One of my favorite financial tools online recently sent an email out. This is what I received from Digit.co

We wanted to make sure you saw that the cost of a Digit membership is changing to $5/month. This goes into effect on May 12th, 2021 and is updated in our Terms.

Digit has been $5/month since 2019, but we’ve kept early members like you at a lower price ($2.99). This update will help us continue building powerful tools for your money.

They go on to justify the price with a list of stuff they've added to the service...

Over the last 2 years, we’ve added features that help you avoid overdrafts, pay back debt, save for retirement, and easily invest for the long term. We’ve got even bigger things planned in the months ahead, so stay tuned.

If you have any questions at all, please visit our help center or contact us. If you’d like to make a change to your membership, you can do that anytime here.

We’re excited to keep helping you achieve your money goals.

But I am not thrilled about this change. Let me explain. I first fell in love with Digit with their initial offering to make saving easier.

The way Digit works is that you can set up a savings goal, and over time they withdraw small incremental amounts from your account in order to fulfill that goal.

It's actually quite good. Check it out, and if you use my link, you get $5.00 and I get $5.00.

I use it for discretionary spending, like buying a new gadget. I also use it to put money aside for vacations. But I primarily use it to put money aside for recurring yearly subscriptions or renewals. Like the DMV registration in my state, or the renewal of Grammarly, or Vimeo.

It's great, when it's time to pay for that stuff, I have the money (or most of it) put aside so my immediate, day to day cashflow feels unaffected.

But let's just say I'm not happy about going from $2.99 to $5.00 per month. I'm not happy about it because obviously, it takes more money from me. Ok, so an extra $24/year isn't that bad, right?

But then there are other services. And another one that is $0.99/month, and the other one that is $36/year and so on and so forth. 

In fact, I really hate this monthly model that many companies are trying to exploit. Mark my words, it will be the death of them eventually.

At some point, the economics will break and many consumers will have to make hard choices about what systems and products they use.

But Back to Digit

What Digit should do in my opinion is this: grandfather loyal customers with their "old" pricing, and sign up new customers under the current pricing. Just like Elementor did for the WordPress community recently. -- It's worth mentioning that Elementor is a totally different beast and the price is completely different; I'm only drawing attention to how they cared for the community that has helped them grow to where they are now.

Then Digit should revamp their rewards program so more people are happy and willing to share how great the service is and they get rewarded.

Right now, it seems that you can only get rewarded for sharing the beauty and awesomeness of Digit with 5 people.

Something else that would be good I think also would be to tier their services.

The main reason they are doing a price hike, it seems to me, or at least they say so in the email is to enable them to continue adding features.

But I have to ask, who asked for those? I didn't. Why do I care about all those things if I just wanted the ability to save automatically and incrementally? That idea, while it is not new, was masterfully executed.

It would be nice if they just tiered those new products.

I still like Digit and think you should get it. Even at $5/month, but I'm just torn about this price hike.

Update!

Just before I wrote this post, I replied to Digit's email with a short note to let them know my dislike for their decision. This is what I said: 

Not cool.

You should be grandfathering your oldest customers on their current rates.

I didn't expect anything in return. I know I was just kind of griping at them, but shortly after I sent my email I received the usual response about how I had requested support and a ticket was created; someone would respond soon.

I thought "whatever" and forgot about it, but a few hours later they responded with the following:

Hi Oscar,

I appreciate you reaching out, and I know this news may be disappointing.

At this time, we do not have plans for grandfathering in members into their former price or offering discounts. But, I did pass this feedback along to the rest of the team to consider for the future!

As a way of saying thanks for your support this far, I've added 2 free months to your membership.

While we hope you'll stick with us we understand if you do need to make a change to your account. You can do that here: https://digit.co/close-account.

I hope this clears things up a bit, but please don't hesitate to reach back out if I can assist with anything else at all. Take care.

What a turn of events huh? I'm glad I sent that quick email out. I mean, the increase of 35 to 60 isn't a huge deal.

But with the response to my gripe and the $10 they credited me, I'm definitely sticking around.

I mean, they have to make money. I get it, and the way they handled my complaint means they really do care.

So I changed the cover image for this post too, correcting their logo back to their happy wink face.

In Conclusion

I'm not happy about the price hike. But I do love their service. I think the $5/month price is fair.

Would I still recommend the service? Absolutely. Especially now after I saw how they handled my gripe. I love their SMS bot, I can do almost everything I want to do with my account via text messages. It's brilliant. If you want to check it out, try it here, you'll get $5.00 and I'll get $5.00.

The post Not Happy About Digit’s Upcoming “New” Pricing appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

It seems that Alexandria gave her boyfriend access to her work calendar, and this caused a cacophony of complaints and accusations and more drama. As if we didn't have enough. But something caught my attention in AOC's tweet response.

First, let me just give you just one bit of context. I don't care about who is right, or whether she's allowed to do that or not. That's not the point of this post. So let's have a look.

The person that seems to have raised attention to the fact that AOC had given access to her boyfriend was actually calling AOC out for getting her boyfriend to work for her. But she responded that he was listed there because she shared her calendar, and played it off as if doing this was normal for congresspersons.

While you were having a nice Valentine's Day, @AOC decided to put her boyfriend on staff - drawing a salary on the taxpayer's dime. Nice to see her adapting to the swamp so quickly. pic.twitter.com/bvncwzxY53

— Luke Thompson (@ltthompso) February 15, 2019

Here is her tweet in response and I highlighted the part that caught my attention.

