Alex gives us an excellent WP learning tip in “WordPress Export And Import Saves The Day!”
I want to tell you all that my attitude about “bugs” which always surface is not: Oh! I am disparate, God! Why me…
NO, a bug is an opportunity to investigate and learn more.
Long time ago, I was a Programmer Analyst at Sony Corporation of America, in the above picture is the group I was working with. In first row is Phil our boss holding help sign, I am in his back, with our team.
We had a project in which everybody wrote CICS programs for a couple of month, it was around 60 programs for an Account Receivable application. When we had 2 month left to the dead line, we started to connect programs.
It was a mess, we had at least 3-5 CICS bugs per day, and nobody in group was a heavy duty CICS specialist. Some point Phil was exasperated, he said, “let’s create a debugging squad, who is volunteering to get in this group”. I was a deep silence, nobody wanted to mess with this topic, and CICS was very hard to debug…
I kept for a while my eyes on my colleges as I expected them to jump, I was with the group for less then one year (probably 8-9 month) and I learned some CICS with a 3 weeks course and just doing it…
Some point my eyes intercepted Phil’s who was looking at me… Hm! It was hard to take the plunge, but finally I said: “consider me in this group” hoping that others will volunteer as well.
When nobody else volunteer to be in the group, Phil said
- “Michey you will work directly with me
- I will provide for you all you need including my time
- You will get all your overtime paid
- We need to make the 2 month dead line”
I wasn’t a happy camper at all, but… I said to myself, I didn’t have a choice, I must do it!
It was a hell of a 2 month experience, Phil and I connected all the programs, corrected errors in database, and met our dead line.
Guess what in 2 month of fixing “bugs” I really learned CICS, and I was the expert on our group from that point on, and that event catapulted my carrier at Sony.
Why? Because I have the courage to take the risk, to get out of my comfort zone, to work hard… and YES fix the bugs.
That was also a life lesson for me.
Now, I am not a hypocrite.
I am not telling you that when a bug appears, I am happy.
But I am telling you that I try to turn the experience of fixing a bug in a positive learning lesson.
Alex and I we spent almost a day testing all kinds of ideas and finally fixed the bug, and YES, we learned a lot doing it.
And Alex graciously shares with you our experience.
This is my way to say Thank you Alex.
To you happy blogging experience
Michey
PS As you can see not all bugs are ugly, the nature is the best creator!
Popularity: 36% [?]
Tags: courage, fix bug, learning, life lesson, take risk
Google releases new powerful features for Google Analytics:
- The annotations which allows users to make comments on graphs
- Custom variables
- New wizard to create and tweak the Google Analytics code with advanced functions built in:
- configure the code for multiple domains
- advanced campaign tracking
- mobile tracking and so on
Google really is a prolific, and pro-active company, sometimes they surprise me. I point you to the best source of info a have:
http://searchengineland.com/google-analytics-adds-new-features-31624
I also give you a very interesting prospective about what is working in Social Media Marketing.
It is a statistical study which tells you a lot about trends, and can surprise you as well. They surprise me, and this is the reason I want to share with you :
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007449
It doesn’t make sense to cut and paste, I decide to send you to the sources I use to inform myself.
With this post I start a new categories “Trends”, keep an eye on it!
Enjoy a good reading,
Michey
Popularity: 78% [?]
Tags: B2B, B2C, Custom variables, Google Analytics
Short and sweet, the Part III is on, biggest benefit is Alexa and how to make the most of it creating and acccount for your main site on the wheel:
http://michaelacernescu.com/help-free-marketing-tools-part-3/
One more part and I am done with free helpful software. I am using them and I save some time for the creative part of this beautiful work. I hope you do the same.
To your success
Michey
Popularity: 52% [?]
It is hard to keep work in line with time, many projects, information overload.
The time for cretion, inovation, new ideas, training for new products and so on is sometime reduced to extreme.
I always was in favor of using tools which gives me back the time I need for the creative part of Internet adventure.
I start today a series of posts about the Marketing Tools I use to get my time back for what I love to do. If you have the same problem as me, look it over:
http://michaelacernescu.com/help-free-marketing-tools-part-1/
As of Dec 12:
http://michaelacernescu.com/help-free-marketing-tools-part2/
other posts will follow soon.
