Organizing How To

As Drew mentioned in a blog post a few days ago I love to organize. In fact it is my dream to have my closet color coded by hangers that are the same colors as the clothes hanging on them, a bit obsessive yes but organization is a huge part of my life and is a must for any successful business.

So here is a link to my new favorite article on mashable

http://mashable.com/2008/12/02/organization-applications/

This is a list of 100+ more ways to organize your life.

You can only imagine my excitement when I found this article and realized their a organizational website for just about everything and anything you can imagine.

I haven't gone through all the sites, but I will keep you all posted on my favorites.

~@weddinggal

RT: Your Boss Doesn't Care About the 'Conversation'

I just read this great article by Mack Collier about how to explain the benefits and ROI of social media to business owners. I can tell you, Mr. Client, that actively engaging in social media is how business is going to happen in the near future, and why it matters. I can tell you that engaging in a client base through a very quick, very short method is a great way to stay 'top of mind' with your prospects. I can even give you examples of people who are making money out of their database with social media.

Alas, there is always SOMEONE who says "ok, I get social media and that it's the future. But how can you prove that I'll make more by using it?"

And I always have just said, "Well, I can't. I can't say 'do this, this, and this, and you will make X. It doesn't work like that."

To which they reply, "Well that just doesn't work for me."

I have hit this wall with a few clients, and he explains it quite well. My favorite part:

You have well-positioned/valuable blog, which leads to more interaction, which leads to X, which leads to more sales. You need to determine what ‘X’ is.

I talk a lot about "conversions" vs. "pageviews and SEO." I even wrote about why SEO doesn't matter. This explains that point of view quite well.

Here's the article- http://bit.ly/VTLFt

Stop going after pagerank and start going after conversions!

-Drew.

Google Calender

So, this is so cool I just HAD to write about it.

I don't know about you guys, but I use Outlook for email, contacts, and my calender. Up until a few months ago, this worked great, because I only needed to keep track of my own... schtuff.

Enter Chelsea. Now, for those of you who don't know us, she's the organized one of the team. I leave clothes in the dryer (it's really perfect- they stay out of the way, and you can just pick stuff out of there that you need to wear for the day. Makes sense to me), and she had her entire room unpacked and organized within 24 hours of moving.

You should see how many sticky notes she uses in a day.

So we had a little bit of conflict when we started working together and I wasn't letting her know what I had going on.

We started using Google Calenders, which is a pretty cool little program put out by those nifty dudes in California. It worked, because I could upload my Outlook calender to Google by converting Outlook to a CSV file. Which worked, but I had to remember to do it.

Enter more conflict. Hey, I'm not that organized, remember?

I just found this little link that says "sync" at the top of the Google Calender page. Click on it, and ... DUDE. You can set it to automatically sync both ways (as in to and from) your Outlook account.



So, looks like our little Outlook Conflict has ended.

The villagers rejoiced.

-Drew.

From David Risley- Driving Traffic to Your Blog

I just read another article by David Risley, a "problogger," and thought that you guys might all enjoy a little bit of sound advice.

David suggests, among other things, that driving traffic to your blog can happen in three easy steps-

1. Guest post on other blogs
2. Build a social network
3. Post videos everywhere

While these are great ideas, something to keep in mind is that this dude does this for a livine. This is his job. You, faithful client, do this as a part of the marketing plan for your real job.

It is important to make time to blog, though. Social Media is not a golden bullet that will solve all your problems. It's going to take some time and effort (like everything else) to really see some results.

Here's the article, it's worth a glance-through- http://tinyurl.com/clvglu

Keep being yourself, and keep posting interesting content, and you WILL be found.

-Drew

Facebook Update!

As of last Friday, Facebook is allowing users to create usernames! This is a big step for the 200,000,000+ user giant of the social media scene.

It allows you to tell people say, "Hey dude, check me out on Facebook at facebook.com/drewshope" instead of saying, "Hey dude, check me out on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/drewshope?v=app_2795223269. That's, um, have a pen? home.php... question mark ref equals... you know what, just let me friend you or something."

Nifty.

This also allows you to have all your user names the same across the social media board, which can really help your findability.

Check us out:

Facebook.com/drewshope
Facebook.com/weddinggal

Cheers!

-Drew

Twitter Spam

I just read this great article from Mashable on the problem of Twitter Spam. How many of you guys get annoying followers? You know, the one's that have 2 updates, following 2001 people, and have 3 followers themselves? It's annoying.

The thing that the Mashable article is talking about is the people that look at the Twitter trending topics (along the right side, under your @replys, DMs, and Search)


What spammers are doing is putting a link to their random, useless crap and using the rest of their 140 characters to pack in as many top trending topics as possible. So you, average Twitterer clicks on "IranElections" and see some stuff on the actual Iran turmoil, and some stuff on "lose weight fast! here's how" and whatever infomercial-esque garbage they can come up with.

Mashable's article is a great review of the situation, and posites that Twitter needs to step it up a little bit to clean up the problem.

However, if Twitter is user-controlled, shouldn't we be the one's blocking the jerks that spam us? if enough people block a user, doesn't that effectively make them ineffective?

Sounds a lot like the big vs. small goverment debate. Which we won't touch, or even mention.

Here's the article, in all its glory- http://tinyurl.com/njvdm6

Until next time...

- Chelsea and Drew