Imagine we are at the race track in the 1940s, and I appear on the scene in a ’90s Lamborghini Diablo. You could put the best driver in the world against me, and I would beat them without even leaving 2nd gear or breaking a sweat.

Just like me in a Diablo, a person with less skill can beat an expert while putting in considerably less effort if they have the right equipment.

Why put yourself at a disadvantage? Why not get the best? It is usually because of money. Well, I am here to tell you that 9 times out of 10 that excuse is complete baloney. Most people do have enough money, they just aren’t willing to cut their expenses. So it is not money, it is a prioritization issue. And when you factor your time into the equation (the extra time you will need to invest by using inferior tools), you will discover that you are actually spending more money by using them.

Liberation from the daily grind is no longer just about being a good delegator, that is a recipe for skyrocketing expenses and laborious management duties. The real secret that everyone is chasing is good automation. And it really isn’t that much of a secret. It is usually just the elephant in the room that no one seems to see.

Anyway I digress, it is time for me to get to the point…

Some people use aWeber and similar solutions, others use 1ShoppingCart or one of the many other solutions that are on the market. If you do a little research, you will quickly realize that most marketing automation tools come from either infomarketers or companies with no real marketing experience. They have little infrastructure or long term planning in place as well.

This is what makes Infusionsoft unique, they have:

• grown from 3 guys in a garage to a team of 143 people in only 7 years.
• gone from 0 to over 22 million in annual revenue during the process.

Do you think they might have something special going on? I can tell you for certain, they do. They have something very special. They have the equivalent of a Diablo in the ’40s, today. Plus, they specialize in helping small business owners with 1 to 15 employees.

I will be 100% upfront with you as I always am, Infusionsoft did have a rough patch for the last couple of years, in my opinion. Any company that grows that quickly is bound to have some fallout. Hence my not promoting them for several months. Plus, when you are that successful the haters tend to pop up out of the woodwork.

But you can rest assured that Infusionsoft is firing on all cylinders now.

Find Out What Infusionsoft Can Do For Your Business

Watch a Live Infusionsoft Demo Today – It’s the Quickest and Easiest Way to Understand What Infusionsoft Can Do For Your Business!

Seriously, if you are stuck and can’t figure out why you can’t move your business forward, Infusionsoft is likely one of the missing ingredients. I would bet that traffic is also a stumbling block, but that can be cured by following up properly with the leads you already have in your pipeline. If you don’t have a couple hundred leads in your pipeline… you might want to consider changing careers, unless you are working with really high-ticket items.

Feel free to leave a comment on this post and I will gladly field any questions you have. I have two Infusionsoft applications, one for jiveSYSTEMS and the other for AskFlywheel. I have also been a CMAC (a certified Infusionsoft coach) for several years now and keep an open mind by continually testing the other solutions on the market, so I am in an excellent position to advise you.

Background — The Quandary

There are several ways to Integrate Infusionsoft with GoToWebinar: php, javascript, cURL, etc.  You can even bypass the registration process altogether by changing the /register to /join (see example below).

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/838278513

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/join/838278513

Using the method in the example above, the visitor never actually registers for the webinar, they login at the appointed time using the link.  Plus, they need to enter their name and email.  I prefer the “one click to join” method and to have all the data (registered, attended, and did not attend) in both systems, which can only be achieved by submitting both forms (the Infusionsoft web form and the GoToWebinar registration form).  This means the Infusionsoft web form needs to auto-submit the GoToWebinar form behind the scenes (i.e. we need to Integrate Infusionsoft with GoToWebinar).

I used to place a script on the webpage that would run in the browser, a method that requires knowledge of code which created a liability (albeit a small one) when training others to setup campaigns.

Who Is Benji? — The Solution

I reached out to Benji “The Solution” Rabhan, our CTO and a partner of jiveSYSTEMS, searching for a better way to integrate Infusionsoft with GoToWebinar.  He accepted the challenge and got straight to work.

Benji also owns a web development company (MorrisMediaWorks) and he is unique because he understands marketing, code, graphics, and business.  Very few people possess his blend of skill sets!  The result is that he can design true solutions to problems, where others have created patches.  He can do this because he can see things in a context that others can’t due to his skill sets: he can put on one hat and think like a marketer who does not know code, and then put on his coder hat.  How cool is that?

In this instance, to integrate Infusionsoft with GoToWebinar, he created a cURL (a script that runs on his cloud servers and can be leveraged to auto-submit the GoToWebinar form).  As the marketer, all I need to do is send an HTTP post to another server with the GoToWebinar ID, which is as simple as adding a tag (it’s even in the same drop-down menu):

InfusionCore WebinarSync is being offered as a free tool by MorrisMediaWorks.

