I follow a variety of wonderful professionals on Twitter. Through their daily links I learn a great deal, on a variety of levels, without the time investment of surfing the internet for information. I use links as part of my daily education process, quick, easy, sent by respected members of my network community.

In return, I send out information that I found interesting or helpful. That information was valuable to me, but how to analysis the value to my network community? Sure, many times I get tweets of appreciation or DM’s, but that is not a analysis by any means.

In compiling a database of social media applications, I came upon Tweetburner. It provides information on your most popular URL’s shared on Twitter, historical statistics, and more.

The first rule in using this application is the requirement of sending links in the shortened URL format “Twurl”. Twurl? Yes, you guessed it, not the format I had been using for the past eight months. A little frustrating to start a test with no history to view, however once I sent out five new links, I had plenty to help me evaluate Tweetburner.

Tweetburners Home Page

Let visit the Tweetburner home page.  On the home page of Tweetburner, you can view the generated Twurl’s to date, Twurl ‘s recently shared, most popular and top 10 URLs in the past hour.
Here is what you can view :

•    Current number of Twurls
•    Number of times Twurls have been clicked
•    Most popular Twirls in the last hour
•    Top 10 URLs with most clicks in the last hour
•    Recently shared Twurls

Now that we have teased you with Tweetburner ‘s main page, let us set up your free account and view your own Twitter and Friendfeed statistics.

Create Your Free Account

Let us start by creating your FREE account. This is a two step process:

Step 1 - Go to the Tweetburner website and click on “Create An Account”. Keep it simply and use your Twitter login and password.

Step 2 - Customize your Tweetburner account to include Twitter and Friendfeed. Here is the information you will need on hand:

•    Twitter Name & Password
•    Friendfeed User Name
•    Friendfeed remote key.

What’s a remote key? A remote key is a password to share with third-party applications and other websites, which allows them to interact with your account with limits.  This is much safer than supplying your password.

Your Stats

Your account is now set up.  Let us look around at YOUR user statistics. Start by clicking on the “Your stats” tab.

•    Clicks on user’s Twurls last week
•    Number of Twurls shared in the past Two weeks
•    YOUR top 5 Twurls
•    Latest Twurls

Please Note:  As previously stated, if your historical links were shortened using any format, other than “Twurl”, you will not see a history.  To begin tracking your history, set your application to send links in a “Twurl” format.

Archive

The archive page show past results, message, Twurl ID, number of Clicks to date and the date and time posted. This page is provides overall statistics on how many people clicked on your link.

How does this help you? This provides insight to the value of your links.

Account Sign Out

To sign out of your account, simply click on the button “Signout”. Obviously self explanatory, but I wanted to complete ALL the tabs.

One wonderful thing about Twitter is the ability to interact and learn from your community.

I find Tweetburner to be useful in evaluating the usefulness of my URL links.  How do you evaluate the usefulness of the URL’s you send in your Tweets to share? What other tools have your discovered and why do you find them beneficial? Do see Tweetburner as a value to helping you engage more effectively? Would appreciate your feedback.

If you found this post helpful, please consider subscribing to our feed.

Related articles:

• Using Twitter to Enhance your Social Network
• Links - How to Find Them and Share Them on Twitter

You have selected a Social Networking service, created your profile, selected a photo of yourself and invited your contacts to join your network. Now you have built a network! Congratulations!

The network you have created is an important one. You have invited people to become part of your network community, so what is your plan? How are you going engage with your community?

Being active and engaging in your community is vitally important. The same time you invest in your personal face to face relationships, you will need to invest in growing and enhancing your online relationship.

Twitter is an exceptional tool to engage community. Why Twitter? It allows you to communicate in real-time, share information, get help to questions and build relationships. People share many aspects of themselves on Twitter, much more than the carefully planned bio on their profiles. Twitter allows you to gain unique insight and open the doors to many new relationships quickly.

