Feature – Page 3

Getting to Know You…

Are you singing the song from “The King and I” after reading the title of this blog?

We are too!

But we really want to talk about one of the best parts of our business, when we take on a new client and are in the “getting to know you” phase. This time is like that monogamous dating after the blind date or set-up. Now we know we are going to have a business relationship and we are on our best behavior, while getting to really understand what drives each of us.

Perhaps because we really are people persons (or is it people people?), this phase is fascinating, stimulating and brings out our creativity.

Why we like it:

We learn about you and your business or practice.
We learn about your dreams and aspirations, how you hope to grow.
We learn about your challenges, what the obstacles to growth are, who your perceived competition is.
We meet all of the members of your team and figure out how the pieces of the puzzle fit together (and sometimes where the “misfits” are).
We develop a cohesive, coherent marketing plan with you in mind.

Why our clients like this phase:

They have already committed to doing SOMETHING about marketing and just making that decision takes a load off their mind.
Our clients like telling us their story and taking time to reflect on success and challenges, as well as setting goals.
This process often brings renewed energy to a business or practice.
Our clients enjoy helping to craft a plan, after feeling like marketing wasn’t being attended to, or was being attended to inadequately in the past.

Getting to know you, getting to know all about you: it’s a great element of taking on new clients.

Thanksgiving Traditions that Need No Marketing

We’re getting nostalgic as Thanksgiving day approaches. We can’t wait for the following:

Making ourselves crazy over the cooking of the turkeys, even if we admit that we don’t even care that much about the turkey. In fact, it’s all about the stuffing.
Watching the Detroit Lions, even if they lose…again.
All of those casseroles: broccoli-cheeze whiz, green beans and Durkee onions, the artichoke dip, the sweet potatoes and marshmallows, even the jello molds that show our age.
More desserts than we can possibly eat, but we will try.
The trytophan coma that comes over us after the complete pig we make of ourselves when we can barely keep our eyes open 30 minutes past dinner.
The alcohol that comes out after the kids go somewhere else, anywhere else, we can’t believe there’s no school on Friday….
The annoying relative. We can’t believe she is in our family, but we would have no stories if she wasn’t at the table.
The kids’ misspelled place cards and turkey decorations. Can there really be too many turkey hands?
The parades on TV or in person. We still have a picture in our phone of the Spiderman balloon getting stuck on a building at the Macy’s parade.
Making a plan to either hit the mall or avoid the mall on Black Friday. Please don’t steal our idea of pedicures that day instead. Shhhh!
Turkey leftovers: turkey hash, turkey soup, turkey chili, turkey tetrazini, turkey salad…
Having to make a second broccoli casserole because Aunt Marge made it this year and took the leftovers home and everyone was outraged at your house.

Happy Thanksgiving. May the traditions in your home bring you joy or fodder for survival stories afterwards!

Am I Allowed to Use That Photo?

It’s a great question and sometimes you will get conflicting answers.

If you are looking for an image to add to your blog or website, you have two major things to determine:

Is the image appropriate?
Are you allowed to use the image legally?

The answer to both questions is of equal importance, because if you use an image without permission, you, as the owner of your site, are liable for copyright infringement. And don’t think you won’t be discovered. Big image providers use sophisticated search engines to regularly look for their images, and their equally sophisticated legal department will send you a cease and desist order and a hefty bill (think $1,000 for one image!)

It used to be easy to find free to use images. Microsoft Word was a terrific partner in this process. One need only insert a picture in a document and MS Word would offer all sorts of images: icons, photos and even videos. These images were free to use in any form. But Microsoft Word abandoned their clip art library in December 2014, as it had grown unwieldy and expensive. The original MS Word had 6 clip art pieces but by 2014, there were 100,000.

So now what?

Now you are relegated to searching for and ascertaining the legality of images yourself. There are a few free image sources out there. Some are clunkier than others. Popular ones include Wikimedia Commons, flickr, Pixabay and openclipart. Each of these sites allows you to download images for commercial use. You have to read the fine print. Not every image is “in the public domain”. Some require attribution. Others cannot be modified in any way (like cropped, shrunk or enlarged).

Another source for images is the ubiquitous Google images. You can sort images (in the search button on the right) by usage rights and further by “free for reuse”. But just because Google images “says” an image is indeed free for public use, you still have to do your due diligence. We suggest you click on the image and find its source.

Major caveat: If Google has offered an image as free, and you use it incorrectly, Google will not be sued; you will.

