Almost everyone I know has already dropped their landline, opting to be contacted solely through their cell phones. But for some reason I have felt the need to retain my landline, despite also having a cell phone. Maybe it’s because my number has been tied to so many other things, like organizations and charities I support. Or maybe it’s because my mom and uncle (who don’t seem to understand the concept of not having a landline) reach me and my family using that number. But now it just seems like unnecessary redundancy. I could do without the sales calls over dinner and as for my mom and uncle, well I could have them change their address book. Options weighed, I recently conjured the guts to get rid of my landline and began the search for new alternatives.

Researching what was available, I had a few requests. I would still like for there to be just one number for someone to call the Nolte family instead of choosing who to call—my wife or I. And what about those other things that rely on your home phone number? I don’t want give my cell number and risk getting sales call on my cell. I also would like voicemail transcribed and emailed to me, and choose when and I want to choose where to have calls go. Too much? Oh and just one more thing… I want it for free!

Well this is where Google came into my life again, with their service called Google Voice.

The first thing you’ll need to decide is whether you’d like to use the full version of Google Voice with a brand new phone number, or add some Google Voice features (like voicemail) to your existing mobile phone number.

The basic differences between these options are:

Google Voice with a Google number

• Use one number to manage all your phones; your Google Voice number is tied to you, not to a particular device or location.
• Voicemail is like email: Save voicemail messages for as long as you’d like, star important ones, and search through them.
• Voicemail transcription: Voicemail messages will be automatically transcribed to text and sent to you via email and/or SMS.
• Customize your callers’ experience (custom voicemail greetings, decide which of your phones ring based on who’s calling, send some callers straight to voicemail, etc.)
• Works with mobile phones, desk phones, and work phones. There’s nothing to download, upload, or install, and you don’t have to make or take calls using a computer.
• International calling: Make low priced international calls from the web or from your phone.

Google Voice with your non-Google phone number:

With this option you won’t get some features (i.e. call forwarding, screening, and call recording), but you get plenty of others, including: voicemail like email, voicemail transcription, custom voicemail greetings and international calling. For a complete list of the features with each option, click here. You can also check out a video about Google Voice’s set up options.

With that choice made, you can start the FUN part, picking out your new phone number!  You can even choose your area code and search for specific alphanumeric options, like 612-GO-NOLTE (not really my number).  

Since switching over to Google Voice, I haven’t missed my landline once—or missed a call from my mom or uncle. So thanks Google, for not only thinking of great ideas, but for making them work and providing them for free.

Read more blogs from SCG’s 41 Stories.

-Trevor Nolte

In this age of the Internet, a businesses’ website is just one component of a complete online digital presence.  Typically a site will have various pages with standard company information: about us, contact us, and products and services. But in today’s world of instant information, customers (current and potential) demand more information, faster. Companies are responsible for effectively integrating new communication technologies to increase their reach to current as well as potential customers.

Before marketing on the web, companies relied on printed brochures, sell sheets, catalogs, business cards, sales team staff, calling programs, direct mail, trade-shows, advertising, and public relations. And while all of these marketing strategies are still vital and necessary today, when it comes to web marketing it’s a waste of the variety of free marketing tools to simply rely on a digitized version of your brochures.

When the web was first introduced, the pressure on companies was just to have a presence to avoid being left in the dust by competitors. Then the issue became how to drive potential customers to the site. Direct email to your current and potential customer list, SEO and pay-per-click ads worked (and continue to work) as your yellow pages to drive site traffic. But why stop there?

Today there are a plethora of social media options ready to be used to promote your company. The use of these social networking sites has extended far beyond their initial purpose, and continues to evolve. The idea of this new web marketing strategy is based on a building with no roads analogy:

Imagine your business is a building with a sign on it, located in the middle of nowhere with no roads in front of it. No one (current and potential customers) can get there unless they know exactly where it is. Now imagine for every form of access someone has to your website, a road will be paved to your building. That first road will be “highway SEO”. But the more roads to your building, the more potential customers. Now if you actively use a blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, buzz.yahoo, StumbleUpon, delicious, flicker, YouTube, and SlideShare you would have 11 more roads to your building and a lot more visibility to you business.

Increasing your digital presence allows your company to reach more potential customers, and allows you to more creatively share information. Below is a great graphic that illustrates the top social networks and how to best use them to you advantage. Thanks to cmo.com.

And below is the Conversation Prism (courtesy of Brian Solis and JESS3) which illustrates many more social media outlets than what I’ve listed above.

How are you creatively building digital visibility for your company?

