Terry Weaver is a guest blogger for Merge and also serves on our Board of Advisors.  Terry is the Owner and CEO of Chief Executive Boards International, an exclusive group of business owners, presidents and CEOs whose members are committed to helping each other achieve both their business goals and their life goals.  Members meet regularly as a confidential, collaborative advisory board to help each other become more focused, effective and strategic.  CEBI operates in 11 major US cities.  You can also check out Terry’s Blog at www.chiefexecutiveblog.com.

I’ve been volunteering at the Greenville Chamber of Commerce, helping with a monthly brown-bag series called the Small Business Owners’ Forum (SBOF).  We recently had a session on using E-Marketing tools to maintain “Front of Mind” with prospects and customers.

It happened that I had recently made a similar presentation at the 2009 Spring Summit of Chief Executive Boards International, but was planning to be in Houston for a CEBI meeting on the day of the SBOF session.  The idea was to do just a short kickoff piece to set up the concept for the live audience.  So, I agreed to record a voice-over behind a few of the PowerPoint slides I’d used earlier.  For those interested in the “how” of this, I have a digital recording setup and some good editing/screen capture software, Camtasia.

The core idea is that prospects, and even customers, forget about who you are, what you do, and how you might be able to help them. And they do so frighteningly quickly. This little piece turned out better than I’d expected, and I’ve subsequently posted it on YouTube.  I encourage you to watch the Video Blog Article on what “Front of Mind” is all about, and why you’ll want to consider E-Marketing tools as part of your customer contact arsenal.

My own testimonial: This stuff works. CEBI has been sending an E-Newsletter to both members and prospects every month for the past 18 months, and the results are amazing. Here are a couple of typical email responses we’ve received lately, 1-2 days after sending a monthly newsletter:

From a prospect who first inquired in March of 2006:
“I am ready to join your organization”

From a prospect who first inquired in January of 2006:
“Terry, I think it is time for me to join your organization”

We’ve had no other communication with these two people (both now members) for over 2 years. Our E-Newsletter alone kept CEBI on their radar until they each decided they had a need for a source of some new ideas.

Bottom Line: If you’re not doing something to actively keep your brand in front of your prospects and customers, give it another thought.  You’ll be glad you did.

If you’ve ever been to Merge’s office, you might have noticed we have a couple of white boards hanging around. In fact, we have 10. Big whoop. But they are double sided (they’re extremely light weight, you can flip them and move them from room to room to swap out if necessary). So essentially, we have 20.

We had a visitor recently who was surprised that such a high-tech and sexy firm like Merge would use something so common as a white board. I agree with him on certain levels. I will do a lot of planning on a white board, from documenting a site map, designing a wire frame or laying out an application. Then, for me or somebody else to put that in a proposal or requirement’s document can literally take a couple of hours.

That’s inefficient, and I’d like to hear your ideas on how to do it better.

BUT…that’s not my point. In this high-tech, fast-moving world we can tend to focus on efficiency and technology over good ole’ fashioned thinking. Merge is a creative firm and we provide creative solutions (most companies today provide creative solutions). In order to produce creative solutions, we must make time to think.

A white board is a thinking tool. Something magical happens when you’re on your feet, writing on a larger than life piece of paper. For me, it’s a brainstorming session on steroids. I think better. I can write something down and immediately wipe it away if it’s no good. I can draw. Make graphs. Whatever. For me, using a white board is a form of art–it’s therapeutic, productive and fulfilling at the same time (yes, I’m still talking about writing on a white board!).

In our current ages, we need more thinking time. We are so extremely busy, we just don’t stop to think. Merge’s precious white boards help us do just that–sexy or not.

My next post I’ll talk about gaining efficiency from transferring content from the white board to the computer. If you have any ideas or experience, comment away.

Bottom Line: Maximize your thinking time for creative solutions and use whatever tool–sexy or not–helps you do that. It could be a piece of paper, a journal, a white board or even the shower glass.

It’s always a pleasure to enjoy an excellent product or experience. One thing I’ve noticed as a consumer of excellence, the product or service has one thing in common: passion.

Here are my three excellent examples:

-The experience and service at The Old Edwards Inn and Spa (obligatory disclaimer, they’re a client): They are driven and passionate about providing a weekend or evening you won’t forget. They deliver, every time. The Old Edwards Inn and Spa is the only resort that delivers an old-world, European resort experience in the mountain village of Highlands, NC.