You can also purchase images from a variety of stock image purveyors. We find a lot of very good stuff. You do have to sift through some weird stuff, too. We love the sites that have collected the most outlandish stock photos everywhere. Check out these weird stock photos!

Of course, sometimes we can’t find exactly what we need. Then we have to turn to our cadre of skilled graphic designers and photographers to create the perfect image. This is a more expensive option, but for big things (logos, website headers, press releases, brochures), it makes financial sense.

Searching for and finding the perfect image is work, but well worth it when your copy is paired with an evocative, attractive image that enhances your brand.

The Buzzfeed Phenomenon

What’s that buzzing you hear?

It’s the news site, Buzzfeed.

It’s a strange world, this news business. Less than 70 years ago, newspapers provided the bulk of local, national and international news with TV and radio emerging into the marketplace.

By the time of JFK’s assassination in 1963, the world heard the news from Walter Cronkite’s lips as the CBS newsman informed the world of the tragedy. The 6:00 and 11:00 news (5:00 and 10:00 in the Central time division) were standards of watching in many households, when 4 TV channels were the norm.

As cable channels came into the mix, the idea of “a source” for news faded. People flocked to their favorite channels and the timeline of news changed to all day with CNN and CSPAN leading the pack.

In the past 15 years, we have seen the rise of all sorts of alternative news sources. Many people will openly tell you that their regular source of news for years was Jon Stewart on Comedy Central’s Daily Show, a fact that often made Stewart himself squirm. He clearly wanted to entertain and educate but didn’t always appear to be comfortable being a regular source of news. Yet by the time Stewart retired, fully 12% of adults online cited The Daily Show as their first news source, their go-to, as it were.

Tying The Daily Show in terms of readership has been The Huffington Post, and the latest upstart is Buzzfeed.

Buzzfeed is now in the business of writing a great deal of content which ranges from serious exposes of American prison sentencing, the Syrian refugee crisis, and quizzes like which house of Hogwarts do you belong to. Buzzfeed has created a melange of content, sometimes needing the benefit of better editing, but placed on phones worldwide in the most user-friendly of mobile website imagined.

Discuss a news item with a teen or a millennial and you’ll discover that if they have knowledge of that news, they’re not watching Jon Stewart nor reading Huffington Post. They heard about it on Buzzfeed. While other news websites have embedded videos which clog up phone usage or have great websites which translate poorly on a mobile platform to clunky less than interactive websites, Buzzfeed retains a clean columned list of all sorts of topics, including pop culture (weighing heavily on British and Australian icons), world events, the wacky in the news, feel good articles, lots of cats, recipes and the fun interactive quizzes.

Today’s topics vary from a discussion of Houston’s rejection of an anti-discrimination bill against LGBT, an article on the Chipotle crisis, confessions of teen mothers, recipes for weekday cooking, and a discussion of Crohn’s Disease.

The takeaway:

People still want the news and are willing to read a long story, even on their phone.
An easy to use website/app is a great entree.
Cats still sell.

Trick or Treat AKA Triumphs and Tribulations

We have been rolling through Halloween-themed aisles for what seems like months now. Were they there concurrently with back to school shopping?

Now, we are actually approaching H-Day. So it’s time to roll out our reviews of the best and worst components of Halloween:

Treats (We love these!)

Snack size candy. Who doesn’t love these? And how many snack size Kit-Kats can you eat without counting them in your caloric intake? And Hershey’s Kisses? Forget about it! How about Butterfingers? Heaven!
Anything Minion. We are obsessed with Minions. Anything Minion is funny, whether it’s minion heads, minion shorts or the entire minion ensemble.
Halloween flashlights: most Halloween accessories are kind of useless, but the combination Halloween cool looking whatever (saber, sword, jack-o-lantern) and a flashlight makes our kids wants to use them, and they are cheap enough that we don’t get too upset if they only work for one night.
Soft-side treat bags. Totes are totally awesome. We’re done with plastic treat containers with uncomfortable handles.
Block parties. We like these, even if they are a tad elitist. We saw a nice example of a block party this past Saturday, where the families chipped in for an inflatable, the police cordoned off the area to prevent through traffic and the kids were out during the day, carousing wholesomely with their neighbors.
Adult treats. We have discovered a few streets where there is a tradition of adult treats. If you bring your own coffee cup or martini glass, several neighbors will give you a shot or a mini espresso. Some even have adult treats on trays like a sushi roll. Fun!
Teal pumpkins: these symbols indicate that the household is distributing non-food items like stickers and glow sticks in order to include everybody, even those with food allergies. Very inclusive, not preachy and the parents who put out their teal pumpkins early are advertising to those with food allergies that this is a “safe stop”.
DIY Haunted houses: We love when a family goes all out and turns their garage or backyard into a Haunted House. And the cheesier and kitschier, the better (especially if it takes the edge off the scary quotient). Especially when there are no chain saws involved.