She's using G Suite, previously known as Google Apps. And in fact, it's not only AOC using G Suite because that wouldn't really work in this case. I can only assume that her entire office is using it. And my optimistic logic mind tells me that if she's using it, then the whole of Congress is using G Suite; it would just make sense and would be the most efficient way.

I mean, they must be, right? If she got in trouble for sharing her calendar access with her boyfriend/partner who doesn't work with her and her response was that "Congressional spouses get Gcal access all the time."

That can only mean one thing, don't you agree? That Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is sharing her Google Calendar.

Maybe even the Federal government is using G Suite. I don't know for sure and I haven't looked into it, but if they are, that's good!

Good because that means that they hopefully are saving money and should have really good security in place. G Suite does security really well, and running a G Suite email system is much more cost-effective than a comparable system running on Microsoft, or Linux based platforms.

So why does this matter to you?

Well, because you too could be using G Suite for your business, saving money and increasing efficiency, security and reliability. Even though Google has products for Government, and Enterprise level operations, their bread and butter is G Suite for small businesses.

But, Oscar! The email address in the tweet is not a "Gmail" address!? 

Well, Google can host email for any domain that you want. So the difference is that Gmail is free, and you always get an email address ending with @gmail.com, but with G Suite, you can use any domain. Well, any domain that you own or control.

Ever since I started using G Suite when I still had a 9-5 job, I've been recommending it to everybody. I have been using it since it was called Google Apps, I think I've been using it for over 10 years now.

Sharing files with colleagues, vendors, and clients is a breeze. I can also share a file publicly with a couple of clicks, things like downloadable pdf reports.

I have folders for all my clients and each folder has files I share with them and I can specifically share some files with some people and other files with other people. We can collaborate on Word documents, spreadsheets and just like AOC, in calendars so everybody can see each other's availability.

I can even make public surveys or questionnaires after I collect all the responses then G Suite will give me a nice report of the data, with pie charts or graph bars to present the information easily, and it puts it into a spreadsheet also. It's pretty sweet.

I use G Suite to keep files for internal projects, I can store any kind of file and then it's available anywhere I have access to the internet, on my mobile device, on my tablet, on any of my laptops or even at a client's site if I need to. It's always backed up, always available and always easy to share.

Check it out, if you're interested in using it for your business, here's the link to it.

If you're really interested and are ready to sign up, I have a couple of discount codes. Google gives me a couple every few months. But they're single-use, so I can't post them. If you want one of the codes, leave a comment, make sure you fill out the email field, and I'll email you the code.

This discount code for G Suite gives you 20% off your first year of service.

The post Wait, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Uses G Cal? For Congress Business? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I had a chance to interview Heather Havenwood, author of the book Sexy Boss. Always staying ahead of the curve, Heather gave us some insights into an amazing technique to improve your digital marketing game.

This interview is all about Chatbots.

Even though I have played with chatbots quite a bit, I am not currently using them for my pages.

Also, Heather's book:Sexy Boss - How Female Entrepreneurs Are Changing the Rule Book for Money, Success and Even Sex, and How You Can Too!

I know I'm sharing this almost a year after I recorded it, but it is still relevant as the chatbot race hasn't been settled yet.

Affiliate Summit takes place throughout the year and all over the world so take a look at it if you want to learn more about Affiliate marketing and related fields.

As more companies join the chatbot world, how do you feel about it? I asked my friends about it on Facebook and they had mixed reactions to it. I'd love to hear how you feel about them.

The post Interview About Chatbots with Heather Havenwood aka Sexy Boss appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

If you measure then you can make smart decisions based on the data instead of just a feeling.

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with gut-feelings but if you're trying to improve your productivity and use your time better, you must measure it and find where you're using your time poorly.

It's like anything else, let me give you a couple examples.

A Food Example

For example, if you're trying to eat better and exercise more, you should track your food intake so that you know how many calories you're taking in, and you should track your physical activity to estimate how many calories you've burned.

If you don't measure your food intake with an app like My Fitness Pal, it's easy to dismiss a quick snack as being suitable for your diet because it was just a "quick bite" but you don't realize that a quick snack can be up to a quarter of your total daily calorie allowance.

A Website Example

If you want to improve traffic on your website, you should track it with a traffic analytics software like Google Analytics.

Using analytics to review your traffic will show you what are your most trafficked pages, it may also show you where people tend to abandon your website and other things that will let you find where you can make improvements to your website.

But what about your time?

But how about your time? Can you track your time and find out when you're using it poorly?

Why, yes you can!

The other day I was asking about your time and productivity, I asked: Are You in Control of Your Time and Productivity? and the post was about how to track your time spent and increase productivity.

So I wanted to highlight another feature of Time Doctor which I talked about in that blog post. The feature I'm going to show you today is pretty straightforward.

It helps you find out if you could manage your time better by guessing that you spent too much time on a time-wasting website. Like Facebook, Youtube, and others.

By the way, you can check out TimeDoctor here. It may be one of the best apps you get to use this year.

Take a look at this screenshot:

But Facebook is Business too!

Now, I happen to run part of my business from Facebook so time on Facebook may very well be business time for me.

But this was flagged as potential poor time use because I wasn't tracking any other time in Time Doctor so it assumed I was just wasting time.