You can learn more here: InfusionCore WebinarSync (Integrate Infusionsoft with GoToWebinar).

But I need a web video squeeze page system now!  So I sifted through my watch list and as it turns out, Easy Video Player is just about to launch Easy Video Player 2.

Create Video Landing Pages w/ Easy

The product is very similar to Kajabi, and can in fact be used with Kajabi. Mike Filsame, for the AffiliateDotCom launch, used Kajabi and Easy Video Player 2.

You don’t get the super cool members area with time release posts, but you do get the slick web video landing page creation system.  Unlike Kajabi, which has a $97 per month base price, Easy Video Player 2 is a $127 one-time fee.

The System Comes w/ Features Like…

There’s more than just that: this thing does split-testing (and not the annoying kind where you need to log back in and review the results).   You can set it to automatically pick and use the best video based on your desired result.

Easy Video Player 2 is going to launch on October the 19th.   The early bird special has already started (a one-time payment of $97).  The ability to get a video squeeze page up in a few minutes has me drooling over this product saying, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

To learn more, check out the launch videos (which are much shorter than the ones for Kajabi).

As always, I am here to serve.   If you have any questions, please feel to leave a comment below.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if you can find a surface that you could wipe once and be squeaky clean?  Well I have found one, and it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.

First I want to go over why you would need a gigantic magnetic whiteboard.  The reason is simple: a giant whiteboard will help you make better decisions faster.  You see, business at its core is merely organized knowledge.  You can organize knowledge into training, software, or technology.

Your Options for a Whiteboard:

1. Melamine – most economical and common markerboard surface.  Tends to ghost and needs cleaning.  Usually not magnetic.
2. Porcelain – usually comes with a steel or aluminium backing, is magnetic.
3. Ceramicsteel – pure awesomeness!

For a more in-depth look at the different surfaces, check out this Wikipedia article.

From my perspective, the easiest way to hash out the details on a topic is to stick it on my whiteboard and then sort through the information.  This is why I believe that every office should have a giant whiteboard, especially those of the knowledge worker.

Let’s get back to the ultimate whiteboard surface that doesn’t ghost.  It’s called P3 Ceramicsteel and it is made by PolyVision (they also make interactive whiteboards).  This is a serious heavy duty surface that can be written on with dry-erase, semi-permanent, water-soluble, permanent marker, pen or crayon without damaging the surface.  A dry cloth, standard eraser or cleaner easily removes writing.  Their warranty states,“virtually indestructible, with the highest scratch, damage and abrasion resistance on the market. Resistant to chemicals, fire, stains, bacteria, scratches and graffiti. Lasts a lifetime or we replace it.”

I can’t claim to have discovered this wonderful surface.  Kevin Kelly wrote a post about it in his blog.  He is a pioneer in the field of shift thinking (how the world is evolving), co-founder of Wired, and his blog gets over 1/2 a million unique visitors per month.

I jumped on the opportunity to purchase a zero ghosting whiteboard surface, and I immediately phoned the manufacture, tracked down a distributor, and ordered a 6×4 board to replace my melamine one.  Now I hear porcelain is a pretty good surface as well, and it is certainly more widely available.  However, since cermaicsteel is the ultimate surface and you can buy distributor direct (it’s not even available in the store, it’s technically a purely commercial product distributed to large institutes, corporations, and schools), it actually works out more economical to buy cermaicsteel.

My Ceramicsteel Whiteboard

Heavy duty doesn’t even cover it.  This whiteboard means business.  They are sturdy as it gets.  I am keen to see how I can setup my lighting to film my web videos using my new board.

And even though I got the low-gloss version (which is not as ghost resistant as the ultra-gloss version), so it would be more suitable for filming my web videos, it is still pretty much a zero ghost surface.

Along the way, I have also learned a key bit of information: water-based and low order dry erase markers cling more aggressively to markerboard surfaces.  Through testing on my melamine board, I discovered that Expo markers ghost more than Quartet, and I feel Quartet are much better quality (thicker ink layer and more legible).

So there you have it, the ultimate whiteboard surface.  FYI – I got my 6×4 cermaicsteel markerboard from American Visual Display.  The total cost shipped was just over $250 dollars and it took about 5 weeks for my board to arrive.  I called (866) 583-4268 and spoke to a Chris who was very helpful.  Remember, they are a distributor, so they may not be able to deliver to your residential address; in this case you can have it delivered to your local post office for pick-up.

