Should we send a card?

There was a conversation in the office the other day discussing if we should be sending birthday cards to friends, clients, potential clients, etc. The concern was if it would be a worthwhile effort that would be understood as a sincere thought and congratulations?

My question is what is “sincere” today?

When I get a birthday card from my friendly Allstate agent I know it’s an automated act of marketing. They have a system that knows my birthday and my agent’s name, it has a nice hand written font and 10 days before my birthday it shoots out a print, sends it into a folding machine, into an envelope stuffing machine and into the outgoing mail system. Pretty sincere right?

In our case we’re a little smaller. We would have cards printed, fill them out when needed and send a few days before, and probably sometimes after, an individual’s birthday. We probably wouldn’t do it for everyone, but when we did it would be on purpose.

I say that we, without a doubt, should be doing little things like cards to say thanks and congrats to those that make our business what it is. There is to much disconnect and reliance on automation and un-personalized experiences in the world today. A little thing like a hand written card goes along way to remind someone that someone is thinking about you.

SEO vs REO (no speedwagon required)

I’ve been working my way though my Google Reader the past few nights, trying hopelessly, to get caught up on blog going on’s.

Through this reading I came across quite a large number of articles on search engine optimization. Specifically a good number of posts geared toward helping people author content specifically designed for good Google rankings.

There are many “rules” that apply to increased ranking, from titles like “The top 12 ways to blah” or “Effective ways to blah with your bleh” to how frequently key (read “buzz”) words are used within the content. As an example, my opening sentence for this post, with a non-related sentence, is bad form for SEO because it wouldn’t show well in the Google search results.

These techniques are all fine and dandy but I think it really leads to some shoddy and non-informative content. This could be due to the frequency people are trying to produce content thus not allowing them adequate time to research and develop compelling thoughts, or it could just be pigeonholing people into short form, non-amazing buzzword driven writing.

I think it’s fair that people want to create content that get’s listed and ranked by Google and all it’s search engine friends, but I’m looking forward to a time where people return their focus on REO (referral engine optimization). A time where people create content that’s so amazing and insightful that we can’t help but tell our friends and coworkers that something is a “must read”…

Maybe that time already exists….we just call it “books”?

Sleep, who needs it? I do!

Two great articles on sleep pop’ed onto my radar today Trouble sleeping? Maybe it’s your iPad and Sleep for Success: Creativity and the Neuroscience of Slumber.

Sleep is one of those areas that continually amazes me, so simple and complex. Many people claim to run on very limited amounts of sleep, while I can’t really feel healthy and operate with less than 6-7 hours.

Inc. magazine recently had an article about highly productive business owners and detailed one CEO who regularly goes to bed between 11 and midnight every night and is up by 3:30am. I don’t know understand how that can physically be healthy or sustainable…Is it something someone can train themselves into, or is it a genetic anomaly like the people who eat nothing but bacon fat and gallons of wine and live till 110 years old?