Most of the work I do for clients involves writing copy, scheduling eblasts, managing websites etc. Very exciting stuff. And something I’ve always used my laptop for.

But having recently picked up an new iPad Mini, I began to wonder if maybe dragging that laptop around was a bit of overkill? Did I really need a full laptop for a weekend business trip?

It reminded me of a similar experience I had about 13 years ago, when I decided to not get a landline in my apartment and only use a cell phone. At the time I had friends question my sanity. But my reasoning was sound. During the day I had a phone at my office and at night I was rarely at home (ah the sweet bachelor life).

In the end it worked out well.  Fast forward 13 years, a marriage, three kids and house later, we’re a two cell phone family with no landline.

I’ve had an iPad for a couple of years. And I actually returned the first one I bought because I thought it was useless for work.

But with the emergence of cloud services like Dropbox, and Office software like Smart Office 2, I’ve found the iPad to be a very capable portable partner.

So off I went to San Francisco armed with an iPad Mini, Apple bluetooth keyboard and PadPivot stand.

On the plane I was able to edit some client video using iMovie.

When I got to the conference, I was able to set up at the bar area of the hotel and use the WordPress app, connect to Dropbox over the WiFi and create and edit documents just like I would on the laptop.

Now it wasn’t all simple. I missed having Dreamweaver to edit code and I did have to get my wife to email me a document I’d forgotten to upload to the cloud. But for the most part, this setup worked perfectly.

And the best part was my carry on luggage was a simple leather satchel that weighed close to nothing. And with that I can say my laptop will not get around as often as it once did.

Have you travelled with an iPad as your sole computer? If so, let me know how it worked out for you.  What apps are must-haves for business folks on the move?

Now you do.

Because of this it’s a good idea for your business to create and maintain a properly branded and optimized YouTube channel.

The immediate benefit for search is that you can quickly make it into the top 10 for many highly competitive queries.

The hard part is updating both your site and your YouTube channel.

So here is a quick tip to help you eliminate the extra work involved in bringing videos to your site and getting folks to subscribe to them.

What you need

1. YouTube Channel
2. WordPress site
3. Feedburner account
4. TubePress Plugin

Step 1

Install TubePress plugin

Download it here.

Step 2

Find your YouTube RSS feed

http://youtube.com/rss/YOURCHANNEL/videos.rss

Step 3

Create a Feedburner feed using your YouTube RSS

Step 4

Add the Feedburner signup and TubePress shortcode to a page on your site.

Conclusion

Your video page will now automatically update from your YouTube account and visitors can subscribe directly from your video page.

Here’s how I set it up for Bill Hogg.

If Facebook has taught us anything, it’s that at least a third of planet’s residents with steady Internet access log onto the site. Logically, once more people have ready access to the ‘net, you can expect to see Facebook’s numbers shoot through the roof.

What will you do to attract this market to your brand? If you’re not yet ready to market to the mobile crowd, here are four steps that should prepare you.

4  Steps to a Successful Mobile Campaign 

1. Offer Valuable Content

Valuable content to a mobile user is a bit different than valuable content to a desktop user. Obviously, you want to ensure the highest quality content, regardless of who you’re targeting or through which device, but mobile content needs to be a cut above the rest. You’re marketing to people who are sometimes literally on the go, sometimes only checking in out of habit. Eye-catching material that rewards their time will earn you more engagement. Think about memes, polls, contests, deals, and other valuable posts. When it comes to linking locations don’t forget you will also need to customize the design of the landing pages for mobile devices.

2. Use Ads Effectively

There are two types of ads on Facebook that will help increase your reach more than the others: Sponsored Stories and Page Post ads. As long as you’re following step one and are always creating high-quality, user-friendly content, you can apply that same quality to your ads and greatly increase the size and scope of your advertising. Plus, with the right third-party ad-management app and Facebook’s customization features, you can easily target any audience.

3. Optimize per Device

Simply catering to the “mobile” market can be misleading. They might all be coming to Facebook, but they’re logging on via different devices. The way Samsung Galaxy users and iPhone users view content is different. You should optimize your content for each device out there to ensure users are viewing the best of what you have to offer. Placement targeting will help you optimize entire campaigns based on a device.

4: Track Your Results 

Even following the steps above, you still have to track your results to ensure that things are going correctly and smoothly. You may encounter issues with an ad. You may find that one ad isn’t performing as well per a device as you would like. View your statistics in real time to stay out in front of any damaging issues. Check your analytics often to ensure that everything is running effectively.

The growth of the mobile market gives you an opportunity to jump aboard a fast-moving train. It might not create another “boom” like what happened in the mid to late 90s; that remains to be seen. But if another few hundred million people join Facebook through mobile devices, and if the economy bounces back in a big way, do you really want to miss out on that market?

This is a guest post written by Stanna Johnson from  Qwaya.  Stanna is an online writer and a social media enthusiast who loves to write about the latest social media trends. Feel free to leave your questions and comments below and she”ll surely answer it.

