Paul Graham published this essay back in May. It’s called “How to Be Silicon Valley”. In it he talks about how smart people tend to go where other smart people are. It turns out he is also from here in Pittsburgh and he thinks we have the smart people to do the job, but because of our lousy winter weather we don’t have enough rich people (at least the VC kind) to make this place the technology center that we are desperately trying to become. I see this kind of thing going on most everywhere and this seems to be as good of an explanation as any.
I know it’s not one of my usual topics, but it’s an essay well worth reading.
I recently found SEMPO. They seem to be a very good organization with the main goal of helping people with search engine marketing.
SEMPO Mission: SEMPO is a global non-profit organization serving the search engine marketing industry and marketing professionals engaged in it. Their purpose is to provide a foundation for industry growth through building stronger relationships, fostering awareness, providing education, promoting the industry, generating research, and creating a better understanding of search and its role in marketing.
They have some very interesting sections to their website including: Training programs, articles and many other resources. I am just getting started with their information, but I have seen enough of it already to recommend it.
Using e-mail to communicate with long distance customers can be a challenge to say the least. I wrote a small article on the subject. The trick is to convey your message as well as to understand what your customer is trying to get across without clues from body language or voice inflections. I found it’s always best to assume that you need to spell out in great detail what you want to say or ask.
There are many other issues to using e-mail to communicate with friends or customers. Etiquette, security, and just plain effectiveness can be very tricky topics. Here’s a post by itsecurity.com called “Hacking Email: 99 tips to make you more secure and productive” it covers many of these issues.
“We consider ourselves an open source magazine — participants have access to everything the editors have access to…. In traditional magazines, it’s all about hoarding until that last moment and then going ta-da – buy the magazine!” Issue 7 of JPG Magazine had 2,400 submissions come together to make this great looking photog mag.
The production of the bi-monthly magazine relies completely on photography submitted by users of their online community.
This is a very interesting idea. If one of your pictures gets published they will give you a free subscription and $100.00
A very happy Thanksgiving to all of you in the USA
I still get an occasional e-mail from well meaning friends that tell me that the newest virus is on the loose. It is undetectable, not repairable, and if I open a certain attachment a hammer will pop out of my screen and smash my hard drive to bits.
Unfortunately it’s just not that simple anymore. While it’s still not a good idea to open an attachment that you don’t know or has a possible executable file in it, many attacks target your machine from a web page or don’t have to be opened at all.
Your best bets are still, keeping all of your software especially your virus protection up-to-date, scan regularly for spyware, don’t open any attachments except the ones that you are expecting form a trusted source.
Real virus warnings are rarely sent by e-mail, not unless you request it and don’t say things like “it will erase everything on your computer.” They usually look more like this…
Are you marketing with e-mail? Many people say that e-mail marketing id dead, killed off by SP*M. I still know many people who don’t know what a blog is. I still think that direct e-mail can be a valuable tool to help you promote yourself or your business as long as you do it right.
You need to make sure that people actually ask for your e-mails.
Send them good information, not junk. People will repay you with value if you send them something they perceive as valuable.
Try to be regular with your mailings. The tricky part is not sending too many. How often varies from list to list and category to category, but If you start to think that you are sending too often, you probably are.
Don’t abuse the privilege of sending them e-mail and they will most likely will read and react your information.
Michael Fleischner wrote this post called “7 Steps for Improving Your Email Marketing”. It has some good advice.
Here?s something for some fun on a Friday. (Not responsible if you get caught playing at work)
Astronomers at New York City’s Hayden Planetarium and Rose Center for Earth and Space think space exploration should be easily accessible to anyone. To make that possible, they offer an interactive atlas of the universe that anyone can download for free.
When I first started designing my site I wrote a section called “Start Your Own Website“. I thought it would be a good place to provide tips to people who wanted to learn how to design their website themselves. It could also be a section that would help people who had some knowledge, but wanted some more information.
Today I read an article by Terry Markle called “How To Write A Mini-Course” and I thought this section of my site with some updating could be a very good mini-course. Since I wrote this section have been adding most of the new information into my blog instead of there.
I have been writing about other people who got great publicity by giving away free e-books and mini-courses so why shouldn’t I? Terry’s article gave me some very good ideas and I’m going to start working on it today. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.
Scott Ginsberg, aka “The Nametag Guy,” has been wearing a nametag 24-7 to make people friendlier. (Has been since November 2, 2000.)
Although this idea started out as sort of an experiment, he has somehow managed to leverage it into a full-blown career, consisting primarily of:
1) Writing books (5 real ones, 5 electronic ones)
2) Publishing columns (2 blogs, 100+ articles)
3) Giving speeches to companies and organizations worldwide (200 or so)
?on topics like being approachable, becoming unforgettable and making a name for yourself.
He has released another free e-book. This time one called “203 Things I’ve Learned about Writing, Selling and Marketing Books”. It’s a good and easy read, packed full of great tips.
