The coffee wars are on, and according to The Boston Globe, McDonald’s is making headway.

The fast food giant launched its “McCafé” coffee chain in Melbourne, Australia with plans to offer the coffee brand in all of its 14,000 U.S.-based stores by the end of this year. Public reception of the McCafé brand has been surprisingly positive. In fact, McDonald’s has unseated Dunkin’ Donuts from the donut chain’s Number Two slot as the most-preferred coffee retailer. No surprise that Starbucks holds the top position. Interested? Read more now. »

When it’s you vs. them, it’s crucial to know who “they” are.

The business world is competitive by nature. In this economy, it’s positively cutthroat – in a professional, may-the-best-man-or-woman-win kind of way. Getting ahead of your competitors doesn’t require you to carry a dagger under you cloak, but it does mean you have to keep a shrewd eye on your rival’s every move – and adjust your marketing plan to compensate when necessary. Interested? Read more now. »

Never is an agency under more stress and strain than during a time of crisis. Unfortunately, many agencies fail to develop and follow an adequate crisis communications strategy. The results of such an oversight can be disastrous.

But why is a predetermined strategy a necessity? What constitutes a crisis? Interested? Read more now. »

Written By Regina Brett, 90 years old, of The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, Ohio

“To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me. It is the most-requested column I’ve ever written. My odometer rolled over to 90 in August, so here is the column once more:

1. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone… Interested? Read more now. »

So much of running a home care agency is wrapped up in the day to day minutia of working with clients, administrative tasks and, of course, all important marketing tasks to build up new client business.  However, we know that the core of any successful home care business is its caregiver team.  Without quality caregivers, there are no quality services available to seniors.  I speak frequently at industry events and a recurring theme I hear is that home care agencies continually struggle with recruiting quality caregivers.  They either don’t have the tools or simply don’t have the time to develop them. 

After I thought about this for awhile, I turned to my arsenal of home care agency tools and created several new products that I think many of you will be able to use…and all based around recruitment!  From training resources to caregiver orientation, save valuable time with these new products!

Viral marketing. It sounds like some kind of bad disease – something to stay away from, like the H1N1 flu. The mere mention of the words almost makes you want to go out and buy some rubber gloves and a surgical mask.

But viral marketing is good, not bad. Because of the ease of ‘spreading” the word via the Internet, viral marketing has emerged as one of the most effective new tools in a business’ strategy to attract attention. Interested? Read more now. »

Obtaining Referrals in the Face of Regulation | By Merrily Orsini

To purchase the article, visit http://hhc.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/21/4/286