I was surprised to get a Google Alert this evening stating that I had made Red Hot Copy’s 50 Coolest Marketers list. This is quite an honor for me to be recognized along with many of friends and several marketers I look up too. Thanks Lorrie for the honor of being on your 2009 list!
If you are unsure of what a Google alert is let me explain. This is a service that Google is working on it is currently still in beta but you can visit the url http://www.google.com/alerts.
When you get there you’ll see a form, simply enter the search term you are wanting “alerted” about the type of results you want for that search term such as news, blogs, videos, etc. I usually select comprehensive to include all types. select a couple other options as well as how you want it delivered either as a feed or sent to an email address I prefer to have mine sent to an email so that any new Alerts hit my in box. I have several set up for things I want to keep up on but I also have an alert set up for my name. If you don’t have one set up I’d suggest at least creating an alert for your name.
It’s pretty interesting to see how quick I receive an alert after I make a blog post. It’s also really cool when you get an alert like I got today.
I think the the “50 Coolest” list thing is a pretty cool idea. If you are reading this leave me a comment about a Blog you think is cool when I get the results i’ll post them in my own 50 coolest list! so go ahead leave your nominee in the comments below.
All the best and much success in everything you do!
Frank Deardurff III - That One Web Guy!
Ok this isn’t what it sounds like…
It’s not some promotion for a website dating service just a quick tutorial on how to add todays date on your webpage.
When creating a sales letter web page we like to include today’s date it creates the thought that the page is fresh and new and is proven to help conversion.
It is really an easy technique to implement.
I use a javascript include to do this, the main reason is to keep the code cleaner for the search engines to spider without having to sort through javascript code.
Anyway to get started just right click on your mouse (mac users ctrl + click) on the link below and download this file to your computer and then upload to your web site.
http://www.frankdeardurff.com/files/date.js
On your webpage insert the following code where you want the date to appear. (note if you have uploaded the script to a differnet location than where the page is you will need to be sure to check the path to the script and put that in the source path (src=”") below.
<script src="date.js"></script>
Another good place to use a similar script is in the footer where you always want the current year for your copyright.
Right click and save this file and follow the similar steps above.
http://www.frankdeardurff.com/files/year.js
<script src="year.js"></script>
I hope you find this useful for your website.
All the best and much success in everything you do!
Frank Deardurff III - That One Web Guy!
Ok I have to share this with you.
After my last blog post I decided to do at least one thing to grow my business each week.
So I looked at my action item list of things I wanted to get done but never did. This item happened to be the fact that when I moved my auto responders to Auto Response Plus I forgot to put messages in my main Newsletter/Contact series.
I know from past experience this is a good way to keep in touch with your customers and prospects. But in the hurried business life we live it was one of those things that kept getting put a side for “One Day”.
Well that “One Day” was today. I thought about 3 topics I wanted to write about for the messages. I figured 3 was a good start and will add more on a regular basis, usually the first ones are the hardest.
So I created the messages logged into my auto responder system plugged in my first message which was a “Welcome” message so that anyone new that signs up will get this greeting. Then on to the second and third setting the appropriate days to deliver.
Well here was the “mistake” apparently in setting the first message to “automatic” it did just as I had instructed… it automatically sent it out to everyone that had subscribed to this point. Just Great I thought, then in rethinking maybe it wasn’t such a bad think I mean I could write and explain what happened and it will be incentive to make sure I go back and add more content for those subscribers and will “force” me to stay ahead of the day count.
Here’s the lesson learned, first if it can be avoided to put off until “One Day” if possible, second if you do wait until “One Day” test your systems (LOL) and last be sure to take action on doing at least one thing a week to grow your business.
All the best and much success in everything you do!
Frank Deardurff III - That One Web Guy!
I’ve been thinking about this recently and thought I’d write about it here.
In the process of taking the steps to grow my business I realized I need to figure out where my business “IS” before I can build upon it.
Now my original thinking was this. I had gotten so busy “DOING” my business I’d lost sight of where I’m making money, where I’m spending money and where I’m loosing money.
In loosing money I mean, leaving money on the table in different areas, or not tracking billable time.
So during this thought process I decided to open up a spread sheet and start listing my websites, adding information such as domain, where it’s hosted and so on but also started to list if there was an opt-in page, url to sales page, thank you page etc.
Well in this exercise I noticed there were a lot of domains bought on a whim that “sounded” like a good idea. This got me thinking a little differently about my original thought “WHERE is my business?” Meaning not necessarily the position my business is in, but where is my business focus what area should I be focusing my business in training? development? service? applications?
Although I’ve yet to determine where my business is I realized by scattering my focus or looking to many places to make money, I may be loosing sight on what is making me the most money and what I enjoy doing most.
So the next plan of attack is to finish up the website list get rid of what isn’t making money. Look at what is bringing in money, determine if I want or like doing that part and focus the energy there to build my business further.
Obviously you have to figure where you are at before you can determine where you are going and if you have nothing to measure from you cannot determine growth.
Have you asked your self recently “Where is my business?” If so what steps did you take to refocus, measure or grow? I’d love to here your feedback on this.
All the best and much success in everything you do!
Frank Deardurff III - That One Web Guy!
Here’s another quick tip to help you AND your PC be more productive.
This tip is for Defragmenting your hard drive. Sounds scary I know but it’s not really. There is some debate whether this is still needed or not I believe it is. So first here’s the video on How to do it and if you want more information on what Defragmenting is read on past the video.
First let me explain what causes your files to be fragmented and what that actually is. We all know that are files are written to the hard drive and that our hard drives have so much space. So as files are added to your hard drive they are added to the next available space on the drive, kind of “stacked” if you can think of it that way.
If you think of a file as blocks and say you have a file that is stacked side by side 10 blocks long it fills that much space. The next file gets added filling how ever many blocks of space lets say 15 blocks. So now you have 25 blocks in a row.
So now after awhile you decide to delete the first file you added, the computer leaves that 10 block “gap” open for the next file to use, which is fine but the next file you save is not 10 blocks but 20 blocks. So the computer fills in the first 10 blocks and then puts the remaining 10 blocks in the next spot available.
The computer of course knows where to get all the pieces but as you can imagine the more and more this happens the longer it takes to get all the blocks (files) to open up the document you are wanting.
So you can see with the blocks being separated into sections or “fragments” it slows up the process. So by defragmenting it takes all of the pieces and rebuilds the data so that it’s all restored into one stack per file again. Which of course improves overall performance and makes us all happy again LOL.
If you found this video useful please let me know. It helps to know if I should add more in the future.
Also you might check out this other video on my blog Computer Cleaning Tip
All the best and much success in everything you do!
Frank Deardurff III - That One Web Guy!
