I’ve tried my best to be an early adopter of the various technologies that allow us to connect with each other online. Of course the main thing that I have tried is to rank well in organic search. The problem with organic search is that it is beginning to take a lot of time to maintain a good ranking. The average business person does not have that kind of time. Maintaining your website takes enough time as it is, even just to keep it current. But that isn’t enough these days, you have to have the various inbound links coming to your website in order to rise above your competition. If you provide a service or even a product locally this is typically easier yet if you live in a larger town or city is still very difficult to pull off. Beyond that, maintaining profiles and listings on various websites and directories is even more time-consuming. You make one change and you have to update multiple destinations to avoid conflicting information. You never know how people are going to find you, just because they do a Google search for you by name doesn’t mean that there cannot land on your website first. They could land on your Citysearch profile or your Yelp page and is the information there is old or incorrect they may not be able to get a hold of you and if that happens your competition earns the upper hand.

Right now I am attending the Search Marketing Expo (SMX) in San Jose California. I was fortunate to attend this event last year and I walked away with a lot of valuable information. As a small business person it’s very important for me to be current and up-to-date with my search marketing techniques. I would like to say that I spend a lot of time doing this and that my good rankings in the search engines are results of strategic work on my part, however I am mostly just lucky. My locally targeted businesses rank very well with little or no work on my part. Because I do good work, my customers talk about me on various websites and review sites. When I listen to the leaders in the search marketing industry, it refreshes my mind with ideas and things I should accomplish. As far as my local reach goes, if I implemented 5% of what I learned at this conference I would outweigh everybody in my local area. However, since I have a couple of online properties that have a worldwide presence, I am really looking to try and find new ways to increase viewership to those websites.

Using my wedding photography business as an example, most of my referrals, which come through my website, are the result of somebody finding me through another website. Rarely does an inquiry come from somebody who manually typed in my website address. When somebody manually types in your website address it means that they heard about it somewhere else. They could’ve been handled by business card by somebody, or perhaps was told about me by word of mouth. It is virtually impossible to track the origination of this type of lead without asking them directly. On my inquiry form, I do ask this question. Is very important to me to know how somebody found my website. Of course it is important because sometimes I spend money on advertising and I want to make sure that I am receiving proper ROI, but it was the result of a word-of-mouth transaction I want to be able to thank the originating source personally. I take word-of-mouth very seriously. Word-of-mouth is probably the best way that somebody could be referred to you. It means that somebody trusts you enough to tell their friend about you. To me that’s huge.

People are starting to get numb when it comes to online advertising. We are marketed to everywhere we go. Even when we view a photo on Facebook there are ads next to it. We have no desire of clicking on anything other than our friends photo yet we are being served ads. That is good for Facebook because they’re making boatloads of cash however we as consumers are learning to block these ads out. It has to really get our attention to even notice it these days. If you asked me to tell you what the last ad was that I saw online I wouldn’t be able to tell you and I have over 12 years of experience in website design and marketing. Even I blocked these things out. So does traditional online advertising even work anymore?

I say that it does if it’s done right. If you have a relatively new website that doesn’t rank well at all for the search terms you desire to rank under you can always choose pay per click (PPC) campaigns. The only problem with PPC campaigns is that is the only place that you show up in search is in the paid search area you probably won’t be taken as seriously as if you show up in the organic search area. Organic search is the results that the search engines serve to us using their algorithms. The search engines algorithms are designed to find the most relevant content for us based on the search terms we enter into their search box. These out the rhythms are getting smarter and smarter every day. How many times have you avoided clicking on a website that shows up in the PPC area of the search results which are typically even highlighted with the words “sponsored link” underneath it? You are PPC campaign has to be spot on for it to resonate with the person doing the search. Organic search results are free, or at least the search engines don’t charge for them. The problem with organic search is that it is harder to rank. Think about the websites you typically click on when you do a Google search. How many times do you venture onto the second page? How many times do you even scroll down? Typically if we don’t see the result we are looking for right away, we change our search and if our research is to obscure, the search engines often give us suggestions. That sure sounds like a lot to think about, and it is. With online advertising, whether you are paying a search engine or not, it is best to show up as often as possible. If you show up in organic search, and you have competition who also shows up in organic search, how are you going to differentiate yourself between your competition? There are really only a few ways to do this. The first way is to make sure that the content the search engines are serving up sounds better than your competition’s does. This could be hard to accomplish while still maintaining a better ranking. What you should be trying to get the search engines to display is a whole another conversation. I am a big advocate of interruption marketing. By interruption marketing I don’t mean that you should get in the way of what the user is trying to achieve, what I mean is that you should be in more than one place at a time. Just because you rank well in organic search doesn’t mean you don’t have to think about PPC. If you are a local business, you should be ranking well for local search as well as organic search. If you rent decent for both, why not throw us thin layer of PPC over the top of that. How many times have you made a decision based on repetition. If the result shows up multiple times, chances are it’s a better option then the other results that don’t show up but once. It’s just the way our minds think. So with online advertising, those are your options. All of those require a decent amount of work to maintain and assure ranking doesn’t change. Even your PPC campaign can start to slide if someone else comes along and bids higher than you. Let’s talk a little about online reviews.

Online reviews don’t work for every business however it does work for most. How many businesses can you think of that don’t benefit by word-of-mouth? I can’t think of any. The positive online review is just as good as a face-to-face word-of-mouth referral. I feel like I can say this because I know how many times I have made a purchase of a product based on user reviews from people whom I’ve never met before. I spend a great deal of money on Amazon.com. When it comes to purchasing a product that I’m not 100% familiar with I always go to the reviews and read what others have to say about that product. Whether the product is $9.99 or $4000, if I’m unsure I read the reviews. One good written review has been enough to lead me to the shopping cart. You might think this is crazy but I’m sure you’ve done this before in one way or another. The number one thing we are worried about when making a purchase is minimizing the chance of that purchase being a mistake. Gone are the days where we have a local professional for every industry that we can go visit or call for their professional opinion. We live in an era of big box stores manned by minimum wage hourly employees who have a very minimal knowledge of the products and services they are selling. For the most part I have given up on asking the opinion of somebody working sales at such stores. There is a small chance that they will have personal experience with the product I’m interested in and most of the time they BS their way through trying to talk me into purchasing it. I end up wasting my time. Online reviews have led me down the correct path 90% of the time. Of course that’s a rough estimate.