The theory of business and making a profit can be pretty simple.  All you have to do is spend less than you take in.  Rocket2Profit is all about helping you identify best practices that can be repeated and sustained to ensure that you do just that, make profits in both the shorter and longer term.

Another major principle in the theory of business is that creating and operating an effective and profitable business is all about planning and managing business financial performance, operating performance, customer value and employee value.  Financial performance refers to such targets as revenue and profit, growth, margins and cash flow.  Operating performance is keeping track of the “widgets” or sales units or services as well as the operating measures that generate your business financial performance.  Operating performance drives financial performance.  Operating performance is all about marketing, marketing and more marketing.

The best way to begin to optimize the theory of your business is to understand driver analysis and blueprint your company.

Rocket2Profit is all about helping you sell profitably.

To learn more, check out our information packed 51 page eBook (it’s free!).

Before always-on internet connections, I used AOL, Netscape, or Internet Explorer to access the internet.  Those days of poorly constructed internet browsers are over.  Companies are producing polished programs for us to browse.  These programs not only look good, but increase the speed, security, and ease of browsing the interwebs.

Browsers should be organic; they need to have a natural flow, just like designing the layout for a room in your home.  Anything that is superfluous needs to be discarded.  Let’s take a look at IE and it’s default homepage.

There are so many things here that we don’t need in a browser – a lot of blank unused space in the top of the browser, a poorly placed favorites menu, and those controls on the top right (page, safety, tools) that don’t need to be there. There are ads all around the default MSN homepage, and silly news stories that I really don’t care about.  The browser is bloated, slow, proprietary, and attempts to look flashy to make up for it’s shortcomings.

Why would a company as large as Microsoft have a browser that is agreeably poor?  One answer is that they are spreading themselves thin.  Think about it – Microsoft makes and maintains the following:

• Windows
• office software
• hardware
• internet browser (IE)
• search engine – Bing
• servers
• Xbox
• video games
• clothing
• Windows Mobile
• email service (Hotmail)
• virus scanner (Windows Defender)
• media format (.wmv)
• media player (Windows Media Player)

For a large company, that list in itself isn’t long.  However, think of how much variety those things have; operating systems, video games, and internet browsers are not all that similar.  Let’s compare that list to Google…

• Chrome OS (in development)
• Google Phone
• search engine
• Gmail
• Google Docs
• Chrome
• Google Earth
• Other companies they own (YouTube, Picasa, etc.)

…and Mozilla, the makers of Firefox:

• Firefox (browser)
• Thunderbird (email)
• Lightning (calendar)
• Sunbird
• Seamonkey (dev tools)

Overextended

It appears that Microsoft has a bunch of things on their development plate, and I’m left to question how many resources and how much focus they can devote to their internet browser.  When you control over 90% of the home computer market, why bother making an amazing internet browser?  In this case, the browser in and of itself is not going to bring in a sale.

Competition

Seeing this lack of any really great browser, companies that devote their time to web products jumped into browser development.  Mozilla came first, with a platform built off the Netscape architecture.  With Firefox as their main product, they put all their efforts into making it an amazing program – Firefox was the first browser to bring tabbed browsing into the mainstream and allow for modular add-ons from third party developers.

Chrome was released in late 2008, and incorporated all the great ideas from Firefox.  Chrome is different in small ways from Firefox, and since Google is such an internet goliath with years of making great products and services, it’s as good of a browser as Firefox.

Internet Explorer is Awful

With these other companies that devote their time so much to developing the perfect browser, it’s clear that Microsoft probably can’t compete.  Based off of my testing and opinion, and supported by many other sources, IE is slower, more prone to attack, less updated, poorly laid out, and not as good looking as these other two browsers.  Both Chrome and Firefox are constantly updated with not only bug fixes, but new features and looks.

That’s enough arguing my case, let’s look into how to install these browsers.

Before we go further, please keep in mind that having more than one browser installed is a waste of space. [Unless you're a tech person like me and you need to troubleshoot issues in multiple browsers.] If you download both of these browsers to test them out, that’s great!  Just make sure that once you’ve made your decision, you uninstall the other one.

Firefox

First off, Firefox is the browser I use on both my Mac and Windows machines, so if you’re looking for the official Propellerhead Recommendation, here it is.

I recorded a screencast of how to install Firefox:

Firefox has an amazing depth of customization and ability. I’ll expand on some need-to-know features in later posts.

