Category: Featured

The ‘e1evation workflow’ continues to deliver!

In my effort to develop a powerfully simple workflow for my clients, I came up with something so elegant that I had to use it myself. Here are the results after 1 quarter of use…
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U2: Save The Yuppies Free Concert

One of the greatest thrills of my musical life was to be present at the ‘Save the Yuppies’ concert in San Franciso in 1988. I was working in downtown San Francisco at the time and at 10:30 in the morning, a local radio station announced ‘This is not a prank or a hoax, U2 will be appearing in a free concert in Justin Herman Plaza at noon today. I ran through the office, alerting my fellow yuppies. We stopped at a local deli and grabbed some Heinekens and made our way to the concert. The free concert was priceless!!!

The image below includes the famous statue on which Bono spray painted the words “Rock and Roll stops the traffic” in recognition of the cars which had stopped on the highway on ramp behind the impromptu concert to get a glimpse of what was going on. Bono was later forced by then mayor Diane Feinstein to appear in court and face charges for defacing public property…

Here’s how the Wikipedia describes it

The performance of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” is from the band’s impromptu “Save the Yuppies” concert in Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco, California on 11 November 1987. The video intersperses the performance of the song with footage from the band’s performance of “Pride” from the same show, during which Bono spray-painted “Rock and Roll Stops the Traffic” on the Vaillancourt Fountain. This caused a bit of controversy, and ultimately, the band paid to repair the damage and publicly apologized for the incident. The phrase “Rock and Roll Stops the Traffic” reappeared 18 years later in the video “All Because of You” when an unnamed fan appeared with the sign at 1:55 in the video.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rattle_and_Hum

And I was there…

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Blogging is the answer. Now, what is the question?

My business website is one of the most visited sites in Wisconsin, outranking websites with much bigger brands, more popular products, and bigger marketing staffs. How do I do it all by myself? The short answer is that I blog. The longer answer is that I have a documented workflow that anyone can use to drive traffic to their website and value proposition and it’s driven by email and bookmarking – two skills that almost everyone has mastered in this new millennium…

Now I don’t know a whole lot about search engine optimization or SEO – if that’s what you’re after, you want to call my friends at Envano. I do know however, that if you use the right tools and process, there’s a natural SEO that occurs through frequent posting. That ‘right tool’ is a blog…

“B2B blogging experts understand that a blog is a lead generation machine. This blog generates more traffic than our main company website. Each month, tens of thousands of people find this blog through search engines and social media websites, and thousands of them like the content enough to take the next step and respond to one of our offers and become a lead.

Some B2B bloggers think a business blog is just about thought leadership. Yes, B2B blogging is great for thought leadership and brand building. But, with this blog we get all the benefits of thought leadership, and also get lots of leads. By maximizing the lead generation potential of your B2B blog, you can have your cake (thought leadership) and eat it too (leads).” Source: How to Turn a Blog into a B2B Lead Generation Machine

There are options to consider whether you have a website or not. The first situation may actually be easier to resolve, depending on how much you want your new blog to resemble your existing website. I used to be a real stickler on this, but as time has gone on, I’ve become less concerned about matching the exact look and feel of the site [just know there are options for you regardless of your perspective] and more concerned about just driving traffic.

It’s an easy thing for me to add a blog to an existing site that will drive traffic using my ‘e1evation workflow’. From a design perspective, it’s much easier to just start from scratch using WordPress – a blogging platform that offers blogs that are already integrated with websites – but starting from scratch begs the issue of how you will populate the other pages on your site with information about your brand and products…

The bottom line is that whether you have an existing website or not, there are a couple of “good, fast, and cheap” solutions that are available to you. If you’re trying to figure out how you can add blogging and social media to your already overflowing plate and still get home for supper, comment, call or contact me — I’d love to show you how…

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Steve Jobs: Master of Irony

I’m not sure if it still is, but at one point in time this commercial was the most popular of all time…

Now, ironically, Robert Wright of the New York Times says Steve Jobs has become the ‘Big Brother’ that Apple warned us about in 1984…

“Jobs stands accused of what in Silicon Valley is a capital crime: authoritarian tendencies. He’s long played hardball with journalists who reveal details about forthcoming products, and now he’s deciding what content people can view on the iPhone and iPad. Apps featuring even soft-core porn are verboten, and some kinds of political commentary don’t make the cut. Apple recently rejected an app from a political cartoonist — and then, embarrassingly, had to reconsider after he won the Pulitzer Prize.