Now I know that’s how a lot of people use LinkedIn. It’s purely a job search tool.

But what I found really interesting is that he said he could tell when someone was looking for a job because their LinkedIn activity spiked.

Now he wasn’t a boss. He was just a friend or colleague. But it’s a fair warning to everyone who might be looking to leave their current job for a new opportunity.

So before you start updating your LinkedIn profile and following companies, you probably should make a few changes to your privacy settings so your current boss doesn’t find out.

Finding Your LinkedIn Privacy Controls

1. When you’re logged in to LinkedIn, mouse over your name in the top right corner and click on Settings.

2. Under Privacy Controls, Turn on/off your activity broadcasts.

Good luck on your job hunt. Just try not to get caught.

Now obviously there are people who use Facebook to promote business. And I do have a FanPage. But it’s purpose is to provide another option for people to consume content. And if they want to read my blog or tweets on Facebook – who am I to stop them?

But  your LinkedIn profile is a place where  you probably don’t pay enough attention. Indeed if you ask around, you’ll hear a lot of the same thing –  LinkedIn is for finding jobs.

But offering your services as an employee isn’t that much different from offering you services as a business. And LinkedIn is excellent for both.

The trick is to use it properly, and in a way that separates you from the roughly 160 million other LinkedIn profiles.

One of my clients – Kurt Shaver – is a corporate sales trainer with a special focus on social selling and LinkedIn. If you want to see a great LinkedIn profile – check his out.

He’s got videos, downloads and lot of other things that tell you right away that he knows what he’s talking about.

And while I’m not here to promote Kurt, he does have a tool that everyone with a LinkedIn account should check out. It’s a short anonymous self-assessment for your LinkedIn profile.

It’s 10 questions and at the end of it you’ll get redirected to a results page that shows the aggregate responses for EVERYONE who has taken it.

When you take the quiz, bookmark the results page and come back to it often. You’ll find some interesting trends as far as seeing where Linkedin users are in general – and learn what you can do to stand out as an individual or a business.

Also don’t feel shy about passing this around to other people you know. The more people who take the survey the more informative these results will be.

Enjoy,
Aidan

What a positive idea it will make! Or so we thought! Open up our business using a Twitter account, selecting a good username and have that little bird icon added to all our corporate documentation! Little thoughts buzzing around our heads of building a social community using the World Wide Web, where all our customers talk and syndicate our chit-a-chat.  Idyllic market place might I ask?  So what the hell do you do when a client hits you hard with a negative Twitter like this…

When you are a commercial business, your interests in social media are based within building a trust, a presence and a clean cut, interactive image of your company.  So when one angry customer decides to “flip you the bird” with a Tweet that is meant as fact, how to we bury this situation and not break over cuckoo’s shells?

Keep Discreet, message in private 

A company’s loss in image through bad manners and slanging in public can be painful and costly. Your audience and users do not want to see childish, undisciplined retaliation of any sort.  Make sure that if you do want to argue your case, that you conduct this in a controlled manner, via the phone, Skype or emails as this is something that your wide audience and clientele need not intrude or see.

Contact the dissatisfied customer with details of your customer service department and make sure that they are dealt with quickly and effectively.  If you have received one complaint from this customer before, be wary about it; think how a poor customer service experience could provoke further Tweeting, disregarding your company.

Answer all your critics

The social media account is now as integral to many large companies much as the good old phone and email.  Customers are on social networks 24/7, and when a customer thinks to complain publicly, there needs to be an employee available to apprehend them.

When a customer complains to your on Twitter, they are expecting a reply, just like someone would if they had rung up or emailed in.  With this so, make sure you handle your client with a personal reply, don’t just send out the generic “courtesy” message, it won’t work.

Respond to your positive Tweets

Keeping up to speed with a company’s Twitter account feels like a hard job to maintain for some.

At Promotional Gifts we try and keep a steady hand on what our clients think of us, and encourage our customers, posting Tweets of positive comments, to add testimonials on the side.  We like to Retweet these anytime!

If you serve up some good feedback to the ones that land good praise, then you know that you have Twitter working for you, on cue, it is your show, citing brand loyalty as the company milestone.

For any companies who are just starting out on their Twitter endeavour, make sure you are ready to rendezvous with the negative resistance!  Make sure you have your customer service processes ready to filter a cluster of bad barks on Twitter, so you can handle complaints in a professional and effective manner.

Written by Daniel Vince of Corporate Gifts Co, Business Gifts Specialist Corporation

I’m not that old and I barely remember them. Today’s Gen Y workers will go through life not knowing that memory at all.

Work life balance is a fantasy that becomes more and more distant every day.

We’re connected all the time. Blackberrys, iPhones and Android devices have tethered us to our offices. It’s virtually impossible to escape. Work emails come 24 hours a day, all week long. And senders expect a response immediately.

