Internet Marketing Tips from Denise Wakeman

Google Launches Web Elements for Your Blog

I got a heads up yesterday from a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News that Google was launching some new tools for bloggers today at their annual developers conference, and she wanted to ask my opinion after the announcement (today).  Never say "no" to a media interview, right?!

So I did some snooping around and found the page for Google press releases and refreshed the page at the appointed time of 9:00 a.m. PT. Voila, there was the release right on schedule.

Among other announcements, here's what Google has launched for blogs and websites:

NConnects Takes TeleConferencing to a New Level

Breaking News: I just got off a 90 minute conference call with Rick Raddatz, the guy who created Instant TeleSeminar and a lot of other cool and innovative Internet marketing tools. If you've been around me for awhile, you know I LOVE Instant TeleSeminar and recommend it to all my clients.

Well, now Rick and his partners have created a new teleconference system that can take your teleseminars and conference calls to a whole new level. The service is called NConnects and launches on May 19. Some of the features include:

• Emergency backup numbers so the host can ALWAYS dial in
• A call-out feature so you can call your guest or co-host if they forget to dial in
• Listeners can "raise" their hand to ask questions
• You can control the sound levels on your guest/co-host (this is a big one for me) so if your voice is normal and your guest is quiet, you can raise their volume so you get an outstanding recording.
• The recordings are NOT compressed so you get a very high quality recording for your info products and replays
• Multiple dial-in lines so most callers can use a local number
• + much more

If you're already an InstantTeleseminar subscriber, they're going to offer a sweet deal to upgrade. If you don't need all the bells and whistles of IT, you can get a basic service with 100 phone lines.

As I said, the service launches on May 19, but you can get on the early launch VIP list now and enter a contest where they are giving away $500,000 (you read that right) in free services.

Personally, because teleseminars are an integral part of my business and I want to always offer the best experience, I'll be upgrading to NConnects. However, you need to figure out what's right for your business. I do encourgage you to take a look and get on the VIP list because I've been a customer of Rick's for many years and I know he's the real deal when it comes to product, quality and service.

Related Posts:
Teleseminar leaders: two sites to post your events
InstantTeleseminar vs. Audio Acrobat

David Pogue's Basic Tech Tips

David Pogue, tech columnist for The New York Times, is one of my favorite tech writers. He is funny and always interesting and informative. I have his column emailed to me every week so I don't miss a thing.

Today's column was so useful I want to share it with you. David Pogue writes about basic tech tips that we have known and forgotten or never known at all. I was reminded of several things that I used to do to be more efficient, but somehow slipped out my consciousness.

You can hide all windows, revealing only what’s on the computer desktop, with one keystroke: hit the Windows key and “D” simultaneously in Windows, or press F11 on Macs (on recent Mac laptops, Command+F3; Command is the key with the cloverleaf logo). That’s great when you want examine or delete something you’ve just downloaded to the desktop, for example. Press the keystroke again to return to what you were doing.

I learned this years ago from Tom Antion, and then forgot. It's a heck of a lot faster than minimizing windows one by one.

At the time of this post, there were already 296 comments with even more great tech tips. Read Tech Tips for the Basic Computer User if you want to learn something very useful today.

TweetStats Reveals Your Twitter Habits

Twitter was the tool of the weekend at BlogWorld and New Media Expo. EVERYONE was using Twitter to share what they were learning and hearing at the panel sessions, who they were meeting, where the tweetups were happening, and so much more. You can see the steady stream of BlogWorld tweets at Twitter Search.

That being said, do you know what you tweet about the most? Or how much you tweet? I was introduced to a new tool today by my pals Adam Urbanski and Mari Smith...TweetStats. You plug in your Twitter handle and a bunch of graphs and a tweet cloud are generated.  You can see your most commonly tweeted words.  Guess what my #1 word is...blog!

If you want to connect on Twitter, follow me!

 

KickStartCart Browser Tip

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you know I recommend KickStartCart for your all in one marketing and ecommerce tool. More than a shopping cart, KickStartCart is marketing system.

About a year ago I switched from using Internet Explorer to Firefox as my default web brower. That's where my problems started. Frequently when I tested my product links in KickStartCart, I would get error messages, telling me I needed to enable cookies on my browser. I always have cookies enabled so that wasn't the problem.

It's been so frustrating, not only for me but for prospective customers as well. It wasn't always a problem, just on a random basis. When a customer complained, I'd have to tell them to use Internet Explorer.

That's not an ideal solution and who knows how many people didn't bother to complain but just abandoned the purchase. This just shouldn't be an issue with millions and millions of people using Firefox.

Finally, I found out that there is a bug with Firefox 2.0 that cannot be resolved with KickStartCart. The problem does not occur with Firefox 3.0. So I upgraded. And guess what? No problems.

So, my advice...if you're still using Firefox 2.0, then upgrade to Firefox 3.0 so you will not encounter this problem yourself.  Thousands of merchants use KickStartCart (aka 1Shoppingcart) so you'l save yourself some headaches if you upgrade today.

Related post:

Shopping Cart Systems - Part 1 - 3