The winner of Seth Godin‘s $800 DVD set from How To Add Colour To A Grey Day entry as selected by Random.org …

Yvonne Russell! Congratulations, Yvonne!

And the winner of the addicting First Class Flurry from Assorted Blogging History Lessons entry as Random.org went to work again…

Karen Swim! Congratulations, Karen!

No, no… I’m not asking you to Google me. You’re going to do it anyway, aren’t you? Ted Demopoulos contributes this entry and the title fits. I met Ted, I believe, either from doing a book review or commenting on one of his entries that led to doing the book review. It’s a case of the chicken or the egg — but I forget which.

Since then, he invited me to contribute to his book, What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting and we’ve gotten to know each other over time. Don’t believe what he says about being the most boring blogger. Not at all, but good publicity!

This entry’s prize are Airport Mania: 2 copies (1 Mac and 1 PC) and one copy of Andy King’s upcoming Website Optimization. Here’s its companion site. Just leave a 30-word comment on this post by June 20 to get an entry for a drawing. Be sure to include “Mac” or “Win” in your comment so you’re up for the right version of the software.

Google Me!

You’re being googled all the time — hopefully the results are positive.

People google you before they meet with you, they google you before hiring you, they google you if they may be working with you, they google you if you’re dating their sister.

Potential clients always google me, my mailman has googled me, my kid’s teacher and even my wife have googled me! And if people really care or are Internet savvy, they will do more than simple search engine lookups.

What shows up when you google yourself? It’s good to know what others are seeing about you.

If you have a common name and nothing comes up, try what others will try; google your name plus other identifying information. Do you work for IBM? Then googling “yourname IBM” may turn up interesting results. Are you a viola player? Then googling “yourname viola” may be the ticket. Do you live in Fresno? Then googling “yourname Fresno” may work.

So what is your name anyways? If it’s a common name you might change it slightly, for example also use your middle name. Although ‘Ted Demopoulos’ is fairly uncommon, if it were a common name I could choose to use ‘Ted Demetrius Demopoulos’ for my business card, resume, email, and other locations as appropriate, making myself much easier to google.

What if there really is nothing online about you? From the privacy standpoint, that might be good, but if you’re looking for a job, trying to date, or maybe think you have career, people googling you might wonder why nothing shows up. Are you legit? Do you really exist? Maybe you’re a complete flake or serial murderer?

Fortunately there are several easy and free or cheap ways to establish an effective internet presence. Here are three quick ideas:

• Join LinkedIn.com, a free business networking site, and setup a profile. Google and the other search engines love LinkedIn.
• Leave intelligent comments on blogs in your niche. Make sure the comments are intelligent and add to the conversation, and use your full name so the search engines can find your comment.
• Review books in your professional area on Amazon.com. This is also free, and Amazon will let you create a profile about yourself, and the search engines will index it.

Of course you could also start a Website, even a simple one-pager about yourself, start blogging, or write articles online – Web masters are always looking for content. These techniques are very effective at establishing an effective internet presence, although they take some effort.

Your online presence is only going to become more important. You had best know what shows up when other people google you, and ideally you’ll create positive content using some of the techniques mentioned above to show you in a correct and positive light.

About the author: Ted Demopoulos is the author of the upcoming book Google Me. For a preview, including his free ebook Effective Internet Presence, Now required for success in business and life, visit www.EffectiveInternetPresence.com.
For more on Ted, visit his blog, Blogging for Business, home Web site, or (you guessed it) google him

This entry’s prize: Two copies of Big Kahuna Reef 2: one for Macs (!) and one for PCs. Comment by June 9 to be eligible). Leave a comment with at least 30 words (to ensure they provide value) by June 9 to get an entry.

Our guest blogger today is a chick, and a very talented one at that. Oh, I’m not insulting her. She’s Paige Eissinger one of 2 Smart Chix who love to share their views from the coop!

Do You Own Your Web Site?

Of course you own your web site. You pay for it, don’t you? Don’t be so sure. You may be just a tenant!

