I think about these things a lot, especially when I’m speaking.  I think “my heavens, I need a new email signature.”

Why?

Because the current one isn’t communicating what I want it to communicate.

Here’s the old one, from this morning:

Any guesses on what each number means?  I’ll list them below, but here’s the new signature:

Here’s what each number is for:

1. This is a special string of characters I chose to tell JibberJobber to not make anything below it a log entry.  I could change it, and probably will, but this is a very important line, even though it really means nothing to anyone.
2. I think it’s important to put LinkedIn DVD, instead of just DVD.
3. I moved this description behind the link, to be consistent with the other lines.
4. I decided to take this off… my Twitter followers hasn’t necessarily grown, and if you really want to find me you can search for me.  We’ll see if I flop back on this one.
5. I took the JibberJobber mobile link out… I think there are more important things to communicate…. like the new line for my LinkedIn book!

Luckily I can change things as often as I want… make changes for yourself… if you hate it, you aren’t locked into anything!

Here are other posts one when I changed my signatures:

Today I (tearfully) retire my email signature
A new email signature

I’m toying around with changing some visual elements of one web page (not a website), and I found some AMAZING tools:

Color Scheme Designer: This helps you see what colors go good with one another… very cool tool.

Flaming Text – Free Logo Designs: Put in the word, change some settings, and it gives you text with different visual characteristics.  Super cool.

Choosing Color Combinations: blog post that is excellent, from Veerle’s blog.

My friend Brad Merrill took the plunge and started a blog.

It has the potential to be an awesome personal branding tool for himself, and I applaud what he’s doing.

This is the first of two posts where I’m going to give feedback (with his permission) on his nascent strategy.  Today I’ll talk about how he let me (and hundreds of others) know about the blog.

It’s important to let others know you have a blog… not just once but frequently.  Be careful how you do it, however, because no one wants an email each time you write a new blog post (unless they opt in to a newsletter, or something like that).

Here’s Brad’s message I got last night:

There are a few things I like about this email, and perhaps a line or two I don’t care for.  Instead of critiquing the entire thing, I want to focus on TWO things:

The Length.

The length of this message is PERFECT.  If it were any longer I’d get lost, or not read it, or save it for later, or something like that.  If it were shorter I might feel like he’s just spamming me and a million others with “read my blog!”  It is sincere, concise, and very focuses.

The Question in Yellow.

This jumped out at me the most.  At first I thought “COOL, a professional blog” (as opposed to a personal blog).

But then, when I read the question “if you have some things you would like to (to) see me write about,” tell me.

That’s when I thought “where’s the focus?”

Indeed, reading through the email again I realized I had no idea what the theme, or topics, of the blog are. Is it a personal blog? Is it a professional blog?  What exactly does Brad do, or think about?

If Brad could help me understand this, even if it’s just a reminder (some people know, but a reminder doesn’t hurt), he would have used this email as a branding tool, and helped reinforce his personal brand to his contacts (whether they clicked over to the blog or not).

At a minimum he could have said:

I am going to write about ______ and ______.  My last post talks about ethical behavior.

To take it up a notch he could have said something like:

As a professional accountant I see a lot of interesting things.  I’ll write posts about my expertise (sales and use tax and financial accounting) and keep it interesting with stories and examples. I will probably write about my passions, including watch collecting) and try to always tie the posts back to business ideas. Whether you are an accountant or just interested in business, I hope to have relevant content for you.  If you have any ideas or questions, please let me know, as I begin this journey.

In the first email he reinforces his brand.  In the second email he drills down a bit more so people understand more of his breadth and depth… even if they don’t become blog readers they will know what some of his specialties and passions are.

“Where’s the focus” was my first thought, the second thought was: missed branding opportunity.

Next post I’ll critique his second blog post.

Hey there, I write on a number of different blogs … you might not have seen these so I wanted to share them with you here:

From my JibberJobber blog: Seth Godin: Pick Yourself

From the Career Resumes blog: Job Search: You Have To Pick Up The Phone

From my LinkedIn blog: Optimizing Slideshare On Your LinkedIn Profile

From this Jason Alba blog: pill vs. vitamin

Enjoy!

A few months ago I was talking with someone about business and marketing and they introduced a concept new to me, but I got the impression that everyone else had already heard of it.

When you are selling/marketing something to someone, do they percieve it as a PILL or a VITAMIN?

The purpose of a PILL is to alleviate a pain (for example, a very bad headache).  The effects should be somewhat immediate. The value of the PILL, at the moment of pain, is really, really high.  I have a PROBLEM and a PILL is an immediate SOLUTION.  You know the perceived value can skyrocket, especially as the problem, or pain, is higher and immediate.

A VITAMIN, on the other hand, is more of a preventative measure.  You don’t take a VITAMIN to get results within 30 minutes…. VITAMINS are a subtle solution to a long-term, non-immediate problem.  The pain is not there, and you might wonder if it will ever come.  It’s easy to feel like it’s a non-essential solution to a problem you might not (or, likely won’t) have.

