Jacob S. Paulsen.com

Google has launched www.howtogomo.com to help users understand the key components in launching a mobile website. There are a lot of helpful resources you can read to help you understand why and how you can go mobile. My favorite feature is the mobile simulator. Unless you develop smartphone apps, most of us have never had access to a system that allows us to see what any given website looks like on a smartphone. Because this is a Google website, you will see how your site appears on Android but generally speaking you can assume that the site would load in the same format etc on iPhones and other smartphones.

When I first visited the site I was in Firefox (not generally my browser of choice) and none of the links were working for me. I switched to Chrome and the site took off! I went right to the “Test Your Site” link or “GoMoMeter” as it is being called. I input my site jacobspaulsen.com and waited while it generated a demo image of how my site appears. After answering a few questions about the site it gave me a score and some interesting data about loading speed.

I downloaded the full report and it had some advice on how to design a mobile site. Very little of the information seemed to be specific to my site but the content was good just the same.

HowToGoMo.com also features a directory of industry reputable mobile designers to help companies and individuals build and design a high quality mobile site. For agencies there is some good information about how you can direct your clients.

This is a strong step for Google to emphasize the importance of the upcoming mobile changes we are going to see in the next several years. M-Commerce is the future and small businesses everyone need to get on the bandwagon!

At my organization we are planning a new year workshop to help the sales team plan for 2012. Its important to help your team and your department focus on whats important. No matter how many books you have read or how many seminars you have been to; we all need reminders and time to “sharpen the saw.”

The outline below is an adaptation of Stephen R. Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People as it may apply to media sales. Use this outline and adapt it for your industry and business.

Habit 1: Be Proactive: Principles of Personal Vision

1. The first step in creating strong income is pro-activity.
2. Create a lifestyle that helps you meet new leads. Make calling on new leads a top priority.
3. Identifying potential conflicts or issues that will slow you down and addressing them with potential solutions to management.
4. Take accountability for your results. You are the factor of your success or failure.

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind: Principles of Personal Leadership

1. Deciding early on what your objectives are. What do you truly wish to accomplish in your job?
2. Creating a mission statement that reflects your goals as a sales professional.
3. Beginning each event, activity, or meeting knowing what you want to get out of it.
4. Foreseeing possible problems with retention, discouragement, accounting, traffic, etc.
5. Taking the proper steps to prepare to be an effective sales person and marketing consultant.

Habit 3: Put First Things First: Principles of Personal Management

1. Understanding the four quadrants of effective production and knowing how to apply that to our business. Focusing on Revenue Producing Activities!
2. Creating habits of time management and effective planning.
3. Reserving time for all your roles in life, so as not to neglect anything.
4. Setting time aside each week for Prospecting, Service, and Production, and Education/Training.

Habit 4: Think Win/Win: Principles of Interpersonal Leadership

1. Commit yourself to Win/Win or no deal. Agree to sell clients who you need as clients and who need your stations.
2. You must listen first. Discover who the client is and what problems they have in their business. Look for the solutions in your stations.
3. Each part of the media buying experience has to be a new win. Show the client how accounting, production, and reporting is a win for them.
4. Train the client to respect your time and learn to respect theirs.
5. Understand how to create win win situations with other departments in the company.

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood

1. Seek to understand the situation of each client. Find out what they want out of the advertising and what has brought them far enough to listen to you.
2. Practice active listening skills. Truly listen to your clients and your team members to best understand their desires.
3. Continue building a relationship with your clients to develop trust and credibility through listening to, and understanding them.
4. Only when the client trusts you and believes you understand them, and have their best interests in mind, will they follow you.

Habit 6: Synergize Principles of Creative Communication

1. Create environments of synergy with traffic, production, promotion, and accounting.
2. Practice habits 4 & 5 in making synergistic moments happen.
3. Synergize with each client individually to get full buy in.
4. Seek out potential synergistic activities, such as creative meetings, brainstorming sessions, etc.
5. Understand the unique abilities/responsibilities that each of our departments have, and think of how best to utilize them.
6. Seek out the very best training in the industry and in your company from the top leaders.

Habit 7 Sharpen the Saw: Principles of Balanced Self-Renewal

1. Set aside Monthly, Weekly, and Daily planning and evaluation sessions.
2. Renew your commitments and covenants in all aspects of life through sincere evaluation.
3. Evaluate the best and less effective practices that you have been using in prospecting, retaining, and up selling your clients.
4. Review this and other handouts and notes that will increase your effectiveness in prospecting, retaining, and up selling your clients.

In my series of Internet Basics videos by Google I wanted to introduce the topic of Google Webmaster Tools and Google XML sitemaps.

When you first build a site you need to submit it to Google so that it can be indexed. Google can more easily index your site if you have a sitemap. Since the recording of this video several years ago, Google has created a robust and helpful dashboard of tools called Google Webmaster Tools. Check it out.