Personally, I advise anyone who wants their own domain name to register it themselves with a reputable registrar like GoDaddy before he or she even creates a site. That ensures you that yes, you DO own your domain and have complete control over what web host you use. If, however, you prefer to hand that task over to a webmaster who will be designing your web site and providing your hosting, just make sure you ask a few simple questions up front:

• Who will be listed as the domain registrant? You may choose to let your webmaster be the administrative and/or technical contact, but make sure your name is listed as the registrant.
• How can I access my domain registration? Hopefully, your designer will be happy to share the login information with you. If the answer to that question is, “You can’t. I have to do it for you,” then you may want to look for another designer.
• How can I access my web site? Again, your webmaster should be happy to provide you with login information for your web hosting control panel. You need to decide up front with your designer which features your web hosting account offers and which features you can actually access via your control panel. It’s also a good idea to keep a local copy of your website on your own computer.
• Who will pay for the domain registration and web hosting? How will the billing be handled? Make sure both you and your webmaster completely understand who will assume financial responsibility for keeping those accounts current.

Asking these simple questions protects both your interests and those of your webmaster. In the event something happens to your webmaster, your web site will not be held hostage because you don’t know who to contact or how to access your domain and web hosting accounts. Your webmaster will feel confident in having you as a client if you show your willingness to assume your financial obligations on the front end.

Now, do you own your web site? You bet you do!

About the author

Paige Eissinger has owned and operated 2 Smart Chix LLC since 1999. She offers start up web site, blogging, and podcasting services for small business owners who need outside assistance to get started with a new web site or blog, or to maintain their current web sites. In 2004, she started Views from the Coop, an anti-geek technology podcast for non-tekkies. She currently co-hosts VFTC as an internet radio show on Blog Talk Radio with WordPress expert, Kim Beasley. Paige has personally experienced the frustration of small business owners with “hostage” web sites and helped them regain ownership and access.

Today we have our first guest post in the blog birthday bash celebration to give Meryl almost a month off from blogging (well, someone has to post the entries and the prizes as I have no fingers). Yuwanda Black of Inkwell Editorial and Meryl have lightly crossed paths, but they finally connected when she interviewed Meryl for Yuwanda’s jam-packed newsletter for writers.

Since then, they’ve stayed in touch and read each other’s blogs. She’s the first contributor to meryl’s notes blog 8th birthday celebration.

This post’s prize: Two full copies of Magic Farm Game PC games from Oleg Kuznecov of Meridian’93. One copy for a reader and one copy for a guest blogger. My Magic Farm review. To win, post a comment in this entry of at least 30 words (to ensure they’re valuable to readers) by June 6.

All yours, Yuwanda!

7 Things You Must Know Before Moving Your Blog

I recently migrated my blog from Blogger to WordPress – with disastrous results. I’m now moving it again — to my own hosted domain. If you’re thinking about moving your blog from one spot to another, here are seven things to keep in mind.

1. Back Up Everything: This is obvious, but I wanted to state it and get it out of the way first. I usually save about a week’s worth of posts. But, this process has taught me to back up everything on my own system.

The chances of large blogging platforms like Blogger or WordPress losing your posts forever are nil. However, just recently, I was relaying my story to a new client who noticed my blog was down and she said that a few years ago, she’d lost about a year’s worth of posts from a large company — and they were never able to recover them.

Lesson Learned: Don’t rely on a blog hosting company not to lose your files. Back them up yourself.

2. Choose a Blogging Platform Wisely: I’m not slamming any platform – just relaying what happened to me that turned me off free blog hosts.

I migrated from Blogger to WordPress on 30 April 2008. On 19 May, I logged on to this notice from WordPress: “This blog is inactive.” And, nothing more -– just a white screen. I received a notice from WordPress when I logged into my control panel that said, “Confirmation required: Your blog is inactive. Please contact us to confirm your account details.”

After contacting them and waiting almost a full day for them to get back to me, the problem still wasn’t resolved. The next day, on 2- May, I received the following email (after two more interactions): “Hi, Your blog was made inactive because it broke the Terms of Service. One or more of the following apply: . . . ”

The email went on to list four different scenarios — none of which I thought applied to my blog. I wrote back asking if they could tell me EXACTLY which Terms of Service rule I had broken. As of this writing (20 May in the evening), I’m still waiting for a response.

Bottom line: I’ve been offline now for two full days — and still don’t know if my blog will ever be live again.

Lesson Learned: Read the terms of service diligently, and scour forums to see if you can find out more about how quick a company is to take you offline without giving you a chance to correct your mistake.

3. If You’re a Business, Act Like It: That means investing in your business. After this debacle, I decided to have a professionally designed blog hosted on my own domain.

