• Intro
  
• Interview - Karen Drebes on Marketing Calendars
  
• The Office Corner
  
• Giveaway Stuff
  
• Grammar Question - Capitalizing "government"
  
• Tech Tips by Terence Kierans - Transitioning
  
• Tech Corner
  
• Writing Corner
  
• Trivia
  
• Word of the Month - Recuse
  
• Recommendations
  
• Judy's Corner
  

* Who says creating headings can't be fun? Early Winters has a print catalog with terrific headings. This caught my eye: "Give blood on your own terms!" There's a graphic of a mosquito to the upper right of the text, and two pages of mosquito-protection items.

* Congratulations to subscriber Jim Nugent, whose name was chosen from the monthly book drawing! He chose the Word 2000 book. Nugent, of San Jose, California, is a veteran, long-time, exceptionally good public relations/marketing consultant. Even he admits it.

* UNDERSTANDING DAD BOOK - AUGUST WINNER: Sandra R., Ontario, Canada.

* CALAMITY JAN'S BOOK - AUGUST WINNER: Phil B., Oklahoma.

Let's talk about your marketing calendar. What? You don't have a marketing calendar? How are you going to promote your business? Do you hang out your shingle, print business cards, and wait for the phone to ring? Here's one of the marketing programs I came up with:

I made a list of the services I offer, grouping like service under one banner. Let's say I have six different services that I want to highlight. Six is a nice easy number, so every other month I should/could/MUST do a mailing. I plotted that on my calendar.

I have the When and now need the What. I'm sure you've heard the old rule of thumb: You have to get in their faces four to seven times before they'll respond, so every other month should work well.

While it's "in their faces," it doesn't have to be the same boring thing each time. Be creative. Pretend you're the recipient. Think of an annual theme to use, or, if not a theme, a color scheme: *some* identifying element that you'll use on all media: we're going for recognition here, folks.

Give it some thought and make it good. I tend to stay with certain colors, changing slightly, but my logo stays the same. It's just a small little thing, but it's on all my work. I've even gone so far as to shrink the logo down and use it as a bullet in a list. Granted, it doesn't work for all logos, but it does for mine.

Take a look at the national holidays. Can you work them into your plan? What holidays fall in "your" months? Can you play off the holidays in your marketing piece?

Or, completely ignore the holidays and stick to your own well- developed theme.

What type of medium? Well, in print you've got post cards (my personal favorite), bi- and tri-fold brochures, fold-over business cards (another favorite), candy wrappers, etc. You are limited by your own imagination.

I've even heard of someone buying a bunch of cheap baby shoes. He sent a single shoe in a 6 x 9 brown envelope with a note that said "I just wanted to get my foot in the door..."

If you are thinking about a postcard campaign, make it sequential. Perhaps the first one can be an overview of your services/products; then make the subsequent postcards product/service specific. Offer something: a free sample kit, 10% during the month of...give them a reason to call you: a reason to respond.

Stick to your calendar! You've spent the time to plot it out and plan the work, now JUST DO IT!

Karen Ann Drebes, MVA, CRESS, PREVA
Source for Sources, Inc.
Office Assistance from a Distance
We Follow Up and Follow Through For You
mailto:kad@s4sva.com

1. MS PUBLISHER CONVERSION TO ANOTHER VERSION: I recently converted a file for someone who has Pub 2000 and couldn't open a file which was done in Pub 2002.

The only problem with saving as a lower version is that things tend to move around. Not all effects are supported in lower versions. This is true of any software.

My advice: if you know that the person who will be getting (or using) the file has a lower software version, you, as the creator, need to save it for them in THAT version. Then YOU can fix any of the errors that will happen as a result of the file conversion BEFORE sending it on to them. Makes life a bit easier for all concerned!

Patricia L. Johnson
Mid-Hudson Regional Information Center,
mailto:webmaster@mhric.org
www.mhric.org

2. PROPOSAL KITS: This site has a variety of proposal kits and some solid testimonials. If you're not up to speed in this area, and need to write even one important proposal, you might consider one of these kits.
http://www.proposalkit.com/index.html

3. U.S. BLUE PAGES: The U.S. Blue Pages project is devoted to helping people connect with their federal government agencies and services. This includes gathering and formatting information for local telephone directories and this website. It has comprehensive search capabilities to easily find phone numbers when searching for listings by key words, city, and state. Find any US government office phone number. Thanks to Rebecca Game of www.digital-women.com.
http://www.usbluepages.gov/

EBOOK BY BOB MC ELWAIN: If you want your own copy of "Your Path To Success" click on the link below. If you're the THIRD person to click, the book is yours!
mailto:bob@sitetipsandtricks.com?subject=Judys_Ezine

GIVEAWAY BOOK! Subscribers are eligible to sign up to win a copy of "The Home Office and Small Business Answer Book: Solutions to the Most Frequently Asked Questions About Starting and Running Home Offices and Small Businesses" by Janet Attard, or a Merriam-Webster's Dictionary
Sign up once a month at http://www.ossweb.com/freebook.html

Q. Do we capitalize the g in U.S. government, whether it is used as a noun or verb?

A. According to Associated Press Stylebook (2000), and Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, you always lowercase and never abbreviate: the federal government, the state government, the U.S. government.

