Archive for December 2007

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And Now Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

Do you remember that friend you had in college? The one whose birthday was right around exams? And everybody really wanted to celebrate his birthday but was just too slammed to do it right, and you guys did something a few weeks later, when things had calmed down a bit? Wasn’t that nice?

Do you think we can do that with Jesus?

I mean, I want to celebrate The Birth Of Our Lord and all, but I’ll tell ya, it’s pretty inconvenient timing if you ask me. I mean, my mother-in-law’s birthday is the 19th, my brother is the 21st, my brother-in-law is the 26th, not to mention before-Christmas shopping, after-Christmas shopping, Santa visits, and passing Michael around from relative to relative like a tray of cakes. There’s just no time!

Anyway, it’s over now. Half the world has already celebrated the coming of the new year. I don’t have to wrap anything until at least May. (Sorry, Jen. I know your birthday’s next month. You’re getting a gift certificate. Tough shit. No wrapping for you.)

The Zack debacle seems to have sorted itself out, at least in the short term. He was back home in time for Christmas. There are no words to describe my appreciation for everyone’s show of support. I was overwhelmed and speechless. Stop laughing, I was seriously speechless. Thank you for your emails, your comments, your phone calls. I spent the better part of a week crying my eyes out, but don’t worry. I’m back to snarkiness. The home business world is as it should be.

Michael got his first grown-up guitar and was so disbelieving that he actually accused us of taking down Jamie’s old guitar, putting it in a different case, and passing it off as new. Obviously we give pretty lame gifts in our house if a new guitar gets that kind of incredulity. Jack figured out that something cool was under the shiny stuff and, following the footsteps of every one-year-old in Christendom, promptly played with all the boxes, making sure to throw the contents at his brother.

So. Happy New Year. You get no Year In Review, or Best Of 2007, or IttyBiz Goals For 2008. You get a sigh of relief and a mad catch-up of Marketing School posts. That’s it.

Speaking of Marketing School, I’m completely sick of being informative and want to go back to bitching. Therefore, I’ll probably be slamming y’all with marketing school posts, sometimes several times a day, to get them done and caught up. This is not a sign of things to come, so don’t unsubscribe in a mad fit of reducing your RSS feeds to a manageable number.

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Overheard In Walmart

Mom, Dad, and son, approximately five years old, are having a cozy evening shopping in Walmart, four days before Christmas. Son is quiet, well-behaved, and co-operative.

Mom: Oh, honey, those are the ones on rollback!
Dad: [silence]
Mom: Ooh, come look.
Dad: [silence]
Mom: They’re on rollback, honey!
Dad: [silence]
Mom: Come on, let’s go look. I’ll be quick, I promise.
Dad: I’m not getting in that line to buy a fucking bath mat.
Son: Yeah, Mummy. He’s not getting in that line to buy a fucking bath mat.

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Moral Of The Story: Generally Ashamed Edition

One day, I will have my shit together. Today is not that day.

I got an email last night from a potential client. In their email, they asked for the phone number for my home business. It was 3 in the morning. I was in a bad mood. I also might have thought I was emailing someone I know far better than this lovely person who might have paid for my children’s orthodontia. My husband, say. My response?

“It’s on the website.”

That’s it. That’s what I said. That was the full body of my email.

Moral of the Story?

Never listen to anything I say ever again.

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Reason I Have a Home Business, No. 32

Please read this one, guys. It’s important.

It would appear that people think I’m funny. Well, strangers think I’m funny. My family thinks I’m a pain in the ass. Maybe it’s like that for Seinfeld, too. I like to think so.

Anyway, the last few days have been exciting ones in IttyVille. Nataly from Work It, Mom! did an interview with me, and subsequently posted about me, and a bunch of other amazing women entrepreneurs and bloggers, on her own blog and on Huffington Post. Lylah did a post about me on her blog, as did Deb, and people are nominating me for Funniest Blog in the Performancing blog awards. Traffic’s up a smidgen. (That’s sarcasm, by the way. Thank God I paid my hosting this month.)