Chrome

Again, I do love and recommend Firefox over Chrome, but that’s not to say that Google has made themselves a really cool browser.  Chrome took all of the best aspects of Firefox and really made them their own.

Here’s how to install Chrome:

Which browser do you use?  IE, Firefox, and Chrome are the largest three browser out there, but there are still others such as Opera, Safari, and more.  After switching from IE to one of these browsers, how do you like it?  Let us know in the comments below.

Thumbnail image courtesy of: www.neowin.net

Filter provided by summaries:
Filter books before buying them – Executive summaries the perfect way to filter books before buying them.  They will save you time and money!

Amplifier provided by summaries:
Increase comprehension and retention – We learn in layers and an executive summaries help your mind prepare for each chapter and the entire book, and they also help crystallize the information when used for post chapter review.

Background

I am not a fast reader, but I still make the time and invest about 15 hours every week to further my understanding of business and marketing.  Since I was about seventeen years old, I have averaged about two books per week.  On a side note, my reading speed and comprehension has started to increase, now that I schedule time to improve it.  I supplement the books I read for videos and DVDs, when possible and appropriate, to increase my comprehension and retention of the information.

Going to the library is time prohibitive and therefore cost prohibitive for me, due to the hourly rate I assign to my activities.  I also tried using a runner to pick-up books for the local library, but quickly found that the new releases and many of the esoteric works I was after were not available or currently out of stock.  Buying lots of books was my only option until I discovered how to leverage executive summaries.

Discovery

Here is what I discovered: executive summaries can be leveraged to improve the process. The end result, I can learn more in less time, and save alittle bit of money as well.

It takes me about twenty minutes to read an executive summary.  This means I can read forty-five executive summaries in the time it takes me to read two books.  I do not read forty-five summaries per week though, not even close.  I use them as a filter, and then make the decision on whether to listen to the audio summary and/or buy the book.  This method of reading the summary as a successor to the blurb puts an additional filter between the blurb and the book.  The blurb is still useful, but it becomes one of two decision making factors.  I can choose to delve deeper into those books which seem interesting, even if they have totally rubbish blurbs; it happens!   The executive summaries can also be leveraged on the backend as well, as the basis from which to build notes to improve comprehension and retention.   After all, it’s not how fast you can read but how much you can retain and then apply.

Research

Not all executive summary services are created equal.   I know this because I have tested several executive summary services.  I compared them to each other and choose summaries of books I had already studied.  While the framework of the summaries was constant, the quality of them was not.

• Some services missed key points and concepts that I felt were key.
• The amount of summaries in their library, type of summaries, and the number of new ones that are created each week is another area where the services could be differentiated easily.
• The number of summaries in their library and number produced each month was also a major decision making factor after quality.
• Another area that I used to differentiate the services was value added services (e.g. audio summary, eReader file, and more).
  • Most offered service’s like these, but the quality of the audio presentation both in presentation and fidelity varied, provider to provider; for some the audio summaries felt like a complete after thought.

After completing my research, I purchased a subscription to GetAbstract whose tagline is fittingly ‘compressed knowledge’.  I also called and chatted w/ one of GetAbstract’s founders.  It may interest you to know that, one of the main reasons they started the company is to make business knowledge more accessible around the world aka for people who don’t speak English or America which ever you prefer.  This is a noble goal that reminds me of just how lucky those of us that live in America are.

In my opinion, GetAbstract is hands down the best quality executive summary service.  They produce 50 new summaries of the best business books each month, and have over 6000 summaries in their library.

We have since entered into an affiliate relationship with GetAbstract and are in the process of adding a banner to the jiveSYSTEMS Blog.  Currently, they are 1 of only 3 businesses we recommend.  Infusionsoft and Web Video University being the other 2.

Free Executive Summaries

You can acquire 2 complimentary executive summaries from GetAbstract by visiting their homepage.

I also negotiated to be able to offer you a three summary packet to help you quantify the value proposition of their service.

In addition, I handpicked 3 of their best summaries!  The summaries are entitled:

• Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High;
• Email Marketing by the Numbers;
• and The Customer Rules.

You can download them here.

I hope this post contributes to you building a system that will help you learn more in less time.  If you have a strategy for learning more in less time, please feel free to share it in the comment section below.  Also, I will gladly answer any questions you may have about this post; if you have a question, you can leave it in the comment section below as well.

