The Internet Marketing Institute

Well- they say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery- so I love that Wright State Professor, Dr. Jerry R. Perrich is teaching a 3.5 hr seminar that will “Cover how the internet and search engines work, successful online business models, how to generate site traffic and measure web performance”- which is just some of what we cover in a Blogosopher seminar.

Of course if you go to his site- there is no RSS, no community building features of the live web, and- sadly- a broken link to his “training course.”

(I’ve included screen shot so once he fixes the link there is still proof- click for enlarged view in a new window – remember- it will say “page not found”- because that’s what his page says- not because you are getting to the wrong place)

If you want a “class about using the web for your work” as the Dayton Daily News headline described this course- you should consider our Blogosopher seminar. Not only do we teach the latest technology, we use it daily- not just for this site, but for our client’s sites. We will get you to the top of the search engines like we helped Charles Halton and continue to provide you valuable tips and tricks via this site on how to get the most out of your site.

You can sign up right on our site and pay online- unlike Dr. Perrich’s course “How To Drive Traffic To Your Website…
and What To Do When It Gets There”
The workshop that shows how to make the Internet work for you.” If you live in or around Dayton, you also have 2 opportunities to take our course before his: Jan 19th and Feb 4th. I plan on taking his course on the 9th and incorporating anything I might want to add to blogosopher. One other note- with our seminar- you get one free return refresher course- because there is so much information presented.

As one last piece of proof of knowing how to work the search engines, here is our google tip in action: if you want to know how many pages of your site google has indexed and how they appear go to google and type in: site:yourdomainname.com and you will see the number of results.

For site:blogosopher.com Results 1 – 30 of about 42 from blogosopher.com for . (0.15 seconds)

for site:websmartbusiness.com Results 1 – 6 of about 7 from websmartbusiness.com for . (0.21 seconds)

That’s 36 more reasons to take a Blogosopher seminar.

Hopefully, I’ll see you in a Blogosopher seminar soon. Thanks.

Post note: to add insult to injury- I tried to register on their form- it wouldn’t work. So I sent them an e-mail- and it bounced:

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:
[email protected] SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO::
host mx.websmartbusiness.com [65.254.254.50]:
550 mail08: Host XX.XXX.XX.XX, error: R5.1

Today Microsoft released another security patch for Microsoft Internet Explorer– or IE or- “exploder” as the serious programmers refer to it.
I also visited a client and used their PC- with the aforementioned evil default browser: it drove me bonkers. No nice little Google window at the top of every page (which actually is a pull down menu that can give you instant access to Amazon, Wikipedia, Dictionary.com or hundreds of other useful search sites) no RSS feed indicator built into the interface- and worst of all- terrible rendering of legal CSS (the code that good sites are coded with).
I asked why they didn’t have Firefox loaded on their machine- and the answer was “What’s Firefox.”
Not only didn’t they know about the Open Source browser- but they were quick to share stories of viruses, pop-ups and broken sites. This made me realize that there are a lot of people out there- who are Internet savvy- yet still have no clue about what a total web experience can be.
So- here is what you need to make your web experience all it can be:
Replace IE with Firefox as your primary browser. You can still have IE on your machine- and may need it for some sites, but in general- you will never look back (at least until IE 7 comes out and possibly becomes halfway useful again). You can import all your bookmarks (favorites) and not skip a beat.
I also recommend for those who don’t use all the features of Outlook- like the calendar etc- to switch to Thunderbird– the companion to Firefox. It will also import all your Outlook or Outlook Express addresses etc. Again- this is only if you just use it for e-mail. Once you switch- you will never need to go back.
Then- the customization of Firefox. It is fully extensible and can be skinned if you like.
The most critical tools:
Google tool bar– which can add auto-complete for forms, and a quick link for Sage– my RSS feed reader of choice.

While you PC users may enjoy the Google tool bar- I was finding it slowing my Mac to a standstill. I’ve deleted it from my Firefox installation and used the Autofill extension.

Once you have added both of these, you are set, but I also suggest making sure you have the latest version of Flash (this is the link for mac- it should redirect you automatically for a PC) (even though I don’t recommend it for building a site) and download Quicktime so that you can get the best video experience available on the web.
If you don’t know what RSS is- I highly recommend you take the seminar. It will change your life online.