My business is at the point where my blog is an integral part of how I relate to my audience — hence, produce certain streams of revenue. Therefore, I can’t afford to break a Terms of Service rule, be taken offline with no clue as to what I did wrong, then wait for someone to get back to me.

WordPress is a free blogging platform. So, I don’t blame them for not rushing to my rescue, so to speak. As an online freelance writing business though, my blog is crucial to ebook sales, my writing history, links to other sites and so on.

I blame myself for this mostly because I vacillated between going with another free blogging service or getting my own host. Trying to save a few dollars, I made the unwise choice.

Lesson Learned: Do it right the first time — especially if you can afford to (and I could have).

In short, if your blog is integral to successfully running your business, treat it like that and have it professionally designed and hosted on its own domain.

Two Things You Must Do to Hire a Professional to Design Your Blog

4. Research Blogs You Like: Spend some time scouring other blogs you like, then write down what you want. A design is only going to be as good as what you relay to your designer (I wish I could get some of my clients to understand this about writing, but I digress).

This is where most of small business owners go wrong (and I’m soooo included in this bunch). We just want to outsource a project and have it done. Then, when we’re unhappy, we blame the designer. This is partly our fault. I’d even go so far as to say largely our fault.

Get a good list of 5 or 10, then you can proceed to the next step, which is . . .

5. Write Out a Blog Design: It took me about an hour to write down what I wanted then forward it to the companies I targeted. Over about the course of a month, I had been bookmarking blogs I liked. I then went back to those to write out exactly what I wanted.

Some particulars I requested were a three-column design, a 10-point Arial font; a white background with navy (to match my website). I went column by column explaining to the designer exactly what I wanted and where. I also listed the plugins I wanted and even the graphics.

Note: As I had been thinking about getting my blog professionally designed for months, I was able to be pretty specific. If you are truly lost, your designer can make recommendations. But remember, they don’t know your business like you, the purpose your blog serves for you and how your customers relate to your site.

All of this information has to come from you. So, while it may take a while to figure it all out, it is well worth the investment. It is, after all, an investment in your business.

6. Get Bids: I contacted a few companies and ultimately decided to go with one whose work I had been familiar with for about a year, and whose business owners I knew to be fair and professional from our interactions online.

My hope is to be up and running by the end of the first week of June.

7. Keep Your Old Blog Updated: For a full quarter (three months) after your new blog is up and running, constantly update your old blog. You probably have some search engine recognition behind it, so continue to capitalize on that until your readers have gotten used to looking for you in your new home.

And, not for nothing, just in case there are glitches with your new blog, you’ll still have an active blog up and running until all is smooth sailing in your new home.

Good luck!

About the Author: Yuwanda Black is the voice of InkwellEditorial.com, a business portal for creative freelancers. She is the author of eight e-books, the most recent of which is How to Make $250+/Day Writing Simple, 500-Word Articles. She continues to blog at InkwellEditorial.blogspot.com until her new blog home has been established.

• Small Business Administration Free Online Courses
• Language Is a Virus: Cures for writer’s block, poetry generator, character name generator, and many more cool tools for writers.
• 11 Irresistible Reasons to Write Everyday
• SOBCon08 recaps: Long list of entries related to SOBCon, event for bloggers held in Chicago. [Link: Starbucker]
• Create a free web site.
• Bad Pitch Blog: For many writers, it seems illogical that PR people would pitch something off topic for a resource — but they do all the time. I’m still receiving pitches for a defunct newsletter and they’re not even close to being on topic. You can get this and many more from PR and Blogging Wars list.
• 7 Reasons Odd Numbers Can Power Up Your Headlines.

And for fun because you’re allowed…

• Vanity Plates… that go hilariously wrong
• Creepy and kinky hotel rooms
• Sites that let you spy on friends: I don’t encourage it… just educatin’ ya.
• Create your own ceiling cat [Link: DeFillippo]
• 29 Ways to Carry Out Random Acts of Kindness Every Day: I believe in always doing something nice for others. My dad did this every morning when he walked. He’d carry a bag of dog bones and give them to all the neighbors’ dogs and he would move newspapers from the sidewalk to people’s doorsteps. I miss you, Dad.

And because we need to face reality… sorry.