As I mentioned before, I am in the service industry. My businesses are services that I provide either to other businesses or directly to consumers. I don’t have a tangible product or something somebody can hold and easily measure its value. I sell a service, which can only be described to somebody else. This is where online reviews, for me, work better than online advertising. I’m not saying that online advertising is not important, if anything both are important. What I am talking about is the difference between the two…

A positive or even a negative online review, is the opinion of the peer. Our whole lives we have looked to the opinions of other people, it’s just the way we were created. If we don’t know something, we want to ask somebody else. Some of us like to figure it out on our own, but even those people have their resources. To many of my friends and family it may appear that I figure out many things on my own, however I spend a lot of my time researching things. When I first got into digital photography I read the opinions of a lot of other people. I knew exactly what I wanted because I learned what other people were using to accomplish their goals. I bypassed a lot of mistakes that many people make when purchasing larger ticket items by learning from other people who are using the products rather than just talking to a sales person. Of course salespeople can be knowledgeable, but they are salespeople who want to sell you something. I don’t know why they would would decide to push one product over another, for all I know it has to do with how much money they make on the sale or what kind of promotions are going on at the time. I don’t want my purchasing decision to be based on somebody else’s sales goals.

Most of the time I have found that online reviews are a better representation of what I’m looking for then the opinion of a close friend or family member. Not to say that I made all of my decisions based off of the reviews of people whom I’ve never met before however their opinions are typically unbiased and since they’re not directly talking to me they are not really trying to influence me. For my photography business I have found this to be really true. Brides typically don’t ask around when it comes to choosing their wedding photographer. Many of them already know who they want their wedding photographer to be. This could be because they were in the wedding and enjoyed the photographer that was a part of that wedding or they could’ve seen some photos while ago online while they were single or dating. Those who had never had a run-in with a photographer whether in person or online before getting engaged typically go and read the reviews. I have lots of reviews on several different review websites. Most of these reviews are from wedding clients that I have had the past. I live in a smaller city where the idea of publishing your thoughts on a product or service is a relatively new concept. In larger cities this is been going on for some time.

When it comes to getting online reviews written for your business is best to let it happen naturally. I have tried to provide incentives to my past clients in exchange for their time in writing a nice review online. The problem is that they’re being incentivized and their reviews sound incentivized. When you write about something out of pure passion and enjoyment others can see that, they can feel it. I know that when I write things because I intend to receive an incentive, I try to write in length and of using a lot of platitudes. My incentivized review ends up sounding cheesy. When I have an absolutely positive experience with a product or service and I go to write a review words just flow right out of my fingertips onto the keyboard. What kind of reviews do you think are best to have? Still, getting your customers to post reviews is a challenge. If they don’t think to write a review it doesn’t matter if they have a good experience or not, chances are they’re not the right one. Most likely they will write one if they have a bad experience, and you don’t want that. Here are a few tips that I have found help when it comes to getting customers to write online reviews.

Complete your profiles: Make sure you have claimed and completed all of your profiles on the popular review sites for your industry. This means that your Google place page, yelp.com business page, Yahoo.com local listing, and profile on any other website relevant to your industry should be filled out completely. You want to make sure that it looks like you’ve been there recently and that all the information is current. If somebody wants to write a review but they come across to an outdated page they may not write a review in fear that their posting in the wrong place. There is nothing wrong with linking to these profiles on your website. I would even suggest we recommend people go interview them, especially if you have reviews there. I have more reviews than all of my competition, so I’m not worried about people leaving my website to go somewhere else just to see that I have more positive glowing reviews than anyone else in my area.

Link to your reviews: When somebody posts a review to a search engine or review site, copy and paste it to your website. There’s nothing wrong with having a reviews or testimonials section on your website. When you place external reviews on your website, make sure you link back to that review. This allows people to click on that review and visit it on its originating website. This shows authenticity. It also plants the seed. If somebody reads several positive reviews, decides to do business with you, and as a pleasant experience, they are going to want to be a part of that list. It’s all about planting the seed.

Asking for it: I mentioned before that the times that I have asked for reviews resulted in subpar reviews if I received any at all. This is because my timing was not right. You can ask for a review. The time to do this is whenever the positive emotion is highest in your customer. For example, the moment that I show my clients their wedding photos and they are on that high of reexperiencing their special day, I need to ask for that review. At the end of my meeting with my clients are thinking me for my great work I could then plant the seed. What I’ve done in the past, is provided them with a small list of websites they could post reviews on. I told him just to pick one and write a review to it. I used to tell them to write a review and copy and paste it to all the websites however that is a daunting task often getting put off and never completed. I want to make sure that I have as many reviews as possible so I need to make this as easy as possible. Most of the search engines and some of the review sites have extremely long URLs that lead to your page. Because of this I have used the URL shortening service bit.ly to provide my clients with a shorter website address that is much easier to type in. Depending on how the conversation goes at the end of the meeting, sometimes I just e-mail them asking for the review. I wish I could say that the majority of my clients post reviews however it is a small percentage that actually takes the time to do it. We’re just busy. Countless times I have even thought to write a review for a business and I end up forgetting. I don’t want to be that guy who hounds previous customers for reviews but that is resulted with me having less reviews than I could’ve had if I was a little more proactive.

So this is kind of turned into more of a conversation about online advertising and online reviews however I think it has given you a bit of information that hopefully you didn’t have before and an insight into the different ways that I do things for my business. This changes with each new bit of information that I get. The next two days at this conference could completely change the way that I do things. Online marketing is a constantly changing animal. There is no one way that won’t work forever and when I mentioned the word “traditional” earlier it is hard to even call it traditional because 10 years ago it didn’t exist in the sense that it does today. All I can recommend is to stay on top of it. That will keep you at least one step ahead of your competition. Even though it will take time, it is time well spent. The more times that you appear in search whether it be due to an organic listing, PPC, a profile on another website or a written review the better. It’s all about repetition.

I often talk about this topic on twitter and Google +. Many of the people that I follow online are professionals in this area and I like to be able to see what they are up to and learn from them as they figure out new ways to reach customers. Follow me on twitter or add me to a Google + circle. When I find the relevant information, I will share it.

