SMB links that say WOW! 03/01/2009
February 28, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
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Ecamm Network: Call Recorder for Skype – Automatically Record Skype Calls On Your Mac
Thanks to Jackie Huba for letting me know how she did her recent video recording of “side by side” conferencing using skype. This is a great too. We already use audio hijack so perhaps they have an upgrade out or coming that has the video feature. Only $30 for 3 pack of licenses for this piece. Nice.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
SMB links that say WOW! 02/26/2009
February 25, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · 2 Comments
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This looks like a great tool for hosting video for almost nothing in a way that looks very professional. I’m going to give this a try so I’ll let you all know when we have something live.
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http://www.andydrish.com/2009/02/24/seth-godin-on-blogging
Seth Godin and Tom Peters on Blogging…just WOW. I hope I say it half this good in my classes. Unreal. Please take a listen to this minute and a half clip. You’ll fire up your blog immediately afterward I think. Whether business or politics the same power applies. This is the most powerful marketing tool in the universe…and it’s FREE!
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Blogging Slow Down – Kool Aid Shortage
February 25, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
Now that blogging is more “mainstream” are you noticing a slow down in blogging by those blogging to grow business versus those blogging for profit? I have. I’d say 2-3 years ago there was almost a “Drink the Kool Aid” type feel about blogging with 3-5 posts a day being the norm. Of course, the economy and business had yet to reveal its true dysfunction so maybe business leaders had more time then.
Now, I get the feeling that “People are too busy trying to make sales and grow business” to spend time blogging so much. I’m not in anyway discounting the power and purpose of blogging. I am commenting on the pace.
I know my personal blogging pace (commentary on life, general business, and Iowa) has slowed dramatically. I haven’t had the brain bandwidth to be thinking about anything but growing my business and much of that growth is coming from human interaction, (aka face to face meetings…eeek!).
Even here on the CWM site, blogging volume has been steady but no where near what I coach my own students to do. Are we experiencing some of that “I’m too busy to blog” syndrome that we preach is an excuse for not marketing strategically online?
Blogging seems to follow a bit of a cyclical nature in my world. When I’ve recovered some time to think and “Work on the business instead of in the business” I blog more. When I’m running from 6am-9pm 14 days in a row, I blog less. You know I’m cool with that. Put down the Kool Aid and let’s have a group blogging hug.
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SMB links that say WOW! 02/25/2009
February 24, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
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Smallbiz America :: SEO With Steve Riegel
So read this article. Is this approach to SEO valuable for you? I’m not sure..just asking. In our world, I’d probably say, “Let your platform and plugins handle these things.” I totally get where Steve is going with this piece and it’s absolutely spot on. But most small businesses probably don’t know these strategies and how to practically apply them. I think we need a different approach. What do you think?
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Internet Marketing with Content & SEO: Interviews with 5 Experts | Online Marketing Blog
Wow. This is a great interview and has awesome discussion about SEO, content, links, etc. It’s a great read. Highly recommended.
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The Dangers of Personal Branding – FreelanceSwitch – The Freelance Blog
This is a great piece. I talked quite a bit about thinking through this dilemma about branding self vs. company with my “Become Findable on the Web” and Blogging for Business class recently. If your company is ONLY about YOU then you will NEVER be able to get bigger than YOU. Logical? Of course. Easy to manage. Nope. We wrestle with this constantly. In the early stages of a company, you establish a lot based on your one on one interaction with people. My current needs are to find someone who can represent me, our brand, and our company and let that person thrive.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Enterprise Social Networking: How Do I Start?
February 23, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
Using my “buzz monitoring” mega portal (ie google reader) I found a great piece this morning done by David Gearhart at the Enterprise Software Executive blog called, “Enterprise Social Networking: A Great Place to Start”. David does a great job of breaking down what Social Networking in the Enterprise looks like, the steps involved, and the results he’s seen.
The most power part of the piece for me was his discussion on community. create WOW media works with companies to help them assemble the tools and strategies to be great community builders and participants. David described the POWER of community in building a company very well. In fact, pay attention the last sentence of this quote (emphasis mine).
The community was leveraged for product ideas/features, product roadmap feedback (ranking ideas/voting), submitting ideas/code/extensions, and quality assurance testing of the product during development. In many cases, the community became so dedicated to their mission that they even helped debug and fix areas of the product for the founders. The community forum quickly grew from a source of information and sharing between the founders and developers into a larger community that supported a variety of purposes ranging from consultants for hire/career/jobs to client – to – client discussions sharing the best practices for implementation and customization of the software. Over time, the community became equally important to software company and resulted in the founders becoming another peer in the community rather than driving the community. Each release was driven by the product ideas, product feedback, and assistance from the overall community. However, there is no stated Enterprise Social Networking strategy at the company, rather it is a critical part of the company culture. It is hard to quantify the value of the community because without the community, there really is no company.