If you use other time saving free packages I want to hear from you
Until next time all the best Michey
Popularity: 69% [?]
Tags: affiliate marketing, Google tools
In the previous lens we had a chat about Affiliate mistakes – well I have another Affiliate mistake.
It will be a huge and costly mistakes not to comply with FTC new rules.
Federal Trade Commission is the nation’s consumer protection agency, and the mission of it is to protect consumers from fraudulent business practices. FTC created new Guidelines for:
- Bloggers
- Affiliates
- On-line advertisers
- Internet Merchants
You will find all details on a new lens I created:
http://www.squidoo.com/FTC-new-rules
Look it over, in a nut shell it is about:
- Testimonials
- Endorsements
- Transparency
I have mix thoughts about this.
In General I like clear, clean rules to follow. In this particular case, there are a lot of gray area of interpretation.
The goal is to keep marketers honest, which might seem like an easy task – how about “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” – but it’s not that easy because we all have different ideas of what constitutes the whole truth in various situations, and in some specific marketing situations.
It is easy to say this product is good for me, but what is good for me cannot be good for everybody, and the guideline suggest to take in consideration Generally Expected Performance of the product. This is subjective.
Or, let’s say I am a affiliate marketer, and I can say this is a terrific product I made $10,000 in 2 weeks, other affiliate will say I made only $500 in 2 weeks. This means that the product is mediocre? NO! this means that the first affiliate is a better professional then the second one, but it is the human nature, the second is not going to give high marks for a product which produce so little for him…
In reality, you get in trouble if the FTC decides your advertisement is “deceptive.”
The Consumer endorsements rule is going to have a major impact on the affiliate marketing industry, because now, if you have affiliates, they could subject you to liability if THEY don’t follow the rules. And if you ARE an affiliate, expert, or other person defined as being a “sponsored” endorsement or testimonial, you could face liability if you do not disclose the nature of your sponsored relationship, or if you say something deceptive in your endorsement, review, or testimonial.
Looks simple but it is not.
As an affiliate I’ll be as open as I can, and I’ll keep an eye and an open mind about what happen.
Reading the entire lens will give you more ideas about the process of being complient with FTC rules.
Until next time
Regards and be well Michey
Popularity: 94% [?]
Tags: compliant, endorsments, FTC, testimonials
It is an intrigue title for our chat today, especially if you know me as an enthusiastic fun of Web 2.0, but “big success” sometime is accompanied by a couple of clouds, a myth is created too quickly, misuse can occur as well.
In the old days of Web 1.0, we struggled to get traffic spending money with PPC, and creating a big volume of buzz in ezines, forums, blogs.
After a while people was tired losing money or exhausted with the amount of “volume” they had to provide.
Now I recognize that in this process a lot of winners popped up, but not everybody was a winner. To be honest with you, I know more people losing money with PPC vs. gaining what they hope for.
In this background, Web 2.0 was born, and people embraced the new wave with great anticipation, hope, and excitement for 2 reasons:
- Web 2.0 applications are FREE therefore they can produce FREE traffic
- Web 2.0 looks easy, easier than SEO tactics, which changes so frequently
Some Web 2.0 enthusiasts consider the new platform the greatest invention, after the sliced bread, born to solve all our problems.
Mistakes were made:
- Some people started to ignore SEO tactics
- Other people spread too thin among Web 2.0 application
The temptation was great, but there were over 400 Web 2.0 applications. I knew fellow marketers who put their names in over 100 Sites, but it was impossible to post frequently enough in all of them. They don’t even dream to use all Web 2.0. Applications and finish being sick and tired of them.
Then the history repeated itself, the users of Web 2.0 realized that:
- They still need volume, this time web 2.0 volume
- And just volume traffic is not good enough, we need targeted traffic, otherwise we have a very low conversion
- Many start to outsource traffic creation, but the demand for outsourcing increase, and the good companies doing it become expensive over the night
Last time when I look over a company which is good on traffic creation, they jump their fee at $400.00 per month. Just think about a membership which will charge you $400.00 per month just to produce free traffic. Well, first of all your traffic is not free anymore.
For some marketers who are well established this is nothing, but for majority, and especially for beginners it is hard to commit to spend this type of money for “free traffic”.
