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Here at Lifehacker, we've often encouraged switching up your working environment tospark creativity and prevent burnout. Even taking a few days each month to work in a new place can benefit you greatly. Here, entrepreneur Wesley Verhoeve explains the benefits of his favorite non-office space: the coffee shop. While team Family Records was in between offices in early 2012, we had 6 weeks to bridge until our new space was ready. During that time we were fortunate enough to be taken in as guests by awesome companies for stretches of time, and for the remainder we took over corners of coffee shops all over Brooklyn and Manhattan. The experience of working out of coffee shops was so positive that even after we moved into our new home, I made sure to get in a few "coffee shop days" each month. For carpal tunnel related reasons alone, I would not recommend working out of coffee shops every day, but here are some reasons why it might be great to try it for one or two days every month.
Via Martin Gysler
An amazing tool to manage tasks with other people around the world. Try it, want it and it's free. [note mg] Organize anything, together. Trello is a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. In one glance, know what's being worked on, who's working on what, and where something is in a process. All your projects, all your tasks, all of your team--organized, accounted for, and easily visible at a glance. New users instantly understand the list and card metaphor, and can be working on Trello within minutes. Read more and try it: https://trello.com/
Via Martin Gysler
Twitter was never designed to be a social network but it has become one.
In fact it was designed initially in 2006 to used by individuals as an SMS type service to communicate with a small group at the podcasting company Odeo.
When I first joined Twitter in 2008, I was underwhelmed and wondered as to its usefulness. Its early attraction to me was its novelty factor. It has overcome this challenge and four years later it has built an impressive resume. Over 140 million active users as of 2012 Generates over 340 million tweets daily Handles over 1.6 billion search queries per day Tenth most visited site on the internet In the nearly six years since its founding over 600 million users have registered Twitter accounts. Read more: http://bit.ly/LmNT9N
Via Martin Gysler
With the connection of AdWords to Google+ Pages via Social Extensions, Google is enticing advertisers to build a presence on the site. As expected, Google continues to advance its efforts to make Google+ a success as it further integrates the social platform into its core products to encourage adoption and increase activity. With the recent connection of AdWords to Google+ Pages via Social Extensions, Google is enticing AdWords advertisers to build a strong presence on the social site. By enabling Social Extensions, consumers will be able to see all recommendations a brand has received, whether they are viewing a paid ad, a search result or your Google+ Page. There are currently two types of Social Extensions: Personal and Basic. Personal shows you the number of people within your Google+ Circle who have +1’d your landing page or your Google+ Page, while Basic shows how many people across the web have +1’d your page. Read more: http://bit.ly/KUBskC
Via Martin Gysler
This piece was written by Aaron Dunn for Content Marketing Institute. These steps apply to your overall content marketing strategy whether you're creating or curating content. The challenge: **Companies are now left trying to make sense of which ones they should be paying attention to, what they need to be doing in these channels to gain a competitive advantage, and how it all ties into their overall content marketing strategy. The solution: **In today’s rapidly shifting web, it’s essential that companies start to take a more holistic approach to content marketing and connect more effectively with their various stakeholders across a number of web and social channels. Here are the four steps: As we awaken to the new realities of content, here are four ways to rethink your content execution, and take advantage of the new content life cycle. **Structure your content marketing strategy as a holistic system that allows you to connect more effectively with various stakeholders across a number of social channels, drive conversation, and influence customers. **Open up content contribution to more users across the organization, providing more opportunities to connect with and engage customers in social channels, and extend your online reach. **Be sure to remove any technology or process roadblocks that inhibit the expansion of your contributor pool — the more people who are able to contribute easily, the more content you will have to push across your channels. **Deliver fresh, compelling and timely content that engages users and keeps visitors returning to your site, and then be sure to extend that content into your social channels. **Be sure you are listening to the online conversations of your target audience, and optimize your content and content strategy based on the insights you gather from them. Curated by Jan Gordon covering "Content Marketing, Social Media and Beyond" "Content Curation, Social Business and Beyond"
Read more: http://bit.ly/J69H56
Via Martin Gysler, janlgordon
