As easy as just two simple steps. Of course, this assumes you have already installed the Gnome Advanced Settings panel (gnome-tweak).

First add Satyajit repository by openning your terminal and typing (or copying from here) the following command:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:satyajit-happy/themes

Once the repository is added, just install the Gnome-Shell User Theme Extension:

sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-extensions-user-theme

This last command will enable an option in the Gnome Advanced Settings panel go to “Shell Extensions” and enable the “User Themes Extension”. Logout and log back in. At this point there should be a new “Shell Theme” option that allows uploading of new gnome-shell themes which can be found at GnomeLook.org.

Easy!

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

I was recently browsing through the Guelph Mercury’s website. I was trying to find some contact information and did find it in http://www.guelphmercury.com/contactus as well as other interesting stuff.

As me and my wife are involved with charities and do some work in the non-profit sector, the link to the Guelph Mercury’s Donations page attracted my attention (even though I was there for other purposes). It states the following (this is an exact copy of their page):

“The Guelph Mercury provides non-profit community groups with donations of cash as well as in-kind support. Click here for more details.”

That seems very nice and all for a company like the Mercury, however, if you click on the “click here” link you will find an interesting surprise (that may change in the future, so I have included here a print of the page as it is right now).

So, once you click on more information about getting support or cash donations from the Guelph Mercury you get to a page that shows the picture of an older man who looks rather pale. What could the Guelph Mercury’s intention be? My first reaction to it was to think it is some kind of joke on people asking for money for charities, I assume they get hit with a lot of requests for funding.

And whether it is a joke or not, this kind of “errors” are nothing to laugh about in your business. So, is the Guelph Mercury playing a little joke on Guelph’s charities? I doubt it. However, this lapse is something that shouldn’t have happened at all, specially for an organization as the Guelph Mercury. This is a cautionary tale of web mistakes and blunders.

This is another example of how your IT and web presence should be very well cared for. The devil is in the details they say, and this is just the case. People from programmers to designers need to be very careful of too many details, however, when people think of the web, most only think its a matter of drawings and words. And while the basis is images and text, there is much more to it than just posting and pasting and it can get very complicated for even the simplest details.

Even if your web people are very good, always be very vigilant and review the work. There have been many examples of IT people having funny blunders that affect big companies and even of disgruntled employees who make a mockery of their previous employer while making a very public joke with their web presence. The web is no laughing matter, specially when the joke’s on you!

Update: Mr. Phil Andrews replied to my message about this strange error and he has stated they will get it corrected. Kudos to the Guelph Mercury for reading people’s emails and taking care of business. However, at the end of business today, the error is still there… let’s see how long it takes them to fix it.

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

[en]

This is not news, this is barely something that should matter, except for the fact that is funny. Of course, some healthy fun is always great. This has gone all over the web, has been in the news in different places and now Antoine Dodson (the guy in the video) has a website and has created some controversy in his hometown in Alabama.

The original interview is here:

Then The Gregory Bothers took that interview and made it into an iTunes song. Its being sold and has had some popularity, the song is rather catchy. This is the final version of the interview:

Peace!

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

[en]

Let’s talk about digital marketing. Gone are the days when people used to think about the internet as only for nerds in a basement. Kids are at it with so much intensity, that any 5 year old can now explain you the best new tricks for Google, Facebook and Twitter.

Internet marketing was about promoting a website and helping it be seen by potential clients. We used to have only PPC and SEO (which is older than people think), and then came along social media. Youtube made the web a TV and Twitter and Facebook made it thing to be carried everywhere. So what is Digital Marketing all about?

Digital marketing is now about using every single channel, connect it using the internet, track, measure and respond to customers immediately (or as soon as possible). Companies that understand that long gone are the days of ignoring your clients, will succeed better, and faster than those who still think that making a client suffer through their services is a good idea.

The point is, if you don’t let your customers know you REALLY care, then there is no point for you to have customer service as this will create even more discomfort and issues than benefits, disgruntled customers who may end up giving bad reviews and finally, loosing business. Still, some companies go past this with lots of money, but that’s the point… it hurts spending so much money to keep yourself over the bad reviews. Why not just do a great service from the beginning?

