some marketers say you “should” do it, I’d like businesses to consider if it’s really worth it. If you own a business and on your business website, you have your name, email, etc., and it’s all over other places on the internet, what’s the point? Anyone (including scammers/spammers) can get that information easily anyway. The only time I would suggest (and this is a personal opinion) that you use private registration is if you have a home office and your billing information is your house address instead of a P.O. Box and you don’t want that info out there.
If your only option for registering a domain name is .net and the .com is already taken, what is sitting on the .com? Can it impact your business? How many potential customers/clients/guests might you lose if someone wasn’t paying attention (or didn’t know) and went to the .com version?
Is it worth it to register multiple domain names? It is worth it to grab the .net extension of your name. If your name is easily misspelled, it may also be worth it to register any variations of the name that might commonly be mistyped. While you can have the .net extension and any other domain names forwarded to your main website, be mindful of the cost. Are you really using them for anything or going to use them for anything? Is there a point in registering them? two domains, .com and .net will run you about $40+ per year; the more you buy, the more you will have to pay to keep them registered every year. Instead of saying yes, it is worth it to buy more names, or NO it’s not worth it, here are some articles to review, and you can decide whether it’s worth your time for marketing and expenses.
Keep in mind several of these articles are written by domain registrars.
My personal take on buying additional domain names? Yes, it can be worth it, IF you use them and if you forward them or direct them to specific pages or unique landing pages, but in my experience, most people buy them, and they just sit there (not directed to anything) in the domain registrar for years and people keep paying for them year after year.
by Heather T. | Sep 9, 2023 | Business, Marketing, Observations, Operations, Safety, Security, Social Media
This is my 2 cents based on what I know about AI so far. Since I am still spending several hours per day learning new AI platforms, and new information it’s going to be a moving target info wise, this is my knowledge and my personal take on all of this so far.
AI Platforms output is not always correct, ALWAYS fact check especially if you are using it for a research tool. Hopefully that information is out there already for most people, but I’m still running into people just testing the waters for the first time that don’t actually know that.
Keep in mind anything added to AI engines is being used to train the AIs; don’t ever put confidential or private information in. Also, be cognizant of putting any personal information in. Just like you shouldn’t be using your favorite vacation spot as a password, hackers are also using personal information to train AIs to hack into accounts.
There has been a recent uptick in hacked social media accounts that is being attributed to AIs being trained by hackers to browse for personal information used publicly online, and that can include data being put into AI generators.
Some AIs are allowing you to opt out of data gathering as well as some platforms and programs that also integrate AI into their software.
To opt out of ChatGPT
- Go to your account at far left bottom, click on the three dots
- Go to settings
- Go to the Data Controls tab on left
- Slide “Chat history & training” to off
Meta/Facebook
Adobe
Don’t use text straight from an AI platform for website text, blog text, or any other online published article text (social media posts are an exception as far as I can tell). Always rewrite and reword a bit. Google can tell it’s AI-generated content, and it can affect your Search Engine Optimization (i.e., how a business website gets found in Google search)
Don’t sign into any AI platform with your Google account or social media accounts, ALWAYS use an email and a unique password to login. Giving access to your Google account creates a backdoor which from a business and personal standpoint, can compromise your email account, and any other Google accounts you own: (Google Suite, Google Drive, Google My Business, Youtube, Google Docs, etc.).
If you are not familiar with Data Breaches and the cost of how it can affect a business (The global average cost per data breach was 4.45 million U.S. dollars in 2023.), please read https://www.upguard.com/blog/cost-of-data-breach and https://www.statista.com/statistics/273575/us-average-cost-incurred-by-a-data-breach/ .
This is also how many social media accounts get hacked. Granting access to Facebook through a backdoor can cause an account to get hacked, and just changing the password to the account, does not remove access, you have to remove app access too.)
If someone does give access to a Google account, and needs to unlink it/revoke permissions , here is a walkthrough https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/2541991?hl=en#:~:text=Select%20Connected%20accounts.
Revoke app access/external Access (social media)
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/help/942196655898243
Instagram https://help.instagram.com/588549329146493
Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a519947
Pinterest https://help.pinterest.com/en/article/connect-to-other-apps-with-pinterest
X (formerly Twitter) https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/connect-or-revoke-access-to-third-party-apps
Tiktok https://support.tiktok.com/en/safety-hc/account-and-user-safety/connect-to-third-party-apps
Please be extremely careful adding browser extensions to your browser to extend AI capabilities, there are A LOT of unsafe, unsecure and malicious browser extensions out there that can compromise people’s computers and contain malware or keyloggers, a good overview of browser security can be found here https://security.berkeley.edu/education-awareness/browser-extensions-how-vet-and-install-safely .
Malware can use known software vulnerabilities to infect your PC. A vulnerability is like a hole in your software that can give malware access to your PC. When you go to a website, it can try to use vulnerabilities in your web browser to infect your PC with malware. Apple computers can also be compromised as malware and virus programs designed specifically to attack Macintosh operating systems can be even more malicious and destructive than ones designed to attack PCs.
A keylogger is a form of malware or hardware that keeps track of and records your keystrokes as you type. It takes the information and sends it to a hacker.
A best practice is to NOT download any AI software. If there is a web-based version, use that instead. Before downloading any kind of software, do your research. Just Googling the name and reviews, or the name and whether it is safe will not give you legitimate search results. Insecure and malicious sites and software have a lot of sites that are either set up by them or paid to have them set up to make software come across as safe and legitimate. If you do download anything, make sure you have a good antivirus AND a good malware program, and it’s up to date; scan the program files before installing. When in doubt (even a little) don’t do it.
