Blog

  • Noise

    Recently one of my board members commented on the sheer volume of posts I was making on Twitter. He recommended I review what Michael Hyatt said about how to post frequently without flooding your followers, “I use Buffer to spread these throughout the day, so I don’t overwhelm my followers.

    Matt O'Dell, New Worship, image courtesy galerie Schleicher+Lange, Paris

    I started using it and it’s been great, but I started to wonder if just tweeting links to my followers was actually helping anyone (including myself). I love to share things, but do people really care? And what does it mean to the messages I do want them to care about?

    Chris Brogan, entrepreneur and social media expert, recently wrote a post entitled Our Responsibility as Media Channels where Brogan talks about how we are all media channels – no different than TV or radio stations – and we have a responsibility to our ‘viewers’ and ‘listeners’ to pay attention to both the content and the rate of what we are presenting.

    You may not think that you are helping to curate the web, but every time you share something, you are categorizing it and sharing it with someone the same way a museum director takes a bone from the earth, identifies it, and displays it in a case.

    Brogan says, “Attention is a currency, and if we spend too much of other people’s attention on frivolous posts and shares, we risk losing that attention…What if you look at this as your responsibility? What if you looked at all we just outlined with an eye towards making something bigger than just noise?”

    Noise

    Noise. That’s the word I’d been searching for to describe that feeling I had about sharing content that while useful, may be just, well – noisy.

    Brogan encouraged me to “[not] just push the stumble, the retweet, etc, but give some value to the share by giving your points, adding your two cents, blogging a piece around it, etc.,” which is what I’m doing here.

    Seth Godin, entrepreneur and marketing expert, recently wrote an article entitled, The trap of social media noise, “More noise is not better noise,” says Godin, who strategizes, “Relentlessly focus. Prune your message and your list and build a reputation that’s worth owning and an audience that cares.”

    That was one of my initial questions: Do people really care what I’m sharing? Does less noise equate with more attention? Is less really more?

    What Other People Are Doing About It

    While Buffer is a Chrome app that allows you to spread out what you are sharing throughout the day, Handpick, which Jon Mitchell, a writer for ReadWriteWeb and former editor of NewsTrust, recently wrote about in Handpick: Selective Social Sharing Without The Noise, is an app that allows you to sum it all up in one email.

    “The social Web is noisy,” writes Mitchell, who reviewed Handpick, a social Web app that collects things you want to share throughout the day and emails them to the contacts of your choosing in one email at the end of the day.

    Pete Williams, entrepreneur, author, and marketer, created NOISE RE/DUCTION, which aims to, “remove all the noise [in the business and marketing space] to find the stuff that’s actually valuable.” In other words, they are curating content.

    What are you going to do about it?

  • Remote Controlled Excellence

    “Excellent!” – Dan Hoffman on 12/20/2011

    We helped Dan convert his high-end remote controlled boat site from static, HTML web pages to a dynamic content management system (CMS) running WordPress. Instead of having to pay to make changes on over 40 different files, he can save money by only paying to change one file. That’s the power of WordPress and PHP includes.

    Bonzi Sports uses the blog functionality of WordPress to create and promote specials on remote controlled boats in his Marina. Before, this process was very manual, but now he can add, remove, and promote sale items independently because each post is modular and contains it’s own web address.

  • Instructions on How to Use WordPress

    This WordPress guide is intended to be a primer for WordPress beginners learning how to login and post a page or a post for the first time. It’s not meant to be an guide on how to use WordPress in general.

    How to Login to Your WordPress Website

    In order to edit your website using WordPress, you will first need to login. You can do that by going to http://[yourdomain.com]/wp-admin. You’ll need to enter your username and password provided to you by your web designer or host.

    If you get it wrong, don’t worry about locking yourself out like you can on some other websites. Unless there is a specific plugin (an add-on piece of software for WordPress installed by your web designer), you won’t get locked out.

    How to Navigate the WordPress Dashboard

    Once you login, you will see your dashboard. From there you can click on “Posts” to view current posts or “Add New” to add a new post. A post is just a term for a specific type of web page within the content management system. It is different from a “Page” for example. Media is where pictures you have uploaded can be managed. Comments (if enabled) can be approved, deleted, or replied to from the “Comments” link. “Profile” is where you can change your password.

    How to Write a Post

    Under the “Posts” heading on the left navigation, click on “Add New”. You can type your post just as you would in any other advanced text editor like Microsoft Word. There is even a button with many smaller boxes in it which opens up more editing options like the ability to change text color and underline. Its the second icon from the right in the editing toolbar.

