This app has solved a major problem for me because my ideas were always scattered everywhere. A few in notepad app, on napkins in drawer, or in a voice memo recording. I hated having my ideas scattered everywhere. This caused me to lose so many ideas. Idea Pad has been the best solution ever for collecting all my ideas.

Why do I like it?

1. Super clean and simple interface.
2. No extra features – capture an idea and that’s it!
3. My phone is always with me.
4. The ideas are digitized in words and can be emailed.
5. Most of all because I use it multiple times each day.

If you have an iPhone I highly recommend getting and using this app. It fricken rocks!

NOTE: this is not a “reminder” app, it’s an idea app. I am an idea guy, hence my love for a simple way to quickly capture my next give idea no matter where I am, or when inspiration strikes!

What’s your favorite iPhone app??

Did you like this post? Please click the TWEET button at the top of this post and SIGN-UP below to automatically receive my future blog posts by email. Thanks for stopping by! ~ Devin Day

Now they are offering HD video streaming  capabilities for your wordpress blog or site via VideoPress.
They also have VideoPress available as an open source framework for large WordPress MU installs (check it out here). This will allow entrepreneurial publishers an own end to end HD video solution. There have been other solutions available for Wordpress for a while, but I am excited to see a powerful video solution coming from the creators of Wordpress.

The Revenue that can be created as a publishing platform with VideoPress and Wordpress MU is huge for those big thinking entrepreneurs. Wordpress is such a powerful platform with NO COSTS.

Now for a prediction…

With all the goodness coming from Wordpress and the newspaper industry in the toilette, I believe that it’s only a matter of time that some young savvy entrepreneur will use the WPMU platform to create “Newspaper 2.0″ (a type of community news company for a digital generation) with the potential of rivaling a Ginette or McClatchy. Ultimately driving newspapers further into the grave.

Why do I believe Wordpress will start replacing the traditional newspaper companies?

1. Scalability – you can deploy infinite sites from one install (i.e. – sf.new-site.com, ny.news-site.com, etc.).
2. Cost – Their are no costs for the technology, except for hosting or you hire designers/devs to do major customization (with all the amazing premium themes these days major customization can be greatly reduced).
3. Automation – you can automate the author process and hire contributors from any city or country in the world.
4. Features – It up to date with tech trends of our digital generation and almost any kind of plugin can be found for sms, twitter, digg, video, social this and that and so on…
5. Time to market – with such a huge open source community of contributors you can deploy sites with all the features you could want within hours to days.
6. Overall mindset – Those who would work with wordpress and develop savvy ideas with the technology tend to be young connected individuals vs. current conglomerate news companies who tend to be old school thinkers who struggle to understand todays pace of trends.
7. I could continue with more examples, but thats all the time for today.

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Thanks for stopping by! ~ Devin Day

You can go directly to the post on the Movable Type blog by clicking here

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOf5jAVILMc

Did you like this post? Please click the TWEET button at the top of this post and SIGN-UP below to automatically receive my future blog posts by email.

Thanks for stopping by! ~ Devin Day

One of the ways I told her she could get the word out on her blog was by sharing it with all the folks that came to her booth at the many trade shows she does each year. Her immediate response – “how should I best do that?”

To me this is a perfect example of usability. If she can efficiently collect email addresses and give them a simple handout that effectively communicates the benefits of going to her blog she will build a loyal audience base that will greatly increase her annual revenue streams.

Most people would approach this suggestion by handing out a flier with tons of other info on and the URL to the blog buried somewhere in flier. Not an effective approach to usability.

Usability (to me) means persuading others. By implementing some key fundamentals, usability becomes highly effective and efficient.

Whether your implementing usability in web design, presentations, fund raising or anything requiring action you have to effectively lead someone from point A to point B, and land them at the place where they are eager to follow your call to action.

Without core fundamentals and a standardized framework (process) to implement usability, you will not be very persuasive.

Let’s look at the core fundamentals of usability that I work with.

1. Keep it simple – people don’t like to think so keep it simple stupid (kiss).
2. Keep it focused – if you want people to get from point A to point B, DO NOT distract them with anything else till they have finished your call to action.
3. Create in your audience an eager want – how do you do this? Simple! See things from your audiences perspective and answer the question what is it THEY want? If you answer this and blend it with your proposition you will become very persuasive.
4. Ask for it – you won’t get anyone to take action if you don’t ask. In addition to asking, make sure your call to action is clear and in no way ambiguous. (Let’s put this into practice right now – for more tips like this sign up here to automatically receive my future blog posts by email)

These four points will ensure that the person has only two options -  yes! or not at this time (to me a delayed yes).

Remember, great usability includes these core fundamentals. It does not matter what your doing -  If you need to persuade someone you must have great usability.

Let’s have a look at an article on web interface usability from a site that I love to read (smashing magazine). Keep an eye on their examples and how through good usability the user is lead from the proposition to the call to action. Click here for the article.

