Here are eight of our most popular articles about blogging from 2008 (feel free to re-post on your own blog):

8 Reasons NOT to Blog

• http://heblogssheblogs.com/8-reasons-not-to-blog/

10 Good Reasons to Blog

• http://heblogssheblogs.com/10-good-reasons-to-blog/

Essential Blog Design Tips

• http://heblogssheblogs.com/blog-design-tips/

How to Plan and Launch a Blog Tour

• http://heblogssheblogs.com/blog-tours/

10 Commandments for Christian Bloggers

• http://heblogssheblogs.com/blogging10commandments/

Tips for Treating Your Blog as a Business

• http://heblogssheblogs.com/businessblogging/

How to Create a Hyperlink Inside a Blog Post

• http://heblogssheblogs.com/creatinglinks/

When–and How–to Compress URLs

• http://heblogssheblogs.com/compressingurl/

Also in this series:

1. The Best (or Worst) Putrid Prose of 2008
2. 11 Tips for Becoming a Better Writer
3. 12 Most Popular Marketing Articles
4. Twitterific Roundup
5. Most Popular Free-for-All Columns

Have you ever had to use the toilet and couldn’t find one? That’s what the 150 children who attend school in the Haitian village of Les Fonds face every day. Their school does not have any kind of toilet facilities.

The cost to build a quality latrine (aka, outhouse) for the school is $3,000 (USD). We have been raising funds to help our friends in Haiti build the latrine, and we’re one-third of the way there.

If you’d like to make an online, tax-deductible donation (in which 100 percent of the funds will be used to build the latrine), go to University Presbyterian Church (Seattle) and create an account.

Once you’re logged in to your account, schedule a contribution by doing the following (click on the image at right to see full-size instructions):

1. Click “Fund”
2. Missions - Global
3. Sub Fund - Robinson, Haiti

When you’ve completed the process, e-mail HeBlogsSheBlogs.com and we’ll notify Bruce and Deb Robinson (our long-term missionary friends in Northwest Haiti) that your contribution is to be earmarked for building the latrine.

Thank you for your kindness in helping this project come to fruition. We’ll keep you updated on the progress.

Warning: rant coming up.

I tried to resist writing this post. Really. I’m a not a “the-glass-is-half-full” kinda guy. I’m a “someone-will-be-by-any-second-to-fill-up-my-glass-the-rest-of-the-way” kind of guy. (There’s a reason I have a Tigger baseball hat.)

But I have to comment on some customer service I’ve, uh, been subjected to recently.

Office Max: I go in to order biz cards. After waiting two or three minutes the gal behind the printing counter looks at me and says, “What?”

I say, “I’d like to have some cards printed.” Her response? Big sigh, then, “I’m pretty busy, you’re going to have to wait awhile.” Then she walks off. So did I.

Jet City Pizza: My wife and park in front of their Redmond store to run an errand. When we return a Jet City employee happens to be standing outside. I wave and say hello. He says, “Didja have to park right there?! Jesh!” We’ve ordered many pizzas from JCP over the years. Their phone won’t be ringing from ours anytime soon.

AT&T: My son’s phone wound up in the washing machine. Bye-bye cell phone. Saturday night we shop for a new phone at the Woodinville AT&T store. A sales associate explains if I sign up for a corporate account through my business I can get a discount. “Great! What do I do?”

“E-mail me your tax ID number when you get home, I’ll get it set up tonight, you can pick up your phone tomorrow.” (Sunday.)

I call on Sunday to make sure she’s done what she said she would. She’s off. I explain to the man on the phone what we did the night before. But they can’t access their data base to see if the account has been set up. “Call back tomorrow.” There was no “I’m sorry for the inconvenience, sorry we can’t get into the file,” just, “Call back tomorrow.”

So my son does so. Leaves a message. He waits. No response. Ah, must be ’cause he’s a kid. I call. Our gal is with a customer but she’ll call us right back, we’re assured. We wait. And wait some more.

As of Monday night at 8p, still no call. Still no response to my Saturday night e-mail.

I’m confused. I was ready to hand her money and a two-year commitment with her name on the account. And these sales people work on commission! (We ended up going to another AT&T store where Scott did a great job taking care of us.)