    To add a picture or music, use the “Upload / Insert” menu just above the editing toolbar. The box-in-a-box icon opens a window which allows you to select files. To add or edit a link, highlight the word or phrase, then click the chain-link icon in the menu. You’ll have the option to type or paste a link in or link to existing content on your site by clicking “Or link to existing content”.

    How to Add an Image to a Post

    click the camera icon above the editing box. When the box comes up, upload the image, fill in the options, and click “Add to Post”. Options like left, right, and center will do that to the image relative to the text.

    Click “Select Files” then choose options for the picture. You can add a title, a link, or a caption as well as left, right, or center the picture. These settings can be changed at any time so if you’re not sure, just go with the default. Once the picture is in your post, if you don’t like it, hover over it and click the properties button to change options.

    How to Publish or Update a Post

    Once you are satisfied with the way your post looks, click “Publish”. Once you do this, it becomes live on your website. To preview it first, click “Preview”. When you are done, simply log out or close your browser. If you’ve already published and are just editing, the button will say “Update” instead. This button saves your changes.

    Erich Stauffer is an Indianapolis-based SEO web design company specializing in converting static HTML web sites into dynamic, easily editable web sites with blogging functionality using WordPress. Contact us with your fears and your problems and we’ll see if we’re a right fit for you.

  • Other Eric(h) Stauffer’s Like Me

    My wife recently pointed out how similar some of the other Eric(h) Stauffer’s in the world are similar to me so I thought I’d highlight some of them here. If you’re one of them and you want me to take your info down, just contact me or leave a comment below.

    Eric Stauffer – Entrepreneur, Payment Solutions Consultant, SEO Ninja, and Business Development/Content Creation

    I’ve added this Eric(h) Stauffer I found on About.Me because he’s an entrepreneur, is interested in payment solutions, SEO, and business development. On all of those things we’re a complete overlap. It’s a little odd actually. I currently do SEO and content marketing, but also run blogs on items processing and digital wallets.

    Erich Stauffer – CEO bei Starbusiness

    Located in Basel Area, Switzerland, this Erich Stauffer does Management Consulting, which is also something I have both done in the past as a business analyst and something I currently do. I’m also CEO of my company, but I know that’s a stretch. My mom is CEO of her company and my friend, Jason Cobb, is CEO of his company too. Everybody’s a CEO nowadays. 🙂

    If Starbusiness is anything like the .SU website, then it’s a multi-level marketing (MLM) business that’s currently expanding into Russia. Good for them! I’ve done my share of MLM (and so has my mother – we have so much in common!). I did Amway and sold Tri-Star vacuums (one to – again – my mother). She sold Tupperware in her day (when she was my age).

    Eric M. Stauffer – Eric M. Stauffer

    According to his Twitter account, this Eric(h) Stauffer is an “Instructional Technologist, Consultant, Creative Problem Solver, Runner, Husband, Comedian . . . Not always in that order.”

    I’ve often tried to be a comedian, am currently a husband, and creative problem solver; and I’ve called myself a technologist and consultant. This guy looks like he travels more than me, but that’s okay. We need different types of Eric(h) Stauffer’s in this world, even if we all have a lot in common.

    Then of course there is the guy I’m named after (who was also a designer like me, even if he was designing fake Hummels).

  • Problem Solver Seeks More Things to Fix

    Recently I’ve been rethinking how I feel about work and jobs. As you may or may not know, I help business owners solve technology and marketing problems, which gives me some freedom to choose who I work with and when. I don’t have fixed hours and if I work more, I can get paid more, but it’s not all roses and cherry blossoms.

    When you run your own business, while you may earn more, much of your work is doubled or even tripled. Not only do you have to do the work, but you have to go earn it, and then process all the finances, documentation, and taxes on the back end. In a traditional job environment the work is handed to you and you just do it. When it’s done, someone else processes it. Your work is finite and so is your pay.

    A Paradigm Shifts Again

    For ten years I worked full time jobs in banking and technology, and I always would told myself I’d be happier running my own business until one day I did. I started off running it on the side in 2007 and in 2011 I finally went full time. I do web design with HTML, CSS, and WordPress, email support with web hosts and Google Apps, and computer and network support for Microsoft products like Windows and Server 2003/2008.

