Technorati is a popular site for aggregating different blog sites.  For this site to be registered with Technorati, I have to submit a "claim code".

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A friend of mine recently recounted a job interview question when interviewing for a project management position:

"It appears as though you have a lot of strategic planning experience in your background. Why aren't you interviewing for that type of position as opposed to this project management position?"

How would you respond to that question?

I have written many blog posts about the power of Wordpress and the ability to build any type of web site.  This blog post focuses on some free and low-cost resources when developing Wordpress websites.

Google maps provides the ability to write reviews on products and services offered by listed companies. Companies with a higher number of reviews rank higher in search results than the ones that do not have reviews.

You will need a Google account to write a review. You can sign up for a new Google account from the Google search screen.

 

Twitter is heavily indexed by search engines.  It is a great way to make sure that your site shows when users are searching for your products and services.

It is not important to become a Twitter addict to get benefits from Twitter.  In other words, you do not have to post things five times a day.  Periodic posting of information about your business will help to improve your search engine rankings.

I interviewed a local Chief Information Officer today and asked "Would you recommend Agile software development to another company?" Well, maybe was the response. I am not going to name the Executive for fear that my interviewing skills may not accurately reflect his position on the subject.  However, he had some interesting comments.

Open Source has a long history. A more complete discourse on the history and meaning of Open Source can be found at Wikipedia.

Open Source - The Bottom Line

Software developers have created their own programming teams to create solutions to common problems.  In some cases the software developers have also built a company to support the software product.  Open source developers usually have at least one version of their product that can be used FREE.  The caveat is that you are on your own to download the software and install it on your own server.

 

By Jerry Helms

I recently attended a three-day training class on Agile Project Management. The instructor in the class compared and contrasted Agile Software Development to Waterfall Software Development. I started asking myself when was the last time I ever worked on a project that used the waterfall approach? I really could not remember a project that I could associate with the strictest interpretation of what the waterfall approach means.

As I continued to think about the issue, I came to the realization that comparing Agile to Waterfall using the "strict" definition is primarily a teaching metaphor. The "blinding flash of the obvious" was that Agile focuses on continuous team improvement and new techniques have been developed to focus on improving performance.

I just purchased an ink pen that also records my handwriting. Oh, it also records the audio that is going on at the same time that I am writing! I can transfer the handwritten notes and audio to my PC via a USB connection to make it easier for me to find my notes in the future.

Watch a pencast of how the technology works.

This new digital recording ink pen is now available at your local office supply and electronics stores!

The following is the text of an actual email sent by Jerry Helms to a business connection on LinkedIn. The names have been changed.

Dear John,

I noticed that you have been working on your LinkedIn profile the last few days. Enhancing your LinkedIn profile is one of the most important things you can do to enhance visibility for you AND ABC Company.

Content created on LinkedIn is heavily searched by the major search engines. Just try searching for your name -- your LinkedIn profile is probably on the first page of the results.

It's fair to ask "why would anyone be searching for me anyway"? If they already know my name, then they should know how to find me. Well, that's the point. ALL of the content in your LinkedIn profile is indexed. So enhancing the description of ABC Company and your products on LinkedIn will improve traffic back to your main web site.

Here is a short list of things you need to do for your LinkedIn profile:

1. Think about the search terms that people would use to find your company. Write content in your personal summary and job history sections that uses these search terms. It's not just about YOU, it's also about your company.
2. Create a separate company profile for ABC Company in LinkedIn.
3. I would encourage others at ABC Company to enhance their profiles. They will be using LinkedIn to find new customers.
4. Make sure you point back to the ABC Company web site using both the web site links area and within the content.

Spending some time every day building your network on LinkedIn is valuable, but it's more important to have good content (words) in your summary and job history. Remember -- write about the company as well as you personally.

There is a huge amount of other things that can be done to enhance ABC Company's visibility on the Internet. This just happens to be one you can do yourself.

Let me know if you need some help!

Thanks,
Jerry Helms

Managing my contact information is a big challenge.  Non Stop Portals is a small business.  Keeping up with the names and information for customers/prospects for the larger organizations that I have worked with was also a challenge.

