SOPA Sucks
The fun version: http://theoatmeal.com/ The long version, but important: The Bill – SOPA A good summary on why SOPA sucks by Mashable.
Where Google Search Plus Your World Goes Wrong
Remember the days of searching places like Yahoo to find the best results that fit? I can remember painfully clicking link after link to find the relevant search results on my search topic. Me and the back button? We considered getting engaged. I came across a Search Engine Land experiment on how the new Google Search plus Your World works. Google has done some pretty unremarkable things in the past (Hello turning off sharing in Google Reader!). The one thing they’ve always excelled at are their efforts to try and improve search results. For example, Panda was a huge move and it removed some of the most irrelevant sites from the top search results pool (spam, splogs).[.....]
Awaken Your Superhero – An eBook
Last year, my friend Chris took a long trip and asked a handful of people, including me, to write some inspirational stories on his blog for the period he was gone. Chris took the stories that we told and packaged them up in a free download, I wanted to share it with you – Awaken Your Superhero ebook style (also the name of his blog). Accompanied by some great minds, I wrote a post that pushed the boundaries of my usual writing style and includes the words “invisible pink monkeys”, if that doesn’t make you want to download and read it I don’t know what will. Other than I can promise that it will help[.....]
Top 5 Posts of 2011
Yeah I know it’s 4 days into 2012, so why am I looking back? Because I find it interesting which were my top 5 post last year and would like to share them with you because I know there are nuggets that will make you more productive if nothing else. Stop Using Your Inbox as a Todo List The last to do list you’ll ever need 4 Sanity Saving Tricks for Gmail Social Inbox Zero How Klout Scores Could Be More Useful to Marketers (though this applies to brands giving away perks too) Okay no more looking back, use these to help you jump forward and make 2012 a grand success!
3 Words and Goals for 2012 – Flow Insight and Commitment
At the first of the year, for a few years now, Chris Brogan has inspired me to think of and post three words that I want to strive to define the new year by. I had to think about it a bit more than usual this year as so many things have threaded through my life in the last few months making me question really where I want to go next. It’s been a bit of a challenge, but I like challenges and am ready to meet 2012 with the feistiness it deserves. Flow, Insight, Commitment. Flow There is a common thread running through each of the things that I do professionally. There are many strands[.....]
Social + Tech
About Chel
Geeky digital assistant learning to become more ninja warrior. Magepants, music lover, lead org PCBoston.
Saving small business owners' sanity since 2007.
Things I Highly Recommend
The Last To Do List You’ll Ever Need
Edit: cohuman is back!!!! You think I’m joking. I’m not. I’ve tried a great number of project management tools and/or todo lists out there. Trying in creative ways to make them work with my inbox so I can access the information I need plus get things done and share with my clients quickly. Most systems are trying to be everything for everyone in your business and therefore suck at being the one thing you need, especially if you’re a solo freelancer/consultant company who has many clients to share with. Sharing with individuals, getting them setup on your system and expecting that they’ll actually use it…well, let’s just say that’s not an easy thing to manage.[.....]
You Control the Social Firehose
After following this discussion on Google+ about the evolution of social network adoption and a number of other posts regarding excitement for a chance to cut down on the noise/shares/etc, I find I must point out something fairly obvious. Filtering social networks is YOUR responsibility. In 2007, FriendFeed was the shiny new tool at the moment. A lot of folks went to great lengths to add every other social network they were a part of. Including Twitter. The redundancy was incredibly annoying. I decided it wasn’t the best use of my time to read the same content twice (especially breakfast updates!) and promptly stopped listening to FriendFeed. If you find that are feeling overwhelmed with[.....]
Chel Consulting
For a couple months now, in between the craziness of work life, I’ve finally wrapped up the niggling little parts of what was left in getting my official business site launched. If you’ve always wondered what on earth it is that I do exactly, I hope this will help explain it a little more clearly. I would appreciate feedback if it does or doesn’t meet that goal. My blogging will remain on chelpixie.com Introducing ChelConsulting.com
Why you should stop using your inbox as a to do list.
