This week we are the world. The world was all a twitter with tweets about the death of three American icons. These were three people from three generations.
On Tuesday our blogger honored Ed McMahon, who passed at age 86. McMahon was a gentleman that we welcomed into our homes for more than 30 years as Johnny Carson's sidekick among other roles.
Yesterday, our blogger honored Michael Jackson, who passed at age 50. This iconic legend who most of us have watched for the past 40 years, from a little boy to a grown man, always surprised us with his talent and creativity, among other things.
I will not let the week go by without honoring Farrah Fawcett, who passed at age 62. For those of us who are Farrah's peers by age, we remember her smile and her gorgeous hair. All the women wanted hair like Farrah and all the men wanted the women in their lives to have hair like Farrah. She was a fine actress and you would know this if you saw some of her more serious movies. Now she will be remembered as a brave woman who was willing to share with all of us her struggle with cancer to the end.
In this world filled with technology...twitter, plurk, tagged, YouTube, my space, facebook, emails, blogs...today is Saturday and it is just a day to remember that in January 1985 Michael Jackson collaborated with Lionel Richie and produced with Quincy Jones a song that touched us all. We are the World! (United Support of Artists for Africa) We listened intently, we bought the album and together we tried to help save a continent, most particularly Ethiopia.
As this day closes, I will remember that Dennis and I played this album with our children when they were quite young. The album is still in our home carefully preserved for whatever reason. Maybe because it made us think, hope and assure ourselves that we are all part of this world and this week We Are The World making a choice.
Enjoy this remarkable YouTube video of the studio recording of We Are The World. I'd would love to hear from you!
....change can only come...when we stand together as one!
It is important to keep your web site current and up to date. Telephone numbers, employee names, addresses and other details change and need to be replaced with the current information. Searching your site first for all the edits to be made can save you considerable back and forth time with your Webmaster.
Find all the changes to be made
evaluate the text on the page for need to rewrite
send changes in one Word document to your Webmaster.
Here is a handy search tip to help you find those items which need to be replaced or updated.
In Google's search box:
type the exact text you are trying find
space
site:www.yourwebsiteaddress.com (using your address and leaving no space between the colon and the www)
For example, if I were searching www.webconsuls.com for "Darin" ...
Returned will be a list of all the instances where that term appears.
If you click the link labeled "Cached" the cached page will come up with your terms highlighted for easy spotting.
Send your list of changes in a Word document to your webmaster.
After the changes are made remember to refresh your page to see the changes. This is especially helpful with larger sites with lots of text and those with blog entries.
One of the joys of having a child in the house is how they can be so easily impressed by simple adult skills and knowledge. I know this phase will pass, in our house this period of time is passing very quickly. The other day I realized that I had an analogy for why blogs are so helpful when placing in the search engine results as I was asked to locate a small misplaced toy.
When I returned with the small bobble I was met with wide admiring eyes and a WOW, how do you always know where EVERYTHING is? (Trust me when I tell you that I am being sure to enjoy these moments of alleged omniscience as it will surely pass.)
Knowing my time is limited and that I had her undivided attention I decided to explain to the little one just why I usually have the answer to where everything is.
"I scan."
"Huh?"
"I am always scanning the house."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, as I walk through the house I am always scanning. I just automatically make sure things are in their place and I take note of what I see."
Replace scanning with spidering and house with World Wide Web and I am just like a search engine spidering links, exploring and noting where everything is so as to find it later!
Well, imagine you have just arrived home and the grocery shopping had just been done, or someone came home from a trip, or for some reason new items have been added to your home. What will you most likely need to do?
You will need to put your stuff away and you will want to know where it is so you can find it when you need it. Search engine spiders will not put your digital files or your groceries away. Deciding where items go and putting them there is still your job.
So why will the search engine be draw to your blog? How does a blog help me?
Blogs feed the purpose of search engines.
That search engine is going to investigate to see just what you added and where. It is the search engines' job to know what material is available on the World Wide Web. Whether it be Google, MSN, Yahoo, Dogpile, you name it, the search engines must familiarize themselves with fresh timely material in order to return the most relevant search. Search engines must keep up on new additions in order to perform the job they were designed to do.
Using a blog to consistently add useful relevant content is a powerful method to draw the search engines to spider (or scan) your site and index the timely information you post.
