On of our main offerings is using customize business blogging software to generate more leads for clients.

For most of our clients this has been very successful.  Probably the biggest challenge is helping clients understand that business blogging is a content marketing strategy and content marketing is not the fastest way to get new clients.  However, it has great long term value.  It is an investment in a long term lead generation strategy.

We have a huge update coming to our business blogging software very soon.  I am already using some of the new tools myself, but I am very particular about releasing it before it is ready and fully tested.  The new blog software will integrate with Wordpress installs so clients will be able to get the best of both worlds.  Wordpress is the industry standard not only for blogging, but also for great search engine ranking.

But if you give back-end access to people, they get overwhelmed and it intimidates them.

So imagine a back end that is full of training, article templates, article writing tools, linking tools, analytics, keyword targeting, social media integration and even includes writing services.  Plus we will be adding lead capture for those clients that are not using their own CRM or Lead Capture solution.

We only have one goal.  Build a content marketing strategy and tool that makes it easy for clients to attract and generate leads but does not require the client to become knowledgeable about Internet Marketing, Blogging or Social Media.

If you are interested in finding out more about our business blogging software, feel free to contact me for a demo.

I run into a lot of people that want social media marketing.  Of course, I enjoy this space but I am very honest with people - social media is not a short cut.

Let me explain.  All too often, people want to do social media because they think it is easier, cheaper and faster than going out and manually building up relationships with their target market.  They think that they do not have to do other forms of marketing and outreach because social media will cut right to the results.

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.  Social media will help you be more successful and faster, as part of a much broader marketing effort.  You have to know who your target market is and you need to not only approach them via social media, but also in the traditional ways.  Things like cold calling and networking may not be your favorite thing, but talking to someone on the phone or in person is still powerful.  Connecting to someone on facebook is not a substitute.  It is just an additional way to leverage the relationship building.

I have watched the videos of the presentation of the new Apple iPad.  I think I will buy one - this is the device I wanted 10 years ago.

But I do have some questions - and these may be obvious for other people but they are not for me.

Steve Jobs mentions that it will run iPhone apps.  Great.  But will it run normal apps?  I may not keep the iPhone when my term expires because I do not feel like hacking it and the out of the box phone is not easy to develop for.  I want to build my own apps easily.

I guess what I am really asking is - how restrictive or open is the Apple iPad?  I find the iPhone too restrictive to meet my business needs because there are barriers to development.

Also, do I need to buy the same iPhone app twice for two devices?  Sure they are cheap usually, but going back and buying them again will not be fun.

If it turns out the Apple iPad is just a big iPhone without the phone, and custom applications are not easier, I will be very disappointed and not buy it.  That is just me because I like to play with this stuff - but the early adopters or products like this are people like me, so that could mean trouble.

For about a year now, I have been telling people that, while I like twitter, I think it is too full of SPAM and I just do not participate anymore.  Today I saw an article that says Twitter may be in decline.

What is especially interesting about this is that Twitter is one of the big three in social media.  So I am not sure what the alternative is.  However, I knew from my own habits that it just did not have longevity with how it currently operates.  I think it is great for celebrities and such, but following lots of people just does not make sense because it ruins your experience very quickly.

So in some ways, you need to ditch your old account and launch a new Twitter account and be very selective in who you follow.  I know the activity I do most now on twitter is to unfollow people.

What do you think?  Is twitter in decline or transition?

Today you can get nearly everything POD (Print on Demand)

For example, you can use family vacation photos to print custom kids murals for the kids rooms.

You could also really do some wonderful things with your office - if you think about it.

Go play with the custom mural design site and think about the possibilities.

You could do a mural of your corporate mission.

You could do a wall mural of your team at a team building event. Luckily, they are removable so you can take it down later when people leave.

You could mottos and inspirational quotes.

You could do a dinosaur - with a caption about how it will eat you if you are late.

If you have read my earlier posts and seen my business card, you know that I am a big fan of taking the traditional and making it stand out. Custom murals are one way you could make that happen.