I would like to hear from you if you have a similar problem!  We need to figure out a solution.

There are a lot of reasons organizations decide that it is time to upgrade their website. The most common reason is to generate more business by making it easier for buyers to find the product/service offered by the company. Business owners are using the Internet to find other companies that they want to do business with, so they recognize the importance of selling their own services through the Internet.

This article describes some of the planning questions you need to be ready to answer when getting ready to build a new web site or revamp an existing site.

The latest social media craze to hit Raleigh, NC is the Poken. A Poken is a device that uses near field wireless technology to communicate with other Pokens. Users store their personal information on the Poken and then they can exchange their personal information by touching their two Pokens together (or putting them close to each other).

It's an electronic business card. When you get back to your computer, you simply plug your Poken into a USB drive and you have access to the information from the other user. The mutual exchange of information happens automatically by connecting you to a Poken web site (where you registered your information). Wikipedia has a good overview of how the device works.

Pokens are available in two basic versions: a read-only device and an USB memory stick configuration. With the USB memory stick configuration you can use the Poken as a regular USB disk drive to store other files of your own. The read-only device is cheaper than the USB memory stick, but it can only be used to exchange information.

Pokens have "funky" designs to help draw attention to the fact that you have one in your possession. Poken Zoo has a great assortment of Poken designs you can choose from.

Pokens have been burning the Raleigh, NC Internet circles as the latest and greatest. Martin Brossman has been a great proponent of the Poken as a new entry to the social media world.  Martin has created some great educational information about the Poken and how it works.  I learned about the Poken from Martin's initiative to share his discovery with the Raleigh community.

It's going to be interesting to see how well they catch on. I paid the extra money to get the USB memory stick version. Can't ever have too much portable disk space around!

Amazing advances have been made in the last few years in software portability. Now you can run your own copy of Wordpress on a USB memory stick!  Non Stop Portals is recruiting beta testers for our Wordpress on a USB stick implementation.

I need to quickly point out that purpose of running Wordpress on a USB memory stick is for you to have a copy that you can use for training or offline development. Your USB Wordpress site will not appear on the World Wide Web, it's only going to be on the memory stick.

Why would you want to do this?

• You are learning Wordpress and aren't ready to invest in a hosting account to make your site accessible across the Internet.
• You want to have the ability to experiment with your site even when you are not connected to the Internet.
• You want to develop your site content offline and them move it to a production site. Wordpress provides the ability to export your site content from your USB stick and then import it to your production server.
• You are an experienced programmer who wants a test environment to develop new themes and plugins. It is much easier to write PHP code on your local PC and then test it immediately.

How does it work?

Wordpress runs in an Apache, MySQL, and PHP technology stack with one of two operating systems - Windows (WAMP) or Linux (LAMP). Several WAMP implementations have been developed to run on a USB stick. Wordpress will work with several, but we have successfully tested The Uniform Server implementation along with Wordpress.

Once installed, I simply start The Uniform Server and access my Wordpress development site using a localhost address (e.g. http://localhost/wordpress).  Wordpress has built-in export and import tools, making it possible to develop content on my local machine, export it, and then import it back to my production web site.

 

By Jerry Helms

What happens when you search for your name on Google? Does your name show up in the results? This article describes a technique that guarantees your name will appear!

Increasing your personal and corporate visibility on the Internet can be accomplished through a wide variety of free tools. Google profiles are free and once you have created your profile your information shows up in search results immediately. When I search for Jerry Helms, my personal listing shows up on the bottom of the first page of search results.

I recently retrieved an old notebook planner to use that had some notes on a presentation that I attended in April, 2001 on Guerilla Marketing by Jay Levinson.  Jay is the author of a series of books on Guerilla Marketing that was very popular at the time and in fact is still popular.

I had started a project management consulting practice in the fall of 2000 just before the big Internet dot com bubble burst.  The "irrational exuberance"  of investing in speculative Internet ventures has disappeared, but in reality the transition to doing business on the Internet has grown exponentially.  The Internet has become one of the key elements of a viable marketing plan for organizations.

