In my last post How to Improve Your Memory During Your Workout at the Gym and YouTube video I showed how you can use the free software program Evernote to jot down notes so you can remember anything anywhere at anytime. As I mentioned this works on any platform/ computer (PC, Mac, iPhone, Mobile Phone).
Turn Photos of Notes into Recognizable/Findable Text
One thing I didn't mention about Evernote is that theoretically you can also take photos of your handwritten notes with your mobile/iPhone and Evernote will recognize your handwriting so you can search/find your notes later.
Turn Lost/Misplaced Notes Into Information Bonanza
How many times have you taken notes at a live lecture, webinar, conference call, and filed the notes somewhere (in that giant uncategorized file)...where they're totally lost to you, since you can't locate them when you need them?
Think of all of the conferences, seminars, etc. with tons of great info that would be excellent to tap into...if you just could find it and view it. This should be great for students, conference/seminar/webinar-attendees, knowledge-lovers, and internet marketers (who are always studying and learning).
Now there's a solution, or at least a potential solution...
Not Quite In-Focus Yet
I haven't quite gotten the note recognition functionality to work yet with my T-Mobile Wing phone but this most likely has to do with the resolution (size: number of pixels), quality (fineness), brightness (of light), and/or the distance from the orginal handwritten note (due to the focal length of the camera). Evernote addressed this in their Help/Support: Why can't Evernote find some of the words in my pictures?
How to Turn Handwritten Notes into Retrievable Information
Install Evernote on your Mobile Phone or iPhone.
Start the Evernote program (on your phone).
Select "Snapshot" (Note: This takes you to your phone's camera).
View the handwritten note through your viewfinder and when it's the clearest, take the photo.
Press the curved arrow button.
Enter a title.
Press "Done" (Note: Then your picture will upload to your Evernote page on the Internet).
Go to your Evernote page on the Internet.
Refresh the page (by hitting <Ctrl> + F5 on a PC, or Command/Apple + F5 on a Mac).
View the photo of your handwritten note.
Note: It may take awhile for Evernote to recognize/index the photo of your note.
As I understand it, your note will be processed quicker if you opt for the fee-version of Evernote (which also increases your monthly storage allowance).
Search for a word in your note and Evernote should find your handwritten note so you can read it.
Note: If this doesn't work, then play with the resolution and quality settings on your phone's camera and/or the brightness of the light as well as the distance of the camera from your note.
That's it! (once I figure the last part out, that is).
--> If anyone knows of a clarity-improving solution like this for the T-Mobile Wing or other non-iPhone mobile phones please let me know with a comment below...
Attraction and Internet Marketing
Question: What does all of this have to do with attracting visitors and Internet Marketing?
Answer: People are attracted to:
How to articles.
Solutions to problems.
Tools and gadgets.
Tips and Reviews.
Keywords of interest (e.g., "treasure")
YouTube videos.
Writing blog posts or making YouTube videos addressing what attracts people can increase the traffic to your blog/YouTube site and to your website from there (if they find information of value to them), e.g., IncreaseOnlineProfits.com.
Last word: Always provide valuable content which helps people since "Content is King".
Comments, Questions, Better Solutions?
Have something to say about this? Let me know...
Have a better solution. Chime in...
Have you gotten this to work with your T-Mobile Wing or your mobile phone?
Were there any additional/crucial tips to getting this to work. If so, please let me and the AttractMoreVisitorsblog readers know by leaving a comment below...
Know anyone who might find this blog post interesting/helpful? Then please use "Tell A Friend" below...
This is Part III of a series of posts on evaluating/improving websites, blogs, and now podcasts.
First, you should know that I'm a great fan of podcasts and listen to as many as I can, as often as I can. I've learned so much from you that I'm really in your debt. Now I'd like to "give back" in the form of some constructive feedback to help improve your podcast.
One thing to keep in mind when reading this post: If "audio is 70 percent of video" then audio is 100 percent of an audio podcast. And of course I'm not referring to the content of the podcast which is a completely different subject.
So when I pose the questions below, just know that I want your podcast to be the best that it can be so you can attract more listeners and be more successful.
Is the ultimate* volume of your podcast recordings high enough?
* Where "ultimate" is podcast player software (e.g., iTunes or Windows Media Player) set to maximum volume and the device (iPhone, mobile phone, MP3 player, PDA) set to maximum volume.
