FINAL POST! I’ve moved to my own domain

Hey all!

Thanks for visiting …. I’m not longer updating this site and have moved everything to my own domain at: BrianFeener.com.  I wanted more control over my layout and plugins.

I still love to answer questions so be sure to visit and send one in to brian AT brianfeener DoTcom. Thanks!

Web 2.0 Guidelines

Enlisting the help of a 3rd Party site is worth the time and effort to upload and update content when:

• There can be a positive return on investment, including, but not limited to contacts, revenue, page views, or brand image.
• The overall image of the brand is improved.

To the peanut gallery: Thoughts?

So Last Season

Picture a High School valley girl: “That shirt is so last season.”

Picture your customers: “Your website doesn’t work in BrowserX.”

Do you think that the valley girl cares that the shirt is vintage? Or that the shirt is so ahead of its curve that it’s for TWO seasons from now?

Do you think that your customer cares that your website works perfectly in IE6? Or that the site works BETTER than perfect in Opera Mini?

Especially in tech, if you’re not serving your customers on today’s needs, they will migrate. It’s just the way it is.

….

This is true for all knowledge workers as well. Can’t figure out Excel but need to work out budgets? Familiar with the AP Style Guide but not Chicago? Trying to get into the global marketplace but don’t understand Chinese and Indian economics?

Guess who is responsibility it is to know these things.

Guess who is judging you about the fact that you don’t.

Add your thoughts in the comments.

Custom Vs Now

I was updating my main website today and put something called Spring Widgets on it so that I can aggregate my feeds into one central location.

I showed my buddy Mills, who said “I would want to customize it a little more.”

While, yes, it would be nice to have really custom, perfect widgets for my site, I got these in 15 seconds.  And then I’m done. 

Sometimes it’s better to go custom.  Sometimes it’s better to go now.  What other factors are out there to take into account? 

Add your thoughts in the comments.

Tempo

Speed metal, hip-hop, cool jazz, and salsa all employ different rhythms to sound the way they do.

The thing that they have in common is that each typically has a drummer to keep the beat.

The fascinating thing is that each has a different style of drumming, each has a different set up for the drums, each keeps different time, but they all work.

What if your rhythm is off?

What about your business? Can you survive a missed high-hat or a errant snare? Would it be worth changing the rhythm to make things sound different than the rest of the pack? How about if you put salsa rhythms in your hip hop song? Do you want every song to sound the same? Do you want every song to stand on its own?

Rhythms are predictable. That’s why you can clap along to them. Customers like to clap along.

Saying Hi

When is that last time you’ve just said “hi” to your customers?

You didn’t try to sell them anything- you just wanted to say that you recognized that they are there. 

What’s it worth?  Well, the people at Field Notes think it’s worth a whole lot.  So much so that people have started saying “hi” back. 

I’m willing to bet that in the long run, they will have sold more notebooks because they were just being friendly.

I Played (USA Football)

Some free promotional material for USA Football – -

We are looking for your football story. Here’s your chance to give something back and recognize those great individuals who helped you out along the way. If you played youth, high school, college or even professional football, we want to hear from you. Tell us what the great game of football has meant to you.

I Played

Darren Rovell knows the Genius of Brian Feener

Check it out:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/24759186

What’s Beef?

Jadakiss and DJ Green Lantern are still beefing.

What does this have to do with business? It’s the final quote by the DJ when he says that it’s “not on me, it’s on him” to reach out and try to resolve the issue.

Guess what, when your customers feel that you’ve slighted them with customer service, it will never be on them to reach out and try to resolve the issue. Even if their reaching out would create a real, long-term benefit to them, they will never give you an opportunity to ask for forgiveness in a gift basket.

You will need to make it your priority to MAKE the opportunity.

(Of course, there are limits. Like a theology teacher once told me: “An apology is like a FedEx package. You can always refuse the delivery. But it’ll never be accepted if never sent.”)

Facebook groups

What can you do with a facebook group?  How can you turn it into something tangible?

We’re going to find out…