Most employees and most people's work doesn't require that they check Facebook, Youtube, or other sites that could be a distraction. The exception, of course, granted for digital marketers, CEOs, and social media managers.

Identifying the potentially poor use of time can be useful if you have employees or virtual assistants whom you pay by the hour. You can determine when they're supposed to be working and all they have to do is check in and keep track of which tasks they're working on.

The desktop and mobile app make it so you or your employees can easily track their tasks and time no matter where they are.

In Conclusion

I already mentioned TimeDoctor before, I love it. This is another feature I love about the software. It tries to keep track of my productivity and reminds me if I've been spending time on websites that could be time wasters. See screenshot above for an example of a report of possible time spent poorly.

I use it for myself, and you should too. But if I had virtual assistants or employees, I would use Time Doctor as my timesheet software for the entire team. I love this feature and the screenshot feature --which I'll cover in another blog post.

If you want to check out Time Doctor, visit here to start a free trial. I really recommend it and can't speak more highly of it.

The post Are You Using Your Time Poorly? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Quickly I can put whatever song I want. The playlists are great, the social component is good and allows me to hear what some of my friends are listening to.

Their own discovery feature is good too and the curated playlists are some of the best I've come across.

So why did I quit Spotify?

I quit paying for Spotify because I'm on a mission to increase my productivity. I want to make 2018 be the year I kill it like no other year.

I'm making a lot of shifts in my life. Starting with my time management using Time Doctor. I will also be implementing the stuff taught on: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. -- Currently, my house & office is a disaster, almost worthy of a show of hoarders, almost.

But I have been paying attention to my habits when I'm on my computer. One of the bad habits is constantly checking FB or Twitter, just to see what's up. I'm already changing that, I cut back a lot of time I spend on there.

Another bad habit I have is trying to find something to play on the background while I work. Sometimes I feel it may even be an excuse to not get to the stuff I really need to work on.

Needless to say, this is a huge timesink because I end up spending a lot of time on Spotify looking for "just the right song."

Sometimes I'll do the same on Youtube, looking through my "watch later" playlist hoping to find something I can play in the background while I blog or try to complete another work-related task.

So while I was at Affiliate Summit I was talking to Stephan Spencer and he recommended Focus @ Will. Focus @ will is a music service specifically designed to help you focus.

I'm trying it now and it's awesome, the trial is free for two weeks, then it's the same price as Spotify. Actually is five cents cheaper.

Cheaper and Better

I' don't feel like spending money on two services which are intended to do the same thing for me. So I'm opting for Focus @ Will only for now since it has the benefit of helping me focus and get more stuff done.

I've already been testing it and it works. My trial will expire soon and I intend to keep the service.

The free ad-supported version of Spotify will have to suffice for the other times where I just need the music for the kids or for entertainment.

If you're looking to step up your game and want to have something play in the background, something that actually helps you instead of distracting you then give Focus @ Will a try. It's free to try.

The post I Quit Spotify. You Should Too If You Want to Get More Done appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

He wanted to know if there was a way to share an Excel spreadsheet so both could work at the same time without disrupting each other's work, and without having to email it to each other or dealing with accessing it from a shared hard drive.

He didn't want to have to email it to each other whenever they made a change. That is just a nightmare and so 2002.

I was a bit taken aback because I thought everybody knew about the solution for this by now. But apparently I was wrong, I told him I had the solution for this, but I still wanted to hear his requirements. I think this answer might help you as well.

I listened to all the requirements he told me. I wanted to make sure that I wasn't missing anything and he didn't need anything too robust like a proper MySQL or NoSQL database. He didn't; he's in real estate and just needed to track stats and properties related to the business.

He wanted something just like his Excel spreadsheet, but better.

The clear-cut answer was to move the Excel spreadsheet to Google Sheets. Google Sheets is part of the Google Docs suite and it does most (arguably, everything) you need to do with Excel, and it does it better.

But can I run some formulas if I need to? He asked...

Of course, you can run formulas. Complex ones, simple ones and if you have the chops or have some patience doing some web searches, you can even program very fancy scripts.

For example, there is the Content Strategy Helper worksheet by Builtvisible. Where you can plug in a search query and it will do a bunch of magic for you to enhance your research and SEO. To use it, you go to the Google spreadsheet they have, you make a copy to your own Google docs and you can start using it.

Another much simpler example is one spreadsheet I use where each of the sheets has a list of locations where my articles or videos might be shared. Each sheet contains network locations, for example: Facebook groups or facebook pages, Google+ profiles and groups, Twitter, Tumblr, Stumbleupon, things like that.

Then I have one more sheet where I use a simple formula to bring all those locations from each sheet into one new column in a document. I use this as an activity log to make sure I have shared my content out for maximum exposure. Think of it like a checklist for promotional purposes.

I have seen complex financial models, simple budgets, and all sorts of things done with Google Sheets. Sheets become even more powerful when you realize that they usually play nice with other Google tools, like Google maps, Google Documents (like Word). And you can also create forms to capture data that goes directly into the spreadsheets. Think surveys, questionnaires, RSVPs, etc.

Needless to say, my friend was happy with the answer because he didn't realize that you could share a spreadsheet in real time with other users and that it would all be backed up in real time, safely and securely.

My buddy also didn't know that you could run formulas as complex as you can in Excel, you can run charts, reports and more.

I have been using Google Docs since they came out. I have my reservations about Google's use of their political and economic power, but their products are unparalleled.