For help on how to add a blog to your web site or blog training to make the most of your blog please contact us at Webconsuls, LLC.
Over the course of any week I receive a number of SEO/Webmaster newsletter emails. I try to read through them for hints, myths, SEO/SMO news in general. This past week one of these newsletters had a link to a video in which Sally Falkow was discussing Internet marketing. I don't know Sally Falkow but I found what she had to say very intriguing. She sited an old mantra "Tell, don't sell", which I believe applies to blogs, in that blogs should tell a good story.
Now you are probably wondering where I am going with this idea. After all it is Saturday morning and you no doubt, if you are reading this at all, are thinking to yourself with a sigh, "doesn't Judy always tell a story in her blog post?"
It is very easy for the Webconsuls' team to suggest to a client that the client should have a blog, but most clients go into panic mode because they don't trust themselves to be able to write. What our clients sometimes forget is that every business has a story to tell and all they have to do is relate the story for their guests, customers, or clients to read. Just tell a good story.
Finding your niche in storytelling can take some time. Let me give you an example. In June 2007 Webconsuls built a blog for Alice and Len Schiller, owners/innkeepers of The Inn at Stockbridge. Darin McClure coached Alice on how to do blog posts and she did a nice job. She frequently would write about events and attractions in the Berkshires. All very interesting, but might have served the local attractions more than the inn.
On December 29, 2008, Alice came up with a clever idea and she posted it: "The Inn at Stockbridge blog is going to put a new spin on things. Alice Schiller feels that she is fortunate enough to have owned and run the inn for over fourteen years. Over the years we have had a great variety of guests visit us and each one has a wonderful story to share. We are now going to share their stories. Guests who visit the Inn come from all walks of life, are a varied age group and have met in a myriad of ways and have wonderful tidbits to share with you the readers of this blog. We are fortunate enough to have them share their experiences at the Inn as well as their stories with you."
Wonderful...the stories have begun, complete with photos, so interesting to read and the best part is Alice and Len are involving their guests (read customers). As a former innkeeper I know that relating stories about your guests is a great marketing tool. People love to be part of something and future guests secretly hope that they will also be featured at some later date.
You may recall, on September 20, 2008, I wrote a blog post called "The benefit of being a 'blogger-in-chief'?" In that blog I talked about how I wrote a newsletter for our inn, Cranmore Mountain Lodge. This was the old fashion way of staying in touch with our customers. Just this past week I came across a copy of the last issue of Inn-Ovations that I wrote in the Fall of 1997. You might enjoy reading the front page. Click on the image and it will get bigger!
Today I hope you will check the Inn at Stockbridge's blog. Read the stories about their guests. Leave a comment. And if you want to preview the inn, here is a video that tells the Inn's story in another way.
I have a feeling Sally Falkow has not come up with something unique. Storytelling is as old as mankind ~ it is the fabric that keeps our cultures, our families, our nations moving through time.
Webconsuls' SMO team works hard to keep our clients and us up to date on all of the latest "gadgets" that seem to offer some benefit either for our website marketing or general business tools. I will admit that I am not always the first one to try out or sign up for the latest and greatest, but I do try to glean from my co-workers their reviews of these new tools. So today I want to talk about Yammer. To Yammer or not to Yammer, that is the question.
I first learned about Yammer on November 5, 2008. I received an email from Lisa McClure inviting me to join the Webconsuls.com network. This email arrived at 7:53AM, then at 8:56AM I received an additional invitation from Malik Moosa. On November 5 I had a very good reason for not responding to these invitations, as I was flying from Tucson to Albany, NY, and the laptop was not accessible for most of the day. Five weeks went by. I was busy with many client's projects and I waited to see if any other team member would invite me to join webconsuls.com yammer network.
December 8, 2008, the wait was over. I received another invitation from Dick Fay. Now this impressed me. Dick is not only my co-worker he is also one of my business partners, and I decided that Dick's invitation offered some validity to yammer.com. So, I signed up!
It was easy to do, I followed the steps and what do you know there I was part of the TEAM. On the home page you can easily see "posts" or "updates" from your team or group members. But what startled me was that, aside from the automatic post showing that Dick Fay had joined the "network", all other updates were from Darin McClure, our SMO director. Hmmmm! What does this mean? Where were Lisa's updates and Malik's update? I didn't understand.
