Confident Writing Coach Joanna Young has hit upon a successful and well received method of engaging her readers. Her site, confidentwriting.com, invites visitors to join group writing projects that she designs. Writers then write their own blog post based on the writing project guidelines and link their post from her website.

Efforts like these are the basis of Web 2.0 and modern social media efforts - they engage readers
to participate in online discussions with like-minded others. For Young’s site these projects are particularly useful in helping readers improve their writing skills, the very reason visitors like me patronize her site.

Young’s most recent group writing project was particularly appealing for me. Since I’ve been developing my blog this past year, I often don’t have much time to go back and see “where I’ve Read the rest of this entry »

For years now web experts have been utilizing page views as the holy grail of web content metrics. If you find yourself still glued to your page view numbers, to the detriment of other traffic indicators, then my guess is you’re stuck in a page view rut, and your traffic isn’t growing as fast as you’d like.

Years ago when the Internet was still in its infancy the only measure of web page success was a page counter, which measured the number of “hits” a web page received. Although a person was able to keep track of the growth of page hits from day to day, there was no way of determining how many of those hits were from the same computer, where they were coming from, how long the viewer stayed on the page, or even where the “hit” came from.

Luckily today’s statistic options allow for far more details about views, but if you find yourself spending too much time crunching numbers you may be missing out on many more Read the rest of this entry »

Lately I’ve been getting a lot of questions from folks about social media and how it can help their small business. Social media may still seem like a “toy for the young” and something to do when you’re bored, but in reality these tools are fast becoming a significant element of small business success.

The video to the right expresses how traditional advertising alone misses the mark with consumers by not allowing them to participate before and during the process of buying products and services. That’s where social media marketing comes in; by allowing consumers the opportunity to be part of the process.

The benefits of social media for your small business are numerous, but let’s review of few of the best reasons for incorporating social media efforts into your business plans.

1. Social media provides a simple way for customers, and even potential customers, to comment on your products or services, or to ask for more information. Because it leaves all the interaction up to the buyer, customers feel more comfortable looking for the information they need. When they are ready to share, or need your services or products, they will let you know!
2. Social media provides an outlet that can “go viral” far more quickly than typical Read the rest of this entry »

Many of my clients excitedly call me asking “what about all this social media stuff, shouldn’t I be involved too?” What I inevitably reply is “Maybe”.

That might sound like a wishy-washer answer, but the fact of the matter is, it depends on the business, and the resources available to develop social media efforts.

Just like everything else, social media takes time and effort to develop. A business needs to analyze their needs, determine what markets they are trying to reach through social media, and then develop a solid plan that will most effectively reach these markets.

For markets involving 19 - 26 year olds and stay-at-home mom types and women ages 36-50, Facebook is the best networking community today. That doesn’t mean it will be tomorrow, however, and it doesn’t mean that you can just open a business Facebook account and Voila! your business is successful.

Instead it takes time and effort to build your account, add friends, get people interested in what Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s new media markets allow even the smallest businesses to get in on the action. What’s hot today? Podcasting!

If you are not familiar with what podcasting is, here’s an official definition from the Wikipedia.org website: a series of audio or video digital-media files which is distributed over the Internet by syndicated download, through Web feeds, to portable media players and personal computers.

In layman’s terms - it is an audio recording that is made available to internet users through websites and other digital outlets.

For many, an audio cast is a fun, simple way to enjoy retrieving information that is important to them. Some people just don’t like wading through the mountains of text, Read the rest of this entry »

Last night on CNN I was amazed to learn that despite the infamous “bridge to nowhere” never being built, the road that leads to the bridge WAS built. In fact, it was built with taxpayer dollars and a $25 million price tag, on Sarah Palin’s watch.

Representatives for Palin didn’t have much to say about the project. When asked why a $25 million dollar road was built to go to a bridge that never materialized the response was that it was in anticipation of the bridge and contracts were already signed and the earmark had already been given.

In other words, the government gave us this money, we’d better spend it, even if it means wasting millions of dollars in taxpayer money for a road that literally goes nowhere and is never used!!

But the best part was saved for the end of the story. Both Barack Obama and Joe Biden had voted down the earmark spending for the bridge to nowhere, wanting to divert the Read the rest of this entry »