Month: June 2011

Stop Beating Yourself Up!

Posted on by Kelly aka LadyOTrout

This post is being written with two ideas in mind.

  1. Sometimes things don’t work.
  2. Most of the time it isn’t your fault.

At Sephone, it is no secret that I am not part of the tech geek universe.  But I live in my own marketing geek universe and often times each universe is talking about the same exact thing, only each one is speaking a different language or at the very least speaking from a different point of view.

I am also of the ancient decades when you bought something and started using it, it worked. (MOST of the time.)  So there was little or no second guessing.  It worked and then after a while it broke and it was obvious there was no fixing it, or you weren’t going to be the one doing it.  There were moving parts – physical moving parts, once they stopped moving, you could see what wasn’t working.

But computers, computer programs, web applications, cell phone applications also have moving parts but we cannot see them moving.  The tech universe can dive into the back of the code (which in our world means – going behind the iron curtain), to see what is and isn’t moving, fix it, or realize that it cannot be fixed.

This is the part that gets us non-tech types into trouble.  Applications through things like Facebook are often lightly tested and MOST often don’t work the way they were described at all.  All of a sudden you mouse over something and there you are “spamming” all your friends when you had no idea it would happen!  When you are playing Farmville in the middle of the night or answering a survey, did you really plan on what you were doing at that precise moment be posted all over the Facebook world?

Probably not.

But it isn’t just Facebook – now with a new cell phone I am learning that some of the coolest applications that I could use FOR FREE don’t always work the way I wish they would.  Then for hours, you fiddle with it and it still doesn’t work.  In conversations with some of my tech friends afterward, they say to me, “Oh yeah, I didn’t like that one, so I tried this one and it works much better.”  And they were right.

Meanwhile I look down at the floor at the pile of hair I have pulled out while I was trying to figure out what I was doing wrong.  The thing just didn’t work. Period.

I can share about 5 or 6 times in the past 30 days, where this was the case.  I wasted countless hours, trying to save time using a tool that was supposed to save me time and all it did was use it up!

Moral of the story?

When you see a “RATE THIS” button
or or

Please participate and comment on the things you are working through yourself so you can share your experience with others.

You are smarter than you think!

Will Twitter or Facebook cause World War III?

Posted on by Kelly aka LadyOTrout

It is amusing to hear some members of the main stream media mention that Twitter could be blamed for so much of the unrest in the Middle East.  These recent outbreaks of violence, demonstrations and the like have been happening in the Middle East for thousands of years – yes there was life before Twitter.  People demonstrate because they are passionate about something.  Twitter and other social media platforms were used to facilitate the assembly, no doubt. Texting also helped.

Just like when you want to meet your friends or kids somewhere you probably text them.  Many folks have cell phones without data plans and still can get text messages.

The point here is that you communicate, you find a way.  Many parents I know ONLY started texting because that was how they could reach their kids.  I have one friend who refuses to carry his cell phone most of the time because he wants to TALK to his kids, not get a random text from one of them asking for money!  He wants to connect to hear their voices as opposed a text that he feels is impersonal.

Yes. Texting allows you to be in one place and communicate with many others. But while you do that what is that person across the table looking at you thinking? How about, “I guess there are others more important than me…”

It is so common to see people in appointments and meetings looking down at their cell phones, disconnecting with where they are to wonder what maybe better or more important, fun, etc.  Feel insignificant yet?

And lots of people, your “friends”  know what is going on in your life because they cruise your Facebook page and you never even know it.  Have you wondered where face to face relationships will be in 10 years?

All this leads to a communication breakdowns, misunderstandings, hurt feelings all because we are not taking the time to ask for clarification of a compressed text message or those dreaded “tweets.  It all is kind of scary to me.  I am taking a page out of one of my friends book and leaving my cell phone in my bag when I am with a customer – whether I am in a meeting with them or at lunch with them.  He always makes me feel like I am on his “Important List” and I have noticed.

What will you do to make people feel like they are on  your “Important List?”