If, as the Yammer.com "about us" page says: "Yammer is a tool for making companies and organizations more productive through the exchange of short frequent answers to one simple question: 'What are you working on?' As employees answer that question, a feed is created in one central location enabling co-workers to discuss ideas, post news, ask questions, and share links and other information. Yammer also serves as a company directory in which every employee has a profile and as a knowledge base where past conversations can be easily accessed and referenced."; then why is only Darin posting updates? And for that matter, is anyone listening?
I am reminded of a winter day in 1989, when I was the co-owner and innkeeper of Cranmore Mountain Lodge. Our chef at the time was a colorful fellow named John Littlefield. (Picture Ignatius J. Reilly, the main character in the Pulitzer Prize winning fiction novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole.) John was a superb chef, but let's just say he had some idiosyncrasies and someday when I write my expose about innkeeping I will devote an entire chapter to John.
But back to my story. I was in the laundry room with my youngest son Daniel
(he had just turned five years old). The laundry room had a doorway to the country kitchen and John was in the kitchen busying himself and talking. Daniel watched John for a few minutes and then turned to me and in a soft voice inquired: "Momma, who is John talking to?" To which I responded: "He is talking to himself." Daniel considered my answer and then in turn responded: "But who is listening?" I didn't have an answer, except a knowing smile.
Now almost 20 years later, I find myself asking the same question when it comes to all of the new-age technology. I know that people read blogs, I know that the Internet and SMO can be very powerful on so many levels. But I also know that I can write this blog every Saturday and I don't really have any idea who is listening. So should I Yammer?
I would like to invite all of my readers to learn more about yammer.com, but at the same time I worry about even the name of "yammer." According to Websters', yammer means to utter repeated cries of distress or sorrow, to utter consistent complaints, to talk persistently or volubly and often loudly. So why would Yammer.com founders choose such a name? I don't know.
What I do know is that I am going to give it a try, but I am going to use it strictly for business questions. I am going to try to solicit input from my team members about business questions regarding SEO, SMO, web design, etc. I will let you know how this works out. In the meantime, here is a video that gives you a pretty good overview of YAMMER. And if you are looking for a good read, try A Confederacy of Dunces, you will laugh yourself silly.
What is a Kindle? A Kindle is an portable reading device which connects to the internet. The Kindle can download books, blogs, magazines and newspapers wirelessly.
I enjoy playing with new devices and having worked with DAISY books, a digital format created for accessibility purposes, I was very curious about this product from Amazon. The following is a list of pros and cons from my user experience. It is not an exhaustive list but one from my direct experience with the device.
What the Kindle Excels at:
The Kindle is great if you like to burn through lots of paperback books and general reading material. Paperback novels, books with very few illustration and not too much organizational formatting are ideal for this device.
The Kindle is the ideal device to use for casual reading while traveling. When I do occasionally travel I never know what book I am going to want to read. A Kindle enables you to have over 200 titles and only one 10.3 ounce device to carry.
Kindle books are generally cheaper than their traditional version. Best Sellers and New Releases are $9.99 unless marked otherwise. Currently 105 of the 112 New York Times Best Sellers are available on Kindle.
The Kindle is very immediate. You can download a novel from the online store in seconds and be reading. Finish the book you brought, visit the Kindle store right from your device and pick a new read. Amazon was not being foolish when they enabled this device with full time internet access.
Want to take a peak at a book. One of my favorite treats with the Kindle is being able to download the first chapter of any Kindle version for free. You have a sample of the book to try before you buy.
Kindle books are saved and could be made available if you ever accidentally erased or lost your Kindle.
The Kindle is a wireless internet device with no monthly fee. You can access your email, your social networks and browse the internet all from your Kindle.
You can subscribe to newpapers, magazines, and blogs and have them delivered to your Kindle.
A built in dictionary looks up words with a push of a button. I love this feature and wish I had it when I read the book "All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy.
The Kindle is also a full encycolpedia. Access to Wikipedia.org, your online encyclopedia, comes with your Kindle.
