Month: January 2017

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It’s a Mobile First World Now

Get professional help with your website.
Get professional help with your website.

Your mission for 2017 if you want to be successful is to focus your activity on mobile. That’s mobile optimized content, advertising on mobile, newsletters that look great on mobile, and location specificity for mobile. In other words, gear up to leverage mobile activity in all you do for 2017!

AMP Pages Showing Now on Google Mobile

Earlier this week I noticed that on Google.com from my smart phone that all the results I clicked in were marked AMP that means Accelerated Mobile Page.  These pages have a super fast download and are visible instantly. But they typically do not have navigation, graphic features and do make it hard to people to dig deeper into your website.

If you are using WordPress you can use the Yoast plugin and Yoast glue for AMP pages on your site. If you are not using WordPress, you’ll need to create an AMP page for each page on your site.

Mobile Version Newsletters

Several years ago I shifted my own personal newsletter format and that of many of my clients to a mobile version. If you do not have a newsletter template that resizes to fill your smartphone screen and is stated to be mobile-friendly, in 2017 you need to embrace a change to a mobile version skin.

Location Specificity for Mobile

In early 2017 take a look at your website. Are there areas you can add more location specificity? Can you add a map with directions to your site. Can you sprinkle in more geographically specific keywords? All this helps to bump up the ability for Google to categorize your website and deliver location specific content to mobile users.

Make sure to bookmark our blog “The Web Authority” so that you can be first to know and share our tips on how to leverage mobile activity to boost your 2017 website visits.

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TeamUp Reviewed – Part Two

Our TeamUp Calendar
Our TeamUp Calendar

My uncompensated review is continued from Monday.

I have trained my team that when they complete one of the tasks that at the end they add -DONE. I have to say this has made my life much easier and has streamlined management for my social media manager.  When you are working with many remote employees who each work when they have time, you need to know when something is DONE.

Sorting
I really like the option to show TeamUp calendar by day, three days, week or month. I typically use the day and three day.

Emailing Updates
I have set my team members up to receive calendared events that have changed. I also get an email at the beginning of the day with each event that has been updated. I encourage my team to drag items they don’t finish for a day to the day they will do it on. Allowing me to identify if I have a problem with deadline slippage or team members who may need additional intervention.

Repeat Events
This is a brand new feature that suddenly got turned on in my account last week and I have to say I am now using it all the time. I can now take and event and repeat it on my schedule – certain days, certain days of the week or even monthly. This has helped me move from user to advocate.

I have to say that TeamUp is a problem solver for my team management issues and allows my manager to know what deadlines are met and not without time consuming double checks. For me, while on travel, I can know what is happening with my team with minimal intervention.

I highly recommend this free app to you to try out too. Find it online at https://teamup.com/.

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TeamUp – Reviewed Part One

Our TeamUp Calendar
Our TeamUp Calendar

TeamUp is an online group calendaring tool that I found and am now using heavily for my 6 person content creation team.  My team works remotely. We share files via Google Drive and had tried using a joint Google Calendar, but that just never seemed to have caught on with my team.

So, before I went on vacation I started looking for an easy to use, user-friendly online calendaring app to keep my team on track.

First, I do want to say that I am not being paid by team up or receive any consideration from them, I am simply a user turned advocate.

In fact I am using the free version right now although they do have a premium version and I am carefully scoping it out.

Here’s what I like and why you may want to consider using TeamUp too.

Easy to set up
I was calendaring tasks for my team in less than 10 minutes and the application was intuitive. I did not even have to read the documentation, although they do have nice videos and startup guides.

Color Coded
Each team member has their own color. I can see at a glance who has tasks to do and each team member can click their own color and see only their tasks in the group calendar.

SmartPhone App
My team has Apple phones and I have an Android one. Whatever I selected to try had to have an app available for iPhone and Android. TeamUp’s app in Android looks prettier. The Apple version looks more like a daily agenda list.

Come back Wednesday January 25th to read the rest of my review.