Here is a short video I recorded to explain the big picture:

So that was the quick summary. Now I am going to go over some of the more finite details so you can quickly add the value of this service to your business.  It all starts w/ choosing how you want to leverage your TimeDriver calendar link.  In the video above, I explained the way our customer support team uses their TimeDriver calendar links; they put the link in their email signature.  Now that’s all fine and dandy for them, but not for me.  I need to limit the access people have to me and screen the people that want access to ensure I am the best person to assist them.  Because of that, I only include my calendar link when I wish to schedule an appointment w/ someone.  You could leverage TimeDriver in one of both of the ways previously mentioned.  Also, you have the option to put your TimeDriver calendar link anywhere you can place a hyperlink: eBooks, Websites, etc…  A couple of words of caution: 1) our web meeting volume increased 4 fold overnight. Make sure you are prepared to handle the load; and 2) If you do start placing your calendar link all over the internet, I suggest you setup a redirect to it from your primary domain that way if you stop using TimeDriver, or simply want to use a new Calendar, you can easily redirect the traffic to your new TimeDriver URL.

This is what your prospects and/or customers will see after they click your TimeDriver link:

Here is Step 2

And this is Step 3

Pretty self-explanatory, right?  When configuring your TimeDriver calendar, you can also choose to create a Welcome Screen that will be shown prior to Step 1 w/ a picture and text.  You can also tweak your availability in a few different ways: only show “x” Timeslots available per day, disallow day of bookings, and more….

I hope you found this post informative.  My goal is to help you find, understand, and leverage the tools you need to automate your business and liberate yourself from the daily grind.  I am very open to answering any questions you may have about TimeDriver, all you need to do is leave your question in the comments sections below.  I would also really appreciate it, if you would let me know your thoughts about the quality and usefulness of this post and tool.  If you start to use TimeDriver and it helps you, please also let me know.  I am here to serve you; the more information I have, the better I can assist you.

You can buy a 24 inch monitor for a couple of hundred bucks.  If you are working off anything smaller than 22 inches, you are wasting time!

A study done by the University of Utah indicates that you would save around 2.7 hours per day when using a 24 inch widescreen monitor in comparison to a 18 inch standard monitor.

My laptop has a 14.1 inch widescreen display!  I upgraded to a 24 inch external display.  I don’t run dual-screens, quite frankly it confuses me.  I have been using my external display for around 3 months now.  The additional freedom provided by the vastly greater work area allows me to open more windows and switch between them easily.  I normal have around 30 browser windows open, along with several other programs.  On my 14 inch screen I can have 7 tabs open in Firefox per browser window.  When using my external display, I can have 19 tabs per window.  This is especially useful when I am doing research for articles and interpreting our monthly reporting (e.g. spreadsheets).

I like my external display so much that I think I am going to take it with me, when I go on my next holiday; smuggling it in the boot of my car [they won't find out until it's too late; hehehe!].

Lastly, the Utah study indicates that increases in productivity start to decrease, when you go above a 26 inch widescreen display.

Closing Thoughts

I would hazard a guess that once you acclimatize to a large display, you will be able to incrementally increase the size of your monitor and your productivity would increases.  This is because the eye limit has not yet be reached.  I believe that as the peripherals we use to interact with our computer change and improve – and as the actual interface starts to morph – we will be able to make huge leaps in productivity by using massive monitors or total immersion virtual displays.

Do you use a large monitor; do you feel it has improved your productivity?  Are you using a small monitor and possibly have questions about upgrading?  Also, this is the first blog post I have published using footnotes; do you have any suggestions or comments about them?

Don’t know which monitor to buy?  The ASUS VH242H 23.6-Inch Widescreen LCD is very good and costs only $200.  I got one for our office through Amazon.com, but you can buy it from NewEgg.com, PriceGrabber.com, and most other sites.

This post outlines the service and tools I use and how they interoperate with each other.  By recording this information, I gain the ability to streamline my activities.  Each service and tool becomes part of a flow of activities.

Once you can see your activities as a flow, you can analyze them in relation to your ultimate goal.

The goal of this post is to address how I do it [not why I do it, though I will address why to some degree].  If I get enough comments indicating that you would like me to elaborate on the why, I will gladly go into more detail in a subsequent post.

Blogging is the fulcrum of my daily activities, a prerequisite of which is learning and testing.  One of the main reasons I blog is to help our members grow their businesses.  I also really enjoy the process of learning and testing.  I don’t fancy myself as much of a teacher, but I am a learner and a tester, lol.

Up until a couple of weeks ago, I just published articles to the jiveSYSTEMS Blog [the blog you are reading now].  I have since made the realization that some of the content I produce doesn’t belong in this blog.  So, I launched two additional blogs: 1) FollowFlywheel.com as my business notebook/journal; and 2) FollowFranco.com as my personal notebook/journal.  This way, people have the choice to tune into the channels that interest them.

