In addition to the usual responsibilities, I also have caregiving responsibilities. I take care of my mother-in-law. And recently, my wife had open-heart surgery, so I’m having to help her with things as well. Some days, I am so overwhelmed with caregiving duties that I feel my name should be “Gimme”. Gimme a soda. Gimme my pain meds. Gimme food. Gimme the newspaper.

Don’t get me wrong. I love both my wife and my mother-in-law. And I know they are having a hard time dealing with their limitations. But it can be overwhelming at times to be caregiver to two people. And soon, my wife won’t need as much assistance as she does at this moment.

One thing I am making an effort to do is cut out things that suck the little time I do have. I am started to spend less time on Facebook. It’s very addictive and a serious time waster. TV is the same way. My wife always has it on and it’s so tempting to just plop down beside her and zone out to whatever she’s watching.

I also need to make an effort to get into a regular routine and anticipate the usual caregiving interruptions.

What have you done to make sure you get to work in a timely manner? If you work at home, how do you handle the common interruptions from family members, pets, etc.?

My question is why do you care whether I have a vagina or a penis? Unless you are my wife or my physician, my gender is not your business.

And don’t give me that tired old excuse about whether I should be addressed as Mr. or Mrs. or Miss or Ms. That’s nothing but a cover for how you intend to market more of your shit to me. If you must address me, you already have my name. You don’t need my gender.

Most of the time when a business asks me for my gender, I take my business elsewhere. So do a lot of women and gender variant people (there are a lot of us and we know how to spread the word about boycotting organizations and businesses).

If you’re a business owner, it would behoove you to really think about what information you are requiring (or even asking for, but not requiring) from those who sign up with you. Do you really need to know whether I have an innie or an outie? Why do you really need to know what I do for a living? How do you intend to use information about my marital status?

What’s sex got to do with it? Not a goddamn thing!

credit: weirdpercent

“Build your business through relationships.” “Show, don’t tell.” “Point your chin in the direction you want the motorcycle to go.” “Don’t allow your toddlers to play with live hand grenades.”

It’s so easy to write a post on a topic that has been done to death. And I am guilty of this, too, at times. Let me tell you, regurgitating the same old wisdom we’ve heard multiple times from other sources is no way to market. It doesn’t encourage readers to stick around.

So how do you break out of this trap? How do you come up with original ideas that are genuinely helpful?

Well, I’m not going to tell you. Because then I would just be regurgitating someone else’s wisdom. And I know you don’t want to eat my vomit.

Instead, I invite you to read the latest post on Copyblogger.com. Take time to digest this nutritious tidbit they are sharing and be sure to subscribe to their feed. I do.

Now does anyone have a breath mint?

By actively creating good karma through helping out others, you naturally overcome the resistance people have toward buying. People are more inclined to buy from those who are generous with their time and knowledge.

It’s All About Attitude

Perhaps one of the biggest marketing mistake entrepreneurs make in how they market their businesses is in their basic attitude. Specifically, their focus is on what they can get rather than how and what they can give.

Sure, maybe our product or service helps our clients, but that’s not enough to get someone to buy or even give us a second look. We have to build (and by build I mean earn) a reputation that we are generous with our time and our knowledge.

Who Would You Choose?

Let’s say you want to hire a contractor to enclose your back porch. You’ve narrowed your search to two people that your friends have recommended. You decide to interview each of them.

Contractor A wants to charge you just to discuss the project, though you manage to get him to agree to a 30-minute free consultation. He listens for a while and then starts making suggestions for some costly add-ons you aren’t really interested in. He insists that it’s an all or nothing deal.

Contractor B is happy to sit down with you for two hours. He listens attentively and then offers a few different ways the project can be approached, offering the pros and cons of each approach (durability, costs, ease of future upgrades). He’s happy to leave some samples with you (at no charge) to allow you to make up your mind.

One of these contractors is a giver, the other a taker. One generous with his time and knowledge, building good karma as a result. The other is controlling and trying to nickel and dime you to death. Bad karma! Which one would you hire?

People Are Attracted to Good Karma

Now think about your business. How can you be a real giver toward your prospective customers? It’s not enough to say I have a product and it’s good. Or I have a service and it solves a problem. Your competitors can say the same thing.