The good news is that Web 2.0 Applications have an incredible speedy development and a couple of valuable trends already exist:
- Creating groups/community/tribes per a specific niche, this is an excellent idea as within this communities the traffic is targeted
- Combining the power of Blogging with the power of communities
- “Tagging” or “Folksonomies”, the short for folks and taxonomy
- Twitter implements his own version of grouping, allowing the creation of lists per user-ID
In Squidoo world, we know from Seth Godin about the value of creating communities/tribes, these are two (2) good examples for above bullet one and two:
http://crabbysbeach.com/blogs/
http://make-money-blogging.crabbysbeach.com/blogs/
I want now to chat a little about a new consumer phenomenon “tagging”/”folksonomies”.
Tagging is powerful because consumers are creating an organizational structure for online content. You can file away content under tags, and share it with others by filing it under a global taxonomy that they created. Tagging is catching on because it is a natural complement to search, and in World Wide Web (www) searching tools are crucial.
Here’s how tagging works. Using sites such as:
- del.icio.us – a bookmark sharing site
- tagfoot – also a bookmark sharing site
- Flickr – a photo sharing site
- Youtube – a video sharing site
consumers are collaborating on categorizing online content under certain keywords, or tags.
Let say an individual posts photos of his iPod on Flickr and file it under the tag “iPod.” These images are now not only visible under the individual user’s iPod tag but also under the community iPod tag that displays all images consumers are generating and filing under the keyword. Right now Flickr has more than 5,000 photos labeled “iPod.”
Even though tags are far from perfect, marketers should, nevertheless, be using them to keep a finger on trends and niches. Start subscribing to RSS feeds to monitor how consumers are tagging information related to your product, service, and company. These are living focus groups that are available for free, 24/365.
Now marketers started to use Folksonomy sites to unleash viral marketing campaigns, but marketers should be transparent in who they are, why they are posting the link/photos and avoid spamming the services.
We all know and enjoy Twitter when we had 300-500 followers, as soon we by passed 2000 followers we lost control and started wander about effectiveness of having thousands of non targeted followers.
Recently Tweeter come with a solution – lists, if some people are interested in what I am doing, saying they create a list using my user ID, if I am interested in some specific topics, I can create list per user ID, but in reality the grouping is per keywords that user-ID represents.
Look on my twitter ID
You will find that I create and follow 8 list, and there are 6 lists following me.
I really think that, grouping and tagging will bring us to a different level of leveraging the power of Web 2.0 Applications.
Until next time, all the best
Michaela
Popularity: 63% [?]
Tags: communities, free traffic, grouping, tagging, tribes, twitter lists, Web 2.0, web2
When I saw first time “SocialOomph“… looked as a typo to me! I clicked on and I discovered that TweetLater is now SocialOomph!
The new site inherit the old functionality of TweetLater and add ton of new features which completely blow my mind.
You know that people want to hear from YOU. That is why they followed you in the first place.
But some people tell you that the best way to gain more followers is through following more people yourself. This is a misconception, which distorts what Twitter is all about.
Twitter is a social platform, and social means interaction.
So, Do you want more followers?
1. Participate in the conversation.
That means, actually read, compliment, add to, and/or comment on what people are saying.
2. Entice others to compliment, add to, and/or comment on what YOU are saying.
Don’t just through affiliate links on people, start up conversations. People voluntarily follow others whom they find interesting, they also voluntarily reply to you, and voluntarily retweet your tweets. All those beautiful interactions are not going to happen without you starting and maintaining a conversation.
3. Twitter has a viral power:
- Every time that somebody reply to you, their followers see your Twitter username, and
- Every time they retweet you, their followers see your Twitter username and your tweet.
The Golden rule for affiliate links.
You cannot explain the benefits of a product in 140 characters, but you can create a Squidoo lens, or HubPage, or Blog post about that product.
Then you create a Tweet in which you send people to that Squidoo lens, HubPage, or Blog post where you tell your experience with the product.
You don’t send people from a tweet directly to an Affiliate link!
The most complains are related with time consuming: “we don’t have time to read all, to respond to all” and so on…
Sure, but this is why the wise and sophisticated people create tools.
SocialOomph is this type of tool which come in a FREE version and a Professional version as well, and can vastly improve your productivity:
- Schedule tweets, just plan them. Schedule and keep your Twitter stream ticking over with new tweets even when you’re not on your computer. It helps you to publish tweets when you know your international followers are online
- Track keywords on Twitter. Set up alerts and track keywords in the public Twitter stream. They will monitor the Twitter tweet stream and periodically email you those keywords.
