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Ideas in Your Refrigerator

Filed Under Branding, Customer Think, Idea Bank, Marketing, Motivation/Inspiration, Outside the Box, Productivity, Successful Blog, Writing | 10 Comments

You Know You’re Procrastinating When . . .

Finding Ideas Outside of the Box logo 2

. . . cleaning the refrigerator takes on a new and miraculous sense of urgency with a heavenly glow.

Go ahead give in and do it, but don’t lose to procrastination. Turn that refrigerator chore into an exploration for ideas. Here are three things you might think about.

  • What is your customer experience of the products that you are tossing out? Can you use those experiences to seed an article for your blog?
  • Refrigerators are filled with products. How do the companies who make those products promote them? Can you twist any of their ideas into ways to promote your business or your blog?
  • Is there a brand in there you are attached to? What do you value about that brand? Can you put your feelings into words? How can you use that brand value you feel to strengthen your personal brand and the brand experience people have when they meet you?

Procrastination just became an idea session, and on top of that you’ve cleaned your refrigerator! That’s productivity where you could have been doing what I’ve done — standing in front of an open refrigerator door thinking about how the light goes on and off.

Bet you can think of more ideas to find inside of that Big Box. How about sharing some with us?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Exploring for Ideas at Technorati
Eye-Deas 1: Have You Started Seeing Things?
More ideas in the Idea Bank category and in Writing Power, Thinking Outside the Box, Customer Think, and Brand You Series on the SUCCESSFUL SERIES PAGE

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How Was Your Day as a Customer?

Filed Under Branding, Customer Think, Marketing, Successful Blog | 5 Comments

Whatever You Did Today

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Whatever you did today — enjoy a cup of coffee reading the paper, watch TV, work on your computer, clean the house, go to the mall, drive a car, eat lunch, read blogs, take a shower — you used a product. You were a customer.

How was your customer experience? Did anything about it leave you wishing that some business knew you better?

What percent of your experiences leaves you feeling more than satisfied, makes you want to tell people what a great experience you had?

It’s hard to miss when you’ve bumped into a business that values a customer. It’s hard to forget the name of their brand.

Brand you and me.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
Feeling a Customer’s First Response
Customers and Credibility
The Customer Think Series on the SUCCESSFUL SERIES Page

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5 Type Turn-Offs that Are Exit Only

Filed Under Basics, Branding, Marketing, Successful Blog | 19 Comments

I’m Only 1 Reader

Spend enough time as a publisher and when you read for fun, you can’t help seeing publishing things . . . if they’re great I comment on them. Reinforce good behavior is what I learned in teachers’ school. If they’re not good typography, I try to overlook them and keep reading. If I simply cannot, usually I just move on shaking my head. I go back to my own blog to make sure that I’m not doing the same thing.

YET when I see the same type issues happening from one blog to another, I think folks can’t see how the type looks and feels from this side of the computer. So I’ve started taking notes on what it’s like to be the reader. Of course, I’m only one reader, but I AM one reader. I’m one who will come back or I won’t. Read more

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Feeling a Customer’s First Response

Filed Under Branding, Customer Think, Marketing, Successful Blog | 7 Comments

An Opportunity

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A customer’s first response runs deep and lasts long. One way I keep myself close to customers is to monitor my first response to new information whenever I can — you know, that initial response that occurs without thinking. I’ve made habit of looking for such responses as I move through my life.

Information has no positive or negative value until I respond to it.

This morning I encountered information that you might use in the same way. Ready? Read more

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Helping Clients Get Past Blogaphobia

Filed Under Branding, Customer Think, Marketing, Strategy, Successful Blog | 23 Comments

Enthusiasm Can Kill

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Just today I wrote an email to a potential client I met with two weeks ago. In it I wrote this phrase I know my enthusiasm can be huge. We’d gotten into a conversation about blogs and how they were changing the world.

I wish that I had read the article I found exploring later that afternoon. It’s a piece by Anil Dash at Six Apart News called How to keep blogs from scaring the hell out of people. It’s just packed with truths. Read more

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