An easy to read screen which excels in the elements, especially bright sun and wind.The Kindle's screen is "electronic paper" and does not glow like a computer monitor. The screen of a Kindle is more like the etch-a-sketch of the my childhood. The "digital ink" is magnetic. The electronic ink is easy on the eyes and reads well even in direct sunlight. Reading the humongous and unweily New York Times in a slight breeze is much easier on the Kindle.
The text size is adjustable.
Drawback that I found
Sharing The downside is that if you are accustomed to sharing your paperbacks with other readers you can't really lend or trade your Kindle books as you would a dogeared paperback.
Diagrams The Kindle is not great for books which contain diagrams. I read a lot of "how to" books. The most recent book I purchased was on photography. I would never even considered buying the Kindle version as the color photographs and illustrations would not be shown full size or in color. Computer instruction and technical books don't render well for the same reason.
A book in the hand ... When I start a book I read all the front material, the table of contents, all the back material, then I start the book. A Kindle book will display all the same material but it just never feels as easily contained as a book in your hands. Call me old fashioned but I do find comfort in that tangable property of books.
Availability Not everything has a Kindle version at the moment. There are more than 190,000 titles. You should be able to find something.
Can Kindles replace books?
Kindles and electronic devices can create digital copies of the text in books. Where the representation of the straight text is all you need the Kindle serves its function well. Will it replace books? Not in my lifetime and not for me.
There are the books that you carry around from childhood. I lost my original copy of my beloved book "Happy Horsemanship". A copy of my favorite book on the Kindle would be a poor substitute. There are the books you have given to you by your parents. My copy of "Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson", the inside cover contains my Mother's handwriting "to Lisa, Love Mom and Dad, Christmas 1984" or "My Dog Skip" given to me by a friend and past student are not only stories but mementos. Another favorite and useful book never far from my desk "Reader's Digest Family Word Finder", a thesaurus of sorts, but one that is actually intuitive and immediate to use. I have turned to this resource for help since junior high school. Paging through this reference that I have had for so many years, even the breaks in the binding serve as bookmarks to pages I have referenced repeatedly. Kindles can't do that.
On the other hand ... I can't access my email with my copy of Emily Dickinson.
There are books you will keep forever. There are books you want to touch and pour over. There are books you want to just consume with one read. The Kindle is for the later.
In my opinion and experience the ideal Kindle candidate is one of two people, a traveling bookworm who frequents the best seller section and devours newspapers and/or the gadget infatuated individual who will thrive on squeezing every functionality they can out of an internet device that happens to also read books.
Will you buy a kindle for a gift ... well not right now because they are currently sold out. There are Kindles available for resale on ebay, but some of those are asking for as much as twice the retail prices. OUCH!
On our recent excursion to Las Vegas for Blog World Expo I sat in on an interesting panel discussion on "Mommy Bloggers". There are blogs of all persuasions but the mommy blogger niche is really a category unto itself. The "Mommy Blogger" phenomenon has been grabbing the attention of marketers for quite some time as Moms are generally the holders of the purse strings in most households.
Listening to the discussion and reflecting on my blog reading habits I started to think about what I like to find in blogs, what keeps me coming back and what we can aspire to as we try to develop our blogs.
Here is one of my favorite "Mommy Bloggers" and why her blog(s) keep me coming back for more.
I originally was introduced to Lela's writing on Hub Pages. Her hubs, individually written articles, ranged from household hints, parenting tips, vacation spots for families, holiday celebrations and harder issues such as drug abuse and creationism in public school cirriculum.
Lela's profile is engaging and natural. When I read "about Lela" I can imagine her in her world. This is how Lela introduces herself to her readers:
I am a Mother. I cook, clean, wipe noses, push Benadryl, check for nits, help with homework, and iron tiny polo shirts. I used to have a real job with a degree framed on my office wall, but I gave it up for this glamour. I also write, hang out with my husband, and drink wine with my friends on the driveway. I believe parenting is the hardest job in the world as well as the most natural thing we do. I screw up. Daily. And I banish guilt relentlessly. I believe it's your moral responsibility to find the thing that makes you lose track of time, the thing that empties all the racing thoughts from your head and leaves you deaf to the oven timer so you forget about the cookies until the smoke finds you. Writing is my thing. Here's to hoping you find yours and go do it.
Many of her posts are simple "how to's and lists."
