Do you tickle your customers? Do I have your attention? :) Twenty years ago, when I was a secretary in a law firm, I remember learning about setting up tickle files. This meant you put a copy of the last exchange with your client in an accordian file with month tabs, as a way to remind yourself to follow up or reconnect at the appropriate time.

The idea of tickling my clients stuck with me (okay, it amused me, too), and although I hadn't realized thats what I was doing, I set up a system for staying in front of my past customers, using computers (of course). This month's feature article looks at some of the ways you can use technology to tickle your past customers, and keep them aware of you.

This past month I finished up a whole series of projects for Jaguar Rose, LLC, a family and woman owned business in New Jersey. I redesigned their existing logo, developed a tagline, create a business card and letterhead, and last, a flyer.

Working with this company was spectacular because they really understood the value of having consistent branding and professional image right from the launch of the business. I will enjoy watching their success from afar!

I do a LOT of writing and every now and then, I stumble across a thief who has taken entire articles without respecting my copyright. But now there is a way for anyone to track down the intellectual property thieves that are rampant on the Web and, if nothing else, render a good spanking by email.

The Copyscape service lets you enter in the web address of one of your pages, and it goes out and sees who has closely similar content. So, even if someone only stole a couple sentences from your site, you can still catch them. I have to admit it was depressing, not flattering, to see how many people stole my writing (you don't want to hear about the web design firm bearing a religious name that ran my entire logo design article as their own!). But at at the same time, a number of the perpetrators were apologetic and changed the content immediately. I suppose I just like that I can catch them, even if I can't stop them.

Oh, this was fun! Cartwheels for Kids hired me to create a new web site, and design a tri-fold brochure for their new business. Cartwheels for Kids is a structured play and educational program for the youngest residents of Rensselaer County. I had a great time coming up with a design, which incorporated a great illustration from another artist. Creating the site and brochure was a smooth, seamless process because of the business acumen of the owner, and it was a thrill to assist at the birth of this new business.

Terri Lonier at Working Solo has just announced her Working Solo Business Gym lineup for the Fall and it sounds like a super opportunity to invest in your business success. The Business Gym is a program that includes 5 teleseminars with reknowned experts and access to a big community and resource area just for solo entrepreneurs. This Fall she has experts speaking on topics such as pricing your services, following your intuition in your business, and how to use the media for positioning yourself as an expert.

What blows me away is that she's offering this entire business development program for only $99 - the cost of a night on the town! Any one of these experts could charge twice that much for a seminar. Then each of the seminars stays available for 14 days as a recording, so you can learn from it when best for you. The whole series starts on September 24th. At least take a moment to check it out - it's a pretty impressive program.

That's it for this month. I look forward to hearing from you, whether it is a a story idea, feedback, or better yet, a way that I can help your business market with technology :)

© 2004 All Rights Reserved - This newsletter is intended to be read and passed around by entrepreneurs, businesses and organizations interested in electronic communication, marketing, design and technology. Please don't reproduce this document or its contents without permission and full credit to Eileen Parzek, SOHO It Goes!