Dan Nedelko

Linksys WRT54G – getting wired speeds on wireless

Dan Nedelko — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 16:54:16 +0000

I’ve got a LinkSys WRT54G wireless router. It’s a little older and been great but lately I’ve been getting disconnected every few hours and had to reset the router. Annoying at best, then I ran a speed test and was sad to see my download speeds stank relative to sitting at my desk and wired right into the router.

I did some digging and after a little bit of work, my wireless speeds equal my wired speeds. Here’s how I did it:

Wired at Home: http://www.speedtest.net/result/1853602685.png
Wireless at Home: http://www.speedtest.net/result/1853606059.png

WRT54G Linksys 2.4 Ghz

Upgraded firmware to 8.0.0.8 from the WRT54G Cisco product page. Make sure you check your hardware model number on the bottom of the router first.
Prevented wireless channel switching (selected channel 11 as I was getting knocked offline by another router).
Changed from wireless network mode to G-only from Mixed.

Next login to the setup page of the Router:

Under Wireless tab change the Wireless channel to 11

Advanced wireless settings:

Change the Beacon Interval from 75-100 (my optimal interval was 100)
Change the Fragmentation Threshold to 2304 through 2375 (my optimal was 2375)
Change the RTS Threshold to 2304 through 2375 (my optimal was 2375)
Change “Basic Rate” from Default to All.
Click on Save Settings.

Wireless speeds now equal wired speeds in 95% of my home.

The End.

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Why I’m the Marketing Guy and That’s OK.

Dan Nedelko — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 16:53:48 +0000

Image courtesy of GapingVoid

I’ve been an entrepreneur for many years, it’s chaotic, hectic, painful, stressful, fun and rewarding – if I’m lucky I might even make some money at it. That’s where I’m personally at today, and again it’s ok.

After one of those extremely hectic days recently, me and one of my partners decided to grab a drink in the local watering hole where we ran into a local business figurehead who will remain nameless.

It was an interesting exchange since I had met this individual no less than 5 times in past 6 months and was quite quickly forgotten. That’s OK as well I’m busier on a daily basis than even I can imagine and spend a significant amount of time awake until 2am or 3am on what I like to call my night shift.

Back to the story. After re-introducing himself the light blub then came on and I was greeted with “Oh yeah, you’re the marketing guy”.

You could call it insecurity (I don’t) but I quickly replied that I’m not specifically a marketing guy, although I do believe marketing in new companies and start-ups as a critical element that is quite often overlooked.

Marketing is business, it’s how you sell your product and how your clients and prospects feel about you. It’s also a way to get the world to know who you are, what you are doing and to create a mindshare with the world-at-large.

It’s business, and it’s critical to the success or failure of any new venture.

Back to the story: apparently (according to our good friend) I was insecure about my abilities. Which I both found amusing and ridiculous at the same time.

So why tell the story?

I do a hell of a lot more in any given day than marketing. I’m working to make all of my ventures succeed just like any other entrepreneur. I’m doing it without investment, all of my companies are (currently) cash flow positive and growing.

I’m happy with that. Marketing is key to the success of all of the ventures, particularly at the early stages. Marketing is also a whole lot more than some perceived bolt-on that happens after you’ve figured out financing, an office, a product, a message and a team.

From day one think about your marketing, how the world will see you, what they say and what they will believe about you and your company.

Even more fundamentally it’s about who are you selling product to, will they purchase it, what are you saying to sell that product and how do we make these companies viable, profitable and long lasting.

Develop your business plan and execute with those elements front of mind. It will make a world of difference much more quickly than you may realize.

Yup. I’m the Marketing Guy. Hell, I’m the Twitter guy as well. I also get coffee, clean the office, don’t take a pay cheque when needed and stay up all night whenever needed. I love it. I’m an entrepreneur and I wouldn’t have it any other way (although my wife and family may sometimes disagree!).

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Youdoneven Know

Dan Nedelko — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 05:42:26 +0000

No comment required.

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Inspiration for start-up entrepreneurs

Dan Nedelko — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 15:38:00 +0000

Hang in there. Special thanks to Gaping Void – my online psychotherapist.

The Start-Up Drive : Startups need planning.

Universes collide

Dan Nedelko — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 22:52:55 +0000

I feel like I might be creating a black hole or something

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How to create a great social media content schedule

Dan Nedelko — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 05:43:30 +0000

I often run into examples of poorly executed social media “programs”. Generally this comes from a highly undervalued view of social media, poor planning and an under-estimation of the complexity of the channels.