    While I have been successful at running my own business, there are two reasons why I’ve recently began applying for jobs in the Indianapolis market. The first reason is because I realized that the ideas I had about working hard now in order to do much less later were not realistic. I didn’t even realize I had this mentality until after a couple of months had gone by and I discovered that there will never be a time when I’m doing ‘nothing’. I’ll always be doing something, so why not just spend some time figuring out what I want to do, not just what I can find a job doing.

    The second reason I began looking for jobs in the Indianapolis area was because I realized that it didn’t matter who I was doing the work for, as long as I was enjoying what I was doing. Even as a business owner, I have a boss. I have clients, my wife, and my Lord to report to. It’s not just willy nilly around here. I have to meet or exceed all of their expectations just as I would have to in a traditional job scenario – only more so because while the rewards are higher, so are the risks. There are no written warnings with clients, just lost opportunities in the future.

    You Are a Startup

    A friend of mine, Jason Cobb, recently coined a term, “You are a startup,” meaning that whatever you’re doing, do it like a startup. But what is a startup? A startup is traditionally a software company that is rapidly trying to create a product that is useful and monetizeable as fast as they can. It normally involves a small team consisting of a leader, a technical co-founder, and a marketer. These roles could all be one person, or it could be five people, but the point is that it’s a small team pushing out useful iterations of a product with the hopes of expanding very fast once a market can’t live without it.

    So how does a startup mentality apply to you? Whether you are working for a client or for a company as an employee, you must be producing stuff that matters, you must be a leader, and you must be marketing yourself. This means listening to your customers and getting feedback, getting to know your fellow employees, and continuing your education (via meetups, books, or traditional training).

    As I wrote about in 13 More Books for Every Entrepreneur, Reid Hoffman, (co-founder of LinkedIn) together with Ben Casnocha (entrepreneur and author) have written a book about managing your career as if it were a start-up business: a living, breathing, growing start-up of you. The thesis is that the same skills startup entrepreneurs use, professionals need to get ahead today.

    Now that I’ve experienced running my own business, I no longer look down on the traditional 9-to-5 job because I know that I can have impact either way and still accomplish my goals of learning, growing, and taking care of my family.

    12 Month Goals (and Roadmap)

    I recently subscribed to a blog I’ve been reading since 2008 called I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. Today he sent out a link to a PDF with a 12 Month Goals Roadmap worksheet, very similar to Michael Hyatt’s Life Plan. I’d like to share my answers here.

    1. What will you be doing for work? – Editing HTML, CSS, and PHP; Converting static HTML web pages into dynamic CMS blogs; converting clients from POP email access to Google Apps; training users on how to use WordPress; Affiliate Marketing; Computer Network Troubleshooting and Repair

    2. What’s your boss (or the person to whom you’ll be accountable) like? – Gives me feedback; Challenges me; Considers me an expert in what I do; Trusts my decisions; Considers my feedback

    3. Where will you be working? – The Greater Indianapolis area, preferably along US 31, Keystone Ave, or 465; In an office with time allocated to work in blocks without interruption,  the ability to get up and walk around or go outside for a walk; And good Mexican, Chinese, and Thai food nearby.

    4. How much time do you spend working? – 10 hours a day, 70 hours a week.

    5. What does your Monday look like? – Reading and sharing emails until noon, viewing reports, and responding to client requests.

    If anyone is interested in using my services or would just like to get together for coffee, please don’t hesitate to email me or follow me on Twitter.

    This is one of those personal blog posts, if you’re interested in reading more about me specifically, try this one next or not, it’s your life.

  • 10 Entrepreneur and Startup Board Games

    As an entrepreneur who is interested in startups and board games, I considered making my own entrepreneurship board game or a board game about starting up, but like any good business owner, I started with market research. It turns out there are already at least ten entrepreneur or startup board games either on the market already or in development. Some of them you may have heard of and others are brand new.

    Startup Fever by Louis Perrochon

    Set in the world of Internet startups, the pieces are employees – from engineers to salesmen to executives. Opponents try to steal them with better offers. As head of the company, you can choose to invest your resources in personnel or sales. There’s even an expansion that introduces venture capitalists and lawyers, for extra flavor. The goal, as in real-world product development, is to get the most users.

    ScrumBrawl by VicTim Games LLC (Bugher and Vic Moyer)

    The object of ScrumBrawl is to score three goals by moving orb tokens into a portal. To do so, players control fantasy creatures – 50 in all – whose characteristics determine how they interact. Players also battle each other’s creatures to keep them from scoring. At one point, the game was much more elaborate than its final version, but play testers told VicTim Games that the concept was too unwieldy.

