Google Search Phrases to Save Time and Effort

Today one of my favorite design geeks Alex; posted he was scouring the Internet to find some work.  Not unusual for a free lance designer to be spending his morning engaged in such activity…but he needs to use his precious time giving love to his craft of design not looking for work.  Need a good designer check him out here ==>GenerationXAlbums

I suggested he use the follow search phrases to get his lead hunting done more efficiently.

I use site: URL “search term” to search a site without having to browse the whole thing.  I quickly found numerous leads without having to hunt through a job site.

ex: site:http://akroncanton.craigslist.org/ “web design” got me 103 returns from google for web design in Akron/Canton.

site:http://akroncanton.craigslist.org/ “graphic designer” Got me 21 returns.

Save time and maximize your efforts to getting the job, not looking for it.

I included the chart for your reference and good luck!

Google Shortcut	Finds Pages That Have…
minolta camera	the words minolta and camera
ski OR skate	either the word ski or the word skate
“gimme five”	the exact phrase gimme five
cotton -picking	the word cotton but NOT the word picking
Die Hard +2	movie title including the number 2
~bus	looks up the word bus and synonyms
define:exile	definitions of the word exile
bring my * here	the words bring my here separated by one or more words
+	addition; 978+456
-	subtraction; 978-456
*	multiplication; 978*456
/	division; 978/456
% of	percentage; 50% of 100
^	raise to a power; 4^18 (4 to the eighteenth power)
old in new (conversion)	45 celsius in Fahrenheit
site:(search only one website)	site:tusco.display “custom point of purchase”
link:(find linked pages)	link:technologyworkgroup.com
#…#(search within a number range)	minolta camera $200…$300
daterange:(search within specific date range)	egypt daterange:200508-200510
safesearch: (exclude adult content)	safesearch:breast cancer
info: (find info about a page)	info:www.genxalbums.com
related: (related pages)	related:www.genxalbums.com
cache: (view cached page)	cache:google.com
filetype:(restrict search to specific filetype)	web design filetype:ppt
allintitle: (search for keywords in page title)	allintitle:”adidas” running
inurl:(restrict search to page URLs)	inurl:southpark
site:.edu (specific domain search)	site:.edu, site:.gov, site:.org, etc.
site:country code (restrict search to country)	site:.br “honduras”
intext:(search for keyword in body text)	intext:shower
allintext: (return pages with all words specified in body text)	allintext:tropical island
book(search book text)	book Love is the Killer App
phonebook:(find a phone number)	phonebook:Microsoft WA
bphonebook: (find business phone numbers)	bphonebook:Intel OR
rphonebook:(find residential phone numbers)	rphonebook:John Smith Dover OH
movie:(search for showtimes)	movie:The Shining 44622
stocks:(get a stock quote)	stocks:goog
weather:(get local weather)	weather:44622

Hope you can put this to good use.

-Michael

HELP WANTED: I Have a Book That Needs Proofed

Good morning!

It is Monday and it sure feels like it.  I had a full and challenging weekend, but I don’t feel recharged and ready to go.  Despite the fact that I have created a bit of margin in my morning by running some of my regular Monday morning stuff last night.

My wife and I as Technology Workgroup, are prepping for a Tweet Up that is to held next Monday night in Dover, OH.  We are meeting at the Breadhead Bakery in downtown and even lined up some local business folks to talk and lead discussion.  We are slated to run from 5 PM to 7 PM and that is when Breadhead has his caffeine happy hour.  Specials on drinks and fabulous baked goods.  We have some shirts to give away courtesy of CDTees, and I want to offer my eBook on Twitter for new users.

Here is my challenge with the eBook.  I need it proofread.  I have been pretty busy and would like to see if some of my fans could give me a hand.  Would you sign up to be a proofreader?  Just follow the link and sign up. In the registration process you will find a link to download the eBook.  Pretty good arrangement as you get to criticize me, and get a free book.  I also will send anyone who lends a hand and send corrections and suggestions a pack of Twitter backgrounds that you could upload to your Twitter profile.

What do say?  Give me a hand, get a free book, and some twitter backgrounds for your time?

Sign up to be a proof reader here:  PROOFREADER

Thanks again!

