All of the retail world uses the holidays to heavily push their products and specials. So… why can’t small businesses?

Using social media, here are some things you can do to get some attention:

1. Write a blog article or Facebook note titled, “5 Great Gift Ideas”
2. Elf Yourself and send it out via e-newsletter or Facebook
3. Create a Holiday card through one of Facebook’s holiday apps
4. Create a holiday special or promotion
5. Create a YouTube video and use it as a Christmas e-card

What are YOUR ideas?

Everyone should have their own policy on boundaries and creating space between our personal and professional lives. Absolutely. But I think we can all agree that there are some lines that intercept and bleed together in our worlds. 

Its natural to add the “personal” to the “professional.” 

It pays to be yourself! The truth is that if we are wise, we are going to be the same person at home as we are at work. People are drawn to who we are as human beings. On the contrary ff we don’t have personalities people are going to notice. 

Share experiences. People want to know we are human. Humans relate! We share experiences about our families at home or a funny things we have done… even mistakes that we have made.

Here are a few things that we can do to bring the personal into the professional:

• Talk about your passions. Your passions SHOULD flow into your work… and if they don’t, hmmm maybe its time to look for another job?
• Engage your readers to telling them stories they can relate to. Maybe you saw an old friend and it made you reminiscent. Or maybe you ate at a good restaurant or had an experience with a bad driver…
• Don’t try too hard. Speaks for itself. 

Search Engine Optimization, that is. If you own or update a blog or website, then you need to know the basics of optimizing a page for search engines to find. 

Most people think that the index (or home) page of your website is the most important. Well, I won’t argue with that completely – but when it comes to using your website as a marketing piece, it needs to be more than a business card. By optimizing each article or page on your website individually, you will help Google list your website in organic search results when people are looking for YOU. 

Here are a few tips to help Google find your website: 

1. Your website or blog is built with clean code. Pretend YOU are a search engine spider. What do you look for on a website? Do you want the content to be easy to find and easy to read? So do search spiders! Search engines want your website code to be clean enough that they can find the content within the jargon. 

2. Do your search engine research. Without giving away all the goods, I would say start with Google Suggest and Google Insight, and see what some popular trends and topics are. Then go into your search engine key word tool and find the exact phrases that will key Google to display your website. 

3. Use your keywords in the correct formula to get Google to notice you. Its easy. Use the key phrase in the title of your page, in the first paragraph, and the last paragraph. There are lots of other rules that will help you out, but that will get you started.

For the Central Virginia blog owners who are submitting a blog to Friday 2.0’s first ever “Blog-Off” Competition (to win a great prize OR to get free feedback) – here is our next set of criteria:

Our judge for Blog Sexiness (Look and Feel) will be Andrew Potter of ShoutOut Marketing.

Andrew will be judging on a combination of your blog’s aesthetics and also it’s content, asking the question: is your site “sticky” (does it make people stay?).

1. Does your blog have a good color combination?

Following conventional rules of good design, your colors should be both complimentary but also contrasting. If you don’t know what good color combinations are, look it up in Google!

2. Does your blog use attractive and complimentary fonts?

Beginners should start with 1 font, playing with the sizes and the different font styles like Bold and Italics. Ideally, however, you should have two font types: one serif font and one sans serif font (look em up if you don’t know what they mean). Again,they should compliment but also contrast. 

3. Does your blog have bells and whistles? 

In other words, does it use nice pictures, videos and other forms of media?

4. Does your blog have good content?

Make sure your blog’s content is separated in a hierarchy of important information, using bolds and font sizes to break up the text. Also your text should be relevant to your target market. Is your content properly edited? 

5. Is your blog sticky?

Does it make people want to stay? Does it make people want to come back? 

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Our judge for Blog Usability will be Jennifer Bailey of Marketing-Helper.com (that’s me!).

I will be judging on the visitor’s ability to understand, comprehend and interact with the website without frustration or anxiety.

1. User’s ability to find the site’s main purpose upon first glance

Most websites only have 3 seconds to introduce themselves to a visitor before they click the “back” button. Is your logo is visible, usually upper left hand corner at all times? Do you have a slogan or website title that is visible with a short and to the point description of the site’s purpose? Do you have a description of purpose or services on home page and easily visible on the navigation bar? 

2. Does the information flows in such a way that you can find what you are looking for without having to think about it?

Do you use H1 to H3 tags, bold, different color contrast, etc? 

3. Is the navigation consistent, simple and visible?

Is it conventional? (Across the top of the site). Does it go more than 3 levels deep?
Does it stay the same on every page? Can you click on the logo to get back to the homepage?

4. Website accomplishes functional goals

What is your end goal for the user? What information do you want to take away, what action do you want them to take at the end? Do the applications work?

5. Newsletter Signup, contact, or other Convergence method

Do they work and are they easy to find and use?