This is exciting stuff, and the pressure to perform is intense. Is this what men feel like? If so, on behalf of womankind, I apologize.

Anyway, today I knew I really had to knock one out. I had to be so funny it hurt. I had to be relevant and inspiring and topical. I was scared shitless, but I figured I could at least pull off mediocre.

Then my little nephew, who’s not the healthiest in the first place, was rushed to the hospital, the details of which I won’t bore you with. It’s thrown everyone for a loop, and it’s the third Christmas in a row that this part of the family has had a medical drama. Zack’s six and he only weighs 37 pounds. There’s not much of him there to fight anything in the first place. He’s a trooper, but it’s not a fun way to spend Christmas.

I know there are greater dramas in the world. I know children are starving in Asia and I know there’s genocide in Rwanda and Darfur’s a total trainwreck. But this little guy’s not in a great place and he’s close to home and it’s really f*cking me up. Thank God I don’t have to get off my ass and put pantyhose on and pretend I give a shit about work right now.

So if you’re the type of person who prays, please do. If not, maybe just send nice thoughts. And if you feel like giving Zack a shout-out in the comments, I think he’d really like that.

I promise I’ll go back to being funny and bitchy and caustic soon. If you’re new and looking for funny, people seem to like the story of how I had to have my husband cut my hand out of a box of wine with a bread knife.

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Thanks For The Nominations!

The nice people over at Performancing have announced their call for nominations for the 2007 Blog Awards. Thank you to the ass-kicking people who have nominated IttyBiz so far. If you’d like to nominate - it doesn’t look like there’s voting, just nominating - click here to head on over and leave a comment. You have to log in to comment but if you’re into blogging, you should probably be a member there anyway.

Here are my nominations. There are 27 categories, but these are the only ones I feel I can speak with any level of intelligence on.

The Best Overall Blog - Zen Habits
The Most Influential Blogger - Seth’s Blog
The Best New Blog - IttyBiz
The Best Blog Community - Amalah
The Best Blogs You’ve Never Heard Of - Remarkable Communication and Shane And Peter
The Best Writing/Blogging Blog - Skelliewag
The Best Business/Money Blogs - The Simple Dollar
The Best Family and Parenting Blog - Amalah
The Funniest Blog - Dooce

Happy reading!

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Brand Vs. Image: What’s The Difference, Anyway?

Because you can read, you know what this post’s about. What you don’t know is that it’s a special post. This week, I’m going to do exactly what I’ve been doing every other week (read: snark and call it marketing advice) but we’re breaking it up because I’m crazy like that. All of my examples this week are going to feature Erin from Durtbagz. Why? Well, because she rocks. And I really wanted some of her bagz. So I bribed her. Or maybe she bribed me. Doesn’t matter. My point(s)? One, you’ll see some Erin for the next few days. Two, I accept bribes. Keep that in mind. Moving on.

The other day, we talked about branding. Some people left stuff in comments and other people emailed me to indicate that they didn’t understand the difference between branding and image. I could come up with my own topic or I could just give the people what they want. Therefore, I give you…

Brand Vs. Image

Let’s keep the cow analogy and repeat from the other day:

“Conventionally, brands were used to identify cattle. They did not say the cow was a good cow or a bad cow. They did not convey the temperament of the cow. They just identified the cow.”

I’m going to add something to what I drunkenly wrote the other day. Brands are permanent. When a cow has “Joe The Tree-Hugging Vegan Farmer” on her ass, it’s there forever.

Therefore, your home business brand (whether it’s the flesh-searing kind or the mind-searing kind) can really be anything. It honestly doesn’t matter that much. You want to take the lower-case letter “Z”, put it in 72-point type, and plaster it from here to lunch, fine. Just make sure that everyone in your market sees that Z and thinks of you. Forever.

A brand represents your existence, but does not represent your qualities.

