The Dip-Lovin’ Post Office Ladies Saved My Behind!

This has been a good week business-wise! I was recently highlighted in a trade magazine that targets country-style stores and I have been getting a lot of wholesale inquiries as a result. Yesterday, I sent out more than a dozen envelopes with samples inside to stores that had requested them. This almost turned into a catastrophe, but thanks to the wonderful ladies at my local post office, it turned out fine.

As many of you know, the USPS just initiated a major rate change. I went to my local post office the other day for new stamps. When I send out samples, the envelope always weighs less than 4 ounces, so I was hoping for 4-ounce stamps. There’s no such thing, so I settled for regular “forever” stamps along with 17-cent stamps for each ounce over the first. I was happy to hear that that rate went down from 24-cents to 17-cents.

Yesterday was my son’s 5^th birthday, and we were on our way to the beach when I got a call from my post office. Yes, they actually CALLED ME to tell me that my postage wasn’t correct! That’s one thing that is nice about living in a small town. Plus, it helps that I supply them with free dip mixes, and they happen to love it as much as I do – perhaps more.

It turns out that there is a new thickness rule which added an additional 39-cents to each envelope! Normally I stack my samples, but now I need to figure out a way to send them flat. Go figure.

So, beware of this new thickness-rule, and be super nice to your postal workers! I hope you all have a fabulous holiday weekend!

Tip #2 – Everyone with a web site wants to be at the top of Google, right? One way to help your website climb the ranks is to put the right meta tags in your HTML code. Here’s how you can find out what Google “likes”.

Go to Google and type in your product or service, (i.e. Chicago bakery). See what web sites come up in the top three. Click on a link, and then in your browser menu go to View –> Source. A text file will open and a few lines down, you will see something like this:

<meta name="keywords" content="Chicago, cakes, wedding, parties, party, pastries, bakery, bakeries, baker, birthday, corporate, confirmation, baby, new baby, Cakes, portrait, cake, photography, holidays, chocolate, buttercream, Chicagoland">

 Those are the keywords that this particular web site is using, and since they are in the top three, chances are they did something right with their meta tag keywords. It’s also important to have these words injected into your actual web site text that people see, so be sure to do that as well.