Around The Business

Today, November 30th 2009, I started training for my new position in my company. After being an excited employee of Ecommerce and have enjoyed every minute of it.

Now I look forward to gaining more knowledge and understanding of techonlogy and our company.

Maybe when I leave training I look a little something like this:

Jay Abraham was a wise man. He once said, “Understand that you need to sell you and your ideas in order to advance your career, gain more respect, and increase your success, influence and income.” Jay understood that you have to sell yourself before you can sell your product. You are your greatest Brand and you have to realize it, and live it.

To be successful in your industry, you have to allow a gap between yourself, your brand, and your competitors. Brand you begins in your office and will slowly spread over every aspect of your life. “Brand You” doesn’t clock in or clock out, it doesn’t take a vacation, it’s a 24/7 everyday part of life. I know it sounds like a lot of extra work, but with today’s technology (such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Linkedin and whatever comes out this week), it couldn’t be any easier to create in yourself a brand that is stronger then you could ever imagine.

Here are 6 simple steps to help build “Brand You”.

Crap Clean your Social Networking finger prints

We have all heard of spring cleaning, but when was the last time you spring cleaned your Facebook page? All of your social media pages should have a feeling of professionalism and respect for yourself and your friends.  Even if your profile is set to private you should take pride in who you are and what image you are providing to your friends. If your friends are looking for someone in your industry to help their boss, they are going to skip you over if they feel you cannot work on a professional level. Remember “Brand You” is every part of your life, not just business hours.

RSS Your Mind

The internet is filled with massive amounts of knowledge, from general news feeds to content relating to your industry, use it. Read as many RSS feeds as you can to grow your knowledge base. You will never walk out of a client meeting with the client saying “Wow, he/she knew too much! We can’t hire them.” By growing your knowledge you are creating a stronger foundation to “Brand You”

Express Yourself

Express your likes and dislikes on your site and others blogs. If in a RSS feed you read a statement you don’t agree with, comment “I don’t agree” and state why not. You can’t be afraid to express your opinion, remember a key word in “Brand You” is “You”.

“Would you like a Card?”

Just because grandfather passed business cards out, does not make them obsolete. Call it old fashion, but they still work. I keep a stack of business cards on my desk from clients and coworkers. Handing someone your information listed on a creative, small sheet of card stock, goes a long way.

Get Linkedin

Linkedin is the number one business to business social media networking tool. Establish yourself in the network and start networking with those people in your address book. Building a strong Linkedin profile allows you to connect with millions of business contacts from all over the world.

For more information on Linkedin checkout http://lewishowes.com. Lewis really has an amazing grasp on how to use Linkedin for your day to day business.

If you need to call an SOS

Building “Brand You” may be too overwhelming for you. If it is, don’t hesitate to scream for help. Use your network to connect with other bloggers online. If you have a question about a post, ask your question. Check out the Q&A section in Linkedin, you may find a lot of your questions already answered there, and if not within 2 days you will be flooded with 15 to 20 answers from real life experience.

Remember this in building “Brand You”, everything has to be about “you”. Products change and business changes, you are always the same. Be different from the world, be “you.”

Google’s Matt Cutts recently confirmed general consensus that Google no longer factors in metatags in the worlds number 1 search engine.

Metatags are keywords that aren’t visible to people browsing your site and have always allowed search engines to guess at your page’s content. Within the last ten years abusers have used metatags to gain higher rankings in search engines.

“About a decade ago,” Cutt explained, “search engines judged pages only on the content of web pages, not any so-called “off-page” factors such as the links pointing to a web page. In those days, keyword meta tags quickly became an area where someone could stuff often-irrelevant keywords without typical visitors ever seeing those keywords.

This has been an issue for web surfers in the past. Think about it, how many times in the past have you searched for a specific topic and found a website that has nothing to do with your search. Those are the meta tag abusers wasting your time.

Cutts contiuned, “Because the keywords meta tag was so often abused, many years ago Google began disregarding the keywords meta tag.”

With Google making the decison and honest about not using metatags any longer, it also allows us a glimpse into the past and look forward to future of the world wide web.

Happy Thanksgiving from the Team at IX Web Hosting – We wish you all a very happy Holiday!

Even the employees of hosting companies have problems sometimes with their sites. This morning I cam into work and it was down. I had some problems with the DNS information being pointed to the wrong site.

Our amazing team at IX had the problem fixed within the hour.

But here’s proof, anything can happen to anyone.

Being the day before Thanksgiving, I wanted to send a little humor out to show what we are all going to feel like tomorrow. Remember to thank those you care about and not eat too much. You never know who is going to be there to help you get back up.

Have a great Thanksgiving!

“Hotseat, a social networking-powered mobile Web application, creates a collaborative classroom, allowing students to provide near real-time feedback during class and enabling professors to adjust the course content and improve the learning experience. Students can post messages to Hotseat using their Facebook or Twitter accounts, sending text messages, or logging in to the Hotseat Web site.” Hotseat

Twitter on the Hotseat

Hotseat is using Twitter to provide input on the discussions in class by using Twitter’s hash tags allowing each topic to be unique and inviting. All tweets are then filtered to students participating in the course.

