Disqus - Latest Comments for tomgray

Re: How to Remove Agitator on a Kenmore Washer

Tom Gray — Mon, 25 Jul 2016 10:57:50 -0000

I looped a heavy leather dog leash under the agitator and pulled up on each side of that. It kept my head out of harm's way and worked great. Thanks for the easy-to-follow fixit guide!

Re: Phyllis Lorraine Cowgill

Tom Gray — Sat, 10 Jan 2015 15:36:39 -0000

Aunt Phyllis was not shy. She had a huge, Italian personality in a small body. Her laugh was raucous and the minute she saw you it was "Come here and give me a hug!" I loved her home made cooking, the lasagna, meatballs, ravioli...Mama Mia, right! She endured a lot but she was the most positive person I knew. I'm pretty sure she's in a better place and I know for a fact that the place she's in is better because my Aunt Phyllis is there! Love and prayers to Toni and Frankie and all the family who'll miss her.

Re: How My Disease Is Bankrupting My Family

Tom Gray — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 01:46:08 -0000

Hello, just read your story and had watched this TED talk once about a woman who cured herself of MS. Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watc...

God Bless You and your family :)

Re: 13 Ways to Beat Distractions and Stay Focused at Work

Tom Gray — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 12:10:58 -0000

Nice; I'll be interested in your take.

Re: 13 Ways to Beat Distractions and Stay Focused at Work

Tom Gray — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 11:53:50 -0000

The Pomodoro Technique is an effective, easy to adapt approach that allows you to more easily implement several of the suggestions you make.

Re: Why Local Businesses Should Not Buy Fake Reviews on Google Places

Tom Gray — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 08:52:58 -0000

Thanks Chris for highlighting this problem. My wife is a local psychotherapist and her Google Places ranking has recently been affected by 2 local therapists who've obtained top ranking in her category by posting 7 Five Star reviews on their Places account. It's easy to tell the reviews are fake as they follow the same pattern as you illustrate above plus they use that stilted, fake review language that's pretty easy to spot.

The fact is that my wife gets many of her new clients from her web presence so to add to your list:

8.) You're stealing. When you knock somebody who legitimately earned their ranking on Google off or down the list then you're potentially stealing from that individual or organization.

My question is, what's the best way to deal with this? Take it directly to Google? Send the offending party a note requesting that they have the fake reviews removed (or else)? Notify their licensing board?

By the way, Google offers a way to flag reviews as inappropriate but do you know of any other ways to bring 'offenders' to Google's attention?

Re: This Week in Love: Radiolab Podcast

Tom Gray — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:11:42 -0000

I'm with you, guys, Radiolab has long been one of life's pleasures. There's something about sound, when done like the Radiolab team does it, that engages me at a so much deeper level than video. It cranks my imagination to high where video too often turns it off. I become a participant rather than merely an observer.

Re: Call to Action Tip: The Importance of Phone Numbers

Tom Gray — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 10:40:54 -0000

Michael, for folks who are supposedly living in the age of "Social" it seems that we're becoming anything but... We seem to be more interested in numbers than names; numbers of followers on Twitter, number of 'friends' on Facebook, number of visits to our latest blog post but we neglect the most important part the names behind all those numbers and, it seems, we may not be particularly interested in anyone finding out ours ... a funny way to do business, eh?
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Coffee, is that an invitation?

Re: Call to Action Tip: The Importance of Phone Numbers

Tom Gray — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 10:10:26 -0000

Thanks, Elli.

Yep, they still use the phone - to text, tweet and update their Facebook status! Oh, does this thing make calls too? Who knew?!!!

A very compelling reason to post your phone number is that while people still use the telephone, they don't use the Yellow Pages, less than a quarter of people looking for a local vendor turn to the Yellow Pages first while over 75% look online.

In fact, the only value I get out of the Yellow Pages anymore is the little plumbers and electricians magnets that they'll attach to their covers. I cut them up and tape them to the back of my photos to create my own, personal refrigerator magnets.

A phone number should be an obvious Call to Action posted on every page of your site for those businesses where the telephone plays any role at all in the sales cycle.