The happy Apple story: My son buys himself a MacBook. A day later they come out with a slightly better deal. We call Apple to see if we can get the better deal. “No problem!” Taken care of by the guy on the phone in three minutes.

Two days later we have to call Apple on another issue. Solved in seven minutes and the gal apologizes for taking so long! No, I’m not kidding.  (Are you saying, as I did, “It usually takes 10 minutes just to get a live body on the phone at most companies.”?)

So let me end this rant with a rave for Apple. I’ve teased my son about going to the dark side by buying a Mac (we live in Microsoft territory) but I’m not sure what I can needle him about. The product has lived up to the hype, and Apple has the best customer service I’ve experienced in a long time. Friendly. Fast. Knowledgeable.

Is it really that hard to get decent customer service? (The brutal answer is yes; getting and training great employees is hard work. But when you’re tossing significant amounts of your yearly budget into the advertising arena, trying to drive people into your stores, don’t you think teaching your employees to treat customers with common courtesy is important?)

Share a rant or even better, a rave about customer service  you’ve experienced lately.

Tags: great customer service, Marketing, poor customer service, sales training

The Seattle Times has a weekly “Rant & Rave” column in which readers vent about poor customer service/rude drivers and rave about random acts of kindness.

Here’s a Rave that tickled my funny bone:

To the employee and the employee’s sister at Tacos Guaymas in Kenmore. They found an envelope containing a check that had fallen out of my purse while eating dinner. They used the phone number on the check to call  me and tell me they had found it. I was able to pick it up the next day. Thank you for taking the extra step and time!

I’m trying to visualize a check eating dinner.

A simple way to fix this sentence: Clarify who’s eating dinner.

The sentence should read:

They found an envelope containing a check that had fallen out of my purse while I was eating dinner.

Science!

You want to know if Santa is real? We must use hard scientific data to prove or disprove the existence of the the big fat fellow.

Let’s start with the Santa atheists. (This is my condensed version so you’ll have time to wrap that last present. Full version here.)

1. No known species of reindeer can fly.
2. Approximately 91.8 million homes to hit in one night.
3. Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones, rotation of the earth and traveling east to west. This works out to 822.6 visits per second, or 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house.
4. Total miles—assuming for calculation purposes each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth—is 75,000,000. This means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second.  (For comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second.)
5. The sleigh carries 321,300 tons (two pounds of gift per kid) not counting Santa, who is  described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Santa would need 214,200 reindeer to pull that load!
6. 353,000 tons (adding the weight of the extra reindeer) traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems a bit slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion: if Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s dead now.

Now the Santa believer’s turn: (Again, condensed. Full version here.)

If you’re skeptical of Santa’s abilities to deliver presents to millions of homes and children in just one night, North Carolina State University’s Dr. Larry Silverberg, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, can explain the science and engineering principles that allow the Jolly Old Elf to pull off the magical feat year after year.

With his cherubic smile and twinkling eyes, Santa may appear to be merely a jolly old soul, but he and his North Pole elves have a lot going on under the funny-looking hats,

Dr. Larry Silverberg says Santa’s advanced knowledge of electromagnetic waves, the space/time continuum, nanotechnology, genetic engineering and computer science easily trumps the know-how of contemporary scientists.
Silverberg says that Santa has a personal pipeline to children’s thoughts, good/bad, what presents they want—via a listening antenna that combines technologies currently used in cell phones and EKGs. This information is loaded into an onboard sleigh guidance system, which will provide Santa with the most efficient delivery route.

Silverberg isn’t so naïve as to think that Santa and his reindeer can travel approximately 200 million square miles – making stops in some 80 million homes – in one night. Instead, he says Santa uses his knowledge of the space/time continuum to form what Silverberg calls “relativity clouds.”
“Based on his advanced knowledge of the theory of relativity, Santa recognizes that time can be stretched like a rubber band, space can be squeezed like an orange and light can be bent,” Silverberg says. “Relativity clouds are controllable domains – rips in time – that allow him months to deliver presents while only a few minutes pass on Earth.”