Also wanted to comment on an excellent Cheetos campaign. They’re demographics are people from all ages,  but focusing on children and teenagers makes a lot of sense. They have created a website called “Battle of the Cheetos” which allows people to play a battle game of cheetos. It is quite cheesy, but the flavour of the site really makes sense. They are promoting this via social media outlets (facebook, Stumbleupon, etc) and allow you to save your progress if you use your facebook account. Fun, entertaining and a great way to reming people to go get a bag of cheetos.

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

[en]

Amazed, as most of you, that Spain and Netherlands made it through to the final. At the beginning of the World Cup no one could have predicted this final, most would have said they were good teams, with possibilities, but Germany, Argentina, Brasil, France, Portugal and even Italy looked like better options to most.

I thought Spain would get a nasty defeat from the Germans, I wanted to see this final between two nations that have never won the cup, but really thought it wouldn’t happen. Germany seemed simply formidable and yet, it fell by the closest of margins and by defense player’s goal (Puyol).

I have some very dear friends in Spain and they are wild with excitement. Most in Spain can’t believe it either, after many cups being big contenders and not living to expectations.

How is this related to marketing or the web? I could think of too many reasons why watching the World Cup has been interesting from a marketing perspective, even of the effects the internet has had on how people live it (nothing that new as we’ve seen this in other tournaments), but really, I just wanted to put this out. A great final, Spain Vs. Netherlands, up for grabs a new champion will rise and no one can guess who will this be.

My pick: Spain. After all, they’ve defeated Portugal and Germany, two of the biggest teams this tournament and Germany defeated Argentina. Netherlands are great, but have conceded 5 goals where Spain has only conceded 2 (even though 1 was a defeat). Will the Dutch be able to get through a tough Spanish defense? Will the Spanish be able to score the winning goals? In any case, excellent final to a tournament that started quite slowly.

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

So here we are, getting ready to move to a new city. The usual boxing of all the old stuff and the review of what stays and what goes… time for a complete cleansing. Time to see all the stuff we have accumulated over the years and audit our past decisions.

The road ahead

We are about a month away from the move and this boxing game has already taken most of our space, the apartment is a mess. Its all for good, we are moving to a bigger space in a better, quieter, safer and kid friendly area. But as in every change, the fear of the unknown is quite palpable. Leaving all the connections and all the work we have done these past years, a question keeps popping in my head… are we doing the right thing?

Since we moved from Mexico to Canada we have not experienced such a thrill and such fears. With this new change, we (my wife and I) have found ourselves taking a strong look at our lives. We want to keep going in the paths we have chosen, but just as Steve Jobs said in his already insanely famous Stanford Commencement Address (see it here in case you haven’t), it is impossible to connect the dots looking forward. We trust that the dots will connect in the future.

So many things have happened in these past 5 years since we moved to a new country. I have been with two presidents (very, very recently with Felipe Calderon, president of Mexico), have met with 3 mayors of different cities and countries (and in their cities), have worked with dozens of brilliant business people from all over the world, have traveled to very cool and interesting places for business and have had the opportunity to have a great impact in so many people’s lives, but most importantly, I have learned.

In our lives, we have started many businesses and most have been a great learning experience. In coming to Toronto, we learned about the world, the people who live in it and the many different cultures. I studied a new career (which doesn’t get used much, but always wanted to do it, so it is a check in my list) and sharpened my skills in business, marketing and
the internet. I have grown along my beautiful wife and our wonderful children (our version of Yakko, Wakko and Dot).

Image via Wikipedia

As we head towards a new life, the first signs of a line become visible(a bunch of connected dots). We are not leaving the old, we are taking it with us and building upon it. Cualli Ohtli has been a brief and interesting experience and we will continue to develop it. As this move happens and in the coming months, our business focus will focus even more, my skills will become even more specialized. This is what we have realized in the last weeks, as we have been in contact with the new city and the new business opportunities. It still is a work in progress, but it seems already a very clear and unavoidable path.

It is hard to see it while things are happening, to me, most of it has been learning while trying to support the family. But I can begin to see it now, the things lived and the skills learned are now tools that will come  in very handy in our new adventures.

Change is scary, but it is good and necessary. If you ever find yourself stuck in the same place, doing the same thing over and over and feeling tired and unhappy, maybe its time you do a clean up, a review or a big change and see were life will take you. Its ok to be afraid.