*Most antivirus programs say they cover malware, but they only cover a fraction of what’s out there. It’s best practice to have both. On average, over 500K malware and virus programs are created daily. I recommend Malwarebytes (free and paid versions are available). There are other good ones out there as well.
Be cautious when using AI photo editors/generators. This is a big gray area online at the moment, but watermarks and digital watermarks are being pulled into AI-generated works. Remember that AI-generated art aggregates other online media and creates something with it, including copyrighted artwork and photos.
Currently, it’s best practice not to use AI-generated art on anything online “owned” by a business—a website, blog, etc. There is a spate of lawsuits going on currently regarding copyright, and until things are officially ruled on, it’s better not to take a chance. I look at it this way: if a business gets sued for using a copyrighted image that was integrated and generated by an AI platform, the AI platform has Terms of Service that give themselves a waiver (the platforms) from liability but not the business, and even if the suit does get dismissed, there is the time, money and reputation of the business that is risked.
Until the courts have consistently ruled about this and more AI art generators start to accept their own liability for using copyrighted art in generated work, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
If a business gets hit with a claim by Getty images, the beginning claim will start at around $1500, they don’t care if you remove the image online, they WILL send collections to harass a business until they pay up. If you want some background on Getty copyright claims just Google: “Getty images copyright claims small businesses” or email me. I’ve been told horror stories by hundreds of businesses, and had to help several dozen businesses over the years who have been hit with Getty claims.
Keep in mind as well that many AI art generators claim copyright to the images produced and many only state that you can use the generated images for non-commercial use.
(September 7, 2023) Microsoft announced it will protect users from Copyright claims. (Which is terrific news, hoping additonal platforms will step up to this).
https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2023/09/07/copilot-copyright-commitment-ai-legal-concerns/
Canva (Canva.com) terms of service regarding AI generated content (as of 9/8/2023)
https://www.canva.com/policies/text-to-image-terms-2022-12-06/ *Note: Read the Legal Notice
I’ve talked to Canva about this, and they refer to this (above link) and have stated by email that to date, they will not be liable for any copyright claims. I first found this as a potential issue because certain prompts in their text to AI image generator, particularly using the watercolor feature, return a large portion of the time images that look like they have copyright signatures in them. From our 17 email exchanges about this topic: “We understand that the appearance of signatures on AI-generated images can be surprising and even concerning. We’re exploring solutions to mitigate their occurrence. However, the signature generated by Text to Image is just that: generated by the AI model. The AI model (Stable Diffusion) has learned from reviewing billions of pieces of data that some forms of images, such as paintings, often have a signature in a bottom corner, so it generated its own variation of one in response to the prompt.” Interesting that the AI platform only seems to be assigning “create a watermark” to the watercolor feature and not concept art, color pencil or ink print, to name a few options, and it doesn’t explain things that pop up like on the image to right where you have a double signature……. I have noticed (so maybe they paid a little attention) that the number of images has decreased in recent testing, but the one on the right I generated on Friday in Canva, so they still have some work to do. And since Getty Images is in the midst of a lawsuit with Stable Diffusion about this very topic…….
Example:
I love Canva, it’s incredibly useful, don’t get me wrong, but I also have a much greater concern that someone i.e. a small business, will use an image generated by the Canva Image generator and get sued not understanding that Canva isn’t going to protect them. So make sure the TOS is read and more importantly understood!
Stability AI https://stability.ai/terms-of-use (as of 9/8/2023)
Midjourney https://docs.midjourney.com/docs/terms-of-service (as of 9/8/2023)
DeviantArt https://stability.ai/terms-of-use (as of 9/8/2023)
The better the prompt the better the results, a good resource for learning how to use prompting is https://learnprompting.org/
I found using several AI platforms at once and putting in the same prompts gives in some cases, very different and varied feedback/results, if you’re using it for marketing, use it to cherry pick the best of the best.
Useful AI Platforms (there are many many more)
https://chat.openai.com/ (free and paid versions, the paid version is $20 per month)
https://claude.ai/chats
https://bard.google.com/
https://www.bing.com/?scope=web&cc=US
https://elicit.org/ (for research from papers and publications)
How can it help small businesses? and What can AI be used for?
To date this list (and it’s the tip of the iceberg) is what “I” have used AI platforms/generators/sites for and found useful. There are 100’s of additional uses besides these listed, these are just the ones I’ve used so far. I find I’m using AI on a daily basis as it is so incredibly useful for a wide variety of things.
For marketing and business development:
- Research (always fact check)
- Business and consumer trends (always fact check)
- Article rewrites (see above #3)
- Social Media Posts
- Email scripts and scripts for autoresponders
- Keyword Research (always fact check)
- Generate video scripts
- Creating chatbots for customer service
- Automating emails
- Writing social media ad copy
- Writing print ad copy
- Writing Google Ad words and Bing Ad words copy
- Create, edit, and modify media and video files (mostly paid AI platforms including ChatGPT plus)
- Blog titles
- Blog posts (see above #3)
- Email marketing subject lines
- Email marketing content
- Website content* (see above #3)
For operations:
- Training Manuals
- Employee Manuals (always run by an HR pro)
- Transcribing text
- Automating tasks
- Voice assistants
- Help with grant writing/grant writing
- Cover letter and resume writing
- Inexpensive marketing ideas for small businesses
- Generate customer surveys
- Proofreading and Editing
- Create contracts (always run by a business lawyer)
- Scripts for lectures and talks (or a speech for an event or wedding)
- Lesson plan outlines
- Writing and debugging code
- Creating WordPress plugins
- Creating WordPress themes
- Write product descriptions
- Create tests
- Explain complex topics in layman’s terms
- Create content in other languages (please use a human being to double check)
- Create Interview questions
- Translate text
- Create outlines for a book or other content
- Creating job descriptions
- Creating job applications
- Creating job search listing content/text
- Extract data from text
- Product/service name ideas (same caveat as business name ideas below/Please check!)