In my series of Internet Basics I’d like to add this great tutorial video from Google that explains browsers.

I have always enjoyed the consumer experience that Apture brought to the visitors on my websites. You have probably had some engagement with Apture without ever noticing it. Apture was a system designed to give sure users more information about keywords or links in a popup window. This served to help the user get the information they need quickly and it kept them on the page longer or in some cases kept them on the site when they might have left otherwise.

Now, I have received an email from Apture informing me that they have been aquired by Google. Here is a copy of the email.

Hi there,

We’re writing to let you know that Apture has been acquired by Google.

Since day one, we’ve been working on getting the Apture experience into as much of the web as possible. While we’re proud of having helped thousands of publishers enhance their websites, we think now is the best time to expand our efforts by joining Google’s Chrome team to help build the next generation user experience directly into the web.

On December 20 we will discontinue Apture’s product and services. When this happens, users will no longer be able to highlight and search terms with Apture on your web pages. Your website will continue to work as normal even after our service is suspended; however, you are free to remove the Apture script code from your site as well.

We want to thank you personally for your support and positive feedback over the years, and we hope you’ll stay tuned for some amazing new Chrome experiences coming your way.

You can view the announcement here on our homepage, or check the FAQ below.

Sincerely,

The Apture Team

FAQ:

When Apture’s service is discontinued, will that break my website or cause problems for users?

Nope, your pages will continue to load normally, but users will no longer be able to highlight and look up terms using Apture.

What will happen to data Apture has collected from my websites?

All data from your website has been deleted.

What will happen to Apture AutoEnhance links and Hotspots after Apture’s service is discontinued?

After December 20th, Apture Hotspots will no longer appear on your website and all AutoEnhance links will appear as regular links.

I find myself more often than not using my website as a resource to answer questions for my clients. 90% of the time when a client asks me something about internet marketing, I can find the answer in an article I’ve already written and just send them the link. For this reason, I’m going to publish a few articles in the next few days that contain the most common “straight from Google” tutorial videos.

This video entitled “How Search Works” reviews search engine basics. Matt Cutts, who is featured in the video has become a bit of a Google celebrity. He is my favorite person on Google Plus

Its the time of year when I start thinking about my goals for the upcoming year. In 2011 I set a goal to read 50 new books and I’m on track to hit my goal. I’ve learned that this goal has caused me to rush through books and get much less from the content than I otherwise would. In looking forward into 2012 I wanted to set a goal to get much more value from far fewer books.

As it will be the year 2012 and there are 12 months in the year it seemed fitting to me to reach exactly 12 books, one each month. As I spent the last two weeks contemplating how I would get absolute maximum value from 12 books, two things occured to me. First that my best strategy would be to start/join a book group that would all read the same books together. This allows for great discussion and insight which increases growth dramatically. The second thing that occured to me is that the best leader of such a book group would be the authors of each of the books we read.

In order to convince significant authors to take the time (without any compensation) to guide a month long discussion about their book I realized that we would need a significant enough group of people in the book club so as to offer the author high exposure and potential for book sells. Thus the goal was refined to find 12,000 other people to read 12 books with me, being lead by the author of each of the 12 books.

I spent last week talking to key friends of mine who I know share my passion for reading business and personal development books. They helped me refine the plans and strategies and they helped me make the first contact with some great authors who have awesome books that we would like to read.

So far we have two great authors committed, including Bruce H Jackson the author of “Finding Your Flow;” and Erik Qualman the author of “Socialnomics” who is realeasing a new book next month.

If you want to change your life in 2012 you need to get involved. If you don’t want to pass on the amazing opportunity to be lead in 12 book discussions by the authors themselves you need to get involved. Visit www.12booksin2012.com and sign up now. Spread the word. Remember that the level of value that each of us will recieve as part of the book group will depend both on the total amount of discussion and the leadership and genius of each author. In other words, SPREAD THE WORD! Utilize Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, your email and more to tell everyone you know about this once in a lifetime opportunity!

If you have direct contact with or access to authors whom you feel would have a lot to offer to our group please don’t hesitate to contact me!

Jacob S Paulsen

When it comes to a networking event I’m as guilty as anyone else. My day is busy and when I go to a mid-day luncheon or other type of event, I just want to go to my table, sit down, and check emails on my phone until its over. I recently felt the sting of guilt when I was at an event considering the opportunities that I’ve missed and the wasted investment of myself or my employers when I’ve attended such functions. I have been searching the internet looking for the best tips and insights from experts and today I’d like to summarize what I have gleaned. Please don’t hesitate to share additional insights or tips in the comments below.

