by admin on January 27, 2010
DC Media Makers, founded by Jill Foster, is more than 200 members strong. More than 60 of those people plan to attend tonight’s meeting at National Public Radio in Washington, DC.
Jen Consalvo will share photography techniques with the group. Consalvo is a social media expert, entrepreneur, and photographer. When I organized a social media panel for the DC Web Women, Jen is one of the people I contacted to speak. I’m delighted to have the opportunity to hear her again on another subject.
Those with iPhones or more traditional cameras can bring them to tonight’s event to follow along with her tips and instructions.
More on DC Media Makers (DCMM
Jill Foster has this to say about DCMM:
We’ve been meeting up for about three years now and it’s a fantastic place to learn and have a blast with digital tech. It’s very idea and conversation driven. As in when folks in digital tech present, they are really conversation starters (vs wrapped up in a PowerPoint presentation). At meetups, we talk about what people are working on in digital media (professional projects or those just for fun) — from webcasting, video blogging, mobile media, film and editing software, podcasting. We’re promoting digital literacy in our own way. And we collaborate and make stuff too. Learn, teach each other, have fun, practice the tech, repeat.
You can also find chocolate, and that’s always important.
Learn more at the meetup page for DC Media Makers.
by admin on January 6, 2010
Catch up on the previous days of my Facebook fast.
By day six, I no longer missed Facebook. I chatted with friends on this thing called a telephone. Do you remember those? You punch numbers, let it ring, and someone answers on the other end. It’s delightful.
I’ve never been addicted to coffee, but I know someone who has. He periodically gives it up. There’s a withdrawal phase — as with anything addictive — and I went through that phase with avoiding Facebook. However, avoiding Facebook became easier over time. I started to think about it less. Facebok status updates were no longer coursing through my brain waves or sucking up the energy of precious brain cells.
I wrote seven poem drafts this year. That felt good.
by admin on January 6, 2010
According to Hitwise, Facebook was the number one search term for 2009. Google was number six. In 2009, Google received the most traffic for 364 days of the year. Facebook beat them on that other day. In March 2009, ClickZ published an article that stated more downstream traffic was coming from Facebook instead of Google on sites such as Cafe Mom.
I’m finding it interesting to watch these trends and think it would be worth it to test Facebook ads for certain kinds of businesses.
What are your thoughts?
by admin on January 5, 2010
Catch up on the previous days of my Facebook fast.
In case you haven’t read the previous posts yet, I decided in December to have a Facebook fast from January 1 to January 15. These dates were slightly arbitrary. I prepared before I “left” Facebook in the following ways:
1. I posted a final update on December 31, 2009 to provide my — it’s crazy, I know — email address. Who uses email anymore anyway, right?
2. I sent messages to a few people to let them know I’d be off line. This fast reminded me there are quite a few people I chat with only over Facebook, so I don’t even have their email addresses.
On January 1, I was still “hearing” updates in my head. I do not want to think in “updates.” It took me a few days to detox, and I’m better now.
by admin on January 4, 2010
The days are going quickly. It’s hard to believe I’ve lasted four days without Facebook.
Today, I was back to my regular work of SEO, PPC and copywriting. Since I was so busy, it was easy to avoid the Big FB today. I spent the evening reading Francine Prose’s Blue Angel. I drafted a poem.
But wait! In my role as Program Chair for DC Web Women, I had to share news about our upcoming program. We promote via the listserv, via LinkedIn and — you guessed it — via Facebook. Although I could have emailed one of two other administrators to post the news, I did not feel like going through the hassle. Let’s not get silly here. I logged in, posted the note and logged back out. I wondered if anyone “saw” me. Boy, those notifications looked juicy. And what was that message on my Wall? I logged out quickly before I could get sucked in for two hours.
Two hours saved.
by admin on January 3, 2010
Please see my first post about my 15-Day Facebook Fast.
Can I do it? Last night, I had a dream — a nightmare? — in which I forgot about the Facebook fast and logged on. I was struck with horror when I saw what I’d done.
By now, the Facebook is leaving my bloodstream. The shakes are over. My mind feels clear.
