Blogging for entrepreneurs...

Google lets users access Web-based documents offline | SiliconValley.com

"Google, bolstering competition with Microsoft, is letting users of its Internet-based word-processing program access their documents offline. A desktop version of Google Docs, now available to a few users, will be rolled out more broadly over the next few weeks, the Mountain View company said Tuesday in a blog posting. While offline access is offered only in English for now, the company is working on other languages. Google is upgrading its Web-based programs in an effort to take customers from Microsoft, which dominates the personal-computer software market. With offline access, Google Docs customers can use the Internet-based program and automatically save their work to a PC, so it's available on airplanes and other places where they can't connect to the Web." Click the title to read the article online...

Blogs in Plain English

Should I Change My Website Into a Blog?

"“Hi Darren, I’ve got a website at www._____.com which I’ve had for a few years and not really done much with. I’ve heard that blogs are a good way of building traffic and making money, should I change it to a blog?”

I get this type of question on a weekly basis so I thought that I’d tackle it as a post.

There are a number of factors to consider when deciding whether to change an established website into a blog." Actually, this is not an either/or question -- it's a both/and! Websites and blogs serve different purposes and you need both of them. I think of websites as more of brochureware than anything else for most businesses. This article lists 6 reasons why you want to blog -- click the title to read them. In addition, I offer the following reasons thoughts...

Most small businesses invest in a website and think they're done with the expenses and that people will come flocking to them like the old UPS commercial about ecommerce on the internet; throw up a website and the orders come pouring in instantly. Doesn't happen...
2. You can easily append a blog to the front end of an existing website as I have done here. My website is http://www.e1evation.com but all the action is here at http://blog.e1evation.com. This takes about three minutes to set up if you know what you're doing...

What's your take on blogs and websites? Comments are free... ;-)

The Top 3 Questions Sales Managers Should Ask | First Border

"In the spirit of time is money, time flies and so much to do… then the shorter you can keep your sales reviews the happier everyone is going to be. Therefore, here are the only 3 questions that you need to ask…" Of course, it gets easier to use only three questions if you have the right system and process combined with the right Customer Relationship Management tool. Click the title to read more...

Those idiots in marketing just don’t get it | Duct Tape Marketing Blog

"I’m presenting a workshop this week titled - How to get sales and marketing on the same page.

The point of the discussion is to help the audience, made up of marketers and the sales people for those marketers, understand that while they may indeed perform unique and necessary functions, they have shared objectives.

So, while, as the title of this post suggests, the gap between what sales does and what marketing does in support may seem vast (and perhaps even at odds) there is an absolute need to strike a balance between their independent and interdependent selves." Click the title to read more...

Microsoft: All roads lead to Vista | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

"Windows Vista's checkered history is now legend.

Instead of the evolutionary marvel that Microsoft long promised, Vista instead has become synonymous with development delays, shifting feature lists, and spotty driver support.

No wonder then, more than a year after Vista's release, many consumers and business customers have steadfastly held onto Vista's predecessor, the Windows XP operating system. Microsoft has followed with price cuts and promotions. This is not exactly the 'wow' moment the company had in mind. News.com's Ina Fried has chronicled Vista's first year in earlier posts.

Still, we know that all good Windows releases eventually come to an end: Windows XP is stable, widely supported, and ultimately doomed. New PCs with XP installed will begin to disappear this summer. Microsoft will stop selling XP completely next January (although the company will provide support for much longer)." Click the title to read more...

How About Some Great PR to Go With Your Sales Efforts? | Sales Coach

"When it comes to building traction for your products and services, one needs more than sales efforts..... they need great marketing and PR. PR Guru Nancy Juetten has taught me so much in getting publicity - she walks her talk as an in-demand speaker nationally, and has crafted some fantastic ways for people to get to know her and her clients." Click the title to read more...

One bookmark manager to rule them all...

A recurring theme on this blog is using one one online [platform independent] tool to use or store resources. Bookmarks are no exception, although in this case I actually use two - one for public, one for private [nothing racy here -- actually is the stuff that's too boring to share] bookmarks. If you scroll down to the bottom of this page, you'll see what is called a 'tag cloud' from del.icio.us [online at del.icio.us.com] -- it's a 'cloud' of bookmarks that I have tagged with descriptors so that I can share them with other people. Check it out -- del.icio.us is what you call a social bookmarking tool meaning that you can share the good stuff that you find and categorize it to either share it or be able to find it again. If you use firefox, there are a couple of addons that will allow you to replace the firefox bookmarks with del.icio.us. You can also use it to import your firefox bookmarks into del.icio.us as well. You can share your bookmarks as clouds on your blogs or through a newsfeed if you prefer...

