heartharmony.com.au

Have you ever stopped, I mean really stopped to see how far you have come? To celebrate your success? Sometimes businesses do it through a strategic planning process, or as part of your life review questions in coaching, but generally it gets a few seconds of consideration and then you are on to your next thing on your to do list.

This forward focus was hammered home to me this week courtesy of my teenage daughter. She has quite a nice singing voice and has been rehearsing for a Cabaret style show at her school. And when I mean rehearsing, I mean every day during school holidays, two nights a week till 9pm after starting at 7am or 7.30am for choir rehearsals, both first and second break at school for the past fortnight and every weekend for at least 4hours for the past 6 weeks.

Now that is a pretty grueling rehearsal schedule no matter your age – but for a 13 year old that is really extreme. Yet she did it without question. “We want to be the best we can – we aren’t there yet” is what she would say when quizzed.  There were days when she was bone weary, and days when she was crying tired. Days when we swore the antichrist had moved into our house and days when she was on top of the world. But she kept plugging away at it.

Tomorrow is performance day, and after a 10.30pm finish last night and a very husky voice today I kept her home from school to rest.

Rachel has been sitting in the lounge this morning watching DVDs of her pre-school and year 1 concerts (we recently had the videos transferred to DVD thanks to Milk2Sugars). While working in my office I heard hoots of laughter during the DVDS, and then she came in to the office to see me.

“Mum, I can’t believe how awful we were. I mean we really sucked. We couldn’t hold a tune, we overacted and you only got a part if you were obnoxious so the teacher would try to give you something to succeed at. I can’t believe you sat through it, clapped and cheered for us.  I guess that unless I had done that, I wouldn’t be here now”.

Now, I had been telling her this for years, but it hadn’t sunk in. It took a video of her before to show her how far she had come, to show her her own success stories. Some people need visible evidence of their progress to realise the distance they had travelled. I know I had the same experience when I looked back over some university assignments 20 years later – to see how far my thinking and writing style had progressed.

In my reflections on life, pretty much everyone sucks at things to start with, but over time and with enough practice everyone can improve. If you really want something enough, and invest the time into it, then everyone can get a credible result. You may never be a world beater, but you will produce great outcomes. That after all is one of the success secrets – time plus commitment equals success.

The other part of success is your cheer squad. For Rachel’s case all her commitment meant driving to and from school to meet the rehearsals (buses don’t get to the school from our place at those hours). It meant shuffling my appointments to work around her. It meant doing “food runs” to make sure she had something warm to eat on her 14 hour days. No-one succeeds on their own. When you are looking back at how far you have come – spend a few moments remembering all the people who have contributed to getting you where you are now.  This cheer squad is part of the meaning of success – they add love and meaning to your results.

From my side of things, it doesn’t really matter how the Cabaret shows go tomorrow. Rachel has already learnt the biggest lesson of them all – to give it everything you have, to invest time in what you want to do and to celebrate your journey.

What about you – have you really stopped to realise how far you have come? What do you do to help you reflect and celebrate? What are your success secrets?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Writer

You all know how much I love poking fun at the Snuggies – the blankets with sleeves. But somewhere amidst all the laughter and the jokes the darn things sold and sold well. Thousands of people bought the backwards hospital gowns, so rather than being a one hit wonder, the Snuggies blanket  manufacturers have now brought out a new Snuggie designer range and chose to launch it at NY Fashion week.

I have my suspicions that a good 50% of all Snuggies last year were bought as gag presents, to be filmed in You Tube videos or to be worn on pub crawls.

The Snuggy fad sort of reminds me of other cringe-worthy niche business ideas/fads over the years – pet rocks, moon boots, roller blades, sea monkeys and hula hoops. Each had their day in the sun after making a mountain of money for the inventors and then slowly faded away only to be found in discard piles at garage sales.

It will be interesting how the new zebra patterns, leopard spots and dog Snuggies actually sell this year. Perhaps the gag will have worn off (we can only hope).

