Recent Activity

Filter by:

All

• 

  How To Promote Your Events In Google Places For Free

  Your local business listing at Google and certainly with other geo-listing websites allows you to promote your events, new products, specials and more.  You can take advantage of this very easily, once you have claimed your listing, by following the following five steps.  We will use Google as our example.

  1. Log into your Google account and go to Google Places through your account or by going directly to http://www.google.com/lbc

  2. If you have multiple local business listings, choose the listing you want to update and click View Report.

  3. Once you are in your Dashboard you will notice a box in the top right that looks like the following:

  

  4. Click in the box and write a 160 character description of your business update.

  5. Click Post and you’re done.

  Your information will appear to the public in your local business listing on Google Maps.  As of this writing you can only have one post and we’re sure this will change in time.

  The Internet has become a good local business marketing source for the local business dependent upon the local consumer for their revenue through web searches and mobile searches.  Tap into the power of geo-listings as you engage in geo-marketing!

  This is a guest post by Melih Oztalay of SmartFinds that provides Local Business Listing Management Services. You will find SmartFinds Internet Marketing to be of great benefit to your time resources and the low cost service may eliminate your yellow page ad costs. Let the experts of over 15 years Internet marketing experience help you use this local business marketing tool properly.

  

  3 months on
  HeatherLeigh's shared items in Google Reader
• 

  13 Ridiculous Things You Didn't Know About U.S. Presidents When choosing the next President Of The United States Of America, "oddball" is usually not considered a qualifying characteristic. However, many of this country's former leaders had strange quirks, pets, and rituals that make you wonder: Exactly what kind of person does it take to lead a nation?

  6 months on
  HeatherLeigh's shared items in Google Reader
• 

  Google Acquires Aardvark For $50 million
  

  Google has acquired social search service Aardvark, says a source that has been briefed on the deal, for around $50 million. We first reported on the discussions between the two companies in December. Those discussions have now turned into a signed deal, says our source, and will be announced today or tomorrow.

  Aardvark, founded by ex-Googlers, has raised around $6 million in venture capital to date. The service lets users ask questions and get immediate responses from their friends and friends of friends.

  Earlier this month the company published a research report that included some key stats about their business:

  As of October 2009, Aardvark had 90,361 users, of whom 55.9% had created content (asked or answered a question). The site’s average query volume was 3,167.2 questions per day, with the median active user asking 3.1 questions per month. Interestingly, mobile users are more active than desktop users. The Aardvark team attributes this to users wanting quick, short answers on their phones without having to dig for anything. They also think people are more used to using more natural language patterns on their phones.

  The average query length was 18.6 words (median of 13) versus 2.2-2.9 words on a standard search engine.  Some of this difference comes from the more natural language people use (with words like “a”, “the”, and “if”).  It’s also because people tend to add more context to their queries, with the knowledge that it will be read by a human and will likely lead to a better answer.

  98.1% of questions asked on Aardvark were unique, compared with between 57 and 63% on traditional search engines.

  87.7% of questions submitted were answered, and nearly 60% of them were answered within 10 minutes.  The median answering time was 6 minutes and 37 seconds, with the average question receiving two answers.  70.4% of answers were deemed to be ‘good’, with 14.1% as ‘OK’ and 15.5% were rated as bad.

  86.7% of Aardvark users had been asked by Aardvark to answer a question, of whom 70% actually looked at the question and 38% could answer.  50% of all members had answered a question (including 75% of all users who had ever actually interacted with the site), though 20% of users accounted for 85% of answers.

  CrunchBase Information

  Aardvark

  Information provided by CrunchBase

  

  

  

  6 months on
  HeatherLeigh's shared items in Google Reader
• 

  Write It Down
  

  That small but potentially great idea you had this morning? Although it seems unforgettable, you might not remember it this evening. You probably won't remember it next week.

  
  

  Write it down.

  
  

  I carry around a Moleskine notebook to jot down good ideas that occur when one would least expect them. It is seldom out of reach. I keep the old notebooks and periodically scan them to trigger memories of past thoughts or to nudge me into new ones. Upon reflection, not all of the ideas are worthy of action and yet even the marginal thoughts may lead to one that is promising.

  
  

  Despite having a very good memory, I have found that the most creative ideas are as soft as feathers. Unless quickly captured, they can float away.

  
  

  And in a competitive world, you don't want to lose those feathers.

  

  6 months on
  HeatherLeigh's shared items in Google Reader
• 

  Four Human Reasons People Participate and Keep Coming Back

  It’s about Me!

