The Reader Appreciation Project

The Underling E-mails His Supervisor

Dear Mr. Maloof,

As my first-line supervisor, I wanted to raise a concern. Today I observed something that I perceived to violate ethical and company guidelines regarding employee conduct.

I observed Tim Montoya arriving two hours late this morning. Then during lunch, he took an extra half hour coming back. On top of that, he left an hour early today. I had a chance to glance at his timesheet he turned in and he wrote down that he attended the full day.

I find Mr. Montoya’s behavior to be damaging to morale as people are seeing that this person is getting away with this. What is management prepared to do to combat the issue of Mr. Montoya’s behavior and repair the perception of the management’s competence?

Thank you,

Walter Troy

Mr. Maloof’s Reply

Walter,

I want to thank you for bringing this to my attention. I’ll handle it.

John

Mr. Maloof’s E-mail to His Supervisor

Alex,

We seem to have a problem with an employee in my division showing up on time and marking up his timesheet. I recommend an investigation. What action, if any, should I take?

John
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A good way to appreciate your blog readers is to blog about them. If you revolve some certain aspect of your blog around your readers, like a blog post, you will not only be appreciating your readers, but you will also be showing that the level of appreciation you have for your readers is so high that you are willing to bring the attention of all of your site visitors to your blog readers instead of only yourself.
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Simonne Matthew is an entrepreneur, running a home-based small business offering marketing consultancy and sales training to a few selected clients.

Trained to be an engineer, but not attracted by the factory life, during the past 12 years Simonne has operated in fields like market research, advertising and marketing, acquiring knowledge and experience in a multinational environment. She had the luck to quit this kind of life before being put in a cubicle, as her native country, Romania, has only recently become a “cubicle nation”.

Simonne authors All Tips And Tricks, her personal blog about lots of stuff, from computers to cats, photography or human relationships.

When she is not writing, she enjoys skating, playing with her cat, cooking or hiking in the mountains.

Hello.

I am Bes Zain. I started the RA Project with Ronald and Shawn because I think site readers today, and people on many other mediums, do not get the respect and credit that they deserve. I work with Ronald and Simonne to spread the idea of appreciation more, and to define and promote appreciation for everyone like never before. Please e-mail me with any questions, or if you simply want to talk about something out of the blue.

I write at The Reasoner, post tips at Flickrness, and post pictures at Eyeography and Flickr.

If you are a WordPress user, one of the small downsides of a self-hosted option is the downtime when upgrading your blog software or tweaking themes. Fortunately, there is a plugin that allows you to let your users know about downtimes. The plugin is called Maintenance Mode. Read more…

When it comes to appreciating people, many people take the route that most businesses take: appreciating every customer no matter what. A blogger might start appreciating everyone in every circumstance, and may feel that doing such a thing is good. In my view, an individual should appreciate someone only when there is something that can be appreciated. You should not appreciate others when you feel obligated to appreciate them. Fake appreciation will in the long run diminish your sense of real appreciation, and will result in you not actually appreciating people, but simply saying things because you want to act like a robot that puts on a smiling face and always appreciates, no matter what.
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It’s usually the little things that spawn relationships. The relationships I am speaking of are the relationships between blogger and reader. The start of a blogging relationship can start with something as little as a comment or an e-mail. Within this post, I am going to talk about how I met three bloggers and the relationships that have transpired because of little things. Read more…

Just like a good business, many bloggers and readers try to appreciate each other via comments left on a blog. People may respond to each other by leaving each other comments. While comments are very good at helping two people communicate with each other, you can try a few other things to build more tighter relationships with people, outside of the comments area.

Following are 5 simple ways to appreciate bloggers and readers beyond the comments area. Taking these extra steps helps start the building foundation of a growing relationship.

5 simple ways to build relationships with bloggers and readers

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I wrote previously on why Spam is a reader’s problem too. Within this post I will list several techniques for WordPress users to limit the amount of spam that show up on blogs. Read more…

With so many websites being born every second, bloggers are doing their best to make their sites look unique in as many ways possible. If a reader visits your site and finds it visually different than the countless other sites on the internet, they might remember it and come back again. However, in the quest for a unique looking website, you might end up sacrificing reading usability and make readers go through extra obstacles to be able to understand different words and labels on your site that define different areas and functionalities around your site.

You should try to use simple words to label different things around your site, so the readers may spend more time getting information from your site than spending time trying to figure out how your site works. Using simpler words actually helps you appreciate your readers, since you are helping them think less about irrelevant things when they are on your site.
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