Saturday, 28 June 2008
We're back online
| Just a quick post to say we are back online. Transferring to a new web host can be a challenge but I am pleased to say that the guys at Host Gator were brilliant - they really did have 24/7 live support and everything appears to be ticking over perfectly. It was fascinating having a day of no emails or website. I chose to take a mini-holiday and visit a trade-show that covered some of my personal interests just for fun. It was great having an IT free day (note to self - must schedule in at least one of these a week!) Thanks for your patience during the upgrade. Ingrid Heart Harmony Putting your business into words |
Tuesday, 24 June 2008
Have your clients outgrown you?
| Often businesses think about if they have outgrown a client - but do you ever think about if your client has outgrown you? I had a call from one of my favourite suppliers the other day. We have become very close friends over the years and I happily refer stacks of people his way as I know his work ethic and quality of his work is impeccable. The subject of the call ... how I had outgrown his skill, knowledge and ability on the cutting edge stuff that I do, and how I needed to start searching for a higher skilled supplier. This was a really hard call to take! But as a client I knew he was right. Over the years I have learnt a lot along the way and can mix it with the best of them in terms of geek stuff. My supplier is a brilliant generalist, but is not a specialist in the areas I now work within. I admire my supplier's honesty and ability to speak his truth even though it will cost his business money in the short term. I will still happily continue to refer people to him and still catch up for coffees as a friend. Ethics in business - it is alive and well! Have any of your clients outgrown you? Ingrid Cliff Heart Harmony Putting your business into words Labels: business ethics |
Friday, 20 June 2008
Affiliates, technology and systems
| If you have read my blog for any period of time, you know I love technology as a means to boost productivity. Technology can streamline your systems and make communicating with your clients a breeze. When it all works you save hours ... when it doesn't life can be hell! Today I spent the day working on installing new affiliate software that integrates into Clickbank the company we use to drive our affiliate program. The software itself is brilliant - but the manual that comes with it was "challenging". It was obviously not edited by a freelance copywriter or written by someone with technical writing skills. It was therefore extremely difficult to follow and meant many wasted hours of trial and error before finally making everything work. The lesson from this is many businesses write instructions for their products or services, or instructions for their clients. If these instructions are not professionally edited or checked with "real" customers you may be causing your clients endless frustration and potentially lose customers. My tip if you are writing instruction manuals or sheets is to always have someone who knows nothing about your business to read it through and then follow the instructions. It is enlightening when you watch someone totally botch up what you thought was perfectly clear! As an aside, if you are interested in promoting our Instant HR Policies and Procedures Manual or Employee Performance Reviews: Tips, Templates and Tactics, then check out our affiliate program where you can earn up to 50% commission on each sale. Ingrid Cliff Heart Harmony Putting your business into words Labels: affiliate programs, copywriting, freelance copywriter |
Thursday, 19 June 2008
Dealing with the Petrol Crisis
| Some people are predicting by Xmas petrol will be $2 per litre in Australia. This has significant impact on small businesses. With your employees - some of them will begin to question if they can afford to continue to travel to your business if petrol costs continue to rise. If you want to retain your team you need to look at options such as working from home a few days per week, petrol card bonuses once a month or organising car pooling within your office. Start NOW before you get the first resignation letter and tell everyone what you are doing - communicate clearly and repeatedly and you will head off some potential problems. You also need to rethink all those meetings at different locations - you know the ones where people drive to your location for a meeting. People are going to start to ask - what is the return on investment for my petrol expense for attending this meeting? This is a brilliant time to explore options such as Skype group chat or other virtual meeting technology. Also look at the costs of your fleet on the road - maybe smaller cars are going to become your new company fleet standard rather than the big Commodores. Petrol is a great opportunity for you to look at ways to improve your business bottom line and boost efficiency - if you just look at it that way! Ingrid Cliff Heart Harmony Putting your business into words Labels: petrol expenses |
Tuesday, 17 June 2008
Business systems - client cards