Are you in a similar stage in your life? Do you have faith that the dots will one day connect? How have the dots connected before in your life?

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

Spain is a beautiful country. Beautiful scenery, great people, delicious food (a bottle of 5 litres of extra virgin olive oil for only about $20CAD, excellent wines for only 3 bucks, cheese from heaven – made in La Mancha… crazy!). I was invited to talk about different subjects related to online marketing, business promotion and personal branding for entrepreneurs in different events through several cities.

I learned a lot from this trip. Usually you go thinking, “here’s what I will teach”, but you often come back getting more than what you give and that is the true value of sharing. Spain is in the middle of very hard economic times. It is a country trying so hard to reinvent itself, to find unification and to find growth and stability. In spite of this (or maybe because of all this), people seem to be having a lot of fun. In the streets of Granada, you could never guess that the city is going through one of its worst economic crisis in years. While going about through several small cities and towns in La Mancha, everyone seemed happy and to a big extent, contempt. People in Huesca, Madrid and Zaragoza share a smile and are courteous, all talk about how the times are bad, but no one actually complains, all keep working and keep living.

This experience refreshed some very important business and personal lessons that we all know, but most of the time forget. I compare the Spanish towns and cities with some other towns in other countries where people really seem depressed due to the hard economic times and look as if the sun ain’t shinning no more. Spain has several millions unemployed and others with half day jobs and half paying work because of the situation, they jus did a massive cut to social spending and more taxes may be on the way. But still, people are working hard, trying to innovate and get going.

This leads to lesson number one: When the going gets though, the though get going. We all should learn from that. Nothing beats a strong working ethic and a good heart.

To all my new Spanish friends, Gracias! It was an incredible experience. A most special thanks to Ana Sanchez and Javier Perez from Ibero Tyke Consultores in Zaragoza with whom now Cualli Ohtli internet marketing has a joint venture and are our local contacts in Spain. They were wonderful hosts, most gracious and lots of fun.

Javier was my guide through most of the politics and economics in Spain, and in spite of its difficulties, it is a country to watch. Through Javier and Ana we met with several government officials in different cities (Mayors, council members and business promoters) and they all have a big passion for their country and respective cities.

Which leads me to the second lesson: Passion must be in your heart for success to come (even if it happens eventually and not immediately). This also means belief. You should believe in your product, so others can believe too.

Ana’s skills made possible many of our adventures and her organizational abilities and happy-go-lucky attitude made even the busiest moments a very pleasurable memory. Her smile made everything shine and her insight brings light to the darkest of hours! We will all go as hippies to Tarifa with you if you reach that point! ; )

And this gives way to lesson number three: In the path to success, there will be busy, hard times, but a smile can take you a long way. If you meet difficulties and challenges with a smile and open attitude, things will go better and the way will not be as difficult (sometimes even easier!).

So, to summarize, success is not giving up when things get hard, passion and belief in what you do must be there and a smile can go a long way.

Even if you fail, success is getting up and trying again. (See post related to team efforts and building a tower for an example of successive efforts with increasing results)

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

While doing some research for a couple of speaking engagements in Spain, I found a video about the nature of teamwork and some interesting insights into ways to accomplish anything.

Lessons to be learned. This also applies very well into any process. Instead of spending a lot of time planning and thinking, spend a little bit less and focus on making it happen. Try as many times as needed until success is achieved. Edison said it:

“After we had conducted thousands of experiments on a certain project without solving the problem, one of my associates, after we had conducted the crowning experiment and it had proved a failure, expressed discouragement and disgust over our having failed to find out anything. I cheerily assured him that we had learned something. For we had learned for a certainty that the thing couldn’t be done that way, and that we would have to try some other way.”

Do, make, try as much as needed until you succeed. Don´t let fear and over-thinking paralyze you.

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

It is not uncommon nowadays to hear someone say, “I do internet marketing“. It just seems that there are just plain too many of us out there! Nothing could be farther from the truth.

There are a LOT of MLM guys out there. Most have found the web a nice place to do their “work”.

I have nothing against MLM people, except for the fact that, even though they use Internet tools to market themselves, they really are not internet marketers. They are just pedaling whatever product they have through Multi Level structures. What’s even worse, A LOT of them are pushing “Secret Formulas” to success online where they sell an ebook or a training program to teach other people how to sell the same ebook. This is far from new, but it is becoming quite annoying.

