Being a good blogger requires having all the right words. Personally, I often have a hard time putting the right words together and saying it like it is. If there was an award for typos, I’d win hands downd! (I purposely did that by the way) Sometimes when you want to describe your own product and/or service, you can be so married to it, words just do not give enough justice. You might have the sensation of drawing it out on the whiteboard or creating a Photoshop image that will better tell the story. Of course, I have never done this because I don’t have a whiteboard or Photoshop. . .

My point is sometimes allowing another person review your own products and/or services with an unbiased review can help put things into perspective. Rob StGeorge at TextLinkBuzz threw up a great review of LinkWorth and “all” of our products. Most people put us into the class of “link broker” but we are a jack of all trades. We compete not only with Text Link Ads, but also with Intellitxt & Kontera and the many other companies that do article submissions and press releases, not to mention SEO consulting.

Thanks for the kind words Rob!

Great Leaders are Lifelong Learners

Strong leadership is essential for the success of any organization. Research shows that direct leaders bear the greatest influence on their organizations.

Gallup says 70% of employee engagement is due to this “Manager Effect.” Other studies show that 50-70% of employee perception of their workplace climate is due to behaviors and actions of their leaders.

Effective Leadership Behaviors & Skills

From employee engagement to workplace climate, many variables hinge upon the manager. Thus, it’s critical to be a strong leader. Okay, then what are the qualities and characteristics of great leaders, you ask?

Great Leaders are Visionaries with Clarity of Purpose

Every effective leader has a compelling vision that attracts others. This vision is often innovative and it should aim to propel the organization forward.

A strong leader is never okay with the status quo. He or she is always pressing forward and encouraging employees to do the same.

An effective leader also has clarity of purpose in progressing toward that vision. Distractions come and go, but the effective leader stays focused on the goal. Additionally, a great leader has to be an excellent communicator to share the vision.

Excellent Communication Skills are Necessary

An effective leader must have strong communication skills. This includes both verbal and nonverbal communication.

Research shows that communication is mostly nonverbal. Only 7% of a messages are conveyed in spoken words, 38% in vocal elements and 55% in nonverbal ways (such as gestures, posture, facial expressions, etc.). A great leader must be proficient in all forms of communication.

Having excellent communication skills also means listening well and read between the lines. An effective leader understands team members and can read cues. Good leaders also speak clearly and coherently.

Caring is a Must-Have Leadership Behavior

Employees want supervisors who have a heart and care. No one wants to work under brash, harsh leaders who denigrate them and make them feel bad. Employees respond well to managers with a strong sense of compassion.

To get the most from employees, you must have a personal connection with them. They should feel like they matter to the company and to you as a person.

Developing and Pouring into Others is an Essential Leadership Skill

One important leadership skill is the ability to pour into others and develop them into strong leaders. Great leaders see people’s strengths, often hidden, and help them develop. They offer their employees challenges and opportunities to grow and excel.

Such leaders are involved mentors and coaches who pour into their mentees. They encourage, cajole, correct and prod employees into becoming great leaders. They enjoy seeing the people they work with develop into strong leaders.

Great Leaders Share the Work

Having the ability to share the work and delegate is imperative for any great leader. You can’t do all the work. Know how to divvy up the work in a productive way.

Be the opposite of a micro-manager. Allow team members to take ownership for the process and responsibility for the outcomes. Great leaders always share the work, which means investing in and empowering future leaders.

Reading over at TechCrunch, there is a post about a website called PlayMyGame It allows you to put your face or someone else’s face into the game and be part of the game. Michael Arrington sets himself up as a boxer so you can punch him. Perfect game for him.

I thought about doing the one with the blowing out of the birthday candles, but decided to go with the one below. It took me a minute to understand it, but you basically move your mouse and try to shoot me flying by. Once you run out of bullets, you have to reload by hitting the space bar. I’m pretty fast, so be quick!