Now go and persuade the world through greater usability!

Did you like this post? Please click the TWEET button at the top of this post and SIGN-UP below to automatically receive my future blog posts by email.

Thanks for stopping by! ~ Devin Day

Let’s look at the social traffic framework we have been working on at JellyBarn can be seen in the flow screenshot below.

We had a few goals when creating this strategy framework:

1. Provide a steady flow of traffic to our website and blog.
2. Help us build our brand as market experts and leaders.
3. Create a process framework that is simple and continually repeatable.
4. Allow a process that can be delegated and operated by any employee.
5. Create a foundation that can be continually quantified and improved.

Lets take a look below in a little more detail what the process looks like…

traffic-strategy-flow

1.  This is our website and blog where we create valuable content that is relevant to our target audience.
2. We are working on a knowledge base that is designed for industry experts and leaders to discuss, share and innovate all ideas relating to social media marketing. (this could be done through a social network software or even a linkedin group. We are preparing to launch our knowledge group at SocialCampfire.com)
3. We create original content specifically for guest posts on popular blogs that are related to our market focus.
4. To simplify the process of distributing our content we utilize a syndication service like ping.fm. 
5. The syndication flow is designed to keep traffic from our content flowing back to our website and blog.
6. Our guest posting is to drive traffic back our website and blog as well as establish market credibility.

Having a strategy is key to building continual awareness in your target market. What is your strategy? If you don’t have one documented that is easily communicated to your staff I encourage you do so.

There are a lot of strategies out there. Don’t forget to comment and share your thoughts, ideas, and what your working on. Please also share your thoughts on how we might improve our strategy.

If you liked this post please click the TWEET button at the top of this post and don’t forget to SIGN-UP to receive future blog posts.

Thanks for stopping by! ~ Devin Day

But alas, my point with this post is not to spout the greatness of Wordpress, but to share some links to some helpful tips to optimize, secure, and tweak your Wordpress site. I have found these extremely valuable for any and all my WP sites. Enjoy!

1. 40 WordPress Optimisation tips
2. 10 Killer WordPress Hacks
3. 10 Steps To Protect The Admin Area In WordPress

All the disappointment and talk lately that display advertising needs to change to become more effective only paves the way for marketer acceptance to go from experimental to mainstream. As marketers transition to social apps (and other social media), it will become one of the more dominant forms of online marketing. Everything from display, search, and even our current social app/media advertising will undergo a social innovation transformation. The need for better ad effectiveness is one of the very reasons that Yahoo’s revenue is down nearly 80 percent as of the writing of the post.

The first half of this year was spent with ad companies reeling from economy shock and the next half, now that the economy shock is wearing off will be focused on new, more effective and engaging forms of advertising. The economy was just the spark needed to light the innovation fuse. One of the biggest reasons for the social app explosion will be an accountability shift. Social apps will move from a time and material model to a pay-for-performance model (similar to cokes recent request for agencies to innovate to pay-for-performance).

Other reasons that social apps will become a dominant advertising model is because 1) they can tell you (if you build them correctly) a ton about the users life-stage and lifestyle, 2) They can be made fun and engaging, 3) the are inherently social 4) they allow for a truly authentic consumer/brand experience and 5) they can help drive real results and revenue rather than a focus only on a brand message.

About a year ago I put a video together from a collection of speeches given by Eric Schmidt, CEO @ Google. His speeches are from as far back (seems like ages ago when looking at it from a speed of technology perspective) as 2006. Mr. Schmidt is giving his perspectives on the rise of web 2.0 and the massive impact, change, opportunity, and questions that it has presented from an advertising perspective.

The message in the video is how web 2.0 (has anyone noticed web 2.0 is seldom used now and has been replaced with “social” this and “social” that!?) is changing the Internet advertising arena and how with the continued growth of web 2.0, our advertising will become very personal and targeted. Most people know the Internet presents the ultimate platform for perfecting targeted/unobtrusive advertising (the holy grail), but the key question most people are still wondering is a) what is the solution to extract that data to better target users? and b) what is the “vehicle” that will make this possible? I believe that social apps for many of the reasons I listed above will explode and play a key role of the ad personalization Eric Schmidt discusses in the video.

See this post on PerformApps™ for performance-based social app solution.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwXU22b3zvY

I have done a lot of hiring as CEO of JellyBarn, Inc. and I can tell you that it is not an easy task. Finding the right fit for a position has been my achilles heel. I can tell you that I have made a lot of expensive mistakes when hiring. It wasn’t from a lack of education, skill, or experience on the new hires part, it was from a lack of the hires behavioral fit (or my lack of a better hiring process). The new hires just didn’t fit the position because their personality behaviors were different from the behaviors required. This can be the case when hiring for any position – developers, sales, marketing, exec staff, etc. 

