Category: Curated

Increase the Productivity of Your Meetings

The following is a re-post of an article from my blog ProductivityPower.net.  This article examines a good web based tool for you to get more out of your meetings by making it easier to take minutes.  If you have any additional tools that you use please share with us in the comments below.

Taking meeting minutes is one of those painstaking tasks that you have to do.  Minutes are the record of what actions items you and others have committed to doing.  By capturing good minutes you will have an easier time processing the action items into your work flow than by relying on everything.A lot of people find it difficult to take minutes.  I think a large reason for this is that there is no one right way to do things.  It’s the same reason why people find Linux much more difficult to use than Windows – there are just too many ways of doing the same thing.

If that is your problem then you need to check out this web service.  It is still in beta which means that the various service plans are free until the end of beta, and they also have a free option that will always be free.  The website bills itself as a meeting planning and documenting service meaning that it helps you to create agenda, take minutes and distribute those minutes to the attendees.

I created an account and played around with it for a bit.  I can see the value in it and I think that once you get over the learning curve it could be a really valuable resource.  My favorite feature is that I can download the minutes after I enter them as a PDF file.

The way I would use this website is to create the agenda and then export that to PDF.  I would print it out and use that to capture the minutes.  I would then enter the minutes into the website.  I wish they had an OCR feature where I could scan in the minutes as TIFF images and upload those instead.  Once the minutes are entered I would export as PDF, delete them from the site and then distribute the PDF via email.

The website can be found at http://www.minutebase.com.  Check it out and tell me what you think by leaving a comment below, please.

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Kick Off Your Web Project the Right Way

I don’t normally post over here very often but since this is a busy week for Todd I figured I would share a few things.  Normally I blog about making beer and staying productive but lately I’ve been spending a lot of time exploring project management, web development and freelance contracting.

Today I want to share with you some tips for getting a good start on a web project.  For those lucky souls to have hired a web consultant, defined a project and implemented it flawlessly then don’t waste your lunch hour here.  Get on Facebook or Twitter or something else and enjoy your time.

For those of us who have had projects go south here are my top four (yes, only four – if you have a fifth please add it to the comments to share with the rest of us) tips to kick off a web project the right way.

1. Clearly Define the End Result
I’ve worked with a lot of clients that expressed some vague goals like “I want a website” or “I want to rank in the #1 spot on Google for a generic keyword”.  These are not good goals to give to a consultant (unless you have a lot of money to burn, in that case – email me…). Continue reading “Kick Off Your Web Project the Right Way” →

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“What the hell am I supposed to write about?”

a tulip arrangement
Image via Wikipedia

I’m a huge fan of blogging for small businesses — after all, it has worked so well for me! This question invariably comes up sooner or later…

“What the hell am I supposed to write about, I own a {insert your small business here}?

Really, who cares about your flower shop, bike shop, auto parts store, or coffee house?

Answer: Your customers certainly care.

We all know by now that consistent small business blogging can drastically improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and overall web presence. Additionally, a small business blog can increase your opportunities to interact with (and highlight) your customers and provide an additional occasion for you to share your expert knowledge.

Unfortunately, nothing stops a would be small business blogger faster than a perceived lack of time, and the frustration that comes with a lack of ideas to blog about.” Source: 9 Tips for Creating More Small Business Blogging Ideas

You’ll have to go to the source for Darren Rowse’s 9 ways. Questions? Feedback? Comment, call or contact me to discuss how this applies to your business…Technorati Tags: ,

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Mr. Rogers on blogging

Are you a blogger?

“As bloggers, we put a lot of effort into telling our readers how to do things.

We believe that if we can just give them enough informative content that they’ll subscribe to our blog and never leave. We try to become the best teacher we possibly can, instilling wisdom down into short, usable posts that our readers can put into action right away.

But what if that’s not what they really want?

What if they don’t want a teacher to tell them what to do?” Source: The Mr. Rogers Guide to Blogging from the Heart | Copyblogger

Go to the source for the rest of the article…

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Lessons learned from 2009

Here’a a great post from Holly Green…

“2009 has come and gone, and many of us are taking a huge sigh of relief. Going through one of the worst recessions in U.S. history will certainly take the wind out of your sails. But we appear to have weathered the worst of the storm. And while the economy might not rebound with the speed and vigor we would like, it at least appears to be heading in the right direction again.

