Is fine print really necessary? Make it big and integrate it into your campaign

There may sometimes be gaps in our postings when business is particularly good, as it has been these past several months. But we always try to look for lessons in our work that we can share.

For example: I’ve been doing marketing support for a major technology company. This generally means I do whatever needs to be done to help marketing meet its goals. But one of my unique selling points is that I’m also a perceptive customer advocate. In fact, I find it difficult NOT to see the customer perspective in everything I do. It’s just how I’ve become wired after years of working in this space: interacting with communities, absorbing composite customer personas, watching focus groups and usability tests and, more recently, monitoring reactions to what I do on social media.

Much of what I’m working on right now requires Terms and Conditions: You know, that legalese that people label “the fine print” – usually because it’s so very small. But there’s also a stigma attached to it. Ask most people what the fine print is, and they’ll respond: “That’s where they get you.”

In a recent marketing campaign that I managed, I noticed customers on Twitter complaining that they didn’t know how they would get their bonus items. The answer was right  there in the Terms & Conditions but it was so tiny that many folks couldn’t read it. So I asked our designers to start making the fine print larger.

It’s an idea that I believe really should catch on. The days of hiding “gotchas” in teeny tiny type are mostly over, or so I’d like to think. If there’s something shady going on, the Internet usually sniffs it out and spreads the word quickly and aggressively.

Instead, I think that Terms & Conditions should be easily read and consumed as part of any offer perusal. In fact, knowing all of the limits and fulfillment details may actually help sell customers, and could even earn their trust. For one thing, it shows the seller has nothing to hide. And second, it should answer any key concerns the customer might have.

Ideally, all of these details should be part of any carefully considered marketing pitch. In the glory days of advertising – which I studied intensely to improve my skills as a headline copywriter – ads were text laden and often filled two or more pages. And advertising studies show that more text can actually be more convincing than less. So let’s put it all out there for everyone to see.

Now if we could just do something with all of those impenetrable End User License Agreements – which arguably are TOO LONG and could use a good summary and be easily reviewed, browsed and, dare I say, skipped. But that’s a fight for another day.

They wanted to know where I lived:

Why do you need my address? What's my motivation to give it to you?

When I first signed up, they didn’t require this infomation. My account existed, yet the only details it had when I logged in this time were my name and e-mail address. That’s all they had required previously, and rightfully so. I had signed up for a free download, and they needed to notify me about my “purchase.”

On the surface, it makes sense. A fair trade of software value for valuable personal details, right?

Certainly, some customers will buy into this. They’ll pony up their mailing address and other contact details for a freebie with perceived value of $5 or more. But others will question why they need this information. They’re not sending a physical CD in the mail with the game on it. They’ll send me an e-mail notification when it’s time to download it. What are they going to do with the address? Direct marketing? Sell my information to a third-party? Either way, I don’t want it.

So some people – maybe the majority – will submit a fake address. 1234 Noneofyourdamnbusiness Lane, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., or perhaps a choice expletive or two.

And now you have a problem: data integrity. A significant part of your database has bad data in it. Supposing you did have a use for the mailing address that most customers would love – say, you decide to reward them with a free disc-based game or promotional (yet adorable) sticker set that everyone would love to find delivered to them free of charge via postal mail – you’d have to do a lot of scrubbing to only send to the addresses that appear to be valid. And, even then, expect a lot of returned mail!

There’s really no good reason to ask for a mailing address unless you need it right here and right now to fulfill a customer’s order.

To be fair, Telltale does sell t-shirts, posters and shotglasses – but I wasn’t ordering those. If I had, then the transaction flow should be modified to require my shipping address. And if I was buying something – even a downloadable game – with my credit card, I’d expect to be hit up for my billing address to validate my identity and complete the transaction. In those cases, the customer will supply these details readily and, most of the time, accurately because they understand the need for it and want to receive the product they ordered.

Any time you ask for information that’s NOT needed to fulfil a transaction, you’re asking for trouble. It may be a little extra work to build that logic into your shopping cart, but it’s worth it – both for the customer’s peace of mind about your company and the quality of the data you collect.