Re: Call to Action Tip: The Importance of Phone Numbers

Tom Gray — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 10:00:30 -0000

Absolutely, I waste so much time worrying about how somebody will "read" my message when it would be so much easier to pick up the phone and eliminate all (or most) of that concern. Of course, I can't pick up the phone if it's not posted on their website.

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Marsha knows what she's talking about. She's an international expert on Detoxing Your Inbox and is sponsoring International Clean Out Your Inbox Week; details at http://www.inboxdetox.com/i...

Re: Customer Acquisition vs. Customer Retention

Tom Gray — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 11:39:25 -0000

That's right and I think that both departments need to collaborate on this particularly where it concerns nurturing newer, smaller accounts. Maybe their needs to be a separate function that spans both departments and whose sole focus is retention.

Re: Preview Google Search Results Before Clicking with Instant Preview

Tom Gray — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 10:08:02 -0000

Darn, Michael, where'd you put your chill pills! Personally, I believe this kind of feature enhances the user search experience by eliminating, at least in part, the constant back-buttoning that goes on in any search 'expedition'. I can take a peek before even going to a site and, if it looks spammy, disreputable or irrelevant, I can move on to the next candidate or refine my search.

As a site owner, I get better information on the user's search experience and I can make adjustments to my page accordingly. I can see how Google sees my key terms and compare their display against my competition. Is this any different than Macy's adjusting its window displays to better reflect the store's merchandise and do a better job enticing prospective customers in off the street?

As for your little brother, I assume he's been at this for awhile and that he's got a good reputation. But ask him, "...if you were just getting started would you have a website, a blog and a twitter account?"

Re: Preview Google Search Results Before Clicking with Instant Preview

Tom Gray — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 10:00:19 -0000

Hi Elli, Signing into Google shouldn't be necessary. It may be that you needed to refresh your cache or something like that.

I agree with your comment about design and keywords. While its intent is to make the user's search experience more productive I think it provides exceptional intelligence on how Google parses your site for keyword terms and phrases.

Re: Are You The Boss From Heaven or Hell?

Tom Gray — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 19:38:14 -0000

Too many bosses, particularly in high pressure positions like sales, adapt as their hero Blake from Glenagarry Glen Ross. Blake's the sales manager from hell who organized the sales contest where, "...first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado....Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired." A great line, not a great boss. Truth is, great bosses are like great coaches; they develop your talent and encourage you to use it to your fullest potential. Screw-ups are opportunities to teach, not punish, while achievement is cause for celebration and motivation to reach even higher. Good reminder, Elli, that we may be the boss but we're also part of the team and we need to continually assess our own contribution to that team's success, or failures, with an eye for how we can improve.

Re: When Marketing Happens

Tom Gray — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:23:29 -0000

Elli, thanks for responding. I very much enjoyed our phone conversation of the other day as well. I did look for the mention of your book on your About page and found it buried 10 paragraphs down below the fold - talk about shameless self-promotion! Your mention did provide a couple of useful links to your forthcoming book (http://goo.gl/gO66) and that's a positive.

You're absolutely right, however, book promotion is very similar to marketing a business. Too often we cross our fingers and hope it will go viral all on its own. That's the same reason I buy lottery tickets (albeit only when the sum to be won exceeds $100 million as anything less wouldn't be worth the bother ;-).

I look forward to your book. I think the topic is timely as women swell the ranks of business owners while often continuing to raise their kids and manage households.

Re: When Marketing Happens

Tom Gray — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:13:35 -0000

Michael, thanks for weighing in... I agree that marketing's hard work plus there something about the proscription to "toot our own horn" that floats around in those of us of a certain generation. However, it's rare that we can achieve success or even notice in this over-informationalized world without a little horn blowing.

Re: How Much Money The “Gurus” Make… And How They Do It

Tom Gray — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 08:31:10 -0000

Thanks, Ray, you've done a valuable service with this post. Most of these gurus remind me of the old adverts in the back of magazines, "Make a Million Stuffing Envelopes". When you send away your money you get a kit instructing you to place an ad saying "Make a Million Stuffing Envelopes"!