That’s a powerful testimony don’t you think?
Remember that building a community INSIDE your organization is at least equally as important to building one outside. So when your building your strategy online/offline marketing plans, don’t forget this critical piece of the puzzle.
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SMB links that say WOW! 02/23/2009
February 22, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
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Make a Facebook Page, Event, or Group Badge at rmd Studio Blog
Have you been wondering how to create a badge to promote your FaceBook Group? Most of the social media “sidebar widgets” allow ONLY for your personal profile or page to be displayed. PageBadge solves this problem. I walked right through and completed my page badge in about 2 minutes. Excellent use of my time!
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
SMB links that say WOW! 02/17/2009
February 16, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
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Dean Collins: Amazon Flexible Payment System – micropayments finally cracked?
This could prove an interesting development in the world of micro transactions. This uses amazons payment infrastructure to just “make things work”. Nice.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Managing the Edge Internet Business Podcast
February 16, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · 1 Comment
Over the last 6 weeks, I’ve had the great pleasure of recording and streaming a powerful new internet business podcast called, Managing the Edge. Managing the Edge is a collaboration between me (Doug Mitchell) and Andy Brudtkuhl (Brood-Cool) of 48 Web.
The show’s tag line really says it all in that,
“We’d like to help you become more findable and engaging on the web.”
Simple. Effective. Straightforward.
Andy and I discuss web strategy, software platforms, analytics, search engine optimization (SEO), content generation and distribution, and a ton of other great web topics. But here’s what you MUST know. The Managing the Edge Internet Business Podcast does NOT forget the word BUSINESS! We always bring technology back to the realm of “Why should I care as a real business person with real issues?” Technology is great but who cares if no one is buying, reading, consuming your product right?
Our recent episodes are all about getting “Back to Business” where we reconnect some of the more in depth tech talk with real business people. In fact, in our upcoming episode that will hit later today, we had on a guest who has exploded his business online by building community around his content. Pretty cool stuff?
I’d encourage you to visit Managing the Edge and subscribe using the iTunes link. Listen to as many past episodes as you can and just see what we’ve got cooking.
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A sign of the times for radio? Google drops ad program
February 16, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
So if you’re looking for a trend here, Google has now dropped its newspaper ad model and its radio ad model. Hum. Not tough to see right? Here’s a quote from the story “Google to discontinue radio ads program” from B to B.
Susan Wojcicki, Google’s VP-product management, said in a blog discussing the shutdown of Google Audio Ads: “… we have decided to exit the broadcast radio business and focus our efforts in online streaming audio. We will phase out the existing Google Audio Ads and AdSense for Audio products and plan to sell the Google Radio Automation business, the software that automates broadcast radio programming.
We’ve been learning quite a bit about the radio market here locally in Des Moines. The create WOW media team helped local daily talk show Mac’s World Live begin streaming live daily and built a blog based web site for him. Then, Mac actually began streaming the show live from our studio daily after his recent deal on AM radio fell through.
The number one takeaway so far? “It’s actually more cost effective in our local market to produce and host a 1 hour radio show each week than it is to buy advertising on a show.” If that sounds counter-intuitive to you…I’m with you.
I’m not going to sound the death bell of terrestrial radio because like other things, it will find its place. But think: How many millennials will be getting their information from an AM signal in about 5-10 years? I think Gen X is already about the cutoff point that still even knows that AM exists. Of course it does depend on your market considering in SoCal the ONLY station in my life was the talk radio powerhouse KFI AM 640. If I want a dose of AM radio now, I actually stream it live on the web. Sign?
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SMB links that say WOW! 02/16/2009
February 15, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
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Thanks to Dave Kaminski for pointing this one out! Wow. If you use or are going to use wireless mic equipment, please pay attention.
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Learn More : Optimizing your video uploads – YouTube Help
This is an easy to understand brief guide on how to optimize the quality of your YouTube video embeds. The piece gives you settings and such to make you look your best.
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Twitter tools :: BtoB Magazine
This is a general piece with a tiny bit of meat..but useful background on twitter if you’re fairly new to it.
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Adobe Marketplace – Offering Detail
Want a more touchy feely happy interface for google analytics? Try this adobe air based application out! Wow. I’m already loving this and have gotten more out of it than the actual goog website. Nice. Thanks to @aaronwebb for this sweet find.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
