Why am I blogging

 

Every weekend myself and Joey get to lie in bed while the kids watch junk TV (like all great parents do) and while the kids are entertained we get to chat for hours about everything... It's a great aspect of our marriage that I love. So this weekend I was discussing the recent blog and how a business friend stood at a networking BNI meeting and promoted that everyone should go read it... I was embarrassed and a bit nervous... What would they think, would they argue with me, not accept some of my ideas... ? So while sharing this with Joey she turned to me and asked, why am I blogging? bloody good question...

After some time examining the reasons and motives... I settled on this one, it's for me! If you enjoy my writing, that's fantastic. I hope you do and I really love to hear your feed back and encouragement (notice I left out criticism ;-)

My initial motivation was inspired by my two cycling mates Hans and Arron while drinking coffee, they pointed out that it's a great way to order thoughts, arguments and apply more discipline to any opinions. So I'm now into my third month and really enjoying the process.

Malcolm Gladwell talked about the 10,000 hour principal, an observation that anyone that masters anything usually has spent about 10,000 hours refining their skill, so I've got 9,990 hours to go.. Or you have about 1,000 blogs to read ;-)

 

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Where do great kids come from

Let's start with a disclaimer "Yes I have a view of this billboard .... And no I won't discuss that view today"

I've driven past this billboard many times and I'm confused (as a marketer) whom the target market is and what the intended recipients should do?

Let's look at some possible target markets :-

1. A person with a great marriage; Would this ad reinforce their good marriage and the good job they're doing with their kids? What should they do, or what action are they to take?
2. A person with a crap marriage; Would they feel good after seeing this? Would this promotion motivate them to change the situation surrounding their marriage? Would they be motivated to find out about the sponsoring promoter?
3. A single parent with a family, would they resonate with this message or would they feel insufficient and excluded! And what actions does the billboard owners want this group to do?

So, I'm left wondering whom the ad is for and what action they should take.... being curious I went to their website to learn some more and I discovered that they're a non political family centred organisation with two options of joining or donating. These are valid options and if the ad resonated with you then you may support their cause...

Conclusion, the marketing seems to be targeted, wanting to attract like minded individuals to grow the movement. So it's achieved it's goal, but how many more people did it alienate and does good marketing have to do that? ... Bet you thought I was going to diss it ;-)

 

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To stream or not

To me there are two different music lovers, the first is format focused and the other is artist focused. Now I know that you're different you're a bit of both, but you're probably driven by one first. So my weekly blog this week I would like to review two apps, spotify and tunein radio, I have tested both and depending on your predominate music driver will prefer one to the other

Tune in radio, streams 1,000's of Internet radio stations from all over the globe, in my favourites I have smooth jazz, swing, big band, cafe, blues jazz stations, I love this as I'm in the mood for s certain format of music I'll dial up the stream and listen away for hours. The benefit of this app over all the other streaming radio apps is the ability to record up to 8 hours of music for offline listening pleasure later. It easily hunts down all the local radio stations in NZ that I could never listen to (bfm in Auckland) and make available any station no matter where. The other thing worth noting is the data usage, it's really not that bad with the most you'll use is 60-80meg and HOUR, that's all so even on expensive or restricted data plans you can listen to any station anywhere in the world!

Spotify, is my most recent trial app that I became aware of after being at a friends place. Now, my preferred way to listen it music is not artist centric so this one has had less use time than tune in radio, but saying that, for only $10 a month (U.S) it's a great deal! I do enjoy listening to some artists and now I can with out having to buy expensive CD's to racks of iTunes that fill up my valuable space on my idevices. Just a note, even though I find the $10 a good deal I've not yet signed up....?

 

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How not to worry

Just when the knife is ready to fall something comes along and saves your bacon! As the saying goes 90% of what we worry about never evetuates and the other 10% of the time works better! And on reflection my anecdotal experience reinforces sets this.

So if we know that most things turn out ok, then why do we continue to worry so bloody much and is there any remedy to the problem of worrying?

Ok here's the bad news, psychologists tell us that as humans beings, we are all prone to worry, no one is immune. They do acknowledge one thing and thats we all experience different levels of worry. So, maybe the question to ask, is not how to stop it all together, but how do we go about reducing the level of anxiety with the worry.

My personal strategy that works for me is my one step philosophy; take one simple step or action to reduce/solve/understand the worry you have... That's it! My strategy...

As an example of how this can work, I'll use this particular blog article as an example, I've now posted three or four blogs over the last month and now I'm suffering from writers block. I'm a day or two late even posting another blog and it was niggling at me, so 15 minutes ago I sat down at the table while waiting for Joey to cook my dinner and stated that all I'll do is start with one sentence...15 minutes later I had somehow created this article, read it to Joey and made some minor grammatical adjustments ... Result, I feel complete, the anxiety has gone, dinner is ready and I'm proud of my first draft (you're reading the edited version now).

 

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