Exceptional customer service stories are not common, and should therefore be told and re-told. We were inspired by these stories and hope you will be too.

Morton’s Steakhouse: Where Stalking Ends with a 24 oz. Porterhouse Steak

Photo By junsato

Peter Shankman swears the following is true:

On august 17, 2011, Shankman was due to catch a 7am flight out of Newark to Tampa, Florida, for a lunch meeting in Clearwater. He had a “healthy piece of grouper” at that business lunch, and arrived at Newark at 4 pm. When he got on the plane, he found that he was, again, hungry: “As I’ve tweeted and mentioned countless times before, I’m a bit of a steak lover… Over the past few years, I’ve developed an affinity for Morton’s Steakhouses and if I’m doing business in a city which has one, I’ll try to schedule a dinner there if I can”. His stomach rumbling, Shankman twitted the following:

“Hey Morton’s. Can you meet me at Newark’s airport with a porterhouse when I land in two hours? Thanks”.

Shankman admits he was joking, and had “no expectations of anything from that Tweet”.

Two and a half hours later, as he was walking off the plane to meet his driver, he was surprised to find a ”man in a tuxedo” waiting beside him. It was Alex, an employee of Morton’s Steakhouse, who immediately proceeded to tell Shankman that “he’d heard I was hungry, and inside is a 24 oz. Porterhouse steak, an order of  Colossal Shrimp, a side of potatoes, one of Morton’s famous round things of bread, two napkins, and silverware”.

The Ritz-Carlton: Where Eggs and Milk are Delivered by the Chef’s Mother-in-law

Courtesy of Ritz-Carlton Jimbaran Bay

Every luxury hotel, and especially a chain that revels in its reputation for excellence, strives to make customer service an art. This Bloomberg businessweek piece, titled “How Ritz-Carlton maintains its mystique”, contains one truly exceptional story.

It concerns a family staying at the Ritz-Carlton, Bali, who had carried specialized eggs and milk for their son who suffered from food allergies. On arriving at the hotel, they discovered the eggs had broken and the milk had soured. “The Ritz-Carlton manager and dining staff”, tells the reporter, “searched the town but could not find the appropriate items”. The executive chef, not a man to be so easily defeated, remembered a store in Singapore that carried the items. He proceeded to call his mother-in-law, never an easy task, and asked that she buy the items and fly to Bali to deliver them. She did, and they were.

B. Dalton: Where it’s OK to Refer Customers to the Competition

Photo By Matt Nager for The Wall Street Journal

American retail bookstore chain B. Dalton boasts the following delightful tale.

A father and son (who remain nameless in the original article), went to B. Dalton in search of a specific book for Christmas. One of the sales reps checked the computer to see if the store held that book in its inventory – unfortunately, it wasn’t. The next shipment was due to arrive in a few days, too late for Christmas.

The sales rep then did an amazing thing: she contacted Borders, the competition, to ask whether they had the book. “She gave me the contact name at Borders”,  tells the father, “and told me to just go up to the counter and my book would be waiting”.

Are your creative juices constantly flowing? Get them to work on the “Art: Reloaded” photo challenge! Create a beautiful photo remake and win awesome prizes from Wix!

Photo remakes are photographic reconstructions of famous art works. An art work can be a painting, a sculpture, an album cover or any other kind of iconic image.

In this challenge, we want you to send us your own take on the masterpieces. Our celebrated artsy judges will choose the best submissions and award the winners with:

• 1st Prize: iPad!
• 2nd Prize: 250$ voucher for B&H!
• 3rd Prize: 150$ voucher for B&H!

All winners also get a yearly Unlimited Wix package!

How to Enter

• Choose the image you want to reconstruct
• Recreate the original piece as a photo. Be creative!
• Submit your remake HERE

The Rules

• Submit your work until Feb 29, 2012
• The remake you’re submitting has to be a photograph – no drawings, illustrations, collage work, etc
• You may use computer graphics to retouch the photo
• Please mention the title of the original piece that you are recreating
• The photo doesn’t have to be an identical copy of the original work. Feel free to add your personal touch

For inspiration, take a look at this showcase of beautiful photo remakes.

ENTER NOW!

Terms & Conditions

Being CEO of the internet has its perks: it allows Google - the most popular search engine in the world – to give away some very useful features for practically nothing. Most people,however, are either unaware of Google’s added value or simply don’t know how to use the endless features it offers. That’s why we gathered some of the most useful but least known Google tricks into this list – to turn your Google use into an informed and fun experience.  

1.       Check No One is Spying on You

Think you Gmail account might have been hacked? Click the ‘Details’ link at the very bottom of your Gmail page and see when, where and how your Gmail account was last accessed. The last 10 logins are listed.

