Tag: Search Engines

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Comment below or ‘connect’ above so we can talk abut how this applies to your business…

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Yesterday, I passed the 400 post mark. 400 posts over 18 months. Wow! Roughly a post a day for a year and a half. Is that a lot? Is that too little? I really don’t know. What I do know is this — when I use my ‘pass or play’ methodology, traffic to my site increases and my ‘pipeline’ fills…

My good friend [and brother in law] Jim Gilligan has a blog that he’s starting for his life coaching business at EffectiveLiving, LLC. Jim asked me how many posts he should create before he goes ‘live’. I told him a dozen or so is enough to get started but recently I did an experiment and I believe the number at which you start to see good results is closer to 100 over a 3 month period. Here’s a real world case study… Continue reading “400 posts” →

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“Last week, I promised to discuss another source of advantage in decay. We’re going to zoom out instead, in response to a flurry of announcements from Apple, Google, and would-be competitors – to have a richer discussion in the weeks going forward.

It’s funny how flatfooted – how almost inept – everyone else in media, marketing, consumer electronics, mobile, a long and dangerously growing list of industries, seems compared to Apple and Google.

What gives? Why is that everyone that Google and Apple decide to take to the cleaners, well, gets taken to the cleaners?” Click here to read more…

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Stay on top of your industry, that is. If you’re a business professional in any category and you’re not using Google Reader or some lesser tool to monitor newsfeeds, I’m very concerned about your future. Whoa. What did you say, Todd? I said, I’m very concerned about your future!

You see, unless you’re working on a production line somewhere making widgets for an hourly wage [not that there’s anything wrong with that — I’ve done it myself] your growth and advancement in business and in life [see this if you don’t believe me] depends on your ongoing professional development and that depends in large part upon your ability to aggregate, manage, and leverage relevant information…

Continue reading “How DO You Do It?” →

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Here are mine [hint — you’ll want to right click on these images and view them in another tab so that they’re legible!]…

What are YOUR favorites?

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5 Steps to Reduce the Pain of Starting a Business Blog

Darren Rowse - Photography Blogger Extrodinaire
Image by kk+ via Flickr

Blogging can be intimidating for someone who hasn’t done it in the past or grown up in the age where everyone has a personal blog.  It is, however, critical that business owners and marketers ‘blog for business.’  Putting pen to paper or more appropriately, putting fingers to your keyboard is the biggest challenge for most people.  So let’s talk about how to get started.

via blog.hubspot.com

If you’re interested in blogging but not sure how to get started, you’ll want to follow the ‘via’ link above to read the rest of this article. If you’re going to start, I encourage you to set a goal of posting once per day. If that seems like a lot, remember that all your content does not need to be original! In my book, there are two main types of posts; creation [original thoughts] and curation [quoting someone’s content with proper attribution]. I uses tools like Gist and Google Reader to listen to subject matter experts in my field, quote their articles, and then post my opinion just like I’m doing now…

Comment, call or use the contact form to connect so we can talk about how this applies to your business!

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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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Google Docs; the next generation

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_hJ3R8jEZM&feature=player_embedded

You can read about all the new improvements here. Just a reminder! If you’re already using Google Apps for your organization, these improvements to your product have already been made free of charge…

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Decluttering Google Reader

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If you read this blog on a regular basis, you know that I’m a huge fan of Google Reader. Here’s a great post on what to do when you save too many feeds to Reader…

“If your Google Reader inbox has grown out of control, and you’re spending more time trying to keep up with the flood of news than reading about things you care about, it’s time for a little Google Reader spring cleaning.

Newsreaders like Google Reader are meant to help us read more content without constantly refreshing a list of bookmarks, in theory saving all kinds of time. If your Reader addiction feels more like a timesink than timesaver, it might be time to think about decluttering and reorganizing your RSS feeds for a more efficient reading experience. Today we’ll walk you through our favorite methods for pruning and organizing your feeds to get the most from your Google Reader experience without overloading yourself.” Source: How to Declutter and Streamline Your Google Reader Inbox – Google Reader – Lifehacker

Go to the source for some really great ideas that will help you be even more productive using Google Reader…

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I love Google Voice!

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I’ve been a user since the Grand Central days and I love it. Here’s another perspective…

“When I first heard about Google Voice, I immediately submitted my email for an invite, and within a few weeks I received one. April first provided a review of Google Voice and offered 100 invites right here at MUO. Since then, Google continued to progress with Google Voice and add more features.

