Customer Love Roving Report November 27, 2010

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving – even you non-American types that call soccer football. A time set aside once a year to stuff as much food as physically possible down our throats and fight with relatives – good times. I did fairly well – I only gained 74lbs. (#’s, £’s???) on Thursday and there was only one visit by the authorities. Luckily I decided to get up yesterday and jog 263 miles and lost every pound, so all said, a pretty good day.

Let’s see what’s going on with Customer Love this week.

It’s a forum

You may have noticed that new tab at the top of the site here. It’s a whole forum in there. During the chat on Twitter Tuesday evening everyone ganged up on LaVonne and strong-armed her into creating a forum. Shortly after the chat was over, seven of us tackled her, handcuffed her to a radiator (aahhhh, sweet revenge!) and told her she couldn’t come out until she coded the entire thing into the site from scratch.

She managed to do this very quickly – and with one hand. I’m still a bit bitter about the short amount of time she was actually handcuffed but I’ll get over it. I’m also not entirely convinced that she actually coded it by hand but it seems to work fairly well, so I’ll just let that one go.

Go on in there and sign up. You can ask questions, put your offers out there, whatever you want to talk or ask about. Everyone can see it and anyone can answer. A central hub, if you will, for your whole customer love project. Jump right in and get any type of help you may need. We’re fairly friendly and they took the handcuffs away from me – so you’re safe.

It’s a free resource

In the aforementioned forum is a section called ‘resources’. Throughout the weekend I will be posting links to free stuff to assist you in creating whatever type of product, class, lessons or product you are thinking about – maybe even something you aren’t yet thinking about. Ummm, you do know it’s day 27, right?

The whole idea of customer love is to work up a whole community of customers that absolutely love you – then sell your stuff to them for all your hard work. That’s the point. With that said typed, it is not absolutely imperative that you have a product. The world isn’t going to end, so no anxiety attacks allowed.

For the first Customer Love challenge, I did not launch a product to sell – not really, anyway. I launched TileTips, a bi-weekly short email which contained shortcuts and techniques that greatly increase tile installation productivity and ease – something everyone reading this has absolutely no interest in. 😀 But that’s what I launched. I did that so I didn’t need to come up with a huge, quality product all at once. I will, in the near future, turn all these tips into a quality ebook which I will sell. The working title being ‘One million and one tile tips to help you pick up women’ – I may tweak that a bit. This strategy builds my list for that launch and helps my readers at the same time. They get free stuff and I get to create the product at my own pace.

So your ‘product’ could be simply a small weekly or bi-weekly newsletter with helpful, relevant information which can be eventually turned into a great, quality product. So, again, no anxiety attacks allowed. Do what works for you and your comfort level. The resources are there for you when you get ready for them.

It’s a collaboration

Alyson Earl (@AlysonEarl ) is in a conundrum. She wants to be a lurker but wants to grow her number of followers on Twitter to 100 by the end of the challenge – help her out, dammit. It’s one of her goals. It doesn’t get much easier to help someone else reach a goal, does it?

It’s a new site!

Lisa Valuyskaya (@LisaValuyskaya ) has launched her new site ideastylist.com and I have to say- she’s good. She’s damn good. She even has a big old jar of sexy sparkle right there at the top of her site. I’m gonna get me some of that for my day job. I do believe that is exactly what I’ve been looking for, and we will be talking.

You can go check out her site and talk to her also. It says right there in her bio that she speaks 738 languages, so I’m sure she can understand what you need! (I may have misread part of that bio.) Business hint: You can tell how effective a marketing or branding person is by how clear and concise their own site is. Hers is. ‘Nuff said.

It’s a sale

Holly from Cottage Copy (@copygeniusgirl ) is having a PWYC sale! I’m told that means ‘pay what you can’ but in Texas they call it ‘pay with yer cash’, you may have to verify that with David Crandall, but I’m fairly certain that’s accurate. It has to be one of those because Holly wouldn’t take my yellow coins. You can get in on that sweet deal here: Cottage Copy’s PWYC sale.

Now what the hell am I gonna do with all these yellow coins…

It’s a tweet deal

I promise I’ll never, ever do that again!

• @LaVonneEllis
  Do you hate your speaking voice? I can help – 50% off private voice coaching session thru 11/30. Discount code: GRATEFUL http://is.gd/hJa39
• @a_creative_life
  It’s up! Thriving Artists Project pre-launch is coming, and there’s still time to get in on it. http://bit.ly/g3QnvM
• @copygeniusgirl
  For the end of #customerlove, it’s a pay what you can sale! http://bit.ly/eQHuSj

It’s the end

Long winded little bastard, aren’t I? Since it is day 27 – you know it’s day 27, right? – I’ll leave you with my quote of the week from @LeelaSinha :

“Fear loses its usefulness when it protects us from nonexistent danger.”

Did I miss anything or anyone’s stuff? If so let me know and I’ll have it here tomorrow. I’m fairly friendly despite the mugshot on my website that Alyson linked to and scared the hell out of everyone with. Yes, I ended that sentence with ‘with’ just to drive the grammar nazi’s insane – you’re welcome.