Tricks (We are trying to avoid these…)

Pixie Stix! We see no active marketing for these abominable snacks, and yet somebody is producing them and others are purchasing them and distributing them to poor unsuspecting children. Just to tell you how we feel about them: when we were kids, the equation for trading was 5 Pixie Stix = 1 Butterfinger.
Teen/Tween girl costumes. Confession time: Several years ago one of us bought a Dorothy costume in the appropriate size for our daughter. We even bought Toto in a basket and ruby covers for her shoes. On Halloween, said daughter tried on the costume, which did fit, but…somewhere between the child sizes and her size, cute girl Dorothy morphed into sexy Dorothy. We were not in Kansas anymore. We made her wear leggings and apologized in advance to the other parents.
Costumes at work…we think we’re over this, but maybe age is a factor. We know we don’t want our professional service providers to be dressed as vampires and we have mixed feelings about others.
Political costumes. You might think that Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton are fun costumes, but you better make sure you know your audience. Politics is generally a sticky subject at work, and these should be avoided.

We hope your Halloween is fun, not too scary and filled with far more treats than tricks, and of course, minimal Pixie Stix.

AB Testing: Making Better Decisions

Remember that old blood test to determine if your blood type was A, B or O?

That’s not what we’re talking about!

AB testing is a very simple model to determine what works best in communicating with your clients, customers and patients and with some basic marketing tasks.

Here’s an example of how AB testing works:

Let’s say you own a smoothie bar. You want to bring in some new customers and you know that sometimes coupons work to bring in new customers. If you can just get them into the door, they’ll be your customers, because of your delicious product, which is competitively priced, and of course your enticing personality.

But what kind of coupon should you send out electronically, a BOGO (Buy One, Get One Free) or a 50% off coupon?

Either option costs you the same: 50% of your income on the item. And each costs the same to send out electronically. So, how do you figure out which brings in more customers?

AB Testing!

Pick two different time periods to run your testing, periods A and B. The two different time periods (weeks or months) need to be as similar as possible (the same season, not during a holiday, the same length of time, with the same store or office hours)

In the first experimental time frame (A), email or distribute the BOGO coupon. Keep track of how many are used.

During the second experimental time frame (B), run the trial the exact same way. Conduct the distribution procedure, but this time distribute the 50% off coupon. Send it to the same exact mailing group that you did before and again keep track of how many coupons come into your store.

Compare the results of Experiment A versus Experiment B. What did you learn? Did one work better than the other? Or was there no difference?

This is AB marketing. The costs remain the same, it is truly just how people respond to the variation in the marketing that differs.

Other ways to conduct AB Marketing:

Play with the placement of contact buttons on your website.
Experiment with wording on upcoming letters to clients and patients (particularly in emails.which cost very little or nothing at all).
Timing of Facebook posts Do your clients seem to view or respond to your posts more in the mornings, lunchtime or the evenings? What about weekends?
Make subtle or significant changes to the colors or graphics in communication, including outgoing messages, the layout of the website and signage in the store or office.
You can utilize Google analytics to track exactly how people meander through your website after making an A version and a B version. You can even play with the order of menus and pages on your website to see if that affects how long people stay on your site and/or which pages they visit.

Sometimes you can get paralyzed with decision making. Instead, turn your decisions into experiments. This allows you time to research how your clients or potential clients respond before making further changes or taking on new marketing initiatives. AB testing allows you to accumulate data and make future decisions based on that data.

Blogging for Dummies

You have a working website. Maybe it needs a little updating.
You have something to say about your business.

If either #1 or #2 are correct, or both are, you are ripe for blogging.Fresh blog materials are a sure way to brighten up your website, to make it more attractive and to provide fodder for visiting your site through you other social media channels.

Blogging is just a fancy contraction for web logging and it means posting your thoughts into an area of your website that is set aside for such posts.

What if my website doesn’t have a blog section? Add that section to your website or have your marketing professional take care of that for you. It’s typically not that difficult to make it happen..

How do I write a blog?