The date struck me because it was before the September, 2001 World Trade center national disaster.  I could not help but reflect that while a lot has changed since April, 2001, Jay's message is still 100 percent on target.  Technology and Internet based marketing was obviously in existence during his presentation, but even he said that it should not be where all of your marketing efforts are focused.

Key Takeaways

Invest in Jay Levinson's books, they are well worth the investment.  Here are a few of my key observations from the presentation.

The key metric to measure the success of your marketing efforts is, no surprise, profits.  There may be some supporting metrics that you can correlate to increased profits, for example web site page views.  However, if improving your web site page views does not generate new business, then it is not a very good leading indicator that you are going to have a good year.

Marketing is any contact.  It's a repetitive ongoing process with the primary investment being time, energy, and imagination.  It is important to remember that you are doing business with real People who appreciate the small things. These People will reward you with repeat business and referrals when you provide them a valuable product/service in a professional and friendly manner.

You will have to "touch" your prospects on multiple occasions to remind them about what you do before it will occur to them that you have something that they need or want.  The response rate for sending out a single direct mail piece to an audience is extraordinarily low.  However, if you send the same piece out three times the response rate goes up.  I am not suggesting that direct mail might pass the cost/benefit ratio for your company, I am just using it as an illustration.

Taking action is the key to success.  Small businesses have the ability to move faster.  If a mistake is made, it's not a big deal.  The intended audience is not so large that it will take a long time to correct the mistake.  Having a sense of urgency to do the important marketing tasks is crucial to success.

Fast Forward To Today

Non Stop Portals provides innovative Internet marketing solutions.  However, we clearly communicate that there are other pieces of the puzzle that are not driven by technology.  Implementing a technical solution without changing the underlying business process often does not lead to improved profits.

The Internet continues to change at a rapid pace.  Twitter has become a national media superstar.  You can not turn on the television without someone talking about "Tweets" and their Twitter address.  Twitter was formed as a company in April, 2007.

The ability to develop imaginative and creative marketing with web sites, blogs, paid advertising, email campaigns, and social media has never been greater.  Even the printing industry has moved to the Internet.  Send Out Cards is an Internet platform where you can develop customized cards and send them out with your signature.  The cost of implementing these types of marketing efforts is much lower than traditional advertising AND your message will reach a global audience.

"What Can We Do For You Today?"

Non Stop Portals is ready to show you how to improve your sales and reduce your information technology expenditures with innovative Internet based technology solutions.  Contact us at 888-881-4605 to learn more.

If you have an interest in learning more about Send Out Cards in the Raleigh, NC area, contact Shannon Saharski at 336-213-9946 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

 

 

Bit.ly is an Internet web site that you can use to create a "shortened" link for your long URL address.  For example, the full link to this article is: http://nonstopportals.com/blog/143-bitly-links.

I can go to Bit.ly, type in this long link and get Bit.ly to create a shortened link for me.  The shortened link that I just created is http://bit.ly/25oIRH.

Shortened links are popular on Twitter and other blogs.  They save space.  Twitter micro blogs are limited to 140 characters.  So Bit.ly was developed to help save space.

Bit.ly also provides statistics about the number of times your shortened link is clicked on.  That means that you can measure the effectiveness of your blog posts.

There is a lot of concern that someone could create a shortened link that will install something bad on your computer.  The prevailing wisdom is that you should never click on a link from someone you don't know.  So, be careful when clicking on strange links.

The following excerpt is from the Bit.ly web site.

How can I be sure a bit.ly link is safe to click on?

Bit.ly filters all links through several independent services to check for spam, suspected phishing scams, malware, and other objectionable content. We currently includeGoogle Safe Browsing, SURBL, and SpamCop in our operations. For Firefox browser users, we also have a Preview Plugin that allows you to view more information about a link before clicking. If you are a Twitter user, similar preview features are offered byTweetdeck (we’ve got a writeup of how it works here).

http://bit.ly/pages/faq/

Non Stop Portals recommends Wordpress as a platform for building web sites that are easy to maintain by end-users. Wordpress is not the perfect match for every situation, but it works great for building web sites that can be modified directly by the owner of the web site.

