Listening to Matt speak last night and then doing a little bit of reading about WordPress this morning, I’m reminded again about why I love WordPress (and I’m not even going to mention all the business benefits – too many to add to this post). Here’s some of the reasons I love WordPress:

WordPress is community based – For the community, by the community

The WordPress community ascribes to cooperation.  Quoting WordPress.org:

“Everything you see here, from the documentation to the code itself, was created by and for the community. WordPress is an Open Source project, which means there are hundreds of people all over the world working on it. (More than most commercial platforms.) It also means you are free to use it for anything from your cat’s home page to a Fortune 500 web site without paying anyone a license fee and a number of other important freedoms.

The WordPress Toronto community is a natural extension of WordPress worldwide. The photo that you see here is courtesy of a WordPress blogger that I met at WordCamp 2009 and see at WordPress events. Willingly and freely given.

WordPress equalises the world of publishing

As Matt pointed out to us last night, WordPress has contributed to the democratization of publishing – in other words – the little company or solopreneurs has an equally elegant and powerful platform from which to publish content to the world. The publishing playing field has been leveled.

WordPress embodies the entrepreneurial spirit

The founders saw a need (as entrepreneurs do) and sought to fulfill it. WordPress “started in 2003 with a single bit of code to enhance the typography of everyday writing” (WordPress.org). By December 2011, WordPress 3.0 has been downloaded over 65 million times.  

WordPress empowers people

Open source, free, fully available and accessible to those of us who are not coders and web developers.  WordPress has opened the web world to writers and given them a platform from which to publish without the need of web techno geek knowledge.

I love you, WordPress. Can I really say that online?

Lastly, a shout-out to the Toronto WordPress MeetUp group. I appreciate you all. You embraced a simple end-user like me, entertained my (sometimes) silly, uninformed questions and treated me like an equal player in the WordPress arena.

How I use Dropbox

• Cloud Backup for my website files: I use a WordPress plugin for backing up my website files called BackupBuddy.  By syncing it to Dropbox, I have a complete copy of my website files in case something goes wrong with my server or my website.
•  I also use Dropbox to share files with clients and family and friends. It’s a convenient way to share information, files and documents without email (and we’re all in email overload, aren’t we?).

Why I like Dropbox:

• Once you drop a file into Dropbox, it will show up almost immediately on another computer that has Dropbox installed.
• Dropbox apps are available for iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry.
• You can access your files from your account on the Dropbox website too.
• No need for multiple emails about web content development. You can DROP your web content files into a Dropbox file that we’ll create and share.

Join Dropbox

Send me an email ~ dawn@dawncomber.com and I’ll return an email invite. Using this method, we will both be rewarded with 250 MB of bonus space on our account.

Or if you’re in a hurry, you can just go to Dropbox.com and sign up there.

11 Steps to Dropbox heaven

1. Install Dropbox on your computer (it’s a free download) (and you can take the Dropbox tour too)
2. Create an account (You’ll be prompted to do this during installation. You’ll also see a new icon Dropbox adds to your desktop and the bottom right of your taskbar.)
3. When the installation is complete, click the taskbar icon and then select launch Dropbox website. You’ll be brought to a page with file tabs at the top of the page
4. If you don’t see these tabs, you may not be logged in. To proceed, you have to log into your account
5. For the thorough step-by-step folks: select the Getting Started tab and go through the steps to ensure that you’ve done everything to make your Dropbox service work for you.
6. For those who don’t want the step-by-step: If you want to skip the Getting Started tab, create a folder. Give your folder a clear, meaningful name. If you plan to use this file with me, use your business name or your name to the folder.  
7. Hover your mouse over the new folder and you will see a little arrow appear on the right side. Click on the arrow and a drop down list will appear. From the list select invite to folder.
8. Click invite to folder and a share window will popup.
9. Enter the email addresses of those you want to share the folder with. Send a note with the email to give more info to the email recipient.
10. If you’re sharing with me, include my address on your email list (dawn@dawncomber.com).  I’ll receive a notification that you’ve invited me to share your folder.
11. When I accept your invitation, I’ll have access to the folder and we can begin sharing!