Facebook on the Hotseat

For Hotseat users who are better suited to use Facebook instead of Twitter, Hotseat will provide a unique Facebook application. This application will provide the same experience for students as the Hotseat web application.

iPhone on the Hotseat

Hotseat is also branching out to Mobile Devices, allowing students at Purdue who do not wish to bring, or forgot their computers, access to the discussion. So far most mobile devices are able to be used, including the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Congrats Purdue on being the first to establish that students can learn using traditional methods and social media together. I look forward to seeing you pave the way.

Since moving to Columbus, one of my family’s favorite hang outs has been the strip of stores connected to the Carriage Place Theater. Carriage Place shows movies usually a few weeks after their release date for reduced prices ranging from $.50 to $2.00 a ticket. If you have not been to Carriage Place Theater, I highly recommend it.

I’m not talking about your average, dodgy bargain theater. Each screening room has recently been renovated with comfy seating and the staff is very friendly. I would say it’s actually one of the better theater venues around town. While waiting for a show to begin my family usually checks out the local stores. My older daughter loves the oriental shop, the Half-Priced Books is the best one in town, and we have almost come home with countless pets from the pet store, Petland.

We have tried a few of the restaurants (not all of them), This weekend we made it to the end of the shopping center to try out the Chinese Restaurant, Sun Tong Luck Asian Cuisine. It was amazing. Hands down the best Chinese food in town, and we have tried many of them. My daughters had the sweat and sour chicken, which they both ate every bite of. These are kids that never eat every bite of anything. My wife and I shared a full size order of General Tao’s chicken, which filled both of us up. The portions of the full size dinner was enormous, it had to be served on two plates. If you are ever in the Carriage Place shopping center I recommend heading dinner at Sun Tong Luck and a great movie, all for less then $25.00

Webinars are taking over the online business world. The ability to have online lectures and class discussions with hundreds of people from all over the world at one time has created massive online symposiums out of what once was a simple educational video feed. But what do I mean by Symposium? Symposium originally referred to a drinking party (the Greek verb sympotein means “to drink together”) but has since come to refer to any academic conference, or a style of university class characterized by an openly discursive format, rather than a lecture and question–answer format (more info, here). With advances in technology daily, it is easy for someone in Columbus, Ohio to speak to someone in Reykjavik, Iceland without delay or problems. Connection with anyone in world is simpler today then it as ever been in recorded history and with Twitter you have the ability to connect with the world.

Using Twitter your webinar can gain needed attendees, but also provide you with their questions and questions for you to answer during the webinar. I have come up with some steps follow that will allow you gain more attendees and broaden your reach, and like everything in the world it starts with Kevin Bacon.

By tweeting about your webinar, you have a larger chance to gain attendees and excitement. Currently while I am writing this post I have around 3,200 followers. With every tweet I send out I have the potential to inter the personal space of 3,200 different individuals, individuals who are also connected to more individuals. With Twitter you have the ability to send out just one tweet that could possibly be seen by more than 100,000 people. What better publicity could your webinar have?

• Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

I thought of a great way to paint a mental image for you regarding your Twitter account. Do you remember the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon? Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is a trivia game based on the concept that everything in the world revolves around the actor Kevin Bacon. With your account you have to imagine it is Kevin Bacon, and everyone in the world is only 6 degrees away from you. Use that image to realize how many possible attendees you can convert from Twitter. Remember you are Kevin Bacon.

• Get your # Tag On

Now that you have harnessed your inner Bacon, get your followers excited about it. Spend the week before your webinar, talking to your followers and building excitement. As the host of the webinar you need to create a # tag name that your followers can tweet and RT to others that is unique to your event.

The # tag allows you to build excitement for your individual webinar. As you view your twitter feed during the day, you see #NFL, #KnightRider #KFC, well maybe not #KFC. Creating a # tag allows people to easily search for your webinar and what people are saying about it. This allows you to establish a strong connection online. By using the # tag and channeling your inner Kevin Bacon, you will establish your thumb print online.

• If you get a question, answer it and thank the Tweep

During your webinar, allow your followers to ask questions and then make sure to take time to answer as many of the questions as possible. By accepting questions and providing strong answers, your followers will form a stronger bond of trust with you and more likely to return for more of your webinar events.

There is another key step to a successful webinar and building trust with your followers, answer all remaining questions. By spending time answering the remaining questions you are building that additional layer of trust with your followers.

• Turn your followers into peeps

After your webinar and you have finished responding to your unanswered questions, begin transferring those followers to contacts. Remember everyone could use additional contacts. For every question you received you have a chance at a new contact. Invite them to connect with you on Linkedin.com, or Facebook.com. This will allow them ask you more questions in a more private atmosphere. It will also allow you to contact them regarding your business or yourself.

I hope this article assist you in gaining a larger your webinar to gain a broader range of possible attendees online and also will help you interact better with your followers.