- Business name ideas** (see below screenshot). Please make sure any business names are checked online before registering, in testing most of the major AI generators/platforms they are ALL making suggestions that when do a search in Google, many of the business names are already being used. This is a screenshot from the paid version of ChatGPT. Highlighted names for example are names already in use (9/8/2023)
Again this is the TIP of the iceberg on what a business can do with AI, with the exception of the video editing, all of the above were done using the free versions and free tools that were out there without adding browser extensions, or giving access to my Google account. So until the wild west of AI platforms has some more security and rules and regulations in place, how safe do you want to keep your business??
AI Program/Platform Directories (Many more out there, I found these useful to start)
One of the good Newsletters I subscribe to: (there are hundreds +++ out there. This one is an aggregate)
Articles of Interest:
by Heather T. | Sep 5, 2023 | Blog, Business, Marketing, Observations, Operations
How many of you get stuck on a project when you’ve got too much on your plate? Or more specifically encountered a roadblock and not moving forward.
The next time you’re feeling defeated or overwhelmed, take a step back and resist the urge to look ahead. Instead, take a moment to look back.
If you are familiar with the concept of emotional intelligence, you might be familiar with this term, but I want to elaborate a little for those who are not.
What is Reappraisal?
Reappraisal involves mentally reframing an event to reduce the negative emotions you feel.
This is not the same thing as reconsideration, which is the act of “thinking” about something again, especially to change a decision or opinion.
Reappraisal is the act of “assessing or evaluating something again,” often to determine its current value or worth.
While both involve revisiting a previous decision, reconsideration involves a potential change in opinion or decision, while reappraisal is focused on reassessing value or worth. And to help change your mindset.
For example, let’s say for example that I spilled the soda that I was going to have for lunch, and I now only have water left to drink.
I might tell myself that well, “It’s okay because at least I have water; there are people who have nothing out there to drink in countries with food and water insecurities”.
That can also be self-limiting, though, because if anyone grew up with parents who said things like “eat your peas; there are people starving in other countries.” I did. There was no direct connection to the reasoning. I never knew someone from another country when I was a child who didn’t have enough to eat, and while I have met people over the years with those challenges from other countries and sadly this country as well, I didn’t have a personal connection with them then.
If I reframed that reasoning now as “it’s okay because at least I have water, clean water to drink, there are people who have nothing out there in my town with food and clean water insecurities.” It’s a lot more relatable.
But you can also look at things from a self-improvement standpoint, which is how I prefer to reframe things.
“I dropped my soda, and maybe that’s a good thing because it’s high in sugar and calories, and this can help me stay on my diet.”
There is no wrong way to do this; it’s only about reassessing and reevaluating.
Let’s take a business example.
You are a software engineer, and you just programmed a new AI platform and released it into the wilds of the internet for use.
After just 2 hours, you have reports of the AI giving people bad and inaccurate information, and you have to pull the plug.
You are depressed and unmotivated because you and your team spent thousands of hours programming this AI, AND now you have to reinvigorate and remotivate your team (and yourself) to redo it and fix it.
Instead of dwelling on the issue and bringing your team and yourself down with your failure, reassess and apply the Rule of Reappraisal.
You don’t want reconsideration, which is the act of “thinking” about something again. You want the assessment of the issue AND to identify and practice the core questions around reappraisal.
You don’t have to use all of them, but identifying a couple can help change the mindset.
Questions to ask yourself:
-Were there, or will there be, any positive outcomes that result from this situation?
-Are you grateful for any part of this situation?
-In what ways are you better off than when you started?
-What did you learn? (Maybe the most important one)
An example might be your need to leave a new program in beta longer and get more testers before opening it to the public.
-How did you grow and develop as a result of this situation?
An example might be you learned how to knit your team into a very cohesive working group during this project, and because of that, future projects will be more efficient.
-Why is it important to build reappraisal ability?
When we change the way we think about our experiences, it helps in not letting things get to us that can drag us down.
We are able to see challenges as opportunities and begin to view our lives in terms of strengths instead of weaknesses. It also helps to reduce negative emotions.
Don’t focus on the path ahead. Look back at what you’ve already accomplished.
The next time you feel that your day, your week, or even your year was a failure or the latest project you deep-dived into just didn’t make the cut, resist the urge to look ahead only.
This is especially important as a business owner because you can get mired down in not rethinking and reassessing something that perhaps didn’t work or didn’t go the way you planned, and it can derail your motivation, which can affect how your business operates.
Instead, take a few moments to look back and reappraise. You would be surprised by all that you have already accomplished.
by Heather T. | Jul 26, 2023 | Business, Marketing, Observations, Operations, Opinion
We recently had a chance to take a little time off and rented a VRBO for our kids and grandkids to come and stay for a few things.
Sadly our local B&B that we would generally put them up at was booked up, so we had to settle for what we could find. Anyone who knows me knows I am not a fan of vacation rentals, this one at least had commercial liability insurance (a must to protect owners and guests) and was legally a business paying NH rooms and meals tax, so there was that.
This is not meant to be an op-ed on vacation rentals or to pick on them but to point out if you are a property owner of any kind renting short-term property out, legal B&B, hotel, motel, hopefully legally vacation rental…. You really should check out the rooms and property from the guest’s perspective. Further down in this post, I also touch on brick-and-mortar retail stores.