Image, however, has the added bonus responsibility of connoting something. It can represent you, but that’s not its primary role. Image says something about who you are, what you do, and how you do it.

Image can say you’re cool. Image can say you’re fast. Image can say you’re reliable.

Some real-life things you can actually apply

1. Brand is exclusive. Image is not.

Erin sells bags. But she doesn’t call them bags. She calls them bagz. Why? Because that’s her brand. Even in casual emails, she refers to them exclusively as bagz. She also spells “dirt” with a “u”, making it “durt.” Durt + bagz = Durtbagz and my little red squiggly spell check lines go crazy. Also, her bags have made-up street signs on them. Nobody else in the bag industry is doing this. It is her brand.

Her image, however, is cool. Her image is functional but still wearable by people under 50. Her image is low-maintenance and down-to-earth. Her image is “we understand what college kids want.”

Durtbagz with the Z and the U and the street signs is a brand. Cool, functional, low-maintenance and down-to-earth is her image. Nobody else can take her brand. Lots of people can take her image. This is why you need to have both.

2.) The line between brand and image is often very, very fuzzy.

Your brand can contribute to your image and your image can shape your brand. It’s kind of cool if they can intersect, but it’s not necessary. They probably shouldn’t actively conflict but you shouldn’t worry too much about it beyond that. You’ll want to take typeface, illustrations, and color schemes into consideration when building both your brand and your image, but we’ll talk about those later in the week.

3.) The most important thing to remember about both branding and image is consistency.

With a few exceptions, it doesn’t really matter what you present, as long as you continue to present it. If Erin all of a sudden decided to start selling upscale laptop cases, people would wonder what the hell was going on. If you went to her site and saw the blog section called “Dirty Laundry” instead of “Durty Laundry”, you would be confused. Does it really matter that she chose a “U” instead of an “I” when creating her brand? Does anybody really care? No, but it’s her brand now and it works. She didn’t need to hire a marketing company to do a research survey to discover that 78% of college students preferred “durt” to “dirt”. She just made a call and stuck with it.

As the week goes on we’ll talk more about what makes up a brand and image and how to keep your consistency. Fire questions in the comments if you’ve got ‘em. In the meantime, I leave you with…

Spam of the Day

“Feeling like your dick is working like a broken vending machine?”

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How To Personally Chauffer Your Clients Out The Door

Let’s play pretend.

Let’s pretend that you are taking me out on a date. (For my lovely female readers, this can be a “friend” date or you can pretend we’re lesbians. Doesn’t affect the story at all.) Because you’re a cheap bastard, you’re taking me to McDonald’s.

We get to the counter and I’m trying to decide between the Quarter Pounder with Cheese and the Big Mac. They both look pretty good, but it’s taking me a while to decide. I step out of the line because I don’t want to piss off the people behind me and I see, to my left, another menu.

“What’s this?” I ask the nearest 15-year-old employee.

“Oh, that’s the menu for Burger King. They’re our competitor. You can go there if you want. In fact, we actually have a driver on call. He’ll take you there, if you like. You can go right now! You don’t even have to come back.”

Because you’re not insanely stupid, I won’t tell you how ridiculous this is. It does lead me to ask, though… why are you running other people’s ads on your home business blog?

At the moment, I’m feeling neither benevolent nor patient. I don’t really feel like holding anybody’s hand. I don’t care that you made $4.21 off Adsense in July and if you keep it up for a few more months, you might just make enough cash to cover your hosting.

If you run a blog that promotes your product or service, do not accept money to shill someone else’s product or service. To half of you, this is obvious. To the other half, this is not. To the half who find it obvious, I’m not talking to you. Read on if you feel like it. Go do some work if you don’t. To those of you who don’t find it obvious, just listen and don’t argue.

Let’s say you run a company that offers custom digital illustration. Let’s also say that you’re pretty good at what you do, and your blog doesn’t get a lot of traffic at the moment. You’re thinking, let’s make some money off this whole internet thing. So you pay attention to what the SEO gurus tell you and optimize your site with the appropriate keywords. Let’s say “custom illustration” is what you’re going for. You slam your site with “custom illustration” and wait for the Google traffic to come in. You also happen to be running Adsense.

