If you’re local (Houston and surrounding) then you have the opportunity to take a class from Cathy Stucker “The Idea Lady” on blogging.
Long time Leisure Learning Unlimited instructor, Cathys “Blogging for Dollars” class is always popular. I’ve taken it – it’s great! She’s a great instructor, she covers tons of info so the class moves fast – be prepared!
Read more at the link.
2 classes coming up: July 21 and Sept 13 (2011).
What do you say when asked “What do you do?”
Most of us genericize what we do, put a lable on ourselves that makes us sound like everyone else in the business. At first contact – first impressions are key. How will we stand above the crowd and let our prospective customers know how great we are?
You have your business logo that is a symbol of your business – a “visual” logo that graphically “says the most with the least” (the basic principle of graphic design).
Expressing what you do verbally, “saying the most with the least” is your “Audio Logo.”
The phrase that follows your brand name explains your unique selling proposition. It is an important part of your brand awareness and positioning. There is a difference between taglines and slogans. Taglines are part of your long standing brand, whereas slogans are something that change with your different advertising campaigns.
“Got Milk” is a slogan from the 1993 milk campaign. The tagline, “Snap, Crackle, Pop” will always be part of Kelloggs Rice Krispies started in 1932.
Compare “What can brown do for you?” (2005) to “When you absolutely, positively, have to get there overnight.” (1982) Obviously these are companies with an established brand awareness. But if your company is small and new, how would anyone know what “What can brown do for you” means? Could it be a consulting service or a ditch digger?
When creating your tagline and slogans, the process is a lot like choosing the name of your company.
Here is a revealing exercise to see how you fare against your competition in business:
When you and your competition offer the same product or service, what can you do to rise above the competition? How do you attract more customers than the competition? Offering lower prices is the first thing that many would assume. But don’t undersell yourself – if you believe in your product or service. We are in business to make a profit! Even those, like me, that love what they do so much they would do it for free, if they could.
Once upon a time, long ago, printing or publishing your own book was looked upon with less than grand praise. Some would have thought that the big publishing houses wouldn’t take the work, so the author had to publish the manuscript themselves. This misconception has progressed and matured side by side with the advances in technology. Almost ever household has a computer and printer. We buy programs that easily print our books in booklet form. Even printing the pages front and back, so all we have to do is fold and staple it (called “saddle stitching”). Ta-da, we have published a book.
THE BASICS
Your business email messages are one more opportunity to project a positive, professional image for your business. Take the time to practice basic email etiquette, also known as netiquette.
1. The emails you send in business are a part of your branded image. How you write them and how you read and respond to them.
2. Use easy to read fonts like Verdana or Trebuchet MS at 10 points or more. The fonts in green below are common fonts on computers. They are all the same size – do you see how Times appears smaller? Just like in web pages, if you use any font that is not loaded on the viewers computer, it won’t show up like you intended, it will go to their default font.
My corner of the world seems to be in constant growth. They call it progress. Streets are dismantled and widened. Trees are felled and flowers and grass are disappearing. I drove past such an area, where just the day before, majestic full trees stood in the grassy median of the thoroughfare. Now there were only the stumps of the grand champions. I am a tree lover and it broke my heart.
Sometime later I passed them again. I noticed the construction still had not started and several of the poor raw stumps had a cluster of new growth growing from their wounds. One in particular was quite bushy! I knew they were doomed but it occurred to me that it is a natural force of nature to not give up, no matter the odds. Are we so removed from the natural rhythm of the universe that we have forgotten that it should be easy for us not to give up?
Like most writers, I have several books in varying stages of completion.
If you’ve seen my logo and knew it was a logarithmic spiral (The Golden Section as the Greeks called it, The Divine Proportion as the Renaissance artists called it) then you may have surmised I’m interested in the mysteries of mathematics…the other night I was reading about fractals and they made me think about the structure of a novel.
I love Fractals because they combine art and math. Up close all you see are lines. From a distance you can enjoy a complex, complete image.
Character Development Gets You Over the Stalls
You are happily writing your next big hit of a novel, it’s going awesome and wham! You stall out. You are tired of writing, its starting to sound corny and tedious, you can’t write anymore. Just remember: There is no such thing as “writers block”. You have just lost your motivation, your passion! If you ever get stuck while writing a novel, STOP and mentally clear away everything you thought about the direction the book should take. Get a blank page on the computer screen so the pages aren’t taunting you, and:
Take a character, any character and ask it a question. For example:
Julie Howell
713-504-9982
julie@studiojules.com
Visit my illustration site Skyjules.com
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© 2011 Julie Howell ~ Admin |
Fake Comments
Even if you didn’t have a spam blocker, in your WordPress settings, if you set your comment moderation to “1″ link (found in Settings under Discussion), I find that catches a lot of spam.
Some spam is obvious of course when it’s a post full of links to who knows what. But they are getting craftier – many look like legitimate comments. But you can tell if you read them. Because even though it might say a lot of things, it’s not saying anything specific to your blog post. Though recently I have discovered some fake comment spam that can grab one word from your header (the blog title) and insert it into their fake comment. Usually reads kind of strange and when you see the link and email to a site selling fake Rolex or worse, then there is your sign.
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