-BMW. Recently I toured their plant here in Greenville/Spartanburg, SC. Talk about passion. The folks at BMW love their product and work effortlessly in delivering the Ultimate Driving Machine.

-Giovannis. This is absolutely the best Italian Restaurant in Greenville. I’ve been telling everyone about it, and recently, as I begin to tell people, they’ve either already have heard about it or have visited. One thing that sets this little restaurant apart: the owner serves you and takes your order. He is Italian (but grew up in South America). I can hardly understand him (which makes it that much more authentic), but he exudes passion. He loves his craft and I love his food. If you’re in Greenville, go partake. You won’t be disappointed.

Passion. Do you have it? Are you delivering a product out of an inextinguishable passion? If not, how can you get it?

Bottom Line: Excellent products and services come from companies and individuals who are absolutely in love and sold out to the product or service they provide. Without passion, you can’t be excellent.

As a business owner, I can tend to work non-stop. I can pull a 8 – 10 hour day at the office, go home, eat dinner with the kids, put the kids down for dinner, chat with my wife for a bit, and then….crack open the laptop and work for two more hours!

Recently, I had about a 6-8 week period where I was so busy I began to forget tasks, such as replying to an important email, calling someone back, etc. I’m typically quite good from an organizational standpoint, but my wife always reminds me, “You know you’re too busy when you start forgetting stuff.” She’s right.

During this crazy time, I ran into Stacy Coulter, owner of the Spa at West End at the Commerce Club. I told her about my hecticness. She had a solution: Schedule a message.

Now I’m a I’ll-get-a-massage-if-I’m-on-vacation type of a guy. But I took her recommendation and scheduled not one massage, but three (the fourth Tuesday of every month). I knew that if I didn’t schedule the massages, I would never “find the time” to go.

The results were outstanding. I was forced to slow down, relax and they relieved some stress in the process. It allowed me to think more about my business and to stop just working in it. Now, I’ve signed up for the entire year. I may not use them all for myself–I’m sure my wife wouldn’t mind a massage now or again, or an employee who just pulled an all-nighter–the point is, scheduling a massage is a great way to force yourself to slow down and relax–business owner or not, we could all use that, but it’s less likely to happen if it’s not scheduled.

Bottom Line: Take the Spa Challenge. Force yourself to slow down and relax. Schedule 3 massages right now.

1. Start Blogging
If you already have a blog set up, great! If you don’t, what are you waiting for? There are several free blog sites available including WordPress and Blogger by Google. Once you set up your account you can begin blogging immediately.

2. Include Pictures
Pictures draw in your audience and keep them interested. Try using Flickr or Google Images to search for the main theme(s) of your blog post and see what images turn up. Here is a recent example from Merge’s Blog. If you are posting pictures that belong to someone else, make sure the copyright allows it and if so, be sure to give them the proper credit.

3. Human Voice – Be Personable
You are the expert and people come to your blog to learn. Don’t intimidate your audience by using corporate speak. Relate to your audience and show them your true personality and they’ll keep coming back for more.

4. Unique Topics
Keep your audience in mind and use unique topics. The more mainstream your topic, the less likely new followers will be able to find your blog in the mass results of the search engines.

5. Add Value
Don’t be selfish with your blog. It is not purely a marketing tool, it is a chance for you to share your knowledge and provide value. You are an expert in your field and you should not view your readers as competitors.

6. Review of Products Relative to your industry
Review products and your blogs will be more easily found in search engines and provide you credibility for reviewing industry related goods. However, be careful about reviewing local products or services—in the days of social media, blogs can be posted and distributed easily through social media networks like twitter and Facebook. National product reviews, good; local product reviews, beware.

7. Link to Resources
Linking to outside resources indicate that you’ve done your homework and you’re sourcing another expert–which gives you additional credibility. Also, if you provide links to other resources you increase the chance that they will return the favor and link to your blog. Give and you shall receive. When linking to other web sites, be sure to have your link open in a new window or tab. Having links open in the same window is a guarantee that your reader is done reading your blog and might miss out on valuable information.

8. Final Question or Final Thought
A blog is more about a conversation than a soliloquy. A conversations can be had by encouraging the reader to leave comments. Utilizing a final question or final thought is a great way to summarize your topic or theme and also to spur reader comments. Anything that challenges a reader to think is a great way to prompt comments.

