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 ...

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...

Most of my peers have this subject nailed down.... but occasionally I run across someone who I think has it all figured out, all this social media hoopla, and yet they are missing one key element about the system (yes it is a system!) that would make their life online so much simpler. So today's Idea Factory is about all the social media tools I use on a daily or weekly basis. This list will likely change in 6 months, so it will likely require a followup. I know 6 months ago I wasn't using half these tools yet... technology is already light-years ahead of us! I also knew this would be a good post today when I counted my sites up and realized I regularly post to, gasp, over 30 different profiles. No wonder I need automation technology to keep myself from going crazy, AND to be able to do some work in a day! Daily I post to: (# of profiles) Facebook (3), Twitter (3), LinkedIn (1), Flickr (1) Weekly I post to: Blogger (4), You Tube (1), Ning (6), The Wheel Life (1), Aweber (1),...

This direct from Twitter's help desk, some of these mobile commands are new to me... tip of the week from the Idea Factory- you've heard it before- "Sometimes it just pays to read the instructions!" Did you know: you can perform certain actions, like following or marking a friend's update as a favorite, by using the designated Twitter commands? Use the commands listed below from your phone, the web update box, or your favorite third party application. Turning Twitter off and on: device notifications ON: turns ALL phone notifications on. OFF, STOP, QUIT, End, Cancel, Arret or Unsubscribe : turns ALL phone notifications off. ON username : turns on notifications for a specific person on your phone. For example, ON alissa. OFF username : turns off notifications for a specific person on your phone. For example, OFF blaine. FOLLOW username: this command allows you to start following a specific user, as well as receive SMS notifications. Example:...