Branding

Motivational Pix – UPDATE

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We've now completed 23 inspirational quotes "mini posters" which will be posted every Monday (except Labor Day, September 1st) at 10 AM Eastern time.  We hope you find them both visually interesting and mentally stimulating.  Please feel free to share them, even print them out as pictures and tack them on your wall for inspiration.

We're working on even more of them, and may release the whole pack in one ZIP file at some point.  We encourage you to post any comments you may have.  Thanks for keeping up with them, and with Agile'.

Motivational Pix

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We currently have the next 9 weeks of motivational quote pix in the bag.  We'll be putting more of them together soon.  We've got enough to last at least through the summer.

Watch for the newest pic with quote to be posted at 10 AM Eastern every Monday.  We hope you find them motivational and inspirational, and that they help you on your road to success!

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Facebook Pages For Business

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We have a detailed article on using Facebook Pages to promote restaurants.  Hopefully it will see the light of day in a publication soon.  How did we come to write this article?

Well, Agile' has two restaurants as clients, and we set up and maintain their Facebook pages (along with maintaining their web sites).  As a result of that, we picked up a restaurant review site, CNYDining.com, as a client a few years back.  It languished for some time, but recently we renewed it's lease on life.

Friday night, we used FB's "Promotion" utility to get the name of the site out there.  Technically, what we were hunting for was "Likes" on the CNYDining Facebook Page.  As a by-product, we were hoping people would travel through to the actual web site.  We did this with the smallest of budgets – $5 per day.

Results: In less than 48 hours, we were well over 50 likes for the page, and the statistics for the main site show a steady increase in the number of visitors, which confirms that they've been coming through from the FB Page.  Miniscule numbers, right?  We also launched a Twitter account for them, and the first tweet just went live around midnight.

Our next step is to put together a give-away keyed to FB Page "Likes."  We're looking at a couple 2-for-1 dining coupon books.  Total cost (with shipping to the winners) should be around $50.  I'm planning to reach 250 likes that way.  And to get more, we'll do what I've been advocating all my clients do: ASK.  Ask them to suggest the site and the Page to their friends.

Give Them Free Rum

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My wife and I just returned from St Martin in the Caribbean.  We were staying on the French side (there's also a Dutch side to the island) in the town of Grand Case.  Yes, it was a vacation, but I'm always on the lookout for new and unique marketing ideas.  Sometimes, like on this trip, I get whacked over the head with how effective "the basics" are, and how time-tested techniques can – and should – be used.

Grand Case is the culinary capitol of the Caribbean.  I don't know who first bestowed that sobriquet, but I'd say it fits.  The Boulevard is narrow, with cars parked haphazardly on either side of the street, tourists walking along it and other cars and motorbikes zipping between them.  The Boulevard, at less than a mile long, is also home to 20 or more restaurants.  While some of these are barbecue joints, serving things like pork ribs, chicken and other "home cooked" specialties, most of the restaurants serve fancy French cuisine, mostly in open-air establishments.  Half of these. the ones on the north side of the Boulevard, are right on the beach, and offer spectacular views.

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Advice For Authors

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You’ve written your book.  It’s published – print, ebook, audio, maybe all three.  You wrote a first draft, then a second, third and forth.  Then there was the editing.  Sometimes you changed a line, or a paragraph.  Sometimes it was a word, or just a punctuation mark.  But you’re tired of the damned thing, and it doesn’t matter anymore because it’s published.  You can forget about it.

Well. . . no.  You can’t.  Novel or non-fiction, in order for people to stumble on it by chance, loving every word and telling all their friends to buy a copy, the book must be promoted.

Here’s a sad (perhaps) fact for you: all that effort to write your book is just the tip of the iceberg.  In order for you to become the next shining literary beacon, the bottom 90% of your iceberg needs to be completed.  You need to be interviewed, to be quoted, to do readings for rooms small and even smaller.  You need to remain completely upbeat when getting up early and staying up late for phone interviews, saying the same things over and over again.  Blogs and magazines won’t go out and find your book on a store shelf, rushing home to read it and gush over it to their myriad readers.  It needs to be put into their hands.

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Please Comment & Share

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Ladies and gents:

If you’re reading our posts – and our stats indicate that at least a few people are visiting our blog – please take a moment to post a comment.  If you agree with something I’ve said, that’s great.  If you disagree with something in a post, that’s great too!  While I write the posts to provide insight into Agile’ and myself, and to offer education and instruction, I also want to inspire people to think, and to consider.

If a post makes you think, if a post inspires you to come up with your own ideas, please take a moment and share them with us and the other readers.  Yes, we do have anti-spam measures in place, but if you’ve got a real comment related to a post, it’ll be put through.  If we post something and you disagree, we welcome all rational and reasoned responses.  Tell us why you don’t like it, where we went wrong, and what life’s really all about.  And hey, if it’s interesting and on topic, we welcome irrational and unreasoned responses too.

And while we’re on the topic, the individual page for each post has a selection of clickable “share” icons on top.  You can share our posts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and a few more places.  We’d appreciate it if you’d take the time to actually share a post.  That way, it will open a wider audience to experience our brilliance or stupidity – occasionally both in the same post.

Thanks for reading!

Restaurant Rants – Part 2

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I used to have lunch at a chain sandwich shop near my office a few times a month.  When they first opened, they were doing a good business.  I enjoyed the place enough that I signed up for the corporate emails, which sometimes included coupons.  I’d print them off and use them in the restaurant.

Granted, the town where I had my office has slid far, far downhill in the last 15 years.  Three major factories closed around 1998, and a lot of the people left in town don’t make anywhere near as much money as they used to.  So any business there is kind of hard.

There was (and still is) another franchised sandwich shop in town.  For years, that chain had been my favorite.  But they’d begun raising their prices to what I consider a ridiculous level, and I was really enjoying the new place anyway.

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Another View On Pricing

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While this link specifically talks about pricing for photographers, you could substitute almost any profession here.

On one hand, I agree with what they’re saying: Sell the emotional aspects of your service first.  If people decide they want the quality and peace of mind you offer, they’ll be more willing to pay a price that’s higher than they expected.

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