Category: Aging

Google Authorship changes have you wondering what to do next?

English: Google Logo officially released on Ma...

Google Authorship changes have me pondering what to do next. I had been attempting to lend authority to our Kestrel Aircraft web content by leveraging my Google+ profile linked by Authorship to my posts at http://kestrel.aero. Friday, Google announced this is no longer an option and for the past 48 hours I have been thinking about what to do next.

First, I’m reading David Amerland‘s book Google Semantic Search: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques That Get Your Company More Traffic, Increase Brand Impact, and Amplify Your Online Presence. It’s not a light read, but it is giving me valuable perspective on this issue and is forcing me to take a look at the bigger picture! I strongly recommend his book and now would be a great time to download and read the Kindle version…

The second thing I’m doing is thoughtfully pursuing microdata formats and learning from Schema.org. Here’s a list of good resources I have found along the way:

Google Authorship changes

What do I do now?

https://storify.com/toddlohenry/authorship-is-dead

What have you learned since Friday? Please share below…

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6 Powerful Reasons Why you Should include Images in your Marketing

Uberblogger Jeff Bullas writes:

If you have an online store, issue press releases or even just have a Facebook business “page”, then here are 6 reasons to publish images and photos as part of your business marketing tactics.

  • Articles with images get 94% more total views
  • Including a Photo and a video in a press release increases views by over 45%
  • 60% of consumers are more likely to consider or contact a business when an image shows up in local search results
  • In an ecommerce site, 67% of consumers say the quality of a product image is “very important” in selecting and purchasing a product
  • In an online store, customers think that the quality of a products image is more important than product-specific information (63%), a long description (54%) and ratings and reviews (53%)
  • Engagement rate on Facebook for photos averages 0.37% where text only is 0.27% (this translates to a 37% higher level of engagement for photos over text)

via 6 Powerful Reasons Why you Should include Images in your Marketing – Infographic.

Here are a couple of free tools I use to create more visually interesting content for my blog:

and here is a list of 14 more from Buffer…

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Which Social Media Management Tools Are Fortune 100 Companies Using?

Managing your social media presence takes work: lots of it.It can be tricky enough to balance just Twitter amongst your day-to-day duties, but add in Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest – and more – and suddenly you’re in a world of pain.Thankfully, a wealth of social media management tools have been created to address this very problem, but how do you know which ones are right for you, and your company?Maybe we should see what the big boys are using?

via Which Social Media Management Tools Are Fortune 100 Companies Using? [INFOGRAPHIC] – AllTwitter.

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Weekend Spring Cleaning Project; Clear out your inbox with Unroll.me

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard for managing e-mail is something I made up myself a long time ago. Here is: only allow what I call just in time e-mail in your inbox. I define just-in-time e-mail as e-mail that affects relationships or revenue — everything else belongs in a feed reader like feedly. I’d like to take a moment however to show you another great tool that can help you with those newsletters that sneak through your defenses. It’s a tool called Unroll.me. Oh, and it’s free!

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Looking for help managing your Outlook inbox?

Then I suggest you take a look at Sanebox!

Steve Dotto talks about it here:

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Are You Sabotaging Yourself

My friend Kristin Barton Cuthriell has arrived again! She has a guest post on @notsalmon’s blog in which she writes:

Are you sabotaging yourself?

If so, it is time to stop! Try treating yourself with kindness and see what happens.

We often consciously (or unconsciously) sabotage ourselves because we do not think that we deserve to be successful in life. We may have made mistakes in the past that we have been unable (or unwilling) to forgive. We may self-sabotage by habitually selling ourselves short, thinking that our goals and dreams are unreachable. We may discount our own internal resources – and deny our own personal strengths. We may unconsciously sabotage situations and relationships that are really good for us.

via Are You Sabotaging Yourself.

This one’s for you, Q3L…

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When Your Relationship Is Rocky, Look Right at Your Expectations

Such a great reminder for me! If you like the quote, go to the source and enjoy the whole article…

Most importantly, remember that expectations are in fact premeditated disappointments. In other words, no expectations, no anger — reduce your expectations, increase the peace between you. Managing your expectations together is rarely easy, but it’s that simple!

Go to the source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-s-broder-phd/love-and-relationships_b_5046058.html?utm_hp_ref=gps-for-the-soul&ir=GPS+for+the+Soul

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Why YouTube Rocks!

Is it the ability to create engaging content like this that gets your message across in an unforgettable way?

Or, is it because it’s a place where people actually go to get brand messaging?

datapoint_593

You tell me!

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Managing Chrome extensions

Extensions

I think managing Chrome extensions is a critical factor for success in your social media endeavors. Many people don’t realize how many resources a chrome extension can use. I’m always trying to whittle down my toolkit to the minimum number necessary to do the work that I need to do. That’s why I use an extension called Context.