Ask yourself: "Who are my Customers and Why do they Buy?"as my co-instructor at UCLA Extension, Beverly Macy, is fond of saying. Applied to podcasting: Think of it this way, where might your typical listeners (consumers) listen to (consume) your podcast)?
Is it somewhere like the gym, where there's lots of noise pollution from TV's, loud mobile-talkers, loud talkers, clanging weights, and whooshing flywheels? Or is it on a walk, where there's the sound of cars/traffic, street sweepers, garbage trucks, etc.?
What device/software will they listen with? (some devices/softwares have maximum volumes that aren't loud enough to compensate for the factors mentioned above).
Is your lead-in bumper music or big-voice announcer promo much louder than your voice so the listener needs to turn the volume up to hear you? Or is it smoothly equalized? After all, you'd hate to be compared to traditional media advertisements with loud ads and soft programming, right?). Similarly, does the podsafe music at the end of your podcast have a big bump in volume?
Are your guest interview calls and/or call-in questions (on or off-line) equalized so that one is barely audible and the other is much louder?
Do you have show notes with links so listeners who can't write while listening (e.g., driving) can still access your valuable content?
Do you have transcripts of your podcasts?
Tip: One no-cost way to do this is to use another microphone (e.g., a headset mic) and route it to another computer with built-in (free) voice/speech recognition (e.g., Windows XP or Vista) software so your words will be automatically typed into Microsoft Word (or OneNote) as you speak. Of course, currently this only works well if there's one person speaking. See these resources for more on this: Audio transcriptions and annotations with OneNote How to transcribe any audio on your PC
- And you can just use MS-WORD instead of OneNote.
- Assuming you'd like a free solution, rather than buying Dragon Naturally Speaking, of course.
If you do a video podcast do you offer an MP3 version as well for those who are just listening to your podcasts versus watching them? This is the value-added podcast equivalent of giving a CD (with MP3 files) in addition to a DVD, if you sell DVDs).
If your listeners subscribe to your RSS feed and download/synchronize your Audio podcasts to their devices, do you try to avoid inserting a long (large file size) Videocast which might blow-out their storage/memory when they auto-sync their feeds to their devices (Yikes!)?
Do you have some sort of consistent naming convention for your file names so your podcast will make sense when viewed in music player or File Explorer? E.g., an acronym/abbreviation for the name of your podcast, podcast number, the date, and a brief title.
The reason for having the podcast number and a title is that depending on how someone's viewing the filename (music player or File Explorer) they should be able to easily differentiate which they've listened to versus which are new (since they may not remember which # they listened to last/before).
And I know it's easier said than done for some of these things like equalization. But just try to think of these points from your customer's perspective and what will draw more people to your podcast so you can grow the number of your listeners and retain more of them.
In Part I we started looking at ways of evaluating and changing your website (or blog) to improve it. Today I'm giving you 10 Quick Questions to help with this process:
10 Quick Questions for Evaluating/Improving your Website
Does your website look nice and inviting? (Does it make your visitors "feel" nice, like the landscape on the right?)
Is it a site that you'd feel like staying at if you just happened to land on it? (Where you feel like you could lie down in the meadow, enjoy the blue sky, and watch the clouds - in other words: hang out for awhile, check out the info/resources, and engage at the site.)
Can visitors find your "Buy" button? (so they can take the desired action easily, e.g., Buy, Join, Subscribe, Register, etc.).
Can prospective buyers (visitors) find what they need easily (information, prices, reviews/testimonials, etc.)?
Is it easy and intuitive to navigate around your site? (Or is it a virtual maze or an impossibly dense mishmash of text or links pretending to be organized)?
Is it easy to use/access your site? (Are there so many fonts and colors that the content is difficult to see, especially for visually impaired individuals)?
Does your site rank highly in search engine results (particularly Google's)?
Is your site's search engine result (Title and Description) enticing enough that you'd click on it (versus all of the others)?
If you click on your site's search engine result, are you taken to the site you'd expect from the Title and Description?
Now loop back to #1 (above) and quickly run through this list again with "fresh" eyes (based on how your site might be found by potential visitors searching the internet).
Bottom Line
IMPORTANT: Please note that "potential visitors" aren't visitors until they visit and "potential buyers" aren't buyers until they buy.
Your task is to re-design your site to create the environment that entices searchers to visit and visitors to buy. This may involve using some SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as well as some E-Marketing techniques and strategy (list building, E-Newsletters, Social Media/Networking, etc.) to promote your site and attract people to it.
