Creative Independence

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:49 — 17.3MB)

Hey, guys, just a short one this week to keep things moving along in a positive direction while Chris and Bob play Skype Tag.

In this episode, Bob takes a quick breather and Chris steps in to talk about a couple of interesting tools for managing your online social activities.

Avatar Management:
Gravatar (Globally Recognized Avatars) http://gravatar.com/

Comment Management System:
Disqus http://disqus.com/
Cocomment http://cocomment.com/

Not mentioned in the show itself are the differences between Disqus and CoComment that Chris feels are relevant.

“First, Disqus tracks comments based on your email address, but unfortunately, can only track one email per account at this point, so if you use multiple email addresses, like me, you have to open multiple accounts. However, Disqus also does a lot of other things better than Cocomment, such as being able to pull your Avatar from Gravatar, Twitter, Facebook and other places.

“On the other hand, Cocomment uses a Firefox browser plugin instead of email addresses to track comments, so you can track ALL of your comments in one account. However, this means that if you use more than 1 machine regularly (I use 3) you need to install the plugin in all of your machines. Also, the plugin is currently limited to Mozilla-based browsers, like Flock or Firefox, so if you tend to favor another browser, you have to start up Firefox and make the comment from there. Cocomment does have a bookmarklet option for other browsers, but that tends to be a bit more work than I’d want to have to do.”

“I have accounts with both, but I tend to favor Disqus, and simply hope that at some point in the near future, they’ll let me manage all of my email addresses under one account.”

Dan Thompson’s Rip Haywire online comics.com: http://comics.com/rip_haywire/
Dan’s personal blog: http://riphaywire.com/

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:06:02 — 90.7MB)

In this episode, we conclude our discussion of LinkedIn by leaving the realm of the personal profile and looking into the many features that Linked In offers for network, for promoting yourself, for promoting you business, and job searching.

Topics covered this episode:

• Inviting your friends and colleagues.
• Finding people on LinkedIn
• Using LinkedIn’s Search
• Setting up contact options
• Finding and Joining Groups
• Starting Groups
• The Creative Independence group on Linked In
• Job Search
• Job Posting
• Questions and Answers
• Setting up your company profile
• Polls
• Quick overview of the Account Settings

Have any tips that we missed in these two episodes? Please swing by the Linked In group and drop your answers in the Linked In Tips discussion there.

Feel free to swing by and connect with both Bob and Chris on LinkedIn, and while you’re at it, if you like the show, drop us a recommendation on our LinkedIn accounts.
http://linkedin.com/in/aithene
http://linkedin.com/in/bobostromstudio

The CI Group on Linked In:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=2489632&trk=anet_ug_hm&goback=%2Ehom

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:16 — 53.2MB)

Chris and Bob take a look at Linked In. This episode is the first in a two part series showcasing the many features available on Linked In.  Once you’ve listened to the show please visit Linked In and join the CI group . Don’t forget to let us know you heard us on the show. As always thanks for listening and Pod On.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:42 — 37.4MB)

This episode, Bob and Chris talk about the business applications of social media: promotion, networking, community and lead generation.

The social media scene is so big that there’s no way we can touch on everything, but we can definitely talk about some of the more relevant types of tools available, and we can certainly list a bunch of them below. The categories below are very general guidelines, especially when you consider that many of the tools really blur the lines and could easily fit into more than one.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:22 — 31.6MB)

Bob and Chris conclude the discussion on Mind Mapping your business before you start working on it by asking you to start thinking a bit outside the actual business and start thinking about the type of lifestyle you want your business to provide to you. The bottom line, if you want a certain style of life and your business’ direction doesn’t seem to be getting you there, then we may need to rethink how things are going.

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