Mitch´s last blog post..Page Rank & SEO – A Short Blogging Research Project

I think you may be right about small towns offering a better chance to network than larger ones.

In a large city, to network effectively, I think you need to identify a particular segment of people with whom to network.

In a small town like Murphy, the entire town is already a small segment, and local small business owners and managers is a very reasonable sized group.

It still feels strange to be able to leave home for more than a couple of hours and talk to people, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it in a few weeks.

I hope you’re right about working the local market. After the last few months, I could really use something working great for me.

You know you’re dangling the bait right in front of my mouth when you talk about making an acquisition, don’t you?

Of course, you do.

You’ve piqued my interest; I’m looking forward to learning about what you’re up to.

Act on your dream!

JD

Welcome to our discussion.

Yes, I can confirm that your confirmation emails were not in my spam folder. I did not receive it/them. I don’t know if you sent more than one.

However, I did receive the email with the subject, Social Media Today Account Information, on December 29.

All the best,

JD

mark lazen´s last blog post..Five tips for a healthier social network: New Scientist on “social contagion”

Man, you went in two different directions with this post. Let’s tackle the second one first. As you know, I won’t bother with any site anymore that requires that I have to sign in or register. I just don’t have the time nor the inclination to deal with it. I know there are a lot of people who believe that having folks register for their site helps keep down spam; it’s not true, and more importantly, it’s irritating. Not quite as irritating as those stupid popup windows, but almost as bad.

On your first topic, I think small towns offer a better chance to network than large ones do. I belong to the Syracuse Chamber of Commerce and the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, a suburb of Syracuse. I’ve met way more people through the Syracuse Chamber, but I know very few of them, whereas through the Liverpool Chamber the numbers are smaller, but I know more of them better, and happen to see more of them on a regular basis since this is where I live. If I offered the type of services that were more conducive to local business I’d be living large. So yes, working the local market could work great for you.

Course, if I get to make the acquisition I’m hoping for later this month,…

Mitch´s last blog post..Page Rank & SEO – A Short Blogging Research Project

Welcome to our discussions!

There’s no need to apologize. I’m sure your lenses load quickly enough for anyone on broadband.

I’m only three miles from the nearest broadband, but don’t expect it to be available here any time soon.

I have a half-dozen computers and not a single one of them is a laptop. I’m going to have to remedy that in 2009. I could take a laptop to the library in Murphy and use their free WiFi, and several businesses offer it, too.

I’m still happy having local dial-up. It wasn’t too many years ago that I was paying over $200 per month in long distance charges to dial in to Asheville to get an Internet connection.

On the other hand, my daughter lives about four miles from me (as the crow flies, across the lake), and she has a high-speed fiber connection that can show TV with no pauses.

In these rural areas, a few miles can make a very big difference.

The main reason I mentioned how long it takes to load the lens is because I’m sensitive to how long someone has to wait when they go to a site.

Since I’m going to be doing something similar to what you’re doing in Pendleton, I’m trying to think of a way to segment businesses into different lenses so each will load quickly.

I still don’t have a solution on how to do that, exactly, so I guess I’ll be experimenting with it next year.

I’m not trying to pick on you.

Thanks for joining us, Nancy.

Act on your dream!

JD

I do apologize about my lenses taking you so long to download. Squidoo encourages pictures and since I strive for good rankings, I tend to use a lot of them. Hey, you could come off that mountain and sit on the square in Pendleton, SC which is all WiFi.lol Maybe that is something that you could get going in Murphy.

Thanks again for all your help.

Nancy Hellams aka Ohme´s last blog post..South Carolina Group Top Lenses added

Dennis Edell´s last blog post..Twitter for You and I in ‘09 – The Post You’ve Been Waiting For

I’ll be vewy, vewy caweful when I leave the cave!

You know, focus is one of the most important things in really building a business. I haven’t appreciated that as much as I should have.

Maybe both of us will grow exponentially in 2009.

(I could do that by eating a dozen cheeseburgers every day, but I don’t think that’s what you’re talking about!)

Act on your dream!

JD

Teasing of course, and I wish you the best of luck in your new adventures!

I did get myself nicely focused in the latter half of this year and hope to continue to grow exponentially from here on.

