Do You Need More Than 1 Bird in Your Twitter Pen?

Today we sat down and talked about how we are using Twitter in business. What we've come to realize is that personal Tweets are often not in line with what our business is all about. While a great deal of our tweets are related to Joomla, Joomla training or web design, so many others are related to parenting, helping animals or education. We have diverse groups of Twitter followers, and our business message was getting diluted. So today we created the Landau Design Twitter account.

Brand is very important to all businesses, and when the principal of a company is strongly aligned with a company brand, it is sometimes difficult to separate the two. Entrepreneurs know this all too well, since often they are seen as the one and only expert in their company.

How do you decide if you should have separate Twitter IDs?
Ask yourself the following questions to determine if you should separate your personal and business Twitter IDs:

• Is Twitter a key factor in establishing and expanding your online presence?
• Are your personal and business interests divergent?
• Are you working on establishing a personal brand separate from your company brand?
  
• Are you using Twitter for marketing your business?
• Would your personal tweets be be TMI (too much information) for potential clients?
  
• Do you have the time to manage more than one Twitter account?
• Do you have multiple employees who could contribute to a company Twitter account?

If you answer yes to 4 or more of the above questions, you should consider establishing a business identity separate from your personal identity on Twitter.

Landau Design Supports Green Hosting

For 2010 Landau Design has committed to reducing our carbon footprint. In a company that does development work, our electrical output is a big part of our energy consumption. As a way to reduce our energy output, we are committed to utilizing a green hosting company for all our hosting needs, and we recommend green hosting to all our clients.

What is green hosting?
Companies who receive the official green hosting label have done specific things to reduce their carbon footprint. As the owner and operator of servers that are on 24/7, you can imagine the electrical energy they consume. Read How Can Website Hosting be Green? to find out how these companies do their part to help the environment.

Please join us in our commitment to help the environment. All the little steps we each take will combine together to make a big difference!

Did You Know LinkedIn is Connected with Twitter?

LinkedIn has employed a fun new tool that allows you to pull your Twitter tweets into your LinkedIn profile. These tools combined can make these two arenas even more powerful for sharing your ideas. The icon for this marriage is the peanut butter/chocolate introduction made popular by Reese's many decades ago.

To take advantage of this new connection, simply click on the edit button on the Twitter line on your profile page (see red arrow on screenshot). Follow the simple instructions, and now your Twitter and LinkedIn accounts will be connected.

There are variables when setting this connection that allow you to indicate of you want all tweets shared on LinkedIn, or only tweets that include a #in hashtag. In this way you are in control of what does and does not show up.

Why is this helpful? First of all, your Tweets can now be shown on your LinkedIn account, which means you can share information without extra effort. Also, your LinkedIn status will be updated when you Tweet, which means your LinkedIn profile will always be recently updated, which keeps you at the top of search results. You can also now tweet from within your LinkedIn account, which saves more time as you share your information across multiple networks.

For a more detailed overview of this feature, visit the LinkedIn Learning center. or view this online video tutorial to setup a LinkedIn/Twitter connection.

17 of the Best Cheap Online Productivity Tools

One of the best things you can do is to share your non-proprietary secrets with your clients. It is always nice to do something helpful and everyone likes to get something worthwhile for free. So in that light, here are my “Best cheap productivity tools from the web”:

Just for Fun:

1. Eventually everyone needs to know how to say something in a language they don’t know. Try Free Translations.

2. If you need to convert a measurement of any kind, visit Online Conversions.

3. How long will it take to get to that cross-town appointment in LA traffic? Start by looking at the Caltans map for sig alerts

4. So you just missed a call. Your caller ID shows a number you don’t recognize. Is it a telemarketer or a new client you should call back now? Try a reverse phone number lookup FREE.

5. Do you have nostalgia itch on your lunch hour and want to know who sang that song you heard on the oldies radio this morning? Look it up in an archive for books, music and other stuff FREE.

6. So you are really bored or need your funny bone tickled? Have a laugh and then another.

7. If you crave news from somewhere other than the commercial networks visit either the BBC or Mcclatchy, (one of the last investigative news organization in the US)

Business stuff:

8. If you need a document converted to an Adobe file but don’t own Acrobat, try this free service.

9. If you are still worried about security on Internet Explorer, use Firefox. It handles most web content more effectively and is more secure from the moment you install it. FREE

10. If you need stock photos for any reason, look at the galleries at Istock Photos. If you budget is larger, try Getty Images or you can download and use many high quality photos for FREE at stock.xchng.

11. If you need a program to upload information to an ftp site and you have a Windows computer, use ws_ftp. If you have a MAC, use Fetch.

12. If you need a good html editor that highlights tags and shows you unmatched tags and you have a Windows computer, try Coffee Cup. It is FREE. If you have a MAC try BBEdit They are the best even though they charge for it now.

13. If you don’t own a true photo editing color, you may need a way to identify the code for colors you want to use on your website. This color converter tool should help.

14. If you have video files created in a format that is not web friendly, convert them by using the inexpensive Ojosoft converter.

15. If you have a high speed Internet connection and want to reduce your phone bill, consider a voice over IP option (VOIP). Many international calls are now made with Skype, which is free. There are several companies that provide good support for their programs in the US. Have a look at Vonage and Ooma as examples.

16. If you are having problems communicating with a developer or another business partner, try sharing the information on your computer with them dynamically by using GoToMeeting. There is usually a 15 day trial for the service and if you need to collaborate on technical data including spreadsheets and presentations, this is a must have.

17. If you are wondering how your website performs on other browsers, test it at Browsershots.

And if you have other good sources, please share them.