Laptop Advertising - 5 Spots Available for 2010

First 5 (2 Sold – Now 3 left) great brands will get these spots…

Want your company name & logo in front of thousands of entrepreneurs and business people throughout North America and occasionally globally this year?

This year I’ll be speaking at more EO & YPO chapters than ever before.  I’m even speaking at three EO & YPO Global Leadership Conferences this year.

I’ll also be speaking at dozens of conferences again, flying business class on all flights, and spending time in airport business lounges.

My MacBook Air is with me and pretty much always out and being used.  I take it out in all my meetings regardless of who I’m working with.

If you want to sell franchises, or market subtly to entrepreneurial audiences this is a great way to get some exposure.

I’m also planning to post about it on my Blog, Twitter, FaceBook & LinkedIn.

Sponsor my Laptop for all of 2010? This will get your logo seen by tens of thousands of influential business people this year.

I’m also planning to get my laptop some press this year too…

It’s pretty widely known that my nickname is ‘Connector’ so you know I’ll be telling everyone that your company is sponsoring my laptop too.

Ya – and it’s capped at 5 (2 Sold – Now 3 left) placements…

First come first serve (but I have to like the brands)… i.e. the only chair company I could rave about is Herman Miller with their Aeron, and my favorite headsets are from Headsets.com etc.

I’m auctioning off five (2 Sold – Now 3 left) sticker spaces on my MacBook Air cover for $2,500 a piece. That comes out to about $200 a month, or $50 a week.

They will stay on my laptop all year, and you’ll “own” that piece of real estate on my laptop case. If anyone asks about your sticker, I’ll send him or her to whatever website/email address you want.

Want in? Email me – Cameron at BackPocketCOO dot com

I coach CEOs to get stuff done properly for cheap by using websites like eLance.com, Guru.com, CrowdSpring.com or Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.  Or check out an awesome new service called Outsourcing Things Done.

It’s really cool how they work: You post the projects or work you need done and people around the world bid on the project, offering their price to get the work done for you. They even provide references and samples for past work they’ve done. Over the last year alone, I’ve had research done by someone living in Karachi, Pakistan, for $2 an hour. I needed to get some contact info, addresses, and information related to venture capital firms and angel investors in Washington state and British Columbia. It would’ve taken me all week to do it and an employee would have cost too much when this person was thrilled to do it for $120 in total.  And the output rocked.

I needed to have all of my training DVDs from speaking events transcribed so I used the transcription services of someone in Sweden for $8 an hour.  I also had some media interviews that produced content I thought could be useful, so I simply emailed her the files and she typed them all up in Word for me. Many transcription firms used to charge $75-125 an hour for this. Her 20 hours of work was a little more than $125 in total.

I’ve used virtual assistants around the world to work on miscellaneous tasks for me. Even CEOs that I mentor are already starting to outsource work they used to delegate to employees. It just doesn’t make sense to delegate work to people for three to ten times what it costs us when you can outsource using services like this. As long as you’re getting the right quality out of these services, it’s worthwhile.

Nine years ago I gave laptops to all of my employees. The productivity gains that happened when they took their laptops home with them to work for a couple extra hours a week was outstanding – totally worth the investment.

As a business coach, I suggest that you should get everyone in your business using a laptop.  My MacBook Air has a 6-hour battery life and I can use it on flights, in the dark, and turn anywhere into my office.

Paper notes are a waste of time and resources.  It drives me nuts watching employees sit in meetings handwriting all their notes, knowing many will go back to their desks to ‘type everything up.’

Some people don’t like others using laptops in meetings because they worry that they are checking email.  A great little system to prevent that from happening is through the use of a ‘fine jar’.  Allow anyone to call someone else out if they suspect them to be using email.  If the person is checking email they put $2 into the fine jar.  If they weren’t checking email, then the person calling them out pays $2.  People will learn to not only avoid checking email in meetings, but to trust that using a laptop in meetings is actually hyper-effective and not a needless distraction.

pic: makezine

Twitter has become an invaluable PR tool for all business owners. It has been one of the greatest online tools where we can get a good quality yet free PR. It is very easy to use and is really effective in reaching out to your target market.