Put these two Jobs profiles together — emerging infotech hegemon and congenital control freak — and you get a scary scenario: growing dominance of our information pipelines by a guy who likes to filter information. No wonder Jobs’s detractors have been making ironic reference to Apple’s famous 1984 Super Bowl ad, the one that implicitly cast the IBM-Microsoft alliance as Big Brother.” Source: Is Steve Jobs Big Brother? – Opinionator Blog – NYTimes.com

Follow the source — it’s an interesting read…

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Ummm. Helloooooo!?

This is why they say that a picture is worth a thousand words. The Oatmeal has communicated volumes about how the world perceives your email with one image:

You can move to the top with one simple tool: Google Apps! Google Apps allows you to attach Gmail and other powerful business apps to your internet domain in about 10 minutes… 

 

Use it if you don’t want the world to think you’re a Yahoo!

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From thinker to thought leader in one easy workflow

So you wanna be a thought leader? There’s no better way to make your point of view ‘searchable, findable, and knowable’ on the internet than this suite of tools. It is the simplest and most straightforward blogging workflow I can imagine and if you’ve got a better idea, I’ll be the first to admit [and use] it…

Updated 5/25/10 to include LinkedIn and YouTube. h/t Alan Petras. Lesson learned? Don’t leave YouTube off a social media workflow when you’re talking to a video guy…

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Wow!

Even I’m impressed by the way my new blogging workflow has increased traffic recently…

Compare this with your numbers and then comment, call or use the contact form to discuss how this applies to your business…

Posted via web from e1evation, llc

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The importance of curation

From a 30,000 foot view, there are two types of bloggers; creators and curators. Let’s talk about curation as an ‘art’ form…

“Content aggregation (the automated gathering of links) can be seen on sites like Google News. Overall, this type of aggregation has been seen as a positive thing for content creators and publishers, and up until very recently, it was left to technology. Content creation, meanwhile, was a human effort.

But all that changes with curation — the act of human editors adding their work to the machines that gather, organize and filter content.

“Curation comes up when search stops working,” says author and NYU Professor Clay Shirky. But it’s more than a human-powered filter. “Curation comes up when people realize that it isn’t just about information seeking, it’s also about synchronizing a community.”

Part of the reason that human curation is so critical is simply the vast number of people who are now making and sharing media. “Everyone is a media outlet”, says Shirky. “The point of everyone being a media outlet is really not at all complicated. It just means that we can all put things out in the public view now.”

Who are curators? What can they gather and re-publish? Do they have the right to get paid for curation? If so, who’s adding the real value, the content makers or the curators/publishers?

For creators — people who’ve spent their careers making content and trying to sort out an economic model — curation can seem like an end-run around hard work. And so the conflict ultimately comes down to this: Is curation about saving money? Or about adding value? The answer, it appears, is “yes” to both.

http://curationnation.magnify.net/embed/player/?layout=&playlist_cid=&media_type=video&content=X4R3BR2QN5MNHDJC&widget_type_cid=svp

“A lot of it is economic — doing more with less — and it has crossed every media industry,” explains Allen Weiner of Gartner Group. “If you think about the tools you want to give an editor to make him or her more complete, you want to give them curation tools.” It could be “something they add to their own content. As more old media companies attempt to do more with less, publishing tools that allow this efficiency without demeaning the product quality … [are] going to be very important.”

So certain things are clear — there’s an economic imperative to add curation to the content mix. And from a user perspective, well done curation is a huge value-add in a world where unfiltered signal overwhelms noise by an ever increasing factor.” Source: Why Content Curation Is Here to Stay

My guess is that this blog is 3% creation and 97% curation. Does it work? You’re here, aren’t you?