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You can enter the Blog-Off competition here >

I just finished putting up a site for speaker and coach David W. Mills.

Goals: 

1. Gain site traffic from churches who want to grow

2. Sell some Needs Assessment Kits

3. Get speaking and coaching engagements

How to Designed the Site to Meet our Goals:

• Got professional photos and put them on the homepage
• Created a logo and a brand
• Made his bio visible
• Highlighted his speaking topics in featured articles on the homepage
• Used key word research to target users
• Created a press page for speaking and coaching topics as well as a press contact
• Created an easy convergence method (a way for people to buy products)

For those Central Virginia blog owners who want to participate in Friday 2.0’s first ever “Blog-Off” Competition (to win a great prize OR to get free feedback) – here is our first set of criteria. 

Our judge for Search Engine Optimization will be Phil Tucker of Tucker Consultancy. 

Criteria for SEO… do you have good:

1. Content … is king! Not only is this where you plugin solid and useful content that make people want to read, but it is where search engines are fed and how they rate you on relevance and popularity. 

2. Incoming Links. The more links you have the more often Google is going to visit. 

“The easiest way to gain quality links from other sites is to link to sites to let them know your site is there and hope for a reciprocal link.” – Phil Tucker

3. Website Title. Is your website topic going to be understood by Google? What are the key words used in your title and domain name and are they relevant?

4. Heading Tags. Are your headings in H1 tags? What does this mean?! Hmm, maybe you should do some research on basic HTML and heading tag structures. 

5. Internal Linking. Of course, you want to use relevant content throughout your site… but if you are using relevant content, it should be easy to link to other relevant content within your site. 

Read what Phil Tucker has to say about his ‘Top 10 Search Engine Optimization Tips” >

What if you started getting calls from the media about your specific niche field? Wouldn’t that be cool? It would mean that you are a valuable resource within a specific target marketing!

Blogging is proven to build reputation because it builds credibility and gets you in “front” of more people. It creates visibility. This will help you become the center of influence within your industry.

1. Create a Good Impression

2. Position Yourself Above the Competition

3. Market Your Blog

You will probably need to test your readers/ audiences to see what works best for them – see what kind of topics are popular and track the results.

If you aren’t a web designer, know nothing about HTML, or just haven’t been using WordPress very long… then it may not be a good idea for you to use a custom WordPress theme. Unless you follow some simple rules:

1. Hire an expert. Ok… I am not trying to promote myself here. But seriously, if you are going to use custom themes, plugins, bells & whistles… but don’t know how to maneuver WordPress CMS… then don’t touch it. Ask an expert to do it. Many experts will let you hire them on retainer so they can this “stuff” for you when you need it.

I get calls all the time… “Help! I broke my site!” 

A lot of you don’t have time to learn to fix it. So hire someone who can do it in a flash. 

2. Learn to use WordPress CMS. CMS means content management system. And really, its easy. You can never be prepared for every emergency that might happen – but if you know the basics, you can save a lot of money on retaining that expert. This means knowing some simple HTML, too. And knowing how to maneuver an FTP program like Dreamweaver or just SmartFTP. 

3. Check your site after every edit. EVERY. EDIT. If you make some changes to the image on your post… save it, then check it before doing any other edits. If you make some edits to a sidebar widget, check it every time you update. If you mess with the plugins, check it after each plugin update.

Some things to watch out for:

• Some plugins don’t work together and can break your site. 
• Some custom themes require a lot of FTP file editing.
• If you change from one theme to another – check all of your pages, some of the code might change. 
• Some themes have special “featured” articles on the homepage that use TimThumb and you will need to learn to use custom fields.

I hear stories all the time of web companies who tell their clients to forward their domain name to another web address. While there is always a purpose in using multiple domain names (.com and .org for example) for the same website, web developers should know that IT IS BAD FOR SEARCH ENGINE RANKINGS. 

I am not a web developer… and I know that it is bad for rankings! So it surprises me every time I hear of web companies who do this. 

Yesterday I heard of a web designer who charges his clients $5/month to forward domain names… Did I miss something here?!?! Or is that as unethical as I think it is? 

NOTICE TO WEBSITE OWNERS: If you don’t know anything about how the web works, make sure to get more than one opinion when going with a web designer. 

Here are 10 questions to ask your Website Designer

Sometimes Web Designers are Like Car Mechanics

The problem is that most people are not MEANT to be experts in web design and social media. But because there are so many people who call themselves “experts” in web design, the people who need there services are often taken advantage of and given bad advice. 

But to get off my soap box and get back to the real topic…

Read this blog article and get more info about why domain forwarding is bad. 

Buzzlogic and Jupiterresearch published a study on the influence of blogs on consumer purchases.

They found that the number of blog readers has TRIPLED in the past four years and that the blogs they are reading strongly influence their purchase decisions. 

Read the article by Retailer Daily here >