Like many Americans, I greeted the new year watching the ball drop in Time Square on “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.” It was an enjoyable experience except for the commercial breaks which were dominated by Weight Watchers. Not surprising, since getting into shape and losing weight always makes the list of top 3 New Year’s resolutions.

With that in mind, I put together a shape-up plan for marketers that will help you get a fresh start in this new year.

Review your website

When was the last time you read your own website? Doesn’t matter how perfect it was when you put it up five years ago, things change. Review every page of the site, read the text for typos and click to find broken links.

While the under-achievers of the Jersey Shore work on their tans, the over-achieving twenty-somethings of Silicon Valley are working on their next billion dollar idea.

Bravo’s new reality series Start-Ups: Silicon Valley tracks six young online entrepreneurs as they work, party and claw their way to the top of the heap. Siblings Ben and Hermione are looking to fund an app that calculates your life expectancy based on your daily choices (Burger for lunch, that’s 10 minutes off your life!). Sarah parlayed her “lifecast” blog into a cozy job as the social media manager for the Four Seasons hotel while Kim convinces ad buyers to fork over big bucks for Facebook advertising, and so on.

Above all, the series is highly entertaining, but after watching the first episode I also came away with several valuable lessons that I’d like to share.

Domino’s and Starbucks are turning customer behavior into customer service with new initiatives that add value to their current service.

In the UK, Domino’s is offering a new twist on dinner and a movie. When you order a pizza, you’ll also get a code to stream a movie from Lionsgate while you eat. That means you can ease your hunger while watching Hunger Games or spend Halloween night with the classic horror movie Scream.

It’s a brilliant combination that plays into something their customers were already doing, eating in front of the TV. Now, they get to link their name to one of the biggest movies of the past year and dozens of classics.

Domino’s marketing director Simon Wallis said:

Between Hurricane Sandy in the East and the recent 7.7 earthquake and tsunami warning in the West, it’s starting to feel like the end is nigh. But soon, it will be back to business as usual for most of us. That’s the good news. The bad news is that day may be further away than we’d like.

Even if you’re not in the path of the storm, Hurricane Sandy is going affect you. Here are a few things to think about to help lessen the storm’s impact on your online business.

Shipping:

We know from what happened after Hurricane Irene, shipping services are going to slow down and in some cases even stop for a number of days. That means checks that you expect to get in the mail won’t arrive on time and inventory shipments will be delayed as well.