The other tool I use is Google bookmarks which part of the Google toolbar. Google bookmarks doesn't have the rich sharing capabilities of del.icio.us so that's where I keep my boring stuff that's not really worth sharing. You can log on to Google bookmarks anywhere so your toolkit can be with you whenever and wherever you are. The Google bookmarks also integrate nicely with Google search and Google notebook...

So You Want to Be a Blogging Star? | New York Times

"Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has a full plate. Besides his basketball team, the busy billionaire also owns part of a media company, and serves as chairman of the TV channel HDNet. He recently competed for five weeks on “Dancing With the Stars” on ABC. How on earth does he find time to blog?" Click the title to read more...

Personal branding is a decidedly human endeavor | Duct Tape Marketing Blog

"In my view, branding has always been a very human endeavor. This is so true for the small business owner and certainly a wise approach for the person trying to create a career that nourishes.

Personal branding, like any form of branding, is all about authenticity. It’s a bit ironic how the thing we sometimes need the most help with is being real." Click the title to read more...

Some thoughts on better contact management...

I recently came across this post from my Internet buddy Brandon Henak and I've been thinking about it all week. It was about using Plaxo for unified contact management and it went like this...

"The people in your network and the relationships you develop with them are some of your most valuable assets as a young professional. You look to them first for advice, job opportunities or just to discuss the latest events in your life. How you keep track of all the contact information you have collected in your personal and professional life is crucial to your success.

Contacts Everywhere!

In the poll we took earlier today we saw an interesting breakdown of contact management solutions, from relying on a cell phone to store contact information to using Microsoft Outlook, Facebook and other online sites. Each one of the solutions have their advantages and disadvantages. I have tried every one of the solutions listed with various degrees of success but, what if you could use each of them where they work the best, Outlook at the office, Mac Address Book at home and Plaxo online, without having to manually update each? I recently found a way to centralize and standardize all my contact and calendar information across all the services I use, automatically!

Sync them up!

Enter Plaxo 3.0 beta with Sync Points. After setting up an account, all I had to do was click on the “Add Sync Point” link for each of the programs I wanted to use (in my case Google, Mac Address Book, Outlook, and AIM) and it walks you through the process of putting in your login information for Google and downloading small add-ins for Outlook and Mac Address Book. Now, all of my sources sync together and I can sync all my contacts to my phone through Address Book. Any addition anywhere flows across the systems and is easily accessible."

This was particularly interesting to me because I'm a Plaxo subscriber, but I've experienced a lot of problems with contact management. So what's the problem?

A little background info...

I've been in marketing, sales, and technology for 25 years now and I have collect over 5,000 vcards and thousands more business cards that aren't documented. I use 7 computers spanning three platforms and I want to access my contacts on all of them.

The answer?

The answer for me, like Brandon, starts with Plaxo for the following reasons:

1. It's platform and browser independent.
2. It offers 'sync points' for the tools I use or have access to; Outlook, Thunderbird, a Treo 700wx running Windows Mobile 5. [Many more are available...]
3. Members can choose to link to give one another the latest contact information as soon as it changes.
4. The duplicate merger/remover is among the best I've used.
5. There is a growing social network component which is a cross between Facebook and LinkedIn.

So if Plaxo is the answer, what's MY problem? In a nutshell, using Plaxo was causing, not eliminating duplicates. Or, better said, using Plaxo with ActiveSync was causing duplicates. When I made the decision to stop using two synchronization tools simultaneously, my problems went away and I got closer to the promised land that Brandon was describing...

More background. I'm currently in the process of moving to Linux; I don't want to pay ransom to Microsoft anymore and although I'm a former Apple account executive, I don't want to pay for Apple's industrial design when I can have the benefits of a Linux based operating system on inexpensive Intel hardware. The answer for me is Linux.

For now, however, my solution set consists of Plaxo, Microsoft Outlook 2003 [I only said I didn't want to pay anymore – I'll still use what I have], Gmail, Google Calendar and a Treo 700wx. I see myself moving off Outlook to Thunderbird/Lightning [Mozilla's answer to contact and calendar management – Mozilla is only going to get better at this!] and off the Treo onto either a Blackberry or the Google Android platform. Thankfully [?], Sprint is forcing me to keep my current phone until September when the outlook on Google's approach to cellphones should be known...