1. Identify a time to check-in – and stick to it. Choose a time when you can devote 15 – 30 minutes to checking in with your business without disrupting your family time or down time. For example, if you’re the first one out of bed, get a cup of coffee and read/respond to the mail. If you plan to sleep in, consider setting aside 15 – 30 minutes after you have wrapped up your evening and the kids are in bed.
2. Set expectations early… and often. Let coworkers, clients and other business contacts know your vacation dates well in advance. If you have a weekly check-in mail with a client or manager, add “On vacation the week of – to –” as a miscellaneous line-item. 1-2 weeks before your vacation, tell your client/coworkers verbally that you will be gone and not available by phone. Let them know that you will be checking working mail once daily, either in the morning or evening – and that you will not be available by phone.
3. Don’t be too accessible. Let technology do the heavy lifting for you. If a business call does come in, resist the temptation to step away and answer it. Let it go to voice mail, and plan to check it as part of your daily work review. Stay out of work mail during the day as well. This is your vacation, and you do need to recharge. Also, there is nothing relaxing about an impromptu argument with an annoyed family member.
4. Leave the files at home. If possible, leave your laptop – and definitely any actual folders or files – at home. This will help you resist the urge to do just a little work. Also, you can’t forget important documents at the hotel if you don’t have them. Whatever it is can wait.
5. Make a commitment to yourself. It is easy to say you are going to relax and enjoy your vacation – but only you can truly do it. Make a commitment to yourself that you will not check email or jump when a client calls, and follow through with it. It may be tough the first day or so, but you and your family will appreciate it.

We take so little time for ourselves these days that it’s difficult to remember a time when we could truly relax. You don’t have to take the radical approach of locking every piece of technology in the hotel safe to force yourself to untether and reconnect with your family – you just have to make a commitment, form a plan and follow through. Practice over the holidays and a few long weekends, and by next summer, you’ll be ready to take on vacation with a whole new perspective.

1. Don’t create eye charts. The goal of your presentation should not be to test your audience’s eyesight – yet that is a common issue in PowerPoint presentations. Five to six top-level bullet points, plus a header, is plenty for one slide. If you are including illustrations, think three to four bullets. Better to have multiple slides covering the same topic than to have a slide no one in the audience can read. Speaking of which…

2. Let the audience listen. Another common mistake is to use a script to build the slide. Your audience will naturally read whatever is on screen – which means they are not paying attention to you. Pull out the very high-level points you will be touching on for the slide, and leave the details in your script. You want the audience to focus on you, not your slides. 

3. Limit fancy transitions. We’ve all seen the fancy dissolves, flying sentences and spinning text functionality of PowerPoint. Animating the text is a fun way to break up the monotony of writing a presentation, and it can be effective – for the right audience. It can also slow your presentation down, throwing your slides out of sync with your speech. Worse, it distracts the audience. Use the regular slide transition for presentations unless you have something really big to reveal, preferably at the end of your presentation. 

4. Follow a set style guide. Major corporations typically have a style guide, including approved background(s), font style, point size and capitalization rules for presentations. Check with your admin or manager – odds are they will know if such a thing exists. If not, create one for yourself. You will need:

• A neutral slide background. There are a number of standard professional backgrounds available in PowerPoint. If you have a group or corporate “style,” ask if you can hire (or borrow) a design resource to create a template for you.
• A readable font. Choose a professional, readable font. Good starter fonts include Arial, Calibri, Verdana, and Times New Roman. (Note: this holds true whether you are creating a work presentation or one for the PTA. Papyrus is never a good choice for presentations.)
• A set of point sizes. “Point” refers to how large your text appears. You should have a set point size for headers, another for top-level bullets, and a third for secondary bullets. They should be reasonably close in size. For example:
  • Header: 24 point Calibri
  • Top-level bullet: 20 point Calibri
  • Second-level bullet: 18 point Calibri

Keep your style guide close by as you create your PowerPoint. You’ll also need it when you’re done so you can…

5. Check your work – and check it again. Proper spelling, good grammar, a consistent flow and consistent style will lend a professional air to your presentation. Don’t assume you got everything right the first time – everyone makes mistakes, especially when developing long PowerPoint presentations. After you have finished your draft, set it aside for a few hours to clear your head. Then go back and review. Ideally, you should do a pass to review for each specific issue. Realistically, you will review once. So do so carefully, and if possible, ask a friend or colleague to take a look as well. A second pair of eyes is always helpful.

