As I mentioned when I first announced the Nimble partnership on our site, this company has impressed me tremendously in terms of the output as well as with how they communicate – in today’s very fast moving environment these factors are both MUST HAVES for any technology provider.

This article provides a full breakdown of what’s new in Nimble 2.0 but the big headlines are Nimble has introduced a paid premium level, advanced privacy settings (this is a must for any organization with more than one person, Facebook Pages and a updates user interface.

One other thing that I think Nimble does really well, which is something they introduced prior to 2.0 is that they provide each user with a daily update via email – the daily update pulls from your calendar as well as from your social stream and provides info like new jobs that any of your contacts might have as well as birthdays – this daily snapshot is a great way to stay connected with your Rolodex.

And by the way – don’t just take my word for it – go ahead and read the most recent review that the folks at TechCrunch wrote: Nimble 2.0 Looks To Give SMBs A CRM Platform That Actually Does Social Right – if you have ever read TechCrunch than you know these guys can be brutal.

Despite where 2.0 is currently, the thing that continues to keep Gadarian Digital very engaged with Nimble is their ability to innovate and continually push the needle forward. As a company Nimble appreciates the value of growth and iteration and for us as solutions providers we can feel confident not only in the product they currently offer, but also we can recommend their platform because we have confidence in what the roadmap looks like as well.

Lastly here is a “glory shot” to give you a sense of how the Nimble consolidated social dashboard looks:

So, if you have any questions, or if perhaps you think Nimble might be a good fit for your business feel free to reach out to me to see if Nimble is a good fit for you, and if so perhaps I help get you set up..

1. Style and Tone

Most freelance writers work with a number of clients, all desiring a specific style of writing. Some clients prefer a casual voice while others seek highly professional articles. If possible, ask the client for samples of the writing style they prefer.

2. Time

When creating an article, the time constraints of both the client and the writer should be taken into consideration. Some clients have an open window regarding the time frame for articles. Most clients, however, expect a speedy turnaround. Some will give writers only a few hours, though most will be satisfied with a one to two day deadline. Writers should make sure they can devote their time to the project at hand.

3. Subject Matter

The fact is, though many freelance writers are able to cover a wide spectrum of topics, most specialize in particular areas. As a writer, it can be more satisfying to pen pieces that fall within a subject of expertise. In some types of writing, like legal or medical documents, it may even be necessary for the writer to have extensive experience. Writers that accept projects they are incapable of writing well risk tarnishing their reputation.

4. Research

How much research is involved for a particular article often determines the amount of time the piece takes to write. Prior to writing an article, assess how much research is needed and what sources should be used. Also, if possible, contact the client to find what type of citations are required.

5. Audience

The audience for the article is a key factor in deciding how to write a piece. For example, if a client asks for an article regarding a topic like distance running, it is important for the writer to know if the article is intended for a novice runner or a seasoned athlete, as this affects not just the tone of the piece but also the content and the amount and type of research.

Being a freelance writer can be both exciting and fulfilling. Anyone that is skilled at writing and able to commit themselves to a job well done can have a great future as a freelance writer. All that is needed is a desire to succeed and the time and effort to put forth an excellent product.

Image Credit: Stock.XCHNG

Kathleen Hubert is a blogger who writes on wide variety of topics. She is 26 year old and graduated from the Los Angeles City College with English major. Writing is her passion and this allows her to share her personal insights with lots of people from different parts of the world. She is determined to pursue her writing career and be the greatest writer she can be. Check out more of her work at LED vs LCD TVs.

In any event, it is still early days on this project for Gadarian Digital but the reason to share it now is mainly to give those of you looking for some alternative ideas an inside look at how we are going about putting this particular wrinkle of our business together. Learn from our mistakes, and yes we will be sharing them…

So with all that backdrop in mind, we are excited to share with you are early effort in introducing the Gadarian Digital Marketing Bookstore where we are going to begin to feature books that we feel can add real value to your own digital efforts.

The idea is we want to provide our readers with some added value and to give our readers some insider endorsements. Starting out is hard and perhaps by referencing our book list it might just be a bit easier.