-Michael

Use the Internet to Find a Job – A Free eBook for Job Seekers

So this morning I was talking with the youngest of my offspring while making coffee and oats for breakfast.  She will soon be 12 and yet she at times posses the Wisdom of Solomon.  She has an affinity for food, all things about it, the smell, the color, and the feel. I asked her this morning, “What is it about cooking that you love so much?”  She tells me, “I like seeing my hard work come together, a sense of accomplishment that I created something.” Not eating it I thought to myself?  She went on to say, “I have a passion for it.”

I asked her what it meant to have passion for something.  She crossed the kitchen to stand close to me like she does when she want to make a point to her hard of hearing dad.  “I love the way people react to what I make.  Most people look in a magazine and say, “I would like to eat that.”  Me, I say, “I want to make that.”  That is what passion for food is to me.  I enjoy that moment when people put the food I made in their mouths and say, “OH MY GOODNESS!”

So I then asked her, “Where does it come from, this passion?”  She looks at me and smiles, “You and mommy.  Your love of food and skill in the kitchen makes me want to do the same.  My friends get jealous when I tell them my mom makes homemade French onion soup or my dad can make me crepes.  They tell me there dads can only make macaroni and cheese and hot dogs, maybe grilled cheese.”  I tell her for me the best part of cooking a meal is that moment of real quiet after the food is plated and the guests start to eat.  She adds, and all of the happy noises and things the people say.

I tell you this because everyone has a passion for something.  Mine is cooking, but even still it is to share my knowledge of all things technology related.  I have spent many years in the information technology field and love it all; computers, the Internet, networking, website building, and hobby programming.  The thing that really gets my juices flowing though is teaching and helping others use technology.   I was a chef, maître‘d, bar manager, dish washer, restaurant manager, waiter, and even a bus boy.  The thing I loved the most was sharing the things I know.  I am a bit of a ham, and am very comfortable in front of people.  I have made money at many jobs and have done quite a few, but I never really found myself as happy as I do when I am teaching.

Technology Workgroup, my business that I co-own with my wife has spent the last few years building websites.  We have now found ourselves teaching social media for marketing.  This got me to thinking about my passion to teach and peoples need to learn.  I want to send out to anyone who signs up for it an eBook on “Using the Internet to Find Employment”.  I am going to give it away; I don’t want anything from you.  I want to teach you what I know and share the things I have found, and let you pursue your passion.  In this time of economic challenges people are reinventing themselves and I want to give you more tools to go after what you want. Follow this link: free job eBook leave me your name and email address, confirm your information, and I will send you a link to the book.  That’s it.  From time to time I may send out some other tips and tools, but hey everyone likes free stuff and I promise no spam, HATE the stuff myself.

If you need someone to come to your location and teach about social media, how to use the internet to market your business or organization, or maybe you need a website makeover or a whole new online persona please contact us.  We build content managed solutions that you own and control.  Technology Workgroup believes that you should own your website, you should not be held up waiting for a designer or your internet service provider to make changes and updates to your site.

Do Network Engineers Know How to Drive a Train?

Today I enjoyed a two hour session working with the newest national account manger, Rick Gerling, A.K.A., Displayman.  He and his wife Sandy joined us for a two day visit to get acclimatized to working with us at Tusco Display.  I hope to complete a website for Rick before next week and will post the URL.  It has been a nice place to try out some of Jeffery and Bryan Eisenberg’s techniques.  Quick shout out to Bryan, “Hey thanks for the great advise and I love your blog!”

Speaking of Bryan and Jeffery Eisenberg, their book Call to Action is beginning to yield results.  Along with the great information from Angela at shinydoor.com, we are starting to see results of our web marketing and social networking efforts.  I am seeing visitors drilling into our site following some carefully laid out mapping.  They are getting to that contact page, now I need to get them to pull that trigger, make the call, send that email and become clients.

In other news, I am plowing away on Access reporting.  I am embarrassed to say how much I have forgotten, just like my German and Latin classes, fallen out of the back of my head.  I keep finding broken machines in the network and users that need my attention.  I have had a very hard time lately quickly shifting from one hat to another.  I often feel like a segment from “Who’s Line Is It Anyways?” doing “Props”.  I have an office full of equipment and software and many days I go about picking things up, fixing them or moving them from one spot to another so I can do something else all the while asking the question, “Can a network engineer drive a train?”.  The answer for me is “no”.  None the less it doesn’t stop me from trying.

