June 17, 2009
My brother Josh is 47. He’s always wanted to be married, never gave up on his dream, just never met the right person until he found Michael Chandler … a wonderful woman and fellow journalist (he at the LA Times/Tribune, she at the Washington Post).
I am thrilled beyond belief that they have found each other and welcome Michael to our family with open arms – she ROCKS!! We don’t know when the wedding will be but it can’t come soon enough.
What are YOU doing to follow your dream??

Josh & Michael's Official Engagement (self) Photo
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Family, Getting Started, In The Trenches, Josh, Partnering 101, People | Tagged: engagement, Family, josh meyer, life, michael chandler, persistence |
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Posted by Melinda
April 23, 2009
Chris Brogan posted some great content today about helping to win over the skeptics and get your Social Media agenda greenlighted.

Adoption, and willingness to invest in new social media-oriented programs, is ramping up slowly, too slowly for me and the projects I’m trying to get off the ground.
I bet many of you are having the same issues.
In an effort to get the corporate sponsorship and commitment required to “green light” SM projects, you need additional resources … ideas, tools and examples of successful SM implementations.
How do you find your champions and equip your mission to be successful?
In my book, proven success stories and shared best practices are some of the surest ways to communicate potential and win over the skeptics. There’s a boatload of both in Chris’s post, “Get on the right side of the Fence”.
Read it here
photo credit: ScottieT812
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Blogging, Companies, HowTo, In The Trenches, Partnering 101, Social Media, Wordpress, collaboration, tools |
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Posted by Melinda
April 1, 2009
Awareness Networks today unveiled the concept of “grugging” which is short for grunt-blogging.
Grugging returns the act of communication to a more primal level and requires the user express all they need to say with monosyllabic expressions.

Continuing on this trend, Awareness unveiled the concept of “grugging” which is short for grunt-blogging. Grugging returns the act of communication to a more primal level and requires the user express all they need to say with monosyllabic expressions. “If you look are today’s culture you will see we still find ourselves communicating in that primal way,” Carter explains. “As an example, Johnny Depp brought resurgence in the expression ‘Aargh’, in his role as Captain Jack Sparrow. Just the other day, I wanted to let a colleague know I did not find any value in his ideas so simply stated ‘Duh!’.
Grugging is ideal for communicating in a downward economy as it is more concise, efficient and cost-effective. “People are having difficulty finding an ROI in more cumbersome forms of communication. In today’s economy, we have to do more with less.”, said Mike Lewis VP of Marketing at Awareness. In a private press briefing, journalists found themselves agreeing or disagreeing with the new product by simply stating “ahh” or “huh?”
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In The Trenches |
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Posted by Melinda
March 31, 2009
Sandy Belknap posted a note on Facebook today (March 31) regarding the Taste of Nashua event, a fundraiser noting that even with a fairly high ticket price, the event has sold out based on word of mouth.
It is great for this first event to be sold out in advance. To me it is just amazing that the tickets were primarily sold person 2 person by the network of people who are on the board. The publicity is helpful to use to draw sponsors for future events, but it proves that 1:1 connections with our community(ies) is far more impactful than a bunch of media updates and ads.
About the Taste of Downtown Nashua event
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In The Trenches |
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Posted by Melinda
March 25, 2009
Web Analytics Tips & Tricks: Using Google Analytics to Create an Optimization Plan (posted Tuesday, March 24, 2009 on Google Analytics Blog. Click link for full article)
Let’s face it, your website is never really finished. Testing pages is an inexpensive way to manage a constantly shifting audience and market. It’s great for:
- Increasing ROI on your advertising
- Teaching you about the likes and dislikes of your customers
- Trying out alternatives used by competitors
- Breaking down preconceptions about what works
- Convincing a stubborn boss to try something new
What and where to test?
So where do you start? First you need a goal. What do you want users on your site to do? Complete a form, buy something, sign up for a newsletter? Without a goal, it’s difficult to optimize, so you should be sure to define one if you haven’t already.
Once you have a goal, you can use Google Analytics to identify those pages that are having the biggest negative impact on the total number of people “converting,” or achieving that goal. These are the pages to test.

Top landing pages report
(Content > Top Landing Pages)
This report gives you instant insight in how well (or poorly) your landing pages are performing. You want to find pages that have both high “entrances” and a high “bounce rate.” These pages are costing you a lot of visitors.
Goal visualization report
(Goals > Funnel Visualization)
The funnel visualization in Google Analytics shows you where people leave during your buying process. For example, the below report shows that 40% of the 200 potential buyers left during “Step X” in the checkout process. Average order value is $100. This means the merchant is losing up to $8,000 in revenue every month due to “Step X.”
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Adding Value, Aggregators, Analytics, Blogging, Google, HowTo, Partnering 101, Social Media, Social Media & Marketing, Tips & Tricks, technology |
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Posted by Melinda