Until that time, I tip my hat to a very quirky niche business (and no … I will not be buying one!).

I give you fair warning though – the first of the designer Snuggie spam emails hit my spambox this morning,  so beware the coming spam onslaught.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Writer

Copywriting, like all service industries, have people at all ends of the financial spectrum.  You can find budget writers in India and Indonesia, and you can find $20,000 a letter plus a % of all sales in the USA.  In Australia the fees vary dramatically – ranging from the VAs who moonlight as writers, right the way through to highly qualified direct mail marketing writers.

We are unashamedly at the mid-high end of the industry. And here’s a little case study to help you understand why you get what you pay for.

Over the past few weeks I have been working with a very talented and successful natural therapies practitioner on revising her website content. She  understands the value of being found in search engines, so we invested time on conducting a range of searches for her so she could get an idea of how many people per day were looking for particular services relating to her industry.

We used this information when creating her copy. This is termed SEO copywriting and includes creating the metatags, H1 & 2 tags and on-page links that her web designer can then just upload onto her site, as well as keyword rich copy.  Her copy will be on-page optimised before she loads it – meaning step 1 of SEO has been completed when her site goes “live”. SEO copywriting is a unique niche – and one we love!

But, in researching her copy we found she used two machines in her business. We did a quick research scan to see what other businesses and the manufacturers said about the machines – and found all used basically the same copy.  (In most cases the copy was identical. This is termed “duplicate content” and has SEO implications, as well as breaches of copyright implications, but we won’t go there).

We then went back and re-read all the Australian legislation and guidelines from the Therapeutic Goods Administration Act to determine what could be said about these machines.

We did further research to find out the specific wordings of the TGA approvals for each machine – as the wording is unique to each machine. “TGA approved” just doesn’t cut it legally – we wanted to state specifically what each machine was approved to do.

We also checked out legal case law to see if there had been any claims made against the advertising of these machines, and discovered a recent case where the “standard wording and claims” used by most practitioners and the manufacturer had been blasted by the courts. The standard wording and claims had been banned from being used, the person before the courts had to withdraw their ads and print a retraction.

Of course, this also means most of the other websites out there that mention these machines and use the standard wording and claims are in breach of the legislation.

Using all of this data and case law, we presented it to the client, to educate her on the situation. We very carefully crafted her web copy to comply with the legislation, guidelines and case law (… yet still sell her services and use of the machines). Of course we advised her to seek competent legal advice to confirm our draft.

What is the point of this post? Budget basement copywriters or newbie copywriters don’t do the research and don’t “get” the legal and SEO side of things.

Of course in every business you need to adopt a risk management approach to your work – but as one of the USP’s of this client is her wonderful honesty and ethical dealings, we made sure her copy was in line with her USP.

Yes, we do things a bit differently … but we also can sleep at night, comfortable in knowing we are protecting our clients while making their businesses highly successful. And yes, we do charge accordingly.

Until next time

We put your business into words

Ingrid Cliff – Freelance Copywriter

As regular readers know, I love niche businesses – those quirky one-off businesses that fit a very small niche of people. But not all businesses can find a niche to dominate. What about if you are in a business that has a lot of competition. How can you stand out? Well … putting it simply … you do the same thing as everyone else, but with a twist.

One of the best examples I have seen lately is an Acapella singing group called “The Voca People“. Music groups are a dime a dozen … so what makes this group stand out? Yes, they have talent, but so do a lot of groups.

They have two key twists – they blended a regular acappella group with two beat-boxers, and then created a very unique “look” for the group. And the results? Well see for yourself …

Clever. Brilliant. In demand (and over 3.4 million views on You Tube)

How can you give a little twist to what everyone else is doing?

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance copywriter

Yesterday I had the privilege of speaking to a conference of TAFE teachers who teach business to students across Queensland.  They had asked for my view of the Gen Z’s – and what was different about them. Now I am not a social demographer (just an interested business observer), but here is a bit of what I shared.

