Oh, the number of times I have asked this simple little question.

"Have you Googled it?"

While I enjoy being considered rather smart by people I've helped through a quandary in the past, I must admit that I'm not able to divine the solution to all known things. I know, this may come as a shock to you, but often, I've been just as stumped or clueless as the person coming to me for advice.

That is, until I Googled it. (By the way, Google is indeed a recognized verb.)

There seems to be an inordinate amount of blog posts, articles, forum posts, and videos on pretty much every topic under the sun. Windows is giving you an error message? You can't remember how to get bubble gum out of carpet? You're not sure which Android app is best for taking notes? You need help proposing marriage? Trust me, it's out there.

Google is the most popular website on earth and the most used search engine for a reason. (Facebook is second.) Do you know which site comes in third? You Tube. That's right. People search for things on YouTube before they hit Yahoo! or Bing. But regardless of which search engine or website you use, they'll still find the information you're looking for!

But is it trustworthy?

There has always been a bias that information on the internet is skewed, faulty, unresearched, etc. And there can be some truth in that. But there are a lot of quacks out in the real world, too. I always encourage you look at a few websites to find solutions that seem the most accurate, up-to-date, or whatever is necessary to you, but I assure you, there is good content out there!

Side bar: Did you know that Wikipedia is more accurate that Encyclopedia Britannica?

How you can use this to your advantage!

Well, besides saving a lot of your own time and the sanity of the people you constantly beg for help, there is a way to make this work for you:

Become the person answering the questions!

Yes, the student becomes the master! One of the best advantages of social media, in my opinion, is the ability to easily broadcast what you know to establish yourself as an expert in your field. Why can't it be your blog post that is solving someone's problem? Why aren't you answering peoples' questions on LinkedIn Answers and Quora? Have you considered recording a simple YouTube video explaining how to do something? Why not!?

Maybe now is the time.

...what does that say about the cobbler?

My mother is full of idioms and good old country phrases (we call them Phyllisisms) and, upon hearing the difficulties I will describe forthwith, she immediately respond, "Of course, the cobbler's children have no shoes."  (I was much happier with this comparison than that of the little boy in "The Ransom of Red Chief," which was how I was often described as a child by my father.)

The point is, that parable really stuck with me, and in no uncertain terms it bluntly illustrated to me that I was the living embodiment of the cobbler; only the industry was different.

The plain truth is that I don't market my company well.

Ok, we have a good website, and sure, our marketing collateral is pretty nifty, but a lot of online activities, especially social media, is lacking.  Gravely lacking.  As a company whose task load is usually about 85% internet related, and considering I speak frequently on social media for small businesses, this is pretty pathetic.

You practice what you preach.  I was raised on that belief, and sometimes sat back with haughtiness while judging others who fell guilty to a lack of commitment.  But I am oh-so frequently in that same boat.  I preach the unbelievable value of blogs, the importance of quality e-mail marketing, of updating your website regularly, and of engaging and conversing to no end on the social networks.  But, alas, the spigot doth not flow as it should.  At the end of the day, it's the clients work that comes first.  "Our stuff can always wait," I think.

My burden and embarrassment were somewhat eased when I regaled this problem to fellow business owners, and frequently they responded that they found themselves in the same boat.  I was further relieved by, when researching the phrase "cobbler's children" on Google for this post, I came upon page after page of not folk tales, but rather articles and blog posts from experts, authors, and other business owners describing the exact same phenomena.  This recent article by Peggy McColl in the Huffington Post is probably my favorite, and deserves a read.

So, what is my solution to this problem?  Well, I'm not quite sure.  If I was, I wouldn't still be in this position.  Here are some suggestions I have if you're in the same boat:

• Set a schedule of the activities you need to do and actually stick to it.
• If need be, schedule a meeting with yourself.
• [Like with all goals], ask a friend or colleague to be your accountability partner, and reward yourself when you've achieved your target.
• Remember that this is what you do for a living, and you know how easily it can be done and how wonderful you can do it!

I suppose the fact that I'm writing this very blog post is a move in the right direction.  I have some lofty marketing goals for my company, and perhaps I need to listen to my own suggestion above and think of some incentive.  12 months of solid marketing = an Android tablet?  A weekend getaway?  Perhaps just the felling of the two-fold accomplishment - both surpassing a huge goal and doing our marketing - is reward enough.

We shall see.

One of the biggest problems I see in LinkedIn profiles are paragraphs. Long, boring paragraphs. No one wants to read a treatise when they go to view a LinkedIn profile, especially if they're a recruiter or potential client who wants their information quick and easy to come by.

Here is an example of what my profile could have looked like:

LinkedIn profile with paragraphs

As I always say in my classes, LinkedIn profiles should be 75% résumé and 25% marketing piece. You don't have hunks of text on your résumé, do you? So don't have them on your LinkedIn profile!

This is what my profile looks like in reality. Much better, isn't it?

LinkedIn profile with bullet points

Of course, the problem is that LinkedIn does not allow any sort of text styling within profiles, so there is no way to create headings or bullet points.

Solution? Use symbols!

There are a million symbols that are viewable on a computer screen, making up the characters that form hundreds of languages. Each linguistic character has to have a corresponding symbol within computer code, and this is where Unicode comes in. It's all very, very confusing, but just know that floating around out there are over a million different shapes that could make you a pretty nifty looking bullet point!

We here at Gong Gong Communications are working on a fantabulous website that will list ALL of these cool symbols in an easy-to-read manner, perfect for the non-techie. We hope to launch the site by Summer 2011, but in the meantime, here are some of the best bullet point characters out for your use immediately!

Bullet Symbols

Just copy and paste these bad boys right into your LinkedIn text!

○
●
■
□
▪
▫
▸
▹
►
◊
♦
◆
◇
∴