His reindeer – genetically bred to fly, balance on rooftops and see well in the dark – don’t actually pull a sleigh loaded down with toys. Instead, each house becomes Santa’s workshop as he utilizes a nano-toymaker to fabricate toys inside the children’s homes. The presents are grown on the spot, as the nano-toymaker creates – atom by atom – toys out of snow and soot, much like DNA can command the growth of organic material like tissues and body parts.
And while there’s no need for Santa to enter the house via chimney, Silverberg says the jolly man enjoys doing that every so often. (The same relativity cloud that allows Santa to deliver presents in what seems like a wink of an eye is also used to “morph” Santa into people’s homes.)

Finally, many people wonder how Santa and the reindeer can eat all the food left out for them. Silverberg says they take just a nibble at each house. The remainder is either left in the house or placed in the sleigh’s built-in food dehydrator, where it is preserved for future consumption. It takes a long time to deliver all those presents, after all.

“Children shouldn’t put too much credence in the opinions of those who say it’s not possible to deliver presents all over the world in one night,” says Silverberg. “It is possible, and it’s based on plausible science.”

I’m going with Dr. Larry’s explanation.

Merry Christmas ‘08!

Tags: , Christmas, Santa is real

Last week we discussed Amazon’s “Frustration-Free Packaging,”  a plain brown box that replaces that irritating clamshell packaging most parents hate.

We asked:
Where do you see clamshell packaging on the Internet?

Laura says:

When I apply the clamshell packaging concept to Web sites and blogs, I immediately think of sites with black (or dark) backgrounds and white (or light) type. Chalk it up to me getting old and having bad eyes or just personal preference, but light type on a dark background is my pet peeve. Hasn’t some market research been done on this, Jim?

Jim says:

Yep. Studies show people won’t read as long when type is reversed. On a billboard-where your message is five words or less-you can almost get away with it. But on a blog? A Web site? Huh uh.

Another Web/blog clam shell is pull-down menus. Some sites have so many I feel like I’m in Daedalus’ labyrinth. Info overload means short attention spans. If people can’t find what they’re looking for fast, they’re gone.

Research shows most people will hit three pages on your Web site, so make it easy for them.

Laura says:

Burying important info “below the fold” (you have to scroll to see it) is another no-no. This is hard NOT to do, because you have a limited amount of space in which to put your banner, site title and tagline, navigation buttons, Search feature, RSS feed info, e-zine subscription form, etc.

Many of us succumb to the temptation to do it all, and we end up with ultra-busy sites that instantly turn visitors off. The profusion of enticing widgets makes creating a clutter-free, easy-to-navigate site even more challenging.

I recommend:

•  Choose 3-5 key elements to put above the fold.
•  Visit a couple dozen sites and analyze how they arrange those elements.
• Choose three sites that knock your socks off. E-mail the links to several of your friends and ask them what they like/dislike about those sites’ design.
• Incorporate the best design elements from those sites into your own site.

You’re going to be using your site on a daily basis for a long time, so choose a design you really like–but one that will also appeal to visitors.

Jim says:

We’ve said this before, but use graphics. Just this morning I read yet another article stating readership takes a nice spike upward when appealing visuals are part of your presentation.

And unless you’re a pro or serious amateur photog aficionado, don’t use your own shots. It’s not worth the $$$ you’ll save. For a little over a $1 a pic you can get impressive shots on stock photo sites like:

• Fotolia.com
• 123rf.com
• Stock.xchng
• iStockphoto.com

People really do judge a book… and a Web site… and a blog… by its cover. Create a clean, clutter-free design that’s easy to navigate and visitors to your site will feel compelled to open the cover.

What’s your blog design pet peeve — and/or your best design tip?

These ads–from the February issue of Writer’s Digest magazine–bother me.

First burr in my backside? The line, “Where all authors are published.” Really? Wouldn’t it be more honest to say “We’ll take $$$ from absolutely anyone.”?

The line is tantalizing to beginning authors. They read it with emotion, not logic and don’t consider that not everyone is ready to have their writing on bookstore shelves.

It’s like saying, “Everyone who tries out for American Idol will make the top 12!”

Next are the numerous grammatical mistakes like: “Are you a writer? Then Get Published!” (To be fair, maybe they couldn’t decide whether to use capital letters or lower case, so they used a combo of both.)