I don't know why many people think that Google Sheets is not as powerful as Excel. Maybe it's just the group of diehard Excel users that have been using it for their entire career and somehow think that Google sheets "just can't do that."

From having to use both and from having to teach people to use both and support both, I can tell you that Google sheets is as powerful and capable --if not more-- than Excel.

If you want to use it for a business and get support and a few more security features, you just need to get a G Suite account, previously known as Google for Business, here's a link to a free trial.

But if you just want to use it for yourself and a couple of business partners, family or friends, then you just need to go to your Google Drive when you log in to your Gmail account. You do know you have a free amount of storage with Google Drive included with your Gmail account... right?

The post If You Want Excel Spreadsheets but Need Something Better appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

"Know Thyself" would say Plato.

So... do you know what you're good at? What about what you're not so good at?

For me, it's time management and time commitments. I say yes to a lot of projects, then I end up having way too many things on my plate. This leads me to have a lot of stuff that clutters my mind and keeps me bouncing from one thing to another until I burn out.

Then I fire off a quick Youtube video to take a break, next thing you know, several hours have passed. It's easy to go down the rabbit hole of distractions online, then you look, and it's bed time! And a lot of stuff is still pending.

Where did all the time go? Can't you relate?

You still haven't started your online business, or you didn't start that campaign you wanted, or you didn't call your mother, and you still have laundry to do, and the oil change is overdue.

The list goes on.

Time is our most precious commodity. Not only is it gone once it passes, but we as humans don't know how much we have left.

No judgment here!

I'm not going to judge you if you like to binge-watch the latest in Netflix. I watched Stranger Things in one night. A dirty little secret is that I watched the entire remake of Battlestar Galactica in about 2 weeks a couple of years back.

So believe me I'm nobody to judge you on how you procrastinate!

But I do have something that will change everything for you. Something that can fix your productivity and time management woes.

As long as you use this tool, you will see an improvement in how you allocate your time. This is the app of the week and part of the spotlight feature series.

The app is called Time Doctor. I first started using it several years ago when my buddy Syed Balkhi recommended it as a way to manage productivity better.

Time Doctor tracks, it measures and holds you accountable

It's an app, you install it, and it tracks what you're working on. It keeps track of time, and it helps you stay focused on what you're supposed to be working. Its strength is on the desktop but it also works on your mobile device.

It holds you accountable, and it helps you measure your time. It's a godsend for freelancers, bloggers, social media geeks and anybody that needs to keep track of time spent on projects.

It is especially useful for companies that want to or need to give their employees a strong time-tracking tool. I'd venture to say that it is the strongest tool I've tried in its category. Better than Harvest, better than Freshbooks, and I looove Freshbooks.

But Time Doctor is also great if you just want to improve your time allocation and prioritization, or learn more about yourself. Here's a quick overview of the strongest features:

It gives you beautiful reports and graphs and points out where you've mismanaged your time. If you say you're working on a report, but click over to Facebook or Youtube, it will pop up a gentle question:

"Are you still working on that report?"

Just to remind you that you said you'd be working on it...

Time Doctor is awesome. It works for you, and it works for teams if you have one, check it out here and start using it, plans start at $5.00 and they have a limited version for free too. You can thank me later (or now by leaving a comment below).

Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention that Time Doctor integrates with your favorite project management and accounting tools.

It integrates with the tools you already use, like Basecamp, Slack, Quickbooks, Zendesk, Asana and many more.

Visit Time Doctor to learn more or try it out for yourself.

The post Are You in Control of Your Time and Productivity? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I have worked with hundreds of people over the past few years. In the process of building a sales funnel, or a website or working on their email marketing, I get access to their usernames and passwords.

And I see a problem that has been happening since 1999 when I first worked on a client account. Chances are this applies to you at least to some degree.
Back in 2005 my identity was stolen. It wasn't stolen digitally, but the process of recovering it and cleaning it up sucked. And it sucked up a big portion out of 3+ years of my life with weekly and monthly calls with police and creditors and debtors and all that fun stuff.
10 years later, now everybody that does anything online faces the same risk of identity theft. Please take this seriously and read on...

First of all, when you are working with a 3rd party, you must change your usernames and passwords for all accounts that were shared as soon as that assignment or engagement is over. That includes, developers, designers, "wordpress pople," "seo people," or whoever.

So if your developer finishes your website and gives it to you on Monday, the 1st of the month, then before that day is over, you should have already changed all the usernames and passwords related to that project.

Unless of course the developer will continue working or accessing the site for additional work, but that should go unsaid.

You should change all the passwords, not because you're afraid of your developer or wordpress person or whoever it may be, but because you want to make sure you're protected. You don't know if their systems are secure.

What if you shared the username and password with them via email, or chat, or skype, and someone is snooping around their computer? Now your security is at risk!

This is not a big problem if you just share one account. Maybe it's just the Aweber account or your cPanel account. You think it's not a big deal, that's just the email list account.

But it could be a really big problem and let me explain why.

Don't share passwords with other accounts!

Now that I told you to change passwords after anyone else besides you works on your accounts, the next thing you need to do is make sure your passwords are unique to each account.

So what if someone finds out that your Aweber password is "snoopy123"? Who cares, you think?

By the way, that is an actual password someone I worked with was using (for all their accounts). Well, most people that use weak passwords, also tend to use one password, or a few different passwords for ALL their accounts.

