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Early January is peak planning time for many businesses and I facilitate a lot of workshops and planning sessions with business owners. But before you leap into planning actions and tasks - stop and ask yourself is your heart still in your business.

What I have found with my clients is if their heart is no longer in the business and they have lost the passion for what they do, it is like a marriage on the rocks. It brings up all the same feelings and emotions (including feelings of guilt, hopelessness and confusion).

Just like a rocky marriage, you need to take action to reconnect with your business, rediscover your passion and work out if you still have the commitment to make it work.

There is no shame in taking a break or seeking help, but just like with any relationship healing this is not for wimps.

Unless you can rediscover your heart in your business then no amount of marketing will work for you. No amount of activity will give you the results you are looking for and you won’t be happy.

Creating a marketing campaign for someone with no passion in their business is like a doctor operating when the patient is sure they are going to die - not advisable to proceed. A good marketer or copywriter will help you tap into your heart, and challenge you with these questions before they work on the campaign.

So as you start 2009 - is your heart still in your business?

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony - freelance copywriters

Wishing you a wonderful Christmas, fantastic holiday season and exciting 2009

From the Heart Harmony team - including our hardworking office mascot - Dalai Kitty

I have been going back through Christmas history (thanks Horrible Christmas by Terry Deary and Martin Brown, Wikipedia and Snopes) and discovered that Christmas as we know it had almost died out in the early 1800s. People thought it was a silly old-fashioned custom and didn’t celebrate it

… that is until a freelance writer by the name of Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol.

Charles was a very fast writer and wrote A Christmas Carol in less than two months as a way to try and make money as he was nearly bankrupt from his failed novel Martin Chuzzlewit. It was published on 19 December 1843 and the first run of 6000 copies sold out in one week at the very high price of 5 shillings a copy.

The book was so popular he was asked to read from it to audiences around the world (one of the first major successful speakers tours) where he made as much from speaking as he did from writing the book.

A Christmas Carol is credited for reviving our celebration of Christmas and their characters of Scrooge and Tiny Tim have entered Western folklore.

But that’s not all!

Another copywriter - Robert L.May was asked to come up with a Christmas story to give away to shoppers at Montgomery Ward department store in Chicago in 1939. Robert based his story of Rudolph the Red nosed Reindeer on the Ugly Duckling and tried the names of Rollo and Reginald for the reindeer before settling on the name Rudolph.

He wrote the story in rhyme, testing it on his 4 year old daughter (very early product testing). May’s boss was worried that the red nose may not be appropriate for a family store - after all red noses were associated with alcoholism and drunks (political correctness is not a modern invention).

So May had his friend Denver Gillen sketch some reindeer from the local zoo with red noses.  These drawings won over the boss and the book went to print. 2.4 million books were handed out by the end of 1939 - thanks to word of mouth viral marketing.

As the work had been created while May was an employee of the store, they owned the copyright and he received nothing for his work.  With his wife with terminal cancer and deeply in debt, May finally convinced the store to turn the copyright over to him in January 1947. His financial future was then assured as he carefully managed the intellectual property in Rudolph through his company the Rudolph Company L.P.

May’s brother-in-law, singer Johnny Marks, took his poem and turned it into a song which was recorded by Gene Autry (after many people turned it down as not being commercial enough). The song is now the second top selling song of all time, second only to “White Christmas“.

Have a wonderful, safe and fun-filled Christmas - and whenever you hear A Christmas Carol or Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, think of the difference copywriters make to your life.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony - Freelance Copywriter and Christmas nut

I have been doing some final research for my new book New Employee Orientation: Tips, Templates & Tactics (due out early 2009) and discovered this fascinating post from Alexander Kjerulf in his blog Chief Happiness Officer. I have reproduced it in full as it struck a chord with me about how to welcome new hires into your workplace.  How would you feel if on your first day this note was waiting for you?

Imagine it’s your first day in a new job. You sit down at your desk for the first time, and waiting for you there is a note from your new boss.

In the note your boss bids you a warm welcome to the company, and then says this:

1: My most important priority is your happiness and productivity at work. If there’s anything I can do to make you happier and more efficient - tell me right away. This isn’t idealism, it’s good business, because happy people are more productive.

2: I will not burden you with endless rules and regulations. You’re an adult - I trust you to use your best judgment.

3: You have my full permission to screw up, as long as you own up to it, apologize to those affected and learn from it.

4: Please tell me when I screw up so I can apologize and learn from it.

5: Please make sure to hunt down people who do great work and praise them for it. I will do this as much as humanly possible, but I can’t do it alone.

6: If I get it right occasionally, I’d love to hear about it from you, too :o)

7: I will always have time for you. My calendar will never be so full that my next free time to talk to you is three weeks from next Friday.

8: I want to know about you as an employee AND as a human being. I DO care about your private life, about your and your family’s health and well-being.

9: Life is more than work. If you’re regularly working overtime, you’re just making yourself less happy and more stressed. Don’t join the cult of overwork - it’s bad for you and the company.

10: I expect you to take responsibility for your own well-being at work. If you can do something today to make yourself, a co-worker or me a little happier at work - do it!

This post was inspired by Michael Wade’s post over at ExecuPundit called Note from boss to employees. I liked his tips but I found the tone of them a little defensive. Michael’s tips had an undercurrent of “business is hard and being a leader is tough but we can slog it out together.”