I’ve touched on this years ago in a couple of blog posts, Why it pays to sleep around for Bed and Breakfast owners and for restaurants, View Your restaurant from a customer’s perspective.
This property had a vacation rental manager who lived according to her, literally right down the road. The property was clean (except for the toaster oven, I’ll give that pass :), beds were comfortable, and it wasn’t out in the trees price-wise, all pluses.
But, In the main bathroom, the sink didn’t drain, and the whole fixture of the faucet was loose, so when you turned the water on, the whole fixture tilted.
In the kitchen, most of the knobs on the drawers and cabinets were loose, and I spent 5 minutes fixing them myself because it was bugging me. There were some other minor issues with the property (aside from the sink, which we did mention to the manager) that were not enough to be an issue or to complain about but it’s what sticks as a memory of the stay for my family. And the point is not to nitpick but to draw attention to the small details. Our kids and grandkids had a great stay otherwise but didn’t leave a review because of the small things.
There are mixed feelings from vacation rental hosts about supplying some essentials; some properties give guests starters or, depending on how long guests plan to stay, at least a few day’s supply of things like napkins, paper towels, and a garbage bag or two. Other rentals have a, “Well” we are not a hotel”; renters need to bring everything on their own.
I lurk on many lodging forums, both legal and not-so-legal lodging, and the discussions and different viewpoints are fascinating.
I’d point that that properties need to clarify that if they are not going to provide the bare minimum, state it explicitly up front. I’ve seen a score of rental sites saying, “Everything you need for a perfect getaway!“ (that kind of implies everything, no?) and then don’t have the little things. (as evinced by scores of reviews I’ve read)
While experienced vacation rental stayers may be hip and bring things, what about someone renting for the first time who may need to be made aware of having to bring everything? Or a case like this, where a renter might know but OOOPPPSS, forgot those paper towels, and the nearest convenience store is a good half-hour away. I’ve lost count of the number of reviews I’ve seen on vacation rental sites and other review sites where people are commenting on this. Apparently, not everyone pays attention to their reviews and they probably should. I wouldn’t be writing a blog post about it if it was just me observing this.
How much of an outlay is it for a place to have at least one roll of paper towels, a couple of extra garbage bags, and some napkins (just as examples). $3 isn’t going to detract much from that $400 a night a property is charging. Again this is not to nitpick, we were prepared and brought things, but how many people may not be or forgot something?
Here’s where I go back to if a property with no onsite owners wants to up their game, stay at the place, what’s wrong with it that’s fixable (even if it’s super minor)?
How can you make things just a bit better for guests? (and be legal, for heaven’s sake! Yep had to add that, darn my fondness for legal lodging).
It’s the little things that can make or break a stay for a guest and, even more importantly, lose a potential repeat customer and not have them leave a review, either positive or not. It IS the small stuff that tips people over the edge on leaving a good review. At a restaurant having an excellent meal with great service but the coffee at the end of the meal is cold is another great example.
What this is really tied into is this goes for ANY brick-and-mortar business out there.
When did you last walk through your retail shop/store selling clothing (as an example) and pretend you were a customer? Really “be” a customer, no joke.
Can those short people (I’m one of them, so this is an endless challenge shopping in many places) reach things?
Can the tall person with larger feet who is a customer reach down easily to get to the lowest row at floor level because not thinking about it, that’s where you have placed the larger shoes, and you did it for the convenience of yourself, not the customer?
I stopped into a little shop recently on a trip, and I had to ask the owner to take down some suit jackets I wanted to look at (note she was not overly tall but still had 6 inches on me). While in there, I also observed several other people (also vertically challenged) who felt some of the clothing, looked up at the clothing for more then a minute, and then walked away.
A question I’d be asking myself if I was the shopkeeper and was paying attention to my potential buying customers (this was the owner of the shop there, so no excuse that this was an employee) is how many of those people that had a little more than a passing interest in something too high to reach without having to ask, might have taken that shirt they were interested in and went to the mirror with it and then possibly to the changing room to try it on, to potentially the cash register and bought it??????????
Just because something is in person doesn’t change the sales funnel.
I’ve seen people pick up shopping baskets in stores, go to the back of a store (not necessarily a big box store) where there are large heavy objects, pick something up, put it back down, or pick it up, put it into their basket and then pick the basket up, put it back down and then place the item back on the shelf either because they wanted to do more shopping and/or they just didn’t want to lug it and anything else already bought up to the counter.
I’m not saying move all your heavy stuff up toward the cashiers but instead be more observant of your customers, not to mention if you’re the owner or manager; paying attention to customers is a good positive thing for customer interaction, but it also cuts down on theft.
In our local Supermarket, many of our stockers are on the tall side, and the general manager/purchaser doesn’t pay attention to things like double stacking, stacking above the cold line, or putting products into space where other SKUs belong, this includes allowing stock people to put items like gallon containers and #10 (extra large cans) on the very top shelf of aisles. For shorter people, we can’t even reach the top shelf half the time, let alone take something heavy down easily, and the reverse can be true if you have heavier items that frequently sell, putting them on the bottom shelf so taller people or older people have to bend down very far to retrieve them isn’t particularly helpful either.
Double stacking boxes on the top shelf makes it a challenge in Jenga to take a box down, no matter your height, and I’ve seen boxes of Cheerios falling on old ladies because they are double stacked, ouch ☹
Another common one is aisle space, sometimes you are at the mercy of a layout that you can’t change, but if you have racks, tables, or shelves that are movable, I challenge you as an owner or manager to dress in winter clothing with a bulky winter coat and/or bring a large bag/purse with you (or get a friend or employee to do it if you don’t feel comfortable with it) and aisle walk.
