What Does A Test Blog Look Like? Behind The Scenes.

I often sit down to test and discover some things I know nothing about.  I have some kind of an idea of what is happening and what needs to be happening in my mind.  But to truly know what works and what does not, is sometimes only a guess.  So as I prepare a blog for the next subject to post I sometimes experiment with the material and its layout.  I work on some areas to study by going online and visiting some of the top recognized blogs.  I look at their layouts, their conversation, the subject mater, and their payment process in how they display and attract particular advertising mechanisms.

I Had Better Luck As I Played With It More

This post you are reading right now is a quickly typed post that was one of those behind the scenes test blogs.  I typed it quickly for the single purpose of getting material printed in an array of paragraph arrangements.  Of course, it has been edited for spelling and word placement.  When I type too fast I have a bundle of mess-ups on the page.  It looks a lot like first grade English.  That should be no shock to those of you gifted with incredible skills in the area where grammatical poise shines.  My script is usually butchered quite heavily.    

Test this page by working with Amazon Dot Com and finding a pattern of script and advertising blends that will appear better on the blog better than what I have been seeing.  This way I can use the power of Amazon's readership to its maximum potential on the blog.  At present, the inserted advertisements are, at times, disruptive to the original layout of the post and do not seem as though they can be edited very well.  This has presented a challenge in layout, increased the time it takes to prepare a post and caused the post to become confusing as each edit is performed.

Infiltrate, Extricate, Imaginate!

Is 'Imaginate' a word?  According to spell check, no.

However, in the world of advertising we can make it a legitimate word.  We can introduce a new word that helps us get a picture into the mind of our viewers.  Look at some of the examples we can use...

Is My Business Boring?

Does Your Business Look Something Like This?

When was the last time you walked about your business to take a scrutinizing look around?  What did you see?  Did you see tired employees?  Did you see worn out carpeting?  Did you see badly stained walls?  Did you see terrible restroom facilities?  Did you see a boring set of website photos?  Did you see unexciting word sets in your descriptions online?  What did you see?

Were your retail isles well defined?  Is your store front inviting?  Were your signs and price labels current, fresh and professional?  Was your display material on the web balanced, coordinated and does it deliver the necessary sets of continuity for your business?  Take a good look around.  Make a serious effort to find the tired portions of your business efforts.  Be critical of what you see.  Be critical of how you witness what you look like.

Add Exciting Photos To Your Site

Do you need new material on your web page?  Do you need new subject matters that your website delivers?  Do you need guest appearances on your website?  Do you need a new product line in your store?  Do you need to introduce a new service your business supplies?  Take a fresh look at what you might be able to do to add new interest to what you are already doing.

Attack the corners of boredom your business has come to accept.  Give your staff and personnel something they can get excited about.  More importantly, give your customers something they can get excited about.

Why Is It So Hard To Play Fair?

NFL Coaches Use Programs To Shield Their Lip Movements

Professional football teams hire lip readers to see what the other coach is saying when he calls his next play.  That is why they hold their play lists over their mouths when they call the next play.  To the 'broken eye' of view, some would consider this move a 'clever' idea.  It only ensures failure.  Unfortunately, failure is not immediate...only certain.  When you work to gain advantage by some 'clever' move that does not involve the art of playing of the game, you enter the gray area of cheating to win.  When you cheat...you lose.  Oh you might not immediately notice it, but your business will eventually suffer more than you care to manage.  And you will manage the results of your cheating without recognizing the root of your challenges.  Your business challenges will not be fair enough to you to point directly back to the areas of cheating you have considered 'clever.'  It is a very unfair process.

Many Suffer At The Hands Of Cheaters!

Rubbing up against the laws of compensation by cheating to win will only guarantee some losses to occur that will interrupt your long term efforts to succeed.  You are no longer competing with the art of football when you hire a professional to read the opposing coaches lips as he calls his next play.  You are cheating.  Period.  You may win some games because you know what to do before it needs to be done.  But you are violating the laws of compensation and they will turn heavily away from your efforts.  You will eventually fail.  The laws of compensation are real.  Just because they are invisible does not mean they do not exist.  Trust me, they are there and working their magic just fine.  They do not need the cheaters approval to do their magic.  You may call this kind of cheating 'clever' marketing or 'clever' strategy but it still remains a form of cheating.  You are cheating.  Stop it.  You are also killing your business success when you cheat.

Why is it so hard to play fair?  Because your competition is cheating and you know it.  You also believe they are winning due to their cheating.  Your competitions 'clever' ways are gaining your attention and you begin to believe they are gaining an advantage over you for it.  That perspective makes it very hard to play fair.   

This kind of 'clever' thinking has become so normal in the world of marketing that most business owners believe they need to participate in order to compete and win.  Not true, but it is very hard to tell how 'clever' policies eventually cause some serious losing strings of results.  The cause and effect relationship between winning and losing is very gray.  As a result, much of the time we cannot tell what helps us win and what helps us to lose.  Let's list some examples of how we all cheat and consider it 'clever.'

Part 2, Three Best Ways To Spoil Your Customers

So how did some of you leaders do after reading the last post?  Did you get started?  Did you set out to cruise the initiative sunrise all by yourselves?  Good deal, if you did.



Let's Improve Water Use With Less Money!

The first step of this process is to get your focus in line with what you plan to do.  The focus is to develop a laundry list of "spoiling tools" you can initiate into your customer relations efforts that will help those customers develop a feeling that they need to return to get their "spoiling" fix.  If you are an irrigation company that has new technologies to provide more efficient water use, and lower 'power-to-the-pump' costs as a result of using this new technology...how do you plan on "spoiling" your customer?

Part 1, Three Best Ways To Spoil Your Customers.

Each Owner Has Their Own Set Of Trimming Knives

When your customers become spoiled with how well you treat them, they become addicted to using who you are.  It is a good thing to have your customers wanting to come back again.

One thing is for sure, you will not have a lot of competition who will be trying to spoil your customers with improved customer service.  Too many businesses have trimmed away the needed personnel required to increase the time demands they need to devote to increased customer services.  Likely, though, you are faced with the same challenge.  If your budgets are like mine, they are constantly under the trimming knife.



As Good As They Are, Your Employees Have Extra Time Chips To Use

As a result, you will need to move your customer service improvements in areas that do not require large chunks of employee time.  This suggests that whatever you discover to do with your employees to begin spoiling your customers is going to cause a shift in habit patterns each employee brings to work.  Trust me, every one of your employees have habit patterns they perform at work.  In those patterns are hidden jewels of valuable time.  Your trick is to continue to respect the value your employees bring to work but to help them create consistent opportunities for "spoiling" customers with some of those hidden time slots they quietly permit to flow by.  You are now entering to perform one of the great arts to business ownership.  You begin the daunting task of modifying and improving the performance of your staff.  Don't be chicken, here we go.