Today Canada lost one of her greatest politicians of recent times - Jack Layton, leader of the NDP – the official Opposition Party. His views may not have been shared by everyone but he dared to say what he believed needed to be said. The first time I was able to vote as a Canadian I voted for him – because he stood up for what he believed in. He was a fighter, determined, passionate man about the causes he believed in. He was born in Quebec but believed in a united Canada.

On a personal basis he was a courageous man – battling cancer during the last year or so of his life.  Even in  his last public appearnce he was dignified and optmisitc that he would be back for the new session of Parliament in the Fall.

He will be honoured in a state funeral to be held on Saturday in Toronto.

He left a letter to all Canadians which I have reproduced it below in its entirety.  Do take note of the last paragraph – it’s true for all of us no matter where we are on the political sepectrum and no matter what country we come from.

 So RIP Jack Layton – you will be remembered for many things and not least as an example to your fellow Canadians to have the courage to stand up for what they believe and to cancer sufferers to fight on with hope and dignity.

My first website – GSPinsights- was born between me flying from Canada to the UK and the lovely Suzanne Whitby, founder of BrandYou, flying from the UK to South Africa. She’s been fixing it up lately and this morning I’m getting a training session in Joomla from her.

So what’s this got to do with anything ?  well, apart from a pitch for Suzanne (which she well deserves) and perhaps opening up a debate about WordPress versus Joomla, I wanted to share with you some things I found on her blog. Two really great tools in fact.

DIGITAL SIGNATURES

Have you ever wanted to have your own digital signature that you can use to “sign” online documents, emails, and letters but did not get around to it because the process of creating a digital signature was too long and tedious?  A nice easy way to sort this out is  My Live Signature – it allows you to create an online signature and save it in an image format that you can use online and in emails as well as anywhere else too in minutes.

To get started, just go to mylivesignature and…

1. Type in your name as you want it to appear in your signature – for example, Jane Bloggs or J.P.Bloggs etc.
2. Select your preferred signature font
3. Select your preferredsignature size
4. Select the color you want for your signature
5. Select the slope
6. Save the image as a .png document on your desktop.
7.  Insert it into your documents and files

It’s that easy!

TIME TRACKING

or as Suzanne called it - A Sexy little timekeeping tool – also known as Fanurio.  Not only is it easy to use, but it allows you to click record as soon as a call starts or as soon as you start working on a specific task, so that you can record when you started, when you paused and precisely what you did.  You can then generate invoices and issue clients with a report so that they can see exactly what you did for them.

Enjoy !

Oh, and check out Suzanne at BrandYou if you are non-Wordpress website type of person. or if you need a logo or other creative work.

Oh, and if you’re curious about my original website and one that I still promote to off-line contacts who may need the services of a boutique management consulting company : GSPinsights.

I was living in Toronto. As I got ready to go to the dentist I heard on the news that a plane has crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York. Then the news announced that another plane has crashed. I remember thinking that the US was not having a lot of luck with it’s planes that day. I naively assumed that a light aircraft had hit the WTC and a helicopter had landed badly at the Pentagon. Never in my wildest imaginings could I have  imagined what I was about to find out.

I walked out of home into a city of blue skies and sunshine. I love Toronto. I was carefree. Life seemed good. I took the tram to go down to King Street West for my dental appointment – two crowns were to be fitted. We were to only fit one – in three hours. When I got to the dentists I discovered what was really happening in the US. My dentist, her assistant and I listened intently to the news. This was why only one crown got fitted. We spent time in silence. We cried. When I left we hugged each other, crying, saying that for the rest of our lives we would always remember who we were with when the towers came down.

I walked out into the street - the sky was still blue and the sun was still shining but the world was grey and scary and I was cold. The down town core of Toronto was empty – offices had been closed, staff sent home. All flights were grounded. Air space closed except for emergency flights from New York. The hospitals in Toronto had cancelled all elective surgeries in order to treat the wounded from New York. No wounded came – everyone had died or… miraculously… survived.  No-one knew what was going on, why planes were crashing , who or what was targeted.

Once back home I switched on the TV – the images were of the WTC towers were falling, people jumping, people running. Those images were engraved on my brain – they were all I would see night after night for a very long time.

A few years later I met a guy on the coach from London Heathrow to Woking – we were getting the same train to the West Country and we started talking. He lost all his colleagues in the WTC on 9/11.

