I realized I haven’t posted in a while, but I’ve been pretty busy and I have accomplished a lot.  So now, I’m taking a break and posting in my blog.  I’m also down for most of the day because I’m sick    I’m not sure if it’s a cold or allergies.

But anyway, I wanted to let you know about this cool Firefox plugin that I’ve installed called WebMynd.  I’m a little skeptical about installing stuff that I feel is going to make my computer run any slower than it already does, or make it crash even more. But I’m glad I installed this one. It really makes searching fun.  Let me show you why.

Here is my search results page for “article marketing”.  Do you see what’s different? Look on the right-hand side where Google Adwords Ads usually show up:

Webmynd Search Plugin

It’s displaying search results for “article marketing” that  were  found in YouTube, Amazon, Wikipedia and even Twitter!  It’s like having a search assistant and telling her to go search all of these sites.  I like the way they show up on the right-hand side in a column. You can collapse the boxes in the column if you aren’t really interested.  I haven’t customized my sidebar yet, but I’m not really interested in the NY Times, so I could probably take that one off and replace it with another news site in their list, like CNN.  Or maybe I want to keep eBay on hand, I can add that in there as well.

The Google Ads are still there, they were pushed down below the WebMynd modules and I just didn’t capture them in the screenshot. I don’t know if that happens on all sized screens, but I can see how some PPC marketers might get a little snippy. The good thing is that they still show up before the pagination, so folks will see them.

Download it and have fun exploring the web in a new way

I’m sure you have heard to always look your best, act your best, perform your best, etc. because you never know who’s watching. Shouldn’t it be the same for our websites?  I just happened to find my aboutus.org page, and I’m ashamed to say it’s looking pretty much undressed.  I took a screenshot earlier this morning and it looked like the picture below:

However, just 12 hours later I notice my Website Information thumbnail has been updated with the actual thumbnail of my blog.  But the rest is just so…naked.

I decided to point this out because, you never know where your website might be appearing without your knowledge.  AboutUs.org basically dynamically builds your aboutus.org/your_site  page based on the meta data it finds in search engines and whois data.  What it builds is an editable (I believe by anyone) wiki page for your site, for you to tell people about you and your site and what you do.  So if someone where to search for your domain name, it’s pretty likely your AboutUs.org page will show up… and what would you want people to see if it did?  It’s kind of like a free business card on the internet at a fairly popular site – and it’s free

I admit, mine is pretty empty at the moment, but I’ll be sure to update it because you never know who is taking a peek!

BTW, notice that the logo it chose for my site is my Follow Me on Twitter image?   I guess this site isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer!  But at least all parts of the site are editable.

I found a free service that allows you to enter the URL of your website and answer the question “who links to me?”  This is great for linking building, testing your SEO strategies and in general, finding out who links to you.

http://wholinkstome.com

Instead of my describing the features, I’ll let you trot on over there yourself and check out your own website!  It’s free, of course.

I’m a little in shock, but could my eBook be 97% complete?  Minus some little tweaks here and there and some finalization – after all this time, I think I am 97% complete! After a final once over, I’m off to CB for approval. I’m sending it to a couple of folks tonight to proofread for me.

The bad part is, and I’ve heard this from other authors, the doubt is now settling in… is it good enough? Are people going to like it?  Is it long enough? Is it helpful at all?   Are people going to even care?  LOL  I didn’t understand before but now I do.  I’m sure I’ll get over it.

I have even managed to update and upload my sales page (which was written months ago), so that was a big step. I’ve had the domain for 11 months (time to renew!).

Keeping in line with my lateness and the disadvantages of being somene who tends to procrastinate, I am somewhere around week 6 or 7 in the original coaching program which I started back in October 2008.   So, today I just sneaked a peek at week 16 (the original coaching program lasted for only 16 weeks). It didn’t contain much of a lesson at all, but it DID inform me that I only had 4 weeks of support after the program was over.  Whoa!   Four weeks, probably would have ended somewhere around end of January 2009 for me.  Then I decide I’d send an email  LOL   Even the email address was closed and informed me “The Coaching Program is Closed”.  And I was directed to the helpdesk.

Ahh, once again…the turtle doesn’t always win

I’ve had my unfinished ebook tucked away for the past 8 months.  8 months! Thinking I had a lot left to write. I took it out (well, opened the file) and I was shocked at how much I had written. Upon review I saw that I have only a few sections to complete (at the most 6-8 paragraphs) and a few finishing touches.  I couldn’t believe that I’d been putting off finishing my ebook because of 6-8 paragraphs.  Shame on me. But, I always like to see the benefit of my actions. And as you know, looking at something with a fresh pair of eyes after stashing it away for a while (8 months), you see it in a new light. Some parts of it I was pretty amazed at, asking “did I write that?”  LOL   I actually enjoyed reading it to see what I had to say

This brings me to my point about distractions. Distractions, distractions go away come again another day!  As I’m sitting here trying to find excuse (as usual) of why I can’t just write the last 8 paragraphs, I’m noticing how easily distracted at the smallest things… Of course, checking out my Twitter account. Thinking of OTHER ebooks I could (not) be writing. Checking my emails, and actually just searching for random things in Google.  Ruffling through some delivery menus to find something easy for dinner. Checking my emails on my cell phone (the same emails that I check online).  Does it ever end?  Well, I’ve been here for 2 and a half hours doing everything  BUT writing 8 paragraphs LOL

Using myself as an example, that’s all to say that distractions add up. In 2.5 hours, not only could I have finished my ebook, but have done final edits and sent it out to others for review – and still have plenty of time to ruffle through delivery menus to order dinner.

