photo credit: axbom

So, your site now has all the bells and whistles. It’s SEO compliant. It’s mobile-friendly. You’ve even got the latest and greatest social media share buttons on the market. But the question is…

is your site responsive?

What is a responsive site, you say? Glad you asked.

Simply put, a responsive site is a site that displays in the proper dimensions based on the device that is being used to view it. For instance, standard site dimensions are 1024, minimally. Viewed on a mobile device, that site would be either humungous or imperceptibly small, depending on whether you viewed it real size or tried to fit it all on a mobile phone. So you make a site that is properly viewable on a mobile phone. Ok. That’s better; but have you considered that people who view your site on a mobile phone are not necessarily just “surfing sites”? Chances are, they are seeking specific information that your company, and thus your site, has. So give priority to the information your mobile viewer is most likely looking for. Yes, that may only be 3-5 items, but if it gets them to the exact information they’re looking for, you’ve succeeded. Give them the information they want; not the information you want them to have.

The same is true for tablet devices, although you do have more room to work with and may not have to be as concerned with displaying only a few items at a time. But now you have to also deal with the directionality of the device; it is landscape or portrait? This is true for phones as well, but it is much more critical for tablet devices.

Then, let’s throw in a variety of viewing resolutions for good measure.

So, what that means is, you need a site that can determine what device it is being viewed on, at what dimension, what resolution, so that you can deliver the appropriately designed site. Cool! That means I have to make 4 versions of my website.

Ok, now you’re just being ridiculous.

Let’s bring in a responsive website. A website built responsively (responsibly?) knows all the answers to those questions and offers up the right site design automatically. This is important from a user-friendly standpoint. The whole reason you’re on the web to begin with is to meet your customers’ needs and get more customers, and that means making it as easy as possible for your customers to get what they need from you. And one way to do that is through a responsive site: a site that responds to your customer in the way that best meets their needs.

If you’re not sure what your website looks like on a mobile phone, check it out. If you don’t have a smart phone, ask someone who does; and if you’re not happy with what you see, give us call.

“Meet Evernote.”
“Evernote, meet every piece of information I will ever want to find again.”

Well, I just discovered that January is Get Organized Month and I’m tickled about that because it’s the perfect excuse to share about my latest discovery: Evernote.

I’ve heard of Evernote for years, but never really got into it till now. At this point I’ve been using it for about a month and not only do I feel more organized, but I’m always finding more uses or advantages to it and get more excited about what a useful program this is. And that “organizing” is always at my fingertips for instant access. Paper filing can’t do that!

To be honest, at the very beginning, getting started can be a little tricky. Here’s what I wish I’d known:

Organize Your Life

Everything you put into Evernote (EN) is a Note. EN does not use the typical hierarchical file/folder structure we are all used to. It basically only goes one level deep, but that really doesn’t matter. The search power of EN eases any need for that type of structure. So you don’t need to worry about how to organize everything, to start with.

So think of each item you want to store (like tear-outs from magazine articles, recipes or quotes) as individual Notes. One “thought” per note, although you can put multiple pages together, like pdf’s (scanned warranties or manuals). Give each Note an appropriate title. TIP+: you can have “untitled” notes, but as you scan the Notes list looking for something, it’s incredibly helpful to see a real title. Just make it something to jog your memory.

Next, Notes are organized by topics called Notebooks. Think of this simple metaphor: imagine you have a Notebook for every topic of your life–business, personal, recipes, Books to Read, Movies to See, receipts, bills, whatever else you need that fits your life. Then every “page” in the Notebook is a Note. For instance, I have a Medical – Eyes notebook. In it are several Notes: a scan of my glasses prescription; pictures I’ve taken of frames I like. I then tagged each of those pictures (Notes) with easily searchable terms, i.e. frames, and the store where the frames are. TIP+: every word in a note is a search term, so don’t worry about getting too specific. Think more in terms of what you are most likely to think of a month from now to find that note. I could even find that prescription by the doctor’s name because he’s on the prescription form I scanned.

