Archive for the ‘Business’ Category

A Great Deal on Stuff You Probably Need, Want, or Use

Monday, July 26th, 2010

Who doesn’t love a great deal? I know I do and I jumped on this one. If you invoice clients or need to keep track of them in any way or send a newsletter out, this deal should be of interest to you.

AppSumo is running a deal right now where you can get the following for $55 AND half of every sale is going to the National Wildlife Federation to help clean up the Gulf oil spill:

  • 6 months of service from social CRM BatchBook ($90)
  • 6 months of email marketing service MailChimp ($140)
  • Survey and form tool Formstack ($84)
  • 100 MOO mini business cards with free shipping ($25.49)
  • $120 coupon for FreshBooks (worth 6 months of their Solo plan)

That’s $55 for all of that – and only one of them by itself costs less than $55!

When I signed up for Formstack I realized the $84 value is actually a full year of service. Additionally, if you sign up for the full year of FreshBooks, you also get a 10% discount off that so it’s less than $100 for a full year! You can even take advantage of this deal if you already use their services with a free account.

Please forgive my excitement. I like office apps and tools almost as much as I like office supplies. And this is just too good (but not too good to be true).

You can read more about this from FreshBooks and Lifehacker.

The deal runs through Monday, August 2, so you have some time and it’s for a good cause!

The “Right” Way to Blog

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

Inc.I was just catching up with my Inc. reading and came across the final article from Joel Spolsky in the March 2010 issue. I can always tell when something has lit a fire under me when I start talking back to the article (or TV or computer monitor, etc.) as I’m reading it.

In this article, Let’s Take This Offline, Joel talks about the “right” way to blog. He’s absolutely right in saying write to your audience and not just post press releases and company updates. The articles that get people reading are the ones that provide something useful to the reader – not the ones about yourself or your company. That is true.

However, that doesn’t mean you never post about yourself or your company. Your existing readers want to know about you and how you do business. In almost every case, you get your readers to you by offering them something tangible. You keep them reading by showing a little personality, showing there are real people behind the company, providing a little insight into how you work and run your business, AND continuing to offer those tasty tips & tricks that got them reading in the first place.

If you launch a new product, announce it on your blog. Your readers are your customers and potential customers. They may not know about your new product any other way. Many people subscribe to a company’s blog but not their newsletter and vice versa. Don’t assume your newsletter (or blog) reaches everyone – announce big news in both places.

There’s a happy medium in blogging. Don’t give away the farm and don’t get too personal. Find what works for you and your readers and stick to it. Your readers will appreciate consistency.