Be creative and use transitions. Use them sparingly or at random and your web pages will stand out among static pages.

Add this code to the <head> </head> area of your page:

<META http-equiv="Page-Enter" content="revealTrans (Transition=X,Duration=1.000)">.

The (Transition=X...) lets the user's browser know which transition to display, so substitute the appropriate number for 'X' from this list:

Terence Kierans
Cyberspace Virtual Services
tkierans@virtualservices.com.au
http://www.virtualservices.com.au/
We keep your project on the boil, while you sleep

1. SEARCH ENGINE RELATIONSHIP CHART: The highly respected Bruce Clay has just updated his chart. Well worth downloading.
http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginechart.pdf

2. BACKUP SOFTWARE FOR ARCHIVING OUTLOOK EXPRESS Outlook Express Backup Wizard is a popular software utility to create backup copies of the Outlook Express email database.
http://www.outlook-express-backup.com/

3. WEB FORM USERS: For those of you who use website forms on a regular basis. Tip from Terence Kierans
http://www.w3schools.com/xforms/xforms_intro.asp

1. GET A LINER: Want to become a better reader? Read subscriber Nina Sipes's powerful tip on fine-tuning your reading skills. Sipes has 35 years of practical experience in tutoring, educational training, behavioral science, and advocacy and she's also an author.
http://www.readingwriting.com/help_with_reading.htm

2. EDITCETERA'S PROOFREADING AND COPYEDITING CORRESPONDENCE COURSES Enrollees receive a course manual that includes training exercises, some to be self-corrected with a key, others to be critiqued by the instructor. Participants work at their own pace, and have up to one year to complete the course. Much more on this site for freelance publishing / publications professionals. Instructors include people like Amy Einsohn, John Bergerz, Barbara Fuller, Marilyn Schwartz, Zipporah Collins, and Melissa Stein.
http://www.editcetera.com/courses.html

3. WRITING IRRESISTIBLE SALES COPY: CAN YOU MEET THE CHALLENGE? Nothing is more likely to be crucial to the success of your enterprise than the crafting of powerful and compelling sales messages. By Azriel Winnett. This website is full of articles to help people improve in the area of communication.
http://hodu.com/copywriting.shtml

1. ROADSIDE PEEK: An adventure in time. Takes you on a roadside journey in time. As you travel, visit old motels, bowling alleys, drive-in theatres, neon signs, petrol pumps, googie sites, tiki villages, and much more.
http://roadsidepeek.com/

2. NAME STATISTICS: Have you ever wondered how your name stacks up against all the others? Do you have one of the most common names or a rare name? Try your first name out and then try your last name out The search engine will tell you what your name's rank really is!
http://www.namestatistics.com/

3: GOLD CLIP ART: Interesting site for people looking for artwork done in gold.
http://www.goldclipart.com

Main Entry: re·cuse
Pronunciation: ri-'kyüz
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): re·cused; re·cus·ing
Etymology: Middle English, to refuse, from Middle French recuser, from Latin recusare
Date: 1949
: to disqualify (oneself) as judge in a particular case; broadly : to remove (oneself) from participation to avoid a conflict of interest - re·cus·al /-'kyü-z&l/ noun

*By permission. From Merriam-Webster's Collegiate(R) Dictionary at www.m-w.com by Merriam-Webster, Incorporated.

1. NUTRITION DATA ANALYZER: This site maintains a large food database that includes information on fast foods and food additives, and provides useful tools for analyzing your diet.
www.nutritiondata.com

2. BLACKPAWDESIGNS: Meet Julie Kimber, who has a wide variety of experiences that come together nicely in her website. And she has a super ezine for small businesspeople.
http://www.blackpawdesigns.com/

Says subscriber Phil B., who won last month's Calamity Jan book: "I received your sister's book 2 days after your last email. I want to know why you've been hiding this one (Jan) from us! I loved her book & appreciate your offer to work with her in giving the book. Tell me you're not hiding others!"

Guilty as charged: I'm hiding Carolyn and David. They are every bit as special as Jan. We complement each other. I can say that now. When we were teenagers, I was too busy borrowing--without permission-- Carolyn's sweaters, and Jan was too busy borrowing mine, to reflect on how we complemented each other. And through all those years, David was the world's biggest tease. Especially about boyfriends. We're different now. Sort of. Ah, those golden days of yesteryear!

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http://www.ossweb.com/ezine-archive-index.html

Questions, comments, recommendations?
Contact Judy Vorfeld at www.ossweb.com.contact.html

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