Category Archives: digital.life

I live online thanks to online marketing, websites, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, iTunes, streaming music, online banking, forums and email. Here is where I share a little of what I’ve learned in my cyber-travels…

Just joined Technorati

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I’m not sure if it’s a sign that I know a little about what I’m talking about or not, but I’m proud to at least know where to look to get the right information. It’s like, I may not actually be cool, but I know people who are… oh yeah I do.

I’m currently following @mitchjoel, President of Twist Image, on Twitter. His post this morning in his blog Six Pixels of Separation was a great outline of several of the top tools for managing, or at least monitoring, your business reputation online. One of those means, which I have not explored thus far (and the only one to date – yay me!) is Technorati.

So this is how I spend the morning… 5:30am, signing up for new profiles in new online spaces while drinking a very large coffee. I’m still working on laying a foundation online to represent myself.

Want to see the real me? Check out my Technorati Profile :)

Not much of a blogger

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Well, it’s official: I’m not much of a blogger. It’s funny, as much as I think I have great things to say every now and again, I don’t actually have time to write them down at the very moment I think them up. I have the attention span of a flea, and thus there are no entries in my blog.

I’m not entirely sure what I want to do with this blog, to be honest. When I started it, I was just looking to ramble some random thoughts as they arose. I still think that’s sort of what goes through my head, but it doesn’t much make for good reading. There are so many topics I’ve thought about really pursuing to make me stand out from the crowd:

- Marketing – so many people do it, and many better than I could
- Online Marketing/New Media – see above
- Parenting – with one 2 1/2 year old I’m hardly an expert
- Christianity – well, it’s hard to really share those deep places with the world
- Music – I only know about praise and worship music and artists

I’m also thinking of starting to build more Squidoo lenses. They’re my latest obsession and I just earned a whopping $0.07! I know… totally thrilling.

Anyway, I’m currently waiting to hear back from my General Manager to find out if I get approved to go to BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2008 in Las Vegas in September. If I do, I’m sure I’ll have far more ideas after. Until then, if you find yourself reading this blog, you’ll have to make do with my random thoughts in no particular order and with no particular regularity.

Thanks for reading.

$3. 30,000 people. 2 months… an interesting concept

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This might just be one of the most exciting examples of fundraising out there… just simply asking for money. And asking for a personal cause, none less. “Brendan B” from Vancouver, BC is trying to build a network of people using a Facebook group and a website to generate $90,000 in donations to get him to Oxford. The concept is to just simply ask friends and family for money, ask them to pass it on to their friends, and so on, and so on, and so on. If he doesn’t actually raise enough to go, he’s committed to forwarding what he does raise to some other worthy causes.

A New Challenge: Squidoo

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So I was browsing LinkedIn Q&A’s and came across a recommendation for a site called squidoo. Well, there was no way I could see a word like that with a hyperlink and not get sucked in. Here’s what I found:

The idea behind squidoo is that everyone can be an expert on something, so anyone can build a page, or “lens”, about it using their own knowledge, web-based sources, rss feeds, content from Amazon, Flickr or YouTube. The first lens I saw was by a woman who I found on Twitter – mynameiskate – who built one on cool laptop bags. I kid you not, it’s an entire page on some really cool laptop bags! Oh the irony. Anyway, the point of this is awareness. The more a piece of content is referenced on the web, the more likely it is to be popular, the higher the search ranking. Here is the description of a squidoo lens, as posted on the squidoo site:
  • An insanely easy-to-build, single page online.
  • Your signpost about something that matters to you.
  • A place to recommend your favorite stuff.
  • A popular way to get found more on the web.
  • A free (yes, free) way to earn a royalty. For you or for charity.
  • Word of mouth at your fingertips.
  • Squiddylicious.
  • Something you should have if you care about getting the word out, about selling something, about changing minds, about sharing info, or if you just love to create, express yourself, and play.
About that royalty… the revenue from the Google content ads on the squidoo lenses get paid out however the author of the lens chooses: they will pay to the general squidoo charity kitty, to the charity of choice of the author, or directly to the author in cash. Brilliant idea for generating a user-base.
So anyway, I got to thinking, what do I know about? Well, interestingly enough I know all about the Grouse Grind and am, in fact, mandated to spread the word about it. So why not build a Grouse Grind squidoo lens and see if it does anything for search engine ranking and increased visitation to the Grouse Mountain website. You really have to check it out to understand it. It basically just amalgamates a bunch of information from wherever you find it in one place. I do think this particular page now has to be the most informative single web page about the Grouse Grind anywhere on the internet.

If it makes any money I’ll consider it commission ;)

Long Weekend

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Well, it’s a long weekend for me, anyway. I’m taking tomorrow off. I feel like it’s been too long since I last blogged, but honestly I typed on my mobile for half an hour the other night only to have the “publish post” button not do a single thing on my iris. I was so angry. I almost decided to give up on this blog altogether lol.

Anyway… now I find myself with far too much stuff in my head to even pick something to write coherently about. It’s all just ramblings of a crazy woman at this point. What’s the use? Tomorrow is a very exciting day. I can’t share the details with the world, but it’s something very interesting and maybe I’ll be blessed with a fantastic story to share when all is said and done.

This weekend I’m in the team leading worship at my church. I absolutely love it. I can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing than singing with this team of people. I absolutely love them, and I love singing praises to God. I am so grateful for everything I have in my life… my family and my home, my friends and my church, my job and some disposable income for extras… that is golden. Absolutely golden. Sometimes I think we can have a tendency to forget that not everyone has that. In the rat race to the top of the corporate ladder it’s really special when you find something you love doing with people around you that you love hanging out with every day. I’m really blessed to have that.

Anyway… life may be just about to take a very interesting turn. On that note, I’ll just share one of my favourite songs these days – “Remember Me” by Mark Schultz. Someone put a little slide show video to it… it’s nice.

Seeking Balance… for real.

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So here I am, at work… working diligently at setting up Facebook ads and a company twitter. I think it’s my ADD… no, really. I think if I had come into the world 15 or 20 years later than I did, I would have been medicated for it. I was browsing Google’s latest widgets, looking for anything I should be considering for business, and I decided to set up a new gmail account. Then I figured, while I’m at it, I should delete my hotmail account… so really I needed to transfer my contacts over. No problem… a quick export, a quick import and it’s done. But then I had to email a bunch of people who still use my hotmail to contact me. Archaic I know… I’m on Facebook every day for heaven’s sake! And then I realized my hotmail is my login for a bunch of things… so I had to go and change my email address in those things, like Blogger and Twitter. So then I thought oh I should add my blog URL to my twitter – after all, it asked for a URL in my profile that I was updating. Then I noticed I hadn’t blogged, and my blog name was related to my hotmail account… so I had to delete it and start all over again. Okay I digress…

I think I spend too much time online. So I thought I’d strike a balance in my life by starting a blog. Yeah… that makes sense. I’d better get back to work…