I have initiated a 1 strike rule with an exception. If I get a spam wall post or message from a friend whom I don’t really know I will either unsubscribe from their posts or unfriend them. Most likely, I will unfriend them. I take spam wall posts much more serious than I do messages because wall posts are visible to my entire friends list.

If I do know the person, I will notify them that either they or their account is spamming first and if it continues I will either unsubscribe from their posts or unfriend them.

Many of you need to be more aware of what should and shouldn’t be done on Facebook. Of course some people just get hacked and I understand it is not their fault, but they need to be more careful.

Keep in mind that “unfriending someone” is pretty equal to “untrusting someone.” If what you post online is annoying, what you say in person is going to be perceived as such.

The great thing about social networks is that it is not face to face, so you typically have no problem friending someone you don’t really know and should also have no problem unfriending them. I believe that people need to know that the same social etiquette we use in real life is expected online. In real life you get social cues which help you determine what you can and can not say to a person or group of people. Online, you most likely do not have those cues, so you should be even more careful.

Those of you who are business people using Facebook as a marketing tool remember these things:

1. It’s not polite to force yourself into a conversation in real life to share something off topic, same goes on Facebook.

2. If you do not communicate with someone on a regular basis it is not polite to share how you can help them with your product or service out of the blue. Just because you are a FB friend with someone does not mean they want to do business with you or were even looking for advice from someone whom they do not know. Be a resource to your FB friends, not someone waiting for them to hint their need so you can pounce on them.

3. Do not sent mass messages to your entire list of friends because your message most likely will not be relevant to 90% of them and it will result in your friends being frustrated.

4. Do not invite your entire list of friends to events that may not be relevant to them. I am married with 2 kids and probably do not want to attend Thirsty Thursdays.

Remember that nothing is relevant to all of your Facebook Friends. If you are having a hard time determining what is relevant to them, ask them on your own wall. People will comment back and let you know what they think, plus you are inviting them into the conversation and asking their opinion.

Inviting people into a conversation:
This is the best way for you to engage people online. It is much more difficult for trust to be earned online than it is in person because of the missing face to face element that allows us to have more of an emotional response to the other person. I recommend that if you want to introduce something to your entire friends list that you make it more personal. Do not just paste a link to a generic image or website, create something on your own. Network Marketers are notorious for doing this. They think that the marketing tools that their companies hand to them are relevant to everybody, but they are not. We want to know how a product or service has benefitted you first before you tell us how it can help us.

Once again, if you are not sure how people will respond, don’t just post it, ask someone first. Do you really want to become that person who people unsubscribe because of your posts?

Last thought: Most people see spam posting on Facebook as the lowest form of marketing. If you have the time to spam post online you probably are not doing any business in the first place. There are to many thoughts you open people up to by posting spam on social networks. A busy and successful person does not have time to do this, however they do have time to ask for feedback and invite people into the conversation they are creating around their product or service.

Best ideas come while on the toilet. True story.

Most Used iPhone Apps

The device I carry most is my iPhone 4S. An iPhone has always been my preferred device even though I have tried time and time again to replace it with an Android. I don’t know what it is about Android but I just want to make one my default phone. However the Android software is just to slow for me and I can’t get things done as quickly as I can on my iPhone. People are going to complain about that statement who don’t understand what I could possibly do faster on an iPhone. Please save your breath for a later post I will write about iPhone vs Android usage. Anyhow, here are the iPhone apps I use most often.

Instagram – Free – Download it here.
If you are an iPhone user and you haven’t heard of Instagram I worry about you. Instagram is a photo sharing application with built-in filters that have made popular. It allows you to take over though in the square crop format and apply one of a series of filters that, within the application to give your photo and interesting look. In my opinion the square cropped look makes it easier to capture a well composed photo and all of the built-in filters draw out that creative I that all of us have. By far it is the most useful photography app for a few reasons.

The first reason is that it allows me to share my photos with all of my friends on the different social networks that I’m a part of. I love taking pictures of my son, my wife, random stuff or anything else that captures my eye. This app allows me to do so quickly and share those photos with my friends. Instagram has made this a very minimal process. It takes seconds to capture a photo, apply filter, save that photo and then upload it to my favorite social networks.

Instagram users can also comment on your photos which of course makes us all feel warm and fuzzy inside. If you have an iPhone, and you like taking pictures, I recommend you download this app. Make sure you find my profile and follow my photo stream, I typically follow everybody back eventually. I even here that they are developing a version for the Android phone soon.

Tweetbot – $2.99 – Download it here.
I have been using this twitter client since it first came out. Even though it lacked certain features that I wanted at the time it was a neat enough experience that kept me around. Now that it has all the features that I would’ve expected it to have from the beginning is my dedicated twitter client. I manage a few different twitter accounts for different projects that I work on as well as my own personal twitter account. Being able to switch between those accounts quickly is important to me. Even with the latest twitter redesign, the twitter app is not as friendly to use as Tweetbot.

Although this app is not free, if you want something that is truly customizable and will result in you spending less time inside the app, this is your app. Some of my favorite features include: Push notifications for pretty much anything that goes on inside of twitter. The user interface is easy to manage and I can always quickly find what I’m looking for.

I don’t typically spend a lot of time looking around twitter. When I’m on twitter I’m looking for something specifically, responding to somebodies comment, or following somebody that I met in person. This app allows me to do all of that quickly and with the push notifications I’m able to see who has followed me right away rather than having that stuff go to my e-mail box.

If you are looking for a nice looking twitter client with lots of features I think you should check out Tweetbot.

Camera GPS – $0.99 – Download it here.
If you are a photographer or just enjoy photography you don’t love this app. Camera GPS allows me to geo-tag photos at the location when I take them. Essentially the moment you take the picture it files a way that photo by location inside the app. There have been so many times that I have been somewhere and seen a photo spot that I want to return to later, however I always end up forgetting that spot and I never return to it.

With the camera GPS app I never forget a photo spot. The next time I’m near a location I can find that photo spot. I used to try and remember to keep a camera with me so that I could please take a couple of photos of a photo spot and then try and remember to make notes when I got back to my computer. I no longer have to do that. I launch the app which quickly launches the camera, I take a photo of the spot and GPS handles the rest.