A big part of solving my problem was also to realize [thanks to David Allen] that some contacts are context sensitive, namely, that I don't need to be able to call all 5,000 people from my cellphone – some I only need to be able to access when I'm sitting at a computer. I was actually synchronizing contacts for which I didn't have a telephone number to my phone! Why? Because I was going to send them an email from the phone? Unlikely. In reality, I have found that after careful analysis, I actually need to synchronize less than 200 contacts between my phone and my computer and if I really were honest with myself, there are probably less than a hundred people that I call on a regular basis. So, I copied all my contacts to a folder called 'Master' in Outlook and deleted all contacts that I either hadn't called or didn't anticipate calling this quarter [there's a copy of the deleted contacts in Master, remember?] As a result, I'm only synchronizing what I have to now. This is a HUGE savings of time and energy and silly as it may seem, actually represents a massive epiphany for me. Call me Captain Obvious?

The underlying idea here is getting closer to a world where it doesn't matter what computer or platform you're using – your information is accessible from anywhere! Plaxo can get you a good part of the way there...

By the way, if you're not using Google Desktop, start! It can unify all the computers you're using and allow you to search your Gmail and your computers in the same way you search the internet now...

Opportunity of a lifetime | Seth's Blog

"So, there's plenty of bad economic news floating around. From the price of oil to Wall Street to bailouts to the death of traditional advertising.

Which is great news for anyone hoping to grow or to make an impact.

Change (and the fortunes that go with it) is almost always made during the down part of the cycle. It might not be fun, but it's exciting. (Where do you think Google came from?) The opportunity is to find substantial opportunities (in any field) that deliver real value and have a future. Those jobs/investments/companies/ideas are undervalued right now, but not for long."

Persistence | Seth's Blog

"Persistence isn't using the same tactics over and over. That's just annoying.

Persistence is having the same goal over and over."

3 Tips For Making Every Website A Lead Generating Machine | RainToday

"As a lead generation tool, your website provides a virtual wonderland of sales and marketing opportunities. It's easily accessible, available 24/7, highly visible, and gives you the ability to present your company and services in your most positive light.

Plus, your site gives prospects the ability to find you whenever they need to. All this makes it one of the most powerful lead generators at your disposal.

So... is your website, this powerful lead generating machine, doing all it can to bring new clients to your doorstep?" Click the title to read more...

What Marketing Works? 4 Questions To Ask Your Small Business Clients | RainToday

"I'd like to share with you a conversation I had with a fellow business owner, Dr. Roy Saldanha, on the topic of buying professional services. He runs a moderate sized (35 employee) veterinary hospital in Riverside, California.

I interviewed him to find out what sales and marketing approaches worked best from his perspective. And I encourage you to take the four questions I asked him and pose them to your own small business clients. You might be surprised by what new insights you get." Click the title to read more...

That noise inside my head | Seth's Blog

"If you as a marketer (/fundraiser/teacher/blogger/salesperson/parent) are assuming that all the citizens in your audience have genius level EQ, you're almost certainly making a mistake and you're paying for it every day." Click the title to read more...

Harmonizing your Sales and Marketing Departments | AllBusiness.com

5 Sentences | How to Change the World

I post a lot about email. Why? Because for most business people the battle for control over the inbox is THE most critical fight they face each day. Most actionable items come to us in the form of email and tools like GTD and Inbox Zero help us process that information [search the blog for those topics]...

What about writing emails? There's a move afoot called 5 Sentences. It's not complex -- you can read everything you need to know about it here. Guy Kawasaki also wrote about it in his post 'Ten Things to Learn This School Year ':

"How to write a five-sentence email. Young people have an advantage over older people in this area because older people (like me) were taught to write letters that were printed on paper, signed, stuck in an envelope, and mailed. Writing a short email was a new experience for them. Young people, by contrast are used to IMing and chatting. If anything, they’re too skilled on brevity, but it’s easier to teach someone how to write a long message than a short one. Whether UR young or old, the point is that the optimal length of an email message is five sentences. All you should do is explain who you are, what you want, why you should get it, and when you need it by."

Handling email effectively is not only knowing how to process your inbox -- it's a collaborative effort on all our parts to write better and more succinct emails!

Ten Things to Learn This School Year | How to Change the World

The article is a little old, but the advice is still sound...

"I’m on the campus of UCSB this week at family camp, and it's inspired me to blog about what students should learn in order to prepare for the real world after graduation. This is an opportune time to broach this subject because the school year is about to begin, and careers can still be affected.

First, take this little test about the state of your understanding of the real world right after you graduated from school."

Guy Kawasaki is one of the greats of this generation and his wisdom is simple and straighforward. Click the title to read the full article online...