Send Out Halloween Cards – Be Different

send out cards halloween card
Go ahead, be different, send out a Halloween card. When was the last time anyone sent you such a card? It’d get your attention wouldn’t it? I always like nice surprises in my mailbox, to know someone is thinking of me. How about your clients? the friend who picks up your children after school? Your best friend in the world? When was the last time you took a minute to tell them how much you appreciated them. Surprise them with a Halloween card. We have plenty to choose from.

Custom Halloween Card made with Picture Plus
Now if you really want to do something different, make up your own greeting card with last years pictures. Unique! Unforgetable! Imagine their surprise when they see they tax accountant dressed up as a vampire, sending some garlic, opps I mean last minute money saving tax tips in such a card. Will they forget you?

Send a Halloween card, I’ll give you the first one, the only string attached is that you have to send it. Go to http://cardsconnectsimply.com fill out the form and I’ll be contacting you with your free Halloween card. Keep having fun!

Heidi

Blog Action Day–Today

Aspen TreesOne day a year for bloggers to come together and support a cause is not asking too much. Today over 15,000 bloggers are writing about the environment for their 12 million plus readers on this 1st annual Blog Action Day. One more day to add to your calendar.

I’d like to share some of the posts I’d gleaned and a few of my thoughts:

  • Mark Athitakis of Washington City Paper

    Blog Action Day seems to figure that if everybody blogged about the same thing at the same time something big would happen—like that old bong-hit discussion about whether the earth would fall off its axis if everybody in China jumped at the same time.

  • Chris Garrett feels otherwise in his “Notice the world around us” :

    Bloggers can help. . .If we ask each of our readers to be more environment conscious, just for one day, and to ask people they meet to do the same, how many millions will we reach?

  • Tech Blorge shares tips on “How to be a Green Computer User”. Some of these tips I’ve heard, others are new to me. One thing I appreciate is that links are posted to various ways to recycle your old computer parts. I love that idea. Once my home seemed to become the storage place for anything computer related that the owner no longer wanted. So they’d give their old monitors, servers, computers, you name it, to my sons.
  • LifeHacker posted their top 10 suggestions from their readers from cloth diapers, and recycled poop, to monitors, and eating utensils. Worth checking out.
  • Last 100 gives us 5 internet TV channels about the environment.
  • The most unique idea came fromMarketing Pilgrim. The novel idea of Akismet for the snail mail that comes in our physical mail box. For those who aren’t familiar with Akismet, it filters out unwanted spam emails from our blogs. I remember being in the post office the other day, watching people sort their mail on the spot, junk mail quickly filling up the bin. Just think how many trees would be saved if each of us had such a system.
  • Dreaming, no Akismet for junk mail, what a shame. Yet there are other ways to help. I was very happy to hear SendOutCards announce this August that they would now be using recycled paper. My suggestion to business owners is that instead of filling up mailboxes with ads to their clients that go straight to the trash, that when they do a mailing out to their list, that they offer something of value. Let their customer know they are appreciated, send out tips, good advice, useful articles. Would you rather be known as the business that stuffs physical mailboxes with junk mail, or as the business who really cares when they send out cards to their clients?

If everyone in China jumped at the same time, earth would not fall of its axis. Yet if everyone who wrote or read a blog did one thing to help the environment, it would have an impact. Just blogging isn’t enough. It is the action part. For the impact to be felt each writer and reader must take action and do one more thing than they’ve been doing to help protect our earth. No idea where to start? Search some blogs.

Heidi

blog action day

Have You Picked up Your Marketing Calendar Yet?

I picked up this great resource by following a link from the Women’s Media Summit Blog. Your Marketing 2007 Calendar lists many special holiday events, and gives you space to write your own monthly marketing plan around these events.

Here is where I missed out. I’d downloaded the calendar, understood the value, but really missed the boat. I knew that the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik was coming up. So the night before I was searching for info to add to my blog as I thought it’d make a great post. Weird, I searched on Technorati for the term sputnik and came up blank, nothing current on the news channels. How could this day come and go unnoticed. So the next morning, I added my post and searched online, and the news articles were rolling in, thousands of blog posts about the event, even Google appropriately changed their logo in celebration.

As I went through my blogs stats the next day, I saw that a few were searching for 50th anniversary Sputnik cards. My site came up about 1st in a google search. Why? Because I sell a card system, where you or I can make custom cards on the fly, and I talked about Sputnik. Then the ideas came. Sputnik was the first satellite, I offer various communication services, where would our communication be today without satellites? I could have had cards made up a week in advance, articles related in the article directories, a special promotion, contest etc. But not when I start planning about midnight the night before, and ideas come a couple days later.

So today I’m printing out my marketing planning sheets. Picking a few ideas each month that will work for me. Then fill in the details as I brainstorm in advance.

Thanks again Heidi Richards for more great info from the Women’s Media Summit.

Heidi Caswell

Flash Back 50th Anniversary of Sputnik

Soviet Sputnik StampFifty years ago today, Oct. 4, 1957, the Space Age began when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man made satellite.
I remember the date because a Junior High Science teacher thought it was important enough to memorize, but no, I personally
have no memories of that day.

Many changes in the last 50 years. Postage stamps were only 3 cents. Leave it to Beaver was having its
first debute. Newspapers were full of the desegregation of Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas. Canada rolled out their
first supersonic jet aircraft, Arrow. No, I can’t remember
all that, I looked it up.

Claudia Meydrech remembers that eventual day:

I was outside as my Dad pointed out Sputnik in the sky (he was an Engineer in the aeronautics department of a big company, involved in a number of space related projects when the “space race” began)

Reading back through various news articles, websites, blogs, you can get a picture of what Sputnik looked like. The launch of the first
man-made satellite to go into orbit. Americans were concerned. That Soviet satellite passed over our country several times a day. How did they get ahead? Cause for concern? Here is a quote from Soviet rocket designer Boris Chertok:

“We prepared the launch without any great expectations. If it were to succeed, [then] great. If not, no big deal. Because our main task was to get back to building a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.”

Spurred by fear, and not to be outdone, the Space Age began. Americans had to be the first to put a man on the moon. So many scientific advances and discoveries have come to pass as part of the race to space.

Reflecting backwards today.

Heidi

You’ve got Snail Mail!

I’m not talking about the half a dozen credit card offers, ads from the local car dealership, the fund raising organizations clammering for my attention. We know where those end up. Yet a postcard sent out from a friend, or a greeting card with a few encouraging words will always bring a smile to my face. Just the other day I got a beautiful card from Sheila Finklestein along with her Bananna Sky dvd. Yes I was smiling.

Now from time to time I get e-cards in my inbox, most simply go to my spam box and if I don’t look, I never knew what was sent. One reason for this is all the email viruses going around.

Now when you get a cool card in the mail, especially if it has a photo, it becomes a keeper. A real card is something that can be touched, a visual reminder that someone cares.


Aaron
My son-in-law loves snakes and has a pet boa constrictor, he also loves sushi. I took a few pictures of it the last time we visited. One came out especially good, you can even see the detail in the snake’s eye. So I used SendOutCards Picture Plus, and turned the whole thing into a card. He loved it! Took it to work, showed it to everyone, pinned it up on his wall.

If you’d like to check out picture plus I’ll set you up a free trial, send out a card, make someone’s day, and they will smile when they go out to their mailbox and find they’ve got the best snail mail around.

Have some fun with this,

Heidi