Link: PlayMyGame

Anyone that reads anything about making money on your site has heard of or at least read something from Shoemoney, aka Jeremy Schoemaker. I honestly have not read a lot from him just because there is so much to read and it’s tough to keep up and still run a growing business.

This all changed after visiting the SES in NYC recently and Matt and I sat in on a session where Jeremy Schoemaker was speaking. The first speaker, can’t remember the name, Jill someone, was good, but I fell out of attention quite a bit. Very nice and informative, though. Then Jeremy came up and did his thing.

I’ll tell you that I have not made it through many sessions, but give them a shot quite a bit, and Shoemoney really is a great speaker. Although I had to pee pretty bad, I didn’t want to miss anything and it was on a subject I wasn’t really interested in. He’s good at mixing in some fun and laughter but giving great info as well. THEN the check pictures and/or the money made pops in. This part gets me every time. Take for example, this picture:

Over 132K paid to Shoemoney from Google. WHAT! Most people I know work their way up to $50 and get their accounts shut down for whatever reason. I have it setup on an article directory that gets decent traffic and it’s earned $30 in one year. 😐

He reminds me of Carlton Sheets where him and his students tell their net worth all through the show and how big of a check they walked away with at closing. But as much as it bugs me, it’s probably one of the reasons he is so successful. People like to see other people making money. It gives them hope and makes them want to be Jeremy.

Jeremy, if you read this and you will be in Seattle for SMX, shoot me an email and we’d love to buy you a beer or few. You’re an interesting guy and I think we might have a good chat. ron[at]linkworth or matt[at]linkworth and we can hear more about what you do.

I read on a blog the other day where they were saying the nofollow attributes weren’t working, so after a day of letting it marinate, and feeling a little frisky tonight, I figured I would target a phrase with the nofollow tag and see how things go. Since the no follow is preached by one person in general, going after his name mixed up would be a good test since there are no results:

Tamt Tucts

Help us with the test and put this on your site. Make sure the nofollow remains.
Select code
<a href='http://mattcutts.com/blog/' rel='nofollow'>Tamt Tucts</a>

As of right now this is what I get in results:

For those who aren’t familiar with John Chow, he’s a self proclaimed internet mogul, well he has a pretty good history of starting an informational tech website that took off well and here he is today. I periodically visit John Chow dot com to see how much more he talks about the money he makes through various money making techniques.

One thing you can commend him for is how fast he propelled his little blog site into making mad cash. Last I checked, he was making around 12k per month. One thing I’m not real fond of us how many ad systems he uses on the site, but I think I understand he’s testing them all out to find the best earning methods out there.

I think the way he presents his information, he speaks more on the readers level and it draws the readers to come back for more. Not to mention the amount of money he makes is like giving people hope they’ll buy that winning lottery scratch off ticket. His site is definitely worth checking out.

While I’m sure this isn’t quite what it was built for, while reading about OrgPlusLive I couldn’t help but think how much it is catered towards the MLM world. Sure there are other ways the software could be used very effectively, but knowing friends in the MLM industry I couldn’t help but think to myself, “This would work perfect for the ‘downline’ industry.”

As the technology that enables Wide format signage printing and Custom Made Lobby Signs becomes more affordable and accessible for print providers, the line between the two is blurring. Substrate diversity in the wide format space has massively increased this decade, allowing wide format to edge into traditional signage work, encouraging printers to bring both under the same roof.

One major technology driving these changes is a social media contests. These devices, with their fast, low-temperature curing are incredibly and increasingly popular. The low curing temperature plays a vital role in printing directly to thin, flexible and low-melting-point substrates. This comes at a time when flatbed, roll-fed, and hybrid devices are all making advances of their own, similarly driving substrate diversity.

According to dash-digital.co.uk without UV curing, for example, printing lawn signs, like the ones you see every election season, was historically done via screen printing methods, which could require long runs to be justifiable. Now, they can be printed directly to the thin, flexible plastic without fear of melting. Flatbeds’ pin-aided precision allows for tight front-to-back registration, so a sign looks exactly the same on one side as the other, creating a consistent, professional look, learn more at https://www.yourveganmarketer.com.