Decide how often you want to post. Some businesses post monthly, others twice a month, still others weekly. Some businesses post daily smaller blogs and occasional longer entries. You want to time your posts so that you bring traffic to your website without bombarding your clients and potential customers with too many notifications.
Determine who is going to write your blogs. We have a variety of arrangements with our clients. Most often, we write blogs and post them for our clients. But we also edit blogs written by others (particularly attorneys discussing more complex legal issues better suited to their own writing) and sometimes post curated content too with limited commentary and links to related trusted websites. If you start blogging, you want to stay with it. So don’t begin the process only to decide it no longer interests you or you can ‘t spare the time. It’s better to pay for others to write for you to keep the blogging up to date. Nothing looks worse than a blog area of the website with minimal, old posts.
Create a list of topics to blog about. For our clients, we keep an index of topics that match their professional offerings after getting to know our clients and what they want to emphasize on their website. keeping this list of topics fresh requires research and communication. We research changes in their business (new dental tools, changes in the law, Federal interest rates for our realty clients, auto safety recalls, etc.).
Consider the calendar. If you know that Veterans’ Day is coming up, then create a post that recognizes veterans as part of your blogging. For our work with a pain management practice, we blogged about Pain Awareness Month in one of our September entries. Talk about tax related issues prior to April 15th. You get the picture.
Shut up and write. Now it’s time to write. Don’t make yourself crazy. Write a few good paragraphs on a topic that interests you. Be concise and inviting in your language. Read it aloud to spot any obvious grammar issues. Run it by a member of your staff or better yet, your marketing professional, for some good solid editing.
Find an image to insert into your blog post. We spend a lot of time going through our image collections, and you may need help with this until you learn to find appropriate graphics that are legal for reuse.
Post your blog. Make it live by publishing it.
Let others know of your accomplishment by attaching a link to your blog on your social media channels. Usually when you copy and paste the link to your blog, the image you have embedded in your blog will also appear. Write a little teaser in the social media link, like “Here’s what I have to say about the latest new trends in window treatments” and post it.
Evaluate the response. Keep track using your social media statistics as to which topics seem to interest your followers the most and the least. Consider future topics using this data.

It’s pretty easy to be a blogger. It’s a little trickier to be a good, regular blogger. The goal of blogging should be keeping your website fresh and making it a free resource for your clients so that you not only provide a service but you are perceived as a voice of experience and knowledge.

We are happy to help you get started on your blogging adventures.

Campus Consuming: Lessons from Parents’ Weekend

Parents’ Weekend at a child’s university offers an opportunity not only to spend time with your child, but also to observe their purchasing and lifestyle decisions, typically made without the watchful eyes of parents.

Some takeaway about the spending of this generation that is on the cusp of being a Millennial and being part of Generation Z:

Chipotle rules! It’s true. Although the true fast food junkies (particularly the male variety) may still be frequenting more burger joints and inhaling McNuggets and fries, Chipotle has the the air of being healthy (how healthy is debatable; certainly the calorie count on some of their burritos are in the stratosphere). The ability to customize the meal and maximize fullness in a relatively quick experience (and with visibly fresh ingredients) seems to be a driving force among the quad crowd.
The campus book store is for parents buying tchotchkes. The students have long ago ordered all of their books on Amazon prime or are sharing texts or text codes for electronic books. They go into the book store to buy a t-shirt for their infant niece or nephew.
The personal touch isn’t cheesy. The owner of the Indian food truck who remembers you is a draw, even if it’s a few blocks away from other food options. The barista at the coffee shop who makes your skinny latte just right and spells your name correctly is the best brand marketing. When they’re away from home, college students want to feel a little special, they want a place “where everybody knows their name”. These small business owners (and large business workers) fill that void in sort of a sweet way, even asking to meet the parents when they come into town.
Cooking is still old school. For the older students with kitchens or kitchenettes, this is a new fun development. They enjoyed buying kitchen gadgets (we’re ignoring how many blenders are in the dormitories…). And even though they can find endless recipes on the internet, they still call home to get their favorite recipe.
You can never be too niche. The market is so varied for lots of things, particularly clothing options and viewing options. It’s all over the map. One cannot say that a certain store apparel is “hot”, because the community has so many sectors (what one group likes another rejects as being too conformist). Online buying even for clothing is pretty big with this crowd. Labels seem less ubiquitous than in the past for clothing, but for viewing and texting, Iphones (not androids) and Hulu (not Netflix) are preeminent.

These mini adults spend a fair amount of money (even if they haven’t earned it) through their campus food plans, which are often glorified debit cards as well as their other disposable income. Creating customer loyalty among this generation can reap rewards for the four years they are a part of the community and possibly longer.