That's the other big problem. You should not do share passwords with multiple accounts. The reason should become obvious really soon --if it wasn't already.

Here's the setting:

The post Keeping your Online Activities Safe appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

If you have LastPass Premium, and a late model Android then you have a featured called App Fill. With app fill, LastPass will autofill in your usernames and passwords when you try to login to an app like Twitter, or Instagram, or Netflix, or whatever.

This is similar to how LastPass works on the browser, except it works with your mobile apps on Android.

But sometimes we goof it up or we have fat fingers and It seems that Lastpass autofill is broken.

If you don't have the app fill option and you always have to copy and paste your username and password, I recommend you get LastPass Premium which is only $12 per year. You get tougher security like two-factor authentication and mobile integration amongst other things.

At one point when switching between Instagram accounts I accidentally told LastPass NOT to prompt me anymore. This meant that whenever I logged out of Instagram I would have to manually go and find my password for the other account I wanted to use.

This is a major PITA and it defeats the whole purpose of using LastPass. If you find yourself in the same boat as I did, then this is how you fix it.

Re-Associate LastPass app fill with your app

Here is how you can associate LastPass with an app after you accidentally or deliberately told Lastpass not to prompt you.

1. Open up LastPass, and on the top left corner click on the menu slider. I can't show you screenshots of everything because LastPass doesn't allow screenshots of any of its screens.
2. Once you open that up, at the bottom you'll see the cogwheel icon and settings menu, click on that.
3. The 3rd option down the list is labeled "App Fill," click on that.
4. Then look for the option to "Edit app fill settings" and click on that.
5. Search for the app you want to associate with LastPass, in my case, it was Instagram.
6. Click on the app, then you will see two boxes. To add the association make sure "Show fill helper" is checked, then click ok.

After you do this and you get back to your app, LastPass should come up at the login screen and try to help you fill in username and password. No more copying and pasting.

The post How To Fix Autofill on LastPass Mobile appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

So I went to check up on that feature and see if my followers had changed and that's when I found about the new name for Statigram. Iconosquare is an interesting name.

Their blogpost calls for a growth in features and service focus as the reason for the new name. I am not totally in love with the name, but I hope they continue to give us amazing tools.

Update: Later on I found out that Instagram changed their TOS for their API and developers and apps apparently aren't allowed to use "gram" in their name. This makes sense and explains why Statigram and other Instagram apps have changed their name.

Finding out where your Instgram followers come from is one of the things that helps to see if you're attracting the right crowd. At least for business, it is important to try to target the right followers geographically.

Another thing I noticed about Iconosquare in one of their newsletters was this:

I am definitely looking forward to testing out the connection with Hootsuite to see what is available to help manage accounts on Instagram. Currently I only manage 3 accounts but I'm starting to get more and more inquiries about doing Instagram account management. We'll see how that goes.

Besides giving you an idea of where your Instagram followers come from, Iconosquare gives you "snapshots" which are tiny infographics that give you stats about your account.

The infographics that Iconosquare gives you these infographics or snapshots:

Infographic for Profile Stuff

• The most liked picture in your account
• Your most used, or presumably your favorite filter
• The percentage of pictures and video you post with filters
• Total media posted
• How many likes you have given out
• How many followers you have

The Location infographic shows where most of your followers come from and a breakdown of the next four spots along with a map that shows hot-spots. There is one iconographic that shows your favorite Igers and a count of how many likes you've given them.

The last three aim at the achievements part of your Instagram experience by showing you the first post you made on instagram, one graphic that shows your three "firsts": The first post you made, the first Iger that you followed, and the first Iger that followed you. Then there is your most liked post.

Overall, Statigram, er Iconosquare continues to be one of my favorite Instagram app and you should check it out if you want to manage your Instagram account better.

The post Statigram is now Iconosquare appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Did you know you can add apps to Gmail? Well, if you didn't know now you know. You can in fact add apps to Gmail. The two I use the most are Rapportive and Streak.

Today I'm telling you about Streak. Streak is a CRM that sits on top of Gmail and it helps you manage your conversations. It's a CRM component that enhances Gmail. Find it at Streak.com

The way that it works is simple and it is better explained in video but I'll do my best at explaining it on text as well. When you decide to track the activity with one person or project, you can create a box that will hold notes, emails and other relevant activity.

You can review that activity at anytime, and this object, the box, can be moved along a sales funnel or recruiting funnel or any kind of funnel you want. Streak calls them pipelines. Enough of me talking, why don't you just watch the video. It'll make more sense.

You can find more about them at Streak.com and two features I want to highlight that you'll love about this app is the email tracking feature and the schedule for later feature. Really killer, really useful for running businesses online.

The post Streak, a CRM for Gmail Quick Video Tour appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Update: Bitcasa is in my shitlist, and that's a very short list.

I generally turn off notifications and updates for things like this but usually they show up when you startup the app like after a reboot.

The one update I really want to share with you is a Bitcasa update. I am very excited about this update because they finally have added bandwidth throttling. Bandwidth throttling means that you can control how much of your internet connection you allow Bitcasa to use.

This is important if you want to use your internet and don’t want Bitcasa to take over and slow down your other internet applications, Gmail, Youtube, Netflix, etc. Prior to this update, it was a real problem using Bitcasa.