 Here’s what to watch for while you review:

• Proper spelling: Spell Check will catch a lot, but not everything. Keep an eye out for words that are misspelled, AND words that are spelled correctly… but not the word you wanted use.
• Good grammar: Same rule: use Grammar Check as a tool, but don’t rely on it.
• Consistent flow: Don’t jump around topics – finish thoughts and move on. Also, ensure that any fact or comment you reference (”As you saw on a previous slide…) is paid off earlier. In other words, make sure it actually appeared on a previous slide.
• Consistent style: This includes the point/font/template styles mentioned earlier, but also encompasses capitalization (initial caps or sentence caps?), bullet style (square, round, diamond, etc.), font color, and any other visual queue you will use in your presentation.

Follow these five simple rules and your presentation slides will keep the focus where it belongs during your next presentation: on you.

Flipboard Contents 'page' - click to view gallery of Flipboard images

The buzz surrounding Flipboard for iPad hit suddenly. One minute I’d never heard of it and then the next my Twitter timeline was drowning in posts about it. I downloaded it just in time… to be blocked by everyone else trying to get in! The next day, Flipboard’s creators announced an invite system where you’d be queue’d to get the OK to connect your Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Even without the social media integration, I immediately saw the appeal of Flipboard via the various news feeds it aggregates. It has the glossy look of a neatly arranged and typeset magazine, only populated on-the-fly with stories and images from the Internet. Flip through the virtual pages just like you would with a paper copy of Wired or Vanity Fair. Some excerpts are short and sweet, others lengthy with a link to the full article. Spontaneous photo essays abound! Tap an image to open a focused view of it, then tap it again and it fills the screen. (Alas, you can’t tap and hold to save favorite images to your local photo album.)

I did get my social media invite a few days later, and suddenly it became much more personal. People I follow everyday get featured pull quotes daily. Gamers I know show off recent play summaries in greater depth than I ever see when browsing my timeline. Articles that were simply shortened links are blown up and instantly readable. My friends’ photos become instant photo essays or one-off illustrations breaking up a sea of article text.

Flipboard turns your Facebook and Twitter feeds into a glossy magazine - click to view gallery of Flipboard images

As much as I love Flipboard, it’s more of the sort of thing a social media consultant like me uses to unwind after a long day slaving over Twitter timelines, @ replies and Facebook walls (seriously, we never unplug – just ask my wife!) than a tool to be used for everyday work.

Here are some areas I would like to see improved:

1. The Contents page only has nine slots, two of which are locked for Facebook and Twitter. I would probably fill 20 if I could with additional Twitter lists and news feeds! Scrolling would probably break the magazine metaphor, but it’s not unheard of to have more than one contents page. How about up to three pages for a total of 27 possible categories?
2. You’re never going to get a comprehensive view of a busy Twitter or Facebook feed with a magazine style client like this, but how about letting us choose which friends we want to see or drill down to view? I recently posted a photo album to Facebook myself but didn’t launch Flipboard for several hours, and by then it was buried under my friends’ posts. I would have loved to see it turned into a photo essay! Likewise, I would like to browse or select sets of Facebook friends for spontaneous views of their recent status updates. And add sites I like that aren’t on the Flipboard team’s radar, or at least suggest them to the team for future inclusion.
3. Flipboard doesn’t cache content for offline use. Since I didn’t spring for the 3G iPad, this meant I couldn’t show off the app to a friend when I took it to a café that didn’t offer WiFi I could use. Fortunately, I had already snapped some screenshots of Flipboard including the photo essay it had made of her recent gallery of self-portraits. Likewise, I would like to save favorite pages to an offline gallery within Flipboard to browse them again later, much as I might revisit a magazine article or photo layout.

That said, these are minor quibbles with an iPad app that is both free and very good at what it does - presenting social media in an old familiar format but in an interactive manner you’d never get from a paper periodical. If you have an iPad, it deserves a slot on your Home screen.

Whether by design or sheer luck, updating my profile was incredibly easy… because everything I needed was already in my completed LinkedIn profile. I was able to pull dates and copy/paste descriptions straight from LinkedIn, saving a tremendous amount of time. My profile was done in about one-third the time I had set aside for the project – time I used instead to fill in some holes I discovered on LinkedIn. I then transferred the information to Plaxo.

