Andy's Idea Factory

If you want to start doing social marketing for your business, you've likely been told that you need to  join them all, but you think, it sure sounds like a waste of time posting to Facebook AND Twitter AND LinkedIn AND your blog when you want to publicize something.  Well you don't have to.  Since someone just asked me for this today, I thought I'd post the methodology we use at AJDesign. Topics included in this post are:  (skip ahead if you're already a go-getter!)  I. Twitter to Facebook II. Facebook to Twitter III. Twitter to LinkedIn IV.  Blog to Facebook or Twitter I. Steps to filter Twitter posts (Tweets) to Facebook wall i f you use Twitter more:  Login to Twitter Click on View my profile page (top left) Click on Edit my profile (top right) Click Post your tweets to Facebook (bottom right) Click Sign in to Facebook and Connect your accounts Fill in Email and Password and click Login And click ...

As many of my friends know, I have an addiction to photographing flowers, so when this email came into my inbox last week, I couldn't help but repost it!! It's got some great tips and it reminded me of what to think of when I'm shooting those small beauties. To join Digital Photography 101's list at PEPhoto click here: https://pephoto.lifepics.com Photo Tip #137: Photographing Spring Flowers Greetings Fellow Photographers! The seasons are changing again! Springtime in North America presents some incredible opportunities for taking photos as the snow melts, flowers bloom, and the weather warms up. Whether you step into your backyard for a little fresh air, or arrange a hike with your friends and family, try to spend some time outside in the coming weeks, and don't forget your camera! Close Ups You've probably seen some gorgeous close up photos of flowers and plants. A lot of these pho...

WIKI: Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a Web site or a Web page in search engines via the "natural," or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic"), search results. A beautiful Web site is nothing without SEO, and there are many ways to direct traffic to a Web site to move you up the search engine ladder and get you to the top of Google's first page when someone searches for you, your business, or your topic. In addition to providing great content, one of the best ways is Internal Linking : an internal link is a link to another page on your own website.  Like inbound links (your Web site's link on other sites), they help build up your ranking for search engine results pages (SERPs) and are 100% within your control.  Both are equally important, as inbound links offer credibility (from peers) that your site alone can't create.  But linking to yourself throughout your site is just as important, as it ma...

The online tools I teach to small business owners are the ones that are most inexpensive (or free!), stable, reliable and most importantly, always improving.  I look for applications that have the same priorities - making online marketing and communication easy for business owners. Today's blast from MailChimp is a perfect example. The headline: Every 4 weeks we launch new features.  An online tool can't get more up to date than that.  I have half a dozen clients using this program, and knowing they all got that email today too made me giggle.  What a proactive little monkey! It takes me weeks, sometimes months, to share the plethora of online gifts that I love with my clients, but in brief, here are some of the wonderful tools (in order of  why I appreciate them) that I use for my own businesses, which to me, speaks volumes when I learn from the my own online gurus. In this fast and vast technological age, we are all students just keeping up with the p...

Recently I made the jump to HDR photography because a new real estate job required it.  For a few years now I've been impressed by the HDR results I've seen from my peers but haven't had the reason, other than hobby, to make the leap myself.  But once you do, it's hard to go back. Combining the light and dark exposures of a single image, HDR can capture both sunrise and sunset in the same image, that is if you have the patience for it.  Many pros think it's cheating, but as someone who grew up with the cumbersomeness (and failures) of shooting with film and the darkroom, I wouldn't label any new technology as cheating. High dynamic range imaging (HDRI or HDR ) is a technique that brings together the lightest and darkest exposures of an image into balance with computer processing through special programs.   If Ansel Adams were around, he'd be eating this system up, as it takes the time of burning and dodging images out of your "darkroom" schedule ...

I love my Droid for its apps, no question. I check Market every few weeks, as new apps are coming in all the time.  Some apps have stayed on my phone, some come and go.  If you got a new Android-based phone for the holidays or new year, start loading it up!  Most come with a large SD card (mine is 16gb) and many apps can be stored on the card.  The apps that I seem to only use once or twice, especially the ones that are larger than 5mb, I usually wind up removing.  Apps that access large directories (like cookbook apps) can also use up too much space, so go into Settings, Applications, and Manage Applications to drop some when it's time to make room for more.  Because of this ADD-mentality I have for apps, I typically only download the free ones- another great Droid feature, free! Apps I can't live without: Advanced Task Killer - there are several versions of this and I've tried three, but it was one of the first things the Verizon rep told me ...

I watched a movie last year called "Who Killed the Electric Car," and have carried around a pit in my stomach about it since then. Perhaps electric isn't the way to go, but why would someone eliminate possibilities?  Two weeks ago I watched "Fuel," which was far more educational and enlightening than "Who Killed...", but it still offered up some conspiracies about Henry Ford and his Ethanol cars during the prohibition era that shocked me. My head flooded with other theories about all those who have suffered death or torture in contradicting the oil industry over the last 100 years. And as a green enthusiast since the early 90s when I turned of voting age, I have spent the last two decades wondering, when, if ever, will things change? Then I saw Nissan's latest commercial. A polar bear is lounging on a last chunk of ice in the glacier melt.  He jumps off and swims south, then walks further south, past what is obviously the Alaskan-Canadian-Pacific...