I publish mainly business and marketing related articles to this blog.  While FollowFlywheel is my notebook/journal, I also use it as a sort of chronicle.  FollowFranco is purely for personal things and has an emphasis on my studies into quantum theory as it relates to human potential.  Putting all of these topics into one blog would most likely lead to traffic dilution due to a lack of focus–the noise/signal ratio would be high for those people who want to tune into just one channel, or even a sub-topic within a channel.

This blog runs on WordPress.org.  This allows us to fully-customize the appearance and gives us access to tons of plug-ins and widgets.  FollowFlywheel and FollowFranco on the other hand run on Posterous which is superb if you need a quick and easy way to publish content to the web.  You can publish text, audio, and video by simply sending an email to a Posterous Blog.  This makes for uber-fast publishing.  Posterous also allows me to auto-post my blog posts to several other services as well.  This is very handy!

Here are some notes on how I use my Posterous Blogs and how my auto-posting is setup:

FollowFlywheel

A business orientated notebook.  Anything noteworthy gets published to this blog, for example: spur of the moment thoughts, business related purchases, what I am reading, where I am going, interviews, any tools I find, and more….

• Must be logged into Posterous account for it to publish to Facebook properly.
• Write a blurb in FollowFranco for very occasional for noteworthy posts.

My FollowFlywheel Posterous Blog auto-posts to:

1. Twitter
2. Facebook Wall
3. LinkedIn
4. FriendFeed [lifestream]

Blog Commenting

1. Disqus
   1. Makes an update w/ a link back to the post on:
      1. Twitter
      2. Facebook Wall
      3. Yahoo Profile
2. Non-Disqus, setup a profile, or comment and then paste comment into FollowFlywheel blog w/ a link

Twitter

1. Seesmic App for G1
   1. To run more than one Twitter account from a single app, you need to upgrade to the pro version.  So, I use two different apps (see FollowFranco below).

1. Save stuff to read w/ ReaditLater
2. Firefox Toolbar for Quick Links Only (e.g. Infusionsoft Login, jiveSYSTEMS Blog Admin, Twitter Login)
3. Delicious is my primary bookmark archive, I then add and annotate the best resources and references into my Diigo account
4. Digg noteworthy items as they surface and jiveSYSTEMS + FollowFlywheel blog post
5. StumbleUpon noteworthy items as they surface and jiveSYSTEMS + FollowFlywheel blog post

Other FollowFlywheel Items

1. Video
   1. Vimeo
   2. YouTube
2. Lifestreams
   1. FriendFeed
   2. Profilactic
   3. Lifestream.fm
   4. BackType
   5. MyBlogLog
3. Ping.fm sends status updates to:
   1. Twitter
   2. Facebook Wall
   3. Flickr
   4. LinkedIn
   5. Friendfeed

FollowFranco

A place where friends and clients alike can get to know me on a more personal level.  I also publish things about quantum theory as it relates to human potential to this blog.

• Must be logged into Posterous account for it to publish to Facebook properly.
• Write a blurb in FollowFlywheel very occasionally for noteworthy posts, mainly human potential focused ones.
• Remove the double post because Twitter and Posterous auto-post to my Facebook Wall.

My FollowFranco auto-posts to:

1. Twitter
2. Facebook Wall
3. FriendFeed [lifestream]

Twitter

1. Posts to Facebook Wall
2. Twitdriod App from G1

FollowFlywheel and FollowFranco

Each have their own unique accounts.  For example, I have a FollowFlywheel Twitter account and a FollowFranco Twitter account.  I keep the channels completely separate.  This starts with creating unique emails addresses.  I then use an email filter to segment the inbound emails accordingly.  In this manner, I prioritize and batch my inbound email activities.

Lifestreams

A lifestream is a comprehensive record of one’s daily activities.  They pull data from many services into one big stream of information.  You will note from above that I only use a FriendFeed account for FollowFranco.  [For FollowFlywheel, I use: FriendFeed, Profilactic, and Lifestream.fm]

Blog Commenting

I mainly use Disqus.  It has two components; a plug-in to manage comments on blogs for publishers, and a profile for commenters.  If you would like to learn more about Disqus, after reading the rest of this article, I suggest you take a gander at this post We Migrated from IntenseDebate to Disqus for Blog Comments.  Whenever I comment on a blog with Disqus comments, it auto-publishes my comment to my Disqus profile, Facebook Wall, and Twitter account.