When I am looking for spots to take clients, I often return to this app and look for spots that I think they would like. It assures that I never return to the same spot to often because I hate taking different clients to the same spots.

Rdio – Free – Download it here.
I used to love Napster back in the day when it was free and underground. I didn’t have to buy CDs anymore. It wasn’t so much the fact that the music I was getting was free as much as it was that I didn’t have to have a CD anymore. I thought CDs as clutter and something that depreciates the more I use it. Eventually a CD would be scratched so badly it wouldn’t play. If I wanted access to that music again I would have to go buy another CD. Then iTunes came along and I could buy digital versions of the music that I love. The only problem with that is that it was still expensive.

At first I didn’t like the idea of not actually owning my music. When we find music that we love we want to own a copy of it, I guess it makes us feel like we’re part of it. We really were not. Once I bought enough albums that I never ended up listening to, I think this happened after my iTunes library peaked 10,000 songs. I decided that it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to check out a streaming service. The first one that I tried was Spotify. It is a good service but it lacked some of the features that I had became used to with the typical music player whether it be the standard music app in the iPhone or even some of the third-party players that came along over the last few years. Rdio is where I landed.

Rdio has actually been around for a while but recently has added all of the features that I expect and I am really loving this service. It syncs my iTunes so all of my iTunes music is now available, something my iPhone didn’t have the capacity to handle. Plus any music that I want from here on out I don’t have to pay for, I simply pay the monthly fee for the service. It is true that I don’t actually own any of the music that I stream through the apps service however that doesn’t matter, it’s available when I want it and I can sync it to my phone just in case I don’t have an Internet connection. Nothing beats this.

Now I am saving a lot of money each month by spending $10 a month on a streaming service instead of $10 a couple of times a week on new albums that I want. If you find yourself buying albums that you don’t listen to as much as you thought you would, I highly recommend this app to you. They have a free trial so go get it.

ScoreMobile – Free – Download it here.
Those of you who know me well know that I’m not really that into watching sports. However the teams that I do care about I enjoy knowing the basics about. I watched very few San Francisco Giants games this year however I always knew won. It’s the middle of football season and I haven’t watched one complete game yet, but I always know when the 49ers are winning. If I know I’m in a be hanging out with friends that talk sports I launch this app and brush up on recent stats. I would probably watch sports more often if I had time but my priorities are elsewhere these days.

The ScoreMobile app is probably one of the cleanest and nicest experiences available for the iPhone. Previous to using this app I used the Yahoo sports app which essentially did similar functionality however wasn’t as nice to look at and wasn’t quite as customizable as this app is. Luckily, I was able to review this app over at Dailyappshow.com (link). I can tell the developer of this app really has a passion for sports.

Though I have no desire to ever play in a fantasy league, this app would be one of the number one tools a person in a fantasy league should have on their phone. This app is equally amazing on the android, I have installed on my iPhone and my Android phones. Best of all, it’s free. So go get it.

Mini Motor Racing – $1.99 – Download it here.
Is not very often that I get addicted to a game. However when you mix racing with the ability to win fake cash see you can upgrade your fake cars, I’m hooked. This game reminds me of the old Nintendo game RC Pro Am. That was by far my favorite game I was a kid. Although this game is much more technical it still has a little bit of that RC Pro Am feel. I absolutely love this game.

The screenshot I have included is from an actual race I was racing. I managed to take the screenshot and still win the race, I’m awesome. Even if you’re not a huge fan of racing games this game is just fun. It’s one of those games that anybody can play even if you’re not good at games. If you’re impatient you can spend some money inside of the app to unlock upgrades so that you could start being off some from the beginning. The first time I played the game I thought that I was horrible at it because the cars didn’t handle at all. However once you purchase some of the upgrades, which you can get by winning races, the cars will handle much better and you’ll have a much better chance at dominating.

The game is easy to pick up and sat down whenever you have free time to play it. That’s what makes it fun for me. I don’t have a lot of time to spend on playing games when I do I want to play a game that I can jump right into, enjoy for a few minutes and return to later when I have time.

Bike Baron – $0.99 – Download it here.
Bike Baron is just plain awesome. I never would’ve thought that I would have to games that I’ve been playing simultaneously for a long period of time however both of the games that I’ve mentioned in this post are just a blast. Bike Baron reminds me of Excite Bike, which is an original Nintendo game. Notice a trend here? However, this game puts a new twist on motorcycle games.

In each level you have a set of obstacles that you need to make it over. There are also certain achievements that you must match throughout each level to get the optimal amount of stars available for that level. As the levels progress they get more and more ridiculous. The challenge to get through it is more puzzle like that it is a racing game. Although you are racing the clock in most cases, the obstacles just get better and more challenging with each level. I often tell myself I will play one level before bed and end up playing 10. Me being an over achiever always needs to have three stars on each level which sometimes means playing a level over and over again until I get them right. I can’t even count the amount of people that I have told about this game. However now all of my kids friends are awesome at it and brag to me about how they’ve beat all the levels. Check it out, it’s available for the iPhone and the iPad.

Most Used iPad Apps

Flipboard – Free – Download it here.
Flipboard is the best way to view all that different things that are going on online in one place. Before this app I would have to launch multiple apps to keep up-to-date with different things that are happening. Whether it’s a blog website that I read, my friends Facebook posts, Twitter posts, Instagram photos or anything else with an RSS feed for that matter, I can see it here.

That happened gets its name from the experience that provides. It almost feels like a magazine, and the way that it lays out recent news and updates it feels a lot like you’re reading your favorite publication. This app provides a really nice experience and it’s easy to set up. It’s a free download which makes it even better.

Now that it is available on the iPhone as well I am able to keep up to date with the content that I care about regardless of the device I’m carrying. If only they had it available on the Android. Of course the iPad provides the best experience because of the larger screen, plus it’s been available on the iPad for quite some time and only recently coming to the iPhone.

Reeder – $4.99 – Download it here.
I read a lot of blog websites. Probably too many considering the amount of spare time that I have. I like to keep up-to-date with different industries that I’m interested in and I generally learn about what’s going on out in the world from blogs. I’m not a big fan of newspapers and standard publications, I just love blogs. The Reeder app allows me to connect to my Google reader account which is a service that Google provides for free to aggregate all of the blogs you read in one place. By simply logging in to your Google reader account, the Reeder app organizes all of your RSS feeds into a nice format that is easy to read.