What happens? Since Adsense picks up on your keywords, it sends ads your way that use those keywords. In our custom illustrator’s case, they send ads for other custom illustrators.

In Google’s mind, that’s relevancy. In your mind, that’s competition.

If you sell a freelance writing ebook, they will run ads for other freelance writing ebooks. If you sell gift baskets, they will send ads for other gift baskets. And so on. I won’t continue. Would you go to any offline business and find them advertising for their competitors? Or even businesses that aren’t their competitors, for that matter?

There should be only one person they can find to give their money to, and that person is you.

Homework

If you’re selling something of your own, whether it’s a product or a service, remove contextual advertising RIGHT NOW. Ugly blank space may send buyers away, but not as fast as other people’s ads will.

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Marketing School: What The Hell Is Branding?

Today, we’re going to talk about home business branding. Get a coffee, because I’ve got a lot to say.

Branding is a very big deal these days. We talk about personal branding and business branding. There are many definitions of the term, but here’s one I like so you don’t have to go searching for it on your own:

“A traditional advertising method used to elicit a latent response from a target based on cumulative impressions and positive reinforcement.” (from AdServerSolutions, via Google dictionary)

Conventionally, brands were used to identify cattle. They did not say the cow was a good cow or a bad cow. They did not convey the temperament of the cow. They just identified the cow.

That is branding.

People think that a brand is a logo.
People think a brand is a uniform.
People think a brand is a storefront, a package, a company car.

A brand is none of these things – it’s a combination of them, and so much more. A few days ago, in response to one of my posts, Bill wrote this:

“Ever seen an ad for some service company, like the lawn care guys (excuse me, greenery maintenance specialist), and in the ad the guy’s driving the truck with the logo, and he’s wearing the short-sleeve shirt with the logo, and he’s wearing the hat with the logo., and he’s holding the clipboard with the logo. His shorts likely have the logo…. Branding is useful, but not super-useful. It’s almost, I don’t know, tertiary — like, yeah, I work here, see, I have the company logo on my butt. However, it doesn’t prove that I know squat. Think of the Geek Squad people. Initially, the image was interesting — gosh, so uncool, they must really know what they’re doing! … But now, the Geek Squad image is more of a Yeah, Sure, Right, I Really Believe that someone smart and bright will show up and do PC magic for me. Uh-huh. Its just an image. Didn’t I see you folding shirts at WalMart last week? It doesn’t convey ability; it just conveys that you’re on our payroll.”

This is true. A brand does not convey ability. It’s not supposed to. A brand is supposed to convey consistency.

Geek Squad puts the logo on the underwear of their tech guys not to make us think that Best Buy is more competent. They put it there to make us think of Best Buy. Whether we think well of them or ill of them, we think of them. That’s what they want, and that’s what they’ve got.

Ellen Degeneres has a very solid brand but she doesn’t wear a shirt that says “Ellen” on it. She doesn’t need to. She wears tuxedo pants and does funny dances on her talk show and wears minimal make-up. If you saw some other short haired blond pushing fifty, dancing around in tuxedo pants, you would think she looked like Ellen. That is good branding.

Branding And Your Itty Bitty Business

Since you don’t have a budget to set up a bunch of nerds in ridiculous looking vehicles, you’re going to need to find another way to brand yourself. With a smaller budget this tends to take more time, but it’s not only possible, it’s easy.

The For Dummies Version Of Branding:

Popular nostalgia has an image about the 1950s housewife. She worked hard, she cooked, she took care of the kids. Every now and again, her husband would take her out for dinner and the kids would sit around her vanity, watching her get ready. She would very carefully take her special occasion perfume out of wherever she put it so the kids wouldn’t get into it, and dab it behind her ears.

When it was time for mom and dad to go to dinner, she would hug the kids and they would smell her perfume.