I am on 5 different non-profit boards.  I am not bragging.  It is a lot of work that I rarely get paid for.  I would never intentionally be on 5 - it just happened because they interest me.

One thing I have noticed is that they do not always understand how to best utilize and communicate with their non profit board members.  If you improve the communication and clarity around how your board members can contribute, you will have happier board members, more productive board members and better results from your board.

People on boards want to contribute.  Often, the non profit may think that the board is not contributing as much as they would like.  But the non profit also needs to understand that their board is involved with a lot of things.  So you need to make things as simple and as clear as possible.

Here are tips to improve non profit board management and utilization

1. Aggregate Communication - Some non profits will send me a flurry of 5 or more emails all on the same day.  That is fine if you do not want me to open any of them.
2. Prioritize Communication - It is important to have FYI stuff, but make sure board members understand which messages are critical and which messages are just keeping people in the loop.
3. Simplify Communication - Summarize a message at the beginning so I know if it applies to me.  If you send me a newsletter, make sure there is a good table of contents.  I will not read the whole thing.
4. Be Specific - Inaction by board members can often be attributed to a lack of specific requests.  For example, if you wanted more people to help get the word out about a fundraising event, you could make an appeal for every board member to invite all their friends.  However, you would get better results if you said each board member is responsible to bring 2 guests.  While not all will bring 2, a larger group of board members will at least try to bring several.
5. Clear Goal and Clear Value - Your non profit must be able to articulate the goal that the organization has.  It is why people serve on your board.  You also must understand and publicly recognize how board members help the goal.  For example, I help the organizations make better technology decisions and marketing decisions - often saving them a lot of money.   It pumps me up and gets me excited when this is mentioned, because I do not always feel like I am doing enough.

Simplify - All of this focuses really on one overarching principle.  You must make it simple for board members to be good board members and contribute in meaningful ways.  Simple goals, simple specific requests and simple missions will help you create a simply fantastic non profit board.

First off, I am not casting any stones here.  If I write a post on one of my blogs and there are not mistakes or typos in it, it is the exception, not the norm.  I enjoy writing and I enjoy teaching, but I have never been a natural good speller.  When my book went to print, I found a misspelling on the cover and had to pay to have it reloaded.  And I was being careful that time.

I get the question all the time when doing blog speeches.  How careful should I be with my writing standards?

Well, I just came from reading a news article on CNN and it had several obvious mistakes in it.

I do not care.  I understand it is breaking news.  I respect that they are putting out new stuff all the time.  But it did make me realize that it is not just us bloggers that are guilty of lower editorial standards.  The web moves fast and more content (if it has value) is better than less.

So Should You Worry About typos?

The answer is that it depends on what you want to achieve.  With typos, some companies have very high standards because of protecting their image.  If I was a lawyer or an accountant, I would not want to be sloppy because I am in a field that requires attention to detail.  If I sell writing services, then I would also not want to have typos because one typo will jump out at people and kill sales.

Ultimately, it depends on your audience and your desired outcome.  I am fine with typos in breaking news, other people will rant and rave about lower journalistic standards.  How important is it that you make everyone happy?

I have to say that for about 6 months I have been looking forward to the new breed of tablet computers coming out.  I just saw the demo of the Lenovo Tablet at CES on CNN and it looks pretty cool.

I worked with some of the earliest prototype versions of tablet computers many years ago.  They were so early, that they actually only had instructions in Japanese.  It sounds cool, but they did not do much back then.  But I saw the potential years ago and have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of really good tablets.

In many ways, the smart phones, like my iPhone, have paved the way for tablets.  Anyone that has gotten into the habit of using a smart phone will have experienced that feeling of not really needing a laptop now, but still kinda needing one because the phones are too small.

I have needed a new laptop for about two years, but have kept putting off a new one in the hopes of something really interesting coming along.  (Plus, the old one works, it is just heavy, old and needs a new battery)

I am not sure which one I will buy this year, but I will buy a tablet.  I look forward to running my business from a small, light clip board that is connected to everything.  I think this will be fun.