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I can’t say enough about Gist

Seriously! I’ve posted on Gist over a dozen times in the past few months — it’s that good! Remember this? I called Gist the ‘cherry on top of my social media Sundae’ back in February. The screencast features my ‘holy trinity’ of morning news aggregation; Google Reader, Feedly and Gist — Gist starts at about 5:25 [although the whole screencast is worth a reprise]…

Yesterday, I received notice that Gist was now available for another of my favorite tools, Google Apps! Here’s a quick overview…

All the Gist info I used to go to the website for is now available per contact at the bottom of every email adding ‘people power’ to every email I receive. I’ll still use the Gist dashboard every morning to see what my powerful network is up to, but this new Google Apps functionality is the bee’s knees…

btw, if you’re still stuck on Outlook, there’s been a Gist plugin for that too! Go to Gist.com and sign up NOW!

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How Outposts Improve Your Ecosystem

via chrisbrogan.com

Posted via web from e1evation, llc

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Tactic #9: Leverage the ‘homebases and outposts’ strategy

It has been awhile since I wrote about tactic #8; using branded mail…

Today I’m going to talk about the third pillar of the e1evation system; promoting your online brand and reputation through the leveraging of homebases and outposts. Pillars 1 and 2 are ‘finding your passion’ and ‘publishing’. Once you’re publishing and you’ve found your voice, it’s time to promote your content through the use of social media outposts. Chris Brogan starts us off here…

“Social networks are great places to meet new people, to build new business relationships, and to learn about information from non-traditional sources. But another great way to use social networking sites is as an outpost. What do I mean by this? It turns out that people getting to know you on social networks might also find your content for the first time, and/or something you post to those networks might bring you an opportunity that wouldn’t immediately come to you in other ways. ” Source: Using Outposts in Your Media Strategy

I first noticed the power of leveraging social media outposts during my ‘reign’ as one of the top political bloggers in Wisconsin. I noticed during that time that if I would cross-post to Facebook or some other social media tool, that the post would get more traffic. Although this idea seemed original to me, I found that other great minds like Chris Brogan and Darren Rowse were already heading down this path… Continue reading “Tactic #9: Leverage the ‘homebases and outposts’ strategy” →

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Damn, we’re good!

I’m a little bit torn between two conflicting philosophies of self-promotion here. Woody Hayes always said “when you get to the endzone, act like you belong there”. On the other hand, it’s a sad dog that can’t wag his own tail, so please forgive a little tail wagging on my part…

Earlier this week, I posted about the work we’re doing with farm implement manufacturer AGCO. Yesterday Wunderkind Public Relations of Atlanta said that while “Georgia’s top public and private companies scored a D for social media engagement in 2009”, e1evation’s client AGCO was one of only four brands in the state singled out for their excellence in the social media space…

“Four Georgia companies received perfect scores: AGCO Corp., the Coca-Cola Company, Delta Airlines, and Infor Global Solutions. These companies utilize a variety of channels to create an interactive dialogue with customers, prospects and employees. On the other hand, thirty-one companies received a score of 2 or less, and all but one company is using some channel of social media. Data also concluded that public companies as a whole, whether B2C or B2B, are more engaged (2.36) than private companies (1.92).” Source: New Research Reveals Georgia Companies Lack Social Media Engagement — ATLANTA, Jan. 28 /PRNewswire/

Now I’m sure there are a lot of great social media consultants in Georgia, but when AGCO needed a social media plan, they turned to the e1evation/Envano team from Northeast Wisconsin. As AgWired reported…

“One of the recommendations Sue makes is to not be afraid to get started with social media. She says that there are some great consultants out there who can help you too. I’ll use this opportunity to make a little plug for Todd Lohenry with e1evation, Inc. [sic] who has worked with AGCO.” Source: AgWired » Blog Archives » AGCO Shows How To Go Social

The e1evation/Envano team offers a unique combination of expertise and value and we’re just down the road. Comment, call or contact us to talk about how we can help you bridge the social media gap in your firm…

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Just getting started as a blogger?

