Facebook Staff Takes a Company Field Trip to See “The Social Network” [PHOTO]

October 1, 2010

Our Favorite YouTube Videos This Week: The Cinema Edition

October 1, 2010

Recently Trending

Minecraft: How Social Media Spawned a Gaming Sensation View Comments Facebook Upgrades Photos: Look Out, Flickr View Comments Google Wants to Kill the JPEG: Meet WebP View Comments IMDb Turns 20, Launches Original Video to Celebrate View Comments Nokia N8 Shipments Begin View Comments Digg Founder Burned Out, May Leave by End of 2010 View Comments

Article source: http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/a1xOQHejXh4/

Posted by Charlie | Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off

Why Don’t You Just “Go Google Yourself”

October 1, 2010

MIKE BOWLER, SR. has been in the real estate business (Lansing, MI) for the past 32 years. During that time hes educated and consulted hundreds of REALTORS. Mike is a former owner/broker of Coldwell Banker Bowler Real Estate and is currently an Associate Broker for Coldwell Banker Hubbell Briarwood in Lansing Michigan, who bought his company in 2001. He also owns his own company PRETEC (Professional Resources, E-Business, Technology, Education, Consulting) and is also an avid fan of social media in the workplace. Mike was named in 2009s Top 25 Most Connected Real Estate Professionals by PROXIOand selected by Inman News as one of the 50 Most Influential Online.

OK, that might sound a little crude for a title, however its Fun Friday and I was told to make this post fun. With all the amazing changes, challenges, and innovations coming at us real estate agents in this industry, its difficult to find much fun in the fact that we need to be thinking about and doing something about the following everyday:

Websites
IDX
Blogs
Social media
Having a profile on various portals
Syndication of our listings

Let alone

Bank foreclosures
Mitigation
Short sales
Price reductions

Most of the items above didnt even exist a few years back, however thats what makes this business so much fun and yet challenging. We have an opportunity every day to learn something new. So, if you take offense to the list above or the video below and think Im full of it, you can Just Go Google Yourself and see what you find. Happy Fun Friday!

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Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheFutureOfRealEstateMarketing/~3/g3wiJIKMgHE/

Posted by Charlie | Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off

Methodology: Brainstorming Awesome Business Blog Posts

October 1, 2010

Methodology: Brainstorming Awesome Business Blog Posts

It can be very tricky to come up with ideas for new blog posts, especially if youre just getting started and need inspiration. I have a brainstorming method that I love to use when helping teach new bloggers how to get started thinking about their keywords while creating good content. For some inspiration, follow along with me here as we write an optimized blog outline together.

1. Make a list of your most important keyword phrases.

This isnt a tough step Think about your dream long-tail keywords that you salivate at getting found on, perhaps outsourced recruiting service or dire straits cover band. Make sure its something searchable Imagine if someone searched for that phrase and found your blog post.

2. Re-read this phrase, but ask yourself a question using it.

For example:

When someone needs help with an outsourced recruiting service, what questions should they be asking me?

If I was at a cocktail party and someone said they were having trouble finding a 70s rock cover band for a party, what would I advise them on?

You probably get these kinds of questions all the time, anytime that you talk about what you do. Close your eyes and think about the last time you had this conversation. The great thing about these questions is that they play to what you already know best The questions your peers have about your business.

3. Write down these questions.

Keep going until you have at least five questions. Youll end up with something like this:

Outsourced recruiting services, questions they should have:

They hit a situation where they are about to experience major growth, and need to hire 100 new staff by the end of the year in order to meet their goals. Do you handle this type of job? Can you handle a volume of 100 people in 3 months? What industry experience do you have? Do you have any references of clients who you did something similar for? How can you help my other departments, like HR, absorb the change? What do you offer that is similar or different to the other RPO vendors?

This leads into your blog post pretty quickly. Keeping the above example: What do you need to consider when onboarding large numbers of staff?

This speaks directly to the actual problem that your blog reader is facing, and establishes your expertise on the area. Reading this, no one can doubt that you know all of the important issues to consider when hiring 100 employees in a short period of time, and would be a great resource to have at your side. By expanding on each of your questions and points more fully, you have a rich outline with your important keyword for that blog post scattered thoughtfully through the content, and ready to take expand into a full post.

4. Review your outline.

At the end, your outline should look something like the below:

Blog post: What do you need to consider when onboarding large numbers of staff?

Issue 1: Do you have the training staff?

Issue 2: How would HR handle that influx of new staff?

Issue 3: Are you prepared to interview 300 people in three months to fulfill 100 positions?