Most hiring is done based on three criteria, education, experience, and skill.  I knew there had to be a better way. A systematic approach that would give more visibility into wether or not the candidate was a good fit behaviorally for the required role and not just a good hire based on education, experience, and skill. I needed a way to find out if the candidates would be a good fit for both the position and the company culture.

What I found after some detailed research was a behavioral test, called a DISC test. This test (see mine below) will give you a ton of information on the candidates behavioral traits and characteristics. This is indispensable information for hiring. For best results the DISC process is broken into three parts:

1. An RBA test (Role Behavior Analysis – this lets you define what you need in the required role)
2. A General characteristics test (this test allows you to profile the candidate)
3. The third step is a cross reference of the first two tests and spits out a report that allows you to see how well your candidate fits the defined role

This is also a great way to find those future young superstars that would have slipped through the cracks because they don’t have a resume with a lot of experience. I do want to note that this is not a silver bullet for hiring, but a systematic approach that can be incorporated into the hiring process to help reduce employee turnover. 

There are two companies that offer DISC personality tests that I recommend looking at: (each with there own pros and cons)

1. Target-Teams - target-teams.com

• Pros – Great detailed information, good for larger orgs
• Cons – $400 per test

1. Epic DISC – intesiresources.com

• Pros – $15-50 per test (cost effective), good information, supplement reports, good for start-ups
• Cons – A little less detailed than target-teams

In Summary, if your firm is hiring (especially smaller firms) I highly recommend incorporating a fourth behavioral criteria into your hiring process.

Lets take a look at two tests so you can see the granular visibility that is included in a behavioral test. For me they have been spooky accurate. Recently all the executives at JellyBarn took the test to help us further understand our strengths and weaknesses and be even better as a cohesive/progressive/communicating team.

Thanks for viewing this post! Best of luck with all your hiring.

Devin Day Intesiprofile

Devin Day Intesiprofile

Having a plan (desired outcomes with documented strategies, goals, and tasks) and working that plan is in my opinion the cornerstone of a building a good company. The problem is a “good” plan is often the most overlooked area in a new business. To many Entrepreneurs think a ton of words on a paper satisfies the task of creating a business plan. The plan usually ends up a lengthy (and boring) word document that no one wants to read and ends up lost and buried in a filing cabinet. 

Unless your raising money or communicating to your BOD (board of directors) you should not need to a huge document anyway. What you need is a clear internal strategy plan that covers the basic three elements of a business model.

1. Value Proposition (Great idea that will help our clients more affordably and effectively do a job they are trying to get done.)
2. Profit Formula (A formula that allows you to keep costs minimal and margins at a maximum)
3. Business Systems (Standardization for the our habitual ways of getting things done)

The simplest way to get your business plan started is this:

1. Summarize in a few paragraphs the overall concept and identify your desired outcome.
2. Write a series of strategies for each basic category and keep it simple – a short overview paragraph followed by bullet points is perfect. Your general strategy categories are – Sales, Marketing, Operations, Business processes, Staffing, Funding, Target market, etc. (for more on business processes view my post here)
3. For each strategy category write out the goals needed to achieve each strategy and then write out the tasks needed to achieve each goal.

Let’s recap – you have identified your desired outcome (where you want to be financially in a desired amount of time), and created strategies to achieve that desired outcome and you have your list of your goals and tasks to achieve your strategies. What your left with in it’s simplest form is a checklist of action items to achieve your business plan.

(NOTE: There will always be continual planning and prioritizing as you chew through your list. Be sure you stay on top of prioritization because not knowing where your at at any given moment will breed procrastination.)

A final recommendation is to find an SAAS (software as a service) platform to manage all your action items and strategies in your business plan. This will allow you to share/delegate tasks with other team members. Keep track of who’s where and doing what and it will keep everyone in sync. I use (and highly recommend) a service called PlanHQ

planHQ is structured for the very format that I have outlined above and is so easy to use. It’s quite powerful and has allowed our business plan to be a living breathing entity that again keeps the team in sync. Your plan for world domination will quickly take hold if you can document your plan, communicate your plan and execute your plan. Now go and achieve your business plan!

Today I took a few minutes to add Slideshow pro to my blog. I purchased the Slideshow pro flash viewer ($29.95) and the Slideshow pro director admin panel ($29.95) see screenshot below. I added a database and installed Slideshow pro Director on my server. I then uploaded some images and installed the Slidepress plug-in to my Wordpress plug-ins directory. Finally I added the slideshow pro SWF file to the Slidepress plug directory and voila!!

Links:
slideshowpro.net
slidepress.net/

This is one integration that I highly recommend for beautifully displaying content on your wordpress site. If you would like to have something like this added to your blog and don’t know where to start, let me know via comments and I will get in touch.

(photos courtesy of my homeboy chemc)