Overview of Twitter Basics

1. Account – Setup a free Twitter account.
2. Name – Pick a meaningful user name that you can use in all of your networks. Be consistent.
3. Avatar/Photo - Be easily recognizable. Select a photo and use it consistently over all other social applications.
4. Bio – Complete your one line bio, telling visitors a little about yourself.
5. Location - Put your location in your profile. This will help local Twitter users locate you.
6. About You Page/URL – Add a URL to allow people to learn more about YOU.
7. Customize Twitter – Create a custom background and promote your brand.
8. Invite Your Connections – Locate your connections on Twitter and invite non Twitter users to join in the conversation.
9. Set Notices – Set your notice preferences for followers.
10. Promote Your Twitter Account – Promote the fact you are on Twitter on your networks, in groups and in the Twitter Yellow Pages.
11. Managing Tweets – Simple tools to help you engage with the community.

Let’s Get Started

1. Account

Set up a free Twitter account or consider getting several accounts and avoid others from obtaining your brand, domain, product names, etc.
Twitter names/ID’s are getting as popular as Domain names. The best way to protect your brand is to reserve your name now. Twitter allows you to register one user name per email. Have other email addresses available to this purpose.

2. Name

Keep User Names Consistent. Use your real name, company name, blog title or a brand name. Be consistent between networks. It is much easier to develop relationships with your network, when they immediately recognize you across applications.
Seriously, using your real name on Linkedin, nickname on Flickr, and yet another on Twitter gets confusing for the best of us. Same goes true to avatar photos, be consistent.

3. Avatar/Photo

Select a photo and use it consistently over all other social applications. Be easily recognizable. In most cases an avatar in a 100 x 100 pixel size, in a JPG, GIF or PNG format, works across most applications, but there are exceptions.

Example: A 100 x 100 pixel size photo appears pixilated in TweetDeck’s larger profile window. Using a larger size of 1000 x 1000 file size, not exceeding 700 k, works best overall.

Special thanks to my friend Simon Salt, for allowing me to feature him as my example.

4. Bio

Complete your one line bio in fewer than 160 characters. People will look at your bio and by this brief description decide whether or not to follow you or engage in conversation. Make your bio interesting, by being “REAL”. Not everyone works 24 x 7, so put a mix of interests in your bio. Even business people have interests in sports, arts, family fun, pets, video games, gardening, etc.

5. Location

Put your location in your profile. Include the name of your city and state, or at minimum the county and state. This will help Twitter users locate you and your business on TwitterLocal.

6. About You Page/URL

Create URL to allow people to learn more about you. In Twitter you can add one link. Which link to choose? What is best, website, blog or one of the many other profiles you have created? Which one is best?

Connect to all of them. How? Create a custom landing page, just about you, and provide links to all of your social profiles. A little thought goes a long way. Make it easy for people to find, learn, engage and connect with you.

Please, avoid creating a link that appears like spam, which will turn people off immediately.

7. Customize Twitter

Let us not forget the “Visual” aspect of you or and your brand. Continue with the consistency with a custom background to match your website brand. It can be enhanced to be a , company logo or personality. Caution: Avoid creating a background that looks like a “sales” piece. The appearance of spam is a turn off to many.

• Creating your background

In this example, we used Adobe Illustrator, but any graphic software will work if you can export into GIF, JPG or PNG format.

Format: GIF, JPG, PNG.” Images must be smaller than 800k.
Canvas Dimension: 795 px by 400 px (this was viewed on 15, 21 & 23” monitors)
Top Branding Dimensions: 39.428 px by 795-821 px

• Change Design Colors

Select colors that enhance custom background graphic. You can change the RGB colors for the background behind your graphic, text, link colors, sidebar background fill and sidebar border.

To activate the color wheel, click on one of the fields; background, text, links, sidebar or sidebar border. Click on the color wheel to select the desired color. The color wheel will put the appropriate web or RGB colors in the appropriate field. You can also directly input your web hex color information if you have it available.