Today — a Sunday — I rose in the near dark and headed to a coffee shop around 0700 to work on my novel for a blissful 2.5 hours. I woke up early because I went to bed early. I went to bed early, in part, because I was not wasting time on Facebook.
by admin on January 2, 2010
I’m continuing my promise not to use Facebook until January 15.
I replaced my Facebook time with real-life events. We met a friend and took our children to a children’s play space in Maryland. I got to pet a bunny named Strawberry, eat pretend ice cream from a play kitchen where the kids were the cooks, and play musical instruments with children.
We went to lunch with another friend. Since we’re still in the market for restaurants that offer crayons, we went to Austin Grill. They do have an amazing grilled corn on the cob. I can’t believe I am recommending this, but they put sprinkles of tart cheese and scallions on the corn. Brilliant. We talked about academia and poetry. Since the latter is a favorite subject, I was in heaven.
by admin on January 1, 2010
In December, I decided to take a break from the photos, videos, updates, comments, messages, ads, friend requests, fan pages and groups on Facebook. On December 31, I already felt twitchy about giving up this addiction.
“You haven’t even started yet,” said a friend.
I decided to see what my mind would do without the constant distraction of Facebook. Today, I enjoyed a leisurely breakfast with my family and did not spend much time on the web. I even — gasp! — took a nap.
For a person who makes her living on the web, being offline was a big deal. I found it refreshing.
I’ll chronicle what I do each day with my “Facebook time” for the next fourteen days.
by admin on July 13, 2009
A friend of a friend had a book on the New York Times best-seller list. I questioned for how much longer the best-seller list would impress anyone — a year, five years?
With newspapers slowly going down the drain, how much longer will we care what they have to say about books we read on our Kindles? With the increased “niche-ing” of society — and people moving into small and highly selective groupings of people who like highly selective niched works of art — will this list remain relevant?
I read poetry and the poetry niche even has its niches: Language poetry, lyrical poetry, spoken word poetry and so on.
When’s the last time you asked someone what they were reading and you found you were not reading the same thing?
The importance of the best-seller list exists, in part, due to people like you and me. We give it importance so it becomes important in the same way a dollar is worth a dollar because you and I believe that.
This importance comes from positioning. In the same way the Iowa Writer’s Workshop will always be the “number one” place to study creative writing or Harvard will always be the number one school, the New York Times best-seller list will always be number one — at least as long as we believe in it.
I had been thinking about this idea and was reminded of it when I read Seth Godin’s blog last evening. He got to write about a similar subject before I did.
by admin on July 11, 2009
Recently, I submitted requests for quotes to several businesses for work I need done. Each potential vendor came highly recommended from someone I trust. I reviewed the work of ten vendors and contacted five of them. If you are wondering how to get more business, I’m going to share a huge “secret” with you.
First, how many vendors do you think contacted me?
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Credit to Jenn Jenn on Flickr.
Time is money and money is time. If you’re running a business, then time management is an issue. It’s even more of an issue for a boot-strapping — starting a business with small funds and no loan — business. To be a success, you have to learn to get things done in an efficient way.
Without telling a lot of people, I implemented an unofficial Getting Things Done (GTD) strategy in my life. Not until months later did I hear there was a book by this name. I later read about the GTD time management process on the Zen Habits blog.
What I discovered during this process — and, yes, the process is ongoing — is that I felt better, I accomplished more and the house was cleaner because every little thing down to the recycled bread wrapper ties had a place in the house. Because the house and office were more organized and I did not spend time looking for things, I saved hours over the course of a week.
Here are my own made-up tips to GTD for your sanity and happiness.
- Write Up Your Tasks: Make two lists. The first list is what’s the most pressing. These items can be done right away. Make sure you give yourself reasonable deadlines. Painting the house will take more than a day. Boxing up items for Goodwill may take only an hour. Your second list is for tasks that will take longer to accomplish or require outside help. Figure out what sucks up your energy, and take care of that first.
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by admin on June 21, 2009
A nonprofit contacted me about helping them with SEO on their redesign, and I thought how wise they were to consider SEO before they start designing the site. With that in mind, I thought I’d put together a list of a few SEO-related items to consider before, and during, your site redesign.