How small business can perform better than brands in social media by focusing on simple goals, being human, ensuring satisfaction and measuring ROI... I currently have the fortune to experience two different fronts of digital marketing. Under Plural, I work with brands and, with SocialMouths I mostly jam with small business, personal brands, and bloggers. One of the reasons I absolutely love this setup is that they are two different worlds in how the social web is approached, how it’s handled and how success is measured. So I’m here to tell you that, despite the ridiculous budgets and unlimited resources, small business has a huuuge advantage over brands when it come to social media. Here are my thoughts: Strategy. Or Not? Read more: http://bit.ly/JkdIDq
Via Martin Gysler
Even if this list is from 2011, you'll find a lot of interesting tools for today. [note mg] If you want to know what’s happening in the social web you need monitoring tools. Before you get out your credit card and start to spend money try out some of the free social media monitoring services. This way you get a taste of what is available and if you need paid services. I have collected 48 free social media monitoring tools. In the Group A are the services that I use regularly or seem interesting to check out immediately. The Group B is an alphabetical list of tools for you to play with. Here we go:... Read more: http://bit.ly/IDzrqr
Via Martin Gysler
Want the skinny on using Pinterest to promote your b2b marketing? Follow these five tips and kick-start your brand’s expansion into this emerging social media phenomenon. 1. Advertising and infographics rule the b2b marketing pins Today, B2B marketers can get tons of great examples of award winning infographics and advertising campaigns on Pinterest. For that alone it’s an amazing resource. However, for other types of marketing, well, my fellow marketers, we have some work to do. Imagine a Pinterest page filled with pins of amazing fashion, inspirational interior design, stunning landscapes, and a screenshot of your low production value product demo video…um, it’s nice you have a presence, but how does that pin of a crappy screenshot of a crappy video look next to the rest of these other magnificent pins? Read more: http://bit.ly/Jc8ObA
Via Martin Gysler
What do you use as your daily Social Media dashboard every day?
Most likely not Twitter.com I am guessing.
Yet, in recent months, there were a great number of browser extensions released, specifically for Twitter.com. They help you create a much greater experience right inside Twitter.com. What I like best about this is that you are in charge regarding how many bells and whistles you are adding. You can basically fully customize your own Social Media dashboard. So here are my top 5 finds you can use to make Twitter.com a truly powerful Social Media tool for you:... Read more: http://bit.ly/IjmxO3
Via Martin Gysler
Have you become desensitized and disillusioned with Twitter? Do you feel like you are suffering from Twitter Tiredness? Do you feel like you are “tweeting in the dark”, spending more and more time on Twitter but getting less and less out of it? I know the story. A few months (or years) ago, you signed up for a Twitter account. You dutifully wrote a clever bio, uploaded your picture and started tweeting. Maybe you followed some accounts and learned a bit about the culture and etiquette of the network before sending your first tweet. After following a few people and building a following of your own, you started following more and more and retweeting more and more, all while spending less and less time engaging in conversations and writing original tweets. Read more: http://www.business2community.com/twitter/how-to-spend-less-time-on-twitter-and-get-more-out-of-it-0160103
Via Martin Gysler
A tactical guide for Google Plus covering page creation, daily management, and key optimizations with other Google products... You can start right now with your Google+ [note mg] Taking full advantage of the SEO and PPC benefits associated with a strong Google Plus presence requires creating a complete Google Plus Brand Page. The following post serves as a tactical guide for Google Plus covering page creation, daily management, and key optimizations with other Google products. For more detail on the SEO benefits of Google+ for individual user accounts, check out AJ Kohn’s amazing and comprehensive post.
Creating a Brand Page
Brand Pages are created only after logging in to an existing Google+ personal account. Read more: http://www.rimmkaufman.com/blog/google-plus-brand-pages-complete-guide/06042012/
Via Martin Gysler
This question should interest every entrepreneur and someone who is active in one way or another on social media. These different options will give you the necessary support. [note mg] Imagine that you’ve spent years building a business and growing a website. You launch a promotion to email a list of potential customers with exciting new opportunities to save lots of money by doing business with you. Did you email too many people, or did you email the wrong people? Did someone turn you in as a “spammer” to one of the many spammer blacklist organizations out there?
Everyone hates real spammers, and the last thing you want to do is get labeled as one. That’s one kind of blacklist. The other kind is worse – the search engine blacklist. That’s the one that is basically a death sentence for your site because Google and other search engines stop crawling your site or even listing it in search results. No blacklist is good to get, because ISP’s and many content filtering services access Internet blacklists to figure out not only what email to block, but also what websites to block or to mark as potentially dangerous.
How do you know you’re on the Google List or any other database of blacklisted sites? Read more: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/8-ways-find-google-list-blacklisted-sites/
Via Martin Gysler
Congratulations, you’ve made it.
You’ve worked hard and paid your dues, and finally you have a blog with healthy traffic and a large list of engaged subscribers.