Next week I will be teaching a 3 credit hour Marketing course at Kent State University.  I designed the marketing course and will be working in an intense, intersession setting where I will do 40 hours of teaching in one week.

It is going to be fun, and I hope really valuable for the students.  It is interesting because the University came to me because they see that there is a merging of Internet, PR, Marketing, Technology and Advertising but they are not well equipped to quickly address it.  The marketing department does not have tech savvy people.  The technology areas do not understand marketing.  Journalism is a different school and crossing over is difficult.

At some point, it seems like some of these traditional schools/departments would need to be rethought.  With citizen journalism, word of mouth marketing and it being easier to create things on the web, people really need to be more interdisciplinary than ever.

My hope is to help them create a whole interdisciplinary marketing certificate that would address these issues.  But right now I am focused on this marketing course and doing a great job there.

Hosting a site or hosting your own blog is a critical thing to do to generate more leads.

Many marketing people don’t understand that website hosting of just one company website, or getting a free blog, is not enough.

In fact, a better variety of ways website visitors might land on your site the better your Internet marketing will do. If your websites have good information, are beneficial and help your visitor, your website sales and site referrals will improve.

This article is about different site hosting options that are in line with any level of costs in your budget. This article will cover free website hosting, low cost site hosting, premium website hosting and we will cover why you should choose one of these options.

Keep in mind no matter which hosting option you pick to host with, if you have not launched a blog or site before, you could try it by yourself, but if it is not an activity you will keep doing regularly, then you should pay people or hire a web design firm. It will cost more money but it will free you up to focus on what you are good at. Many web designers can create a free CMS site very fast when you just are looking for the minimum to get started.

There are basic things new online marketers should know about contracting consulting with open source solutions and also hosting options .

Software that is open source is in some version freely available and hosting, if required, should be nearly free. I could be cliche and comment that you will get what you pay for, but that is not exactly fair. Open source software is usually excellent, but finding an experienced expert that can install it for you and make it possible for you to customize it is not free. Unless you are related to a technology person, you are going to need to pay for some guidance and you must not assume it should be cheap just given that it was open source and free.

Also, website hosting can be very affordable. You can set up a set of dedicated servers and pay $2,000 in an average month in hosting when you need your own servers. What is the difference? One difference is sharing. Your cheap hosting will be on a machine that is shared with a lot of people. It will go down more frequently and if you obtain a sudden burst of traffic, it will slow down and maybe stop.

But consider this, when you only have an average site and normal website visitors, there is nothing wrong with this very cheap hosting solution. Just do’t forget you should be certain you make a backup of your website given that these hosting businesses are probably not making backups of your site.

Low Cost Domains - It is critical to realize that registering a domain for a website can cost a little or a lot, depending on where you register the domain name. I use a cheaper registrar for domains you can visit at Outstanda Hosting. True they have hosting as well, I typically select the hosting at BlueHost. Bluehost costs more for domain registration though. So if you are comfortable pointing domains in one place to servers on other servers, this is the cheapest way to set things up. You just set up the domain name server to the Bluehost Name Server and it will be easy.

Doteasy - free web hosting - I had a representative email me about Dot Easy and the opportunity seems like it could help some people. You can do up to 10 sites for free on their site - which is a great offer. One place they make this money back up is in the higher cost of registering a domain. If you do plan to host no more than ten websites, this really could be the best hosting company for you.

Bluehost - Low Cost Hosting - My sites have been hosted by Bluehost for a long time and the low cost of hosting 100+ sites is a bargain. Of course, Bluehost has the an occasional outage. But they have been good and addressed issues when appropriate.

For high end hosting use Rackspace Cloud Hosting. Rackspace Cloud will cost you about 10 times inexpensive shared hosting but they have very good support, bandwidth that is scalable and the sites you set up are on multiple servers, which can mean minimal outages and less risk of data loss.

There are lots of companies to host. You will want to compare hosting packages and consider the features. Some hosting companies will give you a free 6 page starter website, but these are often just to get you started as a customer and they are not worth much. Take some time to figure out what your future website needs will be and choose the best website hosting package for you.