A few days ago, the writer of an op-ed piece in the local paper said that we needed to get "corporate money" out of politics and suggested that the way to do that was through legislation. I disagree. We've got plenty of laws. We don't need any more of them. (Although I wouldn't oppose a [...]
Satisfying your customers is not enough to keep them—you need to make them loyal so they’ll keep coming back to you instead of another supplier who does enough to satisfy them. Here’s how to turn your satisfied customers into loyal advocates: 1. Find out what your customers want and provide it. Don’t guess; ask them [...]
The highest quality e-mail database you can build is one where your subscribers have purchased from you and have opted-in to your list. These people are ripe to become repeat customers—as long as you don’t chase them away. I do a lot of online shopping and I like getting e-mails with specials, discounts and new [...]
A judge in a Florida case has ruled that debt collectors may not use social networking sites to contact debtors, their family or their friends. I found this case interesting in part because I used to write a column for Commercial Law Bulletin (published by the Commercial Law League, an organization of collection, creditors’ rights [...]
Should your business have a Facebook page? That's a question you have to decide based on the type of business and your particular market. Most companies can benefit from a Facebook page, but you need to set it up right. A Facebook basic: Your profile is you as an individual; your page is your company. [...]
Is social media—Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube—a fad or the wave of the future? From a company policy perspective, the answer to that question doesn’t matter. The fact is that you need a social media policy that clearly defines what your employees may and may not say about your operation on social media sites—and you need [...]
The recent situation with the Yahoo! list that had used excerpts from at least one of my books without permission or attribution has sparked a number of discussions about when it is and isn't okay to republish someone else's work without specific authorization. One person told me that he thought as long as he [...]
Last week, Charlene Davis (my friend, colleague, and occasional co-author) joined a Yahoo! Group called Clever Homemaker. The group has 6,000+ members and Charlene thought the articles the list owner was posting about business were very well-written. Then she recognized one of the articles — it was actually excerpt from one of my books on [...]
A substantial portion of my communication is done electronically through e-mail, texts, blogs, Twitter, websites, etc. It’s fast, convenient, efficient—but you know all that. Even so, since I was a small child, I have loved getting real mail: envelopes and packages delivered to me by the USPS. In the last year, the volume of [...]
Here's a blog post about writing mistakes that I want to share: Author Brian Clark is targeting bloggers in his post, 5 Common Mistakes That Make You Look Dumb, but he’s on the mark with these mistakes no matter what you’re writing or who it’s for. I especially chuckled when I read his closing note [...]
