Thursday, May 30, 2013

Exact Match Domains In The Legal Sphere

In the office, we have been discussing the effects of exact match domains, and the hypocrisy of Google's stance upon them. Let me explain, three weeks ago, we built a web page to test a theory that we had been seeing running rampantly over Google's supposed crackdown on exact match domains.

Our test revealed, that even though Google may want to discourage exact match domains, they are currently rewarding them. It only took three weeks for our EMD to rank on the first page on the highly competitive keywords of 'car accident lawyer denver.' Don't believe me? Check it out at caraccidentlawyerdenver.co/.

If you are interested more in this let us know, and we will post more about it. We think is is interesting. So, it might happen anyway. Driving more business is always exciting...

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Tips on Reducing Your Nerves While Giving a Speech

It’s perfectly natural to be nervous before and during a speech. But do not fret, for there are ways of getting around these nerves. The five tips listed below have personally helped me get past my fear of public speaking; please don’t be afraid to give them a try!

1. BREATHE 
Deep breathing is essential when it comes to calming nerves. When your body is lacking oxygen, speaking becomes physically difficult. Adults tend to take very short breaths; I think this might have to do with stress. It is best to take deeper breaths before and during your speech. Try these abdominal breathing techniques.

2. PRACTICE AS MUCH AS YOU CAN
Having notecards to refer to when you lose track of a thought, or need to reference a name is perfectly acceptable as long as you only glance down for a hot second. When you make your notecards, do not write down your speech word for word, instead, only write down key words or phrases. You should never write down your speech word for word because if you do, you will find yourself solely relying on your notecards. Doing this greatly increases your chance of reading your information instead of talking to your audience about what you know. The more you know about your topic, the better.

3. INCORPORATE HUMOR
I’ve found that incorporating humor is key to a successful speech. Of course there might be a few topics in which this may not be appropriate, so I will let you decide if you should include it or not. Everyone has a unique personality and sense of humor so use this to your advantage. I guarantee that your audience probably doesn’t want to be there as much as you do, unless it’s a wedding or joyous occasion of course. Either way, humor breaks the boredom barrier and is usually almost always appreciated. I guarantee getting laughs will boost your ego and will make you feel more comfortable with your audience.

4. INCLUDE THE AUDIENCE
If you involve your audience in your presentation, they pay more attention to those involved around them instead of just you, the speaker. This can lift some of that dead weight off of your shoulders. You also don’t want them to feel like they’re being talked at, especially if it’s for a long period of time. Find some good information about involving your audience here.

5. REMEMBER THAT THIS IS ONLY A BRIEF MOMENT OF YOUR LIFE
I promise that you will live through this. Just think that this is only going to be ‘insert amount of time here’ of your entire life. If you attempt to do all of these things, I guarantee, with time, or if you’re a natural (go you!), you will become a great public speaker!

Post written by: Erica Gallo

Tuesday, May 07, 2013

Input Overload



It’s a typical day. You wake up, stretch, roll over to grab your phone, spend a few minutes catching up on Facebook notifications and your Twitter feed. Drag yourself out of bed, slide those wonderful furry slippers on, grab the paper from outside, and pour yourself a bowl of cereal so you can eat and read it. Then your day begins. A few texts from Jenny, logging onto Skype, getting the latest on Facebook, and some time spent browsing CNN.com, all while you listen to the radio or TV is on in the background. Now, when you think about it, that is A LOT of information being thrown at you all day!  Absorbing all of this information can take a lot of time out of our day. So what can we do about it?



Streamline Your Information: Instead of using several mediums to get information and communicate, shrink that down with a few services that combine all of this information for you, often for free. Below, I've mentioned my two favorites and how I use them.

Trillian: is a service that can combine your chats from Skype, Gmail, Facebook, and many others into one instant messenger that easily takes care of everything for you. This app has actually made me much more productive and freed up time from my day. I found myself primarily using Facebook for the messaging feature to talk to my friends and in turn, getting distracted by logging on Facebook a lot. Now I only get on Facebook once or twice a day and can still easily connect with friends.

Feedly: is a fantastic news-streaming platform that allows you to enter your favorite sites that you visit daily, and then congregates them into a single feed that features all of the day’s articles. It even allows you to split information into categories, in case you just want to catch up on business news or what happened today in technology.

These are just a couple of suggestions for dealing with information overload. It’s incredible how easy it is to get sucked into constantly and consistently reading every little bit of information that is thrown at you. Or even just the obsession with connecting with friends. It is easy to burn a few hours just delving through other’s profiles on Facebook. Consider instead, boosting your own productivity and still maintaining a little of both worlds and streamline the process. It will take some focusing to buckle down and do, but it’s worth it! There’s many other tactics out there. I’d love to hear how you do it in the comments below!

Post written by Nick Rizzi. Check out his Blog or connect on Google Plus with him.