- Use Clean Code: Be sure to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to reduce redundancy of code on your website. With CSS, you can easily indicate your color preferences of H tags or regular text without having to code each block of text in the HTML code. Using clean code also means placing your content at the top of the HTML code as opposed to placing it under a graphic or flash file. A designer or coder should understand this. =-)
- Do Your Keyword Research: Using a tool such as the Google Keyword Research Tool, figure out your target keywords. If possible, you want to select low competition and high traffic phrases.
- Write for People and Search Engines: You want crisp, clean copy that speaks to your audience and keeps Googlebot happy. Use your target key phrases in a natural way in the first paragraph and headlines and as links, when possible, to other pages on your site.
- Think Usability: Usability and SEO go hand in hand. Both Googlebot and humans need to navigate your site. I’ve found it useful to write potential website sections on index cards or post-its and place them on a wall. Subsections can go underneath. The index cards allow you to move the potential sections around to see where they best fit. In addition, use a site map. Google Webmaster Tools provides you with a handy XML sitemap you can place on your site.
Beth Bates offers additional tips on what to consider during a redesign.
by admin on June 15, 2009
Kristen King, Mayra Ruiz-McPherson and Beth J. Bates at the American Independent Writers Conference 2009
Kristen King (@kristenking) moderated our panel on blogging and had a host of excellent questions up her sleeve to keep the panel moving along while getting the most from each panelist’s expertise. One of the big questions was: “Can you really make money online with blogging?”
Thursday Bram pointed out that she’d been making a full-time living with blogging for about four years. She said she’d talked to people in journalism and found she was making more than her colleagues still employed full-time for one company.
Deborah Ager and Kristen King prepare for the panel
Hot Blogging and Freelancing Tips
Thursday Bram (@thursdaybram) discussed blogging for b5media and copyright issues. If your online writing is stolen, tell Google. If you file a valid complaint, Google will often shut down the thief’s website. Bram shared a resource called Help a Reporter Out, which will help you get in touch with contacts when you’re writing a blog post.
Mayra Ruiz-McPherson (@marketingmisfit) discussed how an online writer has only seconds to capture a reader’s interest and suggested using photos to attract and retain readership.
Beth J. Bates discussed how much she’d learned about blogging by starting to do it herself. I think she’s put herself through an admirable crash course, which is what entrepreneurs often do!
The Other Big Question
The other big question was “does blogging count as real writing?” Kristen King mentioned that she overheard someone say that blogging did not count as “real” writing, and she stepped in to say that it did. Everyone on the panel agreed that blogging counts.
I pointed out that online publication is not 100% accepted as “real” publication, because there are still people who prefer to appear in print and the National Endowment for the Arts requests fellowship applicants to use no more than a certain number of online publications in their application. Bloggers and the writing on blogs doesn’t yet have complete acceptance; I think it will over time.
Thursday Bram, Deborah Ager, Beth J Bates and Mayra Ruiz-McPherson at AIW Conference
Mayra Ruiz-McPherson graciously said we could use her photos from the event. All credit goes to her.
by admin on June 11, 2009
by emdot from flickr, used under creative commons
One of the books I turn to again and again is
The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist. Twist is a fundraiser, speaker, and author and has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and trained thousands of fundraisers to be more effective. She is one of my heroes.
From her website:
Lynne has spent more than three decades working in positions of leadership with many global initiatives including: ending world hunger, protecting the world’s rain forests, empowering indigenous peoples, improving health, economic, and political conditions for women and children, advancing the scientific understanding of human consciousness, and creating a sustainable future for all life.
When I read a blog post this morning (It’s Not Necessarily Who You Know) by DC-area WordCamp organizer Aaron Brazell, I was reminded of a point in Twist’s book regarding collaboration.
Collaboration Creates Prosperity
You could just as easily say: “Partnership creates prosperity.”
If you are looking for a job and work with a recruiter, you and the recruiter have the opportunity to create prosperity. If you have the skills and interview well, you could get a job and the recruiter could get a fee. Everyone wins. If you know a lot of technical information and have no design skills, a partnership with a designer could prove beneficial. Again, everyone wins.