How ’bout “Publish your work in our list of Genres.”

In addition to capitalizing “genres” the sentence is incorrect.

Where’s the hyphen in “non-fiction.”?

The ad became a game. How many mistakes could I find? (And I didn’t even touch on the basic design flaws.)

I understand mistakes. I make ‘em.  But more than five? In a national magazine? When you’re trying to promote yourself as an expert at publishing books? Huh uh. Unforgivable.

If I did ads like that for my clients they would, and should, fire me.

When you post to your blog, change your Web site or design an ad, quadruple checking will always save your face from getting a nice shade of crimson.

Want to play? Tell us what isn’t working in the second ad.

Tags: ad design, copy writing, Marketing, publishing on demand

Do you ever get fed up with the health gurus who spoil the holidays by advising you how to eat right and stay fit during this oh-so-tempting time of year?

The author of the following e-mail took it upon herself or herself (it didn’t include a byline) to help us assuage holiday-food-binge-guilt by suggesting a new–and much more palatable–set of rules for holiday eating.

Please print and carry this list with you in case you forget what to do.

1.  Avoid carrot sticks.
Anyone who puts carrots on a holiday buffet table knows nothing of the Christmas spirit. In fact, if you see carrots, leave immediately. Go next door, where they’re serving rum balls.

2.  Drink as much eggnog as you can.
And quickly. It’s rare. You cannot find it any other time of year but now. So drink up! Who cares that it has 10,000 calories in every sip? It’s not as if you’re goingto turn into an eggnog-alcoholic or something. It’s a treat. Enjoy it. Have one for me. Have two. It’s later than you think. It’s Christmas!

3.  If something comes with gravy, use it.
That’s the whole point of gravy. Gravy does not stand alone. Pour it on. Make a volcano out of your mashed potatoes. Fill it with gravy. Eat the volcano. Repeat.

4.  As for mashed potatoes, always ask if they’re made with skim milk or whole milk.
If it’s skim, pass. Why bother? It’s like buying a sports car with an automatic transmission.

5.  Do not have a snack before going to a party in an effort to control your eating.
The whole point of going to a Christmas party is to eat other people’s food for free. Lots of it. Hello?

6.  Under no circumstances should you exercise between now and New Year’s.
You can do that in January when you have nothing else to do. This is the time for long naps, which you’ll need after circling the buffet table while carrying a 10-pound plate of food and that vat of eggnog.

7.  If you come across something really good at a buffet table, like frosted Christmas cookies in the shape and size of Santa, position yourself near them and don’t budge.
Have as many as you can before becoming the center of attention. They’re like a beautiful pair of shoes. If you leave them behind, you’re never going to see them again.

8.  Same for pies. Apple, Pumpkin, Mincemeat. Have a slice of each.
Or if you don’t like mincemeat, have two apples and one pumpkin. Always have three. When else do you get to have more than one dessert? LaborDay?

9.  Did someone mention fruitcake?
Granted, it’s loaded with the mandatory celebratory calories, but avoid it at all cost. I mean, have some standards.

10.  If you don’t feel terrible when you leave the party or get up from the table, you haven’t been paying attention.
Re-read tips; start over. But hurry; January is just around the corner.

Remember this motto to live by:

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming, “WOO HOO, what a ride!”

It’s time to let your inner comedian emerge, readers. What tip would you add to the list? Let’s have fun with this.

Laura says:
Have you ever had wrap rage - feelings of anger, frustration and violence over your inability to extract your kids’ new toys from their clamshell packaging?

My hubby and I certainly have! We’ve spent what seems like hours sawing through super-strength plastic bindings and laboriously untwisting dozens of wire ties.

Sometime after Christmas, we emerge from the depths of the packaging materials, bloodied yet triumphant.

Jim says:
Blood? That’s not hyperbole. I’ve stabbed myself with the ends of those wire ties more than once. Makes me grateful my boys are in their teens and these days Spiderman comes in an Xbox game instead of ultra-safe-politically-correct-no-one-will-get-hurt-but-the-parents clam shell packaging.