Offers: If these are the kinds of questions youre asking yourself, you should contact us because we can help / download our case study of how we did this with Company X?

How do you generate new blog article ideas for your business blog?

Photo Credit: andyp uk

Free Webinar: Blogging for Business

Want to learn more about publishing a blog on your business website?

Download the free webinar to learn how to create a thriving inbound marketing blog.

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Posted by Brian Whalley on Thu, Sep 30, 2010 @ 12:00 PM

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HubSpot/~3/xcEXrlBoKTs/Methodology-Brainstorming-Awesome-Business-Blog-Posts.aspx

Posted by Charlie | Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off

New Data: Want More Leads? Offer Downloadable Content

October 1, 2010

New Data: Want More Leads? Offer Downloadable Content

This post is a sneak peak at the exclusive new data from the upcoming Science of Lead Generation webinar on October 12th. Register now to reserve your spot. Remember, it’s more important how much business your site generates, than what it looks like.

One of the most important elements of lead generation is creating compelling offers to entice people to give you their contact information.

To understand what offers usersperceiveto be the most valuable, I conducted a survey asking people to rank a handful of offer types.

The results show that people prefer content-based offers rather than “demo” type offers which imply a more sales-oriented process. If you want leads, try offering a downloadable kit, or a free trial of your product.

Free Webinar: Science of Lead Generation

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Posted by Dan Zarrella on Fri, Oct 01, 2010 @ 06:00 AM

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HubSpot/~3/Tsf3Gq4CMq0/New-Data-Want-More-Leads-Offer-Downloadable-Content.aspx

Posted by Charlie | Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off

How Low Will They Go?

October 1, 2010

The average national interest rates on a 30-year fixed rate home mortgage fell to 4.32% for the week ending Thursday, September 3r^d,according to Freddie Mac. Though this is a recordbottom and rates have since risen, the question remains: how low will they go?

It is clear that there is a strong focus on using the housing industry and mortgage interest rates to help spur the economy. In the past year, the Fed has driven interest rates down to help homeowners refinance to lower their monthly housing expenses and to make homes more affordable for those looking to purchase.

Though there were incentives in the form of tax credits for new purchases, the lower interest rates serve as a credit in itself in the form of interest expense savings. Why is this so important for the economy? For starters, ifyouare able to reduceyour mortgage payment by, say, $800 a year by reducingyourinterest rate, then this is extra moneyto either save to help deleverage (seemingly intimidating financial jargon here-simply means giving you the ability to pay off other debts) your household, or it is spending money. Ifyou choose the latter and purchase items with newly found savings, then the person who soldyou those items now has more funds and can choose to save or spend the overage (more financial speak-means extra money inthe personswallet). Theoretically, this should go on and on with a helicopter effect as the initial savings fromyour refi pass from one person, to another, and another, and so on.

So, interest rates become a valuable tool for the Fed to bolster the economy, andit has a number of tools to help drive them down. Sinceofficials havealready driven the Fed Funds rate near zero and have already purchased over $1.25 trillion in mortgage securities, the most recent buzz is about a Fed purchase of treasuries, which would also help mortgage rates.

As in any financial market, the buzz can cause rates to move and the thought of the Feds future purchase of treasuries has already caused mortgage rates to move lower. This is a large reason for the interest rate lows that we saw in September. Expect mortgage rates to bounce back up if it doesnt come true and if it does, then their future movements will depend on the Feds new commitment and investor expectations.

While there are great opportunities to refinance your home mortgages, there is also a great opportunity to purchase. With rates at historic lows and home prices having seen their most significant decline from 2006-2009 (according to Case-Schiller index), we are in an era where homes have been more affordable than any time in recent history.

Article source: http://blog.raveis.com/2010/09/30/low-interest-rates/

Posted by Charlie | Filed Under William Raveis Real Estate Blog | Comments Off

How Liaise is Building a Better Priority Inbox for the Enterprise

October 1, 2010

This post is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark as a new part of the Spark of Genius series that focuses on a new and innovative startup each day. Every Thursday, the program focuses on startups within the BizSpark program and what theyre doing to grow.

Liaise launched to instant fanfare at last falls DEMO event, snatching up the Peoples Choice Award and walking away with a $1 million multimedia package. Its promising product an Outlook plugin that automatically scans your e-mail for action items got the audience salivating over a solution to the overloaded inbox problem.