You know what they need, and you’ve invested the time and energy to create a product that will meet and exceed their expectations. Now all that’s left for you to do is launch the product, and rake in the cash. I mean, at this point, what could go wrong? Well, the truth is that a lot could go wrong. Even with a great product and an engaged audience, success isn’t guaranteed. You still have to launch the thing properly. Here’s how to do it… Read more: http://bit.ly/GLVVGS
Via Martin Gysler
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The classic sales funnel has long been used to describe website development strategy. However, the deployment of content marketing in a sales funnel with a campaign focus is a relatively new concept to many. It’s not as simple as writing lots of blog posts every day and distributing them on social channels. In fact, the goal of strategic content marketing should be to identify, qualify, segment, score and, ultimately, close leads in an accelerated and predictable fashion. In order to strategically deploy content marketing it requires the right software, a defined sales funnel and a campaign structure. Read more: http://bit.ly/MjFpfA
Via Martin Gysler
Content marketing can be an extremely complicated, time-consuming, and expensive proposition! So I came up with content options for the time-starved! Let’s face it. Content development can be a complicated, time-consuming, and expensive proposition! So I started thinking about this in the context of my friends and small business customers who simply can’t afford that kind of effort. It led to this idea: micro-content, or creating small bits of marketing content when you don’t have time to blog, create videos or spend all day on Facebook. Let’s examine ideas about using micro-content for your social media strategy, assuming you are testing the water and only have 15 minutes a day to devote to this activity. Hey, I’m up for a challenge! Preparation Like any marketing initiative, you must have a firm idea of your strategy, selling points, and target audience... Read more: http://bit.ly/LEiFKi
Via Martin Gysler
Value is the currency on the Web, and the more value you create, the more people will flock to you. It has been said give till it hurts and you will receive it back in spades. There are some secrets regarding social media that I’d like to share.
I’m a bit of a hard-core social media user and I’ve been doing web and content development for many years now. Because I have been online for a very long time (pre-graphical Web), I am pretty attuned to what constitutes authentic and cooperative behavior online. There are things that set apart the altruistic contributor (check out this cool thing!), for instance, from the self-serving ones (buy my stuff!).
If you do nothing else this year, consider shifting your social media strategy to encompass increasingly pro-social guidelines. The more you give, the more the community will give back, but it needs to be done with a sensitive hand. Read more: http://bit.ly/LvDTsm
Via Martin Gysler
In Using Utilities and Services. It is more practical for an entrepreneur to use either bundle services or unlimited services. Internet service connection for instance has a promotional DSL bundles that already includes the telephone line. This service is also considered on unlimited use already. With these kinds of services, you will not have to think of your bills when connecting to a client, thus, you have a quality time and better service. In Using and Purchasing Office Supplies. For office supplies, you can save more if you buy in bulk. You may look for generic brands that are cheaper; however, you should also not compromise on the quality when it is a protocol in your business. For example, if your business needs to be precise about the quality of colors for toners, you should opt for branded ones. Also look for ads of sale and grab the opportunity so you can save. Office supply depots can be a great place to buy cheaper supplies. Read more: http://bit.ly/JDSx4Y
Via Martin Gysler
Think about all the hours you spend to publish great content on your website or/and blogs. Here some ideas how you can use them to create your own book or ebook. [note mg] Attention Bloggers: I’ve seen the future, and you’re missing it.
Oh sure, we bloggers think we’re the most up-to-date, leading-edge, tech-savvy people on the planet.