- Save and reuse drafts which will save hours of typing. Save tons of time by avoiding repetitive typing.
- Send automatically welcome DMs to new followers. Send a nice non-promotional DM to new followers that focus on them and your future interaction with them, or simply to thank them for choosing to follow you.
- Bit.ly URL shortening. If you add your bit.ly URL shortening account details to your SocialOomph profile, and they will shorten your links with it so that you can track the clicks on all your links.
- Follow those who follow you. Automatically follow people who follow you.
- Unfollow those who unfollow you. Automatically unfollow someone when they unfollow you if that is your preference.
- View @Mentions and Retweets, this is multi-account efficiency. They make it a breeze for you by showing your @mentions and/or retweets for all your Twitter accounts on one page, in one integrated timeline.
- Purge your DM Inbox. Manually delete DMs from your Inbox is a pain. You can run a purge on your Inbox to delete everything, or DMs older than 7 days, or DMs older than 30 days.
- Personal status feed, your own tweet engine. You can schedule and publish tweets that don’t go to Twitter, they go to your personal tweet stream, which is available in RSS, XML and Javascript formats.
- Unlimited Twitter accounts. Add and manage as many Twitter accounts as you want FREE
- Automated keyword searches and find targeted friends. Enter your keywords and they will search for Twitter users who tweet about those topics and present them to you so that you can decide whether you want to follow them or not.
- Filter the profiles, avoiding spammy accounts. Configure your Friend Finder so that it will look only for Twitter users that conform to your specific criteria.
- Automated limits this means quality, not quantity. The Friend Finder is a tool to easily find quality Twitter users whom you can follow if you choose to do so.
- View predefined channels. With our predefined tweet channels, you can view the tweets from selected breaking news sites, technology news sites, celebrities, musicians, and more, grouped together for easy viewing of tweets that relate to a specific topic.
- Define your own channels, unlimited tweet groupings. Define your own tweet channels so that you can see tweets from a selected number of friends, or selected Twitter accounts, in your own private channel. You can define an unlimited number of channels. You don’t even have to follow a person to include in a channel.
- Identify influential followers, build profitable relationships. They analyze your list of followers and show you the top fifty followers who have the most clout. Build relationships with the folks who have the most clout and develop mutually beneficial cooperation on shared interests.
- Manage DMs With Automatic SPAM Control.
- Manage DMs of all your Twitter accounts. You have all direct messages of all your Twitter accounts on one central and integrated console.
- Automatically weed out SPAM. Tell the system who and what to treat as SPAM, and we will make sure you never even see those DMs in your Direct Message Manager. They delete those SPAM DMs from your Twitter DM inbox.
- Filter out SPAM words, define your own. Set up words and phrases that you consider as SPAM and we will automatically get rid of any DM that contains any of those words.
- Apply decisions of others , Community SPAM decision-making. Tell the system to automatically treat as SPAM any Twitter account that has already been flagged as SPAM by any of your fellow SocialOomph Professional users.
- Manage all your Twitter accounts with TweetCOCKPIT. You easily manage all your Twitter accounts from one central and integrated console.
- Integrate all timelines and keywords. This can be a great boost your productivity. On one page in TweetCOCKPIT, see your normal timelines and additional tweets that contain certain keywords regardless of whether you follow the tweeter or not.
- Filter your timelines, tune in only on favorite friends. Even though you follow thousands, configure your timeline in TweetCOCKPIT to display tweets only from the handful of people you’re more interested in hearing from.
- Do the same action on multiple accounts, big time saver. Want to follow, unfollow, or block a person on more than one Twitter account with one click.Tweet and retweet something on more than one Twitter account with one click. Favorite a tweet on more than one account with one click. All those scenarios are possible.
- Forward DMs to others. Easily forward a DM to someone else, just one simple click and you’re done.
- Mute annoying tweeters, and avoid frustrations. Whether you follow a person or not, mute people in TweetCOCKPIT if they annoy you. You won’t see their tweets. Unmute them whenever you feel like it.
- Hide read tweets, unclutter your view. When you’ve read a tweet, hide it and it will not show up again and clutter your view.