If you want to start sharing with me, don’t forget to send me an email at dawn@dawncomber.com

Not quite clear enough? Watch this Dropbox in plain English video.

Like my image? It’s a stock photo courtesy of .

According to the psfk blog, the idea was imagined by an agency in Stockholm and approved by the government. The goal is to increase tourism in Sweden by enriching Sweden’s ‘personality’ through different perspectives.

As a creative director of the agency in Stockholm said, “What we’ve done instead is said; all people living in Sweden are in essence ‘Sweden’ so they’re a good representation. So together the total of us give a multifaceted view of what Sweden is all about and very personal – high and low, funny and stupid, intelligent, stupid, funny, quirky.”

This initiative is brilliant for several reasons.

1. The initiative epitomizes the ethos of social media. Tweeting by everyday people will make the @Sweden account more social, personal and interactive.
2. The initiative is a grassroots approach. The government is willing to let any ordinary citizen have a say about “their” Sweden.
3. The initiative will make tweets more personal – and therefore add a personal feel to learning about Sweden. Having everyday people tweet whatever they want to about ‘their Sweden’ is more likely to bring a more personal and “real” feel to the tweets.
4. The initiative may produce more entertaining tweets and more attention. People search the web for information and entertainment. How many entertaining videos went viral last year? Remember the one about the dog owner torturing his dog with amazing food he wasn’t sharing?

It is a bold and risky move to hand over branding to your population, or is it? I no longer think it is risky because a move such as this harnesses the power and appeal of social media and acknowledges that some elements of branding are a direct result of customers, clients and anyone who interacts with you.

What do you think about Sweden’s experiment? Would you be willing to hand over your Twitter account? Please let me know what you think by leaving a comment.

If you are interested in the Globe and Mail article, you can read it here.

If you found this post interesting, you might want to check out:

• Blogging and Social Media
• Social Media and Social Activism
• Camping Social Media Style 

Like my image? It’s a stock photo courtesy of .

But that principle doesn’t apply on the web. First impressions are central to making and keeping website visitors.

So how do you write web copy that will make that great first impression? How do you make it magnetic? Whether you’re blogging or creating static content for your website, here’s a web copy manifesto that will ensure that you don’t worry about first impressions:

1. Short sentences without extra clauses
2. One main point per sentence
3. Short paragraphs (sometimes even one sentence – breaking traditional grammar rules)
4. Chunking/segmenting – including several sub-headings. This helps your readers scan and find the pertinent information that they are looking for.
5. Bullet points – a great technique that enables scanning – it’s like reading down a list without extra verbiage in it (like phrases and all that extra stuff that make up sentences)
6. Bolding or italicizing – this makes certain phrases stand out – bold or italicize the information that you want your readers to notice while they scan
7. Hyperlinking – making sure that you have text that links your site together for a smooth user experience
8. Using keywords both in titles and subtitles on the page and throughout the text. The closer to the heading or beginning of a paragraph the better. [This technique is not for your readers but for search engines]

If you use these web writing principles, you won’t have to worry about being “judged by your cover.” You’ll be on your way to keeping and then engaging your site visitors.

Have I missed any web writing techniques? What else do you do to magnetize your web copy? Leave me a comment.

Stock Photo Courtesy of

If you liked this post, you might enjoy:

Thoughts on writing naked
Draw and keep your website audience with 4 time tested tactics
Five ways to kick start your writing
Developing web content through play

This growth means that even though more people are coming online, competition for their attention is growing.  Even though your opportunities are growing, so is the competition for those opportunities.  So your website must make a good first impression – and quickly.  Here are some time-tested tactics to help you draw your audience’s attention and keep it.

1. Use keyword techniques

A lot of people think that on-page SEO (search engine optimization) is less important than it used to be before the web became “social.” This is just plain not true. SEO will be important as long as people use search engines to find things on the web.  You have to pay attention to what your customers are searching for and how they are searching. Then you should work to integrate these into your website.

