Year: 2011

Our best chance yet to help bring Noor and Ramsay home

Dave

If you know me, you know that my friend Colin Bower’s sons Noor and Ramsay were kidnapped more than a year ago and taken to Egypt by their mother, despite Colin having custody of the boys. There’s been a major new development in this heartbreaking case.

Rep. Barney Frank has introduced a resolution calling for Egypt to release Noor and Ramsay. This could finally be what brings Noor and Ramsay home. Please use this link to find your Congressional representative. Send an email and ask him or her to support the resolution. I’ll include some sample wording to make it as easy as possible:

Dear Rep. ____________

Please support Rep. Frank and Rep. Smith’s Resolution 193 to return Noor and Ramsay Bower and ensure Egypt and other countries join the Hague Convention. This is critical to protect the rights of American children in our district, nationally and abroad. Please co-sponsor this Resolution immediately.

Stop boring your customers

Dave

There’s a pizza place in my town that does a TGIM pizza special on Mondays. Great idea. I’ve always wondered why we celebrate Fridays when they don’t need anything more to make them special. Of all the pizza specials that are offered every week, this one stands out, because it’s different.

What can you do that’s unexpected, meets a need and delights people? Sure, that’s a broad and by no means original question. But narrow it down to social media. What are you doing now? Is it a surprise and a delight, or are you doing the same thing all your competitors are doing?

Take off your sales and marketing hat and put on your normal person hat. What do you want from a company with whom you have a relationship? What’s the one blog, Facebook page or Twitter feed you would miss the most? What real value are they giving you? What do you have that would be equally valuable to your customers?

Image by Matt Watts

If I love buying local so much, why do I buy so much from Amazon?

Dave

I am a huge fan of buying local. I got a warm glow at a coffee shop this morning when I saw the list of their local sources of ingredients. I pay more money for locally-made items because I want those businesses to succeed and stay in my community. Heck, I buy soap from Piedmont Biofuels. I know it’s a by product of something or other and I don’t really care, because it’s local.

But today I’m trying to buy a chair for my new home office. I did a Google search for furniture stores in my town and got a more-or-less useless mishmash of results. Only one of the stores I had in mind showed up on the first page of results, and it doesn’t appear to have a website.

Then I searched for a store by name. Its site won’t open. I followed the link to its Facebook page, but that has no useful information.

Ten years ago, I would have spent the day driving around to furniture stores. I don’t have that kind of time anymore, and I don’t think The Boy would enjoy it very much. “Or he would enjoy it too much: “Cool! A hundred beds to jump on!””

Local merchants, I love you and I want to buy from you, even if you cost a little more. Please, make it easy for me. Before I come to your store, I want to look at your website. And I don’t just want stock photos and your hours. It would be nice to know what brands you carry, but I also want to know what your prices are and if you have what I want in stock. Before I get in the car, I want to know there’s at least a reasonable chance I’m going to come home with what I want.

If I can’t get that, why wouldn’t I just order it from Amazon?

Image by me