My New Blog

Hey, I'm now at http://ihogblog.com

Goodbye Blogger

I think my blogging experiment with Blogger is coming to an end soon. Google's application is surely easy to use and allows people to get their own blog up and running quickly. But the time has come for Blogger and iHOG to part ways. It's not you Google, it's me. I have outgrown you and now need to see other blogging solutions. We can still be friends and I will continue to recommend you for people who want an easy to use, personal blog. I'll still be here for a few more weeks but will be using my new website for all future blogs.

You get what you pay for...

It's pretty much a given that if you have a business, you have a website. But how much thought have you put into your website? In my experience, I have seen way too many small business owners whose only question is how much will it cost. They see it more as a necessary evil than a great tool to communicate with customers and sell their products or services. I just met with a customer who has a fantastic product but has very little market share. Nobody knows about him and his product. He currently has an admittedly ineffective website that is several years old and looks like his kid nephew created it. I proposed ways that we could engineer a new site that incorporates current Web 2.0 technologies to attract traffic, capture valuable information, enhance visitor experience and track data. I also highly recommended using social networking sites and starting a blog that would offer tremendous value to his niche market. 

We never even talked about price. Yesterday he told me that he found a web designer whose price was way too cheap to pass up so he hired him. Yikes! So much for a complete marketing solution.

So are you just looking at how much money you need to spend on a website? Or are you asking how money you can generate from your website? Most business owners are not marketers but they should educate themselves and find experienced, knowledgeable marketing professionals who will truly provide solutions. You could have a fantastically talented web designer but if he or she can provide you with merely a pretty-looking website with little functionality, is that a wise investment?

I love this company!

I just love it when a company does something beyond the ordinary that really makes you take notice. I had met a member of the band The Thirsting (a great Catholic rock band, yes I said 'Catholic') at a conference last year and have been listening to their music on my iPod ever since. When I tried to find it online to buy it for my niece for Christmas, the only place I found it was at CDBaby.com, a company I wasn't familiar with. I placed my order and waited for the usual email that my item had been shipped. Instead I received an email that contained the following:

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved "Bon Voyage!" to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Tuesday, December 16th.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as "Customer of the Year." We're all exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Sigh...

Isn't that great! I fell in love with this company. I immediately thought of Seth Godin and his book The Purple Cow. If you have never heard of it, do yourself a big favor and get it.

Ironically, just the other day I stumbled upon the website of Derek Sivers, founder of CD Baby without knowing who he was and sure enough, he mentions that Seth Godin is one of his favorite marketing authors.

Now all you business owners and marketers, do something that sets you apart from the rest of your competition!

Snow Day

I am writing this from my car up in Mt. Baldy surrounded by snow. Today, a Thursday, I decided to take my family up to frolic in the snow. Yup, there are a few advantages to working from home and homeschooling our kids.

Unfortunately Sofia, one of my daughters, frolicked a little too much and sprained her ankle. So while I sat with her I pulled out my notebook and started writing this. That's notebook - as in wirebound sheets of paper, not as in computer laptop. Sorry to disappoint you but I actually wrote this draft using a pen and paper. I know, that's so yesterday.

As I started writing, I recalled a conversation I had this very morning with a printing salesman that I had worked with many years ago. We had not spoken in over 5 years and we reconnected thanks to LinkedIn. He had mentioned how he hand writes thank you notes to prospective clients after the first meets with them and gets a great response. "Nobody does this anymore," he told me, "everyone just sends emails or calls on the phone."

I also thought about how writing, I mean good writing, with correct spelling and grammar is becoming a lost art. I remember receiving an email not too long ago from one of my interns. It was written as if she was sending a text message to one of her friends. I mentioned to a good friend of mine how this younger generation communicates very differently. He told me that he noticed the same thing with his students (he was teaching a graduate course at UCLA at the time) - very short responses to everything. The way we process information and communicate is definitely changing. We have much shorter attention spans, we can send these quick, abbreviated messages to just about anyone from anywhere using our computers and cell phones and with the internet we can get any info we need 24/7. Life is moving pretty quickly around us these days.

I'm glad I was able to slow it down, even for just a few hours today here in Mt, Baldy.

Optimism in this Tough Economy

I have been feeling the effects of this tough economy big time, as many of us have. My business has been very flat for the past few months and even though I am typically an extremely optimistic person, I noticed I was getting pretty worried. I think many of us hear the news about how bad the economy is and we get depressed. Many businesses, in an effort to reduce their costs, started by cutting their advertising and marketing expenses. I am guessing that these business owners have very little faith in their marketing strategies. If you're marketing your business efficiently, you should be experiencing healthy returns of your investments and understand that this is an integral part of keeping your customers and attracting new ones.

Now is NOT the time to stop marketing your business. The results of that will probably not be favorable. It IS a time to reexamine your strategies and be more diligent in how that budget is being used. Now is the time for more creative solutions. I really hate to say this and use this overused expression, but here goes - maybe it's time to think outside the box (I really am sorry I had to resort to a tired old cliché but it does get my point across).

The methods of advertising your products or services and marketing your business have drastically changed in the past years. We hear about inbound marketing replacing outbound marketing. Are we taking advantage of new technology and new forms of communicating with our audience? Are we blogging, are we using social media, is our website optimized to attract traffic? And once we attract those visitors to our website, are we providing value to their experience or are we merely showing them a digital version of our company brochure?

Instead of feeling depressed about how lousy the economy is, we should be excited about all these new opportunities to reach our audiences. This excitement and positive thinking is what will bring our businesses strength and resiliency.

Vonage = HELL!

I created this blog with the intention of providing hopefully useful insight on how to build your business through print and online marketing. However, I need to further vent my frustration with Vonage regarding signing up for their service. So please allow me to use this blog to simply say that VONAGE REALLY, REALLY, REALLY SUCKS! I will spare you the details. If you really want to know more, email me.

I promise that all subsequent blog postings will be of more value to you.

Wow, I feel a little better already.

PS: This is day 4 with no phone line. Yup, I can't receive any incoming calls to my business line. Did I mention how much I dislike Vonage???