You have to brainstorm ways that you can be a giver, so much so that it creates a reputation for you. How free are you with giving away your time? Do you help educate people (and not just about your product)?

Put It Out There

Let’s say you’ve published a science fiction book that you need to promote. Sure, you can give away a free chapter. But a free chapter is like putting your hand out. Sure it’s some free content, but there are obvious strings attached. You can’t get the whole story until you pay me.

But what if you volunteered for a program helping kids build robots or learn something else related to science? How about an all-girls rocketry club? Or doing lectures at your local library on the lives of astronauts or classic sci-fi authors or the search for extremophiles in the depths of the ocean?

Your audience will ask what you do for a living and you say you write science fiction. How likely are they to buy your book? More so than if you showed up with your hand out.

Brainstorm Your Good Karma!

Brainstorm how you can create good karma for your prospects! Focus on your target market and their interests, and how those interests intersect with your skills. Don’t be afraid to think big.

Two hours spent volunteering your time to a related subject can be more productive sales-wise than the same two hours spent at a networking group or sending out emails or press releases.

courtesy of Wikipedia

Not everyone can be on top of Google Search results. In fact only the lucky few can. But success isn’t found only on top. You just need to take a more Zen Punk approach to your marketing.

Madness About Harry

The final installment of the Harry Potter films hit theaters today. And yeah, I plan to see it. The book was incredible, so don’t just watch the movie.

I’ve often heard some of my writer friends say they wish they could get the same lucky break that author J.K. Rowling had. The classic rags to riches story. Well, bitches, it almost never happens that way.

Of course, the Rowlings and Tolkeins and (*shudder*) Stephenie Meyers of the writing world are the ones that get all the press. And there is a tendency to think that it’s the rule rather than the very rare exception that it is.

Everybody Wants to be On Top

The reason I bring this up isn’t to discourage my fellow writers from shooting for success and glory. Rather I am using this fact to illustrate a often ignored fact about search engine optimizers. And that fact is this: not everyone can get a top Google ranking. In fact, the ones that do are the very rare exception.

Let’s say you’re a sandwich shop located in Big City in the great state of Wherever. Your target market is probably local unless you’ve found a way to send your tasty morsels over the Wi-Fi (or some global distribution method).

So in your metro area, let’s say there are 3,000 sandwich shops. If someone searches Google for “sandwich shops, Big City, WR”, there will be a small map at the top of the results page with dots for various matches and then a list of matches. Only about a dozen or so will appear on the first page. What about the other 2,988 sandwich shops? Buried deep in the other pages.

The people on the first SEVERAL pages most likely hired a professional to optimize their website, have had their site up for several years, and are well connected to other sites on the web. So most of the shops on these first several pages have done everything they can possibly do and still only a fraction ended up on the first page. Not everybody can be on top.

Embrace the Kama Sutras of Marketing

So what can you do? Don’t let SEO be your only marketing strategy. By all means, hire a professional (me perhaps?) to optimize your site for search engines AND for people (since search engines don’t do any actual buying from you). But once that’s done, move on to other ways to reach your target audience.

What other ways? Try this: Let’s say you’re walking through a parking lot and you see a bumper sticker you really like. Write “I LOVE your bumper sticker” on the back of one of your business cards and stick it under the windshield wiper, note side up. You may find a kindred spirit who needs your product or service.

Want more? Read Guerilla Marketing books, any of Seth Godin’s books, Guy Kawasaki’s Enchantment. These books are the Kama Sutras of marketing because it turns the tables all around.

Get your mind thinking about how to develop your brand, to develop relationships (even if you own a sandwich shop) with potential clients and how to deliver in such a way that gets people talking.

Be Willing to See Things Differently

Change how you think about marketing, about your business, your product/service and your customers. Do this and it won’t matter if you rank on page 157 of Google’s page results. Over time, generating business organically will improve your ranking.

Now go see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow’s Part II and try not to cry like a 3-year-old when Harry dies. Just kidding! Harry doesn’t die. Or does he? I’m such a bitch!