My initial excitement about Voice quickly faded when I learned that Google Voice will not let you port over your home number yet – although you can use your mobile number, but you’ll be limited to primarily only using the voicemail feature. As I’ve been waiting patiently for Google to offer home number porting (which Google’s help page promises is a feature that’s “coming soon”), I’ve noticed that more cool features keep getting added on to the service, so I thought it’s about time for a list of 5 cool things that you can do with Google Voice.” Source: 5 Cool Things You Can Do With Google Voice

Go to the source for the ‘5 Cool Things’…

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Put your business on the map

The Australian Yellow Pages logo used by Telst...
Image via Wikipedia

Small business owners should pay heed to the opportunities presented by mobile social media as the number of smartphone users climbs…

“Small businesses stand to increase their local audience and further their market reach through geolocation platforms, which attach real-world locations to mobile phones. Here are a few ways companies can become part of the location tagging world of social media.” Source: HOW TO: Make Your Small Business Geolocation-Ready

The place to start, however, is with Google Maps which is fast becoming the ‘Yellow Pages’ of the internet. Watch this…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lviDz8fUMTE&feature=player_embedded

One thing to be aware of. Google has a STOOPID process for adding you to the map…

“First you’ll need your PIN, which should arrive in the mail within two weeks after you submit your business listing. If you have your PIN, enter it beside the appropriate listing below, then click ‘Go.'” Source: Google Local Business Center

You have to receive a pin via SNAIL MAIL. It’s the dumbest process in the entire Googlesphere but the benefits are worth the pain in the butt. imho, it’s one of the simplest and most effective ways a company can advertise their business. The information you enter about your business goes directly into the Google search engine and is immediately available to all those geeks who use Google Maps on their desktops or better yet, on their smartphones as they travel through your town…

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Google Living Stories

California - Santa Rosa: Snoopy's Gallery & Gi...
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Google is like the Lucy van Pelt of media. She is quoted as saying “I’m torn between the desire to create and the desire to destroy.”…

“Today, a new Google project popped up in Google Labs (Google Labs) that is a unique extension of this effort. It’s called Living Stories, and its goal is to provide a new and efficient way to read news coverage on breaking stories from one location. Oh, and it’s enlisted The New York Times and the Washington Post for help.” Source: Google and Top Newspapers Experiment with a New Way to Deliver the News

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZhCY9FF608

Another tool I’d be checking out if I were a news anchor!

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Afraid of making mistakes online?

Get over it!

“Risk aversion is the number one reason that people and organizations fail to tap the full power of social media. People often tell me that they can’t afford to make a mistake online, because any error will be just one Google search away for anyone to see, forever.

Unless you’re prepared to risk the occasional mistake, however, you’ll never do anything interesting enough to earn real attention or foster real conversation. Even more crucially, you’ll never develop the social media fluency that comes from making, and then learning from, your own mistakes.

Of course, it’s hard to embrace the upside of online mistakes in a culture that avoids admitting failure, on- or offline. So let me do my part to chip away at the fear of failure by sharing four of my own cringeworthy social media moments. Here they are.” Learning from My Online Mistakes – The Conversation – Harvard Business Review

If you’d like to read more about Alexandra Samuel’s online boo boo’s go to the source — if you’d like to make some of your own, contact me! I can help you get over it… ;-)

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Personal Digital Coaching

English: American entrepreneur, author and pub... …could be just the help you’re looking for! Over 18 months ago, Seth Godin wrote this on his blog:

“Here are three things that are true: 1. Digital technology, especially computers and cell phones, can dramatically increase productivity. 2. More and more users of digital technology are small firms or individuals. 3. The vast majority of users of digital technology are totally lame in getting the most out of the investment of their time and money. “Oh, I didn’t know I could do that.” “You mean I don’t have to manually type my address book in by hand?” “There are graphs in Excel?” “Gmail is free?” Here’s what I haven’t found: people who charge $100 an hour to hear what you do and how you do it and then show you how to do it better. People who organize data and put it in the right place. People who overhaul the way small groups use technology so they can use it dramatically better. People who use copilot to take over a PC and actually rearrange it so that it works better.More examples: Teach people to back up. Show them how to check their email on the road. Help them understand how to use online networking when it’s appropriate (and warn them when it’s not). Show a restaurant how to use OpenTable to keep the place full, or to use a blog (with an RSS feed) to easily communicate with loyal customers. Teach a company to keep tabs on itself with Technorati.” Source: Seth’s Blog: A shortage of digital coaches

If you do a Google Search on the topic, note who is at the top of the list — your humble digital coach Todd Lohenry @ e1evation, llc! Once I securely log on to your computer [after you grant permission] using the technology described, I can help you with just about anything! See a quick demo here… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJlASMkot34 Oh, and btw? I only charge $50 per hour… [btw, note the date on the post! The cost is now $99 per hour!]