  

  When new clients start talking social media, it’s not long before they get to “engagement.” They want to know what moves crowds and individuals to genuine participation. What attracts us? What connects us? What keep us coming back and bringing our friends with us?

  What makes one space more fun to participate in than another that looks like the same thing?

  Why we participate might vary with each participant, but participants all have things in common — simple human reasons that give experiences meaning.

  • Fame — some folks come for recognition. When we participate, our words get seen and read. Sometimes they’re shared. Every blog post, tweet, status update, and comment aggregates to form our reputation. And now that we friend and follow others, we have even more direct channels to share our words of wisdom and attract a following.

    Will your online experience attract the group you want — the authorities, the elite, or the “Internet famous?”

  • Fortune — some folks come for contests and giveaways, but leave when the prizes quit coming. Some folks are interested in information or training that will raise their income. It’s a tricky business to combine participation and money without it beginning to feel like I’m working for it.

    Will your online experience offer enough to keep folks coming back?

  • Friendship — connections on the social web are clicked on and off in seconds. So the key is conversation between people with common ideas or values. Conversations between like-minded friends grow exponentially faster than their real-world counterparts. Without barriers of time and space, meeting is simpler and more convenient. I leave a message you respond later.

    Will your online experience make it easy for folks to talk to people like themselves about things that they care about?

  • Fun — the distraction of new people and new ideas. The level playing field in which introverts and extroverts both have to type makes it fun. Spice it up with some game that brings out personality … keep it simple and easy. It’s endless conversation in a coffeehouse that’s always open.

    Will your online experience be fun for folks who want to be with other people?

  When we’re looking at an online experience, we have to consider what the human payoff is. What is the most basic reason that people will come and come back? That reason will underscore and validate that the environment we’re building is right for the ones we want to come to share it. Incorporate the values of the folks you want to be there, and people will participate and keep coming back.

  Seems simple doesn’t iit? Humans will be human.

  Which reason do you think attracts most folks to participate on Twitter?

  –ME “Liz” Strauss
  Work with Liz on your business!!

  Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

  Register Now!! for

  

  

  

  6 months on
  HeatherLeigh's shared items in Google Reader
• 

  Painfully Inappropriate Valentine’s Day Gifts

  by Stephen & Renee D

  •    Heart-shaped pork loins
  •    Mentos and Coke
  •    25th Anniversary DVD of Tron
  •    Mixed tape of soft rock hits titled, Baby I’m-a Want You
  •    Severed ear
  •    Tickets to Baby Expo 2010
  •    Hermit crab
  •    Your unfinished screenplay
  •    Lint roller
  •    Dandruff shampoo
  •    “We’re over” text
  •    Kitty Litter Scooper
  •    Coupon for an oil change
  •    Gym membership
  •    Any book that’s “for dummies.”
  •    Neti pot

  6 months on
  HeatherLeigh's shared items in Google Reader
• 

  How Did the Donkey & Elephant Become Political Mascots?

  

  It all started with an insult. During Andrew Jackson’s 1828 presidential campaign, his political opponents labeled him a “jackass.” Stubborn as he was, Jackson co-opted the insult and began putting a donkey on his election posters. For the rest of his career and even into his retirement, newspapers and cartoonists continued to represent Jackson either as a stubborn ass or struggling to control one.

  Almost 40 years later, the donkey was used to represent not just Jackson, but a larger group of Democrats. In 1870, Thomas Nast, the German-born political cartoonist who gave us the versions of Santa Claus and Uncle Sam we know today, drew a cartoon for Harper’s Weekly titled “A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion.” The donkey was a stand-in for “Copperhead Democrats” (the Northern Democrats that opposed the Civil War), and the lion represented Edwin M. Stanton, Abraham Lincoln’s recently deceased Secretary of War. Nast thought of the Copperheads as anti-Union and believed the Democratic press’s treatment of Stanton was disrespectful.
  
  In 1874, the New York Herald loudly opposed the possibility of Ulysses S. Grant running for a third presidential term and cried Caesarism. Nast, a life-long Republican who’d become frustrated with his party, thought Republicans might fall for the scare tactic. He drew another cartoon for Harper’s, again using a donkey to represent Democrats and adding an animal to symbolize Republicans.

  

  The cartoon, titled “The Third Term Panic,” showed a donkey (representing the Herald and the Democratic press) wearing a lion’s skin (labeled “Caesarism”) in order to frighten a group of animals. Among those animals are an elephant (labeled “Republican Vote” and awkwardly fleeing towards a pit labeled “Inflation” and “Chaos”) and a fox (labeled “Democrats” and backing away from the pit that the elephant is about to fall into).