Courtesy engrishfunny.failblog.org

“English is My Second Language, I Just Don’t Have A First One”

That’s what a friend of mine (in the publishing business, no less) once told me after sending me an email riddled with misspellings, bad grammar and sentences that were incomprehensible. I knew this person wasn’t stupid. But you’d never know it from that email.

Sure, we can blame it on the baffling incongruities of the English language, our over-dependence on spell-check apps and most recently on auto-correct features on our smartphones. But you don’t get to use those excuses with people who fail to do business with you after finding major typos in your online communications.

So the next time you have heavy-duty footwear on sale, don’t announce that all BOOBS are half off or your customers may wonder exactly what business you are in! Breast reduction? Post-mastectomy prosthesis? Or girly shows? Hard to know!
 

Look Before You Send

I think the biggest contributor to such awful online communication is our rush to hit the Send button. Just because your tweet is limited to 140 characters doesn’t mean you shouldn’t proofread it. After all, how long does it take to read your own tweet, for Heaven’s sake?

If it’s something a bit longer and more business-related, try and have an associate glance over it before you send. Even if you went to journalism school like I did (Go Dawgs! Sic ‘em! Woof! Woof! Woof!), you’d be amazed at how many mistakes we miss.

It’s not entirely our fault. Our brains have an auto-edit function that blinds us to errors in our own work that we would immediately spot in someone else’s.

Another person can also alert us to potential red flags regarding tone and message. You know that email to your now-ex-boss that you wish you’d never sent? If only, right?

If there is no one around to proofread your work, try reading it out loud or better yet, use a text-to-speech tool to read it aloud for you.

Ignorance of the Law (or the Rules of Grammar) is No Defense

As I mentioned, English is a very inconsistent, convoluted language and one that is constantly changing. It’s multi-cultural history (Indo-Germanic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Arabic, Swahili, etc.) has made for some very strange rules.

And our ever-evolving technology and popular culture continue to add words and push for grammatical and style changes.

But if you want to grow your organization online, you need to know how to communicate properly. So here are some tools that might help.

Style Guides: A style guide covers the rules of grammar and helps to create a consistent style for those gray areas. My favorite (in part because of my creative writing background) is the Chicago Manual of Style, but there’s also the Strunk & White’s classic Elements of Style and the AP Stylebook, among others.

Grammar Girl: Whether you purchase her books, listen to her free podcast or subscribe to her email list, you can no doubt benefit from the experience and knowledge of Mignon Fogerty and her associates. Not only is she informative, she’s also very entertaining. Check out her site at Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing.

Eats, Shoots and Leaves: This is a great book from Lynne Truss on punctuation, and like Grammar Girl, quite entertaining. The title comes from a joke about pandas. If you want to hear the joke, read the book. And watch out for pandas, because we still have a right to arm bears in this country.

The Results Speak For Themselves

How much can poor English cost you? A recent BBC News article explains that we’re talking major moolah here.

A web designer is quoted as saying that in one case where a typo was discovered on a website, he “found that the revenue was twice as high after an error was corrected.” Wouldn’t mind doubling your revenue, I’ll bet.

So take time to proofread, use a buddy if possible, and learn proper English, whether it’s your first language or your twenty-third. Don’t give potential clients a reason to buy elsewhere.

Now what time are those high heel shows?

I Am Blessed to Have You In My Life

I have such awesome friends. When I had to say farewell to my beloved cat Panda, you were there for me with your words of support and encouragement. When I celebrated my 15th sobriety birthday, you were there to cheer me on. And when I was stuck for a week in the hospital last Christmas, you sent prayers and made me laugh (which hurt after the surgery, but I still appreciated).

Long story short, my life is better because you are in my life. I mean that sincerely. Even if we’ve never met in person, the fact that you’re my friend on FB, or on this blog, or some other media, means that I am renewed by what you share. I am so grateful for that.

I Want to Show My Appreciation

I know times are tough right now and money is scarce for a lot of us. And I want to help you out. So I’m now giving 5% referral fees to anyone who refers a new client to me AND another 5% to the non-profit of your choice. So if you refer a client who hires me to design an awesome website, a kickass logo or a mind-blowing Facebook landing page, I will give you 5% of the initial job and another 5% to breast cancer research or marriage equality or building schools in Africa.