I get sidetracked easily. This app make sure that I’m not sidetracked by all of the things that might show up on a typical website. The content is what I’m interested in, and Reeder makes it easy for me to view that content without getting distracted. It has integrations with Readitlater and Instapaper which are two different services that I use to save articles that I want to read later. I don’t always have the time to read things right away but with this app I can save articles to read a later time. Readitlater is another app I spend a lot of time in however I only spend a lot of time in that app because of this app.

Evernote – Free – Download it here.
I am not as good notetaking as I should be. Even in high school and the time I wasted in college I loathed taking notes. I always wanted to find a way to do it quicker, I even had a Palm back in the day when it was extremely nerdy to have such a thing. Pretty sure I didn’t date much because of it. Regardless, all of my notes were typed out and available in a device that I can carry on me. It was a hassle to do much with those notes.

With Evernote I’m able to enter notes, audio and photos into one app and sync that anywhere. Through the power of the internets my thoughts are stored and sent to all of my devices. I do my best to organize my thoughts and keep track of things using this app. When I don’t have time to type it out, I record an audio message that I can listen to later. I can’t tell you the amount of times that this app is saved me because my client forgot their own information but I had saved in a note.

This app and the service is free and if you become a power user like I am, a small monthly fee will give you plenty of room to store more important information. I recommend this app to everybody even if you don’t have an iPhone or iPad, it’s available on your desktop computer. The ability to organize and keep track of things the way this app allows me to has changed the way that I manage my thoughts and things I would typically have to write down in a notebook.

WordPress – Free – Download it here.
I’m sure you’ve heard of WordPress, it’s a software that most bloggers use to run their website. This website that you’re looking at right now is a WordPress website that I am hosting myself on my own server. Most of the time I write my blogs and articles inside of WordPress itself, however I found myself writing more and more from my iPad. The WordPress app allows me to do that. Of course it’s also available for the iPhone but it’s a little too hard to thumb out an entire article on such a small keyboard. Sometimes I even use my iPad with a Bluetooth keyboard which makes typing into the WordPress app even easier.

When you receive comments on blog posts I like to respond as quickly as possible. Of course you could do this through an e-mail or by logging into your WordPress website, but the app makes it much easier to respond. Sometimes I just want to upload a photo or share something quickly on my blog, it’s much easier to do that from the app then it is to take a picture with my phone, e-mail it to myself, and then blog about it from my computer later. The WordPress app just makes it faster.

Skitch – Free – Download it here.
Skitch is an app that was recently bought out by Evernote. Now that it is powered by Evernote it has became a powerful tool for making notes on photos. I may times have you wanted to take a picture of something with your mobile device, jot your thoughts on to that photo and then send it to someone? Of course this is something you could do relatively easily on your computer or if you have a printed out copy of that photo but not so easy to do all from within your device. There are apps you can purchase at a cost that include features that this app includes however its recent integrations with Evernote make it simply amazing.

In the past I would take a photo of something inside of the Evernote app and then make my comments below the photo. This is how I would remember things for later. Sometimes the photo is just better than describing it, but a photo alone is not enough. With Skitch you can take a photo and make your notes right on to that photo. Of course there are many other features inside of Skitch that make it totally amazing however that is what I typically use it for. They also have a desktop application that allows you to create screenshots and annotate pretty much anything on your computer. Because of this it is a powerful tool that I use almost every day. After I complete my photo and annotations, I can upload that to my Evernote account and share that image with anybody that I want.

Dropbox – Free – Download it here.
I have talked about Dropbox many times in the past, I have a couple of blogs on this website about it. Dropbox has became a powerful tool that I use every day for backing up files, syncing files, and sharing files. Whether it’s photos that I took that I want to make sure are backed up, HTML files for website, a database for a website, or documents that I want to make sure I have available at all times, Dropbox makes it all possible.

I decided a long time ago that I didn’t want to have to carry papers around with me. I could never find anything is only so many things that you can organize into one place. However with Dropbox, I can keep digital copies of premature everything with me at all times. Now if I meet with a client, and need to bust out a contract, I don’t have to be pretentious enough to have actually carried a hard copy on me. I can open it up in Dropbox, edit it in Pages and then send it by e-mail. It’s pretty much amazing.

Even documents that most people would file away, I simply scan and upload to my Dropbox. Dropbox then syncs those files to my other computer and then makes them available through their mobile apps so I can have access to them from anywhere. Dropbox gives you 2 GB of free storage and complete access to their apps. It is worth trying out. If you don’t have dropbox, use the link that I provided below to get a free account right now. You’re to love this service once you get used to using it. Imagine having access to all of your important documents, photos and files at any time without having to carry them around. Of course this app is available on pretty much all mobile platforms including iPhone and iPad. I use this app constantly.

Get a 2GB Free account from Dropbox: Click here.

There are many more apps that I use on almost a daily basis that I’ve been using for most of 2011. However there are too many from your list, I thought it would just be best for me to list some of the apps that I use most often and explain why I use them. I hope that this list helps you discover a couple of new apps for your iPhone or your iPad. I would love to hear about apps that you discovered and used the most in 2011, please leave that in the comment box below perhaps you can turn me on to a new app and a good reason to use it.

If you’re looking for new apps you can check out Dailyappshow.com which is a website that I run where we produce video app reviews of new and upcoming iPhone and iPad apps. I am also producing a new show that will be available in a few weeks showcasing the very best apps available for these devices. If you want to learn more about that show or anything else that I’m up to, follow me on twitter. See you in 2012.

I opened up Terminal on my Mac and navigated to the Apache Config folder. With in that folder is a securities file named modsec2. Within that file Flash was blocked. In WordPress and Joomla flash is used for the image uploading script.

Navigate to this file:
/usr/local/apache/conf/modsec2.user.conf”

I simply commented out the following by placing a # in front of it.
##SecRule REQUEST_URI “/usr/local/flash”

After you make that change, restart Apache and give it a try. There is one other fix that I used to have to add in older versions of Joomla. I thought I would mention it as another option if you still have the same errors.

