There is this new trend in business emails, offers and promotions to start with stating the limits to what you can provide. I have actually seen email subject lines like: “This is everything I can offer you”. Or special offer announcements explaining how, if I buy enough products, I can get a discount of maximum…some percentage.

Of course your clients won’t expect you to mown their front yard if you’re a designer. Of course there are limits to the discounts you can offer. No one actually expects you to come into their life and solve all their business and personal problems in the blink of an eye. So why the big emphasis of what you cannot do? Is that really your smartest option?

I say start with what you’re offering, with what you can do. Try to take your mind and those of your audience off the limits. Use percentage ranges instead of a maximum. Besides, limits always stretch! If I want to buy everything in your store, you might want to further discuss that discount! And if a certain client pays enough, you might even hire someone to mown their lawn

If you focus on how limited your offer is, so will your customers. And they might go for a more flexible, more open-minded competitor.

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Those two concepts put together, not likely to win the “couple of the year” award, are they? And they shouldn’t, simply because guilt trips should never be part of business emails, especially when it’s the first email you send out!

Imagine this! You want to introduce your recently launched business. You mention your website, then jump to saying you have a kid who’s just turned two and add a link to cute photos of that kid. Then mention an obscure site you used to have but no longer exist. And finally, in paragraph 4 actually mention one of the services you provide. Nothing on your expertise, no reference to satisfied customers, no detailed skill set of your team. Just throw the baby in, that’s bound to work!

No matter how I twist and turn it, other than guilt trip, no other reason comes to mind for mentioning offsprings and showing photos to potential customers. Maybe, just maybe, if you were a photographer specializing in newborns and toddlers, there might be a reason for the photos. But saying your main quality as a business professional is having a child? It’s crazy! And the image of yourself you put out there has little to no chance to generating leads or sealing the deal.

Remember, you’re trying to build a business relationship! Yes, if you’ve had a client for years, a personal bond develops, you might even become friends and show eachother family photos. But if it’s a new client you’re targeting, keep it professional and tell them how you can help them grow their business. Honestly, they couldn’t care less about you as a dad!

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Often times, we see what people put out there. Their personal choice of branding influences our perception. We see this serious anchorman, all dressed up, nice suit, all business look. Think Tom Green. Would you imagine him in a freestyle hip hop duo with Xzibit? And yet he did get into it! Check it out and make up your own mind abut what the man can do.

Personal brands can change; we can reposition ourselves, the same way it happens with products and services. We are never bound by the limits of the image we have projected out there. But a good personal brand that people recognize will always help us promote new projects. Millions of possibilities if we ever get bored, only one rule: actually be good at it

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The majority of LinkedIn members tweet, a lot of them quite frequently. That is what the results of a recent poll created by Debbie Weil have shown. Apart from 13 percent of users who see Twitter as a waste of time, the rest of them have Twitter accounts and 68% of all the 247 users that took the poll put it to good use.

Because LinkedIn polls do mix the replies with some other data on the members, you can see who tweets and how often by job title, company size, job function, gender and age.

Here are a few results I found interesting

• Company owners tweet more than others (VPs, managers and other types of personnel)
• Small companies and enterprises are big Twitter fans
• No Marketing or PR professionals see Twitter as a waste of time
• The male/female results are perfectly balanced!
• And speaking of young people not tweeting, everyone in the 18-24 age group is a proficient user.

If you’d like to view detailed results, click here. And if you’re on LinkedIn and would like to take the poll, please go here.

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