Important note: until you SAVE CHANGES, your preferences will not be changed. If you do not like your selections, CANCEL and begin again.

8. Invite Your Connections

Locate your connections on Twitter and invite non Twitter users to join in the conversation.
You can import your contacts from Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, AOL and MSN. Note: if you use Outlook, you can export your CSV file and import into one of these free services.

9. Notices of Tweets in your timeline

These settings allow you to control the replies that appear in your timeline.

In the notices section of your settings page, you can choose how you will see the @replies of others. You have three options:

• all @replies: see all of the @replies made by people you follow, whether or not you follow the person to whom the reply is directed.
• @replies to the people I’m following: see @replies from people you follow directed toward other people that you also follow. This is the default setting.
• no @replies: never see any @replies in your timeline, ever

10. Promote Your Twitter Account

• Twellow

Twellow is like the Twitter Yellow Pages. You can search by name, Twitter user or by category. Members can set up a brief bio or an extended profile with links to a variety of their social networks. , as well as your web or blog URL’s.

• Communication Materials

Email Signature – Include your twitter name in your email signature. A simple and professional signature can be created with WiseStamp a Firefox extension enables you to easily customize & add personalized email signatures on any webmail service (Gmail ,Yahoo ,Aol mail, Hotmail).

Business Cards – Include your twitter address near your blog and/or website information.  One Twitter user @adellecharles, suggested if your card has too much information and it begins to look busy, you could consider adding a Twit Bird as a symbol.  I love this idea!

As @Twalk said, “Many of us operate in multiple niches, so why not have mult. biz cards”. This is a great idea. Going to an event or conference, want more than your normal biz card has on it? Try Moo cards.

• Join a Twitter User Group

Facebook has a group named “Twitter”, with over 8745 members.
LinkedIn has several pages of groups, one prominent group Tweeple, has over 1700 members.

11. Managing Tweets

There are a variety of desktop and mobile applications that will help you organize and manage your Twitter communications are available.

• TweetDeck - My favorite and most valuable tool is TweekDeck. Why? I can create different columns and categorize my followers, topics of discussion, clients, etc. Plus the added benefit of having Twitscoop built directly in the application and the expanded profile viewing in the side panel.
• Twirl – This application also runs on Adobe Air, but is a compact version, taking up much less room on your monitor.
• Twitter RSS feed - Keep up with Twitter updates by subscribing to Twitter via RSS Feed. You can subscribe to any Twitter user or even track your own feed.

Just go to the users page and click on the RSS feed at the bottom left hand side of their page. Note: You do not have to follow them, to get their feed.

Closing

Now that you are easily recognizable, linked to your network connections, promoted your account so others can locate you easily, you are ready to begin engaging with your community.

You can communicate in real-time, share information, get help to questions and build stronger relationships.

Writing this post was a great re-check of myself, soon realizing I had been a bit lax in following my own advice. I found a few of my avatar photos were not consistent, my landing page needs work and I will consider a new style of business cards with room for my Twitter address, or at minimum a Twitter Symbol.

People are creative, with creative ideas, what are yours? How do you promote yourself on Twitter? How do you manage your Twitter steam? What tools and tricks work best for you?

Does anyone have the perfect background size for all monitors? I tested 15” to 23”, but there must be an overall method that fits all? No?

Look forward to hearing your tips and tricks!

Related articles:

• Twitter - How Do You Manage the Noise?
• Brands Using Twitter

Over the years I have learned, great ideas, long lasting friendships and partnerships, often come from amazing places.  Looking at the surface is not a good judge of a person or situation.  Everyone has something to offer, everyone is necessary, everyone is of value.

This video remains one of my favorite Social Networking tips, one I thought I would share with you today.  The video is by Gary Vaynerchuk, a man with over 16,000 twitter followers, who discusses “How to cut through the noise”.

He presents his view on managing the “noise”, whether on Facebook, Pownce, Twitter, Email or whatever other platform you use on to connect to your network of people.