The real disservice the 'fakirs' are doing is obscuring the true gurus who really do have something, service, system or otherwise to offer; who drink their own Koolaid(r) and are more than happy to share it. I'm savvy enough to avoid a scam (intentional or otherwise) but not smart enough to know when it isn't.

Re: Customer Retention, Part 2

Tom Gray — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 20:03:31 -0000

Absolutely right but then the glamor is in the gaining not the keeping.

Re: Customer Acquisition vs. Customer Retention

Tom Gray — Tue, 04 May 2010 08:09:37 -0000

This may be true in larger companies but in smaller companies the two departments are often blended and in really small companies it's often the same person handling it all or they have a sales guy/gal and the customer service role defaults to the receptionist ;-)

Customer acquisition is the sexy, exciting side and the topic of myth, Glengarry Glen Ross anyone, its the whirlwind courtship and honeymoon phase of a relationship while customer retention is the hard work of actually maintaining the relationship even though sometimes s/he has bad breath and squeezes the toothpaste from the middle, not the end!

Re: The Hitchhiker's Guide to Social Media Marketing

Tom Gray — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 07:25:45 -0000

Me, I disagree and maybe it's because it's my generation (late baby boomer) that saw us go from prop planes to the moon, from sci fi death rays to celebrating the 50th anniversary of the laser last month, from iron lungs to a near eradication of polio. I love all this stuff and the new stuff in particular. I may not understand the technology behind it but I get it and, at the end of the day, most of this stuff are just tools which allow us to do the tried and true in new and more efficient ways at a scale that's sometimes hard to comprehend.

After all, isn't the common metaphor of social media 'a mixer at your local chamber of commerce except on a global 24/7 scale'?

Re: “Harrass a Booth Babe”: A Twitter Contest Too Far?

Tom Gray — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 10:42:38 -0000

Not to promote sexual harassment but let's get real. Women bear a responsibility every time they go to work for a company like Hooters - which I can't eat at because it's so blatant, or post suggestive photos on their MySpace page or get body painted in the pages of Sports Illustrated or sign up for the booth babe slot at whatever convention's in town. Seriously, you're putting donuts in front of diabetics. Of course nobody complains when some guy poses for a 20 story underwear billboard on Times Square with his 'package' bulging and all the shirt-off, muscle bulging, cannon toting male characters in video games are all accurate reflections of the typical male. Hell, video games objectify everybody, not just women.

EA chose the wrong words in promoting their contest but their audience isn't Gloria Steinem it's socially awkward, 15 year old Conner sitting in the basement with his equally socially awkward friends dreaming of the girls they'll never get - at least until they become the next software/internet/social media gazillionaire.

Re: Talk About Transparency!

Tom Gray — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:12:28 -0000

Rodney, probably one minute more than any other inflight safety vid you've watched <grin>

Re: Talk About Transparency!

Tom Gray — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:43:09 -0000

Actually, I think the promotion will work wherever there are males present to take it all in. After all, we continue to pay attention to the body painted models in SI's annual swimsuit issue. But really, the body paint angle was only the initial attractor, the friendly, humorous and outgoing attitude of the crew kept me watching. ANZ's US brethren (UAL, et al) should learn that even serious topics when delivered with cheer and good humor can be entertaining and "captivating". Excellent job bringing this to our attention.

Re: Social Media Strategy: Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles

Tom Gray — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 10:12:20 -0000

This is incredibly useful information that any organization - of any size - considering a social media strategy should review. It's a template for success whether you're for profit or not. If you have a strategy and it sucks, consider this as instructions for a course correction. Thank you for the great information.

Re: Time Magazine Explains Twitter

Tom Gray — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 10:02:17 -0000

The next hype cycle will be a barrage of stories on the tragedy of Twitter addiction. Covering the requisite, and heart rending, stories on how my Twitter addiction cost me everything; job, friends, family, self-respect but I'm now running the local TAA group (Twitter Addicts Anonymous) and recovering one day at a time.