I also have a BackType profile.  It’s aggregates all my comments on blogs into one stream by using my social accounts and both the URL/Website field.

Central Profile

To further connect everything together, I created a central profile WillFranco.com.  I use this link as my website URL whenever I sign-up for a new service, for example, my Twitter accounts link to WillFranco.com.  This makes it easy for people to understand my value proposition and potentially select one, or more, of my blogs to read.

Online Storage

Dropbox is the winner, hands down. My goal is to centralize and streamline. Unlike almost every other online hard-drive service out there, Dropbox is super simple.  It works just like a regular hard-drive and shows up like one on your computer as well.  Any files you place in your Dropbox hard-drive store locally, sync across all of your computers, and are stored online as well.  Dropbox works seamlessly and silently to accomplish both backup and storage. 

SEO Monitoring

I found ExactFactor several month ago.  I signed up for a free account, and I typed in our URL and the keywords I wanted to track.  Now, I get an email letting me know our position for each of the keywords I am tracking, each week.

RSS Feed Subscriptions

Google Reader does me well.  I subscribe to a lot of RSS feeds and Google Reader makes them easy to manage, annotate, and even share.  Subscribing to RSS feeds and then reading them all in Google Reader is the easiest way I have found to stay in-tune with the blogs I follow.  Just recently, as in, while writing this post, I added a Firefox plug-in called AidRSS which helps me sift through the many feeds I subscribe to by assigning each post a rank.

When I want to see what is going on in the news, I use Google’s FastFlip.  It’s a super cool Google Labs project that does exactly what the name implies, allows you to flip really fast through the headlines of major newspapers.

Closing Thoughts

I use many other tools and services.  For the purposes of this post, I have stuck the ones I use the most frequently.

Notable items that I did not mention in the post include my jiveSYSTEMS account which I use to send video emails to people, and Infusionsoft–the CRM software we use to manage our company.  Since both are paid services, I did not mention them in the body of this post.

Also, I have been building a system to leverage video sharing sites for free publicity, the backbone of which is TubeMogul, a video syndication service–you upload a video to TubeMogul and it distributes it to your chosen video sharing sites (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo, and more…).  I didn’t address video sharing in this post because I haven’t thoroughly road tested it yet.

I hope you found this post useful.  If you have any feedback, comments, or questions please leave them below.

Back in May, I also noticed a couple of other companies that had developed blog commenting plug-ins. Disqus being one of them. Needless to say, they have taken the blogosphere by storm and have expanded past a commenting plug-in and into a blog commenting community. Every time you leave a comment on a blog, it gets added to your Disqus profile. People can track your comments by following your profile, just like Twitter. In addition, when you comment on blogs with Disqus installed, you can automatically post a link to your comment on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and more….

I did a quick video interview with Ro Gupta, VP of Business Development at Disqus to explain more. We were also giving WeToku a test-drive, it’s a free service for recording video interviews online; the system is still in early beta, so the quality of the audio and video isn’t all that good, I hope that doesn’t detract too much from the quality of the content. Our goal was to give you a 10 minute explanation on how Disqus can benefit bloggers and commenters.

Here is a screenshot of my Disqus Profile:

You can see how the Disqus Commenets plug-in works, at the bottom of this post.  If you don’t have a blog, click the Disqus logo below and create a Disqus Profile.  Whenever you comment on this blog, or another blog that has Disqus Comments, your comments will be centralized to your Disqus Profile.  If you have a blog and want to install or migrate to Disqus, visit their website.

Do you have a question about Disqus?  Just leave a comment below and I will do my best to answer it.

Here is a visual just in case you are not familiar with these plugins:

Our readership has increased significantly since adding them. They are easy to install and require no coding. They are also a superior indicator for identifying your best posts. Hits and comments cannot compete with the metric of how many times a post has been tweeted and shared on Facebook by your readers.

One of our primary goals as bloggers is to write about things people want to read and ultimately talk about. This is the key to creating exponential growth in your readership and sustaining it to the saturation point.  When use the metrics hits, comments, and shares you have a very powerful recipe for building an online community.

Here are the direct links to the plugins I mentioned:

• TweetMeMe
• Facebook Share

I hope you find this information useful. If you have any thoughts to share about these plugins, please use the comments section below.

We try to live by this mantra every day; working smarter, not harder.  Some tasks can be automated using technology, such as a CRM.  Other tasks can be delegated to members of the team.  When neither of these is an option, you have a choice to make.  If a task is important, you do it; if it’s not, you ditch it.  In this way, we’re able to maximize the efficiency of our team and get more done with less effort.  This philosophy applies to all aspects of our operations, including the management of our social media presence.

