Meryl K. Evans

I love brainstorming ideas for a new company name, product, or something else. I guess you could call me a name freak. :) Every case is different, but here are the basic tips I tend to follow when hunting for inspiration:

Randomly flip through the dictionary.

Take words and mixing or subbing letters.

Say names out loud.

Pick a [...]

Businesses have been taking advantage of many online tools not originally created for business purposes such as blogs, feeds, wikis, forums and more. These help businesses create a community, build relationships and gain trust and credibility. Would you buy a book on this topic?
If so, what do you want from the book that you’re not [...]

Judith E. Glaser, author of Creating We: Change I-Thinking to We-Thinking and Build a Healthy, Thriving Organization has helped numerous organizations large and small to change and deal with challenges. She tells stories about real organizations and managers and how they worked through their challenges. While the stories provide a learning tool, changing organizational beliefs [...]

David Jones came from humble beginnings and worked his way up to CEO of a successful British retail company. And he did so without telling anyone that he had Parkinson’s Disease for most of his tenure.
Jones was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease one year after he became the CEO of Grattan, which later merged with NEXT. [...]

Jakob Nielsen’s latest Alertbox discusses newsletter usability and the competition for user attention. Nilesen reports that the original findings remain true today: “email newsletters are the best way to maintain customer relationships on the Internet.”
I love newsletters as a marketing tool. Done right, you provide valuable information to readers without annoying them with sales-speak. I [...]

When I switched teams to a tech writer position, my company provided me with a second monitor. At first, I didn’t like it. The cursor was driving me nuts and I was constantly moving windows.
Now I can’t stand working on a computer or laptop with one monitor and wouldn’t mind a three panel monitor. Currently, [...]

When I find my way to a Web site, I may have gotten there through a search engine or through a link from a colleague or Web site. After I’ve scanned the content and fiddled around in the pages, the site may impress me if the information proves valuable.
What do I do then? The possibilities: [...]

Crises aren’t limited to computer breaches, hurricanes, and tsunamis. Unfortunately, more crises have occurred in the past few years than in the 20 years before that. Too many organizations react to crisis instead of making crisis management a part of its organization like human resources and finance.
The unusual way of doing business in the past [...]

Do a search for any telecommunications company and you’ll see plenty of complaints about all of them. That’s because their systems are complex.
I’ve worked at two telecommunications companies for ten years and it gave me perspective into why customer service is often not a smooth process. Both of these companies have been around since the [...]

I never wanted to start a business. The thought of managing all the administrative stuff like accounting, legal, and other stuff turned me off. I like doing my job and focusing all of my energies there. Surprising as that’s what I am doing today… managing my own business.
It’s a one-person business and I manage taxes, [...]

Finally. It took one month, 46 email messages, and two visits to the store to resolve a problem with my Sidekick II. The solution wasn’t complicated, but I can’t honestly say it would’ve worked had I not got a new SIM card.
SMS (short message service) had not been working for months, but I didn’t notice [...]

IntelliEnterprise Version 8.0 provides a complete out-of-the-box intranet solution that does not require custom development . The latest version adds community and collaboration features to IntelliEnterprise, including wikis, blogs, streaming video, user ratings, and comments for all documents and other content, extended tagging and tag clouds, and enhanced workgroups. The release also includes an organization [...]

When done right, white papers are an effective marketing tool. Michael Stelzner, author of Writing White Papers, reports on his findings in the White Paper Report ($49) based on input from almost 600 white paper writers.
First, should businesses bother with white papers? I admit that I’ve downloaded many free reports, white papers such and I [...]

You might allow some e-commerce sites to send you emails with sales and specials. I do. But some go overboard and give you no way to cut down the number of emails you receive. One such site sends emails more than once a week with a sale and instead of drawing me to the site [...]

Samantha Krieger of Just Say Yes asked if editors prefer to receive press releases by e-mail or by mail. The following is my response:
It depends on the editor. My recommendation is to create a column in your editor contact list for “Preference” or something like a “Notes” column. Then go to their Web sites to [...]

Having worked as a process manager and tech writer in software development for over 10 years, I ran into the problems covered in Five common errors in requirements analysis.
Problem 1: Customers Don’t Know What They Want
This is often true because much of development has to do with technology that’s beyond the customer’s knowledge. In [...]

Monitoring blogs for your company information helps you stay on top of what others say about your business. But what if they say something bad about your product or service? The Dallas Morning News reported on how a local chocolatier ran into this problem, and really, the company doesn’t need a blog. Thanks to ten-part [...]

I had been hearing many stories about how bad Time Warner’s service was. Since the switch over from Comcast to Time Warner, we experienced no problems. That is, until December 29. Our Internet connection was slow to non-existent. We didn’t think much of it even after rebooting the router and cable modem. After two [...]

Wow, I’m amazed the American Film Institute hasn’t already done the 100 best business movies. American.com did it first, but only with 10 instead of 100. I’ve seen about half of the movies listed and don’t remember most of them.
Do you think these represent the top 10? Love to hear your comments and movie suggestions. [...]

Derek Harding at ClickZ explores RSS, its good and bad points, and its impact on email marketing. Just like some people prefer to get pizza by delivery, by pick up, or by eating in the restaurant, RSS and email newsletters provide users with the choice of getting content delivered by email or by newsreader. Pizza [...]