It had two modes of operation. Off mode and take-over-your-computer mode. It is nice that they finally improved that and gave us a little bit of control. Also, before, if I wanted to turn Bitcasa off, I could never really quit Bitcasa properly. I had to force-quit it or start up a terminal and use some special commands to forcefully kill the program.

But things seem to be improving in the development of the app. So why don’t I introduce you to Bitcasa. And I'll try to show you some of the features in a few blogposts and videos.

If you're not familiar with Bitcasa, let me tell you about it really quick because it may be interesting to you. Just like Dropbox, Sugarsync, iCloud and other services out there, Bitcasa lets you store your files on the cloud. Their unique proposition is that they offer unlimited storage space for a flat fee. You can synchronize your local folders (like a backup), or you can upload files that live only in the cloud.

The most attractive features are their "infinite storage" and backing up your files including external hard-drives.

If you’re interested in checking it out, head over to Bitcasa now and let me know what you think. I am hesitant to say that they are ready for prime time, but I think they're ready for me to tell you about them.

Here are some screenshots of the upgrade process and I’ve made some comments some of them. I’ve been hesitant to write a review about this because they have been slow at fixing some things and the experience of using Bitcasa can be really frustrating. I didn't want to tell you about it until they fixed certain things. If I had written a review before, it would have been mostly negative and you know what they say...

Screenshot-2014-05-04-11.27.19(2) Screenshot-2014-05-04-11.27.41 Screenshot-2014-05-04-11.28.12 Screenshot-2014-05-04-11.28.34 Screenshot-2014-05-04-11.28.55 Screenshot-2014-05-04-11.29.09 Screenshot-2014-05-04-11.29.14 Screenshot-2014-05-04-11.33.13 Screenshot-2014-05-04-11.33.18 Screenshot-2014-05-04-11.33.24 Screenshot-2014-05-04-11.33.30 Screenshot-2014-05-04-11.33.47 Screenshot-2014-05-04-11.33.56 Screenshot-2014-05-04-11.35.17 Screenshot-2014-05-04-11.37.54 Screenshot-2014-05-04-11.35.27 Screenshot-2014-05-04-11.38.15 Screenshot-2014-05-04-11.38.31 Screenshot-2014-05-04-11.38.42 Screenshot-2014-05-04-11.38.52 Screenshot-2014-05-04-12.39.25

The post Bitcasa Updates client, Finally ads Bandwidth Throttling appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

This is the second article in a series of posts to help you get more out of the internet. The previous article was about Evernote.

Just like Evernote, Dropbox is easy to use and jam-packed with functionality and utility. Dropbox is an app that stores your files in the cloud and synchronizes it across all your devices. It is safe and secure from prying eyes because the files are stored with a high level of encryption. Due to its nature Dropbox works best with a high-speed internet connection.

But it's not just storage.

In addition to saving your files and making them available on your iPhone or iPad and your computers, Dropbox lets you share any file or folder in your account with anyone. You can share a file privately via email, or publicly by using a public link. When you send someone access to your file or a folder via email, only you and them can see and access the files or folders and you can revoke the permissions at any time. Sharing a file publicly lets you post it to Twitter, or Facebook or even your blog.

I use the sharing feature all the time to share picture folders with friends and family and I also collaborate with clients in various projects using shared folders. Instead of having to email each other new files or edited files, we just put the files into a shared folders. If more people become involved with the project then we simply give them permissions to access the folder. It's quick and easy.

Ok, this sounds great but how much is it?

Drobpox just like many of today's apps and services operates on a freemium model. The app offers a free version that works for most people. You get 2 gigabytes (GB) for free just for signing up.

After you sign up, you can earn more storage by sharing the app with your friends or family and by completing basic tasks like connecting your mobile device, uploading pictures to your account. From time to time Dropbox will offer special promotions to increase your storage even more. I currently have about 64GB of storage for free.

If the free version isn't enough for you, the Pro version offers three plans, 100 GB, 200 GB and 500 GB at a cost about $1 per GB/year. Dropbox also offers a solution for teams or companies where you can buy 1TB of storage for up to 5 people. In the business plan, additional users are $125/year and if you use all the initial terabyte of space, they'll increase it at no charge, making the business plan a virtually unlimited storage plan.

I can only assume and predict that prices will drop overtime as storage becomes cheaper and cheaper in the next year or two. But at $500/year for 500GB it is still a bit pricey if you compare it to your run of the mill local hard drive. So the convenience of having your files accessible from your phone, or laptop and desktop is what make Dropbox so attractive.

Why do you need it?

If you ever find yourself emailing files to yourself just so you can get them from your laptop or a friend's computer then you may need Dropbox. I use it daily and it is extremely useful. I move a lot between my desktop and my laptop because I work from home and various locations. I need flexibility, but I also need my files. So I have a folder in Dropbox where I keep all my current work; that way my files are available on my laptop when I go somewhere. I also have the app installed on my iPad and on my Galaxy S4 so if I need to read a document quickly I can do it without having to get to my desktop or open up my laptop.

You need Dropbox if you want to be more efficient and if you want to leverage the technology that is currently available. You can get pretty creative on how you use Dropbox, I use it daily for many different cases. There is even a way to have a website built with Dropbox, but I'll leave that for another post. But I can think of three ways I use Dropbox on a regular basis.

