The Real Lance Brown

Pretty self-explanatory; if you feel like you aren’t doing enough with LinkedIn, Meryl at Web Worker Daily offers a ton of good options for cultivating your presence there.

33 Ways to Use LinkedIn for Business

There are actually 4 (very brief) “tales” in this blog post by The Financial Brand. They include a bonus tale, so I guess I’m spoiling the surprise. Sorry. ;-)

The blog entry discusses how 4 different financial institutions have used Twitter to successful ends both small and large. Most involve making previously-unhappy customers happy–something that many companies could do well to improve at.

Speaking of crappy banks, one of the “tales” here involves my least favorite bank of all time, Bank of America. And despite my pledge of honor to encourage people to never do business with them, I’m linking to this article that praises them for their customer service efforts…because I care about my clients that much. After all, if a giant turdball like BOA can successfully use Twitter to improve their reputation, think of what your company, which isn’t despicable, could do with it. :-)

3 tales of Twitter success

Sean Carton from Clickz brings us a solid back-to-basics checklist of questions to ask yourself as you look to merge your business’s marketing goals with the social media information superhighway web 2.0 Internets. Because the social media information superhighway web 2.0 Internets are going to merge with your business’s marketing goals whether you like it or not. The only question is whether you are going to be leading the dance, or whether the the social media information superhighway web 2.0 Internets will be.

A Social Media Strategy Checklist – ClickZ

The amount of difference a blog can make to your bottom line is tremendous–incalculable really–but it goes without saying that you need people to find it and read it in order to tap into the magic of the “social web”. Take this list of 25 blog promotion tips  seriously and you will be well on your way to trading a p aperclip for a house, or blogging your way to an Oscar, or, more likely, manifesting your own particular dream come true. (Woo hoo!)

25 Ways to Promote and Market Your Blog | Social Media Strategies for Small Business | Fast Company.

I’ll be making a more sophisticated portfolio section on my site soon, but I am long overdue in introducing the web sites I have been designing for clients in Nevada County this past year. (Or in the case of Project Simplify, these past many years. :-))

Project Simplify (original design, now re-done by Velocity7)

High Performance Advocates (original design inspired by client materials)

SCO Planning, Engineering, & Surveying (original design inspired by client materials)

VJ’s Salon & Day Spa (original design inspired by client materials)

Gold Country Roofing (original design inspired by client materials)

Mark Davis Plumbing, Inc. (my WordPress-based adaptation of an existing original design by Brook Design Group)

Debbie Costa Design (designed in collaboration with Louise Preston, who also provided the artwork)

HeartMatters.pro (my WordPress-based adaptation of an existing original design by Susan Powell)

ABT Plumbing, Electric, Heat and Air (original design inspired by client materials)

I will discuss these projects at greater length soon, but suffice it to say, those are some great local businesses in the Nevada City/Grass Valley area. I had a great time working with all these folks as we went through the process of getting their sites built. If you’re from Nevada County, CA, or even if you aren’t, check out their sites and give them some e-love (like links, comments, etc.), and/or some brick-and-mortar love.

Yay for my clients!

CaptionTube is a free service (powered by Google App Engine) that lets you add captions to your existing YouTube videos. I haven’t tried it (all my YouTube videos are nature vids so far), but it sounds wicked cool.

Thanks to Chris Pirillo for bringing this to my attention.

This is a good list, and I’m glad to say I was aware of and/or agree with almost all these points.

Top 25 commonly believed SEO myths – Daily SEO blog.

This article is a pretty good breakdown of the different ways these two tools are useful.

When Do You Use Twitter Versus Facebook?

This is a really great feature, which not only suggests 50 different angles you can pursue with your blog content, but links to a great example for each type of blog, so you can go see how it’s done.

A must-read for blogging novices, IMO. (And all my clients. Yes you!)

Conversation Agent: 50 Content Ideas that Create Buzz.

Paul Castain’s Sales Playbook: Linkedin . . . The Right Way!.

This is an excellent interview with the owner of an electronics hardware supplier who has gotten has employees to blog as a central part of his social media and marketing strategy. The lessons he has learned could serve almost any business that is unsure about taking “the plunge”.

Rick Short Explains How to Turn Staff Into Prolific Bloggers.

Sometimes the Internet is a beautiful thing. Most of the time, actually.

To wit: 25 Places to Find Free Stock Photos from my new friends at Tutorial Blog. (Because providing me with 25 different free photo sites is a pretty good way to become my friend.)

Shefeek at For Technical Information has compiled a big list with a wide array of cool WordPress plugins, with nice succinct descriptions of what each does. It makes for a great overview of some of the possibilities that can be had for your site via WordPress plugins.

I continue to be overwhelmed by the variety and sheer power of the plugins that are coming out these days. But still no Zen Cart integration plugin somehow! Plugin Gods, hear my prayer…

This is helpful:
How To Find Free Images For Your Blog | Blogging Tips from Blogsessive