Darren Rowse, Problogger
Image by Technosailor via Flickr

My brother in law Alan is a talented writer [his new book is called “Gods of Venice“] who is just moving into the online world. If you’re like him, you may benefit from brainstorming around these 20 different types of posts that a blogger can use to build their site content…

“Blog Tip 18 – Change up your posting form – find new blog topics – In the same way that it’s easy to get ’stuck’ in always posting in the same voice – it’s also possible to get stuck in always writing in the same form or genre.

Yesterday I decided to look through a the 500 blogs entered in Australia’s Best Blog Competition (I didn’t view them all but looked over at least 200). I was amazed by the talent out there. I also came away from the exercise struck by variety of different approaches that people take to blogging – especially with the form of posts that they write.” 20 Types of Blog Posts – Battling Bloggers Block

Click the link to go to the source and read through the 20 different types of posts — it’s great stuff, but too long to incorporate here. Comment, call or use the contact form to connect so we can talk about how this applies to your business…

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Tactic #8: Use ‘branded’ email

I took a little time off from my ‘tactics and tools’ series — no one’s paying attention in December anyway, right? ;-)

Now that everyone’s waking up from the holidays it’s time to get back on track with tactic #8 — using ‘branded’ email. ‘Branded’ email? What’s that? ‘Branded’ email is email that comes from a professional domain and supports your brand. Excuse me for ranting about one of my biases for a sec, but it drives me nuts when I see an entrepreneur using their sbcglobal, att, charter, road runner, etc. isp domains for conducting business — especially when there’s a great tool like Google Apps for Business! Every email is a chance to advertise your business by using a domain that points to your Facebook page or website. Besides, there’s nothing that screams ‘mom & pop shop’ more than using your personal home account to try to bring in that big deal…

Here’s a quick overview of Google Apps:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_TzCpYGpzw

Google Apps hits the ‘good, fast and cheap’ trifecta. Simple, yet powerful! A couple of years ago, I worked with a local entrepreneur in Green Bay that had an office with 7 people. He wanted the benefits of Microsoft Exchange and Sharepoint for his team and spent $35,000 [first year acquisition cost of $5,000 per employee] for the hardware, software, licensing, and labor to acquire those benefits. Here’s the dirty little secret; there was no benefit he acquired that could not have been done better than Google Apps at the cost of $50 per user per year…

Consider the benefits of Google Apps:

“Google’s web-based messaging and collaboration apps require no hardware or software and need minimal administration, creating tremendous time and cost savings for businesses.

End users can use the familiar Microsoft Outlook interface for email, contacts and calendar as they transition to Gmail and Google Calendar. Source: Reduce IT costs, get less spam, and improve productivity – Google Apps for Business target=”_blank”

But wait, there’s more! Benefits include…

  • Proven cost savings
  • Email, calendar and IM access from any computer or smartphone connected to the internet, regardless of platform…
  • 99.9% uptime reliability guarantee
  • 50 times more storage than the industry average
  • Information security and compliance
  • Full administrative and data control
  • Helpful 24/7 customer support

Go here to read more…

Wow! A lot of cool features you say, but is it safe?

“Google applications provide a variety of security features, says Eric Ogren, a security analyst with the Enterprise Strategy Group. For one thing, “you have to have authority to get in. Users can determine policies of who looks at a particular document, the amount of collaboration offered, and users have the flexibility to store data on their corporate laptop or have Google do it for them.”

In addition, he voices the security argument most commonly heard about SaaS solutions: “The customer’s IT department doesn’t have to maintain upgrades, so you don’t have to deal with patches with Google Apps, and that’s a nice feature.” Source: Google Apps has its advantages, but is it secure? – SC Magazine US target=”_blank”

Google Apps for Business is THE killer app for entrepreneurs, small businesses, non-profits, schools, and political campaigns. If I didn’t make myself clear, comment, call or contact so we can talk further about your particular situation…

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I keep telling you…

…that in order to thrive, not just survive, on the internet, you’ve got to master RSS feeds! Perhaps if someone else explains it this time, it will start to sink in…

“RSS or “Really Simple Syndication” is a term used to explain how, instead of you having to chase all over the Web to find the latest stories and news items you are interested in, you get the Web to bring them to you.