Join my network

Plaxo profile complete, it was time to find people. I took a cursory look at my recommendations (”People you might know”) but realized that until I had built at least a small network, I was unlikely to get many good hits. So I did something I swore never to do: I allowed Plaxo to pull information from another network.

Like most social networking sites, Plaxo offered a tempting shortcut to finding friends: tapping into an existing wellspring of information. In this case, my options were limited. There were the sites I don’t use (Yahoo!, Gmail and AOL) and the account I wouldn’t use (my personal Hotmail account). My attempt to follow LinkedIn’s directions were a miserable failure. There was one candidate for success, however: Facebook.

Double exposure

I studied the text carefully and confirmed that yes it would only bother people in my Facebook network who were already registered Plaxo users. I clicked the button to access my Facebook account, and noticed an immediate change in my Plaxo view: a photo appeared in my profile. Plaxo had co-opted my Facebook image – an Xbox Live avatar – for my professional profile. Panicked, I immediately went to update my photo… and found several photos of my child. In my Plaxo profile. That I had not uploaded to Plaxo.

Apparently, when I tied my Facebook account to Plaxo, it took the liberty of pulling my various friends-and-family-only photo folders and added them to the “Photos” tab of my profile. While there was nothing incriminating (keep your Facebook clean, folks), I don’t want strangers to have access to family photos – even if they are just my child drinking hot chocolate at Starbucks.

All images were in folders, just as they appeared in Facebook. Fortunately, Plaxo allowed me to delete entire folders, saving me a lot of time. If I had to delete each image individually, odds are the only thing I would have deleted was my Plaxo account itself.

After I finished cleaning out my personal photos and updating my profile pic, I reviewed ALL sections of my profile to ensure no other stray Facebook goodies had moved over. It appears contacts and photos were the extent of the damage.

Contact Us

Satisfied with my damage control, I moved on to the final section: Websites and Personal Info. Opening the Websites section results in an icon explosion – add your Facebook! Share your Amazon Wish List! Tell the world your twitter name! (Just one? I have two, but had to choose…). Not to mention Facebook, YouTube, Last.fm, MySpace, LiveJournal, Tumblr… and that’s just a very, very small fraction. If you’ve ever shared content online, odds are you can share it with your Plaxo network. (Or everyone. Or just Friends. Or just Family. It’s up to you.)

I chose a few resources, reviewed my restrictions and unleashed my profile on the world. All this took about an hour, during which time I received numerous mails in the background. I finally went to catch up and discovered I had four new Plaxo and two LinkedIn requests/friends.

Every single one was from Facebook.

Step 1: Evaluate your hairstyle

Fashion magazines and so-called “women’s” publications encourage readers to change their hair color, length and style constantly. Even some high-end salons will push clients to take on whatever is in fashion. Unfortunately, the latest style/color/cut doesn’t work for everyone. Nor should it. You don’t have to be a chameleon to stay current. Just look in the mirror and evaluate yourself honestly. Do you like the way your hair looks? Does it age you/make you look younger? Is it making the statement to clients that you want? (That could be anything from “I’m young and hip” to “I’m established” or simply, “I’m well groomed.”)

If you do opt to change your style, consider if your current stylist is the right one to do it. If you don’t have someone in mind, or simply want to give someone else a shot, find someone who has the general style you want – for example, if you want to be trendy, look for someone with trendy, well-cut hair. Ask them for the name of their stylist. Don’t be afraid to change if you’re not completely sold on your current person.

And finally, don’t ask any stylist to “give me xyz’s hairstyle.” If you see a model or star with hair you like, take a photo to your stylist and ask them if it’s feasible for your hair, or if it would look good. They might not give you the exact same style, but they can use your photo as a jumping off point for a discussion about what you want. Is it the color? The length? The straight/curliness? A good stylist can adapt a style to look good on you. They will also say when something just isn’t right.

Full disclosure/credit: This information came from years of talking to my own, highly-trusted stylist, Stephanie Veka, a salon owner in Seattle, Washington.

Step 2: Evaluate your makeup

For people who wear make-up, it is easy to get into a rut. Worse, your favorite colors can disappear overnight with the changing of the seasons. Don’t be afraid to visit your local make-up counter and ask for a makeover. Yes, they will want to sell you cosmetics – you are under no obligation to buy them. Your goal should be to explore options and find what you like, including brand, price-range and colors.