The eldest are about 14 at the moment. This generation can best be described as technology on Ritalin. For these kids being connected 24/7 is the only way to live.

By Grade 4 or 5 they have built their first websites and projects are always done in something like Publisher or Movie Maker and handed in on USB. Forget the old-fashioned cardboard projects – these days it is all electronic and interactive. By Grade 7 they have built their first computer games.

From this age they are playing on social network sites such as Club Penguin or Habbo. By Grade 7 most have graduated to their own Facebook/MySpace and MSN accounts and pretty much 99% have their own mobile phones. At least 20% of Grade 5 and 6 kids have mobiles.

They value speed over accuracy (which explains their spelling!). Most don’t know of life without broadband or wireless internet. They bring I-pods to class and teachers allow students to listen to their iPods when they are studying, quietly reading their textbooks or when they are doing something like art.

On a demographic basis, the median age of first time mums to Gen Zs was 33. Families are smaller.

The challenge is that this group is also the smallest number in terms of the size of the generations due to the decreasing birth rate, so this will have implications for jobs, homes & schools. People will compete for their attention (and don’t they already know it).

They are opinionated, passionate environmentalists and have no boundaries in terms of privacy or distance. Teachers are expected to give their class their email address for contact and kids will regularly send through jokes and other fascinating trivia at all hours of the day.

The world is very small to them. If you don’t have at least 100 friends (most of whom you have never met) on Facebook, you are loser. They chat with people all around the world – as long as their interests are the same, they are deemed a friend.

This is also the Ritalin generation with significant numbers of kids taking some form of medication for ADHD. We are seeing increasing violence with younger kids, with regular reports of kids as young as Grade 1 wagging school.

Gen Z loves love interaction – while they are watching TV they are on MSN, texting or some other form of social media.

These kids are tech savvy, opinionated and have a worldview. This has impacts in terms of how we teach them, interact with them and hire them.

So, what will you be teaching Generation Z’s? Discretion (the net is forever), how to respond to online real time feedback, & managing international online businesses (with the odd bit of unravelling multi-tasking thrown in for good measure).

What do you think about Gen Zs? Are they really that different than Gen Y’s?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Writer

I have been talking with quite a few teens lately (and no I didn’t need a translation service to allow this to happen). Teens traditionally see themselves as 10 foot tall and indestructible. There have been a myriad of scientific studies explaining why this is the case … and yet to date all our focus has been on stopping our teens doing physical damage to themselves with cars and alcohol.

What I have noticed though is teens really don’t have any clue of the concept of “forever”. They think in the now which is all great and fun, but what happens when now turns into tomorrow and tomorrow after that. What am I talking about?

Teens post all sorts of wonderful and creative things on Facebook and Twitter. Sharing their birthday seems like a lot of fun – but it opens the way to identity theft. Once your birthday is public on the net – it stays there, no matter how much you try to remove it later.

Teens make throwaway lines about other students, parents, teachers and friends. They also make less than positive comments about social issues, work and study. These are the equivalent of getting these comments tattooed onto their skin. They last and will impact on future employability.

Photos of them in strange costumes and doing things and people make the net and can’t be removed. It used to be that embarrassing photos were the province of parents at your 21st, now they are there forever.

Listening to Bernard Salt on 612ABC this week he raised the issue of our future MPs and Prime Minister in years to come. If today is anything to go by, when someone aspires to public office the media checks out all the dirt they can find on the net. I have this vision of our future leaders being Amish, as they are the only ones without embarrassing historical photos & comments on the net. Unless our culture of digging for dirt changes, it will make our political ranks rather thin.

The other problem is their comments stick. Social media sites rank well in search engines. If they make a derogatory comment about a teacher or other person (whether true or not), then these comments tend to appear at the top of Google.  This damages the person’s reputation and can cause amazing stress.