You get the point.
In The Soul of Money, Twist says:
‘Philanthropy is not just for rich people who feel magnanimous, guilty or embarrassed about having more than they need…
We have an opportunity now to retire traditional charity as we’ve known it, and in its place create partnerships in which a shared vision is realized through solidarity and the collaboration of know-how, hard work, and cash resources. This is the new philanthropy, contribution and service in collaboration. When you are in that space, that place, problems dissolve, miracles abound.’
What do we need to succeed in a collaborative partnership?
1. Know how
2. Hard work
3. Cash resources
Although Twist discusses this idea in terms of fundraising and philanthropy, the idea applies to business. Take your good idea. See who you know. Look inside yourself. Outline your passions and aspiration. What do you want to create?
At WordCamp Mid Atlantic, I attended an excellent presentation by Sri Nagubandi and John Shehata on SEO for WordPress blogs. Those of you who know me well know that I’ve been a fan of using WordPress as a content management system and as a way to gain traction in the search engines for years. I often had the sense people thought I was nuts, and they would ask me why they would want a blog as a website. I can’t blame them, because back then there were not that many instances of a website (not a blog) being run on WordPress. Now, we can find superb examples of using WordPress as a CMS if we know where to look. At times, you can’t even tell a site is running WordPress! They certainly do not have to look like blogs. [click to continue…]
I had the pleasure of writing an article for the Network Solutions Women Grow Business blog. Jill Foster is the editor of this educational blog geared towards business owners. I highly suggest you visit Women Grow Business and read through the articles. Jill has found a number of entrepreneurs to share their take on business building, entrepreneurship, lay offs and team work.
This month, I wrote about SEO techniques you can use to help people find your content and gain more traction in search engines. You’ll get to read a search engine optimization case study in which I let you know how I helped a company attain top two Google rankings. The result? Read the article, please. Did you think I was going to spoil the ending?
To get high rankings with your blog, you have to write articles. The search engines — those darling robots — are hungry creatures. They hunger for your blog content. If you are using SEO copywriting techniques, the robots will be able to “read” your content and classify it properly.
First, though, an article must be written. The actual writing of the article is often the most difficult part for people.
When it comes to writing, I notice that procrastination takes up the most time. We talk about writing blog posts when we could be sitting down and finishing our blog post in the amount of time we spent saying we have no time to write one. Okay, maybe it takes slightly less time to say we have no time than it does to write one. [click to continue…]
Several clients have mentioned how they tried to use Google AdWords and lost a lot of money. Losing the money has turned at least a few off to using AdWords in the near future, and that removes one potential method for them attracting new clients. As a result of these conversations, I thought I’d put together a tiny guide to using Google AdWords. This will by no means teach you all you need to know about PPC (pay-per-click) marketing, but it will steer you away from some of the more common AdWords mistakes I’ve seen people make. [click to continue…]
When the topic of social media is raised, a comment I often hear is that social media takes up too much time. People want to know how to keep social media from becoming a time suck; it definitely can become a time management nightmare if you’re not careful.
I take a few steps to ensure that I’m not spending 99% of my time uploading photos to Facebook and Twittering with all of the interesting people on Twitter.
- Limit Yourself: Choose a certain amount of time each day you’ll spend on social media. You might choose to spend 30 minutes to an hour each morning. I know one person who Twitters from his car while his daughters are in dance class.
- Pick Your Platform: Another comment I’ve heard from dozens of people is that they don’t know which platform to start with first. Focus is the key. I ignore Plaxo requests at present. I avoid MySpace. I use Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. That’s about what I can manage right now.
- Give Up Something Else: If you need, and want, to find 30 minutes to an hour to use social media for your business, then I suggest giving up something else. For instance, I don’t text and I only rarely IM. I used to be able to say I watched no television; then, I discovered Hugh Laurie on House. When I watched no television, I had oodles more time.
A few years ago I read Dan Kenndy’s No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs, which helps you see where time is wasted so you can get more time out of your day.