Can someone easily navigate through aisles? Do their clothes or bag catch on things or potentially brush things off a table or shelf to the floor by accident? What about people with strollers or carrying portable baby seats?
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve walked into a store and, within a minute, walked back out again because I’m afraid my bag (which isn’t huge), and nor am I, is going to knock something off a shelf because there is not enough space to walk easily without having to be hyper-aware of bumping into things.
I’ve also lost count of the times I’ve been behind someone going into a store who has done the same thing, walked in, and then turned right around and walked out; you’ve lost your sale before you even started.
One more is a public bathroom for shoppers. Does your stall have a hook on it to hang coats and bags? No one wants to put those on the floor, no matter how clean it looks. Not just women carry bags; what about bikers (motorized and non) with backpacks or fanny packs they may want to remove as an example, or coats for all genders?
Case in point, many box stores have a small ledge to put a purse down on. In traveling last week, I stopped at my favorite smokehouse in Bennington, Vermont (Henry’s Market); going to give them a shameless plug because, IMO, they have excellent sandwiches, great smoked meat, and friendly staff whenever I have stopped in every few months.
They have an ice cream cooler with a flattish top right in front of the cash register where you put the items you purchase. All five of the woman in line in front of me used the cooler to put their purse on to dig out their wallet, as did I, as did two of the men who were shopping who rode in on motorcycles and had backpacks. They may not have intentionally done this, placing the cooler there, but it sure made paying easier.
Sometimes it’s just a little thing to make a retail experience that much better, and it’s the small things (that detract) people remember.
It’s not just sales; it makes reviews telling (or not). How many reviews does your brick-and-mortar establishment have? You have a great product or products; things are priced well, and your customer service may be exceptional, but where are your loads of good reviews? If you’re not getting them and you’ve checked off all the former points, maybe it’s time to take a good look at your customer “experience” when they are in your establishment and be observant, put yourself in the customer’s shoes.
The phrase, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff is the opposite of true when it comes to the customer experience. It’s the Small Stuff that matters and can put more money in your pocket as a business owner and I hope that matters.
by Heather T. | May 23, 2023 | Business, Marketing, Opinion
As I continue to go down the AI rabbit hole, I keep seeing suggestions out there for using AI to generate social media content, but I haven’t seen a lot so far giving actual specific examples and testing the existing platforms against each other. I’m sure they’re out there since I started playing with this, but I wanted to give you my personal take and some comments about what I found so far.
I love free stuff, especially for free platforms. While there are a lot of paid options out there, I wanted to try to stick with the free ones just because I work with so many small businesses with very limited marketing budgets, and the last thing I want to do is start suggesting paid platforms when there are just as many good alternatives out there that are free.
There was recently an article on Make Use Of on using Canva to bulk generate images so I gave it a try. This has some pros and cons, for example, if you’re doing quotes if your not really specific about the prompt given. When you ask the AI generator to do quotes, you need to give it some very specific parameters about how to separate the data; otherwise, when you copy and paste it into a spreadsheet, you still have to spend some time separating the text into separate columns.
I found when I first started playing with this option, I asked it to generate quotes about scones, and I didn’t give it specific parameters and then had to spend about 5 minutes separating the columns out from each other, which realistically from a time perspective isn’t a lot but if you were doing a whole lot of these that time can add up, and it doesn’t necessarily become a time saver.
So here are some examples, just as a test of some scone quotes in an Excel sheet uploaded to Canva and then autogenerated into a very basic template for scone social media posts. You can do a lot more with it, and I came out with some more creative things after messing with it for a bit, but again you have to think about the time you’re spending to create the templates first. And then the time to customize them a little bit more so they’re not all identical.
Is this all worth it? I can’t say for sure it is, and I can’t say it’s not. That is only something you need to figure out if that will save you time and what kind of image your business is projecting.
The other questions I had were what else can you use it for? I had seen some suggestions for generating post content, for talking about email content and email subject lines, so I was curious to see what some of the various free AI platforms would generate when prompted when compared with the same prompts side by side.
So the first question I asked and ran through some of the AI platforms was “Write 10 creative email subject lines for selling Muffins“. Now, of the results I came out with from Chat GPT, Google Bard, IASK.AI, and Bing’s AI I found some interesting things.
ChatGPT, for example, spit out some interesting content, but realistically, of the ones that really popped visually/text wise and I think I would put in the category of good open lines (meaning it would entice someone to actually open an email if it landed in their email box) I would say maybe only three of the platforms did well in terms of coming up with decent quality examples.
Google Bard, I think came up with only one or two of them from a consumer’s perspective that would want to make me open an email based purely on the subject line.
IASK.AI spit out pretty much the same thing as Google Bard, none of them were terrible, and a couple of were pretty catchy, but again, based on a consumer opening an email based on the subject line, there’s not enough of a catch in them IMO.
Bing’s AI, I think was the winner of this particular trial. Of course, this is a personal perspective, and I thought it was interesting that they were also putting emojis in the subject line, which can work depending on your target market and your age group. Of all of the content that the AI engines spit out, these had the most of what I will call “carrot opens”, which means if I read this email subject line, there was enough of an incentive in the subject line for me to possibly want to open it.
The next test that I gave some of the AI engines was, “Write 10 creative Instagram posts for selling Muffins”.
Now what I thought was really interesting here was that some of the platforms autogenerated some hashtags, but not nearly enough for Instagram, and a couple added emojis.
What I found the most intriguing about this, though, was there was a big difference between the fact that some of the AI platforms recognized the fact that Instagram also needed a photo attached to it or an image, and it was not just text-based or others did not.