Just one year later, Liaise has launched out of beta with its official commercial release, and is aggressively going after the enterprise with its for-charge Outlook product. Theres just one small problem: Google decided to launch Gmail Priority Inbox as a free tool for sorting e-mail messages by importance in the interim.

Can the scrappy and youthful startup take on the likes of Google and other competitors in the ever-growing space of inbox management tools? Co-founder Sidney Minassian seems to think so; he sees a bright future for the startup that involves growth through feature enhancements and tackling platforms other than e-mail.

Liaise Captures Action Items in E-mail

Our inboxes are full of e-mails that demand our immediate attention and often require future action. Liaise works to automatically identify these action items, eliminate redundancy and keep workers on task.

Once you install the Liaise plugin for Outlook, the tool will automatically capture action items as you type, and will then work to prioritize and organize them by project in the Liaise Manager.

The Liaise Manager is a dashboard for viewing actionable items surfaced in our e-mail communications. These action items can be viewed by initiative, owner, due date or priority. With Liaise installed, due dates from e-mail action items are automatically added to your Outlook calendar, and project information can be reshaped in to exportable reports.

The new Liaise Lists feature also brings the automatic as-you-type, Outlook-integrated actions to the free form-notes you take think meeting minutes or to-do lists.

The software is collaborative in nature, so if project team members are also using Liaise, theyll get notified when other parties make changes to projects or tasks.

Google Who?

Minassian says the Liaise team is certainly watching what GoogleGoogle is up to with Priority Inbox, but believes the startup which has raised $5.5 million in venture capital and going after an additional $7 million more is relatively unaffected.

The way Minassian describes Googles approach sounds as if he finds its solution to the overloaded inbox as somewhat generic in nature. Any feature that gets added to e-mail that changes the way e-mails are viewed, sorted or searched, is interesting but does not address the pain point we address, he says.

Our core focus is to help people get work done by automatically capturing actions, issues, dates, owners and priorities wherever they communicate this. [It] then provides management dashboards with drill-down, reports and calendar integration to help teams and individuals stay on top of outcomes important to them.

Theres also the matter of audience. Liaise wants the enterprise, and for now seems content to let Google have everyone else. We focus on Fortune 3000 customers and our initial integration is with Microsoft OutlookMicrosoft Outlook changes to Googles Gmail dont impact us, as Microsoft Outlook has dominant share of the corporate market, reports Minassian.

Liaise will explore building for GmailGmail users once it starts getting penetration inside Fortune 3,000 companies. For the time being, though, the startup is exploring mobile solutions for iPhone, AndroidAndroid, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 so that users can access their Liaise Manager while on the road.

The Metric of Success Is Revenue

At $50 per person per year (with a free trial period), Liaise is launching out the gate with a solid business model in place. We are ultimately focused on revenue, says Minassian.

Its hard to tell just how well Liaise is performing against its own metric of success, because Minassian was reluctant to share user numbers or revenue as the product has only been commercially available (out of beta) for just two weeks.

But, to get to the bottom line, Liaise has put its $1 million multimedia DEMO package to use with online and print campaigns running in Network World, PC World, CIO Magazine and other enterprise-focused publications. The startup also plans to promote the product through social media sites including TwitterTwitter, FacebookFacebook and LinkedInLinkedIn, as well as solicit customers to write guest blog posts on other blogs to help spread the word.

The strategy appears to be working as Liaise is seeing adoption at corporate giants including Sony, HP and Deloitte. Minassian also details that customers are coming directly to them. He has observed that middle managers managing five or more direct or in direct reports will discover Liaise and then pass it onwards and upwards inside their company.

The Long Road Ahead

Along with winning the Peoples Choice Award in the Enterprise category at DEMO last year, Liaise has been nominated for a number of other awardsawards and has seen a host of positive reviews from analysts, bloggers and reporters. Still, with the recent commercial release of the product, Liaise has yet to really prove that it can sell the corporate world on its vision for a better inbox.

Minassian details that Liaise is targeting growth though product enhancements and additional platforms.

On the feature side, we can expect Liaise to integrate suggestions from customers and iterate its product to meet corporate demands. When it comes to additional platforms, we can also expect to see Liaise develop action-finding add-ons for new platforms such as SharePoint.

In January we built an integration of Liaise with SharePoint. Similar to how Liaise works with our own Liaise Manager, we automatically captured Action Items from e-mails, then populated SharePoints tasks, lists, group calendars, conversation threads etc great for teams wanting visibility of project, customer service, sales. This is one example and we are looking at other platforms to integrate.

Images courtesy of biscotte, Zevotron, BONGURI, FlickrFlickr