In your .htaccess file that is located in the root directory of your website you can add the following.

<IfModule mod_security.c>
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</IfModule>

Hope this helps!

The problem is that people are not very rational when using their online services such as Facebook. Why would someone say something like that out of nowhere, and why would you just click on it with out thinking first?

I put together a video showing the different ways that a profile can get hacked and how to prevent it but let me also explain it in text so the interwebs can pick it up in search.

#1 Clicking on links that direct to password phishing sites or other malicious sites.
To avoid accidentally giving away your Facebook credentials to a hacker simply pay attention to what you are clicking on and DO NOT enter your login information unless you are 100% certain that you are on Facebook.com. A Phishing site is a website that was setup to mimic the login page of another website in an attempt to trick people into entering their username and password.

The Facebook login page is easy to recreate and anybody with five minutes of web design experience can make a fake one. What typically happens is that you are redirected to this page that makes you think that you got logged out (this is not AOL, you don’t just get logged out of things for no reason anymore). Once you enter your information and click to login you are redirected to your Facebook page making you think that you successfully logged in. Since you were never logged out it in the first place you think that all is well. The problem is that the fake Facebook login website just added your email address and password to it’s database of other suckers. Who knows how they will end up using that data. They now can post anything to your Facebook that you can post. They have 100% access.

What you need to do now is change your password. Change it to something good. Your Cat’s name is not good enough. It needs to be something more secure. If your Cat’s name is the only thing you can remember than you can make that name more secure by changing out letters for other keyboard characters. For example: If your Cat’s name is Whiskers you can make your password Wh1sk3rs. Notice that I changed out the letter I for a 1 and the letter E for a 3. All you have to remember is that the vowels in Whiskers were exchanged for the numbers that they look like. Since a letter I looks like a 1 and a E looks like a 3, it should be easy to remember. Of course no password is secure if it’s user is clicking on links they shouldn’t be and accidentally typing in their password to Phishing sites.

#2 Giving Access to Applications on Facebook that are Malicious, Old or Outdated
Everything these days has Facebook access. We can post to Facebook from everything, even your refrigerator. Giving access to your Facebook profile for the most part is harmless. Most of these apps or websites just want to allow you to post to your wall from their service. However, if one of them becomes out dated and was accessed by a hacker, who knows what could happen. This is why I regularly go into my Apps page under Accounts in Facebook and delete old apps that I no longer need to have access to. It’s best to be safe and delete these. You will probably be surprised at what has access to your Facebook profile.

How To Avoid Clicking on Potentially Malicious Links Altogether!
How do you know if one of those links is bad or not? Simply Ask. If you get a Facebook message from someone that sounds Phishy to you, don’t click on the link. Send your friend a new message asking them if they meant to send you that link. If they did then you can click on it, if they didn’t know about that link being sent to you then you can ask them to change their password because their profile was probably hacked.

A moment of patience goes a long way. Take a deep breath and use your best judgement before clicking on something. If you see something on your wall that you didn’t put there, remove it. If you see something on somebody else’s wall that you know they didn’t put there, don’t click on it. Send them a message or a new wall post asking them to remove it and suggesting that they read this blog post.

Please be careful and only click on links that you are familiar with. Never enter your username and password into a website unless you are 100% sure that you are on the website you intended to be on.

If you have any tips on prevention, please share them with us in the comments.

1. Social Networks are for Sharing
Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are all about sharing content. Look at the updates from your friends through out the day. What are they sharing and where do the links land? When a funny video is shared the video resides on Youtube and is brought in as a link. When an inspirational blog post is shared it comes in to Facebook as a link. These social networks are sharing platforms. They were not designed to be the “homepage” for your business. Having a page on these social networks has its place in your push for brand awareness but it should not be your main focus.

Your businesses social network page should be an extension of your website. It should complement your website. These social network pages can only contain a small amount of data about your business. I know that it is tempting to make the change because it seems that more interaction happens on your social network page than your website but I encourage you to keep your website as your main focus.

2. Not Everybody is on Social Networks
I have seen some companies forward their website URL to their Facebook page. They gave up on having a website for their company and assume that since “everybody” is on Facebook that they would just use their Facebook page. This is a bad idea. Not only are you alienating those who do not have a Facebook account from finding out more information about your company, you are showing most of us that you are lazy. Posting updates to a wall on Facebook is quick and easy, however it is not a good representation of your business. I can think of very few businesses that have so little about them that they can fit it on the Info page on their Facebook page.

3. You Can’t Capture Useful Data
Social Networks have the good stuff, all of the data from users profiles that would help us market better. They leverage that data so they can sell ad placement. Facebook allows ads to be sold on their website through their system which if used correctly can be pretty powerful. However, we do not get any of that data. If somebody clicks on a link to my website and finds something interesting, I can make a connection with them through a contact form. A viewer can only find your Facebook page if they either already knew your companies name, one of their friends shared a link to your page or saw your ad and clicked on it. Once they get to your page there is no way for them to communicate with your business other than to post on your wall publicly. It takes going to your website to engage on a more private level.

4. You Can’t Sell on Most Social Networks
Facebook does not allow you to sell directly to other Facebook users. Most social networks have this rule because it is a pretty huge risk to let people sell on your website when you have no control over what and how it is being done. You can post links to products that can be sold but you would need a website for that. This goes right back to my 1st point: Social Networks Are For Sharing!

5. Social Networks Go Away
How useful do you think some of those Myspace profiles that companies poured time and resources into back in 2006 are? Of course not all resources last forever but I watched some businesses pour all of their efforts into their Myspace profile just to have to switch focus to Facebook and Twitter which people expect even more of a presence on. There is a happy medium between having a presence on social networks and remembering that there is a “rest of the world” out there. Social networks are made for sharing content. If a social network goes away, we will find a new one to share on. Sharing has been taking place since the beginning of time and that platform continues to change. Do not put all of your eggs in one basket.

6. People Don’t Ask Stupid Questions Publicly
As I mentioned in #3, there are few ways with social networks to communicate privately. On Facebook this is not possible and on Twitter it is only possible if both people are following each other. You want to be available at the moment your customer or prospective customer has a question or concern. Most people are just fine asking any question through an email or a contact form. That question goes to one person who can answer it. The question is not on public display for all to see and potentially mock. Yes, we are talking about the insecurity of people. If I am unsure about something and ask a question, I don’t want to find out that the answer I was looking for was painted on the wall in front of me for all eyes to see. Let me email you through a form on your website and receive my responses privately.

