This is the first in a new series about business strategy choices we’ve made at Synap Software and how they work out. Most of these decisions are applicable to any company or startup, not only software vendors. In an old blog post I wrote a long list of what I [...]

Every interview in Jessica Livingston’s Founders at Work is full of interesting perspectives from successful people who had no guarantees when they started and probably claim to have no secrets of success. This is not a “success” book or a “how to” book, but simply an interesting book. Yet a read between-the-lines exposes [...]

Google’s Webmaster Tools
I regularly do analysis on this blog’s top search phrases as reported on the Google Webmaster Tools “Top Search Queries” report for SynapSoftware.com. I look for patterns such as how much, if any, impact does the post title, post word count, frequency of search terms, outbound links, inbound links, and other items [...]

_ Title uses common words. For example, I have Google rank #3 on “Capture Leads from a Website”. I wish I had written it as “Get Leads from my website” or something with more common wording. I would have been competing with 22 million results vs. just 9 milliong for “Capture Leads…”, [...]

Our work thrives on contact and feedback from users so I have four ways for people to contact us. If you are considering adding contact methods, here is my anecdotal experience of what contact methods are most popular and two questions for you.
In order of most used contact method to least used contact method [...]

We have several articles showing you how to use RSS and Digg and other tools to publicize your blog and to make it as easy as possible for people to find you – obviously and important part of your small business marketing plan.
Here’s another quick tip. Use FeedBurner (you are using FeedBurner, right?) and [...]

If you have not yet checked out AddThis.com, take a look. Addthis is self-described as “Simple and recognizable widgets to help your visitors save and promote your website or blog to the social bookmarking and feed reader services!”.
I would have just said that you can replace this:

with this:

When someone clicks the “Bookmark” button, they [...]

I received a note from Barry Hess at Scrawlers reminding me that I signed up for a Scrawlers account, but had yet not logged in. (Scrawlers “embraces constraints” through stories of 100 words or less). I promptly signed in and posted my first three lines to Scrawlers that afternoon.
That email was a [...]

Saturday is St. Patrick’s Day! Take a break from micro-isv, lead management, or small business marketing work this weekend and enjoy it. Looking for a new angle besides green beer? Check out Patrick McKenzie’s free trial of Bingo Card Creator for this and other occasions as well as his collection of ready [...]

It’s all the little things. For example, while other people are buying extra laptop cord wraps and ties, MacBooks have one built right into the power supply. Simply flip in the outlet prongs, flip out the wrap feet, wrap the cord, and you have it nice and neat and ready to go. [...]