Dennis Edell´s last blog post..Twitter for You and I in ‘09 – The Post You’ve Been Waiting For

I appreciate your taking the time to contact me about this issue with my registration on SocialMediaToday and I sent you an email asking you to manually activate my account.

I don’t know why I didn’t get the email. I have gmail.com whitelisted.

(Sometimes I’m surprised that email is as reliable as it is, but there’s no need to get off-topic here.)

Thank you for your help.

Act on your dream!

JD

I can certainly agree with focusing on fewer blogs. One thing you may want to consider is how to stop using a blog.

One of my first blogs was on Blogger and had my name as the subdomain. When I started testing WordPress blogs, I closed that blog on Blogger.

The trouble is, someone else grabbed it and is promoting stuff using my name at the top of the page. I would not promote those items.

So, what I should have done was kept that blog and posted one last item to it with a link to my new blog, but I didn’t know that at the time.

I’m sure I’m still sending traffic to that old blog from some of my older sites. I found one blog that linked to it, just today.

I don’t know if there is anything I can do to get Blogger to stop this person from using my name, but it’s something I need to look into.

So, think carefully if you plan to stop using free websites and blogs. If you’ve been building traffic, try to use it to your advantage and not some interloper’s. At the least, maybe link to your lenses.

I agree 100% with you on using our online presences as ways to open communications and to make discussions easier, whether it be comments on blogs, duels and comments on Squidoo, managing a forum, or using social networking tools such as Twitter and the others.

Twitter is an easy-to-use and deceptively simple tool. Most people don’t realize how well it is indexed by Google.

For example, I just now searched for “pendleton sc twitter” (without the quotes) and found several links to Nancy’s tweets and Squidoo lenses – on page one of the search results just from using free tools!

Even searching for just “pendleton sc” found your Pendleton lens on page 1 of the results and it was higher than the commercial behemoths such as discoverourtown.com and epodunk.com.

I was playing with some more searches and found this link:

Twitter users in Murphy, NC USA

I need to get some more people active here.

Nancy is the only one listed for:

Twitter users in Pendleton SC

This makes me wonder if there are any tools specifically designed to track Twitter users by location. Do you know of any?

I just searched for Twitter tools for this and found Twitterlocal.net, but it’s not that accurate unless someone filled in their location properly in their Twitter profile.

I’ll keep looking and get back on the subject.

That’s a good idea about keeping Squidoo lens comments open to everyone instead of just lensmasters. Do you have a problem with spam? Do you moderate all your comments?

I just tried loading the Pendleton Business lens. So far, I’ve been unable to load the entire lens. Those of us who are still on dial-up often have this problem with Squidoo lenses that are long and have lots of photos and/or videos.

I was able to load enough of it a few days ago to leave a comment and rate it.

Now that most of us dialup users are in the minority, it may not be as important as it once was, but still may be a consideration for those of us who live in rural areas where broadband is not always available.

Thanks for your comments, Joan. I’ll try to stay more on-topic in my future replies.

Act on your dream!

JD

WordFrame Support team was alerted by SocialMediaToday that the socialmediatoday.com site has an issue with your registration. We checked on their site and we can see your registration. The system has sent you the required account confirmation letter on Dec 28, 11:28 AM CET. Please check your spam filter or spam folder. The SMT admin e-mail address which sent the letter is [email address removed].

We can resend this activation letter or we can activate your account manually. Please send us a note about it. We apologize for the issue, sometimes the spam filters give us a hard time regarding our administrative letters sent out from our systems.

regards
WordFrame Support team
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Note: edited by John Dilbeck to remove email addresses

As to the conversational approach, I think that is the way of the future – actual relationships on line. And leaving websites open for comments and conversation. Even on my Squidoo lens, I leave the comments open to everyone – not just Squidoo members. That one act has resulted in some wonderful comments and conversations from readers who are not Squidoo folks (yet!).

Be sure to check out Ohme’s lenses on Pendleton again. She is doing a great job promoting Pendleton merchants on a site all their own.
http://www.squidoo.com/pendleton-business
Today she is busily making a video in the local coffee shop – complete with local pianist entertaining the guests!