Distractions are time eaters.  Some people are able to focus very well, some aren’t. I’m willing to admit that I’m one of those who fails to focus. But my saving grace is that when I have a deadline I deliver on time. I tend to know when playtime is over.  So what I need to do now, is set a deadline for myself for this ebook!

I like reading the blogs of Coaching and MasterClass students. I have one blog in my cool friends list to the right, and here is a post from her blog – Email Marketers (from Jacinta Dean’s blog). For one thing, I enjoy reading her accomplished tasks for the day.   But in this post she discusses the type of internet marketer she wants to be and she came to a conclusion after being exposed to emails from a number of internet marketers.

Imagine having such a negative influence on someone that they do not want to be like you!  And this is from not even knowing you, but simply reading a few emails from you or reading a few articles you have written or just buying a product you have created.  Then on the other hand, from just a few emails or other interactions, you can influence someone to model their business, decisions or even their life after you because you portray yourself in such a positive manner. We all have teachers, bosses and friends that influence us in a number of ways – let’s keep that in mind as we interact with others…

So, this time they weren’t over capacity…something was just technically wrong   Just thought I’d make a quick post since I’m in a social mood at the moment!

In my last post I mentioned that I signed up for Twitter.  Well it’s getting better now. I have updated my page and have found some followers and followees and have tweeted a little.  I only received the error that I talked about before once in the past couple of days so that’s cool. So be sure to follow me

I’ve also managed to send the feed from my blog to Twitter using  a free service called TwitterFeed.  This service allows you to add the RSS feed from your blog post directly to your Twitter status.  You have to admit you can do some amazing things with RSS feeds. For example, you can “burn” them in FeedBurner, which provides you with a number of options for alternative feeds for your blog, tracking and stats, including ads and even managing subscriptions.  One big, really cool thing about Feedburner is that it is a permanent feed – even if you change blogs (which could change your feed address), change URLs or change whatever – all you have to do is update your FeedBurner feed once with your new RSS URL, and anywhere you have added your feed using your FeedBurner URL will automatically be updated.

(Oops, forgot to do that!  Meaning I’m going to have to update my TwitterFeed with my new FeedBurner URL, these social media tasks are never ending!)

Tip: Take some time to look at all the uses for your RSS feed from your blog or website or what have you. Feeds can be used for more than just having a place to link that little orange, square doo-hickey to on your site. You can use it to send your content to a number of place automatically.

Now, I’m off to go burn my feed for this blog

Ok, so I finally sign up for Twitter. You can see my new “follow me on Twitter” button in the side bar at the top. But I go to visit my Twitter profile, for the very first time, and I get this:

It says “Twitter is over capacity. Too many tweets. Please wait a moment and try again.” – Must be some popular stuff there!

So, is this what I have to look forward to using Twitter? Well as of now, I have no followers and I’m following no one…until the error is fixed. But at least I got started with the process The key is to “start”.

We were all born with the potential to be creative, in some form or the other. Even though we might think that we aren’t creative, it’s probably simply because we don’t know how to develop and apply our creative thinking skills. I remember in elementary school we had an hour for “creative writing”, we had art day and I do remember something along the lines of creative thinking skills as part of evaluations. So, schools were tasked with tapping into our creative potential (at least way back in the day, things have changed so much now).

As we develop ourselves and our skills in our chosen field, we train our minds to look for certain things. Business owners and entrepreneurs are trained to look for ways to make money when an idea is presented. A detective is trained to look for specific cues and clues and to use specific techniques when questioning a suspect. A trainer’s mind is, well, trained, to recognize where a student may have potential problems and to use certain techniques to help the student learn the information. So, why can’t we train ourselves to be creative thinkers?

Being creative isn’t just about finding ways to solve specific problems or inventing new things. Part of being creative is having a”creative mentality” – a questioning mentality – always asking yourself what else or how can it be better or, simply why?

Here are some ways we can work on developing our creative thinking:

1. First and foremost, let your ideas explode! As you analyze your wildest ideas you will see how there might be potential in the idea. For example, I use my fan all day, everyday of the year. Unfortunately, it just sits there spinning & blowing air on me from one direction. I sure wish that thing had wings and could fly around the room and cool me from every direction! That’s totally ridiculous, a fan with wings, but what might not be so ridiculous is a ceiling fan on moving tracks (like track lighting). Maybe something similar exists, maybe it doesn’t but that would be my starting point for research.

2. Look at it from another point of view. Say you decided to have a cookie sale and decided you will sell 3 cookies for $1 in your standard ziploc bag from the grocery store because to you they looked just perfect in a set of 3! That’s great, but what if a family of 4 wanted to buy the cookies? What if someone rushed to the cookie sale to get a quick gift on their way to a dinner party, and thought the cookies would be a great gift? So now you’d have a new idea of selling 4 cookies for $2 and sell them in a gift bag. Just think about other scenarios for typical everyday things will help to increase your creative thinking.

3. Finally, challenge yourself and your assumptions. Just ask yourself “why?” Don’t simply assume that what you see is the only or best way to do something. Why does the switch of lamp only turn the bulb on and off – could it do something else? Why does my car only drive forward and in reverse? Why do pants have two legs?

So the first thing we need to do is to train our minds to make creative thinking come as natural to us as our chosen profession, or hobbies or favorite pastimes. We need to make it a habit if we want to be successful in accomplishing what we want as entrepreneurs and educators and mentors. Just think how many times one of the “gurus” have produced a product and you thought to yourself “Why didnt I think of that??” Get it ? THINK!

Wow, I didn’t realize I wrote so much today, so now I’m off to practice my creative thinking….