I disagree - work is great fun (or at least it could and should be).

How would you like a note like this from your new boss?

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony - HR Copywriter

Well … we have a winner for the best piece of viral marketing for the year. And the winner is (drumroll please), The Message Group.

Check out this brilliant video piece - it is absolutely perfect from a viral marketing perspective.

http://www.worldsgreatestbusinessmind.com/20081203-Ingrid-Cliff-view.html&WT.mc_id=WGBM%20Viral%7CView

And what makes it even better is it didn’t come to me from The Message Group, but the very enterprising Probity Partners who piggy-backed on the campaign and used it to promote one of their own products in the process - very clever, cost effective marketing!

Until next time

The World’s Greatest Business Mind (at least in this clip)

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony - Freelance Copywriters

I am still on the hunt for last minute gift ideas so checked out Annette Piper one of my favourite jewellers. This piece really caught my eye. The colours are gorgeous and very rich. Sometimes handmade makes the best presents (even if you are not the one making it by hand!) Now to convince the kids to get it for me …

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony - Freelance Copywriters

Julie McLeod from Kharma Consulting, a Feng Shui business based in Brisbane, writes a great free monthly newsletter.

This month’s edition featured some great Feng Shui tips for Christmas in Australia that are worth sharing (they are not just limited to family get togethers and can be equally applied to office Christmas parties).

Christmas can be a stressful time of year for many people especially when you have a large number of family members all in the one place. This combined with the summer heat, consumption of alcohol and a lot of fire energy around - these are the perfect ingredients for heated arguments and discussions. Below are some tips to calm the energy to have a more harmonious Christmas day:

• hang your tinsel in a smile - don’t let a little of the tinsel drop down on the ends.
• add more green to your Christmas table settings - this will calm the energy.
• do not have too much red in your decorations as the red and your Christmas lights creates a lot of fire energy.
• do not serve meals and drinks on chipped crockery or glasses as this will create argumentative energy.
• if you have some family members who tend to fight do not sit them opposite each other as this is a confrontational seating arrangement and they will fight.

I have gone around the house and office and rearranged all my tinsel to put the smiles into the arrangement. It may just be the thought of it, but having smiling tinsel around the place certainly feels Christmassy and a lot more fun.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony - Freelance Copywriters

In these days of being time poor, many people are willing to pay extra for more convenience such as faster access, reduced queues and limited waiting.

Recently I visited Dreamworld, a theme park on the Gold Coast, where for an additional $10 you could access the park 1 hour earlier than the rest of the public and get unlimited access to the top thrill rides without the queues for that hour.   They limit the people who can buy the passes and business was certainly swift!

In many businesses you can adopt a similar strategy - premiums for fast turnaround or swift service. The trick is to make the additional cost enough to cover your costs but nominal enough to be paid easily. You need to watch you are not burning your staff or yourself out in the process of accepting these fast turn jobs. You also need not to cut into the service offered to your regular clients.  That’s why the Dreamworld model was such a great one!

In your marketing writing, people value speedy delivery of products - so make sure you specify how long it will take to deliver your product or service. If you have 7 day delivery then say so. If delivery is via courier then include that fact as well.  Adding a premium for faster delivery is an easy option to include.

Where in your business can you look at adding in a premium for fast service?

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony - Freelance copywriters

Businesses need to look at performance measures to track their success but many businesses struggle with working out their top performance measures. They measure things that may or may not make a difference to their business. Warren Buffet once said “Focus on what’s meaningful and not what’s measurable” .

Recently I have been talking with Steve Major from Major Focus Group. He is one of the most insightful and fascinating people you will ever meet, and works with businesses to help them determine the meaningful measures for their business. He picks up where your accountants leave off.

He also believes that every measure has a customer service correlation. That financials without customer service measures have absolutely no meaning (given he has an accounting background this is pretty radical stuff!).

If you want to learn what measures are meaningful for your business I recommend checking out the Major Focus Group website.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony - Freelance Copywriters

OK - I admit it. I haven’t finished my Christmas shopping. Given a number of rellies are decending this weekend for an early Xmas that is a bit of a worry! I have been checking out all my favourite blogs for ideas.

Here is a nifty idea from My Shiny Shoes - clear handbag liners so you can keep all of your essentials in the one place and transfer them from bag to bag, rather than the daily rattle through your bag and hope everything shifted. That’s great for the bag-o-phile in your life (me I just keep the one bag - life’s too short to relocate lipstick every day!)

I also loved this post from Trendhunter on 45 Gifts You Probably Don’t Want. My personal favourite is the nose hair trimmer shaped like a human finger, closely followed by the tiles that have patterns of fallen hair on them (what the?)

I could see a use for the remote controlled sumo wrestlers … but then again my car currently is wearing a bright red nose and antlers to get into the festive spirit (and so I can find it in packed car parks at this time of year).

From my site there has been a real run on our Instant HR Policies and Procedures Manuals. I gather people are buying them for their boss’s Xmas present or for themselves to get 2009 off to a great start.

Ah well, I’m off to battle the shops in search of final inspiration for my list. Now if only a few more businesses had some great pre-packaged fun presents ready to go!

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business Into words

Heart Harmony - SEO copywriting