A good make-up counter artist will begin with a short chat. Explain what your rules are up front (e.g., hypoallergenic, colors you like/hate, etc.) and your goals for the makeover. Things to cover include the amount of time you are willing to spend on your make-up routine and where you will be wearing it (e.g., daily maintenance versus just for parties). Your artist should present some color options – don’t be afraid to reject anything you flat out hate. Remember, they are there to sell you make-up. They will take the time to find things you like.

When you are done, write-down the items you like. Consider spending an hour (at least) in your make-up running errands, etc. and see what you think when you are away from the sales desk. How do you look in normal light? Does the makeup stand up to your average day? Do you still like the color?

Once you’ve found the items you like, do reward the store by buying at least the first round from them. While they are providing a free service, it is courteous to make your purchase from the people who helped you make a decision.

Step 3: Edit your closet

This is often the hardest part for people, but think of it this way: you’re giving yourself permission (and an excuse) to hit the post-holiday sales. The basic standard for clothes is, “Have you worn it in the past year?” I have mixed feelings about this. There are obviously extenuating circumstances around why you haven’t donned certain apparel, particularly party clothes. If you have something that you haven’t worn, take a good hard look and think about why you haven’t. Did your weight change? Is it out of style? Did you simply forget you had it? (Yes, this happens.)

If you have gained weight, take the item out of your closet and either store it or give it away. You need access to good fitting clothes now, not clothes you hope to wear again someday. If you have lost weight and plan to keep it off, find a tailor who can adjust your clothes. (Or, again, consider giving it away. More on that in a moment.)

Next, look at what you have left. Sweaters that are stretched out may be comfortable for weekends, but good fit/tailoring is better for clients. You should have at least one up-to-date suit (you will need it someday) and a good selection of business clothes that fit in with your client’s expectations and your style. And don’t forget to evaluate your shoes and socks!

Sort through your clothes and pull any business attire that you don’t want or need anymore. Now here is your chance to do something good and get a small tax write-off. There are organizations across the nation that take good-condition (laundered) business clothes on behalf of people who need them. Help someone get and keep a job by donating your old business attire to:

• Dress for Success
• Career Gear

Step 4: Take yourself to the cleaners

As clothes cycle in and out of season, they inevitably get wrinkled and musty. Review the items you plan to keep and add them to your laundry pile/take them to the cleaners. Be sure to remove your clothes from the cleaner bag as soon as you get home and allow them to air out before adding them to your closet.

Step 5: Charge it!

At the beginning of this story, I mentioned a good reason to hit the sales. If you’ve gone through all the steps, you know what to do: comb the sales racks to fill in items you need, whether you are replacing donated clothes or just realized you don’t have a good jacket. The end-of-year sales offer a great way to update your style without breaking the budget.

When you’re done, treat yourself to whatever you enjoy – spa, double-feature, golf… whatever makes you happy. After all, you worked hard this week.

Part 2:Organizing your small business
Part 1:Organizing your office for the new year

Step 1: Review your professional materials

While we live in a primarily digital world, there are still times when the small business owner needs to pull out a business card, send a paper invoice or pull out the pre-printed address labels or envelopes. Even digital information may represent your identity. Take time to review any existing pre-printed materials now, when printers are slow and have time to take on your project. Check for:

• Design. Does it still represent you and your business? Is your logo dated, or in need of a facelift?
• Accuracy. Has anything changed?
• Content. Think carefully about how you want clients contacting you. If a phone shouldn’t ring at 11 p.m., don’t include that number.

Step 2: Review your shipping services

If you ship regularly, odds are you have an account with your preferred shipping vendor. Now is a good time to review your terms and determine if you have the right service. In this case, there is no downside to playing the field. Some things to consider are:

• Cost. Do you get a discount for being a preferred customer, shipping volume or other factors?
• Delivery range. Again, this really applies to those doing business internationally. If you ship overseas (or even just over the border), review delivery services and fees.
• Niceties. These are really subjective, but make a difference. For example, some shipping agencies will deliver shipping materials to your house and pick up packages free of charge.
• Bonus discounts/points. Some delivery services have cross-over deals with other vendors (e.g., credit cards). Check your loyalty programs, credit cards, etc. and see what they have to offer. It
  might tip the scales in one direction or the other.