In any event the bookstore is literally as of this post only minutes old and the main reason to even talk about it at this stage is less about the bookstore and more about the process of putting it together. (Once we advance the bookstore to a point we are satisfied with we’ll move it into our websites navigation bar, but for now you can only find it through this post…)

So how did we do it? The answer was we did it through Amazon’s affiliate program. What is amazing is this store took about a half hour to set up (and I think that was largely because I knew in the back of my mind that I would also be writing this post). How amazing is that. Go ahead and take a look at the very early launch of the Gadarian Digital Marketing Bookstore and see for yourself – it’s pretty impressive stuff. Don’t worry – I’m not bragging as yes, Amazon did most of the heavy lifting on this.

What I am super excited about really is being able to share some more great material with my readers.

That said if I can share some material with my reader and also get an added financial benefit that even better – the result is we’ll do an even better job with the bookstore… And just in case you are wondering, after Amazon sites, when you Google “Amazon Assocaties” this guy’s site comes up 11 Lessons I Learned Earning $119,725.45 from Amazon Associates Program – and up top when I alluded to our upcoming list of must visit websites you can be pretty sure that ProBlogger will be mentioned….

Over time we’ll occasionally check in specifically regarding the progress of the bookstore but for now we are very excited to be getting it off the ground. Once again the immense power of the web and some of the people providing services on the internet has us both amazed and deeply humbled. Impressive stuff @amazon

“Someone has requested a new password. If you did not make this request please ignore this email”

Of course this is not they type of email you quietly disregard. I immediately called my client as despite the suggestion by WordPress to simply ignore the email I was very concerned. My cleint assured me they did not make this request and I then went back in to the dashboard to do some more digging. Everything looked fine. I called them back to say so far it looks okay but I will continue to monitor the situation

A few minutes later I get a new email from this site’s WordPress saying something like:

Password Lost and Changed for user: XXXXXXX

Yes, it was now panic time. I could no longer get into the WordPress dashboard as the password was in fact changed and I was starting to have palpitations – imagining all kinds of obscene images on my client’s home page etc. It was not good. Not a nice follow up call to my client either after having just told them things look good.

This was a situation that nobody ever wants to be in. If you have ever been there than you know.

Turns out that firm that handles the hosting for this particular client neglected to let either myself or our shared client know that they were moving this site from one hosting company to another. Oops… but at least I was only out some major flop sweat and my client’s site was not being hacked.

Of course this really got me motivated as I knew I needed to address this issues and to have some good contingencies in place just in case. As a result of this event I’ve gone in put in some extra protocols that I have been rolling out to all my retainer clients to help us be better prepared for this kind of “what if” scenario – of course just because I use these services on my clients does not mean you need to be a client of mine to use these services – in fact having thought through how much value people place in their websites, I’d say these service could easily fit into the “must have” category depending on what you use your website for.

The two major upgrades that I have introduced are the following:

• Backup Buddy
• Sucuri

While you can never say “never”, the idea that in some way I can do “more” is certainly appealing particularly when it comes to protecting both my site and my client’s sites. So what do these things do and why should you consider each of these products for your own website?

Backup Buddy backs up your entire WordPress install. All of it. I also like that this service can automate the entire process and also send additional backups offsite (I’ve utilized their integration with the cloud based file sharing service Dropbox which so far has worked out really well. Don’t get me wrong – I know there are a number of other plugins that also can back up your WordPress site… but for me after seeing enough people that I personally trust rave about this product I was forced to look a little closer. In light of the above near scare, when it came to my clients I just felt that I need to go all in.

Sucuri really takes things to the next level. This service provides a constant scan of your website monitoring for malware.

The Sucuri Web Integrity Monitor detects unauthorized changes to your websites, DNS, Whois and SSL Certificates.

Unlike Backup Buddy, Sucuri is not limited to just WordPress sites. What I love about this service is not only will they monitor your site, but in the event that your website is compromised the experts as Sucuri will also clean up your site. That’s right, if your site gets infected this crack team of experts will go in there and make it all roses again. I can say for sure that if a site of mine were hacked, or for that matter one of my clients, we’d be in big trouble. Not only that, but with the constant monitoring, should anything come back looking bad Suciri will notify me.