Old School Scrapbooking

I still scrapbook.

Not that Martha Stewart-y, Creative Memories, high-priced, super fancy way.

I don’t buy acid-free paper and attach every picture and memento on a designer piece of paper and place them inside sleeves with beautiful decorations, stickers and cutouts.

But I do save pictures, show tickets, school photos (including sports teams!), report cards, birthday and anniversary cards, letters back and forth from camp, and even the enclosures of flowers from my husband (because they are a rare sighting).

And 1-2 times a year, I dump the top drawer of my dresser where these things accumulate and do the following:

Use a 3 ring binder with old fashioned (non-archival rating) sticky sheets.
Put all the stuff in chronological order.
Either place them on a self-sticking sheet or three hole punch the item in order to place them in the binder.
Caption if necessary.
Decorate if I feel like it (not very often).

This past weekend, I scrapbooked 2014-2015. And I was happy. But, I noticed that my ratio of pictures to ephemera is shifting radically over the years. The number of pictures is pretty small; it consists of official graduation pictures, team photos, school photos and a roll of old fashioned film that I sent on a disposable camera with my daughter to camp.

So, now this week, I’m going to have to do some reconnaissance work. I’m going to have to move photos from my phone and from my email and from attached images in text messages to my home computer and on to my printer. I’m going to have to ask my daughter to find pictures of her trip with her grandparents and create a document with pictures (and even captions) to accompany all of the stuff she dutifully gave me that is already scrapbooked (museum tickets, restaurant stubs, airplane ticket).

What’s it all for?

Sometimes I ask myself, “Who cares about these scrapbooks?” I guess, ultimately, I do. I also know that my mom never scrapbooked. Her “stuff” is in shoeboxes, unsorted, unlabeled. In the, I hope far distant future, when she isn’t around, will I even know what’s what?

But then an event galvanizes my resolve. Last year, my daughter’s friends were over for her birthday and somebody mentioned a middle school basketball team picture, and I, of course, found it right away, in the scrapbook. This led to a call from her friends for the other scrapbooks, which I dutifully brought out. I cannot tell you the hours of entertainment and reminiscing that the scrapbooks provided, in a way that scrolling through photos on a phone or even on a jump drive just can’t do.

So maybe I scrapbook for me, for my mom, for my kids.

It’s my way of facilitating memories.

How My Smart Phone is Improving My Travel Experience

It was just a few days in New York. I had a free place to stay (thanks, wonderful brother).

And I had a true purpose: to pick up my college-aid kid whose nannying gig was ending.

And most of my time was already scheduled: a Broadway show that my brother wanted to see, a jazz performance that my brother-in-law wanted to see and brunch with aunts and uncles.

But, all was not planned. I had a few hours that were unaccounted for. What should I do?

It turns out that my phone was my best companion as I decided on my plan, which needed to include: good walks, a little art, not getting lost.

I had just seen the movie “Woman in Gold” and I decided I wanted to see the title painting, the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. Where was it? My smart phone told me it was at the Neue Galerie. Five miles away. Perfect. I’ll walk there.

I checked out the Neue Galerie’s website regarding their collection, the admission price and their hours, along with the address. I already decided I would walk up Fifth Avenue as Central Park would be on my left, along with some pretty fancy addresses on my right.

It was a great walk, but I didn’t want to double it, and wanted to ride back to the apartment, arriving when everybody else was waking up. I had checked out the city’s transit system to figure out which train to take, where the closest stations were to start and where to disembark. And I also learned that I could buy a Metro pass, but there was a $1 surcharge. If I just bought a one ride pass, I could save a buck, literally. Sold. I entered the train as it continued to fill, and fill and fill.

Two days later, I was home alone while everybody was working. After getting some of my own work done, I made a decision to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. After extensive play on my phone, I found the critical advice: to take the subway to Brooklyn and walk from there to Manhattan (the views are better) with information on the closest subway lines to the beginning and end and the best places to eat in DUMBO (in Brooklyn) and architectural reviews of surrounding buildings.

Later that day, I had to walk from coffee with a friend to pick up my daughter. The most direct path was right across Central Park. Awesome detailed maps of Central Park showed the exact path.

I also used my Map my Walk app throughout all of my perambulations so I could keep track of my miles walked and calories burned, a bonus!

The only thing that became evident is that I need to get an external battery charger, because any of these apps that utilize GPS just drain the battery in a huge way!