It quickly became clear that we needed to have the ability to build many Wordpress sites that run off of one copy of the Wordpress software. If we installed a new copy of Wordpress for every new site, we would be faced with upgrading every site when new releases of Wordpress became available.

The technical term for running multiple instances off of one software copy is multi-tenancy. While each individual site has it's own security access rules and unique configuration, the underlying software is the same. Whenever a new software release becomes available we will only need to upgrade one copy of the software.

There are several solutions available to provide the ability to create unique domains that point to one single copy of Wordpress. We tried several of the solutions and finally found one that is well documented and IT WORKS.

The Multi-Site Wordpress plugin and associated documentation costs $15.00. The documentation will save you loads of time.

 

 

 

 

Disclosure:  Non Stop Portals will receive a commission if you elect to purchase the ebook and Wordpress plugin.

One of the most frequent series of questions I get about building web sites is about blogging.

Should I have my own blog?

Why should I have my own blog?

What is the value of blogging?

Web sites are generally created to generate new business through search engines and to show prospective customers that you are a "credible" business. In either case, you need to spend some time thinking about your corporate message and the best way to communicate the message to your prospective customers.

 

I recently posed this question on an Inside919.com blog. The respondents answered with a "yes", but did not have quantitative data to support their answers. I admit that I was still skeptical that participating in social media platforms was really going to help me build a business.

This week I received an email asking questions about how to build a blog with Wordpress. The email author indicated that she had seen some of my LinkedIn status updates and thought I might have some answers to her questions. Now that's exciting! Someone actually saw my LinkedIn updates.

Read more... Add new comment

Watch a Powerpoint presentation about Lean Manufacturing.

The primary object of Lean is to eliminate waste within organizations. Waste can occur in many places -- not just manufacturing. Improving your operation using Lean Manufacturing principles is a topic you need to learn more about.

You can view the presentation in full screen by clicking on the icon on the bottom right hand side of the Slideshare preview window.

Keywords: lean manufacturing, raleigh, north carolina, lean for the office, waste, muda, kanban, kaizen, six sigma

Your Gravatar is an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs and web forums, so why not on any site?

You can register a global avatar at www.gravatar.com. Your gravatar will automatically be recognized by many Wordpress sites.

Give it a try, it's free!

By Jerry Helms

I read a lot of web pages and articles on the Internet.  It seems as though my attention span is decreasing by the day.  I am having trouble focusing on any paragraph that is longer than five lines of text.  Is it just me?

I think that part of the reason is the 140 character microblog.  What's that?  The maximum text message size on Twitter.

Is Twitter really making me become more Attention Deficit?

Probably not.  I suspect my ability to focus on long paragraphs and articles has not changed much over the years.  I know that I am not the world's best writer, but I even get bored writing long dissertations for any purpose.  I'm finding that while writing this article my primary purpose is to use short paragraphs to get the message across and not repeat myself.  And not repeat myself.

I also have recently learned a valuable lesson about presentations.  My old style was to write fairly detailed Powerpoint bullet points.  In reality, my Powerpoint presentation was an outline of what I wanted to say.  I attended a presentation last week that used this technique.  My reaction to the presentation was to wonder if the presenter knew that we could read?  My lesson learned was to summarize words more on the slides and add my words as a part of my presentation.

Boy, writing compelling content for a web site and making effective presentations is hard work!!

 

This is the first article in the "Regular Folks" series.  The focus is to explain the technical term Business Intelligence in a way that anyone can understand.  Feel free to comment on the article and ask questions!

All companies face the same challenges in managing their business to generate profits.  The typical questions that eventually come up are:

• How much money am I making?
• Are my sales trending up or down?
• Which products/services contribute the most to my profits?
• What products should I discontinue because the profits are too low?
• How can I lower my inventory levels so that they are consumed "just in time"?

The Problem

When a business sets up their accounting system, they focus on the minimal effort required to record sales and expenses.  It takes a lot of effort to capture data about the specific items that are sold within your business and the associated effort for the items.  If you really want to answer the types of questions listed above, it is going to be necessary to record detailed data.