Just a note – the Surucri monitoring is also baked into Backup Buddy but if you want more you’ll have to manually run a scan unlike with the paid service which is automatically run. Also the free service does not provide for malware removal. If you are on the fence regarding this service, and you are a WordPress user I would highly recommend you check out the free Sucuri WordPress plugin.

So there you have – two new additions that I have introduced into my life to provide both some additional heft and also some much needed peace of mind. For what it’s worth the client in question now feels much better when it comes to thinking about those “what if” scenarios – just one less thing for them to have to be concerned about.

Photo Credit: Caro Wallis via Flickr

Please note – this posts includes some affiliate links. That said I feel very confident endorsing both of these products and I actively utilize both of them in my daily business.

The morning is focused on already established businesses looking to plan for and to achieve better results for 2012. The topics and paths discussed are intended to give existing business owners real takeaways that they can apply to their own operations immediately.

I am very fortunate to be partnering with Tom Hoarty of Action Coaching Business Coaching for this event. Tom’s presentation is “The Five Proven Ways to Double Your Profits” with a focus on how to get a better return on your marketing efforts.

The presentation I will be giving is “10 Digital Takeaways to Enhance Your Online Efforts” and while the title is a little vanilla I can assure you that having done this presentation in the past, the feedback has been red hot. My personal goal for this presentation is to provide ALL participants with at least one tangible effort that they can take home an apply to their own business IMMEDIATELY.

Tom and I decided to collaborate on this event because during their course of conversations with each other we quickly saw that while we provide very different services there was also a very organic path between what we do. We determined that by presenting together we’d be able to deliver a ton of information in a very efficient manner while also exposing all our guests to a number of really great ideas covering a ton of ground. A great way to start the day… some great information, a little food and then off to the races.

For more details please feel free to either contact me directly or if you’d like to reserve a seat feel free to head over to this link to do so: http://bit.ly/2012talk – Again seating is limited.

So here are a few of the strategies I will be working on during the coming year.

Public Speaking. This was actually something that I started to do in 2011 but I am hoping to make this year a bigger year for this. My first speaking event of 2012 will be at a breakfast I am co-hosting later this month. Feel free to check it out: http://bit.ly/2012talk

Guest Blog Posting. This is a great method to meet some new people. I know there are all kinds of other reasons (like getting great exposure and SEO) but my main hope is to provide some other sites with great content and use this as a strategy to start a great relationship.

Envelopes and Post Cards. I know this is old school but I plan on trying this out – I have a few creative ideas that I’m pretty excited about so we’ll see.

YouTube. 2012 is the year I roll out my YouTube strategy. As you can see, I did not “kill it” in 2011 in this regard but at least I got the ball rolling.

Paid. That’s right, I plan to utilize Google AdWords and Facebook Ads to help promote my business. This campaign will likely start up in the 2nd quarter of 2012. Should be interesting.

In person networking. I’ve been fairly active with MeetUps over the past year and it was a great experience. In 2012 I plan to attend more of them. While I grew up in the Boston area, after 15 years things have changed a bit and it’s been really nice to make some very meaningful new business connections.

Other ideas that I’m exploring include things like signing up for a service called blogdash and once again signing up for HARO (now done).

MSM. I might have a few plans for main stream media as well. We’ll see how that plays out but I did spend a few years working in television…

That said, if you have any ideas for me, or if you are interested in getting in touch with me, I am now “Open for Business“.

In 2011 we integrated Google Apps into our mix which has been a really nice addition to our workflow.

In addition we are going to become much more active with search this year.

With search of course comes Google Analytics – another area we plan to come way up on.

YouTube is also going to have a much larger role and one of our big pushes is going to be focused on screencasting tutorials.

We have been active with social for a few years now (considering this is one of our prime services that is not a surprise) and Google+ in particular is going to have a larger role in what we do. In fact this post by Social Media Examiner on using Google+ to advance search results motivated me to get moving on linking the authorship of my personal posts with my personal Google profile.

Here I am…

Beyond all that I do think Google is just getting started. In particular with a looming Facebook IPO, I expect some major announcements to come out regarding the the use and functionality of business pages within Google+. By the way, if you are interested, feel free to check out the Google+ Business Page for Gadarian Digital.