Small things, connect people, people represent your networks.  When my dog had cancer, there were many supportive dog lovers on Twitter, which quickly turned into friends.  Not surprising, several have become great business resources, exchanging help, tips and even leads to prospective business.  Twitter people who bonded over the love for our pets.  What is noise to some are common bonds to others.

First, how do you like the video? So what do you view as noise? Do you find it difficult to manage all the Twitter traffic? Have your found a way to manage your Twitter messages?

Then in speaking with a friend, Dan Portnoy, who has been recently working on a project for the Union Rescue Mission, we realized poverty and hunger was in our very own backyard.

In our little piece of the world, we call Orange County; we see a beautiful place, 42 miles of white sandy beaches, wonderful weather, culture & entertainment, world-famous dining and the center of some of the best US resorts. We have something for everyone.

Yet, despite that we live in one of the top ten wealthiest counties in the United States, an estimated 35,000 people become homeless each year.

How is that possible? We almost never see people sleeping on benches, panhandling on a street corner or pushing a cart with their belongings. That is because being homeless in our area does not fit within our ideal of the O.C. Lifestyle.

Never seen a homeless person in your part of Orange County? It is time for a reality check, for all of us living here, homeless don’t wear signs. They are very conscious to fit in, to be clean and dress appropriately. They are not sleeping on our park benches, but in their cars, shelters, run-down motel room, on couches or the floor at a friend’s home.

Can you imagine the stress, the efforts to please our O.C. ideal, to avoid humiliation, people staring or avoiding them as if they have an infectious disease?

What about the children? Did you also know, a child is born into poverty in the Orange County every 2 hours? That puts the annual number of babies born into poverty, to 40% in Orange County alone, not to mention all of Southern California.

According to the O.C. Rescue Mission here are seven facts about the homeless in Orange County you may not know:

• 35,065 incidents of homelessness were reported in 2007.
• 24,545 of these incidents were homeless families.
• 16,332 of these incidents were children.
• 5,389 of these homeless incidents involved children under the age of six.
• Approximately 3,400 emergency shelter beds exist in the entire county.
• 60% of the homeless go regularly without meals.
• 81% feel severe hunger.

The Federal Poverty Line, in 2006, says a family of thee, with an annual income of $15,260 is at the Poverty Line. According to the United Way, a single parent with an infant and preschooler needs to make $49,791 to be self-sufficient, to live in Orange County.

A single parent of two children, under preschool age, requires almost $50,000 a year to be self-sufficient in our community. There are no extras this is just to sustain a place to shelter, food, clothing, gas, utilities, all basic needs.

Some may be thinking they don’t know anyone in this desperate situation? You may not recognize them, but you know them as a friend, co-worker, neighbor, client, coach, teacher, landscaper or even your housekeeper.

Let’s not kid ourselves, families are filing for bankruptcy in record numbers, and without a contingency plan, many families are only a few paychecks from being homeless.

Homelessness and Poverty is not only Orange Country problem, it is a worldwide problem. We are trying to education and resolve by 2011. Can we do it? That is the worldwide goal, through education and involvement.

If you would like to learn more, we have listed a few resources below, but there are thousands out there. If you have a good resource in Orange County, National or Global, please provide us with a link by commenting.

There are many issues to address in eliminating Poverty, as we learned in researching and communities with our business networks, but awareness of the problem opens doors to solutions.

Please tell us your thoughts. What can we do, within Orange County? What can we do on a larger scale to help meet the 2015 goal?

Related articles:

• Blog Action Day 08: We Don’t Need Coins, We Need Change
• Blog Action Day 2008 - Poverty (Skid Row)
• Orange County Partnership to end homelessness
• Orange County Rescue Mission
• End Poverty by 2015

This isn’t random spam, this is spam being created by network connections.  How can this be? Interestingly, everyone views spam slightly differently.  I have found a few, who view it as the reason they have a network, which I find interesting.