Accounting systems do a great job of showing numbers and trends at a "summary" or aggregate level.  However, if you really want to drill down into specific product/service categories or individual items, it's hard work.  Many companies resort to keeping two sets of information:  the official accounting "books" and separate spreadsheets with the details.

The Solution

If you capture data in your accounting system at the right level of detail, you can periodically extract the data and analyze it with software tools designed to help answer the important business questions.  The extracted detailed data is called a data warehouse.  Keeping a data warehouse separate from your accounting system means that you can perform all kinds of analysis that will not have a negative impact on the ability for others to continue using your accounting system.

A wide variety of software tools are available to analyze the data warehouse information by product/service category.  The most frequent analysis is to show historical trends based on a timeline.  The timeline can be set up to segment data by month, quarter, year, etc.

If you have ever used a Microsoft Excel pivot table, then you are already familiar with the concept.  A pivot table is designed to show data aggregations over time periods.  You can start drilling down into specific categories.  For example, you want to see all detailed products that have been sold in a category called "Office Chairs".  Once you see the data, you decide that you want to sort the data in descending sequence by profits.

Summary

The technical term that is most commonly used for this subject area is "business intelligence".   Small businesses can perform a lot of this type of analysis using Microsoft Excel.  However, as the business grows the amount of data to analyze makes it harder for Excel to manipulate the data.  The next step up is to store the data warehouse in a database management system and use a business intelligence software package to analyze the data.

Search on the terms "business intelligence" and "open source business intelligence" to get a feel for the number of software options available.

Non Stop Portals has worked with several different business intelligence software suites.  We have a variety of lower cost options available for small business.  Contact us to learn more about how we can help you Manage Your Business By The Numbers.

 

My daughter, Jennifer Jarrell, was kind enough to provide me with some feedback on my web site. In summary, she thought that some of the content was too technical for a new small business owner to understand.

My first inclination was to write a series of articles labeled "... For Dummies". Like, "Web Portals for Dummies".

I decided that using the word Dummies could be a possible trademark infringement on the very popular books. So, I decided to look up the word dummy online. Here's the definition I found:

Main Entry:	dummy
Part of Speech:	noun
Definition:	stupid person
Synonyms:	blockhead, dimwit, dolt*, dullard, dunce, fool,idiot, ignoramus, moron, numskull, oaf, simpleton
Antonyms:	brain, genius

To be honest, the substitute words for dummy seem very insulting. So, I've decided to embark on writing a series of blog posts for regular folks. Non-technical and easy to understand. Sure the site will still have lots of more technical stuff, but I will periodically write regular stuff as well.

Thank you Jennifer for the suggestion!

Jennifer lives in Charlotte, NC, providing urban ministry services through Hyaets.  .

Twitter has some good information from time to time. I just ran across a Twitter hash (#roi) that has a series of posts about measuring return on investment for social media sites.

A Twitter hash is used in each individual article so that it is easy to search for articles of interest. In this case, if you do a search on #roi, you will find all articles that are related to Return On Investment.

The following article is a great start to measuring ROI, which follows our process for helping clients improve their sales and profitability.

Social Media ROI Framework

Here is a simple, five-step framework for developing a social media ROI measurement program. Remember that not all social media initiatives will result in short-term ROI generation. It is also important to comprehend the results of programs that result in non-financial value or impact. (For a quick refresher on the difference between value and ROI read this). Holistic measurement programs should be designed to track and measure non-financial impact as well as ROI.

By Don Bartholomew (Twitter name: donbart)

Read The Rest of the Article

Non Stop Portals is ready to help you implement solutions that will have measurable benefits to your organization!

Watch an eight minute slidecast about Customer Relationship Management and the potential benefits for your organization. The green play button on the bottom of the window will start the audio and automatic playback of the slidecast. You can view the video in full screen by clicking on the icon on the bottom right hand side of the Slideshare preview window.

Watch a six minute slidecast about our special $500 offer to Create A Web Site With Wordpress. The green play button on the bottom of the window will start the audio and automatic playback of the slidecast. You can view the video in full screen by clicking on the icon on the bottom right hand side of the Slideshare preview window.

