MediaGlo, Inc.

A definite must-read for any business owner is a book called The Dip by marketing guru Seth Godin.

There is a small part on the beginning that talks about the importance of being the best in the world at what you do. You might be reading this right now and thinking "The best in the world?? That's impossible." If you're thinking that, then you should quit what you are doing right now.

Not so fast! It's not time to close shop just yet. Let's look at what being the best in the world really means.

Let's say you own an ice cream shop. There are plenty of ice cream shops around town, so why should anyone else come to yours?

I think the first thing that comes to mind when trying to attract new customers is price. Find what the competition charges and drop your price just a little bit lower. In many cases, this cannot end good. What happens when your competition lowers their price even more? You will find yourself now engaged in an unnecessary war. You'll be cheating yourself out of profits, and many times quality suffers in an effort to reduce costs.

Here is a better strategy: Be the best! How would an ice cream shop be the best if there are thousands of other shops? While you might never have the very best ice cream in general, why not pick a specific flavor? Instead of the best ice cream in the world, why not focus on producing the best strawberry ice cream in the world? You see what happens? You have now greatly improved your chance of being the best because you've created a niche. You pick one special thing, and do it well! Now, instead of trying to meet everyone's needs, you can be known to all of the strawberry ice cream lovers out there that you are the best.

Sure, there aren't as many strawberry ice cream fans as something like vanilla, but this is your greatest strength. By picking that one thing, you have just added value to your product. Look at Starbucks. Who would have thought a company would be so successful by charging $5 for a cup of coffee? I can go somewhere else and buy 2-3 cups for the same price. They don't have to offer cheaper prices because of the competition. To many people, Starbucks is the best, and because of that, their customers are willing to pay a lot more.

At MediaGlo, this is what we are very passionate about. In trying to be the best at what we do, we think it's very important to represent our customers as the best. You can get a website anywhere, but why not get the best?

You're either the best in the world or you're invisible. - Seth Godin

I know everyone who read the last post has been anxiously awaiting the next update...

You boot up your computer and open up the web browser. There's no need to type in the address because you have our site bookmarked as your home page (and yes, Bill, that is something we can track) only to find out that we've gone another entire day without posting anything to the blog.

For the rest of you: yes, we would love it if you bookmarked us as your homepage and we would love it if you came to visit our site every single day, but there is an easier way to get our updates. It's this magical thing that we like to call RSS.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. While we can go into the technical details of what it is, the main thing you might be wondering is "why should I even care?" Well, RSS is a great way to keep people coming back to your site! You can push out updates, news, product features to any who is subscribed by just making an update to your blog. Anyone can subscribe with an RSS Reader. An RSS reader works a lot like email. You can keep folders of your previously read articles and just like email, you'll usually have an inbox of unread articles that come straight to you.

To get started, you can use Google Reader if you have or would like to sign up for a GMail account. If not there are plenty of free readers that you can download and start using right away. 

Anyone coming back to the site will notice a few changes we've made. For those who are new, welcome!

We've added a blog to our site (obviously, right?) so that we can tell the world about what's going on with the company, cool projects we're working on, and the occasional Elvis sighting from time to time... (Seriously, if you have anything to report, you can email isawelvis@mediaglo.com)

We'll also have different specials from time to time which we will be posting here. Currently, we're offering 10% off of logo design.

So does that mean you have to visit the site every day in hopes of catching the "Websites for only $1! TODAY ONLY" sale? Not really. We've made it convenient to keep track of what's going on with us by adding an RSS feed to the site. You can subscribe with your feed reader and always be in the loop of what's going on.

Don't know what RSS is? We'll also be posting tips, tricks, and "jargon busters" to help you survive on the web. Our first one will explain just what RSS is and how you can use it to receive updates on all of your favorite sites and blogs.

Until then...

UPDATE: What is RSS?