At the same time, wide format’s increasing flexibility and signage use cases are helping to bring digital print advantages to wide format and signage alike.

Instead of carefully printing small promotional items one by one, specialized jigs can turn flatbeds into high-volume production machines, turning out anything from custom-printed USB thumb drives to branded golf balls. Most experts like next generation sequencing market consulting services say that device-agnostic digital workflows can bring variable data into the mix, helping to automatically regionalize or customize signage, empowering communicators to better reach target audiences.

OrgPlus Live is a web-based organizational charting service designed to make it easier to create, maintain and share organizational charts. If you’ve ever struggled to keep track of different versions of org charts sent over email, OrgPlus Live is for you.

Check out OrgPlusLive and see what you think.

Welcome a new Web 2.0 service, somewhat similar to other services that have come and gone, however, this one is different. Think of all the social networks, search engines and other informational sources. Now think about wanting to search for ohh, say “LinkWorth”. To do this manually, you would need to go to each individual site, enter “LinkWorth”, then click search.

What Sputtr does is consolidate everything into one single search field. I type “LinkWorth”, then click the respective button of the information supplier and it provides search results from that source.

While I’ve never heard of some of these places, I think it’s a kind of cool service.

Okay, okay…I’m kidding. It’s called Universal Search and while I’m remiss about hyping any new Google-gadgetry, this seems to be a nice progression in search. Now, I’m sure most or many or at least a few people were tuned in to Google’s Searchology webcast today where they unloaded lots of new features that are sure to please the shareholders.

Several of the announcements were impressive such as the cross-language search engine where if you do a search in French, the engine will translate the query to English, get results, and translate the results back into French automatically for the user. The idea there is that there could be better results in English yada-yada-yada. It’s a cool concept.

Another useful improvement they’re working on is the automatic correction of spelling mistakes in search queries. We’ve all seen this before, right?

Well, they seem to be making it a bit more intuitive now. Udi used the example of searching for “ABC Survivor.” Well, the show Survivor is actually on CBS and they’re “training” their engine to know the difference. It’s subtle and something you’ll take for granted, but cool all the same.

The thing that I was most impressed with is this Universal Search deal. Soon, when you do a search on Google, you’ll receive not only a listing of links but also images, videos, local info, even maps mixed within the results. In some cases you’ll even be able to watch video right from the SERP….tricky, huh?

I’d like to take the time now to suggest a new research project for Larry and Sergei. Telepathic Search. Come on, you know they’ve thought about it and it’s probably already in development. Why use a keyboard when you can just think something? It’s being done, boys, don’t fall too far behind, okay?

Another thing. I propose that we rename the Milky Way to the Google Galaxy. Screw it, they’ve already claimed our planet with Google Earth…now they have Universal Search….why not? (If I’m not mistaken, there’s already a huge Google logo on the ISS, isn’t there?)

So go get your goo on….they’ve got some new stuff to check out.

I happened across a write up on ProBlogger about new service that tackles the blog comment arena. The service is called LineBuzz. At first, when you’re testing it out, the initial thought is, “Wow, this is kinda cool. Something I’ve never seen before.” Of course, the way I think, I instantly start thinking of how this type of service could benefit me in any shape, form or fashion.

Then I start looking for downfalls of what happens when it grows and could it get out of control. The concept is very similar to our LinkWords product; you mouseover a keyword or phrase and it shows a tooltip advertisement. The difference is, any joe schmoe can create an account and highlight anything they want and add comments. Let’s take a very busy site like, say TechCrunch, install this program and let the users have at it. The end result would look like my grammar paper from grade school after the teacher had her way with the red pen marking up all of the mistakes.

I just see a lot of room for abuse with this product. I like the concept and there may be control that I’m not aware of, but we already have to control comment spam, why add a whole new part to control? You can see the linebuzz in action on their blog. I might think of something that this can be useful for, but for now, just something fun to goof with.