| Hello: Here’s the latest edition of MarketVolt’s Monday Mash-up. We’ll kick off every week with this quick collection of tips, recommendations, observations and other interesting, valuable stuff. – Tom |
| Monday, April 16, 2018 MarketVolt’s Monday Mash-Up Business Cards Collecting Dust? Here Are Some Solutions If I had a nickel for every business card I collected but never entered in my contact management software… But that’s old news for me. I now use an app called CamCard. Open the app and snap a photo of the card. The app scans the text in the photo and converts it into editable text that it saves as a contact record. Phone number in the phone number field. Email in the email field. And so forth… You can then save the record to your contact list on your phone (which, in my case, syncs with the contact list on my other computers). The scanning is not flawless. Sometimes you have to edit the new contact record. But it’s close enough to be a huge time saver. CamCard is a great solution for the occasional card. But if you need to enter more than a small handful of cards, we recommend a service called ALLinEntry. Send that pile of cards to the service, and they’ll return to you a spreadsheet with the contacts — ready for you to import into your database. This is a huge time-saver, well worth the investment. List-Building Tips We just updated “9 Proven List Building Techniques” — one of the free resources on our website. You can grab a copy here. Recommended Word Delivery Device What’s a “word delivery device” you ask? That’s just doublespeak for “book.” I’m reading one called “Spinglish: The Definitive Dictionary of Deliberately Deceptive Language.” Here’s an online excerpt you can browse. A sales guy sparked my interest in doublespeak offered to publish an article about my company on his website. He said there would be “a symbolic fee” for the article. Here’s a great article about how marketers, politicians, military leaders and corporations use misleading language to disguise meaning. Cover Song Controversy Taylor Swift is one of those love-her-or-hate-her figures. Not much in between. Last week, she released on Spotify her cover of the Earth Wind and Fire hit “September.” Allee Wilson, who co-wrote the song, gave Taylor’s version the thumbs-up. “Taylor Swift is the absolute cherry on top of a very soulful and happy sundae,” she said. But there was also widespread criticism. PLEASE REPLY…I’m interested in two things here: 1) What do you think of Taylor’s version? Cherry on top? Terrible? Something in between? 2) What are some of your favorite cover versions of well-known songs. I have a long list that I’ll share soon. Please share some of your favorites by replying here. Meaningful Quote “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.” ― George Orwell, from Politics and the English Language*** Any reading, listening, quoting, resourcing that you think we should share? Send us a tip. Until next time, enjoy the rest of this week and the weekend. Tom |
Categories