Preparing for your next Networking Event:

• Stock up on business cards and make sure they are accessible in a shirt pocket or hand bag.
• Make sure that you have a pen handy. You may need to write down contact information of a newly made contact who is without a business card. You may also want to take notes from the presentation.
• Make yourself identifiable as a member of your group or company. Perhaps there is a tie, lapel pin, embroidered shirt, etc that will help identify you as a member of your organization. Wear your name tag when provided with one.

During the Networking Event:

•  Avoid gravitating toward people that you know. Often current acquaintances can be helpful in introducing you to someone new but it will help you remember why you are there if you avoid seeking out those people in the beginning.
• Approach people who are alone or in smaller groups. Someone standing by themselves is much easier to approach and they will be grateful for someone to talk to. If you do approach people in groups wait to be invited before entering the conversation
• Focus on making a few high quality contacts rather than trying to gather as many business cards as you can.
• When conversing make eye contact and practice real listening. Try to learn more about the other person and avoid talking about yourself and your company.
• The best place for networking is near the main door or the food. Avoid approaching people who are moving toward an exit.

Following the Networking Event:

• Write on the back of your acquired business cards to indicate where you met that person. Also write any specific details about them that may help you recall who they are.
• Seek out your newly made contacts on LinkedIn and, when appropriate, on Facebook and Twitter as well.
• Within 48 hours send a short email to let them know you were grateful to meet them. Include your contact information in the email in case they have misplaced your business card.

The reason online marketing professionals are excited about Google +1 is because of the influence that this new social network can have on search results on Google. We have now taken one step closer to that reality as the +1 buttons have been added to Paid Results via Google Adwords.

You may also notice (as illustrated in red above) that Google Places has been further integrated into paid advertising as well. Advertisers can now integrate their business listing which, if you have a lot of positive reviews adds so much more credibility to your ad in comparison to your competitors.

This further shows how Google is trying to drive the integration of its many products and how you can benefit from a full approach to driving reviews.

Veretekk is at its most basic form a suite of powerful tools available at a monthly subscription. Veretekk has been around for longer than any other company in the internet marketing field and the completeness of their system is un-matched.

In addition Veretekk offers a two tier affiliate program to help compensate users who refer others to the system. Yes I am an affiliate and clicking on any of the links in this post will take you to my affiliate pages.

Top Ten Reasons I Use Veretekk

1. Free Webcast Room. I originally found Veretekk because I was looking for the most stable and economic web conferencing technology online and I stumbled into Vereconference. With your monthly subscription comes a free 5 person webcast room and if you have need of additional or larger rooms you can just sign up for them in your own affiliate portal which makes you money.
2. Affiliate Portals. As part of your subscription Veretekk gives you dozens of replicated websites with your own subdomain. These traffic portals have various uses which we will discuss in detail but my favorite among them is the cash. Several of those portals offer paid products/services (Vereconference among them) and when others visit these sites and buy the products/services you earn a commission.
3. Lead Generation. Each of these traffic portal sites described above offer some type of free service. When users sign up for the free service or product, that generates a lead of someone who most likely has an interest in internet marketing (based on the nature of the services they are asking for) and thus you have a never ending supply of free leads which always include a double opt-in email address and generally also include a name, address, and phone number.
4. Backlinks for SEO. This traffic portal websites also form your very own SEO network. Most companies pay big money to have links to their websites placed on other relevant websites in the world. Just by signing up you can put up to 5 custom links with custom anchor text on all of the dozens of traffic portal websites in your system.
5. Veremail Email Marketing System. Within your Veretekk system you have Veremail. Veremail is your very own email marketing system. It allows you to build series of autoresponders to send to your leads or to just manage new leads that you buy or import into the system. The system goes the extra mile to ensure compliance with anti-spam laws.
6. Free Hosting. Included in your monthly Veretekk subscription is free professional hosting with cPanel. cPanel is the same hosting software/dashboard that is used by major hosting providers such as BlueHost, Hostmonster, and Hostgator. This makes it easy to install your own WordPress site or custom landing pages for additional lead generation or web presence. Hosting is a cost of doing business online but if you can lump it into your Veretekk subscription why wouldn’t you?
7. Google Adsense Integration. Many of your traffic portals have in page advertising opportunities. All you have to do is input your Google Adsense publisher ID into your Veretekk configuration settings and your ads will automatically be served on those traffic portals where they are appropriate.
8. Training & Support. Veretraining is available to walk you through every step of configuration and using the system. You can watch a set of pre-recorded videos, participate in live training sessions, or contact the live support team. Lets face it, technology can be complicated and doing anything right requires some work, so its important to have the right people behind you.
9. Free Trials for Everything. Every service or product including the full Veretekk system itself has a free trial. This makes it easy for anyone to give it a test run to really discover how it works.
10. Social Media Integration and Innovation. The team at Veretekk is always trying to stay one step ahead of the curve. This means that integrating social media is top of mind. I’m always checking the announcements board to see what they are working on next.