My 15-Day Facebook Fast: Day Four

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. [...]

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My 15-Day Facebook Fast: Day Three

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 [...]

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My 15-Day Facebook Fast: Day Two

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 [...]

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My 15-Day Facebook Fast: Day One

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 [...]

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The New York Times Best-Seller List and Positioning

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 [...]

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How to Get More Business?

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, [...]

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Getting Things Done for Your Sanity and Happiness

July 4, 2009

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. [...]

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SEO Tips: What to Consider Before Your Redesign

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: [...]

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American Independent Writers’ Conference: Can You Really Make Money Online?

June 15, 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 [...]

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It’s Not Necessarily Who You Know; It’s About Partnerships

June 11, 2009

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 [...]

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Search Engine Optimization for WordPress at WordCamp Mid Atlantic 2009

May 28, 2009

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 [...]

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5 SEO Tips to Improve Your Search Engine Rankings

May 28, 2009

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 [...]

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How to Write a Blog Post in 30 Minutes

May 18, 2009

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 [...]

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The Tiny Free Guide to Google AdWords

May 14, 2009

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 [...]

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Time Management for Social Media Users

May 13, 2009

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 [...]

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Notes on the DC Web Women Social Media Panel

May 7, 2009

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 [...]

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Is Twitter on the Way Out?

May 5, 2009

Recently, I read that Twitter retains only 30% or fewer of its sign ups. When I first wrote about Twitter on this blog, Twitter was still relatively new. New Twitterers were hopping on board at a fast pace. Since then, TwitterWorld has become crowded. It’s easy to get overwhelmed. You have to face the facts [...]

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Review of the Thesis WordPress Theme

May 4, 2009

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 [...]

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7 of the Best WordPress Plugins

May 3, 2009

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 [...]

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9 Reasons to Use WordPress and to Kiss HTML Goodbye

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 [...]

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Meta Keyword Tag: It’s Long Since Dead

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 [...]

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Ways to Become an SEO Expert

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 [...]

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3 Tips to LinkedIn Success

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:

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How I Used Social Media to Land Work, a Speaking Gig, and a Friend: A 3-Part Series

January 14, 2008

You, too, can use LinkedIn for socializing and job searching. You don’t have to stand alone. In this three-part series, I’ll discuss: What steps to take for LinkedIn success. How to use LinkedIn for networking, new work, and collaboration. When you should use Facebook instead of LinkedIn. When I first joined LinkedIn, I just didn’t [...]

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How I Wasted 2 Hours My Very First Day in Business

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 [...]

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If You Don’t Twitter Now, You’ll Hate Yourself Later

January 7, 2008

“Twitter is dumb.” That’s what a friend of mine said when I told him I use Twitter, a microblogging tool. What he doesn’t realize is that this tool is useful for marketing, staying in touch, getting ideas, and receiving breaking news. Consider it like a mini-newsletter or mini-blog that allows you to reach people in [...]

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Three Ways to Achieve Your Resolutions and Goals

January 2, 2008

DoshDosh at the Make Money Online blog wrote about 8 ways to optimize yourself in your business, in your personal life and in your living space. Essentially, he shares how to optimize yourself. Since it’s that goal-setting time of year, I’m sharing three ways to keep your business and personal goals realistic and possible.

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Are You Making These 3 Google AdWords Mistakes?

January 1, 2008

It’s easy to spend thousands of dollars quickly (and accidentally) with Google AdWords campaigns. I’ve heard the horror stories. Ideally, you should hire an AdWords expert to manage your campaign. If you can’t afford that, then you can at least take three steps to improve your campaign results. These may not be easy steps for [...]

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9 Effective (and Slightly Badass) Ways to Use Facebook

December 30, 2007

I joined Facebook in 2008. I committed at least one embarrassing mistake. I would like to help you avoid my pain. When you join Facebook — and it’s a great networking and marketing tool, so you should — do the following.

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Why is My Computer Running so Slowly?

December 28, 2007

That is the phrase I typed into Google recently after rebooting my laptop for the third time in a row. Two weeks ago, I expressed gratitude for having such a great computer. This week, I wanted to pitch it against the wall. Now, I’m back to thinking my PC the best thing since SEO. I’ll [...]

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