Have you seen the blog posts doing the rounds where you are supposed to list 25 random things about you?
25 seemed like an awful lot to share, so I avoided it … but when one of my writing gurus John Carlton bit the bullet and listed his 25 things and then asked for his blog readers to add their two random points into the argument, it seemed right up my alley. Here’s what I wrote …
It’s funny how growing up the only non-Catholic in a Catholic girls high school will affect you. After mastering the mysteries of when to kneel, do a circle with holy water and understanding rosary beads were not something you wore around your neck to school … I decided my calling was to become a nun.
After the final bell in year 12, the nuns very sensibly sent me out into the world, telling me to come back in a few years.
… Of course within six months I was living in sin with a drummer in a very bad heavy metal rock band that played in biker bars, which wasn’t the sort of career path that nuns normally take. Later on I tried being a born again virgin … but it didn’t last.
Like John I was a bit slow on the uptake in terms of writing. After studying Psychology, Industrial Relations and the History & Philosophy of Science at Uni (doesn’t everyone do triple majors?), I fell into a Human Resource Management/Industrial Relations career … But I couldn’t work out why each role I took on suddenly morphed into writing corporate communications in large government and private sector agencies.
I knew my time as resident HR expert was drawing to a close when I found myself doing a grievance resolution process with a team who hated another team member eating smelly tuna at their desk for lunch (when all I wanted to do was hit their heads together and tell them to “get the f**** over it”).
When a copywriting guru friend explained to me in very simple language with lots of ellipses that I could actually get paid to write what I had been giving away for free, the choirs of angels all joined together and sang Hallelujah (the High School imprint lives on!) .
.. so I hit the resignation button, hot-wired my keyboard into my veins and took up the mantle of pen for hire.
One last thing – I was never great at maths and counting to two!
What about you? What are your two random facts about yourself?
Noise can severely affect a person’s productivity … or so I discovered today when at the end of the day very little was accomplished other than a thumping headache and great irritation. But I am getting ahead of myself …
As a freelance writer I enjoy relative quiet in order to work. Libraries with the warm welcoming scent of fresh books to explore are brilliant. Coffee shops out of peak times with only the quiet hiss of an espresso machine are also great. A home office – absolute bliss!
Which is why today when the gods of noise took up residence and circled my property it was so irritatingly annoying!
The neighbours had a bobcat digging trenches and then cement mixers pouring concrete over their new retaining wall. (Well, during the big storm in November, all of the Red Sea impersonating storm run off ran off past my door and demolished their wall, so I shouldn’t feel too bad about it … or so I told myself).
Across the road had chainsaws starting at 6.30am removing massive gum trees from their property. These went for about 5 hours straight only to be followed by tree mulchers belching and grinding up the evidence of any green leafy matter. (Well, the tree was massive and quite near the house and the neighbouring tree did crush the next door house in the big storm, so I shouldn’t feel too bad about it … or so I told myself).
The teenage boys up the hill, on their day free from school to pursue workplace traineeships, decided that really really bad heavy metal music was needed more than paid employment, so called in what they loosely describe as a band to inflict more auditory torture. (Well, I have memories of living as a teenager with a drummer in a dreadful heavy metal rock band and thinking the music was great, so I shouldn’t feel too bad about it … or so I told myself).
Why didn’t I move to quieter pastures? Well I stupidly kept telling myself … it will only be for a few more minutes before all will be returned to quiet. It wasn’t!
Finally we have peace and quiet in the neighbourhood, but my nerves are too raw to concentrate on the intricacies of writing long sales copy for a client, or completing an award nomination for another client.
So tonight I will blog, finish my newsletter and plan for a quiet day’s work tomorrow.
… Now if I can just find out who has that extremely loud canary with the big voice in the neighbourhood all will be well.
Have you ever wondered about the difference between rich people and poor people (and not just their bank accounts).
As freelance writers, our team thinks about this all the time when we look at marketing to different groups of people. Which is why this report from the Scientific American this week fascinated us.