Most people don’t know how to deal with this, so there is a whole new industry out there doing “Online Reputation Management” – cleaning up the electronic mess left by unthinking people.

So, what can we do about it? Well for my kids I have tried to explain it like this…  “Remember when you loved Barbie. Everything had to be Barbie and pink. Now imagine that you had had Barbie tattooed onto your skin back then. Would you be happy with your tattoo today? Your tastes change. Tattoos are like wearing the same set of clothes for the rest of your life. Writing anything on the web is like getting a tattoo. Whatever you write stays with you forever, so you had better seriously work out what you want to wear for the rest of your life when you write each word”.

I have no idea if my little homily has worked with my kids, but we can only hope. What do you do to help the next generation understand net permanence?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

In case you have been living under a rock for the past 24 hours, a simple skit on a television program with 6 everyday people performing in black face on a tongue in cheek talent show, has created almost as much press coverage around the world as the recent Tsunami’s and earthquakes.

As someone who was in Human Resources for over 20 years, and who specialised in employment equity for a number of them I feel I have to weigh into the debate.

You see – I am actually loving what has happened. I love that this issue is prompting debate and discussion in the workplaces as it is only through active discussion that sometimes hidden assumptions and beliefs can be reviewed and looked at.

So what were the essential facts of the case? The show in question had a very long run – they were on for 28 years which in TV time is as long as it gets. They then had a 10 year break and were brought back for 2 “reunion” shows – bringing back all the key performers from 28 years into the one show. One of the segments of the show is a very tongue in cheek “talent” show – where people embarrass themselves and generally the least talented who gets the biggest laugh along the way would win the show.

In the reunion show, a group of 6 performers reprised their “act” from about 20 years previously where they did a Jacksons tribute with what is termed “black face” – wearing dark makeup to make them appear as African American. They won with the skit the last time they performed. This time one of the judges (Harry Connick Jnr) was less than impressed and stated he was offended by the act – giving the act a zero score. A flurry of apologies ensued – both public and private.

That’s the essence of it … so what changed in 20 years and why was someone offended?

No one can deny that society changes – what is acceptable in one generation is not acceptable a few generations later. 20 years ago it was common practice to ask women at interview when they intended to leave and have babies. It was also common practice to refer to women as “girls” , “love”, “sweetie” and “honey” in the workplace. Patting the office girl on the butt as they walked past was a relatively common game.

20 years ago people still smoked in their workplaces, the boss was usually called “sir”. Girly calendars adorned the walls of many workplaces and the greatest joke was “hazing” the new apprentice – often quite violently at times.

Workplaces struggled with the changes – but today if you call a woman “love” you will often get a rather rude retort back. Women will tell you quite bluntly that they are not your love and they find that word offensive. Just look at the response by Tracy Grimshaw to the Gordon Ramsey comments for an example.

People smoke outside the buildings (10 metres from the nearest entry) thanks to people who were offended by breathing in the smoke from smokers.

Girly calendars are now out of sight in most workplaces – thanks to people who did not want to view near naked people while they worked.

New apprentices sometimes still get an initiation of sorts, but the old fashioned covering them in grease, and duct taping them to the wall has generally fallen out of favour.

You see, in the past 20 years people started to learn that sometimes things they did or said in fun could be taken a different way by other people. That what they did or said may cause offence. They started to learn to try and think from the other person’s viewpoint – to put themselves in the other person’s shoes. It was termed “political correctness” and copped a lot of flak along the way – but still the changes happened.

Managers realised that they had a legal requirement to provide a safe place of work – which included a place that was psychologically safe and free from harassment. They also realised that as a manager they could be held vicariously liable if someone in their workplace breached the rules and harassed someone else.

So … let’s look at the Jackson Jive issue. A behaviour from many years back was repeated … but the world had changed. African Americans started to gain positions of authority and started to speak up that they didn’t like to be made fun of just because of the way they looked. The Black and White Minstrel show disappeared the way of the dodo.