9. Make it easy to comment
Almost any blog has the ability for readers to leave a comment, but sometimes it’s not so easy to find. For instance, in Merge’s redesigned web site (coming soon), we will display a much more prominent comment button. Also Make it a priority to respond to your readers comments. Keep the conversation going!

10. Get the Company to Blog – Not Just One Person
Incorporate several employees into your blog and have them post regularly. This will give your readers an even more comprehensive view of your company culture and your company’s range of expertise. A great example of this is Brains on Fire.

11. Be Consistent – Blog Often
Once you start your blog, block out time on your calendar at least 1-2 times a week to write and post new blogs. Nothing bugs a reader more than to find a blog that they like but is only updated once or twice a month. If you allow too much time in between posts, your readers will forget about you and find other blogs to follow.

12. Track Traffic
Use a tool to track your traffic. Merge’s tracker of choice is FeedBurner which makes it easy for your readers to subscribe to your blog. Be sure to check your subscribers often in order to better understand who your audience is which will should be reflected in your topics.

Now it’s your turn: What blogging best practice do you think could be added to the list?

Terry Weaver is a guest blogger for Merge and also serves on our Board of Advisors.  Terry is the Owner and CEO of Chief Executive Boards International, a supportive, collaborative and confidential peer advisory community for entrepreneurs, business owners, presidents and CEOs that is focused on members helping members to achieve balance and success in their lives. You can also check out Terry’s Blog at www.chiefexecutiveblog.com.

I saw a TV commercial from Best Buy this week, saying “If you come shop for a cell phone at Best Buy, we’ll not only help you pick the best device and best carrier for you, but we’ll also move all your pictures, contacts, etc. from your old phone to the new one.”

Brilliant!! At last, a reason to buy something at a retail store! Frankly, I’ve become seriously concerned about the future of retailing. The “big box” stores like Best Buy have only 2 things going for them — they stock the products, so you can get them today, and you can see & touch the products (if they happen to be in stock).

Commodity products like phones (and phone services, for that matter) are a tough place to be, and Circuit City’s recent demise underscores how hard it is to make money selling essentially the same thing everyone else is selling.

Best Buy has figured out how to market an “augmented product” — a commodity product (available anywhere, probably cheaper) augmented by the addition of a critical service — that of helping you migrate from what you have to what you buy. What a great plan — a way to increase the “reason for being” of an electronics retail store, a business model whose reason for being has been steadily eroded by a decade of migration toward online channels.

Have you taken a look lately at augmented product opportunities in your business? What service could you offer to your customers to set yourself apart from other competitors? Look at things the customer has to do before, during or after he uses your product. Is it design? Is it inventory? Is it training? Is it field service? Or something else?

If you’re in a service business, are there products your customer needs before, during or after you provide your service? Could you deliver those as an augmentation to the service you’re now providing, and take a margin on them? You’re there anyway and you have a relationship already.

The Internet has become the great disintermediator. It has evaporated the reason for being of many businesses, particularly those formerly occupied by agents, reps, distributors or retailers. If you’re in one of those “middleman” channels, you’re in the gunsights of the Internet, and your business is likely to be next. Mount your defense in advance by augmenting the product you provide with services your customer needs, thereby providing an indispensable combination and increasing his “switching costs” — he has to find and coordinate more than one vendor to replace you.

So, just when I thought big box retailing was an endangered species, Best Buy came up with a way, in at least one product line, to increase its reason for being. Way to go, guys!

Today I participated in the PULSE Pace Setters retreat, where part of our afternoon was group initiative team-building exercises.

One of our challenges was to pass a tennis ball around the circle in a particular pattern. We were given the guidelines, and then we were challenged to see how fast we could do it. Our first attempt was 30-some seconds. Our second attempt was 15. Our third, 4 seconds. Our last, 1.5 seconds.

How did we get to from 30+ seconds to less than 2 seconds?

We challenged the assumptions. We realized we were playing the game by several unspoken rules that never existed, but nonetheless, the group unconsciously enforced them.

Don’t we do this in life? Don’t we live by a set of rules that don’t exist (you must have a TV, cable, two cars and a house–who says)? Don’t we do this in business (you must answer your phone anywhere and at all times, you must play the sales game, the customer is always right–who says)?

We’re following a set of rules, consciously or not, that dictate our actions. But don’t we, on the other hand, admire those who don’t follow the rules? Those who say, “I don’t care what everyone else is doing, I’m doing it this way.” They are the rebels, the mavericks, the entrepreneurs (Steve Jobs, Richard Branson). Look even at the web business. Don’t 99% of web sites look alike? How could this be unless we’re all following some set of spoken or unspoken rules, even if we do label them as “best practices?”