The benefits of LinkedIn are plentiful, however using it as an adverting tool is not one of them.

Obviously, everyone in LinkedIn has a product or service to promote, but I find the direct emails, which are apparently random in nature, as they not directed to me or my industry.  They are sent to everyone within that individual’s network.  Emails include everything from event announcements, requests to complete surveys, promotions pieces, invitations to other networking sights, etc.

In my view point, the value of networking is the community and relationships within that community.  As human beings we enjoy relationships with people we trust, respect and find knowledgeable in their field of expertise.  It takes time to build relationships and trust, but ever so quickly can be tainted by the appearance of violating the relationship with unwanted surveys, promotional pieces and events announcements. Would you agree?

Do I want to discontinue getting all announcements through LinkedIn?  Not at all.  If the emails are specific to my interests and industry, then yes I am interested.  It is my opinion that the best place to promote an event in LinkedIn, is through participation in a group, specific to the industry and event you are promoting.

LinkedIn Groups are made up of people with an interest in the specific field, have chosen to be part of this group and have common goals and interests.  The group board allows members to post and comment, within the specific group.  This approach doesn’t appear as random as sending your email to your entire network and reaches individuals most likely to be interested.

What do you do when you receive unwanted spam via your LinkedIn group repeatedly? Do you ignore it? Do you request to be removed for future emails? Or do you remove the individual from your network entirely?

What do I do? Good question.  Fortunately I have only been faced with this twice.  Once after frequent emails being sent to me, I look at the contact and re-evaluated the value of the connection.  In this example the person was valuable and respected by me, so I did nothing, except to delete them when received.  Glad to say they have sense changed their communication method and now use LinkedIn Groups.

The second relationship, actually relationship would not be an accurate description.  This individual requested a connection, I accepted, within 60 seconds I was sent a spam promoting his services in India.  The quickness of their action clearly stated the true meaning behind the request to join my community.  I mean really, 60 seconds.  I felt like I had been hunted and shot with spam.

How do you remove someone from your connections? It was amazingly simple.

• Click ‘Connections‘ under the ‘Contacts’ header.
• Click ‘Remove Connections’ in the upper right hand corner of the ‘Connections’ view.
• Select the people you’d like to remove from your ‘Connections’ list.
• Click ‘Remove Connections’.

What do you perceive to be spam within your LinkedIn network?  What do you do when you receive unwanted spam repeatedly? Do you ignore it?

How do you want to receive event announcements, surveys, promotions pieces, invitations to other networking sights?

Related articles:

• What is LinkedIn?
• LinkedIn To Take the Next Step to Making Groups Useful
• Make Your LinkedIn Profile Work for You

In researching the events and reviewing the list of presenters, I was intrigued. The list was a whos who, all energetic, passionate people in their fields of expertise, early adopters, already embracing new media.

A little planning and research and the tone was set that this would be a great event.

The excitement began to mount the day prior to leaving for Las Vegas, as many attendees had already arrived and were preparing for a full Friday session. Not to mention the unexpected Twitter exchange with @CirqueLasVegas, who graciously set us up with complimentary tickets to Cirque’s Beatles Love Show on Saturday night! One of my best Twitter experiences yet!

The days of planning we over and we are off to the airport. We began to feel part of the event immediately upon arrival to the airport. We were both following Twitter and the official code for the event, @BWE08. There were photos via TwitPic, party announcements, weather information and tweeps announcing departures, arrivals and discussions on the sessions that were already in progress. How nice, we were waiting to departure from Orange County airport, yet we were already feeling part of the event in Las Vegas. Thanks Twitter!

We arrived in Las Vegas on Friday afternoon, checked in and immediately launched the Blogworld08 website for the latest news. Then I checked my RSS feeds and bloggers were already posting about Friday sessions, while still present at the session. I love technology.

