What is a RFP, where to find RFPs, and are RFPs relevant?

Requests for Proposals (RFPs) can be an invaluable source of new business for your company as long as you know what they are, where to find them, and how to make strategic decisions regarding them.

Has LinkedIn jumped the shark?

It wasn't so long ago that LinkedIn was an important part of my day. I actively engaged on it, cultivating connections, participating in Groups and answering questions in the Answers section. I even manage a group in the site for the RFP Database called The RFP Database B2B Forum which now has over 12,500 members in it.

I was a power user, and I used it to engage in conversations as an active part of my sales and marketing strategy.

But not so much anymore. I believe that LinkedIn has jumped the shark.

Timeliness matters for website visitors and search engines

Have you ever gone to a website and questioned if someone was still in business because nothing on their website looks like it has been updated lately? Have you checked out their blog and the last post was from two years ago... or worse yet, didn't have a date stamp?

As a website owner you probably have never looked at your website and wondered this, but we can assure you, potential customers have likely thought this. And what's worse is that search engines wonder the same thing!

Let me explain.

Why your business needs to claim its Google Places page

If you want to do just one activity that will take you approximately 10 minutes of your time and yield you the most customers for 0 cost, this is that one thing you should do. Immediately.

Some quick statistics to get our conversation started:

• 43% of all Google searches are local or location based
• Over 50% of mobile searches are local or location based

Now to explain: local or location based searches are searches whereby either you entered the location directly into the search parameters (search for "pilates in Easthampton MA") or you were in a location and Google returned search results based on your GPS coordinates (you were in the town of Easthampton, MA and ran a search for "pilates").

Use Blogger and Google+ together to great effect

There has been lots of discussion on Google+, speculation about the future direction of the platform, how to best use it, but also what it means for the future of Blogger. What does Blogger have to do with it? Well, it seems that some influencers (such as +Mike Elgan with over 2 million followers) have decided that they like the idea of blogging on Google+, which then transitioned into if they're using it for blogging, then Google should move resources from Blogger to Google+ and let Blogger fade away.

As a fan of Blogger, but also as a content strategist, I disagree.