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Friday
Jul232010

REVIEW: Nixty Helps You Make Online Courses for Free


Some of you know I created my own online university using Moodle a few years ago. Sadly the cost and time to maintain that site was too much for me and it has since been removed.

I came across a new site called Nixty that lets you create and promote your own courses using similar tools to Moodle and other learning management systems (LMS). The cool thing is that Nixty is free. I have created a course for my book Internet Marketing for Newbies that includes a quiz, discussion and a certificate of completion.

Take a look and tell me what you think. If you have a book or some content try creating your own course. It seems like a fairly new site and there are a few bugs, missing links, iffy UI choices, but I hope it sticks around and has time to improve. This is a really cool service and a great opportunity for both educators and learners to benefit.



Are online courses like this useful to you? Will you use this tool for your organization? If you create or take a course, Please let me know in the comments.

Friday
Jul232010

HOW TO: Turn Mistakes Into a Positive (Email)

Lulu.comI got this letter from Lulu, my book publisher, the other day. In short is says they made a mistake and my book did not show up in the search results immediately. I had no idea that this happened and Lulu did not need to make me aware of the error, but they did. Not only did they take responsibility, they wrote a very cool, even funny, email with an excellent tone. And they are giving me a 15% coupon to distribute to my readers.

This is the right way to do business. Thank you Lulu.

BTW if you want to use the coupon to buy a book type in BEACHREAD305 at checkout.
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15% off 188 Business Tips (and 300 Questions) to Get Your Brain Juices Flowing

Monday
Jul192010

Review: Squarespace Website Building Software


Note: I am NOT an affiliate for Squarespace and receive no remuneration for this review.

Summary
Squarespace is one of the best options for do it yourself business owners to create a professional looking site with minimal tech skills for around $15/month.

Review
I have been talking up Squarespace with friends this week and realized I have been pitching this company for months now. I decided to write this summary of why I chose Squarespace and how it may be worth considering for your business.

What I like about Squarespace
  • Fairly intuitive interface based on WYSIWIG's (What You See Is What You Get)
    If you can create a word document you can do 90% of what you need to build a site on Squarespace
  • Templates that don't look like templates
    Most do it yourself websites look the same. Squarespace has enough variety and customization to make your site look unique and professional
  • Administration in one place
    Your website, hosting, analytics, files and everything else are all located on the Squarespace site. You don't have to FTP files or try to remember where items are located
  • Robust hosting
    If you do get a lot of traffic to your site it will likely stay up as Squarespace will automatically give you the resources you need to handle the extra load.
  • Great tech support
    I have asked several questions via email and received answers in a few hours at most
  • Decent price
    Not the cheapest on the market, but definitely within my budget. You can start for $8/month, but I usually use the $15/month for a few extra features
  • Discounts for multiple accounts
    Since I have several sites with Squarespace I get a bulk discount
  • You can customize anything
    You can even tweak the CSS if you know how
  • Website and Blog in one place
    Squarespace has a nice blogging engine built in, but it includes the tools you need for creating standard web pages so you can choose how to use it

What I don't like about Squarespace
Confusing interface
While you can change just about anything, it is not always clear how to get to it's controls. I gave up on the first site I built, but I returned to Squarespace after getting frustrated with WordPress and wanting to have a more professional looking site. I have now spent enough time that I know how to tweak most of the settings, but there is a bit of a learning curve. However I think it easier than using WordPress.

Here are the sites I have built using Squarespace so far
Dr. Ray's Treetop Chiropractic
Agrusas Italian Restaurant
Bud Frank's Lawn Care
Philanthr.org
MichaelDaehn.com

If you use the code "twit" when you sign up you can get 10% off your bill for life. This code comes from the This Week in Tech show of which Squarespace is a sponsor.

So what do you think? Are you going to give Squarespace a try? They have a 14 day free trial. If you do
try Squarespace please leave a note in the comments about your experience and a link to your site.


Wednesday
Jul142010

HOW TO: Create Your Free Google Promo Video

Have you seen those Google search commercials? The latest one features the characters from Toy Story 3. Now Google has a neat little tool to help you create your own Google promo video called Search Stories.

After choosing a few search terms and the music you like it's ready to go. Take a look at the one I made for myself below:

Be sure to choose different ways to display the results. In my video I repeated the search for Michael Daehn, but used Google Image, Books and Maps search.

How could you use a promo video like this for your business or organization? Be creative. And if you make one yourself, post a link to it in the comments.

Tuesday
Jun292010

Using QR Codes for Mobile Marketing


Check out this great article from Mashable on how to use QR Codes for marketing.

I am working with a team this summer to create a mobile app for Maritz and using QR Codes is a key feature. With the move to mobile, these handy little bar codes will be everywhere in the next few years (until they come up with something better).

What do you think of QR Codes? Have you ever used them for marketing?