So what did we learn from the trials and tribulations of the past year? And how can we apply those lessons going forward? Here are 10 things I believe that leaders need to do differently to position their businesses for success in 2010.” Source: Blogging Innovation: 10 Lessons Learned from 2009 – Innovation blog articles, videos, and insights

Go to the source to read her ten lessons. My favorite?

“Get used to the likelihood there will be no normal anymore. The old business world that most of us knew and loved went away with the recession, and it’s not coming back. To adapt to today’s business realities, question all your beliefs and assumptions, get comfortable with uncertainty, and adjust your expectations. For most, the new ‘normal’ will be slow and sustained growth rather than a hockey-stick curve and it will continue to surprise us.” Source: Blogging Innovation: 10 Lessons Learned from 2009 – Innovation blog articles, videos, and insights

Which one is yours?

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Every once in awhile…

…I stumble upon something that I had used once and had forgotten and can’t remember why I stopped. This morning I fell in love with Shareaholic all over again…

“Shareaholic makes it easy for you to submit the web page you’re on to your favorite sharing or bookmarking service, including: digg, del.icio.us, facebook, friendfeed, bit.ly, connotea, google bookmarks, google reader notes, gmail, kaboodle, magnolia, meneame, mixx, myspace, plurk, reddit, soup.io, stumbleupon, tipjoy, tumblr, twine, twitter, weheartit, yahoo buzz, and ycombinator. You can also e-mail the web page directly to a friend.” Source: Shareaholic – The browser add-on extension to share, bookmark and e-mail web pages quickly

Why is this important? Let me try to net it out quickly…

Finding a great website may help you advance your knowledge but what if you had a way to share it with others that required little or no additional effort? Wouldn’t that be worth it? Sure, there are some websites that I keep for my own private use, but for the sites that contain good information for my ‘followers’, I can post those sites to my ‘rooms’ in FriendFeed and they show up as featured articles in the right hand column of my blog. That way, these bookmarks benefits me as well as the rest of the world and make my site more of a destination because of the valuable resources that are there! If you want to drive people to your website or blog, give me a call at (920) 486-4798 or drop me a note using the contact form above. I can help!

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Blogging for thought leadership…

Blogging For Thought Leadership

http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=bloggingforthoughtleadership-090725093252-phpapp01&stripped_title=blogging-for-thought-leadership

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So You Want to Be a Blogging Star?

“Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has a full plate. Besides his basketball team, the busy billionaire also owns part of a media company, and serves as chairman of the TV channel HDNet. He recently competed for five weeks on “Dancing With the Stars” on ABC. How on earth does he find time to blog?” Click here to read more…

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The Freestyle Entrepreneur…

I had lunch yesterday with a fascinating entrepreneur named John Ingrisano — turns out, we have a lot in common. The way we connected is pretty humorous, too…

Those of you who live in big cities probably bump into kindred spirits all the time — the thing that makes this encounter so interesting is that John and I live on the Door Peninsula in a small town called Algoma with a population of 3,500. Not exactly Silicon Valley! So, finding another blogger in our community who is also addressing the needs of small business owners is a pretty amazing find…

Even more funny is the fact that John and I serve on some of the same community boards, but never bothered to check one another out. I’ve known of him, and the fact that he was a freelance writer, for months — never bothered to check out his site. Maybe the funniest thing of all is that I’ve been meaning to ask John if he’s heard about blogging and come to find out the The Freestyle Entrepreneur is one of the top rated blogs for entrepreneurs in the country! LOL. Joke’s on me…

It will be interesting to see if John and I are able to collaborate at all on any areas of mutual interest as there is some overlap in what we do. In the meantime, what are the takeaways from this post? First of all, check out The Freestyle Entrepreneur and subscribe — John’s perspective on the entrepreneurial life is refreshing and entertaining. Second — great networking opportunities are all around you. Wake up! ;-)

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Does a New Website Hold the Secret to Great Customer Service? | Fast Company

“Can online networking deliver us from the evil of bad customer service? Thor Muller is betting that ‘people-powered customer service’ will trump outsourcing and the impersonal call center. Muller is CEO and co-founder of getsatisfaction.com, a user-driven customer service community. Launched in September, 2007, the site provides forums where customers discuss problems with products and services of 2,500 companies from Apple to Zappos — whether the company participates or not. It also provides tools for companies to adopt getsatisfaction.com as their official customer service resource. So far, the site has drawn more than a million unique visitors. Here, Muller discusses why customer service is the new marketing, why you should bring edge users into the core of your business, and how a company you might expect to get it (Facebook) and one you might not (Comcast) are taking very different approaches.” Click the title to read more…

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