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A snappy design might catch their attention, but it’s the words that make the real connection. (Inc)

2010 05 10 Mike quotes Comments (0) Permalink

2 ways to do customer support

Says about the same thing without the sorrys and nos. 1st way: sorry, don’t, can’t, sorry. 2nd way: love, very happy, free time, on top, best offer, hope, great day. Tone makes all the difference in the world. Which way would you rather buy from? (SVN)

If more companies thought about customer service this way, fewer companies would (mistakenly) see support as a cost center rather than a profit center.

2010 05 07 Mike quotes Comments (0) Permalink

Your daily quota

What does your daily quota look like?

There are infinite tasks in your business. Which 4 areas are most important to grow your sales?

When you break it down like that, it becomes pretty clear what you must do each day. What are your 4?

2010 04 30 Mike entrepreneurship Comments (0) Permalink

If I was starting a web design firm today

I would approach small, high-quality specialty shops with weak websites. Like this or this or this. And I’d offer some online craftsmanship that properly reflects their offline craftsmanship.

These shops deserve a high-class feel to their sites. That’s great for me showing my design prowess.

Their products cost a lot, so their customers have money. Maybe they have money for a website (that costs a lot)?

If generating referrals and a portfolio of interesting stuff is the goal, this is where I might start.

2010 04 28 Mike entrepreneurship Comments (0) Permalink

Reality Check

The research is from 2006, but the point is clear: people are getting less connected, not more.

How does your product provide the connections we know they’re yearning for?

2010 04 14 Mike marketing Comments (0) Permalink

Social Media Heroics

Even if you’re a small business, there’s some great insight to be gained from Marla Erwin, Interactive Art Director for Whole Foods Market. Marla was instrumental in creating Whole Foods’ acclaimed social media program and the results have been phenomenal! For example, in the first year, Twitter.com/Wholefoods gained a million Twitter followers. It has now surpassed 1.75 million people. (Social Media Examiner)

(Emphasis NOT mine.) I love how the number of followers somehow makes the account a success. (Was it ever on the suggested user list? We know that skews things but translates little in terms of quality.) So beautifully misleading about what is truly important.

Just as importantly, there is no actual data in this article. Sure, it’s impossible to be wrong if there is nothing to judge, and that’s nice for the writer’s job security… but I fear how many small businessmen read fluff like this and then waste time joining Twitter with no plan in place.

2010 04 13 Mike musing Comments (0) Permalink

Swiping Works

Turns out, designers swipe from past winners just like us copywriters do. And lo! It works.

2010 04 06 Mike email marketing and copywriting Comments (0) Permalink

Joel on Twitter

Although I appreciate that many people find Twitter to be valuable, I find it a truly awful way to exchange thoughts and ideas. It creates a mentally stunted world in which the most complicated thought you can think is one sentence long. It’s a cacophony of people shouting their thoughts into the abyss without listening to what anyone else is saying. Logging on gives you a page full of little hand grenades: impossible-to-understand, context-free sentences that take five minutes of research to unravel and which then turn out to be stupid, irrelevant, or pertaining to the television series Battlestar Galactica. I would write an essay describing why Twitter gives me a headache and makes me fear for the future of humanity, but it doesn’t deserve more than 140 characters of explanation, and I’ve already spent 820. (Joel)

Bummed he’s no longer writing regularly. This is a spectacular passage to close the curtains with, though.

2010 03 18 Mike quotes Comments (0) Permalink

Impacting the first 15 minutes

I think there would be massive upside for any information marketer who implemented this, even if it was just an assistant emailing it out. Lord knows the industry needs all the trust-building it can get.

2010 03 05 Mike marketing Comments (0) Permalink

An Approach to Web Forms

I wonder how you could apply this to your ecommerce sites?

2010 03 02 Mike marketing Comments (0) Permalink