We decided to walk around our hotel, play a few games, and headed to the Blue Man Group to get our tickets for the Friday night show, compliments of BlogWorld! Special thanks to Noel Watson, the Sales Manager of the BMG, for her help and tour of their offices earlier in the afternoon.

Prior to heading down to the show, I sent a Tweet asking if anyone was up to a Blue Man Show Tweetup. Time was tight, so no pre-tweet up, but that didn’t stop us from Tweeting in route and in the venue. We soon found we were in the same row as @onetake and @gototchris, only the band separated us. A very nice usher moved us to be near our BlogWorld friends, a very nice gesture. To our surprise, these two also live in Orange County, California. What a small world.

The Show was fabulous, as well as the company and the post Tweet Up too, where we finally met @danportnoy, after tweeting for months on Twitter and speaking on the phone. Dan and his work is a story in and of itself, working with non profits. Thank you to @cherylsmith999 for the introduction.

Technology gave a wider eyes view of the actual conference and all of the activities. People were sending live streaming, tweeting, sending photos to TwitPic and Flickr and although we were not able to be everywhere, we felt connected to the other events around town the entire weekend. How I appreciate those hashtags #bwe08.

On Saturday, as the sun rose, so did the Bloggers. It was apparent by the good morning tweets on Twitter. Even though we were in different hotels, spread around the city, we were enjoying breakfast and coffee together. Normally, this morning ritual wouldn’t be unique, but on this morning we were all in the same town and time zone, all headed to the same event. That was a unique twist.

I sent out a Tweet “Watched the sun come up over Vegas. Getting ready for BlogWorld. Many great presenters, now is decision time.” I smiled when I got a response from Dave Taylor, “me! me! come to my SEO for bloggers workshop this afternoon! :-)” Now how could we refuse such a cheery early morning invitation?

Upon arriving we could see bloggers carrying all their techno gadgets. They were equipped with video cams, smart phones, iPods, voice recorders and cameras. Yes, we are in the right place.

We attended two back to back seminars on Podcasting. The best part of these presentations was watching the tweets from the Twitter presentation with Laura Fitton, across the hall. That presentation caused much discussion on Twitter and how I longed to be sitting in that room. Many thanks to those in the “Twitter: Building the Connections that Drive Traffic” presentation for keeping those of us not in attendance, up to date throughout the presentation.

Next, we took Dave Taylor up on his early morning tweet and attended “Ten Things You Need to Know About Search Engines”. A topic of interest for me over the last few years and his presentation was not a disappointment.

He presented key information to people looking to take advantage of SEO on their sites. One specific topic was of great interest to me, adding blogrolls to your blog. I had often wondered what the benefit was to listing which blogs we each read? In my case the list would be ever changing as I discover great new sources every day, as would the lists of the other bloggers that contribute to our site.

What are the benefits? Looking for a SEO stand point, there is none. Surprised? I believe many were, but then he asked the question “Why spend your valuable time creating content and to give visitors a list of reasons to leave your site?” That makes sense from a SEO stand point. What is the reason so many people have a Blogroll? What is the purpose of listing out the other blogs you read and does anyone else really care?

His presentation contained a lot of valuable information. What did we learn? Let’s just say after Dave’s presentation, we have several things to redesign, and dedicate more time reading Dave Taylors Blog. Did I mention Dave gives free tech support?

Hungry, we headed over to the Palazzolas, which luckily for us was attached to our hotel and we were lucky enough to be guests at Sushi Samba’s. We enjoyed the Cuban sushi creations and were entertained as they prepared for their grand opening party that very evening.

Saturday night and time to enjoy the Cirque’s Beatles Love Show that @CirqueLasVegas arranged for us, compliments of the marketing team and thanks to Twitter. Thanks to Dave Taylor for suggesting the show! I was sitting right there and how he remembered all of these details I am not sure, but he did a great job in his post. The show was fantastic, but at midnight, back to the hotel to rest up for Sunday. Still had many people to meet and spend time in the Expo with exhibitors.