The first step in SEO is to know the keywords and phrases that your website audience uses to search for your products or services. Use Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool to search for those terms. Once you have identified keywords and phrases that you think your potential customer is using to find services such as yours, incorporate those terms throughout your site wherever there is text and wherever it makes sense. Don’t sacrifice your readers for SEO though. Reader experience should trump keyword usage every time.

2. Create great content

Make sure that your content is:

1. Useful to your audience (Is your content so great that people will bookmark it?)
2. Free of broken links
3. Without grammatical or spelling errors and well-written
4. Original – no lifting paragraphs, sentences or ideas

3. Make your website social

This is the era of engagement. Give people the opportunity to respond to what you have posted. Have sharing buttons for Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. I use the Simple Social Buttons plugin for WordPress. This allows readers to tweet, +1 and like your post without leaving the page. Make sure you have sharing buttons so that people can subscribe to your content, follow you on Twitter, add you on Google+ and LinkedIn. Of course there are other ways that people can engage with you but I consider these the big 5: your blog, Twitter, Google+, Facebook and LinkedIn.

4. Have smooth usability

Usability is about your readers’ experience on your website. Make sure that your site is easy to navigate. Google likes websites (I confirmed this at BlogWorld Expo in Los Angeles) that use breadcrumb trails, internal linking – but not overly linked, a visible search box for your site and a sitemap. If you have advertising on your site, keep within the 80/20 rule – 80% your content, 20% ad space.

Have I missed something in my 4 time-tested steps? What do you do to draw readers’ attention and keep them? Let me know… I’m curious.

Photo Credit: Chili and Lemon
Photo Credit: Velvet Bokeh

Chris Brogan: Be there for people before the sale

My take: Be willing to reach out and help someone solve a problem. Don’t focus on what you have to offer. Get to know someone, their story, their problem and then try to solve it for them. This may not end up with you selling a product or a service.  But you’ve helped someone find what they need. You’ve made their day and my bet is that they’ll remember you for it.

Peter Shankman: Take responsibility for your actions

My take: If you screw up – admit it. Don’t try to hide – don’t try a cover up. Your motive for admitting a mistake is not to clear your path for future success. But there is an unintended consequence for doing so. Admitting a mistake demonstrates that while you may not be perfect, you may still be a trustworthy person.

Amber Naslund: “We are wayfarers. It’s not the era of experts…

It’s the era of inquisitors. It’s the era of the curious.”

My take: We’re at a pivotal moment in time. Social media and technology are giving us opportunities to do business, life and relationships in a new way. Let’s not only capture the wonder of where we are but also question everything we do and how we do it. Out of our questions, let’s create a new way of doing and being in business.

Darren Rowse: Be Useful and Make Life Better

My take: With social media, we have an opportunity to touch many more lives than we did a few years ago. Let’s use it for good. Help people – and make life better – for everyone.

Doug Anweiler: Don’t be a drive-by-social-media-ite

My take: Okay this isn’t exactly verbatim. Doug was actually talking about Twitter but it was such a great metaphor. Being a drive-by-er means being there to post your comment/s and then disappearing from the social media landscape. A drive-by-social-media-ite is like a fair weather friend. There for the minute and gone when you need them. Be available for people.  Stay, engage and be part of an ongoing conversation.

Did you attend BlogWorldLA? If so, what were some of your favourite truisms for social media?

And if you didn’t attend, what advice would you add?

Let’s talk … leave a comment below.

Have you heard of this event? It’s Blog World Expo and New Media Event.  At BlogWorld Expo LA, I’m going to “learn how to create better content, grow my brand, my audience and revenue online from the world’s most successful New Media experts & Social Media innovators.”

Sounds pretty exciting, eh? But what is even more exciting was the backstory to my attending #BWELA.

Two days ago, while cruising some of the blogs I read on a regular basis, I read a post on John Jantsch’s Duct Tape Marketing blog, “Why You no longer need a blog.”  I was intrigued by the title. And found out that John didn’t really mean it.  You can read his post here.

Then he invited people to finish this sentence… The future of blogging is…

He offered 3 great prizes for writing your take about the future of blogging in his comments. 1 Full-Access Pass, 1 – 2-day Pass, and 1 Expo Pass.

