Some interesting articles and stories I came across this past week:

The 13-year-old CEO Who Invented a Cure for Hiccups – I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that CEO’s are following the trend of all other occupations, with the youngest becoming younger and younger.  Since drinking water upside-down has always done the trick for me, I probably won’t be consuming the product, but it’s a clever idea.

Boston Start-up School Accepting Applications – Speaking of CEO’s getting younger and younger, there is an option for folks who’d rather go straight from high school into building a business.  I guess this is yet another angle to the whole “Is higher education worth it anymore?”  argument.

The Cost Of Free Publicity: How Much Is Too Little? – An interesting article on how business should go about getting publicity from bloggers, most of whom won’t post your ad for free.

7 Tremendously Efficient Ways to Re-Share Content – especially good reading for folks who make their living by writing (like yours truly), but I think of interest to any business that puts out a lot of content, written or otherwise.

The Freedom of Limits – What kind of self-marketer would I be if I didn’t include my own blog post?:-)  But seriously, I think this is a useful article in terms of productivity and organization.

photo credit: tantek via photo pin cc

Setting limits can be beneficial

I discovered this after I started working with Ari Meisel. Ari is officially self-titled an “Achievement Architect.” He helps people achieve things by improving their efficiency in all areas of their lives.

We decided to start with email.

It’s not going too far to say that my email inboxes are crazy full. After telling me about two free programs that would help me deal with the mail (Baydin’s Email Game and OtherInbox), Ari said that he never has more than 10 messages in his inbox at a time.

My mind boggled at the idea of having such an empty inbox.

Imagine, if you will, a monster from Greek mythology, with huge open jaws, continuously spewing out bank and credit card notifications, newsletters, client/potential client emails and more. God bless the search function.

The monster that was my inbox

THAT was my inbox.

And yet…two days later, I was staring at an inbox with just 2 messages in it.

After triumphing over one inbox (I admit that the larger and uglier one is still being worked on) I started folding some laundry. As I prepared to place a stack of folded t-shirts in a dresser drawer, I noticed how stuffed the drawer would be, to the point where I would have difficulty opening and closing it.

So I took all the t-shirts out and counted them. Then I thought about the fact that I only really wear these t-shirts when I work out. How often do I work out? Five – six days per week. So how many t-shirts do I need? Six (well, I made eight my limit, since I sometimes get behind on laundry).

And it’s not going to stop there. I’ve started on my mailing supplies (surely a limit of two sheets of charity return address labels is enough, since I send maybe 30 pieces of snail-mail per year) and plan to set a limit of one notebook (how often do I write anything in long hand anymore?).

See how few letters I send?

Limits also needn’t be placed on just physical, tangible, stuff.
They can also be placed on things like:

• How many books you read at one time.
• How many browser tabs you have open at once.
• How many projects you work on at the same time.

At this point you may be saying “Yes, it’s nice to get rid of physical or mental clutter and excess crap, but where is this freedom you’re writing about?”

• The freedom to not have to think about it (“Where is [insert item]?!”).
• The freedom to not panic and feel overwhelmed when I see all the emails in my inbox.
• The freedom to focus fully on one thing at a time.

In other words, setting limits frees up mental space.

With this freed up mental space, you can focus on:

• Your business.
• Your clients.
• Your projects.
• Whatever you want.

And THAT is freedom.

Feeling overwhelmed by how much you have to do for your business? Thinking about setting limits on what you do and outsourcing your marketing and writing? Contact me for a complimentary consultation.

photo credit: Beverly & Pack via photo pin cc

photo credit: donovanbeeson via photo pin cc

Think hard about this one: Do you buy a particular brand of anything because you consciously like it and choose it, or just out of habit, or because you/your family/your friends have always used it?

I was watching a webinar on small business branding given by marketing/branding expert Jim Joseph and hosted by Vocus.com. Joseph spoke of the difference between brand loyalty and brand apathy, a difference that I honestly had never given much thought to before.

Brand loyalty is when you consciously and consistently choose a particular brand. For example, you might want coffee every morning before you go to work. You choose to buy a cup at a certain coffee shop whose name rhymes with CarPucks because you consciously choose that brand, you like that brand and that brand seems to care about you.