- … and much more
The functionality of this SocialOomph package overwhelm me!
Until next time, all the best!
Michey
Popularity: 72% [?]
Tags: SocialOomph, tweet, TweetLater, Twitter
In the last year, I got in the habit of stopping after each Milestone of my Projects and looked back in a constructed way.
I analyze the accomplishments, openly acknowledge the failures, and shape the new phase of my projects in a way which I must benefit, and learn from mistakes.
I firmly believe that if we don’t learn from our mistakes, we don’t grow with a consistent speed. Years ago I use the method of “trial and error”, it is possible to work that way, but it is time consuming.
Now is the right time for me, for a milestone reflecting break.
The last project – coaching a small team on Squidoo Challenge, called Michey’s Musketeers on JJJ 2.
What I learned doing coaching:
- I never hesitate to help, but help must be done on request
- I learn to listen carefully to my team’s needs and then guide them with their work
- Visiting all the lenses as a coach, I made the effort to comment, rank, and favorite as objective as I can
- The success as a coach was coming from my attitude, always polite, I put a equal sign between me and team members, I always said “I am learning from you and you are learning from me” and our Motto in Michey’s Musketeers group was ”all for one, and one for all”
- Based on my attitude and hard work, I have now more Squidoo friends
- I learned to be flexible, but firm in my convictions
My failure:
- The worst was that I ended up working on many projects at the same time (4-5 projects), this slowed down my speed, made me put in hold work which was really important to me
- Other consequence was that I create a small number of lenses and I scarified my chance for Giant-100, I had to choose between my personal interest and helping the team
My measures for a better future.
At the beginning of coaching period I created a lens for my team which presented the team members, guided the team, and I posted a lot of help lenses to learn from, which was viewed as a great help.
The first action:
After the Challenge ended, I transformed the Musketeers lens on a Resource Lens for everyone interested to learn more about the Squidoo techniques, tricks, and specifics. Doing this I tried to keep the flame of Musketeers alive.
This is how the lens looks now:
http://www.squidoo.com/Micheys-Musketeers
The second action:
I chose only 2 projects to work at the same time, if is not going to work, I’ll cut down to just one project at the time. It is possible to work as the projects have some common parts, but I need to see how is working.
I’ll tell you later about that main project, in this post I want to emphasize the need of a Milestone break as part of your strategy for success for any type of projects.
I really think that milestone breaks must be part of any working plans. The prerequisite to make this strategy work is the following chart of planning events:
A. You create a VISION of your project with the END on mind. This is a long term vision.
B. You create GOALS which must lay down specifics, must be serious but attainable, must have deadlines, those are short term bullets.
C. Then you create the PLAN. This plan must include the Milestones/Phases, don’t go with the entire project as a single phase.
D. After you did all those 3 elements, you think about what motivate you, and you must make a COMMITMENT to stick with your Vision.
You will change the course from time to time, but having a Vision created with the end in mind will keep you motivated, and will keep you from mistakes which will digress from your vision.
Until the next time, all the best
Michey
Popularity: 59% [?]
Tags: Business Strategies, commitment, milestone breaks, project goals, project plan, project vision
This is Michey, I have some questions for you:
Do you Squidoo? I do!
Do you Tweet? I do!
Do you Blog? I do in many places!
http://michaelacernescu.com
http://squidooeventlog.com
http://affiliatemarketingreviews-mc.blogspot.com/
Do you… crabbysbeach, I do and I welcome you on my new blog on crabbysbeach! It is a blogging community set up by our Squidoo friend Alex. If you are looking for a place to promote your niche, this is the place to be!
Yes, I know you will do this, you will create your own crabbysbeach blog!
How I know? Well, we all love Web 2.0 Applications, and by the way, I know you, I met you somewhere in the fabulous world of Web 2.0…
Then you and I are probably Squidoo friend, let’s start talking!
My interests are:
1. Affiliate marketing
2. Creation of Digital Products
3. Free traffic with Web 2.0
4. Blogging my way to prosperity
5. Learning and keep abreast with new technology
6. I am addicted to Squidoo, Twitter, RedGage, SecondLife and so on
What about you?
Until the next time
Regards Michey
Popularity: 52% [?]
Tags: crabbysbeach, Squidoo, Web 2.0
michey