The Bottom Line: Great Companies realize there are no rules. They recognize that there are merely guidelines, and those who challenge assumptions and therefore ignore unspoken rules will win.

The Ultimate Driving Machine. Precision. Performance. Luxury. Beautiful. Quality. Innovation. So many great adjectives come to mind to describe a BMW.

Recently, I visited the BMW plant to see how this high-performance machine is built. Although it should not have been surprising, I was amazed at the processes and systems that are in place to consistently build such a car. On one hand, the experience was “sexy” because the plant is something out of a sci-fi movie with the technology and robots that are in place. On the other hand, it was unromantic to see such a beautiful car built in a methodical and predictable manner.

My take away was my outlook on the creative process. Creative professionals tend to buck systems, procedures and structure overall. But arguably, a BMW is the product of spectacular creativity–from the exterior design to the minute design of a cup holder to the innovation of their transmission to how to build the machine itself.

The creative process isn’t always as sexy as the end product. It can require structure. It can require planning. It may require processes and systems–especially if you’re creating creative solutions over and and over again.

BMW has it down–in an economy that’s killing the automobile industry, they’re producing a superior product and still making money. The precise Germans are delivering some of the most beautiful, creative and innovative products out there–and a good portion of what they do is not the sexy creative process one may think it is–rather, a good dose of it is extremely methodical.

Here’s the out-of-the-box thought: Creativity may require you to get back in the box and to develop a process to both produce creative ideas and then a system to execute them.

All right, let’s get technical. Here at Merge HQ we use a top-notch framework called CakePHP to build some of our custom applications, but recently I encountered a mystifying issue whilst hacking away on a big project. Cake seems to have an odd habit of ignoring some of your code when it generates error pages (you know, those lovely 404 “file not found” pages we all cherish). In my case, the title of the site and the main menu refused to display, so that’s a bit jarring, to say the least.

Fortunately, after a day of sifting through more CakePHP code than I’d prefer, I happened upon a solution. This is a problem that has plagued plenty of developers besides me, and I can only hope they might benefit as well. So what’s the scoop? The short version is simply to add the following code to your app_controller.php file:

function __construct() {
    parent::__construct();
    if ($this->name == 'CakeError') {
        $this->constructClasses();
        $this->beforeFilter();
    }
}

This forces Cake to load the components your site uses and run the normal setup code on your site’s error pages. The long version of this solution can be read (or fallen asleep to) on my blog. Let it never be said the life of a web developer is just all cherries and ice cream (although admittedly there is an ample supply of both).

Prompt and timely feedback can be an extremely useful tool for gathering important information for any organization, such as:

• Customer Satisfaction
• Employee Input
• Human Resources questionnaires used to qualify candidates pre-interview
• Marketing Research
• Meeting feedback for boards and committees

Many businesses view surveys as a prompt and accurate method of getting information, but administrating surveys can prove cumbersome and expensive. Fortunately, because of some free and low-cost web-based survey tools, it doesn’t have to be that way!

Discover three survey tools Merge recommends:

1. Survey Monkey (http:// www.surveymonkey.com/)
Not only is Survey Monkey free, but it’s also flexible and user-friendly. Survey Monkey allows users to create over 12 different types of questions including multiple choice, rating scales, drop-down menus, and more. You can also upload your company’s logo and manipulate the colors to match your companies branding to a certain extent. When results start coming in, you can also export the results to excel as well as view and analyze results as reports on the Survey Monkey web site.

2. Zoomerang (http://www.zoomerang.com/)
Like Survey Monkey, Zoomerang has a free version but has a more robust paid version. The biggest advantage is that Zoomerang offers a more extensive reporting tool than other survey tools. It has a flexible cross-reference report to allow survey administrators to see the data relationships across a set of questions.

3. Google Docs (http://docs.google.com)
By far the easiest to administer, Google Docs is commonly known as a way to share word and excel documents both internally and externally. However, it is also a powerful tool for conducting surveys. Similar to Survey Monkey, Google Docs provides several options for types of questions but only about half as many as Survey Monkey. One positive attribute of Google Docs is that you can choose to share your documents through links on your web site or keep them private and share or view by invitation only. Results are also centralized and can be viewed via web browser or by exporting to Excel. The best part? It’s entirely free.