IASK.AI for example gave some emojis, and they gave some hashtags but no photo prompts. Bing’s AI did the same.
Google Bard gave image prompts with short Instagram posts, but they did not give hashtags, and did not include emojis. The emojis were not necessary, but I do think it’s interesting that they did not include hashtags at all.
ChatGPT also gave text for a Instagram post, emojis, some hashtags but no image prompts. (and emojis were before the text compared to some of other platforms).
The last prompt that I gave the AI platforms, at least for the time being, as I continue to mess with the options and with new AI platforms as they come out is “Write 10 creative scripts for Youtube shorts for selling muffins“.
Now a YouTube short is under one minute long, and keep in mind like Instagram, it also needs the visuals, so I was curious to see whether the AI engines would actually give visual prompts, not just scripts.
In Google Bard they gave some suggestions about what you could do with the YouTube shorts and gave some sample scripts but no visual prompts.
I decided to add one of the others I had been testing out that had not prior given decent results in other prompts. Interestingly this one gave some interesting results for this particular test. In Hugging Chat, they gave some script ideas, and they gave titles, and they gave some audio prompts, but they also didn’t give visual prompts.
IASK.AI also gave some interesting results, but it was kind of a mishmash. It gave you some titles like Bite into the Sweetness and Muffin Mania, and then it gave you some visual prompts, but it didn’t give you scripts.
ChatGPT gave off some possible titles of YouTube shorts and gave some visual prompt suggestions, but again no scripts.
Bing’s AI was again almost the winner in this particular prompt in that it gave you an actual script and it gave you a visual prompt. No titles though.
What I deduce from this test, and I know that this is a work in progress as AI platforms gather more data and become more evolved, is that no one platform is going to necessarily spit out everything that you need.
I was interested from a testing perspective to also see how much AI platforms so far have built-in information, like what is needed for particular social platforms. Instagram for example, HAS to have some sort of image, and the text, hashtags, and emojis are kind of useless without one, or not very helpful from a marketing perspective without an idea of what to use “as” an image.
If you take and use the prompts and the ideas from two or three of these platforms simultaneously when you’re running into roadblocks coming up with ideas and creating content, it can certainly generate enough information and ideas.
From a time-saving perspective, I think it can definitly save time and some hair-pulling to come up with new/creative content because it helps you get your brain and your gears working when running into the “Oh Jeez, what do I post next?” which seems to happen to most businesses, sometimes sooner rather than later.
All of the prompts used were simple prompts and while you can get a lot more specific in terms of the ask and what you want generated, I wanted to do this in the context of the average business owner who would not be asking very specific prompts or even know to do that or what to ask in detail.
Curiously on all of the hashtag suggestions there didn’t seem to be any parameters (or data) on whether the hashtag had decent usage at all on a platform, or even if it was used at all. In the case of #MuffinMatchmaker suggested by ChatGPT, not a single hashtag use on Instagram. #MuffinTime on Instagram had 174,103 results, Facebook it had 40K posts and Youtube not a heck of alot unless you count suicidal muffin songs, and that one is not even using the hashtag.
So if your going to use the AI platforms suggestions for Hashtags on any platform, I’d suggest doing some research first on market saturation of the hashtags first and check them for each platform in terms of numbers and marketing weight before you just blindly take them at face value.
My next rabbit hole is to ask AIs to evaluate hashtags and how they are rating and evaluating them (if they even are, and I don’t think so -Yet…..). Google Bard for example suggested some ones for Facebook (in a seperate test) that had less than a thousand posts attached to it, so it looks like they have some work to do, and the majority of the suggestions it spit out for Linkedin as another example, had a big ZERO in terms of usage on the number of posts. Hmmmmm………
by Heather T. | Apr 12, 2023 | Blog, Business Networking, Marketing, Opinion
In some ways, I’m a bit of a Luddite; I still dislike my cell phone (I had a Tracfone for years until I was dragged literally kicking and screaming into the 21st century a few years ago). I still use a paper calendar for scheduling my week (this is more that my brain can’t process things in a digital format for scheduling and try to find room to breathe occasionally. I like being able to visually lay out my week and schedule meetings and workshops where I can find time to do work in between them). But I digress.
My friends and many business associates chuckle at me because in most ways, I am a massive computer and technology geek. AI fascinates me, for example, down a rabbit hole I go. Ohhhh, new social platform alternative to Twitter…………Ohhh, Canva Design challenge……
But……. Printed physical business cards vs. digital. I suspect until we do away with paper entirely and also in-person meetings completely, physical business cards will be a long time in going away.
In the past few months, I’ve had several interactions with people who did not have physical business cards with them. All three went overboard trying to convince me that they no longer needed physical cards any more or even business cards at all. I’m afraid I have to disagree.
Let’s explore those interactions for a moment.
The first was back in January, where I got into a discussion with the person online in front of me in the grocery store when he commented on my custom business imprinted grocery totes. (it was a long line, not enough cashiers on duty). He asked me about my company, and we chatted for a few minutes, and I gave him my card and asked him for his.
He said, “I don’t carry cards anymore because I use digital cards now, I just converted to all digital last week. I think digital business cards are fantastic, etc. etc. the greatest thing since sliced bread.”
Well…. Ok then. I’m game.
Him: “Here scan this QR code on my phone.”
I scan the code. Me: “Ok, so is this what’s supposed to happen? It’s bringing me to the App Store on my iPhone to download a contact App.”
Him: “Oh, they told me it was supposed to get instantly added to someone’s contacts” (My ask was apparently the first test of the digital card).
