Do you remember when you were a kid and you got those brand new pair of tennis shoes? I remember when I got my first pair of Chuck Taylor Converse. They were not too unlike the ones pictured here, but mine were white. I remember so vividly the fact that I thought I could run much faster and jump much higher with those brand new shoes. I know now it was probably psychological, except for the fact that they didn’t have duct tape holding the toe part of the shoe on my foot. They were also quite a bit different than getting those hand-me-down shoes, but I digress.
Those of you that have been following along here over the last 5 years know that from time to time we tend to make some sweeping changes to our look and feel of the web site and blog (terms I believe are synonymous). This is the latest look and feel that we have made and I believe I can now blog better, write better, speak better and everything else has been taken up a notch. Like that kid that could run faster and jump higher, I feel invigorated. We will continue to always be testing new widgets and plugins and every tool out there, but for now it is clean and tidy here and I love it that way.
I have Debbie Lawrence of Lagniappe Marketing to thank for the new look and feel. She is amazing and allowed me to participate in what she calls the “Sausage Making” process of watching the new design come together. We are using Brian Gardner’s template and I recommend all of his work as he has some great themes to work with and to make your own designs. In fact, Debbie was the designer and coder and all-around sausage making queen for the site over at the Modern Media Man Summit which is another of my latest projects. That site is also a Studio Press theme. Thank you Debbie!
I expect things to pick up here a little since I have this new running faster and jumping higher ability. Take a look around and tell us your thoughts.
You can also see that we have added to the home page our sites at Bloggers For Hire and at Social Mediasphere TV. We will be picking up the pace there as well so feel free to grab those feeds too.
Trust. The word is bantered around in many relationships and it has a home in business as well as that puppy love crush you had in the 4th grade. Business can thrive when people trust each other. Not only in the relationships between businesses and their customers, but in the relationships you also have with the people you work with behind the scenes. I make it a point not to do anything that will make me mistrusted by the people that deal with me. Generally speaking, what you see is what you get. I try to be 
I have been keeping ahead of the game of new and shiny objects by trying out the latest and greatest in tools that can be used for social media programs at companies. I have always come back to the main point of view as it relates to tools that work. I was reading
I have been writing this blog post for the last 5 years. No, I haven’t been actually writing this post for that long, but I have been preparing to write this post for nearly that long. You see I have been a strategist a long time in Internet years. I have put many of those strategies together, and I am happy to say that many of them actually worked, but I must also say unfortunately, some of them and I should say more than I care to admit have probably failed. I tried most of these ideas and “campaigns” on my own company and used myself as the test subject. I have always tried them in my own marketing, advertising and public relations and as I said, some work and some don’t. This post is not about the “try” or “the idea”, but the execution.
There is something to say about getting a handwritten note in the mail. It may go back to the day when I was a young boy and we actually walked a mile to get the mail and it was so rewarding just to find that you had a letter from someone. My mother would read the letter as we walked back home. Or it could be that it is special when someone takes the tie to sit down and labor out a thoughtful note and spend the money and time to make sure you get it. Either way, it is an art I think that is slowly going away with new technology and how we can just update our status or send a quick typed out email with LOL typed into 6 times.
An old friend of mine is stepping down from
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