Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket

Published on August 1, 2011 in these categories: General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

I’ve been away from this blog for far too long, and it’s time to get caught up. After a bleak period of many months with minimal client projects due to the recession, business picked up in earnest in Summer 2010. From that time until now, I’ve been so slammed that I haven’t had a spare moment to spend on this blog. Things have slowed down a bit, so I’m going to spend the next few days posting about some of the cool (and not so cool ) projects I’ve been able to work on.

About that bleak period . . . For a few years prior to the recession, I bet my entire business on one client. They gave me lots of good, steady work. And they were a great group of people to work with. So even though I knew better, I did little to get additional clients. When they had a change in their business structure, the projects Easton Communications was working on were one of the things they cut. Typically, I probably would have been able to regroup and line up new clients within a month or two. But this was the beginning of the recession, and it took me a full nine months to get some new things going. Ouch!

When I finally did get things going again, it was in a field completely outside my area of expertise: writing reserve studies for homeowners associations (HOAs). I even spent several months doing tasks such as managing insurance policies for HOAs, paying bills for HOAs, and providing closing figures to title agents when individual homes in HOAs were sold. This work was all done for my son-in-law, Joe Keizur’s business, Blue Mountain Community Management. This work kept me busy for many months while I worked to bring new clients online to support our core business. I’ll write more about this experience in an upcoming blog entry.

I definitely learned my lesson the past few years. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. I always knew this to be true, but I never had it so painfully proven to be an important principal for small business owners. Easton Communications now has a number of different clients. Work is happening at a fast and furious pace, and has been for the past year.

Stay tuned for posts about some of the projects we’ve been working on in the next few days. Besides writing reserve studies for HOAs, I’ll post about writing scripts for promotional videos, more about developing animated training videos, and doing customer case studies. And a bunch of other stuff too!

It’s good to be back.

iPod Touch Tips for Trouble-Free Use

Published on December 30, 2009 in these categories: Technology. 4 Comments Tags: , , .

I’ve had my 16 GB iPod Touch for almost a year. I love the fun and convenience it provides. Besides being a way to have my pictures and music with me wherever I go, it’s also a useful tool for managing my contacts, email, and other information about whatever projects I’m working on. It’s so useful, in fact, that when it powered down for no reason and couldn’t be turned back on today when I was out running errands, I had a moment of panic. How would I get through the rest of the day until I could get home and figure out what the problem was?

Fortunately, I realized there was an Apple store nearby. I headed over there straightaway to get some help. Instead of having to get a place in the customer service queue, I was able to get a nice support person to take a quick look. She gave me two tips that are quick and easy and got me out of my jam.

iPod_Touch_buttonsFirst she showed me how to get my iPod Touch to turn back on when it’s unresponsive to the normal pushing-of-the-home-button or sleep/wake button. You just press both of the simultaneously and hold them until you see the apple icon on the start-up screen. As soon as you see the apple icon, release both buttons and wait for the iPot Touch to start back up. It can take as long as two minutes when you do this.

The second tip was to be sure to completely power-down the iPod Touch at least once a day. Because the iPod goes into sleep mode, I rarely, if ever, completely power it down. Just like a laptop that gets clogged up and slow if you don’t reboot it regularly, the iPod Touch needs a little restart daily.

For more info about the iPod Touch, see Apple’s website. You can purchase an 8 GB iPod Touch there for $199. Shipping is included, and you can even get the back of your iPod Touch engraved for free. To save a little money, order your iPod Touch from amazon.com. They’ll sell it to you for $179. You won’t get the engraving, but you’ll save $20. Both sites offer free shipping. Note that if you’re reading this long after December 30, 2009, the prices will probably be different. Hopefully lower!

Email Campaigns

Published on December 9, 2009 in these categories: Communications and General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

One of the best ways to stay in touch with your customer base is with email. An effective email campaign is designed to reach out to your customers in a timely and effective manner. Both the timing and the content of an email campaign can make a big difference in whether your customers actually read your email or whether they simply click Delete.

One of my clients is a hotel on the Oregon Coast. We use targeted email to announce special pricing for lodging at the hotel. To make the email enticing enough for people to read, we include other information of interest about activities going on nearby. Things such as dining, festivals, hiking, and other beach activities are typical stories. We try to include a balance of pictures and text to make the email aesthetically pleasing as well as interesting and informative to the reader. Click here to view a sample email created for this client.

When developing an email campaign, it is essential that the email only be sent to subscribers who have opted-in to receive the email. There are many service providers who manage email lists and help ensure your email isn’t treated as spam. More about this in another post.

Staying Relevant

Published on August 27, 2009 in these categories: Writing. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Over the past 150 years, we have progressed from the Agricultural Age to the Industrial Age to the Information Age. The Information Age has made many things possible, including this website and blog. It created a new workforce: “knowledge workers.” Knowledge workers focus largely on manipulating information and deploying expertise.  A number of fields fall into the category of knowledge worker . . . computer programmers, web developers, lawyers who draft contracts, MBAs and number crunchers. These fields share similar characteristics in that they are analytical, sequential, and logical.