  The Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives that November, and Nast bemoaned the defeat in another cartoon. It showed an elephant caught in a trap set by a donkey, and the lumbering confused behemoth of the Republican Party undone by the Herald’s scare tactics.

  Nast continued to use the elephant and the donkey in his cartoons, eventually having them represent the whole of his party and the opposition. In March of 1877, after Republican Rutherford B. Hayes’ controversial victory, a Nast cartoon showed an injured elephant (“Republican Party”) kneeling at a tombstone labeled “Democratic Party.” An 1879 cartoon (pictured) showed a politician grabbing a donkey labeled “Democratic Party” by the tail to keep it from falling into a pit of “financial chaos.” The Republican elephant (“the sluggish animal”) is lying on and blocking the road to an election victory.
  
  By 1880, other cartoonists had picked up the symbols and spread them across the country. Over a century later, their continued use in cartoons, party literature, campaign buttons and all sorts of political merchandise and propaganda has cemented the association between the parties and their animals. The Republicans have even adopted the elephant as their official symbol (the Democrats have yet to do the same for the poor donkey).

  More from mental_floss…

  22 Great Photos Found in Presidential Libraries
  *
  A Brief History of the State of the Union
  *
  8 U.S. Presidents With Statues Abroad
  *
  7 Historical Bans on Smoking
  *
  A $100,000 Bill? The Story Behind Large-Denomination Currency

  

  

  

  7 months on
  HeatherLeigh's shared items in Google Reader
• 

  What Really Motivates Us

  In the late 1980’s, Dan Pink made a terrible mistake: he went to law school. He didn’t fare well, graduating in the bottom 10% of his class. Later he overcame his failure at law and became chief speechwriter for Al Gore, then wrote three books about the workplace (including one best-seller). His fourth book is Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Back in July 2009, Pink gave a TED Talk covering much of the ground that would later become Drive. It’s an interesting talk because it presents scientific evidence that the way we are typically motivated in the workplace (with “extrinsic motivators” like bonuses) simply doesn’t work. Or, to be more precise, it often doesn’t work for knowledge workers — it works all right in certain kinds of work (like hammering widgets in a factory), but many of you reading this blog don’t work in a factory.

  Discussed: The Candle Problem, research on rewards and motivation, contingent motivators (eg, get money if you work faster) sometimes work but often don’t (or do harm), carrots and sticks, business vs. science, how certain kinds of left-brained work can be outsourced or automated (and extrinsic rewards work there) but right-brained work is harder to work with, science and “true facts,” and a bunch more evidence.

  8 months on
  HeatherLeigh's shared items in Google Reader
• 

  The Quick 10: 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Isaac Newton

  

  Happy Birthday to Isaac Newton (sort of… skip to #5 for the scoop on that)! Although he’s been a household name since his time, there’s more to Isaac than meets the apple. Here are 10 facts you may not have known about Newton.

  1. He really did not like his stepfather. Newton was an avid list maker and one of his preserved lists included all of the sins he felt he had committed up until the age of 19 (his age at the time). One of them included, “Threatening my father and mother Smith to burne them and the house over them.” You can’t hardly blame the guy, though – when Smith proposed to Isaac’s mother, Isaac wasn’t part of the deal. The three-year-old Isaac was sent to live with his grandmother.
  2. He wasn’t expected to survive as a child. He was born quite premature – an estimated 11 to 15 weeks early. His mother said he could fit in a quart-sized cup upon birth.

  3. That apple thing? Never happened. At least, not the way the legend goes. The story you probably know is that Mr. Newton was sitting under a tree contemplating life when an apple struck him on the head, simultaneously making a light bulb about gravity go off. The real story according to the man himself is that Newton was merely looking out the window when he happened to see the fruit drop. Even then, some Newton scholars think the story involving the apple was entirely made up.

  4. He was a stutterer, but it puts him in good company: other people who habitually tripped over their tongues included Aristotle, Moses, Winston Churchill and Charles Darwin.

  5. Despite being born on January 4, he was born on Christmas Day. I know, confusing. At the time of his birth, the Gregorian calendar hadn’t been adopted by England yet (it took them until 1752, and Newton was born in 1643). Records indicate that Isaac was born on Christmas and baptized on New Year’s Day. When the Gregorian calendar was finally adopted by England, it needed adjusted by 11 days, making January 4 Isaac’s recognized birthday.

  6. Worried about the supposed apocalypse in 2012? Never fear: Newton spent a lot of time studying the subject – in fact, he believed that God had chosen him specifically to interpret the Bible – and concluded that the world would end no sooner than 2060. “This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be,” he explained, “but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail.”

