There a clear difference between work hours and after work fun time when it comes to your employees. Their personal life is something the company can’t control, it’s their private business and what there’s nothing an employer can do to control their activities. If they are high-profile figures in promoting your image, the story is a bit different, but when it comes to the average Joe-employee or Jane-employee, you have no say in matters that can in the end affect you. Like stealing, murdering someone or other such negativity that can be associated with you.

When it comes to breaks, there’s something you can do. You can’t tell anyone when to take breaks or where to take them and I would never recommend something of sorts. But you can kindly ask your employees to display a decent behavior. And if you don’t know what they do or say on their breaks, I suggest you try and find out. Because customers visiting you don’t care you’re staff is on a break, they will associate their behavior with your image because everything happens in your garden.

Why is this important? An example might help. A few days back I went with a friend to get some juice from the bistro in our office building. It was 3pm, long after the rush hour, and half of the employees were taking a break on the hallway. And they’re fun activity of choice? Imitating the sounds of an extremely horny cat! Can you imagine what was going through our minds seeing three grown up men laughing over and over again at the same tasteless joke? Given it was half they’re employees in this category, it was enough to form a pretty general opinion on the company’s staff and the values the employers promoted, the customer care skills they had, etc.

Luckily, I also knew the nice, decent people working there. But for a first time customer, would it have mattered? I seriously doubt it!

Popularity: 10% [?]

I’ve met Robyn Bloom on LinkedIn, after answering one of her questions about getting beauty bloggers and journalists to write about her business, Purely Cosmetics and the line of natural mineral products she created. While talking to her, I wanted to know more about how life as a one-woman-show was in the beauty field. I had only read her LinkedIn profile and some information on her website before sending these questions. I am extremely glad they’ve lead to a great story about following your dreams and doing what you love.

You went from selling prescription medications to selling ad space in the Yellow Pages to then owning your own mineral make up company. Tell me how it all happened!

Most of my life is an accident. When I first went to college, my intention was to become a doctor – I’ve always been intrigued by science. After my first inorganic chemistry class, I nixed that idea. I started out in the fashion industry as a menswear buyer while I was in graduate school (worked in retail all through high school), intending to open up my own clothing store. My MBA was emphasizing entrepreneurship, and after going through the program, I decided I’d rather start new products with someone else’s money rather than mine. Continue reading

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Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Bluebeard, the Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916-1988), is the story of an Abstract Expressionist painter searching for his soul. The lack of soul is the missing ingredient of his paintings and the search for it is not a willing one. It is just one man’s life taking him from the USA to Europe and back, in both times of war and peace.

The resemblance to the fairy tale of Bluebeard is not very strong. In his old age, Rabo Karabekian has become the guard of a significant Abstract Expressionist paintings collection that he shows to visitors from all over the world. His old studio, placed in a potato barn, is locked and he tells everyone it will only be opened after his death.

Rabo Karabekian’s is an interesting story, combining his Armenian roots and tales of old and never forgiven deceits, with art, love, the war and best friends who sometimes kill themselves or go crazy. Although he doesn’t give that impression, he is a devious character who has plotted a whole plan to get his sons who hate him to change their last name back to Karabekian.

A light yet complex read, Bluebeard is a book you should definitely put on your summer reading list.

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What I think you shouldn’t have missed last week…

Happy Monday everyone! I hope you’re week is off to an amazing start and that you have time for some reading today as I come with interesting suggestions.

If you’re planning to boost your e-commerce sales through blogging, Michael Martine of Remarkablogger has 10 wonderful tips to help you achieve your goals.

Ian Lurie of Conversation Marketing explains a very important interdependence: social media and SEO go together and can’t possibly be separated.

We all want to increase our traffic. And Ted Demopoulos of Blogging and Business has some great tips for us to read and apply.

Erica Douglass from Erica.biz is determined to show us how to obtain a difficult, yet rewarding goal: making a million dollars with our business.

As word of mouth is such a powerful marketing tool, we all want others to talk about us and, more importantly, our business. Dawud Miracle explains how to get the conversation started.

As this week seems to be dedicated to 10-tip lists, here’s another exciting collection: read NetBusinessBlog to improve local search rankings in Google.

If you were wondering how not to pitch to a blogger, here’s Eric Karjaluoto’s (Ideas on Ideas) take on bad blog PR.

From tips, moving on to 10 commandments: Beth Kanter of Beth’s Blog: How Non Profits Can Use Social media has recently published the 10 commandments of of panel discussions.

And if you’re ever using Typepad and want to switch to Wordpress, stop by Confident writing first and read Joanna’s Young guide to the move.

I do hope you’re able to find something useful on this list. See you all next week when I promise to be back with more interesting articles for you to enjoy. Have a lovely Monday and week!

Alina

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There are some who believe bad PR only comes from failed or irresponsibly planned actions of public relation specialists. It actually also comes from having no PR to handle negativity associated with a certain company. There’s also this ongoing belief that not all companies need PR, because they see PR as just some people trying to get stories into the newspapers.

Yet here’s the example revealing how PR can help you better communicate with existing and prospect customers. Let’s take a construction company. Negotiations are mostly based on different things than the number of articles on the papers. Old projects are analyzed, those hiring them want to know if they work effectively, if they finish on time and if they can adapt to new challenges throughout a project.

Continue reading

Popularity: 28% [?]