And another thing… I’d strongly suggest you take a look at Google Voice as well – they have some great features including my favorite which getting transcribed emails with my incoming voice messages.

And yes, the Android is pretty great. While I know there are some real serious iPhone users out there, I do know that this Android user is very happy.

As the year progresses I’ll follow up on this post on occasion to let you know what Gadarian Digital is doing vis-a-vis Google.

Here is a list from some of the blogs that I regularly read. Trust me, you read through these posts and you will learn a ton!

In no particular order…

The Best of Copyblogger 2011. The folks at Copyblogger have become a must read for me. Not only are the posts great, but the comments within the posts can also be extremely helpful.

The Top 10 @DanZarrella Posts of 2011. Dan Zarrella has really come into his own this year with some great insights regarding what is actually happening versus what you might think is happening. Always fun to read what he writes.

560 Resources for Blogging, Online Marketing, and Starting a Business by Kikolani (Kristi Hines) – this post is sorted by sublists – find what interests you and dive in.

The Top 50 Posts from KISSmetrics of 2011 The folks at KISSmetrics have managed to become my favorite site of 2011. When this site publishes something it is always filled with a ton of great information. Read. Learn. Do.

And yes, I know there are a lot of very talented people working away, producing amazing content so while this list is in no way the definitive list, trust me when I tell you, going through these Top Post of 2011 will do wonders for your business.

And yes, if you have some other Top Posts of that you’d like to add, as long as they are in some way related to digital marketing feel free to add them in the comments.

How To Embed a Tweet Like A Pro - This one still remains a personal favorite of mine.

Using Bing for Social Media Monitoring - 50+ Tweets – thanks to a few folks at Microsoft for supporting this post.

10 Reasons to Purchase the Premium WordPress Theme Headway Right NOW!

10 Reasons Why You Need to Pay Attention to StumbleUpon - Read it – this service is great.

5 Digital Identity Management Tips for Small Businesses

Create An Amazing Word Cloud In Minutes - another really big post on this site, thanks in large part to StumbleUpon

Livefyre Review - my most commented post to date – interestingly enough about a commenting system!

The following 3 posts were part of a social media series:

How To: Placing Your Social Sharing Buttons On Your WordPress Blog Page

The 8 Most Important Social Media Buttons for Your Site

Where to Place Social Media Button On Your Site

In addition one new wrinkle to my site was that I changed my permalink structure – so all that great “social proof” that I built (some posts were Tweeted 50+ times, other posts have been Stumbled over 1K times!) no longer shows up with my new links – perhaps eventually they will repopulate but in any event I’m okay with that as it certainly motivates me to do even better this year! I knew going in that I would be in some ways starting over in this particular regard but I also know that long term this was the right decision for my site. I bring this up because there is a lesson here…

Big growth for 2012 for all of us! Best, Dave

It will be interesting to see if Twitter rolls this feature out to all users, but for now my guess is it will be limited to paid advertisers only.

The even bigger question of course is will Twitter roll this feature out site wide but use this space much as other sites currently do in the form of traditional banner advertising.

It’s been a while since I did a post like this, so I’ve taken the liberty of also pointing out another feature I saw on GE’s page (not on mine though) which was the ability to “close all tweets”. The implication is that Twitter has taken the liberty of “opening” all the tweets on this page. Twitter purists will likely be upset by this kind of development, but for me, I have been a big fan of the way Twitter has opened up the way their services operates by integrating both pictures and videos.

A few Twitter predictions for 2012.

1. Twitter does integrate some sort of banner advertising. My guess is the ads will have a nice ability to be very targeted but the initial pool of ads will be lacking – I predict an advertising deal with Google.
2. Twitter will allow users to obtain a more granular control over how each Tweet is displayed on their own page. As it is the service is starting to look more and more like Tumblr…. Again, not sure that is a bad thing.
3. Twitter announces an IPO for Q4 2012 following up on a Facebook IPO. I think they have at this point taken on too much cash to be an attractive buyout opportunity for one of the few companies that could afford them. Frankly I think they are a much better company if they can remain independent but that is just me…

So while I started out talking about GE’s page, it turns out this is something of a year end post. Anyone care to offer up their own predictions for what 2012 will bring to Twitter feel free to comment below.