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This week’s roundup: Interesting tidbits on the web

by Jennifer J. Breazeale on March 22, 2011

How to use LinkedIn (corporette.com)

Especially relevant since I seem to be getting a handful of new connection requests each day – some from friends and colleagues, some from random strangers…  How I use LinkedIn has definitely changed over time and will continue to do so as my needs change and the service itself changes.

How to turn all of your Facebook notifications into a daily digest (lifehacker.com)

I don’t spend much time on Facebook, so emails and notifications really pile up when I finally do get a chance to browse around. I’d previously been using Gmail filters to keep these notifications out of my inbox, but then I never actually took the time to go through my Facebook folder.*

This Lifehacker article will walk you through turning off (most) email notifications and using RSS instead. And, with one more step, condensing that RSS feed into one daily digest. Excellent!

*Happy Birthday/Happy Anniversary/Congratulations/Condolences/Get Well, etc. to everyone who I’ve missed an important life event from.

Media outlets to readers: “Put your money where your eyes are” (37signals.com) and
How to keep reading the NY Times for free (gizmodo.com)

The paywall is coming… The paywall is coming… The NY Times switch to a digital paywall happened yesterday and, not surprisingly, generated a lot of discussion (although I think the overall effect will not be as magical or depressing as predicted.)  These two articles provide some interesting ideas on the business model and the potential different paths to profit.

The Pros and Cons of Tumblr for Small Business (mashable.com)

I love Tumblr and have maintained my site pretty regularly for several years (I even prefer it to Posterous for short-form stuff), however, it’s not typically a tool I would recommend for small businesses. Tumblr has a definite sense of community and a unique culture, so if your business is a match with those, Tumblr can be great. If it’s not a match, well…

Hipmunk

Booking travel always seems like it’s much harder than it needs to be. And, while finding flight information is getting easier, finding a place to stay can still be a pain. Enter Hipmunk, a simplified search tool for flights and hotels. One of the cool features, visual data overlays for food/tourism/shopping, etc.  (Hat tip to Joe Lazarus for this one.)

Hipmunk

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Getting started: Making your site dynamic.

by Jennifer J. Breazeale on January 15, 2011

So, you’ve created a great website for your business and sent an email out to friends and family letting them know you’re up and running. You’re all done… Just sit back and let the traffic come to you, right?

Not quite.

Your website is only the starting point for building your reputation, creating a community, or expanding your reach. You need to get your message out to and participate in the communities you want to reach, but if you’re not a digital native, this task can be quite daunting.

But, I have a blog (that I actually post to). Isn’t that enough?

Do you offer RSS and email subscriptions? Are you using Feedburner to optimize/publicize/monitize your feed? Are you keeping track of analytics for your feed? Are you using automated services like Twitterfeed (Twitter) or Involver (Facebook) to push your feed to Twitter or Facebook? For corporate types, have you connected your WordPress blog with your LinkedIn profile?

AAAAAAAA!!!!!

Although the list of services can seem overwhelming, the good news is that most of them require just a little bit of initial setup and then you’re done – you focus on creating content for your blog and let these services spread it the web.

A few tips…

  • Start with Feedburner. “Burn” your feed and set it up for email subscriptions.
  • Change the default feed on your website to your Feedburner feed.
    • There are several plugins available for WordPress that will handle this for you, or if you’re using WordPress+Thesis, you can set this up from the Dashboard –> Thesis –> Site Options –> Syndication/Feed URL.
  • Once your feed is setup and you’re ready to expand, I’d recommend starting with a Twitterfeed hookup to Twitter.
    • If you’re new to Twitter, make sure you spend some time familiarizing yourself with the community and general rules of posting etiquette.
    • Wendy Kier has some good advice about giving your Twitter a facelift (I especially liked #4 – Make your Tweets Rare) and you can learn all you ever wanted to know about Twitter (and then some!) from the awesome folks at Pistachio Consulting.

You can, of course, continue the process with Facebook and LinkedIn and, depending on your business, you even may want to get involved in location-based services like Google Places, Foursquare, or Gowalla, or review sites like Yelp.

Still confused? Contact us for help.

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The evolution of hubs – from Wes to WordPress

February 10, 2010

Image by Thomas Hawk via Flickr Anytime you’re trying to organize, coordinate, and communicate with more than two people over more than a few days, you’ll realize that relying on email (or Facebook, or Twitter) to carry the burden will drive all of you crazy. Someone’s going to miss a message, the “right” people won’t [...]

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Happy New Year!

January 6, 2010

Now that I’ve finished the last of my 2009 holiday relaxing and recharging, I’m ready to get 2010 rolling! Starting this month I’ll be posting some of the “How-To” guides that I’ve created for my clients along with some of the lessons I’ve learned along the way.

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Successful Business Uses for Facebook and LinkedIn (IMU)

June 24, 2009

Although the information presented in this session was valuable, I would have rather visited the LinkedIn Learning Center and/or the Facebook “About” page to learn more about these topics. Having someone try and walk me through basics and setup steps via PowerPoint is just painful for me. If it’s helpful to you, then maybe you’ll enjoy this one.

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Social Media and Building Community (IMU)

June 23, 2009

I didn’t make an actual count of Chris’ mentions/celebrations of other people’s ideas, products, and successes, but based on my rough notes I think he was getting pretty close to his oft stated Twitter goal of 15:1 (their stuff:your stuff)…

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Using Email Effectively and Making Sense of Analytics (IMU)

June 19, 2009

IMU wrapped up with presentations on old-school email marketing campaigns and web analytics and both speakers managed to provide meaningful suggestions, tips and tricks for small, medium, and large businesses.

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