3-12-2014 8-47-09 AM

Context allows me to swap out bundles of extensions and apps based on my activity at the time. It allows you to create a set of always enabled extensions and then select bundles of additional extensions. As an example I have a group of about five extensions I use when I’m doing website development work but I only need them during that time. My philosophy is if I don’t need it at the moment I shouldn’t have it loaded so I use Context to swap them out. Allow me to demonstrate…

Have questions about anything you see here? Use the comments to connect…

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Responding to Sibling Fighting with Spanking?

This one has me thinking about some of my own behaviors and how I got sucked into spanking when I knew instinctively it was wrong…

As I have highlighted in previous posts, one of the most stressful aspects of parenting reported by parents is when their children fight. Although by now the scientific study of parenting has forwarded some exceptional methods of parenting to help deal with the stress of sibling dynamics, many parents respond out of religious conviction to sibling aggression with spanking their children.

Imagine the irony of hearing a parent yell at their child “don’t ever hit your brother, we do not hit in this house…” as the parent proceed to hit their child.

This technique is apparently making a comeback in some online circles as a parenting method to deal with many childhood misbehaviors. Recently I was sent a link by a religious friend of mine to what he thought was a clever online post that read something to effect of “I was spanked as a child and therefore… have developed a respect for others.”

I responded to his link with “you probably also developed aggressive tendencies, an anxiety disorder, anti-social tendencies, academic problems, and sexual issues…”

I have yet to hear back from him.

Continue reading “Responding to Sibling Fighting with Spanking?” →
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How do you delete a Google+ account?

The post How do you delete a Google+ account? appeared first on Living Business.

How do you delete a Google+ account? No I’m not encouraging you to abandon Google+ — in fact is just the opposite! Recent research shows that having an active Google+ account effective ways to get found in search but any number of accounts more than one is too many for most people. Here’s how to […]

via Living Business http://business.toddlohenry.com/2013/12/06/delete-google-account/

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How do you delete a Google+ account?

How do you delete a Google+ account? No I’m not encouraging you to abandon Google+ — in fact is just the opposite! Recent research shows that having an active Google+ account effective ways to get found in search but any number of accounts more than one is too many for most people. Here’s how to delete those extra Google plus accounts…

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Are you managing Google+?

Are you managing Google+ or is Google+ managing you? One tool that can tip the scales in your favor is Friends+Me. Friends+Me has magical unicorn-like powers that not even HootSuite or Buffer possess; specifically, Friends+Me can take things that are posted to your Google+ account or pages and autopost them on a schedule to a Facebook profile or page, LinkedIn profile, group or company page or Twitter…

Information flow

Watch this video and for a quick overview as to how it works:

http://youtu.be/TrQrlj1_WBA

Using Friends+Me, you can automatically do this and it works great…

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How To Hack Google+ For SEO Value

Screen_Shot_2013-10-21_at_11.56.22_AMThis is a small excerpt from a big post by HubSpot on the value of Google+ for SEO:

The biggest difference between Google+ and every other social network, in terms of SEO value, may be the way that user-created content is treated.

Public posts on Google+ are indexed for search, unlike most tweets, Facebook posts, etc. [Note: Twitter has told Google to not follow most links and Facebook’s privacy settings prevent many posts from being indexed – it’s not simply because Google won’t index content from other platforms]. Sure, your profile on other social networks will probably rank well for name-related searches, but there’s no way to target keywords and long tail phrases with specific social posts.

The impact of indexing Google+ public content goes far beyond your personal posts. It means every time that your content gets shared by someone else, you’re gaining link equity as their posts are indexed.

Quick summary: there are a couple primary SEO benefits of using Google Plus. First, posts get crawled and indexed – and it happens quickly because, among other objectives, Google is trying to use Google+ to enhance real-time search. Secondly, Google Plus is used to optimize search results with rich snippets, including the popular Google Authorship feature that allows the author’s picture and information to appear in search results.

Get the rest here: How To Hack Google Plus For SEO Value.

I’m not saying you should abandon any other strategy that is working for you — I’m just encouraging you to revisit Google+ if you have not done so already…

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Everything I need…

Right here on this desktop is every tool I need to establish a thought leadership position…

Screenshot 2013-10-19 at 09.16.27

I use…

  • Google Chrome
  • Google Search
  • Gmail
  • Feedly
  • Evernote
  • HootSuite
  • WordPress

Boom! Does it work? You’re reading this aren’t you?

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How to Avoid Social Media Overwhelm…

Interesting data about social media use…

You can get insights on managing this mess here: How to Avoid Social Media Overwhelm | Become A Blogger. My recommendation? Use HootSuite!!!

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Protein Preaching: Misleading Messaging Drives High Meat and Dairy Consumption

David Simon's avatarMEATONOMIC$

Preacher

Is animal protein a life-enhancing elixir? From a young age, we’re taught it fosters health, growth, vitality, virility, and sometimes even weight loss. The alternative to getting plenty of it, we’re told, could be protein deficiency. Never mind that the typical American has never had—nor ever will have—protein deficiency and has little idea what its symptoms might be. We’ve heard of it, we’re scared of it, and whatever the heck it is, we don’t want it.