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Google privacy

Oxymoron or? Digg users voted on the top ten questions to ask Marissa Mayer, Google VP of Search and User Experience. Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, has the interview. Long, but worthwhile — especially if you’re a fan of Google…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6bFyVGvg28&feature=player_embedded
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I’m working on a project…

…to put my business online using only tools that are freely available from Google. The purpose of the exercise is to ‘eat my own dog food’ so to speak and thereby demonstrate that it’s possible for any entrepreneur, SMB, volunteer group, etc. to have a robust web presence and take advantage of these tools for their own purposes. Sign up for updates in the Feedblitz box in the right hand column and track my progress…

Update, November 9: I ultimately had to pass on this project in favor of adding WordPress and a few other tools to the mix. Since the time of this original post, I’ve learned 10x more about ‘good, fast and cheap’ tools to put your business on the internet. Questions? Feedback? Comment, call or write!

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15x

What is 15x you say? 15X is the multiple by which the traffic to the blog increased over 3 months. In July I was serving up a paltry 4 pageviews per day. Then I got serious. In October that number increased to 63. I have no reason to believe that it will stop growing either, unless I get lazy and stop working at it… ;-)

How did I do it? Through an easy, repeatable process that begins with Google Reader, continues with this WordPress blog, and ends with social media integration. Question? Feedback? Leave a comment or use the contact page…

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FREE ONLINE CLASS TODAY AT NOON: Using Google Reader like a Rockstar!

Google Reader Fluid Icon
Image by indiekid via Flickr

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve posted on the joys of using Google Reader. I consider my use of that tool to be one of the three greatest competitive advantages I have. In seminars I tell people that mastering rss feeds with Google Reader may be the most important skill I learned in the past decade and most of the time the response is crickets chirping…

What is Google Reader and why do I think it’s SOOO important?

“When RSS became a standard for publishing material on the web, the way that we received our information changed very quickly. No longer did users have to go find content; now it could come to them automatically. With the world at their fingertips, something had to be created to sort all of the information. Feed Readers soon started popping up, and power house Google (Google) created their own version.

Google Reader is robust in features, and can be used “out of the box” for those that just want a point and click solution, or tweaked so that power users can play around.” Source: HOW TO: Use Google Reader Like A Rockstar

If you want to know more about how this stuff works, I’ll be doing a FREE ONLINE TRAINING CLASS for the first 200 people who register here for a class at noon central today. So clear your calendar, grab a sandwich from Jimmy John‘s and get smart! Question? Feedback? Leave a comment or use the contact page…

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Google Reader Keyboard Shortcuts

Google Reader Keyboard
Image by paolovalde via Flickr

What? Not using Google reader? I can show you how it will make short work of staying up to date on whatever you’re tracking…

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The ‘Five Minute University’…

Today I’m announcing a new feature on the site; the ‘Five Minute University’. What’s that about? Well, the tool I use for screencasts, Jing, limits me to a five minute screencast. Todd, you say! Wake up — use Camtasia, use Flashback Express, use something that allows you to record longer. No, I say. I have a tendency to bloviate on topic that I’m passionate about and five minutes forces me to get my thoughts together!

The ‘Five Minute University’ is also an homage to one of the funniest bits I ever saw on Saturday Night Live [back in the days when it was actually funny]; Don Novello as Father Guido Sarducci outlines the concept here:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO8x8eoU3L4

Now, here’s my first 5 minute course on using Google Reader as your inbox for the internet…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvf8E6knJtY

Questions? Feedback? Leave a comment or use the contact page to reach me…

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Catch the Wave…

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Image via CrunchBase

Google Wave be the most innovative email tool since the dawn of email itself and the first 100k users have received access…

“Google Wave is one of the most anticipated new products to come out of Google this year. Technology blogs have been abuzz with excitement about this new communications and collaboration tool since Google first showcased it in May.

But so far, Wave, a shared online desktop where groups of users can exchange messages, share and edit documents, drag and drop widgets and play games, has been available only to a select group of developers. On Tuesday, Google is rolling out Wave to a slightly-less-select group: 100,000 users, including developers, people who signed up early on and some users of Google Apps, the company’s package of online applications.

In a blog post, Lars Rasmussen, an engineering manager for the group that created Wave at Google’s Australian offices, said that since the product was first shown publicly, Google has “focused almost exclusively on scalability, stability, speed and usability.” But he warned that bugs are still likely: “You will still experience the occasional downtime, a crash every now and then, part of the system being a bit sluggish and some of the user interface being, well, quirky.” (Of course, well-established Google products, like Gmail, also have had frequent bouts of downtime recently, including last week.)” Google’s Much-Anticipated Wave Opens Up a Bit – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com

Unfortunately, no matter how much I begged, Google wouldn’t include me. Stay tuned for details as they become available…

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