SEO and Social Media Marketing Snake OilAre you tired of SEO and social media marketing "snake oil"? Find out how to recognize the difference in good SEO vs. bad SEO and how to reach your target market.
SEO and Social Media Marketing Snake OilPosted April 18th, 2011 Under: Business in General, Podcast, blogging, marketing, social media.

I am relating this to blogs, but it can apply to many other things in life, and in business. In fact, the more I think of it, this really isn’t just about blogs at all. I hope that you can relate to this, and begin to uncover more of your bright ideas.
Do you ever have a great idea that you just have to share with the world … or at least the people who read your blog? I do, and I find myself jotting down a note about it. I am old school, so I end up with a squillion pages of notes stacked on my desk. Some of them make it to my handy dandy little notebook, and a decent number even make it to my list of draft copies here on my blog.
It is great to have a list of ideas for future articles to present to the world … or at least the people who read my blog. So, in those moments of inspiration, it is best to take some notes and remember to get back to it later. After all, it is often hard to be astonishingly brilliant on cue, and who wants to publish something that is less than “astonishingly brilliant”? Not this guy, but I still do it anyway.
Posted April 1st, 2011 Under: Internet marketing, Podcast.

I have been thinking about this topic for a long time. I tried to keep my inner voice to myself, but if you have read my blog before, you surely noticed that my inner voice has a bullhorn. I say what I think. I have said it before that “I do not try to please everybody, and that pleases some people very much.”
Call me a crusty old bastard if you like. Worse things have been said before, and you will not hurt my feelings. I only get my feelings hurt by people who care enough to create a meaningful dialog with me, and make a relationship. I welcome them to my table, and I will share my blog feast with them any day.
Conversely, trolls can have the corn preserved on the other side of my digestive system. Regarding lurkers, I kind of think of them like zombies. I am not sure if they have thoughts and feelings of their own, because they refuse to reveal them.
So what about the blog trolls and lurkers? I could take this examination to all new heights, because I know trolls, and I have enough lurkers to fill the Mariana Trench! Rather than drawing this out with a lengthy psychological analysis, I will just heave a heavy-handed slap in their direction and let you rip them a new one with your comments if you feel up to it.
Posted September 14th, 2010 Under: Internet marketing, blogging, marketing, social networking.

There are spelling and grammar errors that can make you look astonishingly lazy, and then there are spelling and grammar errors which simply make you appear stupid. The lazy errors happen to the best of us. I have never read a book that did not have an error, somewhere, even after many rounds of professional editing. Hekc, you may even find an error here on my blog.
I cannot expect people to be perfect, but what I can do is to secretly imagine wrapping my strong fingers around their neck and squeezing hard as they gasp for breath. I guess it is not so secret now. Perhaps you do not feel strongly about these failures of education, but do you ever read something that tells you you are shopping in the wrong place?
I encounter horrible spelling and grammar every day, and I often wonder how these perpetrators of illiteracy keep up their fight to grow a business. Here are some brain-failures I hope to one day see eradicated.
Posted June 25th, 2010 Under: Internet marketing, SEO Blogging, SEO Factors, SEO Tools, Twitter, Website Development Issues, blogging, social media, social networking.

I often have a need for a character count script to tell me how many characters something contains. I also often find a need for a word count script. Since I never seem to find such a dual-purpose script handy for calculating characters and words all at once, my quickest response is often to open up my Microsoft Word. I wait for the cumbersome software to load, then copy and paste it and wait for Word to think for a while. It stinks, and I finally got really tired of it. There is no need to hog system resources and more screen space by opening Word or a similar software. I nearly always already have a browser window open, so it would be a lot easier to just open a new tab and then copy and paste the content into a quick and easy javascript character counter and word counter.
I have been a web guy for a very long time. I have often found that when I need a script or an application, it is best to just sit down and create it myself. Over the years, I have written a squillion web applications of all kinds. Strangely enough, I often find that the simplest tools to create are also the ones I have a hard time finding the moment to just do it. Once I get around to it, I have often found that there were a lot of others who felt the same way. For example, there are thousands of people every month who use my very basic and aged screen resolution test. I wrote it because at the time I saw a need for it in my daily routine. The same thing happened here.
Posted June 1st, 2010 Under: Facebook, Internet, blogging.

I thought for a moment that this article belongs on another of my blogs, but then I realized how it fits here as well. This is a bit different from my typical marketing article. It is a piece that I posted on Facebook in November of 2008 addressing the power of written words. It is not specifically marketing oriented, but it does involve something that bloggers and marketers deal with, which is that of having the right words, and the importance of written words. In this case, it addresses the power of a love letter, but it has a good message that can be applied to many other relationships in your life.
I will note that today is number 3,479. It is is my eighth wedding anniversary, which gives me even more reason to honor the day with something meaningful. This story is about day 2,912. I hope that you will enjoy this inspiration …