When I heard this I was perplexed, and I asked, are my offerings (products+services) perceived as PILLs (high value, immediate need) or VITAMINS (nominal value, not sure if really needed)???

Figuring this out, and perhaps even repackaging and repositioning, can help you sell more, make more, and become more valuable.

Or, you can keep trying to sell a solution for a non-problem.

OF COURSE, if you look at Covey’s four quadrants, you know you should spend time in the Important/NotUrgent box… which seems to me to be the VITAMIN mindset… but how many of us (or, our customers) are in the Urgent/____ box?  That’s where the PILL comes in.

How are you positioning YOUR offering?

I had a meeting in a coffee shop today and saw someone Seth Ahonen drawing.

DRAWING.

He had a picture of a baby and was recreating it with pencil (I’m sure there’s a cooler, more technical way to say that).  It really was amazing to watch (since I have no artistic ability).

Here’s his website – check out his portfolio.

I didn’t see a picture of any of the portraits that he draws (from a picture), but I found a great portfolio of his breadth – really quite fascinating. I am thinking of a picture I can send to him to have him draw it – really, really awesome.

I recently posted my 5 favorite words, as a business owner, designer, product manager.  Here are two more words I’ve been thinking about lately.  Both have to do with marketing something… when someone wants to buy “something” from you, you have to be able to easily communicate what “it” is that you have to offer.

System: “7 steps to ___,” or “4 ___ in 4 days,” or something like that.  Think: Seven Habits of ______.  People like to know you’ve (supposedly) thought of all the angles and have come up with an amazing SYSTEM that solves their problem.

Package: Very similar concept to a “system,” but a package doesn’t have to have a system to/in it.  The package can be something like “buy 8 hours for the price of 10,” or “get a book, ebook, DVD and upgrade for ___.”  I do this here.

If you are a consultant I recommend you do this immediately – your clients expect it (even if they don’t know they expect it.

Go check out my other 5 favorite words – I didn’t realize this was going to be a series, and will probably be an ongoing series…

This is really clever, very scary… I think the spammers will have a good success rate with people clicking on this:

here are the things to watch for:

1. I don’t know the “from” person, and “local schools” doesn’t make sense to me (but it might to a lot of students :s)
2. I went to laca.org and it wasn’t a real website… didn’t go anywhere.
3. online.com?  Too generic…
4. subject line has a period
5. I don’t have a mailbox with 23GB.  I Don’t have an account with them.
6. NEVER, EVER “click here” to validate a mailbox… or anything that you haven’t specifically requested.
7. Other poor grammar towards the end of the email

When you mouse over the “click here” link you see it will go to this URL:

A few red flags here, also:

1. the URL doesn’t match the sender (laca.org)…
2. the subdomain starts with scripts. … NOT GOOD.
3. 4goodhosting.com?  Seriously?
4. form1.html?  Very novice.

This has yellow and red flags all over it – but they’ve done a very good job. PLEASE don’t click on anything that looks like this.  Simply delete it (or, if you are on Gmail, report phishing, or report as spam).

UPDATE BELOW…

Taking a quick break from my book thingy…

I have migrated over to Gmail and Google Apps (which allows me to have gmail functionality on my business email) completely … and I have one major beef that would be simple to fix.

In Outlook, when I start a new email, or reply, my EMAIL SIGNATURE is put at the top of the message, no matter how long the message was (in other words, even if I’m replying to a message it is at the top, NOT the bottom).

In Gmail, if I reply to a message my EMAIL SIGNATURE is put at the BOTTOM of the entire thread… which means I have to go to the bottom, cut the sig, go back to the top and paste it.  It’s a pretty lame way of doing it… and I’m guessing just an oversite… but seriously, you’d make my life 10 times easier if you just put the signature at the top of the email on all messages (new and replies)…

What do ya think – can you do that for me?  Pretty please?

UPDATE: Twitter works!  Gmail didn’t necessarily fix it because of Twitter, but I got my solution from Julius Solaris:

That link is a step-by-step description of how to accomplish what I want using Google Labs – it’s basically another setting I just had to turn on…. THANK YOU Julius – and Gmail – get that out of labs

This is brilliant.

Many sites grow “virally” by tricking you into “inviting” your contacts to join.  The idea is an invitation from you is probably something your contacts can trust… companies count on that trust to get eyeballs and signups from your (inadvertent) actions.

This caught my attention this morning… a user of one of those systems knew what was happening and wrote a brilliant “don’t do it!’ piece – check it out:

Please disregard this invitation because they did it automatically and I don’t know how to undo it… so here’s some word of mouth – DON’T SIGN UP FOR THIS SYSTEM.

I really appreciate that my contact saw this before he blasted it out to his entire network – in my eyes his credibility shot up 10-fold.

Imagine if websites didn’t do this type of thing.