Your prospective clients are hungry…are you feeding them good stuff?

Whether we like it or not you have to have a presence on the internet…if I hear about you from a friend, if I meet you at a networking event and get your card or if I stumble across you on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook the first thing I’m likely to do if I find you interesting is to find your website and check you out.

I’m looking for a better understanding of who you are, what you do and why I should care.  I’m hungry for information and if you want me to do something beyond a quick glance, you need to feed me something tasty and nutritious.

Read More…

I’ve been really busy the last few months (which is a great problem to have these days), but it’s been challenging to keep up with all of the great stuff that’s out on the internet.

I pick up a lot of ideas for articles and blog posts from Social Media (LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) when I get the time to surf a bit – or if I’m doing research.  I also have a lot of blogs set up on various RSS readers, on my Yahoo home page, my Google home page and even some just tucked into odd corners.

I also follow blogs from a variety of local folks that I see around Kansas City that I think are very good – here’s a few – Sarah at Dog Eared Pages of course.  Although I haven’t met him personally, I like Sam Meers at Smoke and Meers and a couple that  new to blogging,  Tara Renze at Prospects to Partners and Jason Terry (of the upcoming Blue Gurus) are going to be good reading.

On a national level, there are just a few blogs that I value enough that I sign up for their email feed – several of them because they have good content, but more importantly because I just enjoy reading them.  These are the kinds of emails that you look forward to reading – a treat to look forward to.

Here are 4 of them that add a real splash of color to my inbox!

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photo by extranoise 

Blogging is a great way to promote your business.

There are a lot of great reasons why you should Blog for your business but the catch-22 is that blogging without any readers doesn’t make any noise in the forest (you know what I mean).

As I’ve discovered over time, although it’s pretty straightforward (not easy mind you, but straightforward) to blog consistently and with good intent.  However, getting people to find you and check out your blog (and subscribe) is a whole different ball o’ wax.

I would argue that quality (of readers and of postings) is way more important than quantity, but still everyone wants to grow their readership and more importantly become part of a blogging ‘community’ of similar interests.

That’s why I think Michael Martine at Remarkablogger came up with a great opportunity to Get Web Traffic. 

• Check out the aspiring bloggers on the comments list
• Sign up for their feeds if it’s something cool that you would enjoy
• Leave a comment and let ‘em know someone is reading them

But definitely make sure you check out Remarkablogger because he almost always has something worthwhile to say!  (also don’t forget to comment here!!!) 

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

I couldn’t stand it any longer – I needed to find out what all the buzz was regarding Twitter, so I decided to join up and start learning.

For those that don’t know, Twitter is a ‘micro-blogging’ platform that limits you to 140 characters per post (or Tweet).

What’s the point?

Well that’s the interesting thing – I have no idea how planned this product was and there are a lot of opinions out there, but I think the forced brevity encourages more of a true conversation format.  You can leave short posts on what you’re doing, you can share sites that you found interesting or you can engage people.

There are a lot of ways to participate in Twitter – here’s a few that I’ve noticed so far: Read More…

Delano, Jack,, 1914-, photographer.  find it here

Retiring a locomotive driver wheel in the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railway locomotive shops, Shopton, near Fort Madison, Iowa. The tire is heated by means of gas until it can be slipped over the wheel. Contraction on cooling will hold it firmly in place. Santa Fe R.R.

1943 – March

If you’ve seen much of my blog, you might have noticed that I’m using pictures for most of my posts these days.  I’m a visual person and really drawn to photography – hopefully it’s something that other people enjoy.

What’s really cool is that I’ve found a couple of resources to use as a free and legal source for great images.

The first resource is a great article from Skelliewag (a blogger from Australia that does a great job on blogging in general).  Her article: Guide to finding and using incredible Flickr Images gives a step by step process on how to find Creative Commons (i.e. not copyrighted) photos that you can legally use by attributing the photographer.  Copyright infringement is a big deal and she gives a very clear explanation on how to avoid it.

The second resource I just discovered today on Wisebread in this article:  Help Yourself to Amazing Photos from the Library of Congress.  Earlier this month, the Library of Congress announced that they were working with Flickr to make thousands of their most popular photographs available to the public without any copyright restrictions!

Not only is that a great resource for blogging, publishing, etc, but the pictures themselves are fascinating.  I haven’t had a chance to go through in any detail yet but there are some really amazing historical images on there.  I have a feeling you’ll be seeing quite a few more of these in future posts.

You can find the primary page Here.  Enjoy and let me know what you think!

Shawn Kinkade   www.aspirekc.com