Step 3: Review your technology

Your tax advisor probably told you to do this already, but it is worth repeating: take a look at your equipment and determine if it’s time to upgrade. The obvious place to start is with your computer.

• Laptop vs. desktop. For business travelers, the choice is obvious: a laptop that is (preferably) not a brick, has good battery life, a nice screen, and can boot quickly for the inevitable airport security check. For completely home-bound business owners, a desktop might offer a cheaper viable solution. I’m in-between; while I don’t travel for work, I do have to visit clients from time to time. I’ve found a nice, widescreen laptop plus a second monitor at home (two screens total) allows me to multi-task at home and easily take my work with me when I need to go.
• Display screen. Treat your eyes right – get a decent-sized, flat-screen display that is also easy to read. This is one area you don’t want to skimp.
• Shredder. Every business should have a security shredder that creates confetti, not spaghetti strings. Get a heavy-duty workhorse model.
• Backup software and materials. How you backup is up to you – the important thing is to make sure it happens early and often. Consider keeping an off-site copy of key digital documents that will not be affected if disaster strikes.
• Assorted office materials. Notepads, pens, stapler, USB portable keys, etc. If you haven’t stocked up in a while, stop by your local office supply store. Even they are having end-of-year sales.
• A comfortable chair and desk. You’re going to be spending a lot of time there. Be comfortable.
  Remember to save your receipts – you have until December 31 to make purchases against this year’s tax deductions.

Step 4: Get Ready for Tax Time

Speaking of which, now is a great time to start prepping your tax materials. Whether you do it yourself or use a financial advisor, you’re going to need to get organized. Here are some guidelines to help get you started:

• Organize this year’s deductible bills. Find your deductible utility bills, mortgage, etc. and organize by month. Keep a written list of missing bills (type and date) as you go. You can hunt down the strays later – focus on the task at hand now.
• Gather up your tax-deductible donation receipts. Organize by type (cash vs. goods) and organization if you have multiple donations to the same org.
• Organize your receipts. Group them by possible deduction type. Don’t forget to shred any receipts you no longer need!

Remember, by preparing now you can take your time and really review the year. Forgotten house upgrades or missing receipts can cost you tax deductions. Do it now so you have time to do a thorough job.

Part 1: Organizing your office life for a happy New Year
Part 3: Part 3: Spending the end of year improving yourself (but not at the gym)

• Folders
• File cabinet
• Recycle bin/box
• Separate “to shred” box
• USB key or other portable back-up device
• New office decorations

Step 1: Clean out your files

File cabinets are a great place to start any massive purge. Not only are you likely sitting on a ton of paper you don’t need, it makes room for all that paper on your desk we’ll be addressing in the next section. Plus, wouldn’t you like to be able to open your drawer without using a crowbar?

Prep your cabinet area. Position your recycle and shred boxes close, but in distinctly different places. You don’t want to recycle sensitive materials, and shredding unnecessary paper simply costs money.

Review each file. Yes, seriously. Re-read and assign each document as appropriate:

• To keep: materials you need to do your job now.
• To file: materials you need keep, but are not in active use now.
• To shred: sensitive materials you no longer need.
• To recycle: materials you no longer need that are not sensitive. When in doubt, shred.

Return the folders to the cabinet. As you re-file, check the state of the folder. Replace beat-up folders or use labels to clearly-write the folder name. If it’s over-filled, break the materials up into multiple folders. (Or at least get a rubber band.)

Step 2: Clean off the desk

This can be painful for pack rats, but it’s worth it. Here are some guidelines:

Review every piece of paper on your desk. Same rules apply as filing: keep, recycle or shred.

Install and store software. Have software sitting on your desk? Install it, put the disk away, and return it to IT (or store it).

Rearrange your desk for comfort. I spent nearly a year spinning in my chair and leaning to answer my phone before a co-worker made the obvious suggestion: Move the phone to the left. (I’m left handed.) Simple solutions can make a huge difference.

Edit and update your decorations. We constantly add things to our desk, but when was the last time you took something away? Update your kid’s artwork, review your gag gift collection and decide if that plant is really worth it. Can’t part with anything? Ask for shelves.