This can save you hours. I call it designing your own news service, delivered to you every day or as often as you want.

The “syndication” part of it is like when a comic strip is “syndicated”, that is, licensed to be used in newspapers all over the world. Bloggers and others who provide stories and articles online want more people to read them, so they “syndicate” them – that is, give permission for them to be read where you want to read them.

Blogs (and some other websites) have code in them to make this happen – it’s called a “feed” because it feeds the information to you that you want. How you usually know where that code is to be found is the orange (or whatever colored) icon. And sometimes words like “subscribe to my feed” or “subscribe to this blog”.

“Subscribe” just means that you get the feed and put it into a tool called a “feed reader” – most of these are free.” Source: What’s RSS? — Des Walsh dot Com

Do go to the source and read the rest of the article, but only if you’re wanting to gain a competitive advantage that will help you crush the competition!

Then, if you’re inspired, go back and read all the posts I’ve done on the topic! Hmmm. Sounds a little cranky — maybe I need more coffee [or, I’ve had too much!]… ;-)

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Tactic #4: Use an external blog editor

Last week I covered tactic #3 in the tactics and tools series: blogging. Assuming that all my clients and readers went out and immediately launched a new blog by now you’re thinking to yourself ‘there’s got to be an easier way’. That easier way is to use a blog editor. Not just any blog editor; use ScribeFire. Jon M. of the Affiliate Business Advisor blog writes this:

“I mentioned previously in an older post how I have used various Blog Editing software, some have been good some have been complete crap and some fall, somewhere in the middle.

I just want to mention one that I have been using now for quite some time. Previously I was using software called Post2blog and I worked closely with the designer to add features in that I thought would make it better.

After Microsoft came out with their free Windows Live Writer software, the owner of post2blog decided to call it a day, and with it a number of features stopped working.

So i [sic] moved over to windows writer. I started to find that has numerous issues and was extremely slow to use. Posting videos was a nightmare though I believe they have fixed that now.

At which time I began looking for another editor to use to post to my multiple blogs.. i came across Free Scribefire which at the time seemed excellent but once again I found a ton of issues like you couldn”t align images which was a pain, they also had a number of other issues.. Yet I could see that it had potential if only the creator would fix some of the issues.

Well I have to say that the creator took the feedback from his users very seriously and I kid you not… within a matter of a month or 2 he had output at least 4 to 5 new updates to Scribefire… taking into account pretty much all of peoples requests.

Yet still there seemed to be a few issues that I ran into so i decided to create a video to show the owner..

And once again the owner took seriously the feedback and within a week had a new update out which included some of my suggestions

I stand behind this as its not only FREE but the support is by far some of the best support I have seen provided for a free based application.” Source: Internet Marketing Blog – Making Money Online » Blog Archive » Scribefire Review

Jon also put together a nice video review which you can view here…

Why use ScribeFire?

  1. You want to easily be able to slurp content from websites you visit.
  2. You want additional features or enhancements like Zemanta.
  3. You edit multiple blogs and want a way to quickly update them all.
  4. You want to actively manage pings and technorati tags.
  5. You want an easy way to generate ad revenue.

Slurp content? What is that you say? Here’s a video — easier to show than tell…

I’m a little bit rushed today — my focus is on gettings things in order before my trip to Germany Friday so I may have missed a thing or two. You can always ask a question in the comments or via the contact page. One final note; I would have liked to write about Windows Live Writer which had shown some promise, but due to the pissing match between Firefox and Microsoft, the Windows Live Writer add-on for Firefox does not work with the current version. If you’re an Internet Explorer user, you may want to evaluate that solution as well…

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Tactic #3: Blogging. The ‘why’ and the ‘how’…

WordPress
Image via Wikipedia

Tactic #3 in the series ‘tactics and tools for tightening your tribe using social media’ is blogging and I’ll be covering not only the why but the how. Admittedly, though, the more obvious something is to me, the harder it is to write about it and blogging falls into the ‘duh’ category as in “Do you blog?” “Duh!” The benefits are that obvious! Let me back off a little though and see if I can make my case…