Next day, I received an email saying that I won the Full-Access Pass so guess what folks -  I am going! I’ll meet amazing people, gain amazing insights and enjoy L.A.

And, thanks to John Jantsch and the Duct Tape Marketing Team.  Can’t wait to meet you in L.A.

P.S. If you want to see the winning comment, click here and scroll down below John’s post to find it!

P.P.S. I’m planning on tweeting and blogging my way through this conference. And I’m bringing home lots of fresh ideas that I’ll be eager to share with you.

This past week, I attended a Narrative Design Lab ™, hosted by the Canadian Centre for Narrative Coaching and animated by Dr. David Drake. In this one-day intro lab, we had a ton of fun playing with new ways of imagining our businesses.

Today I’ll share a couple of creative exercises that we played with (that you can use) so you can get your creative juices flowing when thinking and writing about your business.

Only one caveat: These exercises should be done in groups.  So if you have a social learning group or another business group, inject these for a double dose of play and insight.

Warm-Up: Narrative Improv

We warmed up with a fun improvisation game. In groups of 3-4, one member of the circle started a story and talked for about 30 seconds.  David stopped each story-teller and the second person was to pick up the story “thread” from where the previous person left off.  The game continued until everyone had a turn at helping the story emerge.  Then we talked about

• How did the story evolve?
• Were you satisfied with it?
• What did this exercise tell you about narrative? About yourself?

I felt my creativity kicking in and I was opening to new and deeper insight as well.

Using Metaphor to Write About Your Business

Next we were asked to write the first word that came into our heads (concrete noun or a place) on a recipe card or two and hand them in to one person.  Then we were to select one card and write how our business is like a ___________ (whatever the word may be).  The word I selected was “bicycle.”  How was my business like a bicycle? Here’s my list:

[table id=10 /]

From this list David asked us to circle the one word/phrase that most intrigued us.  I chose “a great ride!”  Now how does that phrase transform how I look at my business?? What if that phrase was my tagline? How do I look at my business now?

My take on my business metaphor

Well, developing web content is a process.  There is a give and take – a dialogue between me and my clients.  I care a great deal about the experience that people have when they work with me so – working with me is a great ride.

What does this mean for you?

Playing in this space will give you:

1. Freshness: Use these exercises to uncover new ways to think about your business, your products or your services
2. Creativity: Flowing with your creative juices unleashes new possibilities and invigorates your work
3. Fun: You have to work but make your work fun. These exercises encourage creativity and fun with the added bonus of unearthing new insights and creating inspired business results. That’s a winning combination in my mind

What process do you use to create content? Is it working for you? If not, what would you like to try?

Photo Credit

The tale (tail?) of Air Canada

But wait for it … the first leg of my trip is with (are you ready) – Air Canada!!  I have been passed from pillar to post, from one customer relations rep to another – all the time feeling totally powerless to the “flying gods.”

Knowing there was a strike coming on Wednesday (Tuesday midnight), I knew my goal – get someone – anyone to help me get to Australia.

I’ve spent the last 3 days on the phone with Air Canada, Air New Zealand and various customer reps with Red Tag Vacations.  I’ve experienced empathy, coldness, irritation and rudeness. I have worked to be polite in all my dealings with each person. I do understand that these people are not the problem.

One of my creative solutions was to get myself to San Fran on my own dime and make the second leg of the flight. BUT – that was not possible (according to Air New Zealand). Air NZ wanted to charge extra fees and penalties for me to solve my own problem. More on that later.

So what have I learned? (far from an exhaustive list)

1. Listen carefully to your customer: Listen closely to what your customer is saying. If they are having difficulty expressing what they want/need, help them to articulate it. When they are clear about what they want; you can serve them more effectively
2. Listen with empathy: If the particular problem is one that you cannot solve, empathize with the difficult situation someone is in. For example, when I told my story to Air Canada, the customer rep was cold and uncaring. Saying he was sorry for my difficulty would not have hurt him – in fact it might have helped him. Another customer rep empathized and my frustration level reduced because even if they were not solving my problem, they were relating to me as a human. I was not merely a financial transaction to him/her.
3. Try to problem solve creatively: Work with your customer/client to find a solution to their problem.
4. Be authentic: Don’t pay lip service to people. If you can’t/won’t help them, don’t pretend that you are. You will get found out eventually and your reputation will be damaged. Some social media savvy people can do some damage to your reputation (remember the guitar story?).
5. Make your policies flexible: I suggested to Air New Zealand that I would get to my first destination (San Fran) on my own dime. They blew me away when they said that I had to use my ticket from the first point of departure or I would be considered a “no show”.  Classic inflexibility.