Today, 50 years later, those kids remember exactly what their mother smelled like. If they smell that perfume on anyone else in the world, for the rest of their life, they will think of their mother.

That is branding.

They don’t necessarily think nice things about their mother. They might think of how much of an alcoholic she was and how every time she made a casserole she would stare sullenly into the sink, smoking a cigarette and ignoring her kids. But they think of her and only her.

That is branding.

At its heart, branding is about being the same. It’s about conveying the same image, each and every time you perform a function. Yes, a logo is a part of that. Every letter you send should have the same logo and typeface at the top. Every time your customers come to your website, they should see either what they saw last time or a big sign that says “Check out our redesign.” And every time they see you, as a person, they should identify with your brand.

As “some other Naomi” said in the comments, she’s a designer so she can walk around with antlers on her head and nobody would think anything of it. That’s part of her brand. Her brand is not “some other Naomi who wears antlers on her head.” Her brand is “some other Naomi who does some pretty crazy shit with her wardrobe.” If she showed up in khakis and a twinset, she would be lynched.

Homework

What’s your brand? If you’re like 98.372% of small business owners, you don’t have one. That’s OK. You’re in the majority. Most people don’t really expect you to have a brand. They expect you to wither into obscurity. Your job now, though, is to find yourself a brand. Think of something that embodies you, something you can stick to. Then think of what you’ll have to do to make that brand a reality.

Oh, and while I’m talking about branding, I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you to go read this post. It’s short. Come back and say something when you’re done.

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Marketing School: Turning Weakness Into Strength

[Note: The lovely Nataly and Lylah at Work It, Mom! interviewed me and my answers are up. You can check it out here. But you have to come back, though. That’s the rule.]

Something about your home business is weak. I know this. You know this. If it wasn’t weak, you wouldn’t be reading small business blogs on the internet. You’d be somewhere in the southern United States charging people to join your church.

Weakness is inherent. No strength exists without a corresponding weakness. The reverse is also true.

Trying to avoid weakness is like trying to avoid fear. It is an act of futility. Your job as a business owner, a freelancer, or frankly a human being is to spin your weaknesses into strengths.

The first thing to know is that not all weakness is true weakness – sometimes it’s only perceived that way. For example, in a recent post, I mentioned that you shouldn’t use inkjet printers for your business communications. While I maintain that most inkjet printers yield really crappy documents, Matt from TuleyDocs brought something to my attention:

“Can you expand on that? I have trouble telling text printed by a quality inkjet from text printed by a laser printer. And I know printing cost per page is lower with a laser than an inkjet. But inkjets have a significant advantage over laser printers: Inkjet printouts are much easier to recycle. Laser printing basically fuses the black toner to the page, which makes it a lot harder to get rid of when it’s time to recycle.

I try to run my business in an environmentally sound manner. But if my using an inkjet printer instead of a laser printer for my business communications is harming my business, then, well, I guess I have a hard decision to make.”

Concern for the environment is certainly not a weakness. You know that and I know that. However, you and I aren’t Matt’s clients. Matt’s clients are Matt’s clients, and I’ll hazard a guess that most of them didn’t read his comment. They could still be humming along, thinking that Matt’s cheaping out and using his Dad’s photo printer for his contracts.

Matt’s responsibility now is to find a way to maintain both his integrity and his professional image.

What should Matt do?

When we take a look at Matt’s specialties page, we see that his targets are largely environmentally-minded folks. This means that they will dig the fact that he’s doing cool stuff for the earth. They will not, however, dig feeling that he’s playing to their heartstrings. No big “I HEART MOTHER EARTH” signs for Matt.

Here’s what Matt should do.

In the footer of his outgoing communications – I’m talking letters, memos, promo materials, not contracts – he should include text that reads something like this:

“Did you know that documents printed on inkjet printers are 8 bazillion times easier to recycle than those printed on laser printers? Just one more thing TuleyDocs is doing to protect our environment.”