It is later than I like it to be for my bed time and so I am finishing this post and calling it a night.

Mending Fences and Broken Website

Well I am grateful for someone making me learn HTML.  That is a story worth repeating:  When I first started at Tusco Display I was a support person.  You know, that person you call when your PC stop behaving in the way you expect or desire.  I had spent several weeks getting familiar with the infrastructure of the network, learning my job duties, and pretty much trying to figure out how I fit into a company that manufactured Point of Purchase displays.

My boss one day brought me a book on HTML and told me to look at it and learn it.  I felt like Daniel in the Karate Kid when I asked ,”Why?” and he said, “You will see”.  Likewise he did the same thing in return with a book on SQL server, Unix, and Visual Basic.  I learned a bit and it has become useful in the last six years.  But I digress.

Continuing on my quest for better marketing my employers website, I set to effectively breaking the finely crafted CMS they host it in.  I like DotNetNuke and have been using Mambo recently.  I am comfortable with theses tools.  I am not really sure what control set our site is host in, but it was pretty easy to mess it up.  Needless to say by the time Craig Ferguson finished his monologue I got it back to 99.9% fixed.

Beings I am a guy who helps build websites I am not really happy with ours and of course nothing would make me happier than to convert it to DNN, but that will be a ways off I suppose.

So with the fences mended for now, it is back to writing customer focused material and adding links that tie calls to action together.  It is a little backwards doing it this way, but I feel I can with the tools fr0m Bryan and Jeffery Eisenberg it is very achievable

Today to better understand who we do business with I sent out an email to all of the folks here at Tusco Display and asked three questions.

1. Who is our most important customer?
2. Why would you say they are most important?
3. Describe them in 50 words or less.

I guarantee you will be suprised at the answers.

I also sent the following questions to the Owner and President of Tusco Display:

Are we engaged in accidental marketing?

Could you gentlemen offer me brutally honest answers to the following list?

1. What came first-the idea for our product or service or the understanding that there was a market need that needed filling?

2. Who are our customers?

3. What do they really need?

4. What benefits (not features) of our product or service satisfy the real needs of our customers?

5. What about our products or services is unique, and how can we answer the question, “Why should I buy from these guys?”

6. What other options does a customer have instead of buying from us (including nothing at all)? Are those options better or worse?

7. How does a customer make a decision to buy our products or services?

8. What does a customer have to know before they will buy from us?

9. How does a customer perceive not only our product, but our company compared to our competitor?

10. What is the process a customer goes through before buying our products and services?

11. What is the value of our product or service to the client?(This is not the price.)

12. What would a customer say to a colleague if asked for a recommendation of our products and services?

Once again my thanks to Bryan Eisenberg for his permission to cite from the book “Call to Action”, as he and his brother will help anyone drive visitors to converts.

Stay tuned as we keep climbing up the hill to successful web marketing.

Digging Holes in Cyberspace

So I’m only at Friday of last week, but as you can see this whole thing has begun to gain momentum.  After a full day of work, LinkedIn, Facebook, and tweetting on Twitter I join my wife and girls for a bit of dinner.  My oldest daughter is amused and somewhat concerned about her mom and dad’s new “hobby”.  She was shoulder surfing with her mother earlier in the day and was quite taken aback by what an old school chum had written on my wall.  She told her mom that she would have posted a comment and her mother reminded her why I had not “friended” her.

So we all finish dinner and my wife and I decide that we will retire to the bedroom with our respective notebook pc’s at about 8:30.  So we settle in and start digging up facts about social networking, SEO techniques, and LinkedIn tools.  I got off on a number of threads to get a better grip on why we weren’t getting conversions on our site.  We both traded links over IM that might help us better help our existing clients.  And we all have been there it is now 4:30AM Saturday!  Must put down this machine.  The black box yields many clues but few answers.  I do feel as if I am on a treasure hunt as each white paper and blog post point me in another fascinating direction.  I keep amassing more answers and questions all at the same time.  I am finding where I have moved off the path of successful conversion rates, but I am too tired to take anymore notes and it is all beginning to look the same.