I’ve since been to Ground Zero and looked at the names of those who lost their lives – people that left behind them family and friends, young children who  never really knew their fathers.

This post is to their memory, to the courageous passengers and crew of flight 93 and to their friends and families who have had to find the courage to carry on and live with the memory of the horrific events of September 11th 2001.

Protecting your website – those of use with a website (or two) would do well to read a blog post by Jessica Mathews in which she strongly advises having a Terms of Use Policy and a Privacy Policy posted on your website.  Once you’ve read the post don’t just think “yeah I must do that” – go and do it – write that Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and post them on your website. Here’s the link to her post Is your website puttng you at risk?

Hubspot are offering a free report on Social Media, Blog and Search Engine activity by industry. It’s great on advice about which social media platforms to be focusing and the strategies to adopt. You can download the report here.

For those of you with a WordPress website or blog head over to the Social Media Examinerand read the guest post by Denise Wakeman on 24 impressive blog plug-ins. Denise is a well-respected blogging expert so this post is worth checking out.

How often do you blog ? How often do you think you should blog ? Grant Grifffiths addresses this much debated question in his blog post rather unoriginally entitled:  How often should I post to my blog ? nonetheless it is a post worth reading.

Following on from this I found Chris Brogan’s post on Numbers that matter very apt. Chris wrote the post following someone expressing concern about their numbers on Facebook and indeed everywhere you turn you find someone stressing about how many friends they have on Facebook, how many followers on Twitter and so on and so on. Some of the numbers that Chris thinks are worth worrying about include:

Worth thinking about eh ?

Well of course you need a plumber to install a new bathroom, fix a dripping tap or to switch off water gushing from a burst pipe but I was thinking more of money leaks from your business – when YOU need to be your own plumber stopping those money leaks – and trust me – when you’ve done reading this blog post you’ll all be agreeing that you have leaks – probably so many it’s a big flood.

I certainly hope you’ll leave a comment telling us all about the leaks that you’ve identified that aren’t covered in this post. I’ll bet there’s a ton of things I haven’t thought of.

So here are some potential sources of leaks for you to think about:

• Do you read all those books you buy? do you need to buy them or could you borrow them from your university library or even local library?
• How many VIP and membership programmes are you signed up for and never read the stuff that you receive?
• Do you pay to go on workshops and put the learnings into practice or do they remain notes in a binder?
• Do you use those home study courses you buy or do they take up valuable shelf space?
• How many networking events have you been to, collected business cards and then done no follow up?
• How many domain names do you have? do you really need so many?
• How many hosting services are you signed up for?
• How many premium WordPress themes do you have and make no use of?
• Do you buy ink for your printer, almost never print or photocopy anything and then when you do you find the ink has dried out and you need to replace them? (this is my favourite trick)
• Could you use a Skype calling plan instead of a landline?
• Do you really get benefits from premium membership on Linked In?
• How many business organisations do you belong to and are you reaping the benefits? Do you go to the networking events? do you have an enjoyable time? do you make useful contacts? if you’re answering no then maybe you should question whether you should be spending money on these. Of course some you need to belong like the Chamber of Commerce simply because it adds some credibility and prestige but …
• Annual travel insurance is cheaper than buying travel insurance per trip
• Do you really need that extra suitcase you now have to pay for on transatlantic flights (another favourite of mine although I would claim that going for one to two months makes it justifiable!)
• Do you need to fly on a weekend? maybe if you fly during the week the cost of the additional hotel nights would be less than the extra cost in the airfare and you get some quiet time to focus on your business or hey, even some YOU time which is very important too.

Now write your own list and be prepared for a BIG shock .. my list showed that I could easily save $3000 a year – at least. That’s money you could invest in your business; money that would pay for the services of a virtual assistant (VA) to free up some of your time to work on your business or spend time with family; you even be radical and give yourself a very nice – and probably well deserved – holiday !! or just simply save on all that credit card interest.

Why not share with us some of the things that appeared on your list.

John Williams, author of  Screw Work, Let’s Play: How to do what you love and get paid for it sent me an email the other day (I guess I signed up for something at some point). He’d been inspired to write it following a holiday at a wondeful boutique hotel in Sicily.

I’ve extracted the following inspiring words that will, I hope, help some of my readers  find THEIR brilliance and make a business out of it (and I hope John won’t mind that I’ve done this !)