Assuming the rest of Matt’s text is black, this copy should be grey. If the rest of his text is navy, this should be a paler blue, and so on. By doing this, he accomplishes three things.

1. He gets to mention his personal ethics.
2. The use of small, light text makes his message unobtrusive – or so Matt’s customers’ think.
3. Marketing for Dropouts rule 71 says that everybody reads the P.S. immediately after reading the salutation. People always shoot to the bottom of the page. They see his message first, without even realizing they did it. They then read the remainder of his copy with an existing positive impression. To them, Matt already looks like a rockstar and they don’t even know why.

Matt gets the sale and doesn’t look like a cheap-ass.

Homework:

Figure out your business’ actual and perceived weaknesses. You don’t need to do anything with the information yet. Just let it simmer in your mind.

While you’re thinking (or rifling through your junk drawer, trying to find your business plan), subscribe to the feed. All the cool kids are doing it.

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Home Business Marketing: Where To Spend Your Money, Part 2

First off, I’d like to say that thanks to the awesomeness of IttyBiz readers, yesterday’s Remarkable Communication extravaganza resulted in a 2000% increase in Sonia’s traffic.

2000%

To those of you who have been paying attention, that’s double what I promised. Na na na na na na na. Thank you everybody. You rule.

Moving on to what you should be spending your money on. I have a super-yuck migraine right now so I’m going to make this quick. (Get the ebook when it comes out later. I’ll expand.)

Remember, yesterday’s mandate was that you should only be spending money on the things that people notice about your home business. No notice, no spend. Repeat it to yourself while you think about marketing ideas in the shower. Or maybe you don’t do that. Maybe that’s just me. Anyway.

1.) Paper goods. There are very few businesses that are only able to promote online. Even if you do the majority of your business on the internet, you can still promote offline. Business cards and stationery must be good. Stationery can be done in Word on your computer, as long as you use high quality paper and a laser printer. Business cards cannot. No discussion. And never, ever use an inkjet for business communications of any kind. Yes, that includes you.

2.) Phone stuff. If you primarily use your cell phone, ask around to find the company with the most reliable and consistent reception and pay whatever they charge. We don’t use cell phones in Canada as much as y’all do in the States, so I wasn’t prepared for all the horrendous phone calls I’d be having when I started working online. You don’t think this has to do with marketing, but it does. If I can’t have an understandable conversation with you, do you really think I’m going to refer you to someone I respect and admire, and have them call you, too? Uh, no.

3.) Swag.
What you give out for free is a huge reflection on you. Make sure it’s good. If you do t-shirts, make them very good t-shirts. I recommend American Apparel. Nobody wants another Beefy T. (On t-shirts - look at the shirt you’re considering, sans decoration. Would you pay $20 for it, plain? No? Put it down and find another shirt.) When it comes to swag, think about Return On Investment. Yes, 100 shirts at $6 a pop is cheaper than 100 shirts at $10 a pop. However, if your $6 shirts bring you no new business, congratulations. Your dog just peed all over your $600. You are net -$600. You lose. But if your $10 shirts bring you $1200 worth of business because they make your company look freaking awesome, you are net $200. Zero dog pee. You win.

4.) Your physical appearance.
One day last month, before it became stupidly cold and snowy, Jamie and the kids and I were walking to the library. It occurred to me that each of us was wearing jeans, a grey hoodie, and a buzz cut. Jamie joked that this should be our company uniform. While I don’t recommend Nazi Chic for everyone, spend some cash to not only make yourself look good, but to make yourself look branded. If you wear suits, wear damn good suits. If you wear Chuck Taylors, make them pristine. If you’re the crunchy granola type, make those hiking boots so treehugger it hurts.

5.) Memberships. Spend whatever it costs to join the relevant associations - your local small business association, networking groups, whatever. People will bring you more business than any other form of advertising. (Side note: In order to benefit from your membership dollars, you actually have to go to the events. The wine is always bad. Drink beforehand if you must.)

That’s it. I’m going to bed.

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