Last week one of my friends and former co-workers Andrea Baxter and now Founder of Bratface marketing and I were talking about Twitter.  We agreed that a list of Twitter resources always seems elusive for companies.  So here it is…

Before you get all the Twitter tools though – make sure you are following her on Twitter (@andreabaxter) she has some great marketing info you’ll want to have and share.

Now – lets put these to the test…

The Basics
1.  www.twitter.com – you sign up for the account here (but who isn’t on Twitter yet?).
2.  www.twitter.com/cameronherold – follow me here if you’d like – highly recommended
3.  http://twitter.grader.com/ – great place to see where you rank, to find others to follow etc. – Add some from the Twitter elite who interest you such as your favourite brands, influencers, newsworthy publications, politicians etc.  You can also search terms here and add people who rank highly on those terms as well.
4.  http://socialtoo.com/ – you can use this site to automatically follow people who follow you (this is the fastest way to start adding followers) but it’s not for everyone. If you choose to keep your follow list low, then this is not the app for you, but why wouldn’t you?

Searching & Tracking Stuff On Twitter
1.  http://search.twitter.com/ – you can use this to see what’s happening on Twitter – think Google for Tweets (messages people send out).
2.  http://www.twitscoop.com/ – another great way to see what’s buzzing on Twitter.
3.  http://www.twhirl.org/ – a good desktop client for Twitter – personally I use TweetDeck. Hootsuite is also great.
4.  http://www.twitterhawk.com/ – a great way to search for keywords – and send replies to people – i.e. those talking about your company or product. Great tracking & marketing tool!
5.  http://www.twibs.com/ – this is where you register your company – so people can find you if your twitter name is your personal name, you can also find companies to follow here too.
6.  http://live.tweetmeme.com/ – one of my recent favs where you can see what’s hot on Twitter (think Digg for Twitter).

Advanced Stuff
1.  http://www.twitpic.com – you can upload photos to Twitter from here – great way to share your story…in images to add something extra to your tweets.
2.  http://tweetstats.com - for the advanced tweet-a-holic and if you really start getting into it, you can see tons of stats.
3.  http://tweetmic.com/ – how to upload an audio tweet. Use this to upload radio interviews and podcasts you are on. Get my PR DVD to learn how to land Free Press.
4.  http://www.adjix.com/WebObjects/Adjix.woa/ and www.tinyurl.com are both great ways to automatically a) shorten URLS and b) send them out as tweets. A MUST have tool to fit into the 140 character count. You should also have these features available on your desktop application (Hootsuite, Seesmic Desktop and TweetDeck).
5.  http://retweetist.com/users – see if people are re-tweeting your stuff – if you don’t have the reply feature on your desktop app, this is a great tool to use.
6.  http://twittercounter.com – basic stats

PR People on Twitter
1.  http://muckrack.com/ – journalists on Twitter if you’re a bit of a media junkie.
2.  http://www.mediaontwitter.com/
3.  https://twitteringjournalists.pbworks.com/Media+People+Using+Twitter

Put these in action and leave comments here of others I should add to the list or try out too.

You may not have a deep love for technology, but you better get used to it.  CEOs that resist changing will be left in the dust even quicker as we continue integrating tech into our lives. If the rate of change outside your business is greater than the rate of change inside your business, then you’re out of business.  Period.

As a business mentor, I recommend you and your employees learn one tech shortcut each week.  Here are shortcuts to Outlook, Gmail and Apple, but these are just the beginning.  Shortcuts and quick, savvy web navigation have proven to be faster and increase office productivity.

If something tech related feels complicated or expensive, it probably is. Look for simple ‘tech hacks’ via bloggers and Twitter search to help you before you try and figure it out.  ‘R&D’ (rip off and duplicate) should be your mantra when finding tech solutions to make your company faster.