Mercs

Facebook Fan Page “Forced Like” Ethics

mercsllc — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 02:45:52 +0000

I recently dove into a project to set up Facebook Tab Manager, a cool plugin from David Carr that feeds a Facebook fan page it’s content from your WordPress install. There are a couple cool features of the plugin for turning off certain WP filters that makes it especially nice. Otherwise, you can create your fan page content just like you create your blog content — same interface, editor, and plugins.

The challenge I set up for myself was to get the much touted “forced like” feature

Facebook Fan Page

Happy Heart Day!

mercsllc — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 20:20:01 +0000

I’ve been spending the day playing with my darling children and during lulls in the LOLs I’ve been pondering certain little children and their families who will be just as joyful for their own “heart day” funded on this “heart day.”

My friend Dr.Mani is continually raising awareness for congenital heart defects and he always leverages the obvious holiday: St. Valentine’s Day / CHD Awareness Day. This year Dr.Mani has two things happening on the auspicious day — one for business owners and

Congenital Heart Defects Awareness

Top 10 People for 2011

mercsllc — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 21:00:54 +0000

I’ve been fighting my perfectionistic tendencies for a month writing this up “right” and today I got two promptings to just get it out there. (Perfectionism in my writing does not play well with taking care of the family, finishing my dissertation, and finishing jobs for my clients. Here’s one small step for [this] man, and a giant leap for writing-productivity-kind.)

This year I’m fending off my own S.O.S. (shiny object syndrome) and concentrating on one business area at a time. While

Top 10 for 2011

Five Guys Reframe

mercsllc — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 06:32:30 +0000

Last night I ate at Five Guys Burgers and Fries for the first time. The guy behind the counter watched us eyeball the menu for an inordinate amount of time and asked if we’d been there before. Shaking our heads he explains “the regular is two patties, the ‘little’ is one — otherwise they’re pretty much the same.”

This is an interesting reframe for encouraging over consumption (along with the name of the restaurant encouraging me to add on an order of “regular” fries that filled half the

Reframe for profits

The greatest of these …

mercsllc — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 00:31:01 +0000

As we are full in the swing of the holi-daze, it’s good to remember what the season is all about. It isn’t shopping, spending, buying — it *is* about giving and love.

I was coming here to share about a particular book that an associate asked me to promote. I changed my mind after seeing the “trippy” gifts being submitted for that launch.

Instead, I’m going to recommend the book Allowing by Holly Riley. I have heard nothing but good things about Holly and her book from our mutual friend

Love

More Business = EAT during the holidays

mercsllc — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 04:21:17 +0000

Doing business on the Internet is “easy” — you just put up a web site and collect the moola, right?
Um, no.

Or at least not any more than doing business offline is as simple as setting up an office and getting paid.

So, what’s missing from this overly simplistic idea of business?
People for one. Interacting with those people for another.
An exchange of value for a third.
And online there is the small issue of wrestling with technology.

I think a better model of business than

EAT Business Model

Updated CookieMonster-plus to 1.3.4

mercsllc — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 01:06:26 +0000

Just a quick note to let you know that CookieMonster-plus has been updated to allow use on all pages (even ones using a template that doesn’t include a call to get_header!) and I found and squashed the pesky foreach() bug I couldn’t seem to replicate until today.

Grab the CookieMonster-plus plugin directly or check out the main CookieMonster-plus post for more details.

BTW, the reason I found these bugs is because I was putting up a new freebie for a giveaway event. I’m also working on a

Updated CookieMonster-plus plugin

quickie — $100 for $1 (anti-cyber Monday)

mercsllc — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 21:44:54 +0000

I’m in the middle of composing an epic post that simplifies the whole business world and applies it to your web site. In the meantime, I had to let you know about a time-sensitive deal. (It has nothing to do with ”black Friday”, ”cyber Monday”, or ”arbitrary Tuesday” sales — but does have a deadline in a couple days!)

Marlon’s special video

One of the upstanding pillars of online business, Marlon Sanders, has just posted a video that I think you’ll find profitable. I was going to

$100 for $1? (anti-cyber Monday)

Water, (charity: water) Everywhere. . .

mercsllc — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 04:28:39 +0000

Like so many other resources, we often take water for granted. It’s there from the tap, in the water cooler, at the drinking fountain. But most of the water in the world is not safe to just drink. And nasties like candida and giardia don’t care about age, race, class, income, or geography.

The funny thing is, conversation can ward off the sicknesses and diseases from unclean water in developing regions. I can hear you now “What can conversation do about dirty water?”

First off, no

Mercs & AoC3 support charity: water

Balancing Production and Promotion

mercsllc — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 04:58:18 +0000

One of Marlon Sanders’s key mantras is ”produce and promote.” A wise set of words if ever I heard any.

I’ve been deep in production mode the last few days and have let the promotion aspect slip. Hence, the question: where is the balance between producing and promoting?

When dealing with products the production often happens up front. Physical goods have built-in limits on how much promotion to do because once they are sold there isn’t much point in promoting them more!

Information pr