7. Not All Forms of Customer Engagement Should Be Public
As I mentioned in my last point, not all people like making their issues public. When I want an answer from the source I go to the website and email directly. Posting on a public forum or social network often does not get me the answer I wanted. It gets me answers from users. Sometimes this can be good but often you get bad information. The more you force users to engage with your business on social networks the more you will have to pay attention to those conversations. Wall and topic posts from your customers could also take off in a negative direction. A minor concern that should have been sent in an email could turn into a rant feed of other customers who were not yet ready to complain but now are since someone brought it up.

8. Support Should Be Scaleable
Use the social networks to encourage people to contact you through your website to handle support issues. I really like how some of the large companies out there are using social media to make a public display out of how they are helping customers, however this can backfire for you if you focus to much on helping customers through social networks and forget about those coming to your website for support. Helping each customer with their issues through a social network is not scaleable. Support through a social network takes place like a conversation. This takes much more time to help a person than if it was over an email. Over time, the support posts to your profile, wall or feed will disappear as more posts push it off of the first page and closer to not being found at all. Use the customer engagement you have on social networks to create great FAQ pages on your website. Do you want to continue to answer those common questions on your social network pages all of the time? If the answer already resided in a FAQ section on your site, you could respond to the social network posts with a link to an answer on your site.

9. Your Website is Searchable
When was the last time you did a Google search for something and it resulted in a post to a social network? As of the time I am writing this it is very rare to get a search result that links to a post on a social network profile. This usually only happens when the search is very specific and there are no websites that have written about the subject. Posts to social networks are typically pretty short. Facebook limits posts to 420 characters, Twitter limits are set at 140. If I was focusing all of my attention on my Facebook page, how could I write an article like this? It would have to be broken into chunks and I would have to be very short winded on topics that could require a lot of explaining.

I write articles like this for two reasons. The first is to share information and help people make more informed decisions when it comes to marketing. The second is to increase my own brand awareness. I don’t feel that I can provide much value in the different ways that I attempt to in 420 or 140 characters or less.

10. A Website Can Make or Break Your Business
I never hear anybody say that they decided to do business with someone else because that business has a Facebook page. However I do hear people say that they decided to do business with a company because their website was very professional. You can differentiate yourself from your competition with your website, however for the most part all Facebook and Twitter pages look the same. You are just like everybody else and there are many perfectly good reasons why you should try your best not to be.

If you were just like everybody else why would you care about marketing your business in the first place? There has to be a reason why you are better than your competition? What sets you apart from the other guy/gal in town who offers what you do? When you think of ways to get those points across to customers who may not know you from your competition do you think that a social network profile could accomplish this for you? You can engage your followers in a way that will help build faith in your company but that can only go so far. The above nine points that I made all provide reasons as to why you would want your main focus to be your website.

In Closing
I am not shunning the use of social networks. I have a profile on more social networks than I can even remember. My argument is that you focus your attention on your website and use social networks as a way to drive traffic to your website. Place all of your good content and nuggets of wisdom in your website where people can contact you. Encourage whoever is running your social network profiles to direct customers to your website for support where they can find FAQ’s, blog posts, articles, white papers, answers or direct contacts to the departments that can answer their questions effectively.

Social Networks can make for a great place to share stories and other information that is great, but not great enough to be a main focus on your website. Social networks have character limits because the content is meant to be kept short, just like the attention span of those browsing them. On Twitter, if you can’t say it in 140 characters or less, figure out how it can be turned into a blog post on your website. Use the social networks to share your catchy article title to drive traffic to that article on your website.

Thanks for taking the time to read this long article. As you can tell, I am pretty passionate about marketing and making the best use of your time and resources. If I can be of any help to you or your company, please feel free to contact me.

Start your own Google+ Brand page here.

Visit my Google+ Brand Page: Jerad Hill Photographer on Google+

Like I said before, Google+ business pages for Brands are just like a personal page. You can add a Google+ Brand Page as a friend to your circle just like you could a person and their posts will show up in the stream under that businesses name. As I write this there is no proof that there is any SEO advantages to posting to your page but I am sure that there will be. Google says that they do not use Facebook or Twitter posts in their ranking decision process but one has to assume that something in their algorithm is paying attention.

One of the most exciting features of having a Google+ page for your brand is the Direct Connect Feature. By placing the + in front of a brand’s name in Google search it will make it easy to drive traffic to your brand’s page. For example, if you do a Google Search for +Google, it will take you to Google’s + Page. Do a search for +Pepsi and it will take you to their Google+ Page. Pretty awesome. Facebook and Twitter do not have that kind of functionality unless you are already on their site.

Check out this short video of that feature in action.

In the future we will probably start seeing Google link up the Google+ Brand pages to your companies Place page, Ad Word account, Youtube and more. You can start to see the bigger picture start to unfold. This is something Google should have done long ago. I am glad to see it rolling out now.

Go grab your Google+ Brand page for your business today.

With my 12 years of web design experience and even more as an online shopper I thought I would throw down a few ideas that I believe will increase your sales if implemented correctly. Some of these suggestions are pretty simple to implement and for those of you who are serious there are a few more advanced suggestions as well.

Cross Selling
You know how Amazon suggests items that you may like based on what others have purchased? The feeling they invoke in us is pure selling awesomeness. Showing items that compliment each other is cross selling. For example, a camera selling on a website may have a few items listed below it such as camera straps, memory cards, cases… You get where I am going with this.

Depending on your website, this functionality may not be available to you but if it is or you can figure out how to make it happen you can turn one sale into two, there or more. A great open source platform that comes with cross selling built in is Magento Commerce. Something easier to get started with is Spotify.

Simplify Your Customers Experience
Can you remember the last time you were on a website that frustrated you? It is all to common, especially when you just want to buy something and get back to what you were doing. If you sell a product that can be found somewhere else then you can not afford to leave a snag for potential customers to trip up on.

