The Spin Sucks Podcast with Gini Dietrich

Most large organizations have professional development budgets. The same isn’t true for smaller companies or solopreneurs, so you have to get creative in how you’ll stay up-to-date on the latest trends and industry development, and improve your skills.  Your professional development ultimately benefits your clients in many ways. You’ll be able to think in original and creative ways to meet their n...

Women get a lot of advice about how to succeed at work. Much of it conflicting. More of it extraordinarily offensive. On this week's episode of the Spin Sucks Podcast, Gini talks about workplace diversity, why it matters, and what you can do to make sure your workplace is inclusive. She talks about: A brutally terrible "empowerment" training provided by Ernst & Young. Representation of women, and...

The holidays are fun and not just for kids. Communicators can have fun with the holidays, too. Done well, holiday-themed campaigns can connect you with your audience, generate a lot of engagement and be a good time for everyone. Done poorly, they’re cringe-worthy. Here are some dos and don’ts for creating holiday-themed content campaigns. Do’s Get your community, customers, or audience involved; M...

Negotiation is uncomfortable. Even for the most confident of us, we worry that things won’t go as intended and we’ll end up with nothing instead of something. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Essentially, an app is a piece of software on your mobile device that allows you to perform specific functions. It’s not a full program, but a tool designed to let you to certain things in certain ways.

Everything you do shouldn’t be reliant on one lead nurturing tactic. Your PESO model program allows you to reach people at different times of the day or week, in their communication channel of choice. Look at email marketing as one small part of your PESO program.

Pop-ups may be annoying to us in the internet marketing industry, but in the real world they’re very effective.

It’s been about 9 months since we talked about digital decluttering. How are your resolutions faring? What have you accomplished? Did you slip off the wagon a time or to? Chances are, if you’re human, you haven’t done perfectly. But that’s okay – it happens to the best of us.   What is digital decluttering?   It’s when you’ve got too much stuff. When your digital environment looks like a 9-year-ol...

Dealing with customer complaints has always been a concern for businesses, and more so now with the internet and social media. You want them to come to you to solve their problems, but when they are angry they want the world to know it. Therefore, you should have a policy about how to deal with customer complaints: your customers should know how to contact you if they have a problem, and your cust...

Everything we read or hear tells us that entrepreneurs should love every moment of their work. Not just love it, but be passionate about it. That’s just not true. Many entrepreneurs spend every waking hour of their day in their business believing that they have to sacrifice everything to be successful and create an environment that employees are successful and happy in. Inevitably, the result is b...

Taking a vacation is important for your mental health and work-life balance. It helps you refuel your productivity and creativity. Our brains are not meant to work 24/7: we can't perform at our best when our brains are tired. Taking time off lets your brain rest, plus you come back recharged and ready to solve any challenge.

This week on the Spin Sucks podcast, we’re repaying one of our earliest episodes about brand voice. Brand voice has a huge impact on everything from blog posts and videos to your email marketing, which we discussed last week. More than anything else, it’s the guideline that makes our communications consistent! Find out what goes into your brand voice, how to review and audit whether its working fo...

Email isn’t dead! It’s a convenient way to connect with people who care about what you’re sharing. This week we’re talking email, specifically how to write great ones (that don’t suck).

There are days when ideas come faster than you can handle, and then there are the days when every idea you come up with sucks. In today's show we are going to talk about four places you can get content ideas.

Instagram is a powerhouse of a social media platform, and you should take a good long look at using it for your business. Today on the Spin Sucks Podcast, your host, Gini Dietrich talks about why it matters for businesses and the different strategies you can use to engage your audience, teach and inspire your community, showcase your culture and promote your products and services. Instagram can be...

When you’re running out of bandwidth with your current team, or when it seems like there are plenty of opportunities just out of your grasp if you only had some additional skill sets in the office, hiring can feel like your best option. But sometimes it makes more sense to test the waters by outsourcing some or all of part of your business. That’s what we’re going to talk about on today’s version...

After a deal is signed, it’s time for onboarding: onboarding is what you do for new clients after they begin services with you. It’s a stage of the relationship it’s important to get right because we’ve all had that experience where you sign the contract, pay the invoice and… nothing happens. It’s disorienting, uncomfortable, and makes you doubt the company you’re dealing with. On today's episode...

This week on the Spin Sucks Podcast, Gini talks about how to integrate your owned and earned media and get the most out of both. Each element of the PESO model works well - but you get more mileage if you integrate them as a comprehensive strategy. This episode covers developing content campaigns that use both earned and owned media, and how to promote them using syndication, social media, content...

This week on the Spin Sucks Podcast, Gini talks about those special introductions, often considered the Golden Goose of running a services business. Referrals. They come directly to you. Often highly qualified and already ready to buy. The best way to get referrals is to ask for them - but that can make some business owners uncomfortable. This episode explores how to make asking for and giving ref...

In this episode of the Spin Sucks Podcast, Gini talks about the work involved in providing consistently good customer service over the long haul. It starts with tieing your customer service to the big picture of your company. She covers the importance of setting boundaries, consistently clear communication, ensuring your whole team is on board and being proactive in how and when you reach out to y...

When you’re the expert, clients, colleagues, friends, and family expect you to know what’s going on in your industry. And you should, but communications is changing so fast, on top of the industries in which we work. So how do you stay updated? Gini shares 5 strategies for keeping up with your industry - without having to spend every waking moment doing it. Technology combined with clever use of c...

Fellow listeners, please enjoy this replay of last year's episode #28! When did we stop talking to each other like real people? In our industry, it’s getting hard to sort through all the hype. What’s the difference between a meaningless buzzword and a genuinely useful phrase? Take the term ‘Thought Leadership.’ This is what we’re getting into today, so sit tight because we’re going to be looking a...

We’ve been feeling a bit nostalgic since our one-year anniversary episode of the podcast. Which was a great episode, by the way. Our listeners weighed in with some of the amazing things they’ve learned! But back to this week. Coming up in September, we’ll celebrate 13 years of the Spin Sucks blog. Can you believe it? We can’t! Today, we’re time traveling back to the beginning and taking a look at...

At the end of every year, you can expect every content creator on earth to talk about trends for the coming year. And, at the end of 2018, they all said the same thing (and nothing has changed six months into the year): video. It’s all about video. For everyone. So how do you create video marketing that is timeless in a constantly changing world?

Can you believe it’s already been a year? We’ve had 52 episodes and 52 chances for our listeners to add crucial knowledge to their arsenal, from using content to being productive, and from PESO to SWOT. In today’s episode, we reached out to you, our listeners, and asked what you learned in the past year.