1. Find your brilliance
Find that thing you have a natural ability and enduring passion for (clue: you’ve been doing it in some form your whole life)

2. Accept your brilliance
Even if you don’t shout about it to the world, you must stop pretending you’re nothing special (Brits in particular take note here). Downplaying your strengths short-changes both you and the world and it guarantees you will never rise above the level of ‘good’ to reach brilliant.

3. Develop your brilliance
Take what you’re already good at and enjoy doing and focus all your energy on that. Become superb at it. It’s going to take a while but if you’re “in flow” you’ll have a blast along the way.

4. Create something truly brilliant
Use your talents with the skills and knowledge you’ve developed to create something really special. Focus on something very specific you can excel at. Collaborate with others who are brilliant at the parts you’re weaker at. Producing something is the most important step of all. It doesn’t matter how brilliant you believe you are if you have nothing to show for it.

5. Show the evidence of your brilliance
Occasionally I meet people who tell me how brilliant they are. I’m really not very interested. Tell me what you’ve created or contributed to and what other people have said. Better still don’t tell me, show me by helping me with this skill and knowledge of yours. Or just let me find you by others’ recommendations.

Blogging Tips carried a guest post by Charnita France who seems to always come up with great suggestions on internet tools. This time she talked about the benefits of using Spyvo to manage reminders and keywords: Quickly Manage your Reminders and Alerts with Spyvo.

As many of you probably know, Google announced last week that it was ending development of Google Wave – not a complete surprise – in fact in truth I, like many others, had forgotten all about it. It sounded so promising when it first appeared but never really gained traction. It was supposed to replace email and IM but it didn’t interact with any of those platforms, even Google’s own Gmail and I don’t think anyone was really clear what it was supposed to do. Jonathan Bailey posted the 5 lessons from Google Wave for the rest of us over at Blogging Tips which are worth bearing in mind. You can read some extracts below:

1. No Man is an Island

No one is an island unto themselves, especially on the Web. Network with blogs in your field, link and quote them and leave comments on them. “Interfacing” with other sites encourages people to read yours as they read others.

2. Let the People In

Wave was unveiled in small “waves” of invites which hurt its ability to find a niche. By the time it went public, the enthusiasm had died down. Lesson: Don’t turn people away, open the door to conversation and participation. This is especially true in comments. The fewer barriers you place to a particular action, the more people who will take it. Open your doors wide and welcome all of those who want to visit.

3. State Your Purpose

Few understood what Google Wave was supposed to do or what it was useful for. This made Wave a really cool piece of technology without a real problem to solve and that meant users were impressed by it but really didn’t have a place for it. Lesson: Explain what your site is about and do so very clearly. Put it in the domain if you can or, at the very least, make it the first thing your readers see. Tell them what need you will fill and then fill it very well.

4. Speed Matters

One of the more common complaints about Google Wave was that it moved slow, especially in certain browsers. Lesson: Focus on speed. Do a good speed test on your site, put it on a diet and make it as fast as possible. A fast site gives people a good impression and that is an impression that lasts a long time.

5. Marketing, Marketing, Marketing

After its initial launch and feeding frenzy, not a lot was done to really promote or push the service. Most barely even noticed when Wave was opened up to the public in May. Lesson: Never stop promoting or marketing, you have to do it even if it is just to maintain momentum, let alone increase it. Always stay on top of your marketing game and be trying new things, never rest on your laurels.

I first read The Zen of Social Media Marketing by Shama Hyder Kabani in bits and pieces during the early Summer but then this week sat down in the sun on my balcony and read it again – cover to cover.

With a Foreword by Chris Brogan, the book contains chapters on:

• Online marketing basics
• Websites, Blogs and SEO
• Social media marketing : what you need to know before you start
• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Video: the Next Frontier
• Creating a social media policy for your organisation
• Tools for attracting even more business (this includes social bookmarking and how to measure the results of your efforts)

These are followed by:

• A section on some of the questions asked by the readers of Shama’s blog
• A section with case studies from companies in a variety of sectors.

The Zen of Social Media Marketing is somewhat unusual in that Shama has posted all of it on her website so that readers can access updated chapters.