Kennedy suggests turning off the phone, running errands and commuting to work at off-peak times, limiting email, and limiting meetings. Instead, return all calls at the same time, respond to email all at the same time, etc. Batch processing tasks saves you from being interrupted and an interruption can cost you 5 minutes several times a day, which can quickly add up to an hour.
After reading Kennedy’s book, I listened to an educational CD in my car and it perfectly filled a 20-minute ride. When I worked for another company, I arranged to work from home a few days a week; that saved me four hours. My to-do list keeps me on track and means I’m not having to waste time remembering what I need to accomplish each day.
Easy-to-lose items, like keys, are kept in the proper place so I know where to find them (instead of wasting 5-20 minutes searching like I did before).
One suggestion in the book is to link all of your tasks to your overall life goals. Then, you can ask yourself if you are making the best use of your time in this moment. Sure, we’ll goof off sometimes. However, we also want to make time for what’s important to us.
Last night, I had the pleasure of organizing and attending DC Web Women’s Social Media Extravaganza with five DC-area social media strategists — Mayra Ruiz-McPherson, Beth J. Bates, Jill Foster, Jen Consalvo, and Terri Holley — presenting on a variety of social media subjects at TRAK Staffing in Washington, DC. An additional bit of excitement was the motorcade for the Pakistani and Afghani presidents that rumbled by at 18 and I Streets, NW and delayed a few participants.
These are notes. As such, the writing is a bit choppy as I chose to take notes the old-fashioned way — with a pen and paper!
Used with permission from Jen Consalvo
Jill Foster took the stage first and said social media is the “relationship fertilizer business.” Her goal for every tool she’s used to promote the Women Grow Business blog for Network Solutions has been to develop a long-term community as opposed to making an immediate sale. She said she found posting a question on LinkedIn to provide a “massive, immediate” response. She found Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook helpful in promoting and connecting with her communities on this project.
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I’ve been blogging for more than five years and have bought multiple WordPress themes (aka designs) and used countless free themes. Although I liked many of them, none provided easy code and design customization and stellar support until I found the Thesis WordPress Theme.
I’ve been using this theme for several months as part of a content management solution for websites and to run blogs, and I can say I’ve found the theme I’ll use for the rest of my blogging days.
Why is the Thesis WordPress Theme so Great?
- Support: When you buy Thesis, you are able to join a community of Thesis users who offer you answers and suggestions on how to use Thesis better to manage your website and achieve your goals. An additional plus is that you can see how other people are using the theme and get ideas and inspiration.
- Design Freedom: Thesis comes out of the box looking plain ‘vanilla’ yet attractive. If you had to do so, you could use Thesis without graphics. Most people don’t want to do that, so it’s good news that Thesis can be customized with graphics and color changes. With a few edits to a ‘custom’ file, I can change the background and outline colors of my theme and change how my header navigation looks. I love this feature because I can see how a variety of options look before making my final decision. If I change my mind, it’s easy to make a site-wide change.
- Creating Pages: When you create pages, they are not automatically placed into your site navigation as they are in other themes. Since you might want to create pages that don’t appear in your overall site navigation, this is quite handy. If you do want a page to appear, you check a box and you’re done.
- Multimedia Box: With this box, you can insert video, a photo, or a series of rotating photos or even advertising. What makes this remarkable is that your multimedia can be changed page by page and even post by post. If you write a post about Thesis, this one for instance, you can include a related graphic of link to an affiliate program on the same page. (To see an example of this, be sure you click on the title of this post.) It makes so much sense that you would tailor your ads based on what the visitor wants to see. Brilliant!
- Search Engine Optimization: For my small business clients, this theme is attractive because it makes optimizing a blog post simple. A few input boxes allow you to add meta tags, a description and a custom title tag.
I’m wondering if this theme can wash my car, too.
Are there drawbacks? Yes. If you know absolutely nothing about PHP or CSS and don’t want to learn, then you’ll want to get some help. That’s where the helpful support forum comes into play. You can ask any question about Thesis and receive a reply rather quickly. I’ve always received a reply within 24 hours — often less.
