When you sign up for just about any social network, you have the option to upload an image that will represent you. No matter what the social site, you’ll want to associate an image with your online identify. This image is your “avatar.” It’s your online persona. It’s the way the online community will see […]

Best-selling author Tim Ferriss is one of my heroes. His book, The 4-Hour Workweek, was an inspiration to me. In my podcast interview of him, he dispensed some life-changing advice. So when I saw that Tim had laid out a plan on his blog for outsourcing one’s inbox and never checking email again, I was […]

My favorite keynote at the Web 2.0 Expo last week was from one of my favorite bloggers — the Forbes columnist Daniel Lyons, aka “Fake Steve Jobs.” It’s an amazing story, how a joke turned into an Internet sensation and then a book deal. And the way Lyons tells it, it’s uproariously funny. The 8-minute […]

With school teachers, employers, and even people you meet randomly in the bar “Googling” you, online reputation management has never been more important. All it takes is a couple uploaded drunken pictures to your MySpace or Facebook to have them rank for your name (provided you aren’t John Smith) and ruin your reputation to everyone […]

First off, I must apologize for the radio silence for a number of weeks. Over half the month is gone already and I hadn’t blogged once! Very naughty! I had a good excuse though — I was super-busy with my move from New Zealand back home to the States. (Yes, that’s right, back in beautiful […]

Reputation monitoring and management have become hot topics and will only continue to grow. These are becoming important areas for all businesses, large and small, to focus on as more and more people turn to the Web to communicate through blogs, their own Web sites, as well as the ever-growing opportunities for online consumer reviews […]

One of the areas that I’m starting to see a rapid growth in, is local search. It’s important that business owners start taking advantage of this growth in popularity, so that they claim a stake in this soon-to-be competitive market. Believe it or not, there are a number of free tools where you can list […]

My daughter Chloe is featured today on the BlogTalkRadio home page! 🙂 Listen in at 6:30pm Eastern / 5:30pm Central this evening. Diva marketer Toby Bloomberg will be interviewing Chloe and me. We will be talking about SEO, blogging and monetizing your blog. UPDATE: The half hour interview has been archived for your on-demand listening […]

Now that I’m back full-time in the US, it’s not such a chore to get to conferences. I can even attend conferences that I’m not speaking at, which is something I seldom (if ever) did in the 8 years I lived in New Zealand. Yet it can be an excellent opportunity to connect with really […]

Yesterday’s keynote at Web 2.0 Expo featured an interview of Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google Inc. by John Battelle. John asks such great questions. I really enjoyed the session, but I kept finding myself distracted by Eric’s horrific outfit; it was reminiscent of Mr. Rogers (remember “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood?”). He needs a fashion consultant. Heaven […]