  7. He was a genius, to be sure, but not much of a politician. In his year as a member of parliament, he spoke up only once – and that was to tell someone to close a window.

  8. Think the Philosopher’s Stone is just Harry Potter lore? Newton didn’t. OK, Newton didn’t know about Harry Potter, but you know what I mean. A bunch of his papers were deemed “unfit to publish” upon his death in 1727 and remained so until 1936, when Sotheby’s auction house acquired and sold most of them to economist John Maynard Keynes. These included the papers on the Philosopher’s Stone (thought to turn lead into gold and possibly be an elixir of life) and his prediction about the end of the world.

  9. His dog set his laboratory on fire, ruining 20 years of research. At least, that’s the story Newton told – some historians believe that Newton never even owned a dog, hypothesizing that he left a window open and a gust of wind knocked over a lit candle. But the dog story lives on – it was recorded as early as 1833 in The Life of Sir Isaac Newton. When he saw what man’s best friend had done, Newton is said to have exclaimed, “O Diamond, Diamond, thou little knowest the mischief thou hast done.”

  10. Late in life, Newton suffered a nervous breakdown and became known for rather eccentric behavior. But it probably wasn’t his fault – a 1979 examination of Newton’s hair showed astronomical amounts of mercury, probably as a result of all of his alchemy experiments. Too much mercury can drive a man mad, of course, and that may have been exactly what it did to Isaac Newton. Then again, maybe not: the other side of the argument is that Newton never lost his hair (although he was gray by the age of 30 and attributed it to his studies with mercury) and never had bleeding gums, two very prominent symptoms of mercury poisoning.

  8 months on
  HeatherLeigh's shared items in Google Reader
• 

  How Are You Measuring Your Community?

  It feels like I’ve written this a lot over the past few weeks, but if you weren’t tracking and measuring social media and your community efforts in 2009 – you need to get on that. Because it’s not rainbows and butterflies and sparkles.  Community building is about dollars. More specifically, it’s about putting those dollars in your bank account by connecting with and building relationships with real people.

  One thing I’ve noticed when talking to business owners and clients is that they understand that they should be tracking ROI on community activities, they’re just not sure how or what they should be looking for. Measuring community activities is a bit of a moving target and we’re constantly adding new things to the fold to monitor and determine. Here’s a working list of some of what we’re looking at right now.

  Growth

  This is a no-brainer and where most people will start, and sometimes, get stuck. Things like follower numbers, RSS subscribers and friend counts aren’t particularly useful metrics on their own, but there is some value in benchmarking them as a way to determine growth. As long as the number of active followers is growing with the number of overall followers, you’re probably on the right path. It doesn’t matter if you have 50 followers or 500. It’s how many people are invested in what you’re doing that matters.

  In terms of Growth, we look at:

  • Twitter followers/Fan page members/social media friends.
  • Blog Subscribers.
  • # of Active commenters
  • Member registrations.
  • Unique visitors.
  • Ratio of posts to comments, types of comments.
  • # of Message posts, if a forum.
  • # of Conversations over a month period.

  Presence

  Another metric you want to look at is Presence. How visible are you in your space and how does your visibility measure up against that of your competitors? In a world where Presence often means social authority, this is a pretty big health indicator for your community.

  In terms of presence, we look at:

  • Your share of conversation vs. your competitors.
  • Buzz over a 30 day period.
  • Types comments/posts written about you – mentions (linked or unlinked), product reviews, company reviews, attacks, praise, about a certain individual in the organization.
  • Who authored the mention – client, colleague, recognized social media contact, influencer, etc.
  • Where was the mention located – Mashable vs Maine’s Official Hunting Blog vs zomgmontanahunting.blogspot.com.
  • How often does your community share your content?

  Conversation

  Presence is who’s talking about you, Conversation looks more at who you’re talking to and the effectiveness of those conversations. Measuring the types of conversations you’re having is an important metric because it shows you where your time is being spent and how people are engaging with you. It’s worthwhile to know if you’re spending most of your day answering support questions via Twitter or if you’re spending it chiming into to conversations about Red Sox Spring training.

  In terms of Conversation, we look at:

  • Breakdown of the types of conversations being had– support-based, link sharing, friendly banter.
  • Time spent on each conversation group. [I'd especially look at ROI for support questions. What's more cost effective - social media CRM or phone/email?]
  • Whom you’re conversing with – customers, prospective customers, colleague, outsiders.
  • Conversation spread and growth.
  • Actionable knowledge learned about core audience.