2.     Add Customized Google Search to your Website

 Google’s Custom Search Engine  enables you to add a customized Google search to your website / blog. This means you can have your visitors use a customized topical search engine that only searches your website/s.  

3.       See What the World is Searching for

Many of us are already familiar with Google Trends, a tool that helps users discover the hottest searches on Google.  Google insights is a similar yet powered up version of Google Trends since it allows you to see what terms are being searched for in given countries or on specific time frames.You can search across specific regions (Australia vs. Europe), categories (health, finance, and sport), time frames (last 30 days) and properties.

4.       Read your RSS Feeds like Email Messages

Great for any content curator or just anybody, frankly, who spends more than 30 minutes per day on their Google Reader. The problem stems from the fact that the default view in Google Reader is expanded, which makes a quick scan-and-drop quite hard to do.To remedy that, change the view from expanded to list on the right hand side of your screen. Now, you have a nice Gmail-looking RSS feed in your hands.

5.       Find Local Time for Any City in the World

Need to know the current local time in Paris, Beijing or Addis Ababa? Find the local time for any city in the world by searching the word ‘time’ followed by name of the city (example: “time London”).

Facebook’s Timeline has only been open to the public for a few weeks, and it’s already a huge success. One of the main reasons for Timeline’s popularity is the Cover Photo – that wide image on top of the page that finally makes Facebook profiles look good.

Antonio Fadda Facebook Timeline Design

The trend now is to create the most unique and attractive cover photos. The good news is that you don’t have to be a graphic designer to create an awesome cover photo. Here are some great tools that will help you design your cover photo and customize your Timeline’s look:

My FB Covers – Upload images, customize or choose a visual from the huge cover photo pool.

Cover Photo Magic – Facebook app with many sweet templates for creative cover photos.

The Site Canvas – Connects with your profile and offers different layouts, based on your photo albums and stock photos.

Pic Scatter  - Generates collages with different styles from your Facebook photos.

Fabio Maravilla Facebook Timeline Design

Cover Junction – Allows you to upload your own images or use the site’s pool of images.

Timeline Cover Banner – Photo editor that helps you customize your cover photo.

Cover Photoz -  A large selection of nice cover photo backgrounds, sorted by different categories

Coverize Me -Many themes to choose from. You can also add your own background (excellent for brands!).

FB Cover Designer for iPhone – Grabs your photos from different sites and adjusts them to the cover photo layout.

Facebook Timeline Covers for Android – Choose pics from your phone or snap new ones, customize them and upload to your FB profile.

Niels Langeveld Facebook Timeline Design

Photo By ►CubaGallery

Photo By ►CubaGallery

Photo By Airymist

Photo By ►CubaGallery

Photo By C.Rangefinder

Photo By Lisbokt

Photo By Emily Chastain Photography 

Photo By ►CubaGallery

Photo By ►CubaGallery

Photo By Hadleygrass is asparagus

Photo By ~Sh@wn~

Photo By Jocelyn Allen

Photo By Chelsea Fisher

Although photo remakes are based on works that already exist, it would be very wrong to doubt their status as artworks in their own right. Creating a powerful remake requires not only a great deal of technical precision, but also a clear artistic vision and talent, as you’ll see in this stunning showcase.

“American Gothic” remake by Jesse John Hunniford

“Narcissus” Remake by Max Zerrahn

“The Two Fridas” Remake by Claire Ball

“Girl with Ice Cream Cone” remake by Stephanie Gonot

“The Ship” remake by Justin Nunnink

“Composition With Red, Blue and Yellow” remake by Katie Jackson

“La bonne foi” by Magritte, remade by Noemi Mazzucchelli

“David and Goliath” by Caravaggio, remade by Miguel Iturbe

“Self Portrait 1889″ remake by Seth Johnson

“Christina’s World” by Andrew Wyeth, remade by Daryl Seitchik

“Nighthawks” remake by Bastian Vice

“Pot Pourri” remake by Tania Brassesco and Lazlo Passi Norberto

Julianne Moore by Peter Lindbergh as Seated Woman With Bent Knee by Egon Schiele for Harper’s Bazaar

 The photos were taken from a photo remake contest held by  booooooom.com

Today we introduce three terrific tools that will help you monitor your website’s activity. Keeping track of stats is a burdensome task, but it is absolutely essential. By understanding the graphs and numbers, you can evaluate success, analyze failures and strategize your next moves.

The following tools provide a clear image of website statistics and will get you familiar with what goes on “behind the scenes” of your site.

 Alexa

Many Online marketing professionals make no business decision before consulting Alexa’s ranking service. Alexa rates websites according to their popularity (Google is ranked #1, Facebook #2), and provides a comparison between similar websites.