But one of the biggest changes in the long history of content creation is taking place right under your feet, and I’m afraid it may be passing you by. Yep, the ground is shifting, fortunes are being made, and some of the people who could best profit from this tectonic shift — content producers — are mostly sitting on the sidelines. Okay, what am I talking about? The revolution in book publishing … Maybe you’ve heard some of the success stories of the authors who’ve been selling a ton of paranormal romances, thrillers or other genre novels on Amazon’s Kindle platform, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Read more: http://bit.ly/J4FyDg
Via Martin Gysler
Getting your app discovered is the fundamental challenge every app marketer faces. With millions of apps across iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and other platforms, standing out in the boundless sea of available apps is becoming increasingly difficult. The best app marketers will pursue a comprehensive, well-rounded app marketing strategy that includes pre-launch work and post-launch work. The best strategies will include organic and paid app marketing channels. Here’s the complete guide to app marketing that every app owner needs to follow. Before Launch Contrary to popular belief, your marketing strategy needs to start well before your app goes live in the app store. Like any successful product, understanding who your customers are and where you can find them is one of the most important pieces of the app marketing puzzle. There are a few steps you need to take before you launch your app: Read more: http://bit.ly/JkeEHT
Via Martin Gysler
Probably not unlike you, we use a cadre of different tools to help us create websites and products we’re proud of. Every year it seems that this list morphs, evolves, shrinks and grows. So we thought, ‘Hey, it might be valuable to some people to get a look at how we build things and the tools that we use to get the job done.’ We looked at every step of our development process and highlighted our favorite technologies every step of the way. These divisions aren’t meant as hard and fast rules; but rather groupings that can help you if you’re looking for a tool to find efficiencies, process improvements or work product for a particular phase. 39 WEB APPS AND TOOLS WE USE TO CREATE WEBSITES MEETING, BRAINSTORMING, STRATEGY
Our initial planning phases are all about collaboration. Here’s what we use to communicate, ideate and put the plan together. Read more: http://bit.ly/KMGb4d
Via Martin Gysler
If you want learn more about social media curation and/or start your own scoop.it you should read this excellent and detailed blog post from Shirley Williams. [note mg] Are you asking the following questions: “What is social media curation?” and “How does it add value?” Are you like many business owners trying to get your head around curation and the associated benefits? Well I have come to realize, you are not alone! In an earlier post I defined curation. In this post I would like us to revisit that definition and share how value can be gained by demonstrating how to use Scoop.it. Reminder of What’s Social Media Curation? With the exponential growth of social networks and blogs, the amount of information on the internet can be overwhelming and time consuming. Consequently, the role of the social media curator has become increasingly more attractive. Social media curation is when you filter, select, review and reposition quality content on the web for a specific audience and/or topic... Read more: http://bit.ly/IRXDad
Via Martin Gysler
Maybe you’ve been distracted lately by Tupac’s hologram stealing the show at Coachella, but if you’ll allow me, I’d like to turn the conversation to content marketing for a moment. Okay, maybe a few moments—get comfy. From the bold strategy Coca-Cola shared with the public, to debates over whether content marketing sucks, content marketing has captured quite a bit of Internet attention, and it doesn’t seem to be letting up. But one thing I’ve noticed is most people are focusing on the marketing part, and not so much on the content part. The general consensus is that quality content is the way to high rankings, traffic, and conversions. But while I’ve read a lot of posts that say you need quality content, I haven’t seen many that outline exactly how to create it. There seems to be a disconnect between copywriting advice, and content marketing how-tos. So let’s connect those dots. Read more: http://bit.ly/HW3YDc
Via Martin Gysler
A tactical guide for Google Plus covering page creation, daily management, and key optimizations with other Google products... You can start right now with your Google+ [note mg] Taking full advantage of the SEO and PPC benefits associated with a strong Google Plus presence requires creating a complete Google Plus Brand Page. The following post serves as a tactical guide for Google Plus covering page creation, daily management, and key optimizations with other Google products. For more detail on the SEO benefits of Google+ for individual user accounts, check out AJ Kohn’s amazing and comprehensive post. Read more: http://www.rimmkaufman.com/blog/google-plus-brand-pages-complete-guide/06042012/
Via Martin Gysler, Robin Good
A tactical guide for Google Plus covering page creation, daily management, and key optimizations with other Google products... You can start right now with your Google+ [note mg] Taking full advantage of the SEO and PPC benefits associated with a strong Google Plus presence requires creating a complete Google Plus Brand Page. The following post serves as a tactical guide for Google Plus covering page creation, daily management, and key optimizations with other Google products. For more detail on the SEO benefits of Google+ for individual user accounts, check out AJ Kohn’s amazing and comprehensive post.
Creating a Brand Page
Brand Pages are created only after logging in to an existing Google+ personal account. Read more: http://www.rimmkaufman.com/blog/google-plus-brand-pages-complete-guide/06042012/
Via Martin Gysler
Some very interesting ways to improve your business in this year. [note mg] Social media is big in business circles and every business is scrambling to implement social media strategies to take advantage of this new opportunity. If your business is not already on the social media bandwagon, you still have time to create a social media strategy and start getting social. Here is a list of the top 30 ways your business should leverage social media this year. The list is by no means exhaustive and any other ideas you may have are welcome. Read more: http://www.instantshift.com/2012/03/28/30-ways-your-business-should-leverage-social-media-this-year/
Via Martin Gysler
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Koffie, wat anders ;)
I've been working out of coffe shops for years and agree its a great setting...and the perks aren't bad either.
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John Michel, experienced leader, humanitarian, visioneer, and renown status quo buster, is the author of the ground breaking book, Mediocre Me: How Saying No to the Status Quo will Propel you from Ordinary to Extraordinary. Check out his blog at www.MediocreMe.com or drop him a note at johnmichel@MediocreMe.com