There are several formats you can use to work with EN: web app, phone app, and standalone app. I use the standalone app the most.

The left column is my list of notebooks. Once you click on a notebook, the center column is a thumbnail of the notes in that notebook. The right column is the specific note. The very first notebook at the top, “All Notebooks,” is where all the notes are listed in the order they were added. Sometimes recent notes are easiest found there than trying to come up with a search term.

The first things I put into EN were all the written notes I had on my desk, like phone numbers or to do lists; each one being its own note. The name of the note was whatever the note was about; I also tagged it with something I’d be sure to remember later: “notes from my desk”. TIP+: the fun thing is, even handwritten notes are searchable. Here you can see several of my handwritten notes with the “notes from my desk” tag.

Ok. that’s enough for now. There is just absolutely no end to the power of EN, but this should be enough to get you started. So here it is broken down into steps you can do now.

First 3 Steps to Getting Started with Evernote (after setting up an account and installing it)

1. Make a New Notebook. Call it something pretty generic, like your name. Mine is “Auto-Import”. Almost everything I put in EN starts out there. Make this your Default Notebook. As you email, scan or clip things to EN, it will automatically go in there and you can decide on a specific notebook later.

1B. Make some more Notebooks based on broad categories of your life, like Business, Hobbies, Recipes, Workout, Mom’s Birthday Party. “Books to Read” or “Movies to See” are popular; make a Notebook for a project you might be doing, “Sales Presentation” or “Website”. Be sure to keep the “sync” checked.

2. Remember, each individual piece of information is a Note. Get 5 items into EN. Keeping it simple, click New Note and type something up
• grocery list
• write a blog post article
• room measurements, paint colors
• snippets of info you always seem to have to look up (keyboard shortcuts?)
• make 1 note for each book you want to read, or movie you want to see

If you want a bit more of a challenge, do some scanning. I suggest making an EVERNOTE folder on your computer and have your scanner automatically put things for EN in there. Then go back and send it to EN. (There’s a lot more to this, but I’ll cover that later. This is enough for now.)

• take-out menus
• magazine article you want to save (business or personal)
• receipts (paper ones scanned in)
• digital receipts (email to your EN account) (challenge + for emailing to EN)
3. Now assign each of the notes to a notebook. You can do this by either dragging and dropping the note into the correct notebook, or you can select a notebook from the dropdown menu at the right of the note. I have some notes that just don’t seem to have a notebook I’d like them in, so I made a “Miscellaneous” notebook just to get things out of my auto-import notebook.

Some excellent resources are the Evernote Blog, Michael Hyatt, and the forums. You’ll find more information there than you’ll ever want to know. This is an amazing program. You owe it to yourself to give it an honest try and stop worrying about hoping you’ll find that scrap of note you wrote last Wednesday.

After you’re finished with this, be sure to come back and leave me a comment telling me how it went. I’d love to know your first impressions.

Just when you got it all figured out, Google comes along with Panda, the latest algorithm for their search engine, and changes the game. A lot of what used to work now doesn’t, and it’s hurting content farms, like How.com and About.com. But social media news giant Mashable seems to have a handle on it. By strategically placing social media links above advertising banners, they’ve managed to remain at the top.

Alternatively, Sports Illustrated puts their social links on the bottom of their site and gives priority to print and email buttons over social media icons, thus making people have to “work” harder to share their content.

The goal for Google is to bring more relevant content to the top of search results, give you more of what you’re really looking for, and weed out the automated, mechanical info. By bringing the best content to the top, which Google believes to be what is shared most frequently, it becomes obvious, and necessary, that sites make it as easy as possible for people to share their content.

http://emediavitals.com/content/seo-vs-smo-why-google-may-favor-social-media-optimization

Anderson Senior Center
Job Search Learning Lab
Friday 1:30-2:30pm

Are you out of work? Have you been out of work for a while now and feel like you’ve done everything you can to get a job, but you’ve long since run out of anything else you can do? Are you using every tool at your disposal to promote yourself? Are you using video?