Though some people dispute its accuracy, Alexa rankings are still highly regarded in the industry. That’s why keeping track of your website’s Alexa ranking is important. It also provides information about search terms that lead to your site, a daily visitors count, important demographic data about your visitors and plenty more.

 Google Analytics

The most popular tool for website activity stats. Site owners who use Google Analytics start seeing their website in a different light. Analytics helps you understand who is your audience, how did they find your site, what did they do while visiting, and what you can do to guarantee their return.

Frankly, not a day goes by that we don’t check our own Analytics reports to see how we did in the previous day. The data in this tool is so extensive and helpful that it’s almost hard to believe it’s given for free.

 WooRank

WooRank analyzes how well your site is communicating with search engines. In a world where a website’s fate is determined by its rank on Google, understanding your site’s SEO is critical.

After entering your URL, this tool will provide a report about your site’s SEO, as well as a short list of practical things you can do to improve it.

Some information provided by WooRank may sound like gibberish, but they provide a clear explanation for everything. Extremely useful is the ability to see how many links to your site appear on the web and where (good to know – Wix has 323 backlinks from Wikipedia!).

Follow our Twitter list for more great business tools!

There are a few actions you can incorporate into your blogging to generate more  response and blast that content forward.  Here are some tips to start you up:

Get the most out of Social media

You’re already present on one of the 3 top social networks, if not all of them. Automation is key when you want to save the time it takes to connect them with your blog:

•    Link your blog to Twitter. Twitterfeed is a useful, free website application that “feeds your blog to Twitter.” Sign up for an account on Twitterfeed, verify your personal info, and log in. Then click the Create New Feed button to add your blog. From now on, your content will be shared automatically on your Twitter page.  Twitterfeed works with Facebook as well as other social networks.  

•    Link your blog to Facebook. Use the NetworkedBlogs application on Facebook. NetworkedBlogs is a user-generated blog directory and syndication tool. Their Facebook app is one of the largest news apps on Facebook.  Go to NetworkedBlogs application and add your blog information as asked. There’s a verification process you’ll be taken through to make sure you’re the author of the blog.

•    Link your blog to LinkedIn. First off, if you haven’t already done so, add your blog link to your profile. To add your post updates automatically, you can use either Bloglink or WordPress applications. Another simple option is to add your Twitter stream to LinkedIn, and then, by default, as long as your blog posts are updating in Twitter they will also appear on LinkedIn.

To access LinkedIn applications, go to ‘edit profile’ and scroll down to the bottom. You will see a link that says Applications- Add an Application. Pick your selection of tools and start ramping up your LinkedIn, to get better exposure.

Use Flashy and Optimized Titles

Get attention to your posts and make sure people see them as they’re rushing through their day. Use bold, dynamic statements in your title and add zest to them with words like “Killer” “Amazing”, “Thrilling”.  Titles like  “5 life-saving tips for your freelance business” or “10 awesome ideas for your next photo shoot”, get noticed.

It’s critical you use Keywords in titles if you’d like your blog to better indexed by Google. Once you know which keywords you’re using (we’ll talk about it next) make sure to include them in your post title.

SEO your Posts

SEO is an entire field of opportunities if you learn how to use it. First, make sure your blog has a meta title, keywords and description. Second, make sure all your images have alt tags. These are tags that tell search engines what the image is showing and enable it to be better indexed. Third, optimize each individual post by adding meta data relevant to the post.
You have two main options here:

1. Write a SEO pre-meditated post. This means giving SEO some thought and consideration before you write a post, or even as you choose your post topic. To do this, go to Adwords Keyword tool and start by plugging in words relating to your blog’s field or specific to the topic of the post you’d like to write. Google will present to you the search volume of each keyword or keyword phrase you put in and give you many additional ideas.  Knowing the top ranking keywords will help you prepare better for writing your post. For better results, go for the longtail keywords - Those are phrases which are usually 3-5 keywords long.  They have a lower search volume but this also means you have a better chance of getting a higher search rank for your chosen phrases and your traffic will be better targeted.

2. Write a post and optimize it after you finish writing. Use Adwords Keyword tool and get the most relevant keywords, then adjust your post accordingly. You can also use tools like Scribe SEO tool, which will analyze your post and let you know what you need to do in order to optimize it.  It will give you keyword suggestions as well as other recommendations like better keyword density and how to add relevant links.

Write for other Blogs

Connections are great for exposure. Start interacting with other blogs in your industry. Guest blogging is very popular and most blog owners like hosting great guest posts every once in a while. Contact another blogger and offer to share your expertise on their blog. You can invite other bloggers to write a guest post on your blog as well and increase interest among your readers. The best way to go about this is to prepare a list of blogs which are close to your niche but not directly competing with your blog. Then simply email the bloggers to introduce yourself and tell them of the mutual benefit in your offer.