-Trevor Nolte

Did you know that 96% of the world’s under-30 population has joined a social network—whether it be YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or even MySpace. Yet there are still skeptics that view social media as just a fad (on Monday Jeron even mentioned John Mayer’s dismissal of Twitter as a form of communication). On July 30, 2009 a video hit YouTube called “Social Media Revolution” that presented staggering facts about the prevalence of social media in today’s world. In less than a year, the social media landscape and population has changed so fast they needed to produce a new, updated version, “Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh).”  Watch the video and comment below on your thoughts. The creators of the video also provide a handy list of the eye-popping stats that will likely convert the most fervent social media deniers into believers.

What are you thoughts about the Social Media Revolution?

-Trevor Nolte

Thanksgiving is upon us! It’s time to pile our plates high with turkey, yams and pumpkin pie.  But before we do, we asked ourselves, “What are you thankful for this year?”  Here’s how we replied…

Steph is thankful for her clarity and sanity.

Whitney is thankful for her family. “They can always make me laugh and have given me such unwavering support throughout this year.”

Trevor is most thankful for “my beautiful, healthy baby girl Luella. I am also thankful for how stinkin’ happy she is all the time!”

Joy is thankful that, “even though my family lives in three different states, we will all be together for Thanksgiving!”

Patricia is thankful for the trust our clients have placed in us during this challenging 2009.

Patrick is thankful that our agency was able to withstand the economic downturn and that our clients have generally weathered the storm very well.

Carol is so thankful for Makarei, her little granddaughter. “We get up at 4:30 in the morning to get ready for work and school.  On Saturdays she has piano lessons and choir practice.  She goes with me to Lay Organization and Missionary Society meetings and stays in a separate room dancing and singing.  Makarei is the joy of my life and I am so happy to have her in my life.”

Chad is thankful for his family.

Randy is thankful that his cousin Trent returned safely from Djibouti, Africa, after spending a 7-month tour of duty in the Marines.

Jenny is thankful for the small group she joined recently through her church. “We meet each Sunday night for a time of faith, fun and fellowship. It has already been such a gift and a wonderful way to start a new week. And our host is truly Rachael Ray Jr. so I leave each week with lunch for Monday!”

Jeron is thankful the economy has reminded him (and certainly many others) how much more valuable family, health and friendships are than material items.

Jane is very thankful to have a wonderful, big family that surrounds her with love and support. “I am also thankful that both Dan and I are employed and that our family is healthy and happy. And I am thankful to have been fortunate to have adopted such an amazing, loving dog to add to our family…we are so blessed to be able to share every moment of Lily’s life.”

What are you most thankful for this year?

We hope you enjoy your holiday with family, friends and those closest to you. Happy Thanksgiving from all of your friends at SCG!

Twitter has grown from 600,000 registered users a year ago to 40-60 million users today. Are you wondering what Twitter is all about? Taking the plunge and crafting your first Tweet? Or already tweeting with a growing following? Here’s my top 10 list of favorite Twitter tools. Happy tweeting!

1. WeFollow is a Twitter Directory and Search organized by interests. Find celebrities, actors, TV personalities, or new Twitter friends in your area.  http://wefollow.com/
2. Just Tweet It is the Directory of Twitter Users. http://justtweetit.com/
3. Who Should I Follow suggests interesting people to follow. http://whoshouldifollow.com/
4. Twazzup, search Twitter in real-time and find relevant content. http://www.twazzup.com/
5. Monitter lets you “monitter” the twitter world by a set of keywords and watch what people are saying. http://monitter.com/
6. What the trend helps you find out what’s trending on Twitter and why. Provides explanations of why it’s trending (these blurbs are edited by you!) You can also see the latest tweets, Flickr photos and news stories. http://www.whatthetrend.com/
7. Trendsmap is a real-time mapping of Twitter trends across the world. See what the global, collective masses are discussing right now. http://trendsmap.com/
8. Ping.fm is a simple and FREE service that makes updating your social networks a snap. http://ping.fm/
9. Twibes Twitter groups. Find a Twitter group and join it. Or, create your own Twitter group. http://www.twibes.com/
10. TwitPic lets you share photos on Twitter. You can post pictures to TwitPic from your phone, our API, or through the site itself. http://www.twitpic.com/

What’s your favorite Twitter tools?

-Trevor Nolte

Search engines provide a great starting point when you’re searching for comments about your company or products online, but often they’re just not enough. A myriad of social websites have popped up over the past few years to help you track what people are saying about your products. Here’s a list of the top 10 free social tools you can start using today:

1. http://www.blogpulse.com/
A blog search engine that also analyzes and reports on daily activity in the blogosphere.

2. http://www.google.com/alerts
Provides email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.

3. http://spy.appspot.com
Spy can listen in on the social media conversations you’re interested in. What do you want to listen for?