Quite often this will lead to an inconsistent and off-topic communication plan when it comes to talking to your fans or brand advocates through social media channels. Here are a few things I see happen all the time:

You talk endlessly about yourself, your product and special offers. You’re talking at your consumers, fans, brand advocates not to them.
You talk endlessly about completely off-topic content. Try to be relevant to your brand values.
You are always borrowing the content of others. You have content in your business, I know you do. Now use it.

I’m going to give you some insight into a process I’ve used over the years at both Honeypot Marketing and ArtBarn Media in order to put together a simple, effective and organized social media communications program.

Step #1 – Define your company (brand) values.

This is not a complex or overly difficult thing to do. In 3-5 simple words or basic statements describe what you stand for and what makes your company or you different. What’s it all about?

Let’s use the simple example of Bob’s Restaurant. It’s a mid-range restaurant in a small urban center of 130,000 people, the market is competitive but Bob’s been at this for 35 years. It’s a family owned business with a loyal following, Bob is passionate about his work and the food that is produced. There is a focus on local suppliers, fresh daily specials and events which are catered and also regularly occurring weekly events.

At the most atomic and basic level, the things that make Bob’s Restaurent different are in fact: food, events, people, environment. We’re avoiding complexity and intentionally keeping it simple.

Step #2 – Expand on your values…

Now let’s dig a little bit deeper (but not too much) into what those atomic brand and company statements mean…

Food – the food is made fresh everyday, daily specials are always unique, the ingredients are from local suppliers, the chef puts creativity into every special and plate.
Events – events are unique and frequent, from daily events to special events we are always dedicated to creating amazing experiences for all of our guests.
People – our staff are the heart and soul of our business, we care about each other and work hard to make our workplace fun and exciting even though it can be stressful at times.
Environment – we’ve spent years, countless hours and invested in the ambiance of our business, we are always looking to make our restaurant feel like home, a comfortable atmosphere where our customers are comfortable and welcomed.

Step #3 – Build a content plan based on your values.

Okay, we’re getting there! Now that we’ve laid out our company in a simple and concise manner we can build out a content plan that makes sense. We’re going to build content and messaging that always supports the values above and communicates these to our fans on all of the social networks we are engaged with daily.

When building out a content plan it’s very important to plan, create and schedule. This will ensure that you’re not running around every day trying to create content in an ad-hoc and chaotic manner. We’re going to use photos, videos and small stories to communicate the points in Step #2 in a casual, fun and engaging manner.

Food – we’re going to take 50 pictures of all of our menu items, the chef is going to give us a brief description of each and what makes it unique.
Events – we know that 50% of our events are planned. We’re going to use the creative we’ve already made, take photos at the events and also re-use photos from our previous events.
People – we’re going to take short videos and take pictures of our staff. We want to tell their story and we also are going to take pictures of staff in their environment and show some behind the scenes peeks for our customers.
Environment – we’re going to take some pictures of our restaurant, the ambiance and tell our story. How did we get here? What did we do that was a challenge? We want our customers to understand and feel the same passion we feel for this business.

Step #4 – Pick a couple of days and get that content together!

Get a decent camera and video camera, plan out a couple of days and then simply build out a database of the content in Step #3. Use Flickr to store photos, load up videos on YouTube and get all of your content organized.

This is not a huge job, especially considering that we’re building out a schedule that we can then have posting to our social media profiles on a regular basis. By doing this all at once you can work it into your workflow once a month or every 6 weeks. It will be very manageable, trust me.

Step #5 – Use a social media management software package.

I prefer Hootsuite for it’s ability to tie into multiple social networks, multiple team member support, scheduling and authorizing posts. The most important thing here is the scheduling portion. Take a few hours and write your content, lay it out so that you’re posting your content at the appropriate time of day and also planning it out so you’re not flooding the channels all at once.

If you’ve never done this before then use your intuition on the most effective time of day to post content, social media isn’t magic, it’s a channel that allow you to talk directly to your customers and potential customers and allows them to talk back. Using the restaurant example above, posting food features 1 hour before lunch or dinner would be a logical and intuitive place to start.

Once you got some analytics data, you can then go back and start to see what content, what voice, what time of day and what rich media is the most engagig to your fans. You can revise all of this in fairly short order.

Step #6 – Implement your schedule and prepare for real time posting!

Congratulations! You’ve just off-loaded 60%-70% of the daily overhead of your social media program. Now you can focus on the real-time updates, cool events that happen and monitor your channels to provide responses to inquiries.

Your messaging will be on point and relevant to your business without being too blunt or being so completely off-topic that you’re simply adding to the white noise of social networks. You’ll be engaging and unique to your customers (turning them into brand advocates) and will give you the opportunity to reach into their networks naturally.