You see there has been a scientific study that analysed if people can tell a person’s wealth, socio economic status and mother’s education level just by watching their body language.
What they found was based on just a few short moments of watching non-verbal cues, people could accurately predict all of these things.
Fans of “Lie to Me” will love these findings! Rich people are generally ruder and less engaged listeners. When someone else is talking they self groom more, fidget more and doodle more than poor people (and yes this applies to women as much as men).
Poor people show greater engagement such as affirmative head nods, smiles, good natured laughter, eyebrow raises and gazes to the partner).
This raises a whole lot of interesting marketing questions. For TV ads the actors may need to reconsider their subtle body cues if they are to play “out of type”. It also may need people who want to gain wealth by hanging around wealthy people to lose some of their less engaging behaviour in order to fit in.
Me – I will just be watching all of my interactions even more closely to see if this works in my world and not just in the lab on captive uni students (how well I remember those days back in first year Psychology – being called human lab rats and required to participate in a number of studies each year in order to pass the course).
What do you think – are rich people ruder than poor people?
If you are in a small business, at some point you will need to outsource tasks. This may start small such as outsourcing your book-keeping, your graphic design, your printing, your web design and of course your copywriting.
As you grow, your business will get to a point where you can’t serve your existing clients effectively with the resources you have, let alone the new ones coming into your business.
This is where you look at other options. You can hire people onto your payroll or you can look at extending the outsourcing options.
I have a brilliant new VA (Virtual Assistant) – Charmaine who is helping me to stay on top of my admin. VA’s are the admin assistant you have who just happens to work off site. With technology it doesn’t matter how far off site they are – the work can still get done. But I still need more assistance!
Over the weekend I attended an Outsourcing online conference (same as a normal conference except you don’t have to leave home or get out of your PJs). John Jonas was one of the speakers and really got me thinking. His focus is outsourcing tasks to the Philippines and gave some strong arguments in support of his case, as well as a whole pile of practical how-to’s to make this happen.
A lot of his tips were great for managing any off-site employee or telecommuting employee. Here were a few of my favourites
Require a daily email of progress (it helps accountability and keeps managers in the loop)
Start the person with a hard task first (it helps you work out who has the initiative to work independently)
If they are great – then ask them who they know is like them that could do a similar job (great recruitment strategy)
Give bonuses for good work
Let them figure stuff out
Use Jing (it is a software tool similar to Camtasia so you can record bits of your screen while you explain what you want them to do)
Record MP3s of your project brief – don’t just type. You can say a lot more in an MP3. Use Audacity to record your MP3s
Give them access to your system (trust them in other words)
Give them access to software & ebooks you buy (in other words share knowledge with them)
Give them decision making powers
Retain and respect local customs
Expect there will be internet problems at times and plan for it
Use a task management system such as ActiveCollab or RTM (Remember the Milk) to keep on top of projects
Document what you teach them (so you can train others)
Be the expert
He also gave a lot of great tips in relation to paying overseas outsourced workers.
The way I look at it, outsourcing and telecommuting have a lot in common. If you treat your outsourced workers in the same way you would treat a telecommuting employee, then a lot of issues can be avoided.
Of course there is the question of whether or not a service is suitable to be outsourced in the first place … which I think could be left for a whole other post.
However, this You Tube clip highlights some of the problems of not considering the implications of outsourcing a service.
Today I was asked why businesses should blog – after isn’t blogging just a waste of valuable time? Doesn’t it just detract from your core activities and add to the plethora of junk on the internet?
So what did I say? Well there are different sorts of blogs. Some are just comments and observations. Others look all the world like normal websites. Blog platforms are becoming the default website for new businesses, with many using WordPress themes as the base for their site rather than traditional web design.
In terms of start-up businesses, Blogs quickly gain listing in Google (the best result I have seen so far was not listed to page 3 of Google in 3 hours of going live).