As most internet marketers out there have found, if you publish yourself as an online marketer, you get more spammers and junk marketers than most people. It seems that saying you are an online marketer gives you a target sign online and all sorts of people that “do marketing” think they can just phone you up to offer their products to “teach” you how to market. Geez!

This guy here knows what I’m talking about:

Yes, that guy is phony, but that’s exactly how many people look like.

This is not to say that some people are following you because they honestly want to learn, others really are interested in seeing what you have to say and share their knowledge to find new ways to market or have real business ventures.

Another stigma online marketers are getting is of “pseudo home office workers”. While a big advantage of the web is that you get to do a lot of work anywhere you have a connection, it is by no means an easy job for the casual “easy money” hunter. Online marketing has many responsibilities and requires full commitment and determination to learn what you need too do. In fact, most expert marketers are specializing rather than just doing everything at once, and there is a reason for that. It is also a very good reason why you need to have a team of people working with you (as we have programmers, designers and other specialists).

Anyone can be a marketer, just like anyone can be a lawyer, doctor, mechanic, accountant or business administrator. Like all those professionals, you need to be willing to learn a lot and have to prove yourself with experience. How many business owners are ready to shell out cash to you so you can experiment on their business? Really, not many.

Are you a real marketer or just a wannabe “easy money” hunter?

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.

To my dear readers, sorry about being out for a while. Really, I’m sorry.

We had tons of news over this time. Tiger Woods became a prime time mess, a marketing disaster of major proportions and a big comics’ tool. There was a so called bombing attempt on Xmas in the US and flying has become every travelers’ biggest nightmare. Oprah is retiring… in a couple of years and to her own channel (is it really retiring?). The Sci Fi channel became Sy-Fy and even though everyone blasted their marketing department for that, the Sy-Fy channel has reported and claimed success… interesting stuff.

In the online marketing world we’ve had even more news than that. Google applied for a license to buy and sell energy, launched the first “superphone” the Google Nexus One, changed the URL display guidelines and got some feathers ruffled with some over the moon charges for canceling the Nexus One contract with T-Mobile. China has become an international mess with Google and things keep getting worse (now after Google apparently got hacked by Chinese hackers). Bing still lags in functionality and even Chris Brogan has begun a quest to try Bing or die in 30 days.

I have tried Bing, I still give it a chance every now and then, but frankly, even though it has some nice features, the results (the main reason for a search engine to exist) are at best, buggy. Most of Bing’s results are either obvious or completely off the mark. Chris Brogan, a well known blogger, social media expert and internet marketer found out that when typing his name in the search, Chris Brown (you know who) showed up. THAT is buggy as a simple comparison of word by word should give the crawler the obvious results, everything related to the people with the same name. The same test with my name yields equally disappointing results. Now, getting indexed by Bing (regular business sites or any kind of site) is quite the adventure. There is an extremely long and useless thread in Bing about this particular issue.

Anywho, getting back to the original subject, there have been many news and many changes. I kept myself off the predictions bus but here are my two cents:

• The world will continue the great migration online
• Cellphones (smartphones, superphones) will be much more important
• Big growth in mobile marketing or mobile-friendly marketing
• The world economies will continue to be a mess, but will probably get better
• Bing will continue to struggle until everybody realizes its just Live with a different name and more images
• Google will continue its path towards world domination
• China and Google will continue on bad terms
• Brasil will be a dominant team in the world cup (if they don’t win it again)
• Canada will be big on the Winter Olympics (specially the hockey teams)
• Yahoo will continue in its nice quiet little place… or maybe not?

That is as far as my crystal ball (or Liquid Crystal Display screen) allows me to see. There is something very certain about it, that no matter what, I’ll continue to write about it all and probably, hopefully, just maybe, someone will care and eventually read my stuff and find it at least entertaining.

On a side note, Search Engine Optimization is going to get much more complicated with all the changes Google and Bing are implementing. The content will continue to be king and writers will continue to prosper in this online jungle, or as I like to call it, this Online Wild West. Has anyone checked out the Tweets on Google searches? Pretty cool right?

Ma Cualli Ohtli!

©2012 the Marketing stuff. All Rights Reserved.