Techy past times…

So we had a little fun with a inter-company competition of ping pong yesterday. A few of the guys from our little Books Collection and Redistribution company, (Worldwide Book Drive), met up with the guys and Sewelldirect.com and and suffered a clear defeat. It was a great break away from the daily grind and fun for everybody. I remember a long time ago that Preston Wily, Sewelldirect President and COO, suggested starting up a local company competition circuit. But it never quite got off the ground. Feel free to check out its roots anyways at bizpong.com

I think it would be a great idea to get a sort of interbusinessmurals going… There’s a good name for a website (kinda long, but could become a new term :)

301 Redirect Lessons

I’ve recently been trying to learn about 301 Redirects to improve traffic and search engine ranking. Unfortunately I’m no programmer and it has taken off my stats and the ability to view my template on some browsers. I’ve still got a lot to learn about this redirect business, so I’ll get back to you when I do :)

SEO TOOLS

With all of the recent excitement of the SEO conference in Vegas, I decided it might be a good opportunity to garnish the subject with my contributions.

I get asked questions about search engine optimization (seo) all of the time. While I certainly am not the expert on the subject, (I’m privelaged to know a few who are). I have found the information on these sites not only to be helpful because of their optimization for search engines, but also for marketing and increasing click through rate (ctr) with your customers.

There are a lot of sites out there, but I would say the two I use the most are certainly

Jakob Nielsen’s website

SEOmoz.

They don’t have all of the answers, but the articles, links and tools between these two websites certainly handle the bulk of even most advanced webmasters.

Enjoy!

College Times Recognizes WBD

Worldwide Book Drive (often cited as world wide book drive), is a small company with a huge vision. We have recieved a lot of positive feedback on our services and programs. We have a long ways yet to go, but I believe it’s on the right track.

The College Times recently did an article on our program. Click here to learn out Worldwide Book Drive News Coverage. One of the comments made by the writer stated that the idea seemed to basic and so easy, it’s no wonder nobody thought of it earlier. Who’s to say if they have or haven’t thought of it before… but making it a reality has been an entirely different experience. We still have a long ways to go, but we are grateful for any positive coverage or encouragement we can get… Keep your eyes out for more Worldwide Book Drive coverage in the future…

9-X Exposure…

According to research cited in Entrepreneur magazine, research shows consumers need to hear a message at least three times for them to have name recognition and recall, and nine times before they become a customer.

We recently ran an ad with Val Pak. It was a good experience and the meetings with various advertising service providers was invaluable education. But we didn’t quite break even with money we put into the mailer. I wouldn’t recommend it as a means of building initial brand recognition, but it was a start…

Of course everyones promotion and publicity mix is different. But no matter what it is, I would encourage as much free publicity as possible. A good newpaper article creates online traffic and ranking as well as offline recognition and exposure.

A Few Good Men

Today was phenomenal. I had the opportunity to go with my friend and business associate David Kasteler (an amazing person himself) to meet with some of the most incredible men I have had the privelage to have known. Dan MabeyKen Dehyle and Kelly Sheppard. Each of these men are accomplished entrepreneurs and builders of men. After talking with each of them, it was confirmed to me that consistency and work towards a well defined goal is one of the greatest keys to happiness.

I recently had the opportunity to take a little company tour at Sewell Direct with their new President and COO, Preston Wily. Now they are the 4th fastest growing company in Utah –remarkable. I first met Preston years ago, when he was still just an entry level marketer at Sewell. I had always been impressed by his ability to recognize opportunity. Through consistent performance, Preston (and his fellow marketer Dan Caffee) guided and developed Sewell to become what it is today… And what it will soon become. It was no golden ticket for Preston–but consistent learning and work.

All of these individuals have different aspects which I hope to integrate into my own character and understanding. I appreciate their examples and look forward to learning from them in the future.

Worldwide Press Release

Okay, so maybe 22,000 papers at BYU isn’t much in the global scheme of Worldwide Book Drive, but it was a good and informational article.

It was exciting to see an article put together after the issuing of a little press release. I think we have a pretty simple formula for press releases, but I would love to compare it with some others. I’ve always wanted to find a format for a good press release, but I haven’t seen one before… anyone suggestions?

As a quick side note… I just got back from 10 days in Peru with a very impressive non-profit organization, Eagle Condor Humanitarian. Thanks to an excellent management team, (Jaron Brown) all of the businesses are in tact and life is still clipping along.

Engage Technology Focus Group

The meeting with Engage ThoughtWare was extremely enlightening. The theory behind the technology is rather simple: Politics, Personality and Corporate Culture are some significant inhibitors to corporate success. By developing a system that eliminates as many of these as possible, productivity increases, profit increases, thus boss and employee are happier.

The technology has powerful organizational systems that could potentiall offer normal blog sites to reach unprecedented organization and follow-thr0ugh on their ideas.

The technology also offers a gated community wherein the development and sharing of ideas could only be accessed by those who are invited into the discussion. This way important conversations wouldn’t be crashed by unwelcome visitors and sensitive information could be identified and developed freely.

I would very much enjoy having this technology for Paul Allen’s page or Mark Cuban. I believe if the UI were made simple enough, it could have a very fast adoption rate and possibly spark an entire paradigm shift in the means of blogging and page organization.

We’ll see.

By the way, in my first day I got nearly a hundred views my first Youtube posting… About 1/100th of where I want to be someday… But really fun anywho…

Can You Build Land?

When I was in 4th grade, I remember learning about the problem of landfill waste and drawing up what I felt was a grand concept to compost waste and create land in floating barges in the ocean. I drew up plans with areation modules, anchoring systems, etc. When I learned that the Japanese had already developed land generation, my 11 year old heart was broken. I couldn’t believe it! But I moved on.

I had almost completely forgotten about this, until last week when I watched Superman Returns with my wife. When Lex Luther talks about how much money he would make by creating land… One of the only truly fixed resources–it got me thinking. I thought about my 4th grade idea, and then a few of the things I’ve learned since then.

Somebody asked me the other day what I would do if I already had hundreds of millions of dollars… I gave the question serious consideration and then responded that of course I would relax some, establish a helpful and strategic foundation or non-profit and then, I would like to make land :)

I know it sounds like a larger than life idea. But I can absolutely see a market for floating land creation. There are a number of available technologies that can meet the needs for cost-efficiency, independent energy and water. Moreover, in today’s environment of systems theory and networking, a network of floating real estate becomes even more valuable and useful.

I’ve seen whole floating colonies of fishermen and impoverished vietnamese. I’ve walked the piers of houseboats and cruiseliners… People are doing it already. It just needs the right team, the right funding and the right timing before we see an impressive reality of new land.

I Tube… You Tube… We all Tube

I’ve been reading so much about the Goo-Tube craze and direction of video advertising that I thought I would try my hand at a little piece. I think what turned the tipping point was Paul Allen’s online video marketing blog. I went to You Tube and thought of a little piece… I tried to develop it along the lines of the other pieces I saw that had the most views… (Certainly not the highest rating).

I’m a long ways from my own internet news beat… but it was a fun little exercise. It will be interesting to try a series of little videos and learn more about how to successfully use them for exposure and conversion.

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcaniconiosis is a disease one gets from inhaling microscopic pieces of silicate or quartz… Pretty interesting ‘eh?

Don’t ask me where I got the actor… Not bad for his first try though :)

Any ideas would be welcome.