| One of the great things you can do for your clients is to send cards. They can be thank you cards (thanks for being a new client), happy birthday cards, happy anniversary (for the month a person became your client for the first time) or as I did this week happy new financial year cards to all of my copywriting and consulting clients from the last financial year. Cards make you stand out from the crowd and help you to become memorable. A hand written card in the mail is a very personal thing compared to an email. Cards are a great client nurturing strategy - reminding clients you are thinking of them helps them to know you value them as a client. It is also a great way to say thank you to people who have made a difference to your life - whether a client or the person who makes you great coffee at the Coffee Shop. The trick to this strategy is to be organised. Over at agoodsort.com blog they talked about some tips to get organised with cards. One of their tips includes pre-purchasing cards and writing a reminder in your diary or calendar about a week out from the event to remind you. One of my clients uses a monthly concertina file with a list of upcoming events for that month along with cards for those events. They then post them out in the first few days of that month. I have a pile of great Thank You cards and postcards in a drawer that whenever I get great service I jot a note to the company and post the card off that day with the outgoing mail. Whatever your system, a little bit of organisation will generate great results - both in terms of customer retention as well as the nice feeling you give to other people when you remember them. Ingrid Cliff Heart Harmony Putting your business into words Labels: marketing tips |
Saturday, 14 June 2008
It's only office supplies
 In HR World, Spherion conducted a survey that found 19% of office workers reported they had stolen office supplies for personal use. Only 22% felt guilty and 74% knew that it was wrong. When I was in government we tracked the amount of office supplies ordered over a few years and discovered some very interesting trends. Office supply ordering spiked at return to school times and end of financial year. It could be merely that all companies advertise office supplies at that time so people were more aware of them ... or it could be they were being lifted with greater regularity for personal use by the 17% who owned up to stealing supplies in the Spherion survey. In many companies I worked with, the arrival of a new mega catalogue of office supplies was greeted with as much joy as the arrival of the coffee van bearing free cakes for everyone. People would line up to read the catalogue and would pore for hours over the pages. For some reason people love stationery! One of the best examples of capitalising on this passion is the store Smiggle. If you don't know what Smiggle is you obviously don't have primary school children or teens. Smiggle dominates that market with funky office supplies. The store has major pester power - kids plan their trip to Smiggle with as much excitement as going to a theme park. If you don't have Smiggle stationery at school you are part of the uncool crowd. But it's only office supplies! What about the humble pen and eraser can make people so excited? I am still trying to work that one out - but there is something about office supplies that can make grown people go gaga and kids turn into pestering monsters. If you have a Smiggle store near you - check it out. Spend some time in the store trying to work out what about their products is unique. It is not the prices, it is definitely not the service or decor of the store. They have something that is very hard to define and they have captured a particular niche market. Me ... I am off to Officeworks tomorrow for my end of financial year office supplies buying blitz (bring on the archive boxes!). Ingrid Cliff Heart Harmony Putting your business into words Labels: small business niche, stationery |
Friday, 13 June 2008
Responding to customer needs
| Last week we upgraded to the latest version of Quickbooks for 08/09. Unremarkable you may think. Well - Quickbooks has done a great job on "pimping" the look and feel of their program for better usability. The one thing they still haven't done after all these years is work out the documentation side of things. You have the help file which is average at best ... but if you really want to learn the package you either need to pay to attend training or go and buy a book. I decided on the Quickbooks for Dummies series - doing my research on the net as to what was available and which was the Australian edition that matched the latest Quickbooks software. Then it REALLY got interesting. I wanted the book yesterday so thought I would just pop down to the local store to get it. My thinking was ... end of financial year, with all the people wanting to ensure they were doing the right thing financially bookstores would be swimming in the top selling guide for one of the two major financial pieces of software. Wrong! 4 major shopping centres and countless bookstores later ... Some major booksellers couldn't find anything to do with the Dummies series (even to order it in - what planet are they living on). Others could order the US edition but not the Australian edition. I finally tracked down a copy of the essential manual in time for the start of the new financial year in an obscure book-store miles away from home (but it was still cheaper and faster than ordering on line). The good news was the Quickbooks QB for Dummies Australian Edition manual was great - I learnt lots of tips and tricks I had not heard of before and now have everything just about in readiness for the end of financial year. The lesson for me was how unfocused were all of the major booksellers on what else was happening in the world. End of financial year happens each year. Each year people will want to get ready for tax time, improve their financial knowledge and generally get organised. And yet not one store had a display table or promo with end of financial year books and office supplies. They didn't have any stock of the top selling books (even MYOB books had disappeared in most bookstores). This is a major lost opportunity for the booksellers. They are missing a peak selling opportunity by not creating a promotion that matches the main calendar events. For your business - what have you done to reflect this time of year? Do you have any special promotions or services that tie into the end of financial year? If not ... why not? Ingrid Cliff Heart Harmony Putting your business into words |
Wednesday, 11 June 2008
Looking for writers ...