Me: “I’m sorry the line is moving along, and I don’t really want to add one more app on my to phone if it’s just for one contact. Let me grab a pen, and I’ll jot down your email/phone number.” Good thing I had a pen……
The second was at a home show in Manchester, NH, my husband and I went to last month and got pigeonholed by a guy at a booth selling garage flooring. It was kind of interesting so we stuck around to chat. The booth was completely paperless.
When I asked for a card, the fellow said, “I don’t do business cards anymore or anything in print, but let me have all your contact information so I can put it into the computer and follow up.”
Sorry mate, if I’m interested, I’ll call you. Not the other way around.
My husband caved and gave him his contact info with the caveat; don’t call me during the day; I can’t take personal calls when I’m working.
Guess when he called?
He didn’t even have a QR code on anything in or on the booth either (or on his phone) or even anywhere where his website was listed on the display so I could take a picture of it, so we walked away with nothing in hand to remember the company by, except for him having my husband’s information which didn’t work out so well for him. Several marketing fails on that one.
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?), I don’t recall the name of the company because again, I didn’t have a way to do so easily. And the fellow was very VERY adamant that this was “the Way!” Anyone else watching the Mandalorian? While I suppose I could have snapped a picture of the display with the business name on it, at that point I was a tad aggrevated at both the pushiness to get contact information and the “new tech is the only way to go.” He lost a potentially significant sale because of this (and calling during the time when told not to call didn’t help).
The third interaction was last week at a business event. I asked a new contact for a business card and gave them mine. “I don’t have print cards anymore” was the response I got. Ok. So I scanned the code on his phone into mine, and he is now in my contact list.
Well, just dandy folks, I met 15+ people after I talked to him within a short span of time. I got business cards from pretty much all of those people except for people that forgot them or they were out of them. Note, I also have over a thousand contacts in my contact list.
If I had a little more time in between meeting other people, I would “maybe” have had a moment to try to find the contact and add a note in about who he was and where I met him, but I didn’t get a chance. And I didn’t remember until days later, and by then, I forgot his name.
This is something to keep in mind for how people do in-person networking, you meet, you greet, you chat, you move on to someone else. So normally (and in this case), I probably would forget to follow up with him unless it was a super important contact and it was top of mind.
All of the business cards I received at that event, I’ve either connected with via email or on Linkedin if I was interested. And to whoever it was that I met and got your digital contact info, I’m sorry I don’t remember your name, and I don’t have time (or the inclination) to spend lots of time trying to find you in my contact list, so I hope YOU follow up if you want to connect.
I’m not poo pooing digital business cards, but I’d like people to consider the benefits of using and having BOTH digital and physical cards. I no longer have a Rolodex, but I do like the physical business cards, so I can make notes on them, track where I got them from (date and event), and then scan them in (and then they are digital). I also keep important ones in addition in the paper format as I may refer other people to them as they are easily accesible in a card file vs searching online for information, and I also may pass them along to other contacts.
To reference the last interaction, this is where having both digital and paper cards come in handy. “I got business cards from pretty much all of those people except for people that forgot them or they were out of them.” Have the digital format for people that want it (and as a last resort if you run out (can I just say tsk tsk though?) and use the paper for most.
I know I’m not alone, I do know many people who still keep Rolodexs or similar means of keeping cards, and until all of us old fogies and luddites die out, we might be customers, guests, vendors, or, if nothing else, good contacts. (Sorry, not sorry, if that sounds sarcastic but it’s true.) Until Gen Z completely dominates the workforce, which is coming, but still a decade+ down the round, business people have to remember that customers and business contacts still come in a variety of ages and technology comfort levels.
The other small (or large) thing to remember is if the contact application is in the cloud, is there decent cell service (or service at all in some cases) everywhere? In rural”ish” NH, there is still a ton of dead zones. So if your business card app is cloud-based and you can’t connect, how useful is it to you or the person you are trying to exchange contact information with? It’s just like QR codes (which I love, by the way, as a marketing tool), but if you’re in a subway, (the longer version is well worth the watch as well), as my one of favorite marketing peeps points out from a rather older video now, but still relevant, you don’t have a cell signal………
Also, what happens if your cell phone runs out of juice at that all-day conference you are at…..
(As a side note, mostly because I am so easily amused, Canva’s AI doesn’t seem to know what a Rolodex is, the right hand photos are AI generated in the photo collage at the top, if the odd shaped fingers hadn’t tipped you off already).
by Heather T. | Mar 22, 2023 | Blog
Since AI first started hitting the news, I’ve been completely fascinated. I was expelled from the womb as a science fiction nerd, and my earliest memories of reading anything besides Nancy Drew stories were reading Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert (who wrote the Dune series).
I was an early 70s baby. My Grandparents mostly raised me. My grandmother (also a sci-fi fan) shared her old Amazing Stories Magazine and Analog Science Fiction and Fact Magazines from the 20s and 30s. She had boxes of them she had saved, and I happily feed my psyche on those and her set of pretty much every book Edgar Rice Burroughs ever wrote. And for those who identify Burroughs with just Tarzan, 3/4s of his works were sci-fi, including a few of the Tarzan novels. As I got older, I still loved the books by Burroughs but despised the author for his beliefs. (But that’s a topic for another time).
I have many happy memories of growing up talking about science and science fiction with her. Not all of you may recognize these shows, so I encourage you to look them up for a laugh for a couple of them. I grew up on shows like the Gong Show, The Odd Couple, Nova (I loved Carl Sagan’s voice and listening to him talk about space, time travel and science fiction, and science fact), and of course, Star Trek reruns, I think that accounts for a lot of my rather wonky personality at times. And, of course, as a kid, I watched the cartoon the Jetsons.