A few weeks back I was thinking about a 9 day camping trip I took back in 2005. I had no access to my phone or my email. It was wonderful.

Could I take 9 days away from my job now? It would be difficult. I know in my brain that the world would go on just fine without me. But being connected is such a huge part of what we’ve all become that making a break – even for a few days would be tough.

But learning to separate ourselves from work and our social media tribe is essential if we want to maintain a semblance of independence.

Work is important. Facebook, less so. And learning to turn away from both for even a little bit can help us recalibrate.

If you need a business reason to try this, think about what effect resetting your perspective and looking at your business from a completely fresh angle on Monday morning could mean to your clients? A little bit of distance can do amazing things for your objectivity.

Try it this weekend. Can you live without email and social media for 48 hours?

On Monday, I’ll be back to writing about marketing with some tips on how to use LinkedIn for prospecting.

Next week, I’ll also have a blog about optimizing your videos for search.

So have a good weekend. I’m off to grab a beer.

I’ve always been a strong advocate of using LinkedIn as the primary  tool for B2B companies trying to leverage social media to drive business.

Unlike Facebook, LinkedIn is a business networking site. You won’t (or at least you shouldn’t) see funny pictures and profanity-laced updates. More importantly you post stuff to LinkedIn that most of your personal connections on Facebook probably don’t care about.

Related: Stop Polluting Your Personal Facebook Page with Business Updates

Another reason why LinkedIn is becoming more important everyday – as of March 2012, professionals were signing up to join LinkedIn at a rate of approximately two new members per second. And while 160 million members might not be Facebook numbers, it is a huge pool of potential partners and customers.

So the trick is to find a way to reach all these potential clients and turn them into real world business.

Now here comes the awesome part. LinkedIn actually makes it very easy to show visitors to your website how connected they are to you and your company.

If you run a website – you already know about the LinkedIn Share button and it’s ability to send your content to specific individuals, groups or simply post it as a status update.

But LinkedIn has a lot more social media options to help your business integrate with it’s members beyond simple sharing.

You probably haven’t heard of LinkedIn’s Member and Company Profile plugins (for any site – not just WordPress). But they are essential tools for any business looking to leverage social media effectiveness. Simply by dropping a small piece of code onto your homepage, LinkedIn members who come to your site from any traffic source will immediately see how “connected” they are to you or your company.

If you want to see it in action check out the home page of my site here. How are we connected?

Why are these tools important? Well if a prospective client sees that you are connected through a mutual business partner, that acts as a “soft referral” or endorsement of you and your business. And we all know that the more connected someone is to you the more likely they are to send business your way.

So here are the links to generate the code:

Member Profile
Business Profile

Go ahead and pass this post to your webmaster. Get these tools dropped onto your site today and start turning LinkedIn members into real clients.

How else are you using LinkedIn and other social media to grow your business? Let me know in the comments.

Also see: Growing your Facebook Fan Page

With close to a billion members, Facebook is a marketers wet dream. Of course it can quickly become a nightmare if you forget the reason people love it so much – they like sharing stuff (and showing off) with friends.

I had a person I went to high school with “friend” me a few years back. We weren’t close and I was still in that phase of accepting just about any friend request I received. Besides, I was curious to see what he was up to.

Within a few hours I started getting updates about specials and events from his catering company.

Needless to say, he didn’t last long as a Facebook friend.

It was an interesting experience that lead me to re-examine what I was posting. As much as I didn’t care about his business, I was equally sure that folks were not interested in mine.

On Facebook people want a little window into your life, not a trap door into a sales cycle.

Before posting anything on your personal page, ask yourself “Does my mom (dad, girlfriend, boyfriend etc) care?” If the answer is no, head over to LinkedIn and post your update there.

That’s not to say you can’t use Facebook. That’s why there are Facebook Fan pages.

Using a proper Fan Page, you can talk about your business and engage in “shop talk” without annoying those you actually care about personally.

Join my Facebook Fan Page here.
Connect with me on LinkedIn
Follow Short Circuit Media on LinkedIn

Those behind this little piece of coding were brought down by the FBI last year. But when the Bureau realized that turning off the infected servers would return everybody infected back to the early 90s – i.e. without internet – they replaced the infected servers behind the malware with clean ones.

And now it’s all coming to an end Monday morning @ 12:01am.

You may not even know you’re infected. However, if your computer is slow and you seem to be having trouble with other problems – you could be.

Both Facebook and Google have been showing warnings if they detect an infected computer. Facebook displays a message that says, “Your computer or network might be infected.” Google users get a similar warning.

To check whether a computer is infected, users can visit a website run by the group brought in by the FBI.

The site includes links to commercial sites that will run a quick check on the computer, and it also lays out detailed instructions if users want to actually check the computer themselves.

You can also access this free tool  – DNSChanger Malware Checker,here.

So consider this fair warning.