Are You Brainstorming Bonanzle Tonight?

Image via CrunchBase

I have the great honor of being an invited guest on the award-winning Brainstorming Bonanzle podcast TONIGHT at 8:00pm EST!

Brainstorming Bonanzle is a live talk show where movers and shakers in ecommerce come to discuss online selling.

My segment of the podcast is called '15 Tips From the Top.' These tips will be useful for anyone who sells online or is thinking about doing so.

Walt Kolenda, better known as Auction Wally is co-host of the series which was named one of the Top 100 Small Business Podcasts of 2009. Walt is a licensed autioneer, eCommerce guru, podcaster and writer.

Walt's co-host is the knowledgeable and charming Phaedra Stockstill, Owner & Formulator of @ The Boutique! Phaedra is a rising star at Bonanzle and has been a moving force behind the recent Bonanzle Up meetings taking place across the country.

Come join us TONIGHT on Brainstorming Bonanzle! The chat room will be open so sit back, relax and listen in!

Customer Service and Zemanta

Image via CrunchBase

These days customer service is often what makes the difference in maintaining customer loyalty.

This week I had the opportunity to experience first class customer service.

Several months ago I learned about Zemanta, a service that enriches blog posts by suggesting tags, links, related articles and photos. You can see Zemanta in action on this post.

I added Zemanta to my Blogger dashboard mostly for the ease in finding & using 'legal' photos in my posts. After using Zemanta for a month or so, it disappeared from my Blogger dashboard. I tried to figure out what happened but then other, more pressing issues came up & I decided to do without it.

Earlier this week, out of the blue, I got an email from Jure Cuhalev who is a Zemanta Community Manager. He noticed that I had used Zemanta for a while and then suddenly stopped. He wanted to know if something had broken or if the service hadn't met my expectations.

I was delighted to hear from him as I did miss using the service. After explaining what happened, he transferred my information to Domen Grabec, Zemanta's IE developer. After a number of emails back & forth, during which time Domen led me step-by-step with detailed explanations & screen shots, I now have Zemanta back!

Zemanta offers a free version of their program as well as a paid version. Since I use the free version I am extremely impressed with the level of customer service provided.

If you're a blogger, you may want to check them out: Zemanta.

Today's Tip: Google Image Search

You may already use Google's Image Search to find graphics, clip art & photographs but did you know this is also a great way to find additional information on a topic?

Recently I've been doing research for a couple of projects (a powerpoint for a class presentation & articles for the Examiner.com). I did the usual Google search to find information on the topics.

Then, since both projects needed some graphics to jazz them up, I went to Google search, clicked on 'Images' and typed in my keywords. The results that came up were the graphics I was looking for.

However, I found that the images that showed up with my keywords were usually attached to articles that hadn't come up when I put the same keywords into a regular Google search.

So here's 'Today's Tip': if you're looking for additional information on a topic, do a search of Google Images and you may discover some excellent, new articles.