If the job is for $1,000, you get $50 and your charity gets $50! If the job is for $4,000, you get $200 and your charity gets $200. All just for referring a new client to me. Just be sure to let me know you referred them!

It’s All Good

Those of you who have hired me know I always go the extra mile for my clients. If I could, I’d do it for free because I so love helping people. So when people refer clients to me, they’re doing their friends a solid, supporting their favorite charity and putting some cash in their own pockets.

So spread the word and help me pay you back for your support.

Here are nine things to consider to make sure your web presence is up to par.

1. Flashing Is A Crime

No, I’m not talking about showing your tits at Mardi Gras or dropping your Speedo at Pride. I’m talking about websites that use Macromedia Flash for animations. While it’s not technically illegal, it ought to be.

Don’t get me wrong! I’m all for using animations. Obviously, since I use it a bit judiciously myself. But there’s a problem with using Flash to achieve the effect. About a third to a fourth of your visitors are viewing your site on a machine that doesn’t have Flash enabled. This includes folks using the very popular iPad and other Apple products.

So instead of seeing your beautiful site in all of it’s glorious animation, they see a big blank box wherever you’ve used Flash. This can prevent visitors from navigating your site, so they go somewhere else.

How can you tell if you’re using Flash? If you open your site in FireFox, click on the Add-Ons menu then click on Plugins. Look for the line that says “Shockwave Flash”. Click on the disable button. Now pull up your website. If there’s something missing (like your navigation bar or your banner or your entire site), then you’re probably using Flash.

Most animations can be achieved without Flash but using JavaScript. If you don’t know how to do that, it might be best to replace Flash elements with static text or images.

2. Looks Like A Redneck Wedding Invitation

I’m talking about blocks of text that are center-aligned. With the exception of wedding invitations, text should either be left-aligned (aka left justified) or right-aligned (aka right justified). When you center paragraphs of text, the result is always something that looks unprofessional.

People judge companies by their websites. An unprofessional website tells your visitors that you are not professional, that you’re sloppy and careless. If you don’t want someone getting that impression, make sure that elements are either left-aligned or right-aligned.

3. You Got No Style

Your website should tell a story, but it shouldn’t look like a novel with large blocks of uninterrupted text. With today’s short attention spans, you have to have eye-catching section headings, with images and lots of white space (aka negative space).

Use font size, distance, colors and alignment to show how different elements are related and to keep everything from running together in a big field of gray. This can best be achieved by using cascading style sheets (CSS). This helps to create a consistent look across multiple pages.

4. Doesn’t Play Well With Others

These days, web surfers have a wide choice of browsers including Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera and (cough) Internet Explorer. They also have a wide range of operating systems including various versions of Windows, MacOS, iOS, palmOS, Android, etc. And then of course, there are screen sizes and devices to consider. How well does your website look on all of these? If your website uses HTML5/CSS3, what happens when people view it on older versions of IE?

Note: IE version 9 is fairly compatible with HTML5 elements, but requires users to have Windows 7. This means that people with Windows XP may be looking at your site with IE8 or older.

5. You’re A Whore

I know you’re not. But maybe your marketing plan is. What I mean is that if you don’t have a defined niche, you trying to appeal to too many people. It means you are competing against a lot more competitors, as well.

If someone asks you who your target market is, and you say “Everyone”, you’re a market whore! I promise not to tell your heart-attack-prone mother, but you really need to do something about it if you plan to stay in business.

It’s much easier (and cheaper) if you focus in on a narrow (and ideally under-served) segment of the marketplace. If you sell shoes, target a specific market like basketball players or seniors who like to walk or artsy fashion trendsetters. Otherwise, no one will notice you.

6. You’re Taste In Music Sucks

I’m sure you have wonderful taste in music. But if your music starts playing the second your home page loads, you may be sending people away to other sites. Maybe they’re at work and don’t want their coworkers knowing that they’re surfing. Or maybe they really do think your taste in music sucks.

The same goes with videos that play instantly. No body likes to be surprised with sound coming from their computer unexpectedly. If you really must have a video or audio on your page, give visitors the option to play it when they’re ready.

The one exception to this is businesses in the music industry. But again, your visitors will appreciate it more if they decide when and if to listen.