  Sentiment

  Another obvious biggie to track. More important than simply knowing you’re being talked about is knowing what people are saying about you and how that’s changing over time. This can be especially important to monitor around the time of a new product announcement to understand how the community is responding and if you’re going down the right path. Obviously, should the crap hit the fan on a PR front…you’ll want to spend a good deal of time in this area, as well.

  In terms of Sentiment, we look at:

  • Emergence of Brand Evangelists -onsite and off.
  • Ratio of positive/neutral/negative mentions (i.e. satisfaction).
  • …as compared to top 10 competitors.
  • Members recommending the community, passing it on to friends.
  • Frequency of community members responding to/helping other community members, overall “vibe” of the room based on tracked interactions.
  • Community members defending you on negative blog posts.

  [There will be some links to resources at the end of this post but…we really, really recommend using Raven SEO Tools. So much that that’s not even an affiliate link!]

  Referrals & Conversions

  This, quite literally, is the money. All of the above will help you determine the health of your community, but this really tells you whether or not you’re investing your time wisely in social media and whether or not the people you’re attracting to your site are adding dollars to your bank account.

  In terms of Referrals & Conversions, we look at:

  • Leads generated from social media vs. conversion rate.
  • How Twitter traffic converts (yes, we break this one out separately).
  • Referrals generated from social media/blogging, noting who gave the referral (active community member, Twitter follower, frequent blog commenter, etc).
  • Customer loyalty form community conversions – how many times do they buy/refer?
  • Examples of moving community members from online to offline – meetups, reimbursing online or mobile coupons, etc.

  You don’t need to track every bullet point on this list, but you do need to understand what behavior leads to the biggest ROI for your company. Perhaps you get more customers through the BS conversations on Twitter than you do through targeting customer support queries. If that’s the case, that metric is far more important to you.

  Rhea gave us a great post on monitoring social metrics that can help you set up the appropriate spreadsheets to keep tabs on this. You may also want to check out our post on tracking brand mentions (which needs to be updated to include Raven and WhosTalkin), as well as Marty Weintraub’s post on building a reputation monitoring dashboard (major league awesome).

  2010 is the year to start putting real metrics on your social media activity. Because if you’re not monitoring it, you’re just playing with it.

  8 months on
  HeatherLeigh's shared items in Google Reader
• 

  140 Bite Sized Ideas to Help Your Business

  

  I have been searching for books that contain leadership information and content that I can use on Twitter when it comes to sharing information about leading companies. Kevin Eikenberry, renowned author and speaker, recently sent me a Twitter book that fulfilled all my desires. The book is called #LeadershipTweet and is filled to the brim with noteworthy leadership quotes to get me through the day. (I’m not kidding… I did love the book). I thought I would write a brief review of the book while listing some of the leadership tweets he has documented over the past couple of years.

  The book breaks down into 4 sections plus a short foreword by the one and only, Chris Brogan. The sections include leadership actions, thoughts, inspiration, and how we can learn from one another to become better leaders.

  I wanted to list 15 of my favorite leadership tweets from the book.

  1. Remarkable leaders translate vision into reality

  2. People don’t resist change; they resist being changed

  3. Want better ideas? Create MORE ideas

  4. Strive to be a leader who learns and a learner who leads

  5. Remarkable leaders have formed a habit of doing things that average leaders don’t like to do

  6. Remarkable leaders are willing to make bold decisions

  7. Make a choice to make a different. Make a choice to lead

  8. Great listening starts with an open heart and a curious mind

  9. Your belief in someone’s potential is the first step towards helping them develop it

  10. Be authentic–you will be a more successful leader (and person)

  11. Remarkable leaders are network builders

  12. Remarkable leaders are accountable for their actions

  13. Remarkable leaders communicate with others in a way that is best for the other person

  14. Remarkable learders communicate powerfully through stories.

  15. Resistance is energy that leaders use to move change forward.

  As you can already tell… the book is packed full of great ideas for leadership for 2010! You should definitely go check out the book. Follow this link to read thoughts, ideas, and inspiration from Kevin Eikenberry and the world of Twitter!

  Related articles by Zemanta

  • Social media needs fewer rockstars, and more rockstar ideas (socialmediatoday.com)
  • How to Create a Meaningful Following on Twitter (mintzwordz.com)
  • Book Review – Dan Zarrella – The Social Media Marketing Book (broadcasting-brain.com)
  • Are Tweedledee and Tweedledum on Your Twitter List? (socialmediatoday.com)

  

  8 months on
  HeatherLeigh's shared items in Google Reader