• Portion sizes: Then and now

• Can’t get the media to do a write up? Perhaps, guilty of one of these angry journalist complaints?
• Work on a site with a team [Google edition] [Yahoo edition] [Microsoft Live edition]. This tool comes in handy when you’re working with a team on a Web site and want to se how things look in general with content.
• The state of today’s journalism. 2008 media survey that looks at how our industry has changed. For example, Scott Hensley wrote health-related stories for the print edition of The Wall Street Journal seven years ago. Today, Hensley is the editor of the Journal’s Health Blog.
• English to Become the Official and Obligatory Language of the Internet: How silly is this? Just what Americans need… another reason not to bother learning a second language.
• Twitter Tools, Tweaks and Theories: Enhance your Twittery experience.

And for fun… because you’re allowed.

• 56 Awe-inspiring Creative Photographs
• Six Cutest Animals… that are dangerous. Dolphins!?
• See amazing locales without paying a dime… panoramas.

37signals asks eight questions before, during, and sometimes after working on a project or task. These questions work well for writers and other freelancers. Those of us who work solo rarely have anyone to check with us to make sure we’re on the right track.

So we need to help ourselves figure out if we’re on the right track with a task, project, client. Questioning also helps us gain credibility with clients because we might recommend a faster or better way of doing something or provide insight.

37signals asks the following questions. I’ve added notes to show how it affects writers. I’ll use a Help project I’m working on for a client’s web site as the example.

• Why are we doing this? To help users understand what the site is about and how to use it.
• What problem are we solving? Providing answers to user questions in how to modify their accounts and use the various features. Without the Help, they might spend too much time figuring out something or abandon the web site.
• Is this actually useful? While the web site’s design tries to make things obvious to users, it’s not always possible for them to figure out things without a little direction.
• Are we adding value? The current Help also has special sections for advertisers, product managers, and contributors. I’m breaking out the advertisers and product managers sections and moving them elsewhere. These have little value to the consumers.
• Will this change behavior? Not all writing will change behavior like interface design. In this case, the Help will guide the users to take the right steps to complete their tasks instead of taking the longer route.
• Is there an easier way? Yes and no. The Help uses a wiki. Though I’m not crazy about using a wiki, it has advantages over going another route. One, it would take longer to incorporate it into design based on the current goings-on. Two, the site wants to build a strong community and enabling them to update the Help will support the community concept.
• What’s the opportunity cost? This is why a wiki is a better way to go. the cost of integrating the Help with the design would be higher and take longer. Maybe after finishing the Help, we can integrate it into the design better.
• Is it really worth it? If done right, yes. Some sites have terrible Helps and they make more work for the user.

Jakob Nielsen’s Blah-Blah Text makes an important point that web site visitors want to cut to the chase. They don’t want to waste time with a welcome message or any of that.

We writers have learned that we need to have an opening, body, and conclusion. But we also know that writing for the web breaks many standard writing rules. Whether a site should have an intro depends on its purpose and audience (You’ve heard this a thousand times, I’m sure).

Yahoo! needs no introduction. Almost everyone knows what it is. Instead of an intro, Yahoo! gets down to business with headlines and a sentence for its latest news items. The rest of its content leads users to where they want to go as users go there for different reasons… search, e-mail, news, and specific sections.

Users go to Google to search. Some use it for news, but not like with Yahoo! Google compromised by providing two home pages — one with the famous signature Google logo and a search box with a few links around it; and the other customized for users (iGoogle). iGoogle’s default (for users not signed in) home page contains the more popular widgets.

On the flip side, few know meryl.net and what it’s about. The name gives away nothing. I chose not to put the blog on the home page because my business comes first and many people will find their way to the home page. Not all of my clients care about blogging, but they get a bite of it on the home page right after the introduction to the business.

A random testimonial appears on the top right letting current clients speak for my work. The newsletter provides a way to capture names and e-mails in exchange for providing visitors with information of value (at least, I try!).

Dennison asked excellent questions in response to How to Do Usability Testing Cheap and Fast:

Tell me if I follow correctly: Do you do the test only on users that have their own PC with them? So if you happen to be in a store where nobody has a machine or is willing to take the test, then, tough luck?

Why worry about having the users test in their own environment (PC)? The focus of the test is on usability. Testing to see if the site works properly across different systems should be part of QA work and can be done separately.