Please don’t do a video resume: don’t read your resume and don’t give your whole work history. And PLEASE don’t give your interview on video. Use video as a finely honed instrument in your job search arsenal.

I will be doing a presentation on how to more effectively use video in your job search. We all know the ever-exponentially-growing popularity of video, and what a powerful medium it is for business. Too powerful to ignore. But have you thought about using video in your job search?

Come find out why you need to use video; what you should put in your video; and what to do with that video once you’ve created it.

We’d like you to signup, but if you can’t get to that and you’re still interested, please come anyway.

7970 Beechmont Ave., 45255 [BEHIND THE FIREHOUSE]
Every Friday
More info at jobsearchlearninglabs.wikidot.com

I am excited to announce that I have finally entered the world of smartphones. Although I am very technical, until now we were just not able to get into the mobile market. But about a month ago we were able to pick up an LG Optimus Android phone and Don got a msgm8 phone. With unlimited minutes, unlimited data and unlimited text, we don’t have to worry about extra charges for falling outside our plan. Without that worry, we can concentrate on how to best use mobile technology.

Step One: Apps

Of course the first thing I did was get my apps in order. I’ve used an iPod Touch for the last 3 years and while it does most of what an iPhone does (except for phone and camera features, of course), there were several apps I never did find or that worked just right for me. The most important to me being mileage tracking. It was the first app I looked for when I got my smart phone, and right away found one that did what I needed. You can check out more of my thoughts on this app in my review post. I will be doing more posts on my favorite apps, so I won’t go into that detail here.

Another big advantage with my Android phone has been the connectivity with Google. Instant sync with my calendar and tasks/to do’s (a serious lack for iPods), has increased the functionality of this device incredibly. One serious shortcoming I had with the Touch was finding apps with the ability to update the data on a computer. For instance, getting an initial task list setup would have to be done on the Touch; there was no correlated app on the computer. That would just be too difficult on that tiny screen and I wasn’t going to do it. So the second app I looked for was a task manager; and I found one in Astrid.

So just being able to find specific apps that work for me, that were seriously missing from Apple, has made me much happier. And, as an aside, I haven’t had to buy an app yet. There are a couple I’m considering purchasing or upgrading to full versions, but the functionality and variety of apps available at the free level is amazing.

I Can See Clearly Now

Now that I’m in the Mobile World, I’ve also gained a new perspective. For instance, being able to check-in at any time, like with Foursquare, has gotten me thinking about possibilities for this technology and how I might use it to help my clients grow their businesses.

Of course my favorite are the photo and video capabilities. The ability to instantly post photos and video has opened an incredible new world to me; a world of possibilities for business to use video to compete with larger marketing budgets, and to connect and engage with customers.

So i am very excited to begin this mobile journey. If you don’t know how mobile can help your business, drop me a line. I’d love to explore the possibilities with you.

I recently finished an exciting project I’ve been working on for quite some time. The whole video is made up of stock video clips. However, this particular project was edited as it was designed, meaning, we didn’t have a set script to follow ahead of time.

It was a work in progress most of the time. We knew the basic story and emotions we wanted to convey; it was just a matter of finding clips and putting them together to convey that message. So as I searched the clips, the site I found, Pond 5 (affiliate link), allows you to download a low res version of the clips you want. So along the way I downloaded about 30-40 clips that I worked with until I had the final video as I wanted. It ended up being 21 clips, including sound effects and music, that I then purchased.

Seeing as I wasn’t just looking for specific clips to place in a video, being able to use draft clips to create my project then replace them with the high res ones, enabled me to fluidly create my project, getting a pretty good feel for what it would look like, then purchasing just the clips I needed without having to buy clips I won’t need, or changed my mind on. Of course the video clips are much lower quality and have a watermark on them, and the sound effects and music have an audio watermark, but for design and creation purposes, it didn’t matter. Even my client didn’t mind.

This video shows how I replaced all those draft clips with the HD ones without having to, in essence, re-edit the entire video. It’s pretty much cut and paste.