How can you prepare for real-time posting? Make sure you and/or your staff have capable smart phones and are comfortable with providing updates, photos and discussion with your customers. Be prepared, because the more successful you are with your social media program the more prepared you will have to be to respond to your networks.

Wrapping it up.

There’s alot more to your social media plan than I’ve covered here. Landing pages, contests, engagement strategies, partnership programs and more advanced content campaigns are all a part of a highly successful social media plan that doesn’t suck.

The goal of this post is to give you a head start when implementing your own social media plan and community management. It’s an important first step as it provides the organization and foundation to move into more advanced and effective program elements.

Social media marketing will lift your business, doesn’t matter if you’re a large enterprise or a local small business. Hopefully the simple steps above give you a jump start into your social media planning.

Internet Marketing Tweet Digest 2011-11-27

Dan Nedelko — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 05:26:00 +0000

@dannymichel delivers $20k in donations to the Ocean Academy / Belize, CA http://t.co/GkhQit5B via @youtube #

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Internet Marketing Tweet Digest 2011-11-20

Dan Nedelko — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 05:26:00 +0000

I'm at Brick Brewing Company (181 King Street S, Waterloo) http://t.co/DzSFmCBr #
@jennmae haha the short answer to that is no and the long answer is it was work in reply to jennmae #

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Internet Marketing Tweet Digest 2011-11-13

Dan Nedelko — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 05:26:00 +0000

@martyc29 lol nope, my neighbour neurotically rakes leaves for a month and draws the line at the property line. I let leaves fall… in reply to MartyC29 #
@martyc29 haha if it's free then sure. Have a snowblower kickin' around there? I have a disc golf bag and discs for Cal btw. His own set. in reply to MartyC29 #
@MartyC29 heh a snowblower might be cool I'm officially too lazy to want to shovel this winter. in reply to MartyC29 #
The art of the fail. http://t.co/4p4WjoOD #
@bakeshopbeth looking forward to tasty coffee and croissants at the cafe @thebauerkitchen – exciting in reply to bakeshopbeth #
Join Mama Knows on Facebook and get 2 free cookbooks http://t.co/2kMaXxpa #cooking #recipes #family #
Peter V on his recent trip to Provence "Just got home and all we can say is that was freaking amazing!" http://t.co/8IFzmTLx @demeuretravel #
100 year old equipment and still in production! The Bauer Kitchen Team Visits Arva Mills http://t.co/25NuJhBZ via @youtube #
Taking time to reflect http://t.co/gJeieGl8 via @joelgascoigne #
@alexkinsella they should end their program immediately. Just brutal in every possible way. in reply to alexkinsella #
@SteveCase interesting POV you've taken on ER – it's ownership and a highly limiting model. It's about access. in reply to SteveCase #

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Social Media is personal – Gary Vaynerchuk

Dan Nedelko — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 04:03:45 +0000

Good old Gary Vaynerchuk does a great job of distilling the importance of social media and how it can lift your business. Watch the video below. I’m adding my own bullet points in addition to highlights from Gary’s talk.

The way business used to built was on the relationship.
Social media level sets that relationship, the new marketing is marketing to the individual.
Stop thinking short term, run the marathon don’t run the sprint.
If you like it then you better put a ring on it.
Don’t treat social media like it’s a one night stand. Make the commitment.
Everyone is acting like a teenager in social media settings – trying to close the deals without starting the conversation.
You don’t want to bet on the culture shift because it doesn’t happen in the next 20 minutes. Make the bet.
For the first time ever it’s not push, it’s a cocktail party. That’s uncomfortable for marketers.
Thank you economy is offense. Customer service is defense.
Find your clients on social media and find out what they love.
What you can learn is about your customer, not just his shopping habits. What are their emotional triggers, find them and thank them, be one to one.
It’s about lifetime value not the purchase today.
Say thank you. People are in sales mode, customers don’t expect to simply be thanked.
We are social creatures. We want to express ourselves. It’s the same in social.
Social media is about listening, not talking. Listen and learn.
Word of mouth is the currency. Now we have the infrastructure to enable word of mouth.
We all live in the same business. You’re in the eyeballs and ears business.
We’re iving through a massive cultural shift. We need to create context.
Companies have the opportunity to move from a non-human to a human relationship and image.
Create real conversation with your fans, be more than a press release.
Marketers turn everything into a tactic.
Create an emotional connection with your customers

There’s more to come here, but if you’re in business or in marketing do yourself a favour and absorb this.