Bill Moore from RadioTime responded:

(more…)

Designing Web sites for events requires a different thought process and approach than a regular Web site. Of course, every design project should be unique, but events have features in common that the design project should discuss in every project. Such common features include:

• Home page: Event name, date, location and quick explanation of what it’s about and who it is for.
• Travel: Event hotel with special rates (if available), hotel recommendations including how far they’re located from the event and whether an airport shuttle is available (if the city has a subway or other transportation — provide this information).
• Schedule
• Some events require tickets for showings, seminars, panels, etc. One superb site made it possible to select the classes you wanted to attend and get the tickets for them all at once by having boxes next to them. Participants select the boxes and submit the form.
• Ability to buy or reserve tickets to the event itself. sxsw, which includes photos on its badges, lets you upload pictures for the badges.
• Vendors/Exhibits: Provide the details vendors need to sign up, get their stuff to the city, and so on.
• Having links on the schedule for more details (speaker bios, topic details, location, etc.). Having the title of the panel or whatnot and the speakers don’t give enough information (unless the event is far off).
• Accommodations
• Food and drinks: Will the event have accessible food and drinks? I like to have water with me at all times. I want to know ahead of time whether I need to bring my own water or if I can get it there. Can you even bring food/drinks from outside?
• Wheelchair, hearing impaired, visually impaired, etc. accommodations. Anything you can provide regarding these accommodations is always helpful. For example, a Dallas theater has laptops available for the deaf, which contain the show’s script. But it doesn’t say what you need to do to check it out. Most conferences and events are exhausting for me as a deaf person — so I’m less inclined to attend events — but if I see some accommodations to make things easier and more enjoyable, it’ll increase the likelihood I’ll attend.
• Bathrooms. Save time and frustration by giving people an idea of where the bathrooms are. Go the extra mile and tell them “Get up anytime … when you gotta go… you gotta go.”
• Maps and directions. Make sure the map you use or link to is accurate! At a recent family event, the street didn’t appear on one popular map Web site.
• City info: Participants may want to explore the city during down time. Make it easier and a better experience by providing:
• List of recommended restaurants nearby and restaurants that are unique to the city that may not be close, but worth the visit. Don’t simply point to the city’s guide web site — there is too much info there and they won’t know what’s good and what’s not good.
• List of places to visit and anything that’s unique to the city.
• Shopping! People want to buy stuff to remember their visit and surprise their loved ones with souvenirs. Plenty of “baloney” places exist to trap tourists — show your participants where the real goods are.

Nice to haves… depending on the event

• Merchandise (aka “swag”): Event shirts and goodies popular? Save time, lines and frustrations by selling merchandise online. Hey, people can wear them before and at the event. More promotion!
• Updates during the event: Have a section or a blog… whatever is easiest for posting regular updates. Updates can include news, changes to the schedule or location, notes, presentations, etc. Make them available online, through feeds and provide a computer where people can check the updates as not everyone wants to bring a laptop.
• Post-event notes: Podcasts, notes, speaker presentations, transcripts. Anything you can provide will make the participants more appreciative and more likely to come back or talk about it.
• Feeds and files for downloading to MP3, handhelds, smartphones so participants can carry the info with them. I can’t remember how they did it — but sxsw made it possible for attendees to download info and schedules to their devices AT the event. These should be easy to browse and not graphics heavy. If you create maps or something with graphics, create a separate feed or file so only those with capabilities can access them and the others don’t have to deal with slow download times.

Did I miss anything? What do you wish you had known before going to a conference or event?

Gap Inc. closed down its family of Web sites so it could load the new designs that are supposed to make it easier to use the site and to find things with fewer clicks. gap.com has a tour of its new features. I shopped around the site and almost immediately I found a broken image link. I like that it covers current trends and helps you figure out what clothes are appropos for work, going out, and current trends. It’s much improved.

Old Navy also got a redesign as it’s a member of the Gap family. However, I don’t see an improvement in finding the gift card information. Those of you who have shopped online at Gap, Old Navy, and Banana Republic in the past, what are your thoughts on the redesign?

And a word from our sponsors…

Imagine sliding out of bed and knowing your “work” for the day is to
scuba dive along the Great Barrier Reef…mountain climb in the
Andes…or Kayak around the remote islands of the San Juans…
Passport to Romance: The Ultimate Travel Writer’s Course:

http://www.thetravelwriterslife.com/kp/mef2

Back to your scheduled programming…