Brand apathy is when you don’t really choose a brand, you just go with it because it’s something you’ve gotten used to. Maybe you wash your clothes with a detergent that rhymes with Ride because you recall your mother or father using it for their laundry when you were a child. You haven’t given much thought about what it does for you, your clothes or your washing machine, you just go with it.

You might think, “Who cares why they buy my brand, so long as they buy it?” As an owner of a business of any size, you want to be a benchmark brand, that is, the brand that everyone looks to as the best choice and chooses consciously because you offer the best brand experience and you’re always innovating to best meet the customer’s needs. Brands that are purchased through brand apathy are always in danger of losing their customer base. Anything from a change in packaging to a price fluctuation could make a customer suddenly take notice and take their business somewhere else.

For me, moo.com, a company that makes business cards, is a benchmark brand. In addition to providing excellent products and having a pleasant, whimsical tone, they provide excellent customer service. I once purchased a new set of business cards, only to realize the next day that they were holding a sale. I immediately emailed customer service and asked if there was any way the discount could be applied retroactively. A service representative immediately emailed me back, stating that my credit card had been refunded the difference.
THAT is what I call service.
That is what I call a good customer branding experience.

Are you a benchmark brand? When you think of benchmark brands, what brands come to mind, and why?

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

So the important thing to get across in that short span of time (if it can even be called a span!) isn’t what you or your business does. It’s what you can do for your client.

This point really hit home recently on a complimentary consultation where I was analyzing a potential client’s site. The potential client was a holistic healer who used hypnotherapy to help people change their habits for a better life.

But you didn’t get this at all when you looked at his website. The primary things that would get people’s attention (like the effectiveness of using hypnosis to quit smoking, lose weight, de-stress, incorporate healthy habits) were buried on a sub-page of the site. I can’t imagine how many potential clients he lost due to the fact that they had no idea how his practice could help them.

This is why my tag line “Taking Care of Your Copy While You Take Care of Your Business,” is at the top of the home page of my site. I want you to know, the minute you land on my site, not only what it is that I do, but what I can do for you.

Can a potential client easily see what you can do for him/her, looking at your website?

Not sure that you’re getting your message across? Contact me for a complimentary consultation!

Would I suggest this for just any theatre group? Nope. In this case, this annual event (the third of its kind) tends to consist of a lot of humorous short plays, and most of the participants in the show have their own fan bases. Having funny, mockumentary clips on youtube seems like perfect advertising. Would it work for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Hamlet? Probably not (though I’d love to see what the response was!).

Seems like a no-brainer for hotels. I mean, it’s a value-added app for them to offer tech-savvy clientele for a fairly small cost to the hotel owner, with big rewards to reap in terms of conference planners and customers paying extra money for the benefit of the app.

Ah, but how little did I know about the world of hotels and hotel owners. According to my potential client, when it comes to technology, the hotel industry lags 2 – 3 years behind. And that includes hotels in Silicon Valley. Yep, even Silicon Valley is a hard sell when it comes to a mobile app for hotels.

Crazy, right? You don’t have to have read this article from The New York Times to know that easy access to technology, whether that means free wi-fi or ordering room service from your smart phone, is key for hotels looking to capture the twenty-something to thirty-something demographic. These are folks who would rather not flip through an outdated binder of tourist options – they want what they want, in the smoothest, easiest, manner possible.

You can be a cranky hotel owner and dismiss this as millennial entitlement, but the fact of the matter is, millennial hotel customers aren’t going away. What might seem like entitlement today becomes the norm tomorrow. In fact, as the clientele gets younger and technology continues its fast and inexorable march, the hotel owner who adapts the fastest is going to win the race for business. Or, as hotel owners like to think of it, the race to have the largest number of rooms filled at the best rates.

How’s your business, when it comes to adapting to future, or even current, technology standards?

I can write the most brilliant copy, but if it’s not easily accessible, it may as well be lining the bottom of your parakeet’s cage.