Visit www.nonstopportalsezblog.com for more information.

I just ran across a good article on Bing about writing content with an emphasis on keywords.  It is a great basic tutorial on generating better results for your page rankings.

The bottom line summary of the article is to write natural content that is focused on specific keyword phrases.  By natural, the writing should provide information to the reader instead of using tricks to try and manipulate the search engine.

Yes, it is still important to match your site meta tags with the contents of the article, but it is just as important to write good copy for your content.

 

A Meetup is a group of people with common interests that schedule meetings to discuss their topic of common interest.  The Meetup.com website facilitates finding groups of interest, administering group membership and posting upcoming events.

Basically, the Meetup structure is a social media network that allows individuals to connect with other individuals in their area.  Each group is self-administered and meets locally.  Individual group leaders register a group of interest and solicit their friends to form the core group.  Word of mouth and self-promotion are normally the means utilized to get new members to join.

Topics of interest for Meetup groups vary widely by location.  I live in the Raleigh, NC area and obviously have a strong interest in web site development, search engine optimization, and project management.  Local Meetup groups exist for each of these topic areas.  After I register as a Meetup user, I can request membership in any group listed.  Once approved by the group leader I will receive all upcoming meeting announcements and events.  I RSVP to any meeting that I am planning on attending.

Meetups are a valuable resource to learn more about your areas of interest and to share what you know with others.  The group depends upon members sharing with each other.  Give it a try!

 

We have written a separate article on our blog about the options available for you to Create Your Web Site. We will be happy to talk with you to help you decide which option is best for your requirements.

We are offering a complete blog package starting at $500.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet.^[1][2] Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the "cloud" that supports them.^[3]

 

A web portal presents information from diverse sources in a unified way. Apart from the standard search engine feature, web portals offer other services such as e-mail, news, stock prices, information, and entertainment. Portals provide a way for enterprises to provide a consistent look and feel with access control and procedures for multiple applications, which otherwise would have been different entities altogether. Examples of a web portal are MSN, Yahoo!, AOL and iGoogle.

A full-time internal webmaster easily costs over $75,000 per year  in compensation, taxes and benefits.  Is this payroll commitment really providing the value to your organization?  Perhaps you should consider a virtual webmaster for your organization.

A virtual webmaster works on  specific assignments as directed by you.  Let's be honest - most companies don't really need the overhead associated with hiring a webmaster to be on their staff.

Choosing your domain name is an important element of branding your company to get maximum exposure. Domains are "leased" by Internet name service providers on an annual basis. We can assist in registering your domain name or using your existing registration.

Your new web site needs to hosted on a server that is attached to the Internet. We have a preferred hosting provider that we work with, which expedites our programming services. Every hosting provider works a little differently, so using our provider saves a lot of development time. We will be happy to discuss how web hosting works in more detail.

The way you want your site to "look" is a big factor in the overall expense of your new site.  We have graphic designers available to do a complete custom design, including logos, color choices, graphics, and fonts.

If you want to get a great look at a lower price, you may want to consider using one of our many templates as a base to design your look and feel.  Making color changes to an existing design takes a lot less time than designing one from scratch.

Of course many Internet development "purists" believe that all site templates should be custom designed.  We leave the choice to you.

We can create a flexible payment plan for you to make monthly payments after a small down payment on development services. This approach works very well for small business owners that are concerned about a high up front investment. We also have a plan where you can say more over the course of a year by making a larger up front investment. We would like the opportunity to discuss your requirements and develop a web marketing plan that generates new business leads for you and is also affordable.

The economy  has been in turmoil for the last several years.  Speculative home buying fueled by easy home mortgage financing could not really last indefinitely.  When the economy started seeing signs of a recession, the housing industry was hit harder than many other industries.  The collapse of the financial industry is one of the primary reasons for the current recession.

There have been recent signs that the economy  is starting to show signs of a recovery.  You need to position yourself to take advantage of any improvements in the economy.

The services provided by Non Stop Portals are designed for any business.  In addition to creating a superior web site presence, our solution includes a flexible system for you to post content on your site.