Create a Squidoo Lens

Squidoo is a popular user generated content site. You can get some added exposure to your blog as well as back-links. Pages tend to have good authority and rank high on Google so it can prove particularly beneficial if your blog is new. Create a brand page for your blog or individual lenses for posts.

If you’re a freelancer and have experienced one or both the following symptoms you may have contacted Freelancer’s blues:

-    An occasional drop in motivational energy, especially during dry spells.
-    A general air of loneliness (that may come and go.)

But do not discourage! We’ve gathered some tips to help you overcome Freelancer’s Blues!

Staying Motivated During Dry Spells

Every freelancer goes through dry seasons, those awful periods when business is slowing down. In such periods, to get your spirits up and avoid stagnation, try the following:

Remind yourself your greater goals- those that go beyond paying this month’s bills.  Where do you want your business to be a year from now? Where do you see yourself professionally 3 years from now? Think far and big and keep your eyes on the greater plan, not just the present day.  Remember that in the grander scheme of things, this period is only a phase and things will get better.

There’s always something to take care of- You are your own boss, your own bookkeeper, your own marketing team and your own sales person. That’s a lot of work and skills.  Surely one of these departments needs care.  Are all your books in order? Are your Google ads optimized? Have you tried SEO? What about growing your LinkedIn network? There’s much that can be done and dry season is best to care for these things and have them ready for busier times.

Self propelling- aka freelance.  There are many resources on the web that advertise jobs for freelancers. Sometimes even getting lower paying gigs is good for a while to get your name out, to keep working and most important, to maintain your self-value.  If clients are not calling you daily, get proactive.  Check out this list of 31 job boards for freelance work and start hunting for gigs.

Work on your elevator pitch- If you haven’t done it so far, this will help you focus on your goals.  An elevator pitch is a minute long answer to “so what do you do”? It needs to be concise, clear and contain a spark, some element that would entice the listener to hear more. Changing your elevator pitch a bit, to accommodate different types of listeners, can help to get more people interested and to spread the word about what you do.

Dealing with Freelancer’s Loneliness

 We’re social animals, working from home all the time means we spend long hours alone, without much human interaction.  No water cooler conversations, no team projects or daily lunches with colleagues.  (Apparently, this part of  Freelancer’s blues may not be as widespread as some people think, read this interesting post about the myth of the lonely freelancer )

Here are some methods for overcoming occasional loneliness:

Social Networks- Technology is the key to staying connected. Some days you are actually too busy to even make plans for later, but online conversations are a good way to interact at any time. Give yourselves breaks to open your Facebook or Twitter and engage in conversation with friends, family or the general community.  For many freelancers, this is a great way to stay involved and socially active on a daily basis.

Business Networking Organizations- Join a business networking organization and go to meet-ups, events and lectures. Business networking organizations are an awesome way to meet people, learn new things, and most importantly, get more business referrals. Check out BNI and 4Networking to get a better idea on what business networking can do for you.  In any case, it’s a kind of interesting social interaction that can also profit your business and can become part of your weekly routine.

Work from a café’/co-working space- It’s great to spend most of the day in your Pj’s, however, venturing out might do you good. The local coffee shop is often a freelancer’s haven. Take your laptop there and work for a few hours a week. You can also try free community co-working spaces. These are becoming increasingly fashionable and you can actually make rewarding connections. If you happen to live in NYC or in San Francisco, you’re always welcome to work at the Wix Lounge. Coffee’s on us!

Get out more- Visit friends, make new friends. Go to conventions and trade shows. You can also take a class on a work related topic and meet new people. Having a well balanced life that contains work time and fun time will make your overall frame of mind happier.

Taking Good Care of Your Body

This may not seem related to Freelancer’s blues, however, caring for your body is essential for your mental well-being. Depending on your line of work, you may actually be spending 8-12 hours a day in front of the computer, without so much as even walking to your car or the train. This means you’re not moving much or let’s say, not moving much the right way.

Take a Pilates class- Pilates exercise is wonderful for strengthening inner and outer muscles and moving your body gently back to a healthier posture. Your local gym very likely offers a pilates class or you can easily find a professional in the area. If pilates is not your cup of tea, go with yoga, aerobics, swimming or any other training that will get your blood flowing. And hey, until you figure out what kind of sports you’re into, you can always take a 45 minute walk at the end or in the middle of your work day.  Just put on your sneakers on and get out there!

Eat well- You’re home all day; take an hour break and cook something nice and wholesome. Having a snack when you are in a rush to make it to the bus is understood. But being your own boss means you get to set up your daily schedule a bit more wisely, so give your body some love.