In the olden days — the days when my boys tell me I grew up — freedom of the press belonged to those with a printing press. Now, anyone who can fill out a form on a website can have a blog. Seriously, it’s that easy — why do you think there are so many bad blogs out there? ;-)

A good blog, however, is a powerful tool for establishing thought leadership in an area. My good friend Dana VanDen Heuvel @ MarketingSavant describes it this way — the difference between a thinker and a thought LEADER is that the thought leader has a public point of view. That public point of view leads to share of voice, which leads to share of mind, which leads to share of market and that improves your bottom line! Personally, I know of know better way to make your point of view known than using a blog. Continue reading “Tactic #3: Blogging. The ‘why’ and the ‘how’…” →

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“If I started today”…

Connecting (Chris Brogan)
Image by petermello via Flickr

…is an insanely great post by Chris Brogan on the topic of where I would start today if I wanted to use the internet and social media to promote my thought leadership position — NOW I understand why people like Darren Rowse of ProBlogger rave about him!

I came across it looking for the killer article for a prospective client that I really want to land and I couldn’t have picked a better one to help him make the right decision…

“Okay, so you’ve heard from someone that this social media and social networking stuff is great and you should get involved, and it’s really going to help you out. Maybe it will help you in the economic downturn. Maybe you have heard how you can use Twitter for business. But there’s a lot to it all.

Where would you start? What would come first? How might you think about getting out there and joining in on the experience?” Source: If I Started Today

You’ll have to go to the source to get the answers but it’s well worth the trip — and let’s hope that client ‘gets it’ whatever it is… ;-)

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I love ‘Remember the Milk’!

Image representing Remember The Milk as depict...
Image via CrunchBase

The hosted task management system with the funny name is one of my favorite tools. Just this morning as I was hacking through my todo list, I tweeted that I was reminded what a great tool it is. Then, as fate would have it, I saw this post commemorating their 4th bday…

“Four years ago yesterday, we breathed a sigh of relief: after more than a year of development, our super-secret project was finally ready to launch! Little did we know that the adventure of Remember The Milk was only just beginning…

Five days after our launch, there was already a crazy 50,000 tasks being managed with RTM. Perhaps that should’ve given us some indication of what we were in for, but it wasn’t until 2007 that we figured out that, well, we might need a little help. (It turns out that two people and a stuffed monkey working full-time on a free app with some serious hosting bills does not a sustainable service make.)” Source: Remember The Milk – Blog

Remember the Milk, or RTM, is everything a task management system should be and it synchronizes with my BlackBerry and iPhone and integrates seamlessly with my Gmail account through their Firefox plugin. Of course I’m a pro subscriber! Question is, why aren’t you?

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Tactic #1: Master Firefox!

Image representing Seth Godin as depicted in C...
Image via CrunchBase

First, what’s this nonsense about ‘Tightening your Tribe’? Well, it’s a reference to Seth Godin’s social media masterpiece ‘Tribes‘. As I read the book, I really enjoyed the strategic discussion but found any reference to practical, tactical tools was missing. I therefore decided to create a series of posts on tools that could possibly accompany the book. This is the first post — there are 9 more. I hope you enjoy them all!

Just in time for the first major entry in my series ‘Top 10 Tactics and Tools for Tightening your Tribe’, Google was kind enough to do a short video on the topic of browsers…

They even launched a new site called What Browser? for people who are unclear on the concept. The truth is there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of different browsers you can use to view content on the internet, but most people never venture beyond the familiarity of Internet Explorer. Personally, I go back and forth between the 5 browsers [Internet Explorer, Firefox, Flock, Chrome and Safari] I have installed on my computer and many times I have multiple browsers open at the same time because not only is it possible, but also desirable, to use a certain browser for a specific task.

I have joked before that Firefox is my wife and Chrome is my mistress, but my wife does not think that analogy is very funny. Maybe it’s better said that Firefox is my workhorse and Chrome is my show pony. In either case, I do most of my work in Firefox, although I am using Chrome more and more — especially with web-based Google products. So why do I love Firefox so much? Let me break it down for you… Continue reading “Tactic #1: Master Firefox!” →

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