Small Office, Home Office Information

When any business wants to do some advertising in most forms of media including print, television and the Internet just about every one of them thinks in terms of contextual advertising. For example, if they are a beer company doing television advertising they will think of having their ads show during sports shows.

But is that the best form of advertising? What about behavioural targeting - the art of advertising to people based on observed behaviour?

Of course some mediums are going to be able to achieve that form of advertising better than others but if your interested in reading more about a different form of advertising and why it might work better than the contextual then spend a little time reading “Advertising Out Of Context”.

I came across it on a blog run by a venture capitalist - but don’t let that scare you off because it really does make for some thought-provoking reading.

My ex wife once told me that when I talked to people I was blunt and she inferred that I was blunt almost to the point of rudeness. And I guess she was right - I do speak plainly, I don’t dance around the subject, I tend to call a spade a spade.

So a post entitled “How not to speak like a business idiot” was always guaranteed to grab my attention. I would recommend that anyone in business spend a few moments to read what Garr Reynolds has to say because he makes some very valid points.

And his points are related to this book:

Here is a sad tale of insurance coverage that wasn’t and an important lesson that we learned this week.

These days laptops come equipped with internal wi-fi cards but as recently as a couple of years ago, when we bought our latest laptop, wi-fi was new technology and internal cards were yet to be thought of.

When we moved to wi-fi for our home based business we bought a wi-fi network card for this laptop that plugs into a port on the side of the machine and over the last 12 months it has worked very well.

At the same time we have had all our equipment included in our household insurance. Our insurance company was quite happy to include our computers because we could legitimately say that every one of them was used, in very small part, for private use.

As far as the insurance company was concerned it didn’t really matter how much they were used for private use and their only criteria for establishing that it was for private use was if there were games installed on the computers and - being computer geeks - of course there were.

So that was the situation on Monday morning … when I dropped the laptop and of course it fell on the side where the wireless card was plugged in. After the fall the wireless card was pushed much further in than it normally goes.

I powered up the laptop and it worked, I tried to access the network and it didn’t work - time to call the insurance company.

The bad news was that our insurance company (RACQ - a very reputable company here in Queensland) does not cover anything for accidental damage if the policy is for goods situated in a house that is leased - we lease.

The company does not cover laptops for accidental damage, even if they are listed as a specified item, if they are used for business.

The moral of the story is - check your insurance policies item by item because the cover you think you have may not really be there at all.

A few days ago I wrote a post I called Real Estate Hype - 10 Lines of Crap and perhaps this post should be read in conjunction with that post because Real Estate Agents have a lot to learn about writing effective copy.

So, if you have to write an advertisment for your business - maybe a flyer or even something on the Net here are five rules that you should always remember.

1. Always emphasis the benefits of your product and not the features. Tell people what your product will do for them and not all the fancy doo-dads that it might come equipped with.

2. You have an audience - write your advertising for them. Not everyone in town is even vaguely interested in what you are selling but there will be some people that are. Focus on them and forget the rest.

3. Include a call to action - tell your audience to click here - buy now - phone for the best price - take a test drive now. Those are call to actions and if you don’t include a call to action in your advertising then people won’t do any of those things I just mentioned.

4. Pay attention to layout - use colours, italics etc. in appropriate places (but don’t over do it) - make sure your advertising is set out in a way that is easily read - most important info and the top of the page - additional info under that and don’t forget the call to action

5. Never pose a question or make a statement in y0ur advertising to which the reader can respond with “bull shit” because as soon as they think or utter those words you’ve lost them. Go back to point 7 in the 10 lines of Real Estate Crap and you will see what I mean.

1. Anyone who tells you that they are a guru in their chosen field isn’t

2. Half the people named as supposedly satisfied customers that some websites use to promote their services don’t even exist

3. If anyone uses the term “trust me” then don’t

4. Half the people who claim to have been around on the Internet since 1996 didn’t even own a computer back then.

5. Free downloads always cost something.

1. I’m a nobody - I’m not a marketing guru, I offer no free give-aways and no gratuitous advice about earth-shattering revelations that came to me while I was sitting in a client’s waiting room. I just write about my day to day experiences and what works for me and what doesn’t.

2. I’m not rich - I don’t make tens of thousands of dollars in residual income, or enough to take my entire family to Aspen for a week of posing as someone who can ski - I just make enough to pay the bills, keep food on the table and be comfortable with who I am.

3. I can look at myself in the mirror (whenever I remember to shave) - I don’t peddle crap products to people who don’t need them - I don’t lie through my teeth to bolster my own ego - and I don’t care what anyone but my kids think of me but my word is my bond.

4. I don’t have any guarantees to offer anyone who reads this blog - I’m just a normal small business person - I work too hard for too many hours of the day doing things for other people when I would rather be working on my own projects.

5. I don’t care if I’m not ’successful’ - I live in a sub-tropical paradise - I work in nothing but a pair of shorts nearly all year round and when I feel the urge I can go walking on the beach and I answer to no one but myself (don’t tell Toni I said that)

And what brought that little dummy spit on?

I’m sick of the hype and bullshit I see out there on other blogs - if you choose to believe them that’s fine - and I’m mildy pissed off by one or two ‘names’ in the blogging world making offers and promises to us that they had absolutely no intention of keeping.