Step 3: Organize your professional library

I’m always amazed by the number of severely outdated books on office shelves. Unless you truly need to hang on to that HTML 1.0 book, take it off the shelf.

Step 4: Clean up your computer

Now that you have a clean desk, it’s time to update the space where you spend most of your time: the computer. Here are some guidelines to get you started.

Clear out your e-mail. Every interaction, from e-mail to calendar requests, contribute to your e-mail limit and bulge. To control the chaos, create folders (by business, client, project – your choice), and start filing. Review and delete mails that are redundant, unnecessary (”thanks” mails) or just no longer needed. Note that many major corporations require employees to delete mail after a certain time period. Check with your legal department for guidance.

Tackle your calendar. Delete the dentist appointments, coffee dates, long-dead project meetings and other detritus. Keep ongoing appointments and recent meetings that may come up in future conversations.

Check your Tasks list. This can also become a wasteland of long-forgotten errands that don’t need to sit on the server.

Organize your digital files. All those things you did with your files? Same thing applies here. But before you delete…

Backup! If you work for someone else, odds are they have a backup in place. Self-employed people, you are your IT department. Don’t neglect your back-ups. Do a mass back-up now, and then set regular back-ups going forward. (We’ll dig into this and other tidbits for the self-employed in Part 2 of the series.)

Step 5: Take home personal files

Part 2: Spending the end of year organizing your home office/business
Part 3: Spending the end of year on yourself

Cable network TNT sent its marketing team in the wayback machine this week to send out a “sneak peek” at a new show, Men of a Certain Age. Which, based on the cast (Scott Bakula, Andre Braugher and Ray Romano) is somewhere in the late 40s to early 50s. Presumably, these men of a certain age made romantic mix tapes for their would-be loved ones in their youth. Or a mix tape to enjoy while driving around. Or, and I’m just guessing here, to enhance getting baked in their mom’s basement.

The “mix tape” is an iconic touch point for anyone of a certain age, especially those who know what a “tape” is. (Was.) These men of a certain age most certainly spent some quality time in mom’s basement making mixes to celebrate love, mourn getting dumped and generally show off their masterful knowledge of hot jams. (For the ultimate example of this male prototype, see John Cusack in High Fidelity.) Naturally, these men are now older, but somewhere deep inside each one, an insecure teenager is dying to find audio perfection.

Which brings me to the marketing experiment that arrived in our snail mail this week (for no apparent reason!). TNT has spent at least a few bucks to create a giant faux tape box containing a tiny-but-heavy rubber “mix tape” that’s really a flash drive that plugs into your computer’s USB port. The drive contains three songs in a play-only Shockwave format (alas, no MP3s) that presumably represent the three men at the heart of the show. I say presumably because I can’t imagine any person on Earth putting “Up Around the Bend” by Creedance Clearwater Revival, “Here I Go Again” by Whitesnake and “The Best of Times” by Styx on the same tape voluntarily.

My expectation is that these songs will play while the three men bond in the car, driving in the perfection that is the Magic Hour (right before the sun sets). Or perhaps while smoking weed they stole from one of their children in the basement. I’m pretty sure they won’t be playing any of these songs while holding a CD player over their heads. I just don’t see wooing the Mrs with Whitesnake.

I’m just guessing, of course, as I didn’t bother to watch the core marketing piece on the tape: a “sneek peek” for the show itself. I just can’t get excited about a show revolving around middle-aged men who like Whitesnake, CCR and Styx. I’m also curious as to how I was targeted to receive this particular piece. The best theory I’ve had to date, based on the name used on the address label: cable cousin (via Time Warner) HBO sold/lent my name to TNT.

I purchased a True Blood tee directly from HBO.com earlier this year, and fully expected to get marketing from at least HBO. They have not disappointed, letting me know every single item that has entered the store related to every show on the air. Every HBO touch has been via e-mail, however.

TNT clearly spent at least some marketing dollars to get attention for their show. The question is, did  it work? Yes and no. No in that I still don’t have any interest in the show, and in fact any chance I might have given it (based solely on the cast) pretty much died when presented with these music choices. (I now have a mash up of “Up Around the Bend” and “Here I Go Again” stuck in my brain. I fear I may go insane!)

On the plus side – at least for TNT – they got exactly what every show desires: a free plug.