| One of the job markets that is really crying out for people is copywriting. People need people who can write great words ... words that get attention, generate action and help websites get found in the massive e-marketplace. I have been speaking with a number of my colleagues lately and we are all in the same boat. We would love to be able to subcontract out some of our work if we could find the right writers. Some of my colleagues specialise in writing short articles for the web, others in editing brochures, some ghost-write and then there are people like me who love "long copy" websites as well as all other web copy and corporate writing. If you currently write and are interested in subcontracting ... drop me an email, and with your consent I will pass on your details to my colleagues (or keep you to myself!). If you have thought about writing I can also refer you to some great courses to polish up your skills. Drop me a line and I will send you a link to some sites. Ingrid Cliff Heart Harmony Putting your business into words Labels: copywriting |
Tuesday, 10 June 2008
Transforming a passion into business
| The best businesses all have passion woven throughout them. Passion for the product, passion for serving the customer, passion for solving a particular challenge and passion for giving back. Some days it is hard to remember what your particular passion was with your business. On those days it is great to check out the inspiration of other businesses fueled with passion. Pink Heels blog had a great post about a few businesses inspired by passion - businesses run by women who left the relative safety of a J-O-B and who started their own business. If you are having "one of those days" - rediscover your inspiration by checking out passionate businesses and see what makes them great. Ingrid Cliff Heart Harmony Putting your business into words Labels: motivation |
Saturday, 7 June 2008
Crazy interview questions
| When you are hiring a new employee you want to find out if the person will be a great match for your role. You want to discover a bit more about them as a person and how they generally operate under both normal and stressful situations. Let's be honest - you would dearly love to find out if they are stalkers, likely to rob your company or create a lawsuit by their bizarre behaviour towards clients ... but you can't generally ask those sort of questions. That's why I loved this article in the Indianapolos star. It talked about weird interview questions and here are some of my favourites:
If you are going to ask questions, ask ones that are based on experience that transfers to your job. "Tell me about the best team you worked for and what made them a great team", "describe the qualities of your favourite boss you have worked for", "how would we know you are under stress" are more likely to get sensible answers than the fruit question. Have a great weekend! From running horse Ingrid Heart Harmony Putting your business into words Labels: recruitment, recruitment questions |
Thursday, 5 June 2008
Geek tweak - Try out different browsing experiences
 Have you ever looked at your website in different web browsers? Many people use Internet Explorer, but many more use things like Firefox, Flock, Opera, Navigator (the list goes on). There are also many more people checking out websites from their mobile phones and PDAs. What looks brilliant in Explorer may look like a pile of dog food in another browser (or a mobile phone) which means you are losing sales and customers. I have 3 different browsers installed on my work computer and check out pages on each of the three browsers to make sure the site looks OK across the three of them. It may not be perfect - but at least it gives me an idea of what I am up against! Recently I have had a few clients whose websites just didn't work across the 3 browsers - which meant they were throwing away at least 10% of all site visitors before they even had read the first word on the page (for a copywriter that is just straight sacrilege!). If your site doesn't look great across different browsers, it is time to visit your friendly web developer to get your site updated. While you are there - ask them to put in a permanent 301 redirect for your website. There is a historical quirk that means Google (and other search engines) index both www.heartharmony.com.au and heartharmony.com.au. When they do that you could get hit with what is called "duplicate content penalty" and lose Google rank as a result. The simplest way to fix it is a permanent 301 redirect so that heartharmony.com.au automatically redirects the search engine to www.heartharmony.com.au. Does all of this sound weird? Go to your browser and type in your website without the www. in front of it. What comes up? If it is anything other than www.yoursite.com.au you are losing valuable Google rank. Talk with your developer or if you are a closet geek go to your cpanel (if you have one) and put in a redirect yourself. Ingrid Cliff Heart Harmony Putting your business into words Labels: internet marketing, website design |
Wednesday, 4 June 2008
Tweets for Today
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The Thirty Day Challenge - The Best Internet Marketing Course Going????