    Fluke by Ida Byrd-Hill, Detroit, MI

    A Detroit mother has developed a board game that takes players from accidental inventions through the tricky realm of patents, portfolios and finally to corporate wealth – if they’re savvy enough. The player with the largest portfolio wins.

    GoVenture Entrepreneur Board Game by GoVenture

    Run your own business and compete, collaborate, and negotiate with other players. Game play is designed to recreate the real-life thrills and challenges of entrepreneurship in a fun and educational social learning experience. Activities are expertly designed to enable you to experience the true challenges of entrepreneurship, while at the same time, provide an engaging and experiential group learning opportunity.

    Zeros-To-Heros by Richard Mak

    Marketed as the “World’s 1st board game on Entrepreneurship” Zeros-To-Heros is the winner of MENSA Singapore SELECT Awards (2007) based on its originality, dynamic game play, ability to stimulate players’ intellect and fun. You start the game as an employee with ZERO capital and ZERO understanding of business. Take the exciting path to become your OWN BOSS and see whether you survive or become an entrepreneurial Hero.

    Hot Company® Board Game

    Students experience what it’s like to “be the boss” while experiencing the thrill of running a company and finding solutions that will lead to success. Each player or team is the “owner” of a hot new company. Roll the die, pick a card, and you’re in business! The object of the game is to get “your” company to turn a profit. Hot Company® develops a wide array of real-world business skills.

    I’m The Boss!®

    A game of deal-making and negotiation, where students are investors just trying to make a deal. Through intelligent negotiations, temporary alliances, and cut-throat bargaining, players can rake in millions. But watch out for the other investors at your bargaining table who meddle in your affairs and try to take over your deals. As the boss, you stand to gain the most, but you can find yourself quickly cut out of a deal. In the end, the winner is the investor with the most money.

    Rich Dad Cashflow for Kids

    CASHFLOW for Kids teaches children how to have money work for them. CASHFLOW for Kids is a complete educational package which includes the book “Rich Dad’s Guide to Raising Your Child’s Financial I.Q.” CASHFLOW for Kids is recommended for children ages 6 and older. Children learn the difference between good credit and bad credit, assets and liabilities, earned income and passive income, and income and expenses. Cashflow for Kids is an easy way for parents to teach their children about finance, but it requires an adult or older child who already understands the basics of finance to reinforce the lessons as they are experienced.

    Entrepreneur’s Accessory to Monopoly by The Third Dimension

    This game, subtitled “The Power-Business Venture Game”, is an unofficial expansion to Monopoly. It comes with a small board that fits exactly into the center of a standard Monopoly game board. The game plays like regular Monopoly but adds Corporations, Leverage Buyouts, Corporate Takeovers, Casinos and Financial Coups into the mix. Look for it on eBay, but Monopoly itself is a good economic game.

    Globalization by Sandstorm

    Build your global empire… one company at a time! As the head of a multi-national corporation with one goal in mind – to make money – players in Globalization attempt to outbid their competitors to acquire businesses within six different industries and grow their conglomerate. Streamline operating costs build additional factories sue your competitors or take one of your subsidiaries public for big returns! Your corporate strategy will impact which companies you buy and how to take your corporation worldwide. The first to reach a billion in net worth wins!

    Want more learning sets for kids?

  • Is Your Business Prepared for a Disaster?

    Sometimes it pays to be redundant.

    Does your business have a disaster recovery plan for business continuity? Do you know what your company would do if a single workstation, a server, or the entire building went ‘down’? These are the plans that are above and beyond baseline data back-up, which you should be doing anyway. If you’re not doing that, stop reading this and back up your data! It should always be in at least two locations with one copy preferably stored off-site.

    Disasters such as earthquakes, fires, and floods are all too common in today’s world, but sadly, business continuity plans are not. Be prepared for not only a loss of data, hardware, and facilities, but also the risk of a pandemic where a third to half of your work force either can’t come in or are sick. How would your business continue to function? Would you still be able to serve your customers? What sort of steps are you taking to prepare for a scenario like this, or worse?

    Professional Technology Consulting has years of experience helping companies design and implement disaster planning and documentation. If you or your business is in need of professional technology assistance with how to back-up your data or prepare a disaster recovery site, please contact us and we’ll set up a time to site down and get to know you and your business before ever recommending anything that you don’t need, but hopefully some things that you will find useful-and necessary-to survive the storm.

