Turnaround King – Outstanding Case Studies on Business

At Blackball Online Marketing we always try to share information we think valuable for your business. While channel surfing on the good old local cable network this past weekend, I came across a show which I feel is a homerun. The Turnaround King is about a business specialist who analyzes businesses that have either gone astray or lack direction or focus and have fallen on hard times.

Nat Geo's Turnaround King - Grant Cardone

I have always been a fan of preventive maintenance. It takes a lot less energy to maintain and sharpen business practices and worker’s skills than it does to retrain or hire new ones. The tips offered by Grant Cardone are solid fundamental advice for any business including ours, which is what drew my attention in the first place.

The tagline on the National Geographic Channel reads “Sales expert Grant Cardone helps struggling businesses turn things around and get back on their feet by giving the business owners the tools for success.”  The two pilot episodes are amazing to watch as I can see many small businesses falling into the same mindset as the owners featured. These problems are universal for small business which is some of the appeal.

The theme for the auto dealer episode is about small business owners who have been operating for years and have lost the ability or drive to aggressively target new opportunities and adopt new technologies. They, as small business owners, are not alone. We live in a fast paced business climate and seasoned businesses can become complacent. Here’s the video excerpt from this program.

Another episode deals with a family owned franchise of a gym. Grant offers some sage advice when the owners get caught up in competing based on price rather than selling their unique proposition; the amenities and strength of a solid training and support staff. High energy goes a long way provided it’s aimed in the right direction and Grant gives a shot in the arm to this business by offering proven methodologies and a great game plan for revitalization of the business. You can view the preview video here.

I’m already looking forward to the next episode and hopefully after reading this you are too. We are constantly seeking sound advice as we realize there are so many things that we can be better at. Are you doing the same? Need help promoting your Pittsburgh Web Design and Marketing campaigns? Contact Us.

2012 The World Ends: Will Your Facebook Page Be Ready?

Update Your Facebook Page Before The World Ends in 2012

Ok everybody, swallow hard, cause’ we all know what’s coming - Dec. 21^st, 2012 it’s the end of the world. Basically, we’re all gonna’ be toast – real soon like. I figure about a week before the grand finale it’ll be total mayhem, people loading up on Slim Jims, Red Bull, some damn good cheap booze and all kinds of other stuff to make that “last hurrah” easier to take, and lets not exclude cats and dogs living together.

This is a big day for all of us – the end of the world - lots of things to think about – or not. Me, personally, I’ll regret not getting to see the latest James Bond, which I’m sure will be due for release probably on Dec.22^th 2012. That’ll be just a bit too late I believe. I always dug the James Bond movie endings when it says “James Bond will return” well, this time he won’t – bummer.

I’ve only scratched the tip of the iceberg here. You get the picture. It’s not going to be peachy.

So, let’s get down to brass tacks. What’s really going to be important when the world ends on December 21^st 2012?  You know it, I know it, and just about everybody else knows it – so it’s unanimous - and that is will your Facebook page be updated and ready for the mother of all events?

You can forget everything else, even Pittsburgh Internet Marketing, and here’s why; Facebook has given us all a reason to live again by helping us magnify our most cherished and addictive subject – ourselves. But now this is all going end. These things happen.  So, since Facebook has given us the means to “embrace and extend” the ultimate importance of us, it stands to reason that when the end comes - and need I remind you it’s real soon, the only thing that’s really going to matter is us all having our Facebook pages nice and spiffy, updated and ready for the big “Check In” (or would that be “check out”). Because, when the world ends on Dec. 21^st 2012, and it isn’t on Facebook, how in the hell will anybody know?

But hey, look on the upside, everyone’s going to save money on Christmas gifts, and the best part is you can let everybody know that – on Facebook.

Like us on Facebook before the world ends, would ya. It would mean the world to us.

How To Use Google Advanced Search

Nearly 17 billion explicit core U.S. searches were conducted in January of 2011 alone. Google Sites ranked first with 11.1 billion searches. Source – comScore. It is the worldwide defacto information gathering and retrieval source. We depend on it for our day to day Pittsburgh Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization work.

Google has provided us with an even better way to retrieve information - Advanced Search. We believe that increasing your efficiency with these techniques for acquiring more targeted and therefore better information will serve you well. Whether  your looking for a favorite song from days gone by or an electrician, Advanced Search can help.

To help you explore Google’s Advanced Search we have provided links to the specific sections along the way for you to follow along and try your own Advanced Searches, so let’s get on with it.

The Google Advanced Search Link

As the image shows, navigating to the Google Homepage and looking just to the right of the Search box appears a diminutive link with a whole world of possibilities behind it. So click it. Click this Google Advanced Search Link if you don't see it on the Google homepage.

The Google Advanced Search Query Page

Google Advanced Search Options page

You should now see the above image. The Google Advanced Search interface customizes your queries to the Google Index for you. This is very powerful for refining your search to provide the most topical and relevant information. It does this by using human questions not Boolean operators, so it in effect teaches you advanced operators as you go. This is very cool and extremely powerful.

Google Advanced Search in Action – Constructing Your Query

In this section we’ll walk you through some of the advanced options and give you some insight into how to harness the power of the Advanced Search operators.  For the purpose of this post we’re going to target a topic we know well – Google Advanced Search.

Entering the search phrase Google Advanced Search into the this exact wording or phrase box adds quotation marks around the query. It’s no surprise that this effectively matches Google’s best results for the exact phrase you entered.

TIP about the Tip Links - In addition you can click any of the tip links to the right of the query boxes in Advanced Search to learn how to do advanced searches in standard search.

Google Advanced Search Screen Results

Advanced search also builds your query in the box above at the top of the Advanced Search screen. This will come in handy when we enter our custom queries into our How to use Google Alerts Post which is coming very soon.

Some other queries on the Advanced Search page are:

• Using the OR operator by selecting to enter your query into the one or more of these words query box.
• Searching without specific words using the Don’t show pages that have any of these unwanted words query box.
• Searching within a certain file type using the File Type query box can be very helpful for digging through resource material.

Additional posts on Advanced Search Operations and Operators can be found amazingly by doing an Advanced Search and selecting the Advanced reading level option.

Google Advanced Search Operations and Operators

Additional Advanced Search Options

An additional section also appears in a link at the bottom of the Advanced Search page; the date, usage rights, numeric range, and more link. See the results below when the plus sign is clicked.

Additional Date Usage Rights Numeric Range and More

We use the date option frequently to get the most current results about a given topic and excluding old and outdated information. Other helpful information resides here so it is important to mention.

Using Google Advanced Search can give you Creative and Competitive Intelligence that would have taken hours to sift through. Learning to use these free tools from Google can enhance your effectiveness at your job or speed up your personal search experience. We hope you enjoyed this post. Please leave us a comment about your own experiences with Google Advanced Search.