Here are a few use cases

As a Blogger

I can use Drop box to gather photos, and save notes or reading material to have handy at any time. Dropbox has a photo uploader feature that lets you automatically save your photos from your phone to your account. That way you can attend an event, or location that you want to blog about, take pictures and by the time you sit down to write about your experience your photos will be available for you to edit, upload and post on your blog. No messing with cables or memory cards and memory card readers, etcetera.

Sales 

If you are in sales, you can keep your brochures and sales documents in a folder that is easy to access from wherever you are. You can have videos, photos, audio or PDF files there easy to show a potential client at a moment's notice.

Real estate professionals

Dropbox is ideal for realtors and real estate teams. While somebody is out in the field taking pictures and saving them to a shared Dropbox folder, somebody else in the office can get to work on the marketing materials for the property. Or if the agent is out with the client and somehow forgets a document, an assistant or team partner can put the document into the Dropbox folder and it would be available for the agent in the field in just a couple minutes, easier and more reliable than sending email.

Photographers

If you are a photographer and like to share your photos in Instagram, or Twitter, Dropbox is for you. You can take your photos with your nice camera, then save them to your Dropbox account. They'll be available to share via Instagram or Twitter or 500px. This lets you share your photos in social media networks without having to compromise the quality of your photos. As an extra bonus, Drobpox has a nice system to view photos online so you can browse through your photos, create galleries and generally manage your photos through the Dropbox system.

Webmasters, programmers and other techies

The geeky side of me also uses Dropbox to save configuration files for several applications I use. This is how that works. I use a program that connects to people's websites via FTP (I'll spare you the geeky details), all the website information is saved in the program and I have dozens of them. Instead of having to re save all the information on my laptop and having to update it any time it changes between my desktop and laptop, I have moved the configuration file for this app to a Dropbox folder so that any changes I make are automatically available on my desktop and my laptop.

It plays nice with other apps. Dropbox has a really nice developer program so that other people developing apps can enhance its functionality. One of my favorite third party services that interacts with Dropbox is If This Then That (IFTTT). I can have IFTTT automatically save any photo that someone tagged me in facebook to my Dropbox for example. I could also have photos I post to instagram automatically be saved to Dropbox for backup purposes.

In conclusion

Using Dropbox requires no special skill. In order for you to use Dropbpox, simply install it and then start saving stuff to your new folder, just like any other folder. This automatically makes the folder and files available online via a web browser, or on any other computer that you install Dropbox. Install the mobile app for iOS, or Android and you'll have your files available there as well. Windows phones used to have a Drobpox app but it is no longer updated or published.

Dropbox is one of my favorite apps and I consider it a must have for anyone trying to wrangle the interwebs. It will save you time, headaches and make your life generally easier. All you have to do is use it and take advantage of it. You can download it here.

If you are already using Dropbox, how do you use it?

The post Access your files anywhere with Dropbox appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

As I mentioned on a previous post, many companies have an affiliate program. This means that you have a good chance of making some extra cash if you try to use an affiliate program on your blog.

Apple has an affiliate program for iTunes content. You can sign up to be an Apple iTunes affiliate by applying here.

That means you can promote apps, music videos, Television shows, Movies and other paid content available on iTunes.

Maybe you like to review books, or movies or music. You could add some of the affiliate links about the content you review or write about. Using these links on you blog or website will pay you money when clicked on.

I've never promoted this before so I can't tell you how they have worked for me, but I just applied so I will keep you updated when I my application is approved or denied.

Something I noticed is that they seem to be active and keep you can read their page of affiliate resources. Looks like a good tool for new iTunes affiliates. You'll find link generators, banner generators and even an RSS generator.

The post iTunes affiliate program. Did you know they had one? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

In case you aren't using Dropbox, you should be. Check out what they just gave me:

Pretty sweet! This brings my total of FREE dropbox space to 65.75 Gigs.

You may be wondering why I rave about Dropbox? Well, it's free for one! Two, their customer experience and perks are awesome. Who else gives you almost 70GB of free cloud storage? But beyond that, it is so useful and practical that I use it everyday several times a day. Here are some of my favorite uses for dropbox.

• Automatically saves my photos from my phone to my other devices, iPad, desktop and laptop.
• Allows me to share any file or folder with anyone, instantly.
• Can help me get a prior version of a file. In case I accidentally erased part of a document or botched up a picture or something.
• Acts as a backup and cloud storage for my most important files.
• I use it to get photos and post them to Instagram, even when I took the photos with my DSLR.

Each one of those bullet points could probably have its own blogpost but let's just say for now that you should be using Dropbox and if you aren't, well, I don't know what to tell ya. You just don't get it.

If you want to give it a try, visit Dropbox and get a free account today.

The post Dropbox just gave me almost 50 GB of free storage. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Living in Irvine gives me an insight into the culture that we have, and I know most people have smart phones so this is a great move. You can use the phone to find and connect you different places. You can email or call the police officers in charge of the different high schools around town. If you're social and want to go out and mingle with other city dwellers you'll find a cool section that shows you events coming up so you can join.

One thing that I thought was really interesting is the crime tip tool. You can actually report a non-emergency crime directly from your phone. That's pretty neat, you can just send and alert to IPD if you see a crime taking place and you don't even have to dial the police department or 911. Though you're still reminded to call 911 if there is an emergency. Something that was a bit unexpected for me,  is the "Teen Events" and "Youth Action Team" social media icons, in fact there's a whole section related to Teens and I just found that odd. Why isn't there a "seniors" section, or "entrepreneurs"? Perhaps Teens is the demographic that the Irvine Company determined is using mobile devices with these kinds of apps.

