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Julie McLeod from Kharma Consulting, a Feng Shui business based in Brisbane, writes a great free monthly newsletter.

This month’s edition featured some great Feng Shui tips for Christmas in Australia that are worth sharing (they are not just limited to family get togethers and can be equally applied to office Christmas parties).

Christmas can be a stressful time of year for many people especially when you have a large number of family members all in the one place. This combined with the summer heat, consumption of alcohol and a lot of fire energy around - these are the perfect ingredients for heated arguments and discussions. Below are some tips to calm the energy to have a more harmonious Christmas day:

• hang your tinsel in a smile - don’t let a little of the tinsel drop down on the ends.
• add more green to your Christmas table settings - this will calm the energy.
• do not have too much red in your decorations as the red and your Christmas lights creates a lot of fire energy.
• do not serve meals and drinks on chipped crockery or glasses as this will create argumentative energy.
• if you have some family members who tend to fight do not sit them opposite each other as this is a confrontational seating arrangement and they will fight.

I have gone around the house and office and rearranged all my tinsel to put the smiles into the arrangement. It may just be the thought of it, but having smiling tinsel around the place certainly feels Christmassy and a lot more fun.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony - Freelance Copywriters

Businesses need to look at performance measures to track their success but many businesses struggle with working out their top performance measures. They measure things that may or may not make a difference to their business. Warren Buffet once said “Focus on what’s meaningful and not what’s measurable” .

Recently I have been talking with Steve Major from Major Focus Group. He is one of the most insightful and fascinating people you will ever meet, and works with businesses to help them determine the meaningful measures for their business. He picks up where your accountants leave off.

He also believes that every measure has a customer service correlation. That financials without customer service measures have absolutely no meaning (given he has an accounting background this is pretty radical stuff!).

If you want to learn what measures are meaningful for your business I recommend checking out the Major Focus Group website.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony - Freelance Copywriters

We have just finished all of the exterior Xmas lights for the second time this year - the first go was wrecked by the Brisbane storm. They look brilliant (literally) and due to the unexpected assistance from the weather I had to go and buy a whole pile of new LED Xmas lights to fill in the dark spots.

This led me to a few wonderful niche businesses - Christmas lighting shops. It is amazing how they are springing up everywhere and are a veritable treasure trove of lights. They have to be the ultimate niche businesses - only really trading for a few months of the year, and yet they are surviving and thriving even with the competion of the big chain store guns of Kmart, Target and the like.

Another niche business I found is PossBloss - a specialist shop that makes hand made kids art smocks and bibs. Their range is gorgeous and very different from the run of the mill stuff.

Niche businesses definitely have their place - for something unique, different and quirky.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony - SEO copywriters

Many small businesses start because the big players miss out on serving a major niche. Joliv is a typical case - they make chemically free, environmentally friendly, natural beauty products as the owner is sensitive to the chemical cocktails in traditional beauty products.

I have seen handmade stationary and cards - because the mass produced ones didn’t reflect the needs of buyers, kids clothes that were pretty as well as practical and a whole raft of other small businesses bloom from the cracks in the pavement by the big players.

This is why independent supermarkets are gaining market share. Why gourmet pizza shops are springing up in the same way that bakeries did a few years ago and why farmers markets nearly outnumber trash and treasure markets.

There is always a niche not being served - that with the right product and approach to the right audience, small business can dominate. The trick is to find your particular niche - to find the need that people are looking for and not yet finding the solution for.

That is why keyword research for small business websites is so vitally important. Good research helps you to find the niches that the big guns are not tackling.It helps you find the words people are entering into search engines and not finding the answers they are seeking.

You may not be able to dominate the market on the big words, but you can certainly take on the market on niche words. Finding the niche keywords is just one part of finding the niche product or service that is not being met, and then profiting from them.

If you have not had a keyword analysis on your website, you are missing out on major opportunities.

Heart Harmony offers keyword analysis as part of our copywriting service, and good SEO companies also offer keyword analysis.

Call us at Heart Harmony if you would like to have a keyword analysis done for your website or business idea.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony - SEO copywriters

I don’t know about you, but I have been noticing a shift with our teens and kids over the past few years. Many of them seem afraid to try and fail, or just to give something a go purely for the fun of it at school, with no expectation other than to enjoy it.

Many teens seem to believe that unless they are going to be good at something - why bother trying, which has had trickle down effects on the subjects they select and the courses they end up choosing at Uni level. Many hated subjects at lower levels can become much loved at senior levels as they explore the more interesting realms of information - if they just give it a go with no other expectation than to see what happens, rather than “will this subject give me a good OP”.

I see this with sports - we focus on the competition rather than the pleasure of physical activity, which may be why it is an uphill battle to get people to become active.

I have been watching it in my own Primary School kids. Both of them used to constantly sing - just for the joy of singing … until they met one particular teacher. In 2 short years she has managed to suck all of the music out of them. She has made choir a chore to be avoided at all costs and music the most painful subject on the planet.

Music has pretty much died in our house. I counter to the best of my ability - but it is an uphill battle countering negative programming that “you can’t sing”, “your voice is dreadful” and “unless you get it right you can’t participate”.

I don’t think she is a bad person, she is just misguided in her goal to win music competitions for the school, rather than instill a lifelong love of music.  She is typical of many of the type “A” driven personalities - forgetting that fun and laughter is as much a teacher to kids as “to do lists” and avoiding mistakes at all costs.