To make the most of the design modifications, you’ll want to make some modifications to the code. The good news is that you can find cut-and-paste code on blogs related to Thesis, and these posts show up when you put your question into Google. I’m far from a PHP programmer, yet I’ve done fine with adding code to customize my sites.
I encourage you to look into getting this theme. If you already use it, please let me know what you think about it in the comments.
When I spoke to a group of small business owners about starting blogs, many of them wanted to know more about WordPress. I’m always happy to discuss using WordPress as a content management system. When I told them that they could use a free piece of code to continue updating their blog while they travel on business or vacation, their eyes lit up. If you’re already a WordPress user, then you know that this piece of code is called a “plugin.” This group wanted to know the best WordPress Plugins.
Below are seven plugins I use now or have used in the past.
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by admin on April 14, 2009
WordPress (WP) is one of the best content management systems out there, and one reason has to do with its price. It’s open source and free.
Not everyone who visits this site is a tech geek, so I’ll explain that “open source” means software, developed by programming volunteers, that people can use for free.
Now on to the reasons why I think you should at least consider using WordPress to run your website:
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by admin on March 20, 2008
Lately, I’ve had people asking me questions about the meta keyword tag. It’s dead. It’s been dead for years, yet I have a hard time getting this across to people.
Back in the old days of the web, the search algorithms were simple and the meta keyword tag was offered as a way for webmasters to let search engines know what their site was about.
It was simple. People liked meta tags, and they were easy to fill in with related data.
Unfortunately, spammers took advantage and started stuffing the keyword tag with unrelated words that they thought people would search for on the internet. If they thought people would search for “healthy hair,” then they would add that into their keyword tags even if their site was really about cars.
Spammers sometimes want traffic even if it’s junk traffic. I have no idea how this really helps their sites. To each his or her own.
What do you use instead?
Instead, you can start by become an SEO expert, writing stellar content or hiring an SEO copywriter. Content is king, my friends, and it’s hard to go wrong with quality content that people want to read.
by admin on February 12, 2008
This is part two of my article on becoming a SEO expert. You can read part one of this SEO Education series first if you want.
By spending time in online marketing forums, you may find you absorb a lot more search engine optimization (SEO) information than you realize. When I joined my first tech forum, I was baffled by the techie language. Within a few months, I could hardly believe I’d ever not understood what they were talking about.
This article shares seven SEO forums and two excellent online marketing blogs with you.
On SEO forums, you’ll find a mix of people managing niche websites, people wanting to market their brick and mortar, black hat SEO types, and prominent leaders and “gurus” in the SEO field. As with anywhere in the world, some people will be kind and others rude.
Read on to get the list of seven SEO forums and two blogs.
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by admin on February 11, 2008
Are you curious about how to improve your SEO skills? Are you a small business owner who wants to know a bit more about SEO?
Recently, someone emailed me to ask what resources I use and think are best for learning about search engine optimization (SEO). With some of these resources, you may wonder what is the relation to SEO. Magazines.com may seem like an odd choice, yet it works to help you with your website and SEO if you let it.
Below are the first nine of my top 27 resources, including websites and online training, that have helped me develop my skills.
This list is in no particular order. Here you go! [click to continue…]
by admin on January 16, 2008
Well, gosh. Here I was going to write the best ways to use LinkedIn and the company itself beat me to it.
I’ll share a few of their ideas and then a few of mine: [click to continue…]
by admin on January 14, 2008
You, too, can use LinkedIn for socializing and job searching. In this three-part series, I’ll discuss:
1. What steps to take for LinkedIn success.
2. How to use LinkedIn for networking, new work, and collaboration.
3. When you should use Facebook instead of LinkedIn.
When I first joined LinkedIn, I just didn’t get it. I signed up, plugged in some of my information and let it sit. Where was the magic I expected?
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by admin on January 11, 2008
Imagine looking at the time, realizing two hours went by, and you haven’t completed your major project for the day.
Has this ever happened to you?
It was August and the scent of lavender and mint blew in through an open window. Somewhere a neighbor was mowing a lawn, and I could hear children at the playground. Ah, the sounds of a home-based office.
And then I wondered:
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