It puts into perspective those old stories written 50 years before I read them in the 1970s; so much of what was pure fiction that authors wrote about that they didn’t see happening for centuries has happened within the last few decades.
Look how much has changed in the last 50 years; the cartoon, the Jetsons in 1962, had a meal replicator, we now have 3D food printing, and Elroy Jetson had a smartwatch, and he could watch TV on his wristwatch. How cool was that, then? How cool is that now?
Star Trek came out in 1966. Star Trek had the first mobile phones. In the show, known as the handheld communicator, aka a cell phone.
But that doesn’t hold a candle to AI. But it’s tied to it. Artificial intelligence is generally tied to computers but also robots.
Not everyone is a Sci-fi fan, but I’m going to throw out a bunch of examples of AI in TV and the movies, and most of you will probably have heard of at least one.
Examples of good artificial intelligence:
Johnny 5, Short Circuit
The Iron Giant
C-3PO, Star Wars
The Robot, Lost in Space
Vision, The Avengers
Lt. Data, Star Trek
Bad or evil artificial intelligence:
HAL 9000, 2001: A Space Odyssey
T-800, The Terminator
The Sentinels, The Matrix
The Gunslinger, West World
Ultron, The Avengers
The Borg, Star Trek
Wait, I said Evil. Can Artificial Intelligence be evil? Good question.
Was the original terminator evil? Well, it wasn’t an AI directly, Skynet was sentient, so that one is debatable. Skynet started a war because it didn’t want to be deactivated. Technically, if it were a human being, it would be the equivalent of not wanting to be killed.
In many cases, the “bad/evil” AI’s motivations were that it didn’t want to be killed/deactivated. From a human perspective, it’s understandable.
And then you take cases of movies like Lawnmower Man’s Jobe or Virtuosity’s SID 6.7, which puts a bit of spin on things. Jobe starts as a human and then basically merges with the machine. Is that AI? It’s an intelligent machine, so technically yes, but technically no, because it started as a human that went bad.
In Virtuosity, SID 6.7 is a digital blend of some of the worst killers out there in digital format that ends up as an actual real-world villain that goes on a killing spree. Sid is also threatened with being shut down. Is this a real AI with true sentience? Fear of being killed as a motivation, or is it a program based on some terrible people which acts out its base programming when given the opportunity? Why does it exhibit rage or glee if it’s just a program? That one never quite gets answered.
Can an AI be good or bad? Also, a good question!
We don’t know. That can be a philosophical, religious, scientific debate, or all three.
In many examples of “evil” AI, it’s a computer deciding the world would be a better place without humans. Well, are they wrong?
And this is not an argument about whether human beings should be around; it’s a rhetorical question meant to make you think.
I want to explore this for a moment and tell you what I think are three things that make people fear Artificial Intelligence and that are stimulating our flight or fight responses.
First, AI currently is not sentient, meaning it “thinks” based on the input it’s given. It can problem solve, but it’s based on the data it has access to. I think people fear this regardless of whether it can pass the Turing test or not. Like news highlighting Bing’s AI, which according to some journalists, has a mind of its own. Many people think AI means it actually “is” intelligent and free thinks.
The Turing test, originally called the imitation game by Alan Turing in 1950, is a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s intelligent and has self-awareness. It just means it’s enough to convince most people. And that’s pretty scary. It’s enough to be disturbing and make people uneasy.
Humans do away with each other, we do away with other species, and we damage the planet we live on. If a AI, regardless of whether it was self-aware or not, evaluated whether we are good for the planet or not, what do you think it would decide? And so we are afraid. It makes me afraid as well.
The second fear is we also run into something called the uncanny valley. We see it on tv shows and movies when a robot looks human, like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Terminator, Arnie plus a ton of makeup to make him look a little “fake”. We see it in recent films like a recent horror movie called M3GAN, about a murderous child robot. In those cases and in most movies where it’s a AI robot on TV or in the movies, it’s also really a person “playing” a robot, which is disturbing enough by itself.
But we actually do see the uncanny valley in CGI in movies where things don’t “quite” look right all the time or in hyper-realistic video games. The news doesn’t help when they spotlight Boston Dynamics Robot Dogs Dancing or interview Sophia from Hanson Robotics on TV or news on the net.
The uncanny valley is an unsettling feeling people experience when robots and audio and/or visual simulations closely resemble humans (or, in the cases of the robot dogs, actual animals) in many respects but are not quite convincingly realistic, but it’s enough to make you feel uncomfortable and raise your hackles.
You may have heard of the news about deep fakes, where a person is basically digitally cloned by AI and other software, and the concern is that news will become even more questionable than it is now because you won’t know what is genuine and what is fake.
Our popular media hasn’t been helping pushing movies and shows highlighting the scare factor. The FTC recently came out with an alert about AI helping clone people’s voices based on finding public videos that out there and scamming people. That is super scary in itself.
The third fear is that AI will supplant people’s jobs, and I want to explore the pros and cons of what AI can do for businesses and the pros and cons of doing it as I see the potential it gives us. As stated in the title, this was part one; stay tuned for part two in my next blog post, where I’ll talk about AI for business, what it can do, what can’t it do and whether we should be scared of it or embrace it.
And in terms of AI taking over the world. AI, according the Oxford Dictionary, states:
Noun: artificial intelligence; noun: AI
The theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.
Key in on “perform tasks that normally require human intelligence” AI does NOT mean it’s actually intelligent and self-aware and is going to take over the world and do away with humanity. That “may” come down the road, but it’s not here “yet”. But we still fear the unknown and again popular media doesn’t help when they feed the fire of our fears.