The Air Canada strike has emphasized a lesson that we all learned a long time ago and that is …

Put your customer first.

Your customers have many places to go to buy products or services similar to yours. If you don’t meet their expectations or exceed them: believe me they will look somewhere else!

[Update] I’d just like to give online kudos to Red Tag Vacations. From the President (who did give me a personal call and asked staff to find a solution) to the manager of online bookings (Gina) to a customer rep (Christina) who both called me to let me know that the strike was averted. These people and their actions stand out above all the other customer reps because they cared enough to inform me that the strike was over. No one else did that and believe me, I’ve talked to a lot of people in the last 3 days.

Were you affected by the Air Canada strike or some other service disruption?  What did you learn about customer relations as a result?

Photo Credit

• creating circles and adding my contacts to them
• sharing existing content on Google+
• adding content that I thought might be interesting to people in my Circles

One of my challenges so far is that many of my clients and friends are not yet using or interested in using Google+.  If you’re interested, please send me an email and I will send you an invitation.

But today was a horizon-expanding day.  Why you ask?

Once a month I join two colleagues to participate in a social learning event.  We get together to share new web tools, apps and products that we have encountered in the previous month.

We have a great time catching up but most of all we have a blast learning from each other.  Social learning is one forum where everyone contributes.  We explore and experiment and share our learning as we sit together. Today is one great example of that.

Here’s a brief summary of what I learned about Google+ along with my colleagues.

My hope is that this will help others who are “on” Google+ but who feel overwhelmed by having to “learn” a new social media platform.

Google+ Hangouts

I think Hangouts take video calling to another level. Want to know why? You can invite as many people as you want to a hangout but a max of 10 people can be there at a time.  For a quick intro to hangouts, check out this video.

Making it work for you

1. Scroll down your stream and on the right hand side of your page, you’ll see Start a Hangout.
2. Click on it and then invite your friends to join in.

You can choose a circle or you can invite select people. Your choice.  Nice feature.

In a Hangout, you can watch YouTube videos as well as have a regular meeting or Hangout.  You can use the chat function as you watch a video (left side of page).  I’m not sure yet about screen sharing. If you know, please leave a comment.

Some other things you might want to know about Hangouts:

• When you invite people to a Hangout, a post will appear in their stream telling them that there’s a hangout going on, along with all the people in that hangout currently.
• If you invite less than 25 people, they’ll receive a notification. Over 25 and it appears in their Google+ stream.
• To open the Hangout, you’ll receive an IM in chat with a live link

Hangouts demonstrate greater sharing possibilities than Skype – because of the video capability and because of the ability to invite multiple people. With Skype, conferencing calling is a Premium account feature.

Twitter and Google+

During our social learning time, we found a great browser extension that allows you to add Twitter to your Google+ account.  Grab the Google+ Twitter extension here.  At this point, you cannot send your Tweets to Google+ – I think that’s still in the planning phase in the Google+ project.  Look forward to that in the future.

Making it work for you

You have to download and install the browser extension. Head back to Google+ and refresh. You’ll see a new (Twitter) icon beside your Home icon. Click on it, sign in with Twitter, it will sync and then click on Go! You’ve now integrated Twitter into Google+.

You can send your Google+ updates to Twitter by selecting “I want Tweet my G+ post automatically!”

There’s still a lot more to explore in Google+.  I suggest that you get together with a friend or colleague so you can explore together. You learn more and you can enjoy the adventure together.

I’d love it if you would take a moment and tell me about your Google+ adventure so far. Can you see yourself using it in the future?

Photo Credit