Handshake HQ Blog
iLearning Global
Posted on November 18th, 2008
iLearning Global is a great iLearning Resource that enables you to make money by helping other people find the great training as well.
I am very skeptical about any MLM, but read the iLearning Global Q&A of why I joined this one.
Marketing Strategy
Posted on September 16th, 2008
Handshake HQ is a marketing tool. But how do you get information on what works?
Check out the Marketing Advisory Board.
And if you want to build an Employee Ambassador Program - use Handshake HQ to help you control the message.
Virtual Assistant Jobs
Posted on August 5th, 2008
We are working more and more with virtual assistants - and sending virtual assistant job leads.
Handshake HQ can help you be more successful with virtual assistant activities by helping you organize the messages you are sending.
Is a Business Card Permission To Email?
Posted on August 1st, 2007
Today I was talking to someone and they insisted that if someone gives them a business card, it is permission to add them to their eNewsletter.
Legally, you can probably get away with it. Morally, it is wrong. They did not ask it and you are inconveniencing them.
What is OK is to follow up with them once. That is why we built Handshake HQ. Why not make a great template that is for follow ups after you get a business card from someone. The template encourages them to opt into your eNewsletter so they can learn more about you and so that they can keep in touch.
One email is fine. A subscription is not.
Handshake HQ Bug Fix
Posted on July 19th, 2007
I fixed the bug with the daily trends. It was not always showing up with data - but the issue has been resolved.
We are seeing considerable success with the product when we use it after an event. It has resulted in significant website traffic, more eNewsletter subscribers and more blog readers, as well as a few direct sales.
Copying From Word
Posted on June 20th, 2007
The release of Handshake HQ is going well. Right now it is a soft release to see what kind of feedback we get and to ensure that we do not experience a rush of users.
One thing to keep an eye on is copying from word or other products. The text must be plain text or it will send come crazy characters. Smart Quotes in word seems to be the biggest problem. The trick to fixing it is to simply retype any characters that do not show up well after saving it.
We also added a message on the template page to watch out for that issue.
The good news is that the templates only need to be set up well once and then used as often as you like, with minor modifications before you send them.
Beta Handshake HQ Open
Posted on June 12th, 2007
You can now sign up for the beta version of Handshake HQ. It is fully functioning and only remains a beta because we are considering a few more features, refining the marketing, adding some form validation, adding additional public email templates and collecting feedback.
Beyond those improvements, we have already started using it to grow our business and create a buzz online quickly. Go ahead and give it a try.
Handshake HQ - Before Promotion
Posted on June 7th, 2007
I like to measure things and create new things. As you can see from this image, “Handshake HQ” has only 17 listings in Google and most of them are from little things we have done in advance. You can keep an eye on how we are doing at promoting it by checking Google here.
Great Progress
Posted on June 5th, 2007
I have a bunch of loose ends to clean up and then we will be launching quietly to a larger group of beta testers. The only major functionality I am not going to add for release is the uploading of data from excel. It is only available for people that are using the more expensive packages and I do not want to hold things up for it, as it is unlikely to be used in the first week or two.
Handshake Development Progress
Posted on May 31st, 2007
As I close out the week, I have gotten some great feedback from the couple of users and have implemented most of the suggestions. Before going wide scale, I still need to add the user management, charge card processing and excel import and export.
I also do not plan on having the main web server process emails for long. We will have to put that engine on another server. However, we can get that done in a day or two, so I am not particularly worried about not being able to handle the load. It would be a good problem to have.