If you'd like more ways to evaluate and improve your website (or blog) you might enjoy our free 77 Great Tips of Internet Marketing (at top-right of web page) for a more complete checklist.
~~~
Have any questions, comments, or tips of your own for evaluating websites? If so, please leave a comment...
With a New Year and a sense of there being a new outlook in the world, it's a good time to think how your website/blog/podcast is doing. While the Presidential Inaugural parade was today in Washington DC, we can also look at the recent Rose Parade on New Year's day in Pasadena for some guidance on website design and strategy.
Design, Planning, Functionality, and Theme
Looking at the before and after pictures of NAMM's* "Musical Extravaganza" float which was designed to coincide with the Rose Parade's "Hats Off to Entertainment" theme you can see that a lot of work and planning goes into creating a pleasing yet functional float. And it must have been pleasing because it won the President's Trophy.
* National Association of Music Merchants
Big Bird float - BEFORE
Big Bird float - AFTER
Before and After
This wasn't just random - the float was entirely conceptualized and planned out before it was built (structurally) and the flowers were glued on. You can see the scaffolding used to build the structure in the Before photo (on the left) and the final flower-decorated float in the After photo (on the right).
Blind Evolution versus a single Objective
But many websites have grown-up (evolved?) from initial ideas/concepts into something which might be quite different from what they originally began as. These websites (yours?) weren't tightly themed, planned, and constructed with a sole purpose for a particular effect or goal (e.g., winning the President's Trophy).
"Now" is the Time to Step-Back and Evaluate your Site
No matter how your website got to where it is, now is a great time to step-back and evaluate it (or re-evaluate it). One way not to do this is to let your body go all limp, squint your eyes, and stare at your website for x minutes (like a "magic picture").
Ways to Evaluate (and Improve) your Site
Ok, so if that isn't the way to evaluate your site, then what is? One way would be to find a handful of brutally-honest friends and ask them what they think. A variation on this would be to find a handful of strangers and ask them what they think. The difference being that you'd have to reward the strangers in some way (free ____, pay them, etc.). Or you could simply evaluate it yourself by answering some questions or using a checklist.
There's a great trick for shortening web addresses (URLs) in your Twitter posts (and no, it's *not* TinyURL!).
But first, what is Twitter?
Twitter is a micro-blog where you post 140 character updates simply answering the question "What are you doing? These short one-way posts, known as tweets, are shown on your Twitter profile page. These updates can also be received on Facebook, your mobile phone, your blog, etc. For more info see the Twitter Wikipedia article.
Table of Contents
Since this is long post, please see the clickable Table of Contents* (below/right) --> * How was this Table of Contents created? See Bonus Trick #5 below.
Web addresses (URLs) are long. Clearly with only 140 characters for an update message in Twitter, the less characters (letters, numbers, symbols, and spaces) you use, the better.
Solution
Shortening the URL using free web services like SnipURL or TinyURL which take long URLs and make them shorter.
--> Note: This is also great for PowerPoint presentations as well as Email messages, where long URLs can break-up if they're longer than one line (e.g., a huge link to a Mapquest map - yikes!).
These are great solutions, but SnipURL's "snipped" URLs can be shortened even more.
With all of the people using TinyURL in Twitter (about 2.5 million uses as of when this was posted), it's too bad they don't know about SnipURL and the trick for making their URLs even shorter. And of the 90,000+ uses of SnipURL in Twitter, only half used the trick.
Both short URLs have far less characters then the original URL.
This savings would be even greater if you started with a longer web address.
Note that the domain names are 7 characters for both of the URLs (excluding the ".com"):
snipurl (7 characters)
tinyurl (7 characters)
The number of characters after the ".com/" can vary, but there are usually 4 to 6 characters.
From what I've seen, SnipURL's algorithm seems to create less characters at the end than TinyURL.
- Definitely a case of "less is more". This might be because TinyURL has been used more than SnipURL.
For the example above the characters following the domain names are bolded below:
With SnipURL, you can shorten the URL even more, by using any of SnipURL's shorter domain names: snurl.com or snipr.com. For the example above, any of these URLs will lead to the same web address:
Or delete the "u" and "l" in the SnipURL above to get:
http://snipr.com/3n4l1
Now you're probably thinking, "Can I make the URLs even shorter by deleting the leading "http://" characters too?"
- Answer: Yes, but then the URL won't be clickable in Twitter (Yikes!).
- See the deleting the "http://" test in Twitter.
If the description of the Trick above doesn't make any sense, just view the Video below...