Blogs are Google’s favourite things. They love the fresh content so the algorithms seem to weigh more heavily towards blog content rather than traditional static content. With the right keywords they can quickly outperform traditional websites no matter how well optimised. So in terms of new businesses I have a lot of sympathy for blogs as a great way to enter and quickly dominate the market. They are also very cheap (free other than domain name and hosting if you are willing to do it yourself).
What’s my personal experience?
Blogs when done well can help demonstrate expertise and build more personal relationships with clients. What I have personally found is some people love my blog, others engage via the newsletter and some prefer Twitter. My approach is to match my communication style to their individual communication preferences in terms of how they like to get data. I haven’t yet spent too much time on video or audio, but they are other valid channels.
In terms of traffic – my Performance review blog is the main source of traffic to my EPR product – so it works in terms of generating traffic and a following.
The thing with blogs are they are just one marketing strategy and have to be considered in the overall context of what the person or company wants to achieve. They also are a big commitment and require time and focus, so are not right for every business. But if a client is serious about SEO or SEM – then a blog or blogs in my opinion are absolutely essential.
In terms of managing information overload from too many blogs, I use tools such as Google Reader to more effectively manage my time. That way I can track the 100 or so blogs I follow without wasting hours of effort each day.
So what do you think? Are blogs a waste of time for business?
In Australia we were following the rest of the world into the slide into recession. Yesterday our Prime Minister announced a major $42billion goverment led recession buster package.
So what are some of the goodies in the package for small business?
Small business gets a $2.7 billion package of tax breaks that includes an extra $600 tax deduction for any small business that buys and installs a $2000 computer before the end of June.
Those small firms that buy and take possession of a $60,000 backhoe by the end of June can claim an extra $18,000 tax deduction.
Small businesses with a turnover of less than $2 million a year, can also claim an extra 30 per cent tax deduction for assets costing more than $1000 or more that they buy and between December 13, 2008 and June 30, 2009 and install by June 30, 2010.
And if we run a home based business, we can take advantage of the home insulation incentive. From 1 July we will be able to ring a central hotline and get free home insulation up to $1600. You can get in early and then be reimbursed after 1 July if you would prefer.
I must admit that a Bradford Batt and Laptop led recovery wasn’t in my dreams when I woke yesterday morning!
That said, computer shops and technicians as well as home insulation businesses are also big winners from these incentives.
If you provide services to these businesses you may want to touch base to see how you can help them maximise the new business that will be coming their way.
You may also want to put a call into your accountant to work out what is the best way you can capitalise on these incentives for your business.
The Superbowl in the USA is not just about sweaty men running after a stiched up piece of leather. It is also the Olympics of advertising, where all the best and brightest spend millions on one of the handful of advertising slots available.
It is estimated that in 2009 28 advertisers spent $206 million (US) on commercial time during the Superbowl (which works out at $100 000US per second of air time).
They spend months working on researching the audience demographics, carefully crafting their ads to appeal to their audience and much more money actually filming the ads.
Every year USA today uses a real time ad metre to test which ads won and which flopped.
So what happened this year?
Well – the one that the audience voted the number one best ad was made by two unemployed guys on less than a shoestring and entered in a viral video competition by Doritos. They outperformed all the high flying advertising agencies with all of their expensive research and facts.
So what can small business marketing people take away from the Superbowl ads?
Humour is in for 2009. People are sick of doom and gloom and want to laugh. Lighten up your marketing.
Watch the on-screen violence. A number of customers rated ads with on-screen violence down (even pratfalls and things such as people walking into items).
Nostalgia and stories work. People love the Budweiser Clydesdales and the stories linking them through history. Stories are still powerful sellers.
Sex still sells. There were a couple of ads designed for teenage and young men with gratuitous flesh – sex still works for that audience.
Even experts get it wrong. Toyota’s ad bombed, as did one with Coke and boy walking through a world full of avatars.
Ask your customers. The best ideas come from customers about what their needs are and how to have these needs filled. Ask them what they want.
Thank your customers for their input . Doritos paid the winners $1 million for their ad and have gone on record as stating it’s the best million they have spent. Sort of makes that gift voucher you were thinking of as a prize look a bit scungy.
