YOU DON"T HAVE TO KNOW A THING ABOUT MATZO TO LOVE THIS VIDEO

Matzo is a seasonal product eaten primarily during the 8 days of Passover. While my 85 -year- old father likes to have matzos year round, its not on the top 10 favorite food list for most people.

While Streit’s Matzos doesn’t take overt credit for this video, The Jewish Robots told blogger B.l.

(Read the full post about ‘Streit’s Matzos Has YouTube Hit’…)

You can now add Honey Bees to the list of things you need to worry about.Over the past several winters the United States has lost about 25% of its honey bee population due to CCD-Colony Collapse Disorder ( known in the UK as Mary Celeste Syndrome –in honor of a ghost ship).

To bring attention to the plight of bees and what it can mean to our economy, Haagen Daz has launched a website called Help The Honey Bees.

Now imagine the world without tasty pears, luscious raspberries and juicy strawberries. Honey bees are responsible for pollinating one-third of all the foods we eat, including many of the ingredients that define our all-natural ice creams.

We’ve creating this site because honey bee populations are disaapearing at an alarming rate and we want to keep these heroes buzzing.

(Read the full post about ‘Honey Bees and The Economy’…)

It is an ongoing conversation in my head. Paper or Electronic.I have a subscription to an online card service - Jacquie Lawson  It’s a boutique online card provider  offering just over a 100 different cards. But they are fabulous cards and people really seem to like them — ( in this case people is code for baby boomers)

My dilemma was, " Would my client think that an electronic card was a lazy woman’s version of saying Thank You? 

As recently as December I chatted with a business etiquette expert who advised never ever send a client an electronic thank you note.

(Read the full post about ‘Have Electronic Greeting Cards Reached It’s Tipping Point?’…)

What Does This Company Sell?

Naming is a topic that deserves a lot of attention. We’re really going to get into it here in the not-too-distant future.

I’m not going to give it what it deserves today.

In fact, you may notice that I’m kinda stringing it out right now.

You know what this company sells, right? At first the truck was almost a quarter-mile in front of me, and I knew what they sell.

My kid knew what they sell.

We got closer, and the brains no longer saw the truck, having determined that its meaning was understood.

(Read the full post about ‘Tip of the Week: The Simplest Way to Avoid Naming Disasters’…)

Leading Change Initiatives

Motivation=Wanting to do something.

Sounds simple, right?

It’s not.

Does Your Kid Take Out the Trash?

Mine does. I haven’t got all the mysteries of parenthood figured out, but that one goes well at my house. At age nine, my daughter likes to take out the trash. In our apartment complex, this involves a walk with me, to cross a busy parking lot, go to the trash corral, and throw our trash into the dumpster. Why does she want to do it with no prompting?

Time with Mama. A little walk-and-talk with nothing pressing to distract us.

(Read the full post about ‘Are You a Manager or a Leader? Why Pushing Change Always Fails’…)

Wednesday Words

To Go Where Your VisionPoints, a few inspiration points for you and your business.

Never try to teach a pig
to sing. It wastes your time
and annoys the pig.
—Unknown

Grow and be well,

Kelly Erickson

A question recently came up about the titles that should be accepted with web directory submissions.  Listed below are some tips to keep in mind when reviewing submissions:

• Avoid accepting titles that are overly promotional, such as "cheapest", "best", etc.  Consider using "affordable" or "high quality" instead.  Otherwise, your directory would be endorsing a web site that may in fact not be the cheapest or best.
• Avoid titles that are too long for the sake of keyword "stuffing".  Such titles should be revised to include a few of the targeted keywords.
• Avoid approving titles that are too short, such as a one-word title.  These titles are not descriptive enough to properly represent a web site and should be altered to do so.
• Most obviously, ensure that titles actually represent the content of the web site submitted.  Some web site owners and marketers will attempt ranking for keywords because of the volume of traffic they will send when it is not truly appropriate for the web site.

The above efforts should be common practice for quality web directories, and helpful tips for all web directory owners that want to maintain a valuable resource.

Times have came to change right quick for some. Even the so called, more than “Mind Reader” didn’t see this more than one coming ! Change hits and doesn’t run off so quick gone good at times. Change tells you of not which way it will come to go, and what it’s full face is. Junk comes with change for the worst best at times !

You’ve made it, like no-one else perhaps ! Your satisfied, comes back more than life-time fold, with your faith even in so called junk, and it’s glory unto glory satisfactions beyond the best of so called Idols or not !