You might be thinking, "This is completely ridiculous - You're only saving a few characters at most with this stupid trick."
Answer: Yes, but with only 140 characters allowed for a post, the prime Twitter real estate (space available) is very valuable and you need to save every character you can...especially if you are trying to squeeze several URLs into a post as in the next example:
Now you're probably wondering, "Why would you want to post such a cryptic message? Are you a spy or something?" (Answer: "No!").
Well, here's the situation: I had just posted a comment to the blog page of one of my favorite podcasts, Marketing Over Coffee. Unfortunately MoC's software/settings for Comments had stripped the helpful links from the comment I'd made.
As a workaround to this dilemma I posted the tweet above so someone searching on the keywords might find the links. (Ok, I cheated and used my first name in the search to limit the number of search results...but you get the idea, right?).
What did I do with the extra characters saved with the SnipURL Trick?
- Inserted the phrase: "How-to" to describe the link
(which actually gives the solution many people might be searching for).
Bonus Trick #2:
- How do you get SnipURL's (Snip!) into your Browser Links or Bookmarks toolbar?
Go to SnipURL and "simply" drag the Snip! button to your Links or Bookmarks toolbar.
While this usually works fine for Firefox, in many cases it doesn't work for Internet Explorer.
--> Trick for IE: Right-click on the Snip! button, choose "Add to Favorites", then click the down-arrow next to Create, scroll down to the Links folder, and click Add. Easy, right?
Bonus Trick #3: - How do you get your Twitter posts to be displayed in the right column of your blog?
And while you're there, be sure to subscribe to their "Snips" e-Newsletter, which sends you an email of interesting snippings every week - definitely a guilty pleasure(!), but you can get a read on hot trends and popular culture too.
What do you think?
Do you have a better way to do this? If so, please leave a Comment below...
If you like this post, then:
Subscribe to the Feed (see the orange "subscribe in a reader" feed icon at top-right of page.
Let your favorite Social Media/Networking site know (see "Share & Enjoy" icons for Digg, etc. below).
Tell A Friend (see "Share This Post" and/or TellAFriend button/link at bottom of post).
PART II: Attracting Visitors and Internet Marketing Techniques
What does the blog post above have to do with Attracting More Visitors to your website or blog?
- How can these Internet Marketing techniques help promote your site?
Twitter is a great way to attract potential visitors to your blog or website.
Intriguing/interesting Titles attract people to your blog posts, articles, or emails.
Using carefully selected keywords is very effective and critical to the success of your Titles.
Delivering on what your Title promises is very important.
Just in case someone wanted something other than what they found here, bonus tricks were included.
Did you find what you were looking for?
If yes, then more value was provided.
If not, hopefully you found something that was helpful (a trick, resource, or link).
Since "Twitter Tools" is a very popular search and "Twitter Tools" is also a Wordpress plugin, content was provided for those searchers finding this post as well:
Bonus Trick #2 and other info "Twitter Tools" searcher might find interesting/helpful.
The video can be searched/found on YouTube or search engines.
Linking a YouTube video back to your blog or website both in the video description and within the video can be very powerful.
Of course with any Social Media community, try to be sensitive to what they consider to be blatant marketing (bad) vs. subtle markerting (may be ok, depending on the community).
Any video has the potential to become viral and be passed around exponentially.
Use Examples
People like examples as they show "how to".
People love Stories...and Examples can tell a story and make cold data/info personal.
Asking your readers to do something is a "Call to Action". (e.g., Tell A Friend)
Sometimes all you have to do is ask and people will respond favorably.
"Always be Testing"
The Twitter Test "deleting the "http://" test" (above) is a tiny testing example in homage to what Bryan Eisenberg says: "Always be Testing" (in his book titled: Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer):
Navigation/Usability: If a web page or blog post is long, make them easy to Navigate (e.g., the Table of Contents)
If the post was broken up into several posts, then it would appear in reverse order and lose its scanability, effectiveness, and flow. Instead of doing this give your readers an easy way to navigate (links, Table of Contents, etc.).
If you liked this post you might also enjoy receiving our 77 Great Tips of Internet Marketing to help you Attract More Visitors and Create More Customers(SM).
In my last post How to Improve Your Memory During Your Workout at the Gym and YouTube video I showed how you can use the free software program Evernote to jot down notes so you can remember anything anywhere at anytime. As I mentioned this works on any platform/ computer (PC, Mac, iPhone, Mobile Phone).
Quick Questions for Podcasts