I’ve been tracking Shama for a couple of years now but any social media newbie buying this book will probably have no idea who she is. However she rapidly demonstrates her impressive knowledge and expertise and reinforces her credibility by having Steve West write the section on SEO and handing over the chapter on Video: The Next Frontier to Dave Kaminski who she acknowledges as her number one source for online video information.

Quotes from social media practitioners are sprinkled throughout the book. Exceptionally I found them all to be highly valuable. I read many books on a variety of topics and typically the quotes just reinforce what the author is saying whereas Shama used quotes that really added value.

It’s a very easy, relaxing book to read – it’s just as if Shama is sitting there with you telling you all about social media. The pages just turn themselves. But make no mistake – this book contains no fluff and is absolutely crammed full of useful information. I would definitely recommend having a pen to hand to mark the things to action. Whilst I’m by no means a newbie to using social media for business – I teach it as part of a course on Strategic Communications at Webster University in Leiden and give talks on it back home in Montreal – I still found lots of things to put on my To do list. So whilst The Zen of Social Media Marketing paints a broad canvas and in a very accessible style making it a must read for the social media newbie, it’s still worth a read for the more seasoned social media folk.

The Zen of Social Media Marketing is available from Amazon (my affiliate link) and no doubt a good bookstore not far from where you live.

Having written this review I then read some of the reviews on Shama’s website and at Amazon – interestingly everyone has commented on how easy and gripping a read it is packed full of useful information and no fluff, just like Shama sitting there talking to you. Think Shama has clearly demonstrated that not only is she extremely knowledgeable about social media but she is able to write about it and share that knowledge in an accessible way.

For the record, Shama is the president of The Marketing Zen Group (previously known as Click To Client), a full-service web marketing agency serving clients around the world. She was tagged by Business Week as one of North America’s Top 25 Under 25 entrepreneurs. She holds a master’s degree in organizational communication from the University of Texas at Austin.

With so many smaller businesses and solopreneurs creating a Facebook Page I thought it was timely to provide some information about Facebook pages and serve up some of the great posts about Facebook Pages out there in the blogosphere. 

But first of all – what’s the big deal about Facebook Pages ?

Well -  the Page option allows you to create a presence for your business, web site, product, whatever and promote it.  With a Page you have “fans” rather than “friends” and no restrictions on how many. You can send them updates, engage with them in discussions.

You can feed your Blog Posts onto your  Page  (use the Facebook Notes application) and you can import your YouTube videos using the YouTube Video Box application.

If you have more than 25 fans you can have a vanity URL.

Pages are indexed by Google.

You can gather user analytics and data.

 The coolest thing of all is that you can enhance your Facebook Page with the use of HTML – a rare thing on social media sites. You can rearrange and rename the tabs. You can upload an image (your photo or logo or a poster about your organisation) measuring 200 x 600 pixels (now that makes an impression). You can create a custom landing page using the Static FBML (Facebook Mark up Language – a sub-set of HTML) application.

But first of all you need to create a Page so …..

Setting up your Page

Go to your Home page, in the left hand column click on Adverts and Pages, then click on Create Page (see the screen shot below as this is a tad obscure).

Then you need to decide how you want to classify yourself. If you’re a bricks and mortar business look through the drop down options to find the one that fits best. If you’re a business, organisation or web site with a national or international presence, look through the “Brand, Product or Organization” options. Of course if you’re famous then it’s a no-brainer.

So having settled all that let’s go take a look at the posts I checked out on setting up and enhancing your Facebook page.

Enhancing your Page

As I said, the Static FBML application that allows Facebook page administrators to create custom boxes and tabs on their pages. For me the best post on this is from my big favourite the Social Media Examiner.  In How to Customize Your Facebook Page Using Static FBML, Nick Shim provides a how-to guide on adding the application to your Facebook page and making effective use of it.

Meanwhile Darren Rowse over at Problogger adds some further details that are worth reading : How to Create a FaceBook Landing Page for Your Blog

Ching Ya again at the Social Media Examiner looks at  9 Ways to Enhance Your Facebook Fan Page including “testimonial page” to “ newsletter opt-in” – great stuff !

In How to create a bootylicious Facebook Page  John Haydon (who focuses on social media for not for profits) provides some great tips for creating a Facebook fan page to stand out from the crowd.

There’s a load of stuff out there – if you want even more check out the amazing list from the Interactive Insights Group – Ultimate Guide to Facebook Pages.