Video is nothing to be scared of. Even now, after doing lots of videos, I still struggle with that final act of being on screen. But it’s definitely much better than it used to be. And it gets better every time. Each time I’m about to record and I feel that little twist in my stomach, I just remember last time it wasn’t so bad and whenever I mess up, I can redo it. Then I just press record and don’t worry about how good or perfect it is. It’s digital; I can throw it away and re-record. I’m the authority here, so I get to say what perfect means. IOW, if I say it’s perfect, it’s perfect. (Just a note, don’t get caught up in perfect. Perfect is overrated. We all know you’re not perfect because we aren’t either. But we are interested in what you have to say. We’re on your side, so don’t worry about it.)

No Fear Here

Unlike the #1 fear most people have, video is not public speaking. Well, in a way it is because the video plays publicly, but video is the public speaking that you get infinite do-overs (until the point that you’re just making excuses to not finish it). So relax about it. In fact, just record some video about whatever topic you enjoy. Pretend you’re talking to your best friend and sharing your hobby with them. Let your excitement and passion for the topic come through. You aren’t going to post this anywhere; it’s just to practice getting comfortable being on camera. Don’t even worry about the technicalities of audio, framing, and background at this point. Just record. It’s ONLY about you being on screen. Do this several times and you’ll get more comfortable each time. Eventually add in the technical elements to increase the video’s quality. But take your time. Even if you’re petrified to be on video, just keep working at it. You can throw it all away if you want. Just break that fear.

Then when you get to an acceptable point, share it with your friend, or a colleague. You still aren’t going to post it, but by letting someone else view it, you have brought the video outside of yourself and can now receive honest input. There’s always that self talk that tells you how a thing is, but by sharing that video you taking a little risk which will help break that fear some more. You will also get a different perspective of your video and things you may have been obsessing about are not even noticed to someone else. Because you are the one creating, you are the one that sees the flaws, but your audience won’t.

Here’s Where to Start

Plan a little bit about what you want to say, but you don’t have to memorize it. Perhaps write 3-5 points you want to cover and that’s it.
1. Chances are you have a webcam in your computer. If you don’t know how to access it, find out how. If you’re on a Mac, you can just open the PhotoBooth program. If you’re on pc, open the Movie Maker application.
2. Adjust the camera so that you’re fairly centered. Don’t have too much room over your head (called ‘headroom’). Just nicely centered is fine.
3. The camera should also be roughly at eye level. This will avoid the subconscious illusion of dominance by the viewer. Even though this is practice for now, they are some things to keep in mind even just starting so that you set a good foundation.
4. Press record.
5. Take a deep breath and count to 5 silently in your head. Then begin to speak. Talk about your kids. Talk about a fun vacation you took. Talk about the book you’re reading now. It doesn’t matter what the subject is at this point. Just make it interesting. Try not to ramble.
6. Aim for 1-2 minutes. You’re not doing a long video any time soon even when you’re ready to go public. Plus, it’s easier to watch and redo over and over when it’s shorter.
7. When you are finished talking, PAUSE. Count to 5 silently again in your head, looking at the camera with a smile. Then click Stop Recording. This way, even if you don’t have a remote and have to reach to the camera to stop and start record, you can easily edit that out.

That’s it. Easy peasy. Re-record as much as you need to get comfortable. Just be careful not to obsess about it before you can move on. Then share it with a friend.

I’d be glad to help you. If you’d like me to take a look at videos you produce, I’d be glad to give you pointers at whatever level you’re comfortable with. If you very, very new to video and just want someone else to look at it, or if you’ve done a few videos but want some tips to improve, I’m there for you.

Leave a comment below about your experience recording video, your fears that prevent you from recording video, or if you found this article at all helpful. If you want me to look at your video, just post it. I have to approve all comments before they’re made public, so you can remain private.

As popular as you can probably tell video is today, the amount of video found on the internet is expected to QUADRUPLE by 2014. And you need to be in that space. But you don’t need to worry about how huge that space is except where your competition is concerned. If you’re not using video, and your competition is, then you could be in trouble. Don’t let that happen. Start using video in your marketing plan today.