You see things different again and again, and the doors of education follow after you, with extreme glee ! (Read the full post about ‘Used Junk Offers, It’s Full Glory Change !’…)

Alive Directory has today launched an extensive blog directory resource.  The blog directory is intended as an extension to Alive Directory, and offers the same listing types and options, including deep links.  A comprehensive set of categories is provided for exceptional blog categorization.  Alive Blog Directory currently offers introductory pricing.

(Read the full post about ‘Alive Blog Directory Launched’…)

There are many reasons not to use fully automated directory submission software.  Listed below are some of the more significant disadvantages and problems associated.  The information provided will hopefully be helpful for both submitters using or thinking about using automated submission software as well as the individuals and companies that operate web directories.

• The availability of automated submission software causes significant spam submissions for web directories.  Any individual or company that operates a web directory has either had to deal with spam or implement a spam solution.  This is not to say that you would spam web directories, but the fact is that some do extensively.  This fact in itself is a problem for the web directory owner, but it is mentioned at this point to keep in mind for the following points.
• Using automated submission software can lead to many rejected submissions.  No matter how good the automated submission software is, form field names, category selection methods, and such can change, which will cause the site to be broken in the submission software.  This, in turn, will cause submissions to be entered incorrectly, incompletely, or not submitted successfully at all.
• Automated submission software’s biggest obstacle is category selection.  Other than providing category selection for every single directory that must be selected by the user (which can take just as much time as using a semi-automated directory submission tool), there is no perfect solution for the software to intelligently select the correct category.  There are numerous ways this can go wrong, and it very frequently will happen.  When this occurs, the software will usually submit to the "Top" (homepage) as the category, which is not normally possible.  This can lead to submissions being manually categorized by the directory editor, which may result in a different category than the one desired (if you’re lucky) or complete rejection of the submission (more likely).
• When a web directory receives spam, some solutions (or manual actions) can result in the IP address of the submitter being banned, which will prevent future submissions.  Even if you’re not spamming web directories, if the above occurs (incorrect category selection), it amounts to the same consideration, especially when submitted to the "Top" category.  If this occurs, not only could your submission be rejected, but it may not be possible for you to submit the current or any future listing, even if done 100% manually.
• Spam submissions are a significant inconvenience for web directory operators.  The usage of these tools causes extra work for the web directories one way or another.  This will frequently delay submission approvals on a daily basis, during a period when anti-spam measures are being implemented, etc.  Therefore, not only can this cause delays for those who use automated submission software, but it can cause delays for everyone else too.
• Web directories frequently start as free, and then later change to paid.  Since automated submission software cannot handle payments, those solutions will completely fail when a paid directory is encountered.  In addition, some directory scripts only allow one submission per domain, full URL, or title, even when the existing submission is in the pending queue, and many web directories have problems with clearing aborted submissions for various reasons.  This scenario will prevent you from resubmitting the aborted listing, even if done manually later.
• As mentioned previously, web directories usually need to implement anti-spam solutions in order to effectively operate a web directory.  These solutions typically check for specific words in the titles, descriptions, and/or URLs of submissions.  On occasion, this can cause problems for legitimate submissions, no matter if automated or manual.  This can be caused by your submission data actually containing a word (or part of a word) the web directory operator expected to be spam or words setup in the anti-spam solution being poorly thought out.  The fewer people that use automated submission software, the more likely these measures will not be requires for web directories, and therefore prevent the problem.
• The fact that automated submission software is used to submit spam causes web directory operators to implement image validation or other checks to ensure submissions are from humans.  This causes inconvenience for everyone.  Automated submission tools cannot successfully submit to sites that use most types of image validation.  Therefore, this leads to fewer total submissions or failed attempts for those using automated tools.  Furthermore, it results in major inconvenience for everyone else as well.

There are more facts and disadvantages that could be mentioned, but the above should be enough to deter anyone from considering a completely automated solution.  The best approach for web directory submission seems to be semi-automated directory submission tools.  These tools fill most of the data for a single web directory as you visit, and allow you to check for the category, enter any image validation, etc., preventing the above issues.  This approach can significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to submit web sites to directories, while still yielding more successful submissions, approvals, and fewer problems.  Some of the semi-automated tools also include directory management solutions to mark web sites submitted to directories, and make it easy to submit future listings to directories, etc.  Be careful when selecting a semi-automated solution to use, though.  You should seek one that is provided by a reputable and trusted company that will be around to provide updates.  Semi-automated tools should also be configurable so that if a submission form is not properly detected, it can be reconfigured by the submitter, rather than having to request and wait for an update from the company.