  • Best Android Email App for Google Apps Email Users

    If you have an Android phone and you use Gmail, you’re in luck. There are plenty of apps for you to choose from that work great, but if you’re a Google Apps email user, the setup is a bit more tricky with most apps because there are currently no specific Android apps for Google App users.

    What’s the difference between a Gmail account and a Google Apps account if the email looks the same in a browser?

    Google Apps users may have noticed that things are a little different than Gmail. While the mail interface is now the same, that hasn’t always been the case and you can’t login to your Google Apps account through your Gmail address, although there are options, which I’ll discuss later. While a Google App email address can become a Google account or be linked to an existing Google account, a gmail account can’t be used to access a Google Apps account directly.

    So what are my options?

    First, if you are checking your Google Apps email from Outlook or Thunderbird because that’s how you or your IT department or vendor set it up for you, great. You’ll probably need them to help you set it up on your Android phone as well. This really isn’t for you. But if you check it in a browser or on your Android mobile device already, you are who this article is for. Google provides several web addresses to login to your Google Apps email even if you don’t have a custom domain setup for it such as mail.yourcustomdomain.com. Try placing your domain name after the a/ in http://mail.google.com/a/yourdomainnamehere. Adding a ‘s’ to http makes it secure. Google will change it to https anyway because that is the new default. If you browse here on your mobile phone, chances are Google will redirect you to the mobile version. This is your best option if you want to view pictures in your email. The default Android email app with Sprint’s HTC Hero, which is what we use, does not display pictures in email because it does not support HTML email.

    So what is the best Android email app for Google Apps email users?

    If you want to see pictures in your email, use an HTML email viewer, of which there are few. This is because Google has had an inline image/html email problem with Android since 2008. MailDroid is said to have success with viewing images, but Google says that the best way is to browse to http://www.google.com/m/a/example.com where example.com is your domain. If you have a T-Mobile G1, then you have pre-installed programs for Google Apps, but otherwise, you’re out of luck and the browser is the best alternative. The only downside to using a browser is there is no push email; there is no alerts when new email is received. This means that you’re stuck constantly checking your email through the browser or not getting inline images or HTML email through your default Android app.

    The solution? Use your default Android email app for push email and syncing, but keep an icon to the web address in the browser for viewing inline images (attached images can be downloaded and viewed just fine). This is the work around until Android and it’s apps develop a little further. Remember, it’s new here.

    If you or your business needs help or support with Google Apps, please contact us and we’d be happy to consult you.

  • What Can SugarCRM Do for You?

    SugarCRM is a great customer relationship manager with pipeline management and email marketing capability.  The core Sugar modules are as follows:

    Home – The Home module provides a quick view of the relevant data and activities that you select for display.

    Accounts – Manage customer companies, entities, or even individuals if’s it’s a small business.  You can track a variety of information about an account including website URL, address, number of employees and other data. Business subsidiaries can be linked to parent businesses in order to show relationships between accounts.

    Contacts – Individual customers, essentially the various contact points within an organization. These are the individuals with whom we are doing business and we wish to target marketing activity towards.  You can track contact information such as title, email address, and phone number. Contacts are usually linked to an account.

    Opportunities – Click this tab to view the Opportunities module. Use this module to track potential customers. Opportunities help you manage your selling process by tracking attributes such as sales stages, probability of close, deal amount and other information.

    Activities – Click this tab to view the Activities module. Use this module to create or update scheduled activities, or to search for existing activities.

    Activities consist of the following sub-modules:

    Calendar – View scheduled activities (by day, week, month, or year) such as meetings, tasks, and calls. You can also share your calendar with your coworkers to coordinate your daily activities.

    Calls – Manage outbound and incoming phone calls between you and your customers.

    Meetings – Manage meetings, including both internal and external invitees, which you schedule or accept.

    Tasks – Manage a list of actions that you need to complete by a specific date.

    Notes – Manage notes and file attachments.

    Leads – Used to track potential customers.  This is the entry point into the system to know when a potential new customer is requesting information, or could even be a current customer wanting a new product.  Leads are an important aspect of the sales management process inside of SugarCRM.

    Emails – Click this tab to view the Emails module. Use this module to send, and receive emails. You can also automate email management, create email templates for automated responses, and for email-based marketing campaigns.

    Campaigns – Click this tab to view the Campaigns module. Use this module to create and manage marketing campaigns. You can implement and track marketing campaigns. These can be telemarketing, mail or email-based campaigns.