If you aren't a fan of the iconic Science Fiction show Star Trek, bear with me here. I think you're going to be pretty amazed at what's been happening lately.

The idea that modern technology is being inspired by or even mirroring that which was imagined on Star Trek is not new. There's even been a TV program hosted by William Shatner that talks about all of the developments that sort-of look like Star Trek gadgets. From computers to cell phones, some pretty amazing things that we take for granted today were an everyday part of the crew of the Enterprise.

However, some of the most recent developments I'm about to share might just blow your mind.

A few weeks ago, I decided that it would be really nice to make the 10 hour drive back home to Ohio and surprise my mom for her birthday. She adores her granddaughter and I knew they both would be thrilled to see each other. Not long after I informed my wife and we scheduled the trip, we were invited to a baby shower in Chicago on the same weekend. While we wouldn't be able to attend the actual shower, we love visiting Chicago and decided to stop there on the way back to St. Louis and spend an additional night. As a result, I knew that I would be traveling and busy with family for four full days. 

When you have a daily blog posting schedule like I do, that's a problem!

I knew that I would have my MacBook Pro and iPad, and of course my iPhone, but I didn't know when or where I would have time to do much, so I decided to have posts ready and scheduled to publish ahead of time. 

One of the easy pitfalls when you're first starting your business (or really at any time) is to say Yes to a client and take on a job that you really didn't want and should not have taken on in the first place. There are all kinds of reasons why we do this; we need the money is typically the culprit. But it's also easy to give in to situations where you think you're helping the client, or perhaps you think it might lead to future opportunities, or other mistaken and misguided reasons.

The problem is that once we get into a situation that isn't a good fit, for whatever reason, it's far more likely that the job will run into insurmountable challenges. Just as we want our customers to be successful in their businesses, we also must ensure that we put ourselves in a position to be successful. Sometimes that means saying No to a potential client.

LinkedIn has said time and time again that its desire is for its members to only connect with other members with whom they have had previous interaction, either through a shared work experience, school, or as a vendor. Members who don't yet know each other are encouraged to connect only after having been introduced or referred by a shared connection. That's why every profile that you see on LinkedIn is displayed as being either a 1st degree connection, 2nd degree connection or 3rd degree connection. 1st degree connections are people you are directly connected to, while 2nd degree connections are people with whom you share a connection, but you are not yet connected to directly. 3rd degree connections are members with whom you have no shared connections at all.

Have you ever had an idea for a blog post, but before you can write about it, someone else beat you to it? If you write about social media and technology like I do, you probably answered "all the time!" It's actually quite rare for me to write on a topic that no one else has already. Jeff Bullas goes so far as to say that everything has already been said. I don't buy into that 100%, but I see his point.

There are many different social networks out there, and if you're like me, you have accounts on a lot of them. Maybe you created a profile on Facebook to connect with friends and family, or maybe you got on Twitter because you were told it would be good for your business. Either way, statistically the average American has six different social media accounts, and that number is on the rise. For most, though, many of these networks aren't providing a lot of value.

When speaking with businesses, I help them to understand their goals for social media, the profile and usage patterns of their target customer, and identification and strategy for specific social networks. For instance, we might identify that a business needs to focus their efforts on LinkedIn and Google+, and spend less time on other networks.

"OK, so now that you have a website for your business, it's time to get active on social networks. Go ahead and create accounts for yourself on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn, and don't forget that Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn also have special pages for businesses that you need to set up and be active on. Next, create profiles on YouTube, Flickr, SlideShare, Quora, Foursquare and Yelp, MySpace, Bebo, Orkut, Viadeo, Vine, Pinterest and Instagram, and spend time each and every day engaging followers on every network. Oh, and keep an eye out for new social networks so that you can join up early and get a head start on your competition."

"Nearly 8% of school-aged children in the U.S. have received a diagnosis of AD/HD and nearly 1 in 5 U.S. school-aged children have some form of dyslexia." According to Joan Brennan, creator of the patented Reading Focus Card, there's a growing segment of our population, both children and adults, who are dealing with these kinds of issues and struggle to read. In 2009, she developed a low-tech tool to help people focus their eyes on just one or two lines of text, and block out all of the surrounding text so that they can concentrate on the words they're trying to read and digest them.

Take one glance at Joan's Pinterest boards (http://pinterest.com/brennajn2000/), and you can see how dedicated she is, not just at selling her product and building her business, but also at providing resources and educational information that people and parents will appreciate.

After I have finished writing, editing, deep linking and have published a new blog post, my work has just gotten started. Simply creating content isn't sufficient to gain readership. You need to actively promote that new post so that people can see it and have a chance to read it. It can take a long time to build up email and RSS subscribers, so in the meantime, you will need to be more proactive.

Here are all the things I do after I publish a post to get readers to it.

One of the more challenging topics that I often discuss with clients is the concept of having an editorial calendar or publishing schedule. The idea is that you know in advance on a particular day, week or month what topic or topics you're going to be talking about through your online platform, including your business blog. When you know the topic in advance, you have an opportunity to plan everything and guide the conversations in directions that you intend.