Those of us who are knowledge workers have seen the employment landscape change drastically over the past few decades. The heyday of the 90’s was replaced by the dot-com bust as we entered the 21st century. And just when we thought we’d turned the corner on that, we were faced with the biggest recession most of us have ever experienced.

In these troubled times, companies are looking for lifelines they can grasp to save their sagging bottom lines. Many times the solution is to replace knowledge workers with off-shore workers willing to do the same work for pennies on the dollar. Automation is also replacing many knowledge workers. Free or cheap electronic databases are replacing the knowledge previously provided only by lawyers and doctors. Accounting that used to require much thought and analysis by a skilled CPA is now accomplished in seconds using QuickBooks or TurboTax. And on and on it goes.

So how do we knowledge workers stay relevant and necessary in our current troubled times? According to Danial Pink in his book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, “Mere survival today depends on being able to do something that overseas knowledge workers can’t do cheaper, that powerful computers can’t do faster.” Pink makes a good case that we are entering a new age called the Conceptual Age, where knowledge workers will need to “supplement our well-developed high-tech abilities with abilities that are high concept and high touch.”

What exactly does this mean? Pink has devoted A Whole New Mind to explaining this. It’s a good, easy read and I highly recommend it. To tempt you a little, I’ll let you know that it means transitioning from sequential, logical, and analytical left-brain thinking to non-linear, intuitive, and holistic right-brain thinking. The left-brain capabilities are still necessary, but are no longer sufficient. According to Pink, “the capabilities we once disdained or thought frivolous–the right-brain qualities of inventiveness, empathy, joyfulness, and meaning–increasingly will determine who flourishes and who flounders.”

Will you make the leap? Or will you be left competing with cheaper off-shore workers and automation?

eLearning With Video Animations

Published on July 30, 2009 in these categories: Communications and WordPress. 0 Comments Tags: , .

There are many ways to communicate information. Many times, a picture is worth a thousand words. And sometimes an animation is worth even more. Whether you’re teaching a new user how to use your application or convincing a potential customer why they should buy your product, a video animation is often the easiest way to get your point across.

Consider the simple task of creating a blog post (such as this one) in a Wordpress blog. It would take several paragraphs of fairly un-interesting text to spell out the basic steps involved. After reading the steps, you may or may not have a clear picture in your mind of how to perform the task. By conveying the information in an animated tutorial, there’s no second-guessing involved. You see and hear exactly what the steps are. This sample video animation demonstrates the task of creating a blog post in less than a minute.

Video animations are often referred to as “eLearning.” eLearning is by no means the only way to communicate step-by-step instructions. But many times it’s the most effective.

Know Your Audience

Published on July 23, 2009 in these categories: Communications and Writing. 0 Comments Tags: .

Before writing any type of technical documentation, whether it’s a short piece of web content or an extensive knowledge system for a complex software product, you need to know who you’re writing to. This goes by many names, such as audience analysis, customer analysis, or user profile. Having an understanding of your audience impacts your writing style, voice, and the method of communication. These are a few things to consider when doing an audience analysis: Continue reading ‘Know Your Audience’

Giving Up the Morning Paper

Published on June 15, 2009 in these categories: Reading. 3 Comments Tags: , , .

The age of the paper newspaper is nearing its end. From an environmental perspective, this is probably a good thing. But sitting down with your morning cup of coffee and your laptop just isn’t the same experience as flipping through your favorite newspaper. I recently learned of something that just might make the transition from paper to bits a little easier for those of us who really prefer to get our daily news fix the old-fashioned way. Continue reading ‘Giving Up the Morning Paper’

Getting Started: Setting up WordPress

Published on May 19, 2009 in these categories: Reading and WordPress. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Once you’ve set up your MySQL database and installed WordPress, it’s time to start creating your blog. WordPress is extremely flexible and makes it easy to get going. You don’t need any special programming skills. You can go the simple route and just write and publish your blog. Or you can customize your blog and even turn it into a complete website. Continue reading ‘Getting Started: Setting up WordPress’

We Love Books

Published on May 14, 2009 in these categories: Reading. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

Because we love books at Easton Communications, and use them all the time to learn new things and help us deliver stellar client solutions, we’ve added a new Books area to our website highlighting some of our favorites. Besides providing a little information about why we like a book, we also provide a link to each book on Amazon. This makes it easy for you to get more information and even order a book if we’ve really sold you on it.

In this day and age, no list of books is complete without mentioning Amazon’s amazing Kindle. We highlight the Kindle 2 and Kindle DX in our Books area.

Be sure to visit our Books area from time to time to see what’s new. You may end up stumbling on exactly the right book right when you need it.

Getting Started: Setting up MySQL

Published on May 8, 2009 in these categories: Reading and WordPress. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

As you’ve probably noticed, this blog is a WordPress blog. WordPress makes it extremely easy to start, update, and manage a blog. You can even build an entire website around a WordPress blog. That’s what I’ve done. Continue reading ‘Getting Started: Setting up MySQL’