Fry-Wagner : Moving your business or home? Bring in the experts.

Fry-Wagner Moving & Storage

Moving is a stressful undertaking.  Whether it is your business or your home, there are many forces working against you, including time, weather and people averse to change.  One of my best practices when faced with these types of situations is to bring in the experts and let them handle it.  I have been referring business to Fry-Wagner Moving & Storage for years and they always do a fantastic job.  The relationship has gone even deeper over the past 2 years because Earl Kawaoka and I are in a Vistage group together that meets each month, and I recently trained their Kansas City and St. Louis sales teams how to use LinkedIn more effectively.  Through all this, I have gotten a deeper understanding of how Fry-Wagner is operated and who the people are that make the company successful.  These guys are the real deal.  Whether it is a residential move across the country, or moving your small business from one location to another in Kansas City, you should call them.  I am going to have them move my parents from Wichita to Kansas City later this year when my father retires from Boeing.  That is how much I trust them. Read more

Google Local Business Center – Get Your Company Listed and Get Found

Google Local Business Center

A friend and client of mine, Karen Maxwell, mentioned Google Local Business Center to me recently.  Millions of people search Google for businesses and it is a good idea to make sure that your business is listed on Google Maps.  I use my iPhone to search for businesses all the time when I am on the move.  I never thought about the fact that I might need to submit my business to Google so that my business shows up in search results!  There is an entire resource center with videos and more on how to do this, and I just registered Blue Gurus.  It took about 5 minutes, and I verified the business listing with my phone, so the Blue Gurus profile will be available in Google Map Searches within 24 hours.  Get started by going to the Google Local Business Center! Read more

NameChk.com – Claim Your Name Right Now!

NameChk.com

One of the biggest pushes we are seeing in the world of Social Media right now is the concept of “Claiming Your Name”.  It is reminiscent of the .COM gold rush days when everyone was scrambling for their .COM domain before someone else bought it to use it for their web site or to try and sell it to the highest bidder.  There are so many social media web sites that you may not realize that you have not secured your personal name or your company name on.  I am excited to share a tool that I found that will point you in the right direction… NameChk.com.  This web tool makes it easy to check 145 social media web sites to see if your name is taken or not. 

I used this tool over this past weekend to make sure that the names JasonTerry and BlueGurus were secured on the sites that mattered most to me.  I was surprised to find that there were a couple of MAJOR gaps in the accounts I had secured and quickly corrected the problem thanks to NameChk making it easy for me to see which social media web site Vanity URLs were taken and which were available. I recommend that you use NameChk to figure out which sites you need to create an account on and do it immediately.  Read more

Google Buzz – Just another social media platform?

Google Buzz

Google Buzz was released on February 9th (more from the official Google Bog).  It is a social media site where you can share thoughts, pictures, videos and more.  I hear a lot of people saying one of two things…

ONE – Do we need another social media platform?
TWO – This is Google, it’s gonna be great!

If you already have a Gmail account, you already have Google Buzz.  (If not, get a free Gmail account here)  The important point to make is that at launch there were immediately 39 million users with Google Buzz ready to go.  Instant social network, just add water.  That number is roughly 25% more than the number of users with profiles on Twitter.  Interesting opportunities for Google. Read more

IdentityGuard.com – Early warning for identity theft

IdentityGuard.com

We all know that it is a good idea to keep track of our credit rating.  Unfortunately, it often becomes one of those things you will get to later instead of staying on top of it.  I fixed that problem for myself about a year ago when I signed up for IdentityGuard.com.  I wish I could say that it was because I was being proactive, but it was in response to one of my credit card numbers getting out somehow and being used at online merchants.  (My credit card company called to let me know about the unusual activity on my account, so thankfully the problem was caught before affecting me.)

Identity Guard is a service that monitors credit activity with Equifax, Experian and Transunion.  I receive an email alert any time there is new activity on any 3 of these services.  One nice thing about this is that you can always see what your credit rating is as reported by these 3 services.  Read more

PIPL.com – The most comprehensive people search on the web

PIPL.com

So I didn’t get very creative with the title for this blog post.  It is straight from the PIPL.com web site.  Not a problem since the statement is true!  PIPL.com is an information aggregator that pulls data about people from multiple data sources and is the most comprehensive people search I have seen on the internet.  I learned about this site from a client of mine, Jenny Redix with The Henning Law Firm.  Jenny uses this tool to do research on their defendants and plaintiffs.  I couldn’t believe some of the things that were found when I searched for my own name.  Read more

Yelp.com – Consumer Reviews for Local Businesses

Yelp.com

For many purchases, I research what other people say about the products that I am considering buying.  Sites like CNet.com, Amazon.com and Buy.com have good product information and a wealth of customer feedback from those that have bought the products and experienced them first-hand.  Sure, some of the reviews are probably planted to promote the product, but I have to believe most of them are real reviews from real people.

Yelp.com is a social media site where people can come to give open and honest feedback about local businesses.  One obvious use for this is food related reviews for local restaurants.  And they have plenty of them.  Click here to see a bunch of restaurants reviewed near my home like Spin Pizza, Jack Stack BBQ, Mi Ranchito and Ingredient. Read more

Indeed.com – Looking for a job? You gotta check this out.

Indeed.com

If you or someone you know is looking for a job, there are some great tools out there to help in the search.  One of the sites that has been on my radar lately is Indeed.com.  It is a job posting aggregator.  Indeed.com is like Travelocity.com or Kayak.com for finding the best fares on hotels or car rentals.  Indeed.com is for finding jobs from multiple job posting sites like Dice, Monster, LinkedIn, and CareerBuilder. They also pull job postings from newspapers, associations and company career pages.  Read more

Avatar – A Game Changing Movie

Avatar

Watch the Avatar Movie Trailer in HD at YouTube.com.

Everybody is talking about the new James Cameron movie “Avatar”, and I can’t believe that it took me 4 weekends to see when I am normally up to speed on new movies.  I just saw Avatar in the AMC 30 IMAX in 3D this weekend.  I can summarize this post by saying that Avatar is one of the best movies I have seen.  Sure, I am the typical guy that likes a good shoot ‘em up with lots of digital special effects.  But I also enjoy a good chick flick with my soon-to-be wife, Trista, and cry when the underdog is victorious. Read more

Ping.fm – Update your status everywhere at once!

Ping.fm

What is Ping.fm???
Ping.fm is a web site where you can create ONE ACCOUNT TO RULE THEM ALL.  (Sorry, Lord of the Rings reference…)  In other words, you can create a free Ping.fm account and then provide your user name and password to sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Plaxo, Delicious, Flickr, Wordpress, Blogger, and Friendster.  Then all you have to do when you want to update your status across multiple social media sites is log in to Ping.fm, type your message (recommend 140 characters or less) and click “Ping It!”  Ping.fm will then log in to each of the sites you have set up and publish that status FOR YOU!  And yes, there is an App for that… a Ping.fm client called Pingle (YouTube video review here) that works on the iPhone so you can broadcast your status on the go. Read more