7. You’re A Bit Slow

Remember me talking about short attention spans? If your website takes more than a couple of seconds to load completely, people are going to say “Forget this bitch” and move on to your competition’s site.

What slows down a website? Dirty code like what you sometimes get with sites designed by Dreamweaver, MS Word, or some other WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) program. Lots of large graphics also puts the brakes on load times.

8. Can’t Find Sh!t

Have you ever been to a website looking for something specific, but the navigation menu makes no sense? How long before you went to another site? Not long, I’ll bet.

I’ve seen websites with multiple, unrelated navigation bars that only served to confuse visitors. Do click on this button up here or that link down there? Do I need to do a search for a keyword?

Make sure the navigation on your website is logical and easy to follow. Otherwise, visitors will get confused or frustrated and go visit your competition.

9. You’re English Are Terrible

We all make typos. My big downfall is mixing up homonyms, words that sound alike, but have different meanings, like your and you’re. And spellcheck doesn’t help in those instances, because both are legit words.

But if you want people to hire you or buy your product, you don’t want your site reading like a Chinese tech manufacturer website. Learn to speak proper English and have a trusted friend proofread your work. Otherwise, you end up looking like an idiot. And who wants to hire an idiot?

In the late 1990s, just having a website at all meant you were cutting edge and someone to take seriously. But websites have evolved along with the technology on which they are viewed. If you want to have an online presence that generates money for your business, your website needs to look professional, be easy to navigate, not piss off or confuse visitors and provide the information that your target market is looking for.

Say no to drugs, but yes to the marketing secrets that drive their demand.

First, let me say that I’ve never smoked crack, weed or used any other illegal substance (unless you count that Estradiol I may or may not have bought down in Mexico). And I don’t advocate you do either. Of course, that’s between you and parole officer.

But I think there are some lessons we could all learn about marketing from those nasty purveyors of personal doom.

You Don’t See Ads For Crack

First, an observation. You don’t see crack advertised on TV or on billboards or in Google Ads. With few exceptions, it is portrayed in the media in a justifiably harsh light. In movies and shows, junkies usually end up dead or in jail.

And yet, despite the lack of advertisement and all of the negative publicity (not to mention the fact that it’s illegal), there’s a lot of money moving around in the drug industry. So what do crack dealers know about marketing that most of us don’t?

Well, you’d have to be high not to get it. The key is having a product that makes people happy and which is highly addictive. Why else would people risk their freedom and lives and pay good money for a product?

Obviously, you don’t want to sell a product or service that destroys lives the way crack does. But taking the time to craft a product or service that induces a certain amount of craving and has customers lining up for more no matter the cost is something worth pursuing. In fact, as an entrepreneur, it’s the only thing worth pursuing.

Google+ is the New Crack

Consider social media. How addictive are Twitter and Facebook? For a lot of people, they’re pretty darn addictive. And now there’s Google+ and everyone’s all abuzz about whether or not they’ve received an invite. Which brings me to another lesson we can learn from crack dealers: scarcity.

You can’t buy crack at the local CVS or Walgreen’s. At least not over-the-counter. To buy crack, you have to know the right people.

Similarly, you can’t just go to the Google+ website and sign up for the new social media service. You have to know someone who has an in or at least an invite. Google intentionally made this a scarce commodity. And since people often want what they don’t have (and Google has a reputation of creating kickass stuff), people are begging their friends for an invite.

Granted, Google+ is free. But even if it were a paid service, I’d bet they’d still have people jonesing on Facebook for a Google+ invite.

How many of you have an iPad? Quite a few I bet. Why? Probably because you saw the promos or saw your bestie with one and found yourself addicted to how cool and innovative it was.

It’s Time You Got Your Clients Hooked

If you’re still in the early stages of starting your business, devote 90% of your time to creating a product that makes people feel good and which is somehow addictive. If you’re already in business with products and/or services already in place, spend at least a few hours each week (more if you can) on how you can improve your stuff until it’s like the next crack.

Brainstorm. Break out of the tried and true. Push the envelope. Innovate! And don’t listen to the naysayers. Ask your customers if cost was no limit, if the laws of physics were suspended, what would they like your product or service to do for them. What can you do that would drive your competition crazy and have them scrambling to keep up? Now do it!