4. http://serph.com
Serph is a search engine that you can use to find out what people are saying on the web right now. When you type a query into Serph, it goes out and searches online social media to find the latest buzz. After it gathers the results, they are sorted and organized so the most recent buzz appears first. The buzz is gathered from blog search engines, social media websites, social news websites and social bookmarking websites.

5. http://socialmention.com
Social Mention is a social media search engine that searches user-generated content such as blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news, videos, and microblogging services. It allows you to easily track what people are saying about you, your company, a new product, or any topic across the web’s social media landscape in real time. Search results are aggregated from numerous popular social media sources and remixed as a single stream of information.

6. http://monitter.com
This twitter monitor lets you “monitter” the twitter world for a set of keywords and watch what people are saying.
Just type three words into the three search boxes below (where it says ‘monitter’ now) and within seconds you’ll start seeing relevant tweets streaming live.

7. http://v2.boardtracker.com
BoardTracker.com is an innovative forum search engine, message tracking and instant alerts system designed to provide relevant information quickly and efficiently while ensuring you never miss an important forum thread no matter where or when it is posted.

8. www.filtrbox.com
Filtrbox delivers the information you need, and helps you discover information you didn’t know existed. Filtrbox gives you only the information you want, any way you want it. In today’s hyper-competitive business world, Filtrbox gives your team the relevant market intelligence it needs to be proactive, and to be successful.

9. http://www.google.com/reader
Keep track of your favorite websites. To organize all of the sites that have RSS feeds you need to acquire a feed reader. I personally use Google reader because it’s easy to sort feeds, bookmark/favorite them and share them with your network.

10. http://delicious.com
Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages from a centralized source. With emphasis on the power of the community, Delicious greatly improves how people discover, remember and share on the Internet.

If you’ve got a great tool you want to share, please let us know.

-Trevor Nolte

New daddy with daughter Luella

It began on December 20th, 2008 at 3:05 a.m.. At that precise moment my name changed from Trevor to Daddy. My wife and I were no longer a couple but now a family. On that snowy December day we welcomed our beautiful daughter Luella Kathleen and we began a new life together – just the three of us.

When you’re expecting a baby, people always say two things – “it will change your life forever” and “you can never prepare yourself for how much it will change.” Here’s my perspective.

How it has changed my life so far:
- I have fallen in love all over again in such a different way. The first moment I saw Luella – our perfect, innocent, shivering and helpless baby, my heart warmed and melted into a big mush of emotions.
- I was confronted with a new love to understand and define. The closest definition I can muster at this moment is “complete and total pride, protective of her at every moment, and an unconditional love that surpasses all others.”
- I was a boy pretending to be a man, but now I’m man with purpose to my life.
- I have a new priority in my life and that is Luella – first and foremost. Sorry Lisa (my wife).
- Every thought and every decision includes my baby girl.
- And finally, I have a whole new set of vocabulary words I use daily.

Words of newfound wisdom to first-time expectant fathers out there:
- Never argue with your pregnant wife. Period. Do it once just to see…I dare you!
- Get used to doing more things around the house. And do them without being asked.
- Get back to the basics. As an Eagle Scout, I run my life by the motto of “Be Prepared.” Take that idea and run with it. Read the books, watch the documentaries, attend the classes, listen to the horror stories and then realize that most likely everything will be just fine with your wife and child.
- Take the pressure off your pregnant wife. Finish all the projects around the house and get the baby’s room ready early.
- Once your bundle of joy arrives be sure to keep your composure and stay calm for your wife. Most importantly, embrace and enjoy your new role as a father.

-Trevor Nolte

Second Place Sausage Pocket Apps

This summer, SCG had its annual party with the main event being the appetizer contest. I decided to make my very own “Second Place Sausage Pocket Apps”. Despite the name, I ended up winning first place – which created a great deal of brand confusion.

First place winning “Second Place Sausage Pocket Apps”:

1 lb ground pork sausage
3 T Italian seasoning (oregano, basil, parsley, rosemary and other spices)
1 T minced garlic
1 t onion powder
2 cups freshly graded Pecorino cheese
1 package crescent rolls
Secret ingredient: low expectations!

Cook the pork sausage in a frying pan over medium heat. Slowly add and mix in the Italian seasoning, garlic and onion powder. Once the sausage is fully cooked, strain the grease and let it cool. Separate and place the crescent triangles flat on a baking sheet. Spoon on ample amount of cooked sausage and top it off with the grated cheese. Pull up the three corners of the crescent roll and pinch the sides closed. Place the sausage pockets in the oven at 350 degrees for about 15-20 minutes until the crescent is a light golden brown. Once out of the oven brush with melted butter and sprinkle with graded cheese over the top.

Enjoy!

The only thing missing is a good sauce. If you have any ideas, please post a comment!

-Trevor Nolte