Sunday we decided to attend one presentation and then spend some time in the Expo. We decided on “My blog is a Business?”, which did a brief presentation and took questions from the audience. I actually enjoyed the questions, because every individual came from a different perspective, each having different interests. One particular question kept arising, monetization.

We didn’t create our blog with monetization in mind, did we? No, but after listening to this presentation, in fact that is what we are doing is having it as an extension of our eLearning Development. Chris Brogan said an interesting thing, if we were to look at his blog, there is a plan when he writes posts. He is indirectly giving us messages to his knowledge, experience and his value. That is why we are at BlogWorld, just more food for thought in our planning and direction.

The panel also continued to express, the key is doing what you are passionate about. If you work hard at making it good, quality content and monetization will come. Great advice, hands down. When I decided to make a drastic change and do things that I loved, although initially out of my comfort zone, well worth it because great things begin to happen when you follow passion.

Now for the Expo and what I view as shopping! Someone has to do it! We talked to many great exhibitors, some we knew, some we just met. We will be writing more about these great new finds in future postings.

However, I never found a Twitter shirt that I have been longing for, but what I did find came straight from Twitter and was even better. I saw a tweet from @coachdeb that she was at the i360 booth and signing pre-release copies of Twitter Revolution. Let me just say, @coachdeb is exactly like she is on Twitter. She and @warrenwhitlock were both nice enough to sign the book and pose for photos. Read the book on the way back on the plane, great book, another post coming about this great gem.

Will we attend in BlogWorld 2009? You bet! Would we do anything differently? Yes. We did many things right in researching in advance, but after this wonderful experience it would do a few additional things to prepare for all future events.

• Participate in many more hosted events, to really take advantage of time with people face to face, one on one.
• Research the speakers and their presentations, to ensure we are getting the most out of each presentation, to meet our individual needs.
• Take more photos of the event and friends to share with those that don’t attend, as well as our own memories of the events.
• Pack video equipment or bring one of our videographers, to tape planned interviews.
• Research product and service providers and make time for those specific to our interests.

Thank you again to fellow blogger, Rosina Rothman, of BabyFriendlyLA, I hope you make it next year!

Please consider joining me and a host of others on Blog Action Day 2008.  It is one day, one blog post, all to focus on one important issue.  Help spread the word on October 15, 2008.

What is Blog Action Day?

It is an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. The aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion.

Action Day and there is no limit on the number of posts, the type of posts or the direction of thoughts and opinions.

How can you get involved?

The different ways, you choose.

In 2007, Blog Action Day was a huge success.  There were over 20,000 bloggers participating to discuss the environment.  The United Nations got involved for the environment and suddenly this event was in the papers and the media.

This Years Theme.

The event this year focuses on Poverty. One issue a thousand of voices.  On this one single day, thousands of different people, a thousand different viewpoint and opinions, the perfect fit for bloggers.  Each blogger posts their own topic and engages differently with their audience.

What to write about?

This organization has put together a list of sites for you to visit, research and gather the information to engage your audience. Here is a list of organizations to help.

Who else is participating!

Your are in great company. In 2007, Blog Action Day was a huge success.  There were over 20,000 bloggers participating to discuss the environment.  The United Nations got involved for the environment and suddenly this event was in the papers and the media.

As of this post, 4,939 sites are registered and 9,723,618 RSS Readers are set.  Here is a very small list of 2008 participates:

How to get started?

Visit Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty and register your blog.

Please join us on October 15, 2008 in changing the world of Poverty, by helping spread the world.  If you join, please post a link to your blog, so I may follow you.  I am interested in seeing the great stories people write!

This continues from my first post, Going Green - Where to Begin?

Where did we start? We started off in the one place most of us have, our office.  It seemed like the right place, the place we spend a lot of time, and with a few modifications to our thoughts about recycling, we could make an immediate difference.