Laura says:
Like me, you might be celebrating Amazon’s new Frustration-Free Packaging.  Amazon works directly with manufacturers to box packages in plain brown wrappers right off the assembly lines. This not only reduces packaging waste, it significantly decreases the number of parents with box cutter injuries.

Jim says:
Now while I like the idea of cutting down on waste, no blood etc, I’m not ready to do the Texas Hold ‘em thing and go all in with the Amazon idea.

Why? The kids scuttling down Target’s aisles will be a lot more attracted to the package on the left than the one on the right. Not to mention attracting the attention of Mom and Dad, the people who control the coin of the realm.

So while it can work for Amazon, the brick-and-mortar boys will still have to do the Fort Knox security package. (Anyone know who came up with the tighter-than-Scotland-Yard packaging requirements in the first place?)

Laura says:
You make a good point, He. Amazon is NOT brick-and-mortar. When I buy Amazon, I already know what I want… perhaps I’ve even eyeballed the item in a store. So pretty packaging is secondary when I order online. I just want the product I ordered to arrive in a sturdy box, all in one piece.

Amazon’s new packaging method got me wondering:

• Just how important is it to watch your kid’s eyes light up as he rips the wrapping paper off his gift and glimpses his new toy through the see-through packaging?
• Will his eyes light up just as much if he has to go through the extra step of opening a nondescript cardboard box?
• And how does packaging impact product sales?

Jim says:
Hey, She. Next time I think we should talk about how we adults do “clam shell” packaging with our Web sites, blogs, etc.

Do you already have an idea what Laura and I will go with our next post on the subject? If yes, tell us where you see “clam shell packaging” on the Internet.

Blogs. Web sites. Social Networking.

When you ponder the plethora of the online venues from which you can promote your products and services, it’s hard to know where to start.

Prospective customers need 8-to-10 “touches” from you before they remember you or your brand. Cyberspace is a great place to reach out and touch someone. NOW is the time to begin making those touches.

Here are a few tips for building your online presence:

Build your hub.
Think about the International Space Station. Construction began in 1998 with the Control Module. Gradually, additional modules have been added.

Your online hub should be a Web site and/or a blog.
A Web site generally contains static content that changes infrequently. A blog is an interactive Web site-its content is updated on a regular basis (at least weekly).

More and more often, businesses are creating sites that seamlessly integrate blog content with static content. For example, here at HeBlogsSheBlogs.com, our blog is on our Home page. Navigation buttons on the Home page lead to inside pages that function more like a traditional Web site.

Gradually add spokes or “modules” to your hub. I consider social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace) and social bookmarking sites (Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon) as spokes. You’ll create a profile at each site (registration is free) and link to and from your hub. Millions of people subscribe to social networking sites, substantially increasing your chances of being found and “touched.”

• Don’t feel compelled to instantly sign up for each of them. Spend time looking around, visiting others’ profiles, and studying how members market themselves.
• After you’ve visited a site several times, ask yourself whether you feel comfortable joining the community, and whether it’ll be worth your time investment to become an active member.

Here are some sites to explore:

General Networking:

• Facebook - http://www.facebook.com
• LinkedIn - http://www.linkedin.com/
• Ziggs - http://www.ziggs.com/ (for business professionals)

Targeted Networking:

• MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/
• Shoutlife - http://www.shoutlife.com/ - Christian social networking for authors, music artists, comics, organizations, and regular folks.

Video Sharing

• YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/
• GodTube - http://www.godtube.com/ - Christian version of YouTube

Book Sharing

• Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/
• Shelfari - www.shelfari.com
• BookTour - http://www.booktour.com
• Book Marketing Network http://bookmarket.ning.com/ - You can set up your own customized social network at ning.com

Micro Blogging

• Twitter - https://twitter.com
• Plurk - http://www.plurk.com/

Social Bookmarking

• Digg - http://digg.com/
• Delicious - http://delicious.com
• StumbleUpon - http://www.stumbleupon.com/

What sites do you use/recommend? Leave us a comment!

This article was originally published on the WinePress Publishing Company blog, Oct. 20, 2008. WinePress is the leading company in the Christian custom publishing industry.

Tags: blogs, book sharing, internet marketing, Marketing, micro-blogging, promoting, social bookmarking, Social Networking, video sharing, Web sites