Spurred by the most basic force of meatonomics—the drive to sell more meat and dairy—animal food producers use our protein fears to their advantage. For example, a beef trade group’s website suggests when deciding how much meat to eat, we go beyond the bare minimum needed to “prevent protein deficiency.”[1] Elsewhere on the site, we’re warned:

HEALTH ALERT: Sarcopenia.

Sarcopenia is a condition associated with a loss of muscle mass and strength in…

View original post 1,479 more words

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How to become a thought leader on $137.88 per year…

A couple of days ago, Craig Badings of the Thought Leadership blog asked me to complete the following sentence: “Thought Leadership is _______”. My response? Fundamental. As in “thought leadership is fundamental”. Craig asked me if he could post my definition on his site with attribution and frankly I don’t know if it’s because he thought my response was stupid or brilliant or somewhere in between. Let me explain however, what I meant…

At a time in history when almost 90% of people search Google before making a buying decision you need to show up in search in a good way. To me a thought leader is someone who uses the incredible good, fast and cheap tools we have at our disposal to get found when people are looking for what they do, or, in what Google calls the Zero Moment of Truth. They use blogging and social media to attract and retain fans who either buy into their ideas or by their products.

It was Leonardo da Vinci who said “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”. I maintain that if you aspire to thought leadership there are only two activities you must master: finding and sharing good information. When I teach my college classes, I call this deepening your expertise and documenting your expertise. Any person who aspires to thought leadership has probably done Malcolm Gladwell‘s 10,000 hours of work to gain their expertise but if you want to be a thought leader you must continue to nourish that expertise and stay current on the things that are important in your field of study. That’s what I called deepening your expertise. The second part, documenting your expertise, simply means to use the publishing tools available on the Internet to provide social proof of your work. If you’re a great thinker who aspire to thought leadership that’s all you need to know — hence my statement that thought leadership is fundamental.

I have developed a simple workflow that I call a ‘Me’cosystem which anyone can use to establish a thought leadership position over time. All of the tools are best of breed, free or freemium, and completely cross platform down to the smart phone level. There are nine different activities in which the thought leader must engage and I outline them here:

I’ll be going into more detail in each of these stages later on in the series. Organized efficiently from the beginning to the end of the process, it looks more like this:

And again, I’ll be going into more detail in subsequent posts. All I think you really need to know at this point is that the process really does work and that it’s simple enough and cost-effective enough that even someone who does TED talks can use my system. :-)

Next week I’ll start with the analysis phase in the flowchart. Questions? Feedback?

 

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The opportunity…

Mitch Joel writes:

With each and every passing day, we’re seeing more and more people build networks of trust through the creation of content that adds value and – by doing so – wind up in some pretty spectacular positions. It’s easy to be negative and see these individuals as some kind of exception to the rule or an anomaly, but that is shortsighted. These individuals are doing what most brands (and individuals) don’t have the ability or integrity to do: spend the time to actually build the trust first, instead of looking for that quick, big fix. It also speaks volumes to what the future holds for those eager to become entrepreneurs. There Is A Bigger Picture (And It’s Worth Thinking About) | Six Pixels of Separation – Marketing and Communications Blog – By Mitch Joel at Twist Image

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Amit Agarwal is my new hero!!!

This year has been a difficult year for knowledge workers and content marketers what with the shuttering of Google Reader and the removal of RSS feeds from Twitter and other similar moves on the part of major technology companies. Major players like Google and Twitter are engaging in shaping strategies to force us to use their products in ways they want us to, not which are best for us…

Thank goodness then for people like Amit Agarwal who generously share their brilliant thoughts with us and enable us to circumvent the powerful forces in technology who are looking to dis-empower us!

Let me back up for a moment and talk again briefly about the topic of thought leadership. To me, the Internet provides an opportunity to offer social proof of one’s expertise in any given area. In applying ‘Einstein’s Razor’ of “things must be made as simple as possible but no simpler” to the problem of social proof of thought leadership, I say that thought leadership on the Internet boils down to two basic activities; finding and sharing good information. You need to feed your expertise before you can feed your followers. RSS is a critical part of this process and Google, Twitter and others have been making it difficult to use RSS so that you have to go to their site in order to read content. First Google killed Google Reader and then they removed RSS feeds from Google Alerts.

Where does Amit fit into the picture? Watch this video in which Amit shares a way to get RSS feeds from Twitter again, ironically via Google scripting:

The great news is that I can now track Twitter topics, lists, and users via feedly, my RSS reader again! Thank you, Amit, for the valuable work you do…

Here’s a sampling of some of his great thinking!

http://storify.com/toddlohenry/amit-s-greatest-hits

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