I also see it in our workplaces, where people are not allowed to make mistakes - and if they do they are crucified for them. Laughter of the roll around on the floor sort of belly laughs is seen as somehow inappropriate in workplaces and the realm of touchy-feely types.

Many workplaces are so focussed on the end goal, they forget to have fun just for the sake of having fun and for the joy it brings.

Where did we as a society lose our sense of fun - for doing things just because they feel great to do them? When did we stop jumping in puddles or skipping down the road?  When did we stop taking the time to bond through humour and relaxation?

How can you bring a little bit of joy back into your workplace or home today - just because you can?

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony - SEO copywriters

We have just joined thousands of people who have bought the cookbook “4 Ingredients”. Why?

Well our family is typical of many families. We are time poor and the thought of fancy cooking with its miles of ingredients is frankly terrifying. Add to that the ability of my eldest child to burn the base off saucepans at an alarming rate of knots and we needed help.

If you don’t know, this cookbook gives recipes that are quick and simple and only use 4 ingredients.

So what are the lessons from the book? People want simplicity and will pay to get it. They also want to DIY (as long as it isn’t too complex - think Ikea). We even don’t need glossy books with gorgeous pictures - keep it simple and it will walk off the shelf.

How can you make what you do simpler and easier for people to use or buy?

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony - SEO copywriter

Amazon has just introduced a brilliant new service that is environmentally friendly and adult friendly. They have arranged with some of the major toy manufacturers to package their most popular toys in easy to open cardboard recyclable packaging rather than the standard layers of wire, plastic, twist ties etc etc.

Amazon benefits because people then buy the same product from Amazon vs the toy stores, the environment benefits and parents remain sane. If you have kids you know the drama on Christmas morning where you get to spend 20 minutes trying to retrieve the latest Bratz doll from its adult proof packaging. It is not pretty and usually ends in tears of frustration (from the adult at the very least)!

Apparently Fisher-Price, Mattel & Microsoft now have arrangements in place with Amazon.

To highlight the issue, Amazon has also put together a gallery of wrap rage - videos and photos people have sent in to share the hassle of badly packaged products.

This is a no-brainer product development. If your product packaging annoys rather than helps, then change it! Hats off to Amazon.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony - SEO Copywriters

My local Red Rooster at Arana Hills and I have a chequered past. We stopped going to it about 12 months ago when we were served some desserts that were 3 months out of use by date and were met with some Basil Fawlty style of problem resolution by the manager.

Last night after hearing that Head Office had been in and had changed the Manager and been working on systems in the store we thought we would give them another go.

So about 7m, we pulled into the drive-through, wound down the window and ordered a chicken and chips family pack. “We don’t have any chicken”.

I was a bit taken aback by that. “Pardon”?

“We don’t have any chicken”.

By this stage I felt like I had joined a skit of Monty Python.

“So just to check - this is Red Rooster and you don’t have any chicken?” “That’s right”.

There was no offering of any other menu options, such as chips, chips and chips, chips chips chips and chips (Monty Python’s spam skit was starting to play through my head). There was no apology. No we are cooking some and it will be ready in 10 minutes, it was just “we have no chicken”.

So I did what I observed every other car do that night - drove through to the drive through and go straight to Hungry Jacks next door. Which is a whole other saga as that store had one frazzled team leader and the entire rest of the employee team were all wearing the little red badges saying “Hi I’m in training”.

On talking with one of the team members it was all of their first nights working there- so a 30 minute wait for the order gave us and all of the other customers time for a lovely chance to chat, bond, get to know each other’s children, get to know all the people from drive through coming back in the store after their orders were incorrect, sing a few verses of Kumbya and watch the cars drive quickly through the next door Red-Rooster drive through without stopping.  One of the returning customers mentioned that it was the second week in a row that Red Rooster had no chicken.

So what can businesses learn from this? Yes, all businesses sometimes run out of items. You can do it once and get away with it, twice is just getting silly and shows you are not learning from your business reporting.

You need to train your employees what to do in those situations - offer alternatives, discount vouchers or some other way to get people back when you do have your stock back in.

Oh yes … and never never never only roster trainees on a shift.

I now know why the local pizza shop is always busy!

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony - SEO copywriters

Many governments and business get music on hold for their telephones. Personally I hate Greensleeves chimes only slightly less than “your call has progressed in the queue and your call is important to us” as you know darn well that if they really cared they would employ more staff so you are not left hanging for 40 + minutes.

The other day I had to laugh when put on hold for the umteenth time for one Local Government office I was greeted with “Killing me softly with his song”. Either the programming company had a very wicked sense of humour or it was one of those delicious mistakes.

Have any of our readers had any other pet on hold hates or delicious mistakes they would like to share?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony - SEO copywriter

Just a quick tip - when you do your business back-ups (daily of course), remember to also regularly add in backing up your blog and your website to your server. Websites can be corrupted, a wrong button may be pushed and accidentally deleted, it may be hacked into … a whole raft of things can go wrong. Having a back-up is added protection for those situations.

Most people assume their web host will automatically back-up their website for them, but they may or may not do this.  The only way to be certain is to regularly do your own back-up of your website and blog to your own system.

If you are like me and fiddle a lot with your site, then weekly site back-ups may work for you. At the very least a monthly back-up of your website will save you lots of hassles if something goes wrong.

My site met with one of those little “count to ten” moments last Friday, but thanks to the back-up I managed to restore the site as soon as I found the problem.

Talk with your friendly IT guru to help you work out how to back-up your website if you don’t know how.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony - SEO copywriter