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
2011 Challenge: Learning to Love Sales
I hate sales. Let me rephrase that. I hate the idea of cold calling prospects, pinging Twitter accounts, filling people’s inboxes in hopes to get their attention long enough to take money from them. I find it highly distasteful. I hate the subtle sales pages that make promises for only $47 dollars you get a short education on how to make thousands of dollars. (I’ve been told those pages work to sell products. I have no direct experience but I still dislike them.) I prefer to sit down with potential clients and listen to what’s going on in their businesses and/or lives. I want to hear what they struggle with that keeps them from focusing[.....]
Tools for Web Development
As a web developer, I use many tools to wrangle websites and designs on a daily basis. Photoshop is a godsend when doing mockups but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Here are some other tools that help me with different aspects of the design and implementation process. Themes for WordPress Quite often, a client comes to me already having found a theme to modify for WordPress. I will take that theme and customize it to their specifications. I don’t have hours to spend looking through WordPress’ theme bank, so finding good reliable sources with great themes that I can refer clients to works wonders at saving time. One set of themes I love[.....]
6 Presentation Tips for the Neophyte
At both Podcamp Boston and Podcamp New Hampshire I gave a talk on social media and competitive intelligence. The last time I spoke in front of crowd as a presenter was at NewBCamp 1 in Providence. I came away from that talk discouraged at the idea of speaking in front of a crowd. Then I took lead org of Podcamp Boston, which came with an element of standing in front of people to welcome them. Not nearly as nerve wracking to me, but still I wasn’t confident in my abilities. When the time came to do stand up and do my session at Podcamp Boston I found that I was more confident and some part[.....]
How to Back Up Your Gmail Account
As a long time Gmail fan, every email that I send or receive goes through my gmail account. Once I was annoyed by it’s clustered conversations but then it won me over with keyboard shortcuts and amazing search of my inbox. One thing that does terrify me is their ability to lock you out of your account, taking several days to fix it even if you do the required reset to your password via text message or secondary email. While I have both set up in case of emergencies, I also have a backup. If you work remotely, you probably have a lot of important details in your inbox. Don’t risk getting locked out and[.....]
I have breasts
Now that I have your attention, go read this post by the awesomest lady, Tamsen: “I’d prefer my gender be an additional piece of information you know about me, rather than the primary one.” - Tamsen McMahon (@tamadear) If you don’t read it, you’re definitely a boob.
How to Sell Your Product in Less than a Minute
I read about SwiftKey after seeing it tweeted as a keyboard alternative for Android users. When I landed on the home page of their website I saw this: I immediately went to search for their app and paid for it. It took less than a minute to sell me on this product. I haven’t come to any conclusions about how effective it is and I don’t know anything about their customer service, but they got me to spend. While social matters, that sale is the ultimate goal. (Keeping customers is another blog post. ) How can you make people buy into your product when you have less than a minute? Does your website/landing page/marketing efforts[.....]
Podcamp Boston 5
It’s been a crazy 5 years, well, 4 for me, but 5 for Podcamp Boston. For those of you who do not know the history of Podcamp: A PodCamp is a usually free BarCamp-style community UnConference for new media enthusiasts and professionals including bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers, social networkers, and anyone curious about new media. The first PodCamp was held September 8-10, 2006 in Boston, Massachusetts. PodCamps are now being held worldwide. Podcamp Boston was co-founded by Christopher Penn and Chris Brogan in 2006. These two guys wanted to learn more and share what they knew about podcasting without traveling over to the west coast to do it, so they came up with the idea to[.....]
What Education Can Learn from Marketing
I recently finished a project that has required me to skim resources that are related to kids, education and digital media skills. It’s made me ponder our educational situation here in the U.S. I’m also pondering how the generational lag between teachers and students is, in some cases, contributing to a lack of very necessary skills for students graduating and learning in a digital age. It’s not a case of teachers being poorly trained but I think teachers aren’t aware of the potential resources at their disposal to help kids learn in ways that work for them as individuals. Enter Joseph Pine. Pine is a big believer in authentic experiences. When he spoke at TED,[.....]
How to backup WordPress completely
If your content matters to you, especially content on your WordPress site, then please take a few moments to back it up. It’s much like your backup of your hard drive. You wouldn’t pass on that, don’t pass on this. Work it into your morning routine. You’ll need complete backups in order to restore with confidence. How do you do this? First, backup your content by exporting it from WordPress. Like so. It really does take 60 seconds. If you really don’t have 60 seconds a week to think about this, hire me. At least do it weekly, if you blog more often, daily. Second, backup the database. You can do this three ways.[.....]
Writing Shorter Email Subject Lines for Mobile Mail
How short are your subject lines? Do you find the majority of your customers are reading your email newsletters on their mobile devices? In January this year, PEW released a report on Internet, broadband, and cell phone statistics stating that they “…found that 83% of adults have cell phones or smartphones”. With mobile use increasing and Apple’s iPad release this year, it’s important to be as concise as you can when sending emails and especially, newsletters. If you’re like me on the go, your attention goes to the most compelling things in your inbox, the rest gets ignored and then archived if it’s not important. Blue Sky Factory often talks about telling your customers what[.....]