She is always very timely. She has already begun posts in preparation for Halloween.
Lela keeps you involved in the process. Recently Lela has been working on a novel. She keeps her readers abreast of her progress and her plan. Novel in Six Months Plan
Lela writes regularly.
All these elements keep me coming back, but of course I subscribe to Lela's RSS Feed so I don't miss a post.
Before there was radio, and television, and computers people used weekly literature to connect with the world at large. From August 4, 1821 to February 8, 1969, The Saturday Evening Post was what people looked to for: current events articles, editorials, human interest pieces, humor, illustrations, a letter column, and poetry; readers were even encouraged to write articles for the Post. People would sit around their homes on Saturday evening to read the Post, they would discuss the articles and what was taking place in the world with friends and neighbors. Norman Rockwell became a main cover illustrator for The Saturday Evening Post; he would illustrate certain events or activities of the American Family in a beautiful way.
As time went on, the post lost its popularity and people started looking other places for their information. Newer magazines and the advent of T.V. made the Post less popular, the Post had to cut costs and started using photographs as opposed to illustrations. Today the Post is still published six times a year by Benjamin Franklin Literary & Medical Society (a non-profit), because The Saturday Evening Post descended from The Pennsylvania Gazette, founded in 1728 by Benjamin Franklin.
I had the privilege of going to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA. On display were many Rockwell paintings that were featured on The Saturday Evening Post's cover, art of a bygone era where life was painted and encapsulated in time. Norman Rockwell's art was a staple of the Post up until 1963.
Today, Weblogs have taken the role of the Saturday Evening Post; readers and the writers share the same role for spreading information to the masses. The public follow blogs much the same way they followed The Post, blogs today are the conversation pieces. Blogs may not have the same artistic appeal that the Post had, but blogs travel along the same lines with regard to started discussions. I am not sure that it is a coincidence that when we publish something on a blog it is called a post. Blogs allow the reader to be the writer, and the writer to be the reader in the blogosphere.
Writing a Weblog is one thing, writing a good one is something else altogether! Some people write a blog for themselves and others write them to appeal to a particular audience. It is the latter which I am concerned with, reaching out to the people so they will read what you have to say; when people finish reading your post you want them to have a desire to come back for more. Know Your Audience! Seth Godin says "You only get one chance to make a second impression".
The key to blogging is choosing a topic, once you have chosen your platform you need to reinforce it with good content. One's topic and content should appeal to a targeted audience in the field of what you are trying to sell. Most websites today, especially business websites, have a blog affiliated with their site. It gives companies the ability to reach out and have a conversation with their consumers. It is what I like to call "injecting life into your website". What was once inanimate is now animate, people can get involved in the conversation like never before; this gives the consumer a "it's all about you" feeling, and by giving the consumer the feeling of involvement you can go a long way .
Whats good for the blog, is great for the website! Once you have created something worth reading you want to make your blog's presence on the internet greater; in other words you want your audience to be able to find your blog even if they have never read or heard of your blog before. The thing worth noting is that blogging is a means to an end; when people find your Weblog (the means), they also find your website (the end). Google rewards you for a good blog and they reward your website even more for one!
Blogs are the perfect ingredient to making a high page rank in Google! Blogs are updated more often then websites which allows them to be "spider'd" more often by search-engines. Coupled with great topics and content, loyal readers equals high page rank. Keeping search engines in mind is the key to people finding your blog, and thus finding your website; keywords and key phrases are of great importance because ultimately it is those which allow search engines to find your blog and place it where it belongs for your target audience to locate your information. Create a list of keywords you want to be found for and incorporate them into each of your blog posts. The title you assign to your post is the most important place for you to implement your keywords/phrases; search engines place all lot of value on the title of your web page; therefore, how you title your blog post is of great importance for the fact that your blog is a web page in itself.
In summation I believe that there is not one right way to go about creating a Weblog, but there are definitely wrong ways. You will not become an expert blogger overnight and patience will be in order to become successful. As long a you update your Weblog often while always keeping in mind rich content that directly relates to the topic at hand you will succeed. It is completely acceptable to refer to other blogs for guidance as far as ideas and content; look for what's worked for other people and find a way to make it work for you and your company. Blogging is the voice of your business...it is your billboard on the internet highway!
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