Getting feedback can be difficult. I have never been a fan of asking customers to specific of questions about the process through my websites however there is nothing wrong with asking your best customers if they think there is anything that would make the process better. They have probably been through it multiple times and may have some insight. If you really want to make sure, have a couple of those family members of yours that never seem to be able to learn how to attach a photo to their email to buy from your site. If great aunt flow can make it through with out calling you five times then you are probably good to go

Create ways for your customers to get to your holiday specials. This could be as simple as adding a menu item, a banner image that links to your holiday specials or special landing pages that link to your social media sites.

Do all of these things. I am a huge fan of covering all of the bases and being everywhere.

Optimize for Search
I say optimize for search rather than search engine optimization because I don’t believe that you should position your website to appeal to a ranking that you may think is relevant to get more traffic. I have found that people search in a less logical fashion then you would assume. The only time they search in a specific manor is when they have the specific answers. This means that they already know what they are looking for they are just looking for the website with the best price. If you think like I do then you don’t want to be that website. The web is filled with to many websites that lack in so many areas because their owners are not making enough money to take their website serious. If you want to find the customers who went to Google because they did not yet know what they were looking for then you need to position your products and content to be found by those people.

Positioning your website and products to be found by the less informed takes a lot of work. You may be selling products produced by another company, which means that your content and resources are probably handed to you by the manufacture. I always tell my web clients that as an online consumer, I am not the type of person they should be targeting. I know how to find something, even if I don’t know what it is I am looking for. It is very rare that I spend more then a few moments looking for something that I didn’t even know existed. However, people who are “pretty good” at searching the web are not your target. Those people generally can find you if they wanted to as long as your website is in decent working order, is fairly modern and has decent content.

This is where I suggest that you optimize your website for those searching. A best practice that you will see on many blogs is to make sure that the text on your website is “keyword” rich. That is only a small step in the right direction. What you really need to focus on is making sure that your website’s text is search phrase rich.

A search phrase is what most of us do when we search. If I am looking for a camera I don’t google search the word camera. Most people will search based on what they are trying to accomplish. For example, if Jane was looking for the best camera for taking sports photos of her son playing soccer and you really want to sell a certain camera that is good at fast moving shots to soccer moms she would probably do a search in Google for “best camera for soccer photos” or something along those lines (keep in mind this is an example). That is a search phrase. Read through the content on your website and most importantly the product descriptions you have and see if you have any potential search phrases in there. Here is an example of how you could word your content: “The SL140XT is an affordable choice for the mom who wants the best camera for capturing her children’s soccer moments.”

Of course that example is very specific. I would suggest you try to be as broad as possible with out sounding like the manufacture wrote it. To make this process easier you could put together packages. If a mother wanted to buy a camera for the above mentioned purpose she would probably need a compact camera case, extra batter and possibly a zoom lens. Why not create a package that is for the “soccer mom.” If you can figure out how to create some specific niche packages you could take care of your Cross Selling and the same time.

Website Redesign
I am going to be honest. I judge a website by it’s cover and I know you do too. We all do, the same way we decide to walk into a store or not. When it comes to spending our money we want to make the best decision on who to spend it with as possible. At all costs want to avoid a negative experience or even worse, an embarrassing experience. A website is a lot like high school, the pretty ones get most of the attention. Of course there are the occasional loud websites that just seem to be popular for no apparent reason but the pretty sites have to work far less at it. If your website design is not on par with what people would expect from your industry then your website’s look could be costing you more money than it would take to redesign it. Of course it does not come down to the look of the website along, however this is one of those things that helps. A typical website redesign could cost you as much as a few thousand dollars but if the feeling people get from your website when they first click on it is less than desirable, you could be loosing much more then that.

People expect consistency, it helps us feel like we are on the right path. I get frustrated when I click on a link or an ad that looks and sounds like what I wanted only to land on a website that looks and feels nothing like what I expected. Create the experience you want your customers to have from the first link or ad they click on to the pages they land on after the checkout is finished. When it comes to selling online there is no such thing as to much testing.

Simplify and Reward
I think I have spoke enough on the topic of making the process simple. Once you have achieved this, make sure that you reward your customers for buying. I have seen websites give free shipping on the next order, a 20% discount if another order is placed with in the next 6 hours and coupon codes on the invoice with the shipped product. Make sure you give them something for next time. Make them remember your store, especially if you sell something that can be found somewhere else. You can not afford to be forgotten by your customers.

Online selling is much harder then it was 10 years ago, even 4 years ago for that matter. Don’t ever get comfortable. Keep trying to improve the process and make the experience better. Know what your customers are looking for and provide it. Know who your customers are and be the kind of seller they want to buy from. Just because your website does not have a physical face that people can see does not mean that you can not make it feel just as warm as dealing with a real person. Check out Zappos.Com’s iPad app. When you add an item to the cart a kitty jumps out with a thumbnail of the product in hand and drops it in the shopping cart. It is clunky looking but it makes me smile every time. What are you doing to make your customers smile while on your website.

This article quickly turned into an article on things you should do to your website anyway. I could go on in extreme length on examples of exceptional websites and practices that seem to be working for other people however I believe that you should figure out the kind of customer you are wanting to attract and build the shopping experience that person would expect to get.

Resources:
Spotify – Online Selling Platform with a free trial
Magento Commerce – Opensource eCommerce platform. Not easy to setup but it’s amazingly powerful.
OSCommerce – Opensource eCommerce platform. Not nearly as robust with features as Magento but easier to setup.

The process is simple. Drop a black layer down in the timeline and drop your audio track under that. Stretch the black layer out to the full width of the project or the audio track. Hit the spacebar to play. While the music is playing hit Command and the B key to create breaks with the blade tool. You can do this in real time. I like to time it to the beat to make it interesting but you could do this however you wish. Then all you have to do is drag your images or clips over the black clip you want to replace and then choose replace from beginning. You have to do this for each clip, which is the time consuming part, but it does give you a lot of customization albeit forced customization. If you are dropping in video tracks and it seems to have placed the track incorrectly you can use the slip tool to slip the portion of the clip that was brought in to an earlier or later portion of the clip.

To be honest I find this a much easier task in Adobe Premier Pro, but we are using Final Cut Pro X.

Hope this helps you edit your videos and slideshows to the beat of music. Make sure to share this video with your friends.