If you’ve read a lot about Twitter, you’ve probably found that a lot of people are trying to figure out exactly how to use this medium.  The goal is to connect with customers and prospects, and to monetize this effort.  After a lot of research and a lot of time spent testing various theories, we’ve come up with a solution: Use Twitter to find people who have the potential to become prospects.

3 Steps to Better Leverage Twitter

1. Define Indicators – What traits do your ideal customers have?  For us, one of these traits might be a person who owns a small business and maintains a web presence for this business or someone who uses a CRM.  When you think indicators, think keywords!

2. Search for Prospects- Once you know what you’re looking for, you can search for people with the right indicators through Twitter.  For this example, I would search “small business” or “CRM.”

3. Think Automate— After a few minutes of searching and finding only people who have Tweeted your keywords, you may become frustrated.  I know we did!  Now you have a choice to make.  You don’t want to do it yourself since it takes too long, but it’s too important to ditch.  You can either delegate it or ditch it.  You probably won’t want to delegate it either, since this process doesn’t yield high-quality results and will drain your resources, so you automate it!

Now that you’ve decided to automate finding followers, how can you do this?

We’ve used a lot of tools to manage our Twitter accounts, and of those tools TweetAdder is the best one we’ve found so far.  I signed up for the free trial and quickly came to realize that this was the answer I was looking for.  TweetAdder allows us to automate the process of using Twitter; freeing us to focus on connecting with our fellow Tweeters.  Instead of spending my days searching for like-minded people, I can tell TweetAdder exactly what I’m looking for and it will do the rest.

Above is a picture of TweetAdder, let’s break down its capabilities, tab by tab:

Login—I can manage up to 5 accounts with the license I bought, and depending on your needs, you can manage as many or as few as you like.

Search—This is the core function I was looking for.  TweetAdder lets you search for your indicators, or keywords, just like your Twitter account does, but better.  You can search for users by location, who they follow, who follows them, and my personal favorite, their profile information.  Going back to my earlier example, I can find people who have the word “CRM” in their profile info.  Chances are, if you have “CRM” in you profile, you use one.  The results of this search are much more relevant than using Twitter alone.

Follow—Now that you’ve found these highly-relevant Tweeters, you can follow them.  TweetAdder lets you automate this function as well.    By doing so you can learn more about what they do and what’s important to them (free market research!!).  Many of these people become followers!

UnFollow—As you might of guessed, TweetAdder lets you automate the process of unfollowing users as well.  You can set limits on the number of people to unfollow, who to unfollow, and when.

Messages—You can automate your direct messages as well.  Instead of having to write a message to each person, or manually sending a prewritten message, you can have them sent automatically.  TweetAdder gives you control over how many messages you send, to whom, and integrates with bit.ly so you can shorten links.

Tweets—Do you Tweet often?  This feature allows you to finish all your Tweeting at once.  You can write 10 Tweets, and control when they are posted.

Replies—When someone Tweets about you, you can reply automatically with pre-authored responses.

Automation—This is where the magic happens.  Using this tab, you can pick and choose which functions to automate, based on the settings you have selected on the other tabs.  You can also decide when these automated tasks take place.

Misc— This tab isn’t very useful.  Suffice it to say that you can delete the direct messages you receive that contain links.

In Summary

1. You can better leverage Twitter by searching for people who have the potential to become prospects.
2. This process can be automated with a variety of tools; we use TweetAdder.
3. This will save you time and expose your message to a large number of Tweeters.

Please let us know if you found this article to be helpful, and if you would like to see more articles about tools you can use to put the human touch in your marketing.

Side note: I am a huge advocate of Google’s services. I use Gmail, Gdocs, Gcal, Reader, G1 phone, Analytics, Talk, Feedburner, Alerts, and Maps. I am also on the waiting list for Voice and Wave. These services are free and web-based. I shaved almost 2 hours off my work day by migrating from Outlook into Gmail. Folder structures always felt inefficient to me, and then I found Gmail’s archiving systems. It took me a couple of weeks to adjust to archiving emails. However, once you get used to relying on Google’s search algorithm to find things, the desire to create those annoying folders and sub-folders goes away. Think about it for a second, a prerequisite to finding something is remembering a characteristic about it. Type that info into the top of Gmail and in less than a second you will be presented with the information you need.

Here is a short video overview of Google Voice:

Get an invite to Google Voice.