 If you run a small business it pays to learn the latest trends in internet marketing. In my opinion, the best course available to teach you is called the Thirty Day Challenge ... and the even better bit is it is free, with nothing to buy to make it all work.How the course is structured is a pre-season where you learn the latest free tools and software available on the net and the actual challenge in August where your goal is to earn $1US applying your learnings. I did the Challenge last year and from personal experience I can tell you it will push every one of your boundaries. The technology pre-season was brilliant - the tools I picked up boosted my productivity enormously. The actual challenge saw amazing and dramatic results for my business and my e-books and I now generate at least 1/4 of my business income as a direct result from the course (so you can see why I recommend it!). A heads up - from my HR history I have to tell you the guys that run the course (Ed Dale and Dan Rein) are not trainers. They tend to be a bit full of themselves, waffle and take a LOOOOONNNGGGG while to say anything that is needed to be said. The trouble is their nuggets of content are so unique and worthwhile that it is worth putting yourself through the agony of poor presentation to get the content (or do what I did and find someone who created cheat summary notes from the waffle and refer to the notes rather than watch the videos/TV streaming). The other thing is often you are asked to do things without context or explanation - just "do this it is cool" or "it works". I found this personally challenging and almost threw in the towel a few times because of my need to know "WHY". But they were right - it does work (and yes the results are cool) so put up with your inner demons if you are like me and work through it. They have continued this approach into this year's Challenge with the release of their first pre-season training video on the internet browser Flock. Lots of how and absolutely no why! AARRRGGGHH but given my experience last year, Flock is my new browser and I am controlling my need to know why. The Thirty Day Challenge just like all good training only works if you actually apply what you have learnt. Looking at the videos/TV streams or just reading the blog notes does nothing unless you actually apply it. You need to block out dedicated time and put the tools into action. I already have committed to a lighter workload in August to allow time for the challenge each day. One of the most powerful parts of the Challenge is the need to form teams to back you up. Last year I had a great team from people around the world and like all teams we had people committed to the project and the odd passenger. It was great experience again from a HR side of things about setting and running virtual teams using the latest free technology available and is worth doing the course just for those lessons alone. This year I am looking for a local team of small business people passionate about the internet, dedicated to following through and willing to commit the time it takes to do the course. I will happily share my expertise and look forward to learning from other team members as well. If you are interested drop me an email and we will have a chat about it in a bit more detail. The best sized teams are about 4-6 people. So - check out the Thirty Day Challenge, book some time in your diary and prepare to be stretched! I will keep you posted on my blog about some of the things we are learning through the pre-season and actual Challenge over the coming months. Ingrid Cliff Heart Harmony Putting your business into words Labels: internet marketing, thirty day challenge |
Tuesday, 3 June 2008
Repurpose, recycle and reuse
 With the growing trend to recycle, many small businesses are embracing this with a passion and forging a whole new business out of repurposing products. Elena from EP Designs is a classic case study for repurposing - taking old products and with a twist of creativity making new (and profitable) products for sale. This week in her blog she talked about repurposing an old stainless steel gravy boat to become a candle, complete with decoupage! Now that's creativity. Repurposing doesn't have to be restricted to physical products. If you sell e-books you can look at repurposing them as well. Can they become e-courses, bundled into larger packages, read aloud or talked about in a teleseminar, edited into becoming articles, or presented as physical seminars. I am all for creating something once and using it for multiple purposes! Many of my clients repurpose our direct mail pieces and use the words on their websites or visa versa. What can you repurpose today? Ingrid Cliff Heart Harmony Putting your business into words Labels: recycling, small business ideas |