Office Supplies

The next logical step was office supplies and surprisingly enough, researching office supplies was actually very simple.  Organizations like Staples and Office Depot are making it easier for their customers to locate good quality, Eco-Friendly products on their websites:

• Staples – Eco Easy
• Office Depots – Your Greener Office

There are many eco-friendly options today.  Here are a few ideas we have implemented:

• Instead of using a disposable tape dispenser, get one you can refill.
• Post it notes, try the ones from recycled paper.
• Replace colored file folders, with natural ones, eliminating the dyes.
• Using only natural colored shipping boxes
• Eliminate paper cups by using stoneware
• Eliminate self service packets, like sugar, creamer. Use full size products.
• Consolidate office product deliveries into one shipment. Reduces delivery fuel, shipping costs.

Many suppliers offer free shipping if you order meets a certain requirement.  Both Office Depot and Staples offers free delivery on orders $50 or more.

Repurposing is another good idea. Those boxes you receive products in, reuse any clean and presentable boxes again. We replaced our styrofoam peanuts by reusing our shreaded paper. Of course these ideas will not work for businesses that have significant shipping, ours is minimal, but it opens up the idea of Repurposing.

There is much more we can do, this is just a start in our office. 

The above examples, we are doing in our office.  Do you have any other Eco-Friendly ideas, product suggests for office supplies? What were the results? Did they match up to the expectations of your old favorites?  Were they more expensive?

We encourage you to share, any of our posts that you find interesting and useful.  Please feel free to repost portions or the entire post, but please link back to blog.einnoventions.com‘s article, and give our team credit. Thank you! This notice excludes use for profit.

There is no end to the information that can be found and it can be overwhelming to say the least.  First question, where to start? Where to begin researching? Which area should we tackle first? If you are not sure, you are not alone.

I wanted to know what small to medium business could do to implement easy and meaningful “green processes” to help reduce their carbon footprint on the environment.  What about home offices, which are a growing trend as part of telecommuting, which helps reduce an individual’s carbon footprint, through reduction or elimination of daily commuting to and from a employer.

Where to start? Need ideas? Join an Eco-Friendly group on LinkedIn, Facebook or a host of other social networks.  These groups have thousands of members, all willing to help other member’s source products that work.

I joined a group on LinkedIN , called GreenBiz .  On their website I found a publication called “State of Green Business 2008 “, a 64 page publication about companies going green.

It contains lots of helpful information and ideas.  It also shows there is much to celebrate and still much more work to do to integrate environmental thinking into operations of organizations.

We started in the office and we will be sharing those experiences in our Green Tip series.

Have your or your organization began to go green? What area did you decide to change first? What changes did you make personally?  What changes have taken place within your organization?

Additional Links

• GreenBiz
• State of Green Business 2008
• Lets Go Green - Eco Friendly Products
• Flex Your Power (California)

We encourage you to share, any of our posts that you find interesting and useful.  Please feel free to repost portions or the entire post, but please link back to blog.einnoventions.com‘s article, and give our team credit. Thank you! This notice excludes use for profit.

I encourage you to listen to each of these 4 short “Podcasts” to “relive the lessons” that made such a profound impact on me, when Learning transformed from a “chore” to an exciting “challenge”, and was the catalyst to build a successful career.

Here is the Last of four consecutive daily podcasts.

Optimal Learning… 8 Ways To Bring Learning Alive

1. Write a goal sheet for new skills
2. Actively participate in training
3. Take notes on key ideas
4. Relate what you learn to you job
5. Find the big idea in each session
6. Review & study new material
7. Be “present” while training
8. Have fun with the material

Questions:

You have listened to the podcasts, so tell us How do you like to learn?  What have you learned about learning?? Do you see yourself as a active learner, a vacationer or a prisoner of learning???  Did this four mini podcast help provide reminders to how to achieve your goals?

Previous Podcasts in This Short Series

• Learning To Learn…The 5 Levels of Learning
• Building New Skills…The 4 Phases of Skill Develoment
• Fully Engage While Learning… The 3 Basic Types of Students