I heard an item on NPR this morning, about March Madness and  how ESPN is now designing its online streaming with mobile phones first in mind.

Image: Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I was surprised – not that they were thinking about mobile phones, but that they designed their streaming with mobile phone screens first in mind – mobile phones, then computer monitors, then TV screens, but it totally makes sense. There are so many people who will gladly watch their home team play while they wait for a bus or stand in line for a coffee. It seems a little much to me, but after all, the word fan is short for “fanatic.” That’s the world we live in: People want what they want when they want it, wherever they may be.

While this makes sense for ESPN, it also makes sense for other businesses. If you’re a restaurant or coffee bar owner, it seriously makes sense for you to be optimized for the mobile screen. If someone is wandering around your neighborhood and does a search on the Yelp app on their smart phone and your business pops up, you want them to be able to easily access your menu on their phone, don’t you?

The easier you make it for customers to connect with you, the more likely you are to get their business.

He received an e-mail from a company representative, telling him that as a “valued customer” she would like to talk to him about some of the additional benefits of his subscription that he might not know about. He thought, what the heck, he might as well get his money’s worth, and signed up for a conference call.

The first thing that went wrong was that the conference call was a little late. Not shockingly late, but as this business owner stated, it’s irritating when someone else doesn’t value your time.

But not nearly as irritating as finding out that the person on the other end was not the rep he had emailed with, but another rep who didn’t even realize that he is a current customer. This rep basically tried to sell my friend a subscription when he already has one.

My friend hung up, understandably annoyed, as his time had just been wasted.

Several days later, the rep he had been corresponding with earlier, called. He told her, with a chuckle, that he was glad that she was calling, as her colleague had called trying to sell him the service he already had.

Guess what? Apparently, rep #2 wasn’t any the wiser than rep #1, even though she had sent an email stating that my friend is a “valued customer,” meaning that he obviously already had a subscription.

That’s right: She didn’t even know which form letter she had sent him.

My friend quickly got off the phone. He shrugged it off, saying that with big businesses, it wouldn’t be surprising if some system automatically generated the email that he received from her, and that she probably hadn’t even bothered looking him up in the system. But he was still kind of pissed off that the right hand didn’t seem to know what the left hand was doing, with the result that his time had been wasted, not once, but twice.

This is your advantage as a small business owner. “Small” can be good. It can mean meeting with people one on one, following up with an email or a handwritten card or a phone call. It can mean not only knowing your customer’s name, but what he/she needs. You know who your customers, and your potential customers, are. And you’re willing to go to the trouble of researching your customers and knowing what they might need, and not going after potential customers who obviously don’t need your services, wasting their time.

How have you used the small size of your business to your advantage?  Please share your stories in the comments section.

A happy customer in The Big Gay Ice Cream Shop

I think this might be the most brilliant use of Twitter by a business owner that I’ve seen.

The Big Gay Ice Cream Shop was once The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck (the truck still exists, but doesn’t roam during the winter months). Known for its fantastic and often unusual, flavor combinations (I finally sampled my first Salty Pimp last November, and “to die for” doesn’t even begin to describe it), as well as its flamboyant name and decor, The BGIT, like most other food trucks, was constantly tweeting throughout the day to let customers/potential customers know about their location for the day, what specialty was being served, and irreverent bits of humor.

Now that there is a store, there are fewer locational tweets, but there is still a constant, entertaining, stream of information being divulged to Twitter followers. Yes, there are still updates as to what’s being served, the newest creation, special store hours, but there’s so much more.  Whether it’s a still of production from the BGIT’s appearance on Anthony Bourdain’s newest show, The Layover or commenting on something a fan/friend says, Doug Quint, co-owner, is constantly engaging with people via Twitter.

Not all businesses, of course, can do this:  The irreverent tweets, for one thing, match the quirkiness of the shop, and not all businesses are as unconventional as The Big Gay Ice Cream Shop. But still, judging from this picture, Quint sets the bar high when it comes to the best use of Twitter by a business. A lady getting her hair dyed who is so tempted by the ice cream shop across the street that she can’t wait for her hair to be done before buying a cone – can any advertisement do better than that?