I got the app as soon as I heard about it and I like it. It's a bit rough around the edges when it comes to design. The functionality of the app although  limited, is well done. The icons and menus make sense and you are able to do what you are being offered. The app hasn't crashed on me or given me any problems. If you want to try it yourself, just head to your respective markets and Download for Android, or Download for iOS.

At last, a few screenshots of the app to give you a better idea of what it looks like. So far it's been great and you should get it if you live in the area. I'm guessing that cities like Costa Mesa, or Tustin, Newport or even south of Irvine will start their own apps soon, especially if enough people download and use the Access Irvine app.

09facilities-description-irvine 08email-call-emergency 07school-resources-irvine 06teens-section-irvine 05irvine-city-events 04-police-crime-social 03-irvine-parks-facilities 02report-crime-screen 01city-of-irvine-app

The post Access Irvine, The City of Irvine’s First Mobile App appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Ifttt is similar to other services like Yahoo Pipes, or Tarpipe; it takes a source of content and sends it to a destination. The source can be an email, RSS, SMS, Facebook, Read it Later or others. The destination can be Twitter, email, a phone call, a blogpost or others.

A common use of such a tool is, for example, taking a blogpost and automatically sharing it on Twitter; that's an easy example. Using what you call tasks, ifttt can do much more than just retweet your blogposts. It can save a picture you've shared on Instagram and upload it to Facebook. Maybe you want to change your Twitter profile picture when you update your profile photo on Facebook; yes, ifttt.com can do that for you.

So for my SMMOC friends and collegues, here's a brief video introduction to IFTTT.com. The video should give you a good overview of what you can do and how simple it is to use.

The post Introduction to ifttt.com for #SMMOC appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

If you didn't know about Formulists, it doesn't matter much now, but I'll give you a quick rundown.

Formulists was a tool to help you manage Twitter lists. You could create lists based on certain parameters and then Formulists would keep those lists up-to-date. For example, a list of people that often talk to you directly.

The service never really worked for me because you had to constantly keep logging into it, and the time it was supposed to save me by making my lists was instead taken up by me having to log into the service.

Maybe this is part of why they didn't succeed. But I wish the team the best, and like they said in their goodbye blogpost, I'm sure they've learned a lot of good lessons along the way. Every failure is a true success if you learn and adjust. It is rumored that Henry Ford failed at least three times before FORD motors was born. Imagine if he had given up at the first or second try!

Good luck to Formulists, it was nice to know ya.

For those of you that want to find something that can help you with Twitter lists, take a look at SocialBro. Even though it isn't automatic, it can help you dial in a group of people and easily add them to your lists.

The post Formulists for Twitter is Going Away appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

If you're looking for MySQL GUI tools, you might want to take a look at MySQL Workbench.

MySQL Workbench lets you Develop, Model and Administer MySQL instances from a GUI interface. You can point and click through almost anything you need. For somethings, there is nothing like the command line but these tools are getting better each time.

MySQL Utilities Workbench Scripting Shell Setup New Connection MySQL Workbench

The images above are from MySQL Workbench for OS X. Workbench is available for Windows, Mac & Linux.

The post MySQL Workbench, GUI for MySQL appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Install as usual, then after installation you'll have a new icon on the bottom right hand corner of your Firefox browser. From there, you can choose to do a screen cap of just a section, or the entire site, or just certain viewable space on the web page.

In the settings of the addon you can pick other preferences like taking screenshots in jpg instead of png and whether you want the timestamp as part of the file name.

Partial screenshot of a sample website, ideal to do a website review. pop-surrealism-full-screenshot screengrab-after-installation screengrab-menu-save Screengrab-Settings

Simple, useful and very straight forward. I often use this instead of Skitch because it allows me to save a full website into an image with JPG or PNG option. This is very handy when I have to show the full view of a webpage to a client. I often use this also for initial consultations with a client in order to annotate changes that need to be made to their website. In the case that we're doing a critique or consultation, I take a full screenshot with screengrab, then I open the image with Skitch to annotate.

Go and get Screengrab for Firefox right here.

The post Screengrab by Andy M, an addon for Firefox appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

If you use both of these apps, you might want to synchronize your Skitch screen captures with your Dropbox files. It is rather simple to do this but you need to do this from the command line. Full instructions are available at the Tips and Tricks wiki from the Dropbox guys.

The trick is to create a Skitch folder in your Dropbox directory, then you move all the necessary files and folders from their original location to this newly created folder. After you do this, you then create symlinks (shortcuts) from the original location of the files and folders to the new location in Dropbox.

On your second computer, you just need to copy your .skitch files into the new Dropbox location, delete the other locations (because they are in Dropbox), and then symlink the original locations to the Dropbox counterparts.

After you do this, each time you save a Skitch to your history, it will automatically be available in your other computer.

The post Synchronize Skitch with Dropbox and keep your screenshots everywhere appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Here's a quick way to fix it using Firefox and an extension called Firebug. Check out the video and let me know if you have any questions about it.

The post Tarpipe editor window fix appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

This expands on that previous video where I show you how to use Tarpipe with Twitter and Flickr. It is improved by using a custom message for Twitter and a URL shortener like Bit.ly.

The post Tarpipe, Flickr & Twitter workflow improved. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.