That’s why it was such a big thing when Obama was elected President. A black person in the highest office in the USA was un-thought of 20 years ago.

In Australia we haven’t quite made it that far. People of indigenous descent are still not very visible in Australia. They still face discrimination. We only apologised to the stolen generation when Kevin Rudd came to power – as before that there was  a belief there was nothing to be sorry for. People of indigenous descent were only allowed to vote from 1962 (1965 in QLD) and mandatory voting by people of indigenous descent only occurred in 1984, compared to 1924 for white Australians).

The different opinions that have been coming out of the Jackson Jive issue show in a very clear light what managers trying to do the right thing on harassment and bullying are up against. 50% of the population see things these sort of issues as a joke and without any malice.  They feel it is in fun – and “can’t people take a joke anymore”. 50% see the issue for what it is – the simple act of black face can cause offence to people of a black or indigenous background.

This is going to be the same in your workplace. Many people who bully or harass are unintentional – they think they are having a joke. The issue is that it is the person on the receiving end that defines whether or not they feel offended and it is doesn’t matter what the person intended. Unless people are aware that the world (and laws) have changed, then problems can and will occur.

As a manager – if you permit bullying or harassment, you are vicariously liable for that action. If it humiliates, intimidates or offends someone – you are liable. (You may want to read up on your legal responsibilities here). It doesn’t matter what you may personally feel – you have a legal responsibility to deal with that type of behaviour.

The flack that Harry Connick Jnr received about stating his offence at the skit is exactly the same that any whistleblower or person who makes a complaint receives. That person is often derided, their history combed for misdemeanors and their initial objections ignored or trivialised. Understand that this often stops people from speaking out. Also understand that you have a legal role in protecting people who make complaints in the workplace.

So what do you need to do about it? Well legally you need to ensure each and every employee is regularly trained in your policies on bullying, harassment and racial vilification (contact me if you need the name of some good trainers). You need to keep your policies up to date and you need to take action if your policies are breached.

Personally I would hate to be Channel 9 right now – they stuffed up as managers by letting the skit go to air and they will have an “interesting time” of it to come. But you as a manager need to learn from the issue. You need to get your own house in order. You need to read up on your responsibilities and you need to have this discussion with your work team.

OK – I’m getting off my soapbox now.

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance writer

Often I share tips  on great ways to grow your business, but today I am going to talk about the 100% guaranteed worst way you can market your business. It is without fail guaranteed to make you despised in the eyes of the majority of other business owners and will destroy your reputation faster than sleeping with the intern in your office.

It is of course telemarketing. Now a quick disclaimer here – back in the 80’s when telemarketing was shiny and new I was involved in this form of marketing for a time. Then it worked because people were actually excited to hear from their electricity company about anything except their bill. Now … telemarketing is the phone equivalent to spam in your email box. You just don’t do it if you want to remain credible as a business.

Yes, there have been fabulous laws passed in many countries establishing “do not call” registers for private homes. This has reduced the phone spam at home – but has passed it on to businesses. Our business is case in point – every day we get on average 5-8 telemarketing calls from people attempting to sell everything from phone plans, finance plans, toner ink, government grants and mortgages. Sure … I am keen to hand over money to people I have never met. Sort of like believing that there really is a nice man in Nigeria willing to give you millions of dollars he happens to have fallen over on a dark night.

Over the years my approach to these unwanted approaches (termed harassment in Human Resources parlance) has gone from polite to downright rude. This is one time when I am actually hanging out for additional government regulation to create a do not call register that businesses can list themselves on.

Until then … if you seriously want to market your business don’t take up telemarketing. I don’t care how attractive it sounds – it is the same as walking up to everyone in the bar and asking them to sleep with you. Your business is going to get a lot of whacks across the side of the face for every acceptance.

Until next time

Ingrid

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance writer