At least I didn’t stick my head out the window and scare the neighbours like Peter Finch

Edit: Down in the comments you will see where I was rather blunt with someone who kindly suggested that I really did need a blog roll. Perhaps I could have explained it a little more gently and that’s what I try to do here in Why I Have No Blogroll

Hmmm - I owe some people some apologies. Elsewhere I mentioned that yesterday I would post about why video blogs had the potential to be unattractive marketing tools for small businesses and I didn’t do it … but I will - just as soon as I can find where Toni filed something she wrote for another website.

Once I’ve found it I can be a bit lazy and copy and paste most of it and add a few comments and it will be done.

Until then I’ll just have to feel guilty about not doing it and I was sitting here feeling guilty as I read through this week’s property guide for another project I’m working on.

Right now the real estate industry in Australia is in the doldrums and even though we live in one of the five biggest growth areas in the country the local real estate market is basically dead.

So I decided to have a look in the property guide to see how the local real estate agents were selling house. Now many real estate agents will tell you that houses basically sell themselves and I don’t doubt that for a moment. However when you’re in competition with many other real estate agents who list in the same property guide you do have to do something about getting people to stop and actually look at the houses.

Now a good way of doing that is to include power words in the headlines. Power words are words that the human race is conditioned to read and act on. Not surprisingly in a 50 page property guide I found one power word … and I also found a lot of crap too.

So here are 10 lines of real estate crap just from the first few pages of our property guide.

1. Opportunity Knocks - but it better not knock too hard because the picture of the house makes it look as though it’s about to fall down

2. Vendor Says ‘Sell’ - ummm … don’t they all?

3. Budget Beater - are you trying to tell me that buying this house is going to destroy my finances?

4. Magnificent Home - Panoramic Views - then why are you showing me a picture of the pool in the backyard?

5. You’re Buying the Land - the Units are Almost a Gift - you really think we’re that stupid?

6. It Doesn’t Come Much Better Than This - I hope it does because the house in the picture looks rather plain

7. Is There Cheaper? - Yep two lines down and three photos to the right in their own ad

8. Looking to Grab a Bargain? Why are you showing me a photo of an entertainment unit? I thought this was the real estate guide.

9. Is There a Better Location? - you mean the claustrophobic kitchen in the photo is the best location in town?

10. A Little Unique - yep it’s got three gum trees in the front yard instead of the usual palm trees.

Actually #8 contains a power word that I missed - it’s a pity the agent couldn’t match that word with a view of a house.

Even if you have a product that will sell itself you still need to use the right words to attract the attention of potential buyers.

How do you store your business records?

These days, with so much of our business packed into that whirring computer box, it’s only natural to think to storing your data on CD or DVD. After all, these days every computer comes with a CD or DVD burner so why not use it to store your data?

We certainly do, we have business records and important business files stored on CD going back as far as 1998. We also have a lot of our family records stored on CDs. Treasured photos, important family history papers going back to WWI have all been scanned and burnt onto CDs.

We have always known that CDs are prone to fail after a few years. I’ve mentioned it here before that cheap CDs are not ideal for storing important files because they deteriorate after just a few years. But now it seems that experts are also suggesting that good quality CDs are not ideal either.

Long term storage on hard disks is also not recommended because mechanical failure is quite likely.

Kurt Gerecke, a data storage expert with IBM, suggests that the only safe way to store important data is via magnetic tapes. He suggests that even good quality discs are unlikely to last beyond five years and el-cheapos bought at the local discount store are not going to last more than two years.

You can read the full story here at Computer World

Just lately I’ve been confronted with a major problem that has needed a lot of very careful thought.

I don’t know about you but my thought patterns tend to go round in circles going back over the same thing time and time again. And that was certainly the case this time.

What I needed to do was think in a linear fashion and I needed to consider a number of alternates that could arise if I chose to take a certain course of action.

I was really struggling with it until I remembered a book I read years ago - it’s called Piece of Mind (no typo) and I was amazed to find that it is still available on Amazon - of course I have provided a link.

In the book the author, Sandy MacGregor, talks about mind charts and how to develop them as an aid to thinking.

I adapted that idea to fit my own situation and came up with my own little maps to help me think in a linear fashion. I haven’t used them in many years but today I sat down and started drawing my mind map and it helped me focus on the possibilities that lay ahead and where I need to tread carefully as I make my plans.

You don’t have to be a great artist to draw a map like mine - just some symbols that you understand and lines and arrows that you can follow as you think through whatever you’re using the map for. Mine are certainly not as elegant as the ones in the book but they work for me and that’s all that counts.

I’ve included a rough example just to help you see what I’m talking about.

My apologies for not rotating the image into landscape but unfortunately I would have had to have reduced the size to the point where you would not have been able to read my scribble.

Sometimes something as simple as a sheet of paper and a pen can help you think through your small business decisions.

Like most other people there was a time when I made New Year resolutions - and like most people I never managed to carry those resolutions beyond the end of the first week in January.

From there I went through a period not even thinking about making resolutions - what was the point if you always fell back into your old ways?

But the urge to make resolutions is a little hard to resist and hit has struck me again. Perhaps this time I might actually keep some of them because it’s something born out of necessity that I somehow have to fit into an already busy work schedule.

So this year, although it’s a little late, I’ve resolved to set aside an hour a day to learn some new coding skills. A reasonable amount of our business is centred around websites and there was a time when I could write HTML by hand just as quickly as I am typing this.

That was back in the days of HTML 3 and the code used in web pages as moved a long way forward since then. So it’s time for me to catch up and that’s why I need to relearn those skills.

What about you? What skills do you need to take time to brush up on?