Our inboxes are the hubs of our daily lives. Some of us check them the first thing when we roll out of bed. (That’s a bad habit too!) They store notes from various people that are important to us on some level trying to get our attention. But if we start to using it as keeping track of the things we need to get done, problems emerge. See one email but there are 3 tasks attached, one with a deadline? Get distracted by all the things that keep coming in instead of focusing on the tasks that need your attention? These create stress.
4 Sanity Saving Tricks for Gmail
As someone who values being as productive as possible, I find using Gmail helps me keep up with my inbox while trying to get things done. If you are a Gmail user yourself, there are some things that you can do to make life in your inbox a little less cluttered and stressful. Here are a few of my favorites: 1. Muted conversations Do you keep getting included on reply all threads that you don’t really need to be on? Mute the conversation! It will filter the email in the sense it won’t appear in your inbox, rather than you having to set up filters for individual emails. If you for some reason need the[.....]
Monday Morning Brand Quarterbacking
In the rapid fire internet time, brands can’t afford to have a divided message when social sharing. I can understand why companies think it’s risky to interact online with consumers after watching the Kenneth Cole debatcle unfold on Thursday followed by the Super Bowl ad gaff by Groupon on Sunday. The tweet by Kenneth Cole was in short, distasteful. The internets were fired up and pointing the blowtorch at Kenneth Cole. Someone deleted the tweet from his stream, followed up with a tweet pointing folks to an apology on Facebook. As a side note, they can’t seem to get their stories straight. It wasn’t a joke, it was a joke, it was a prank…..seems to[.....]
The Most Important Business Strategy In The World
“Only one thing matters in this life and that is to get them to sign on the line which is dotted” – Glengarry Glen Ross The following video is NSFW. The quote above summarizes the important part nicely, but the context is in the video. These are shiny objects: Your website Twitter Facebook Yelp Google Places Analytics SEO This is not: People who pay you money. What matters here? What’s going to keep your business open and thriving? Which of these things actually puts money into your account and helps you keep the doors open in a recession? The shiny objects can help you achieve some of these goals, it’s true. They cannot solve all[.....]
How to Say No (and Yes)
Lately I’ve heard a lot of people ask the question how do you say no to something constructively? Maybe you’re busier than you know what to do with, but someone’s emailing you with this one project, thing, idea that they must talk with you about, get your input on, a review of their book/blog/business plan, an interview, a quote, or just help with promotion. Sometimes they use the following line: “I know you’re busy but…”. The person on the other end sees a minor time commitment on this really awesome thing but you see your current to do list and calendar and groan. Here’s a way to say no: ”That looks/sounds like a fascinating[.....]
Top 5 Posts on Chelpixie.com in 2010
Looking back through my content for the past year, I noticed that the longer more research intensive posts were my top content. Much a surprise to me given content has somewhat become a #bite140 world. The posts are some of my favorites as well so I thought I’d do a short list of them here for new visitors. How to Market with Google’s Social Search Lessons from an Oil Spill: Green is the New Black Get Habilis to Email Files to Dropbox What Education Can Learn from Marketing What Telegraphing Can Teach You About Competitive Intelligence Looking forward to more to come in 2011. Thank YOU for visiting and reading.
3 Words for 2011
Chris Brogan is right. When I started thinking about the things I wanted to accomplish in this shiny new year, I realized it does boil down to 3 words to me. Not goals. For that, I have a mind map of goals that I need to accomplish this year which are measurable. I’ll add this. There will be changes and it’s okay to reevaluate if something shifts significantly. Change is inevitable. Actualization. Transition. Fearlessness. Actualization – Will. The will and courage to follow the map laid out for myself, to reach the goals that I need and want to reach for the year. To realize that each of these goals will make my life better[.....]
