• The best way to engage anyone is to ask them questions about themselves. Most people have one favorite subject in common and that subject matter is “me…me…me…me…me…me”. Isn’t that your favorite subject?

• I was fortunate to have one of the companies I worked for early in my career force me to go to what I thought was one of the most lame sales training courses called “Dale Carnegie”.  After all, I was 20 something and I knew all I needed to know…right?  Wrong!  I think you find that out when you hit 30 something…you know, not knowing as much as you thought you knew.  Though I was forced to go to this training class I thoroughly hated, I chose to make the best of it and take away as much information as possible.  After all, I was there….they were there and I didn’t have a choice.  So, when life hands you lemons, make lemonade.

• One of the greatest gifts I took away from that sales training coarse was reading the book “How to win friends and influence people” By Dale Carnegie.  I highly recommend this book to any person who will take the short amount of time it takes to read it, it will change you and your relationships.  It will help you understand that people simply want someone to take interest in “their stories”, what is going on in “their lives” and that taking an interest in other people really is the number one way to build better relationships.

• On that note, I would like to encourage you to add questions to your blog posts to better interact with your readers.  There are many simple questions you can ask as you close out your blog posts, here are a few ideas:

1. How will this information help you?
2. How do you plan to use this information?
3. How else might I be of assistance to you with the information I have provided above?
4. What experiences have you had that may add to the discussion?
5. After reading what you read, what is your commitment to implementing in your own blog or website?

• I will close by having you think back to the last social gathering you were at and recall if most of your conversations were about you or the person/people you were conversing with.  Which of those conversations were most interesting to you?  How often were you engaged in “interesting” conversation where you were learning about someone else, what they do, etc.  If you are the type of person who finds yourself learning about others during conversations, I bet those people think you are a GREAT conservationist!  I love the old saying “you have two ears and one mouth….remember to use them accordingly”.

• I really am interested in your thoughts and opinions and truly wish to know how you plan to use this in your next blog post, networking event or sales call.

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upgrade to 2.8.6

It is that time again. Word Press has come out with a new upgrade. You can upgrade your Word Press automatically by clicking at the top of your screen when you first log in to your blog.

• It is important to make sure you keep up to date on your upgrades to keep your blog from getting hacked.  Many times, these upgrades are done to not only add more functions and features to your blog, but to update potential security issues that have surfaced.

• Always make sure to keep your word press blog updated and current as a first defense to keep from getting hacked.

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• When you register at Online Business Academy, you have access to all of the video tutorials that teach you how to build in Joomla. Though this blog is in Word Press, I really do prefer Joomla as a platform and find I more flexibility with it.

• Another site that was built using Joomla as a platform is “San Ramon Homes”, address http://www.mysanramonhomes.com.  Because PrinterBees really does specialize in working with the real estate community, this is an example of one of the sites we have put up to help one of our “San Ramon Realtor” clients.

• The website/blog for Livermore Martial Arts was also built in Joomla, which again you can learn more about by visiting Online Business Academy.

• Happy Blogging and Web Site building.  It isn’t too difficult to get your own sites up with some great how to blog tutorials like the ones mentioned above or on this blog on “how to blog”.

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If you have a Word Press blog, which is the platform for this particular blog, you may be excluding your blog from the Google Index without even realizing it.  Two of my clients were being excluded and I was left puzzled and questioning what I KNEW to be true.  Goes to show that you learn something new every day…and today I learned something new about Word Press.

• One of my clients has a Word Press blog, which he built himself using the free guide “blogging for buyers“.  He hired me to help him find a domain name and I felt really good about the domain we chose.  Based on all the research I did, it seemed as though the domain name alone would help him to yield good search results once he added some good content to the site.   Not So Much!  (learn more about how to chose a good domain name here.)

• No matter what we did and how I coached him, we couldn’t get Google to index his blog.  We have all of the SEO tools installed, had hand submitted the site to the Google Index and NOTHING! I hope this will all change with what I discovered today.  I wanted to bring it to your attention as well to make sure you have your Word Press blog set up properly to be indexed and crawled by Google, Technorati, etc.

• Follow these steps to make sure you are in good shape:

• On the left side of your Word Press screen, you will see “settings”, click on it.  A list of options will drop down, and one of those options is “privacy”, click on it. This is what you will see:
  

• Make sure that your site is set TO BE CRAWLED, and not set to block the search engines.  I am 100% sure that both of my clients who had their settings set to “block the search engines” did not choose that setting, which leads me to believe that it is the default setting.   I can’t think of any other way that it would have ended up “blocking” the search engines and I am very hopeful that now that it is fixed, Google will begin to crawl the site and we will see some activity.

• There is much more information regarding getting found on Google in the Getting Found On Google Section.  Good luck to you on finding your place in the Google Index.

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I recently came across a situation where one of my clients was told by his business consultant that his  blog was for one purpose only.  To educate people  and share good information.  My client was told that his blog should not be used for “marketing purposes” and I tend to disagree.

• If your blog isn’t to be used for “marketing”, then what is the purpose in having it?  Now don’t get me wrong, educating people and offering your visitors valuable information is crucial to the success of your blog, but factoring self promotion and marketing is also important.  You have to find good balance in your blog to make sure you are educating your readers, after all that is what most people are looking for when they read blogs, they want information and providing valuable information will keep them coming back for more.

• My recommendation to you when creating a blog post is to educate FIRST and market second.  If you approach your posts by marketing first, you will most likely loose the interest of your readers within a few moments.

• The best way to use your blog as a marketing tool is to provide valuable information with hyperlinks directly to your product pages where people can take action with the product or service you are offering.  It serves three purposes:

1. Blogs create fresh content which is what “Googlers” want and what Google wants to provide.
2. Leads potential clients to the place to take action
3. Create links throughout your site or from your blog to your site, which helps with your quest to work with Google.

• To learn everything you need to know about how to blog along with what to blog about read “profitable blogging”

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• It is important to make sure you are always on the latest version of WordPress to make sure your blog does not get hacked by some jerk who has nothing better to do than mess with your blog for no apparent reason.   The one big downside to having a blog vs. a traditional HTML website is that they are much easier to hack because when there is a security issue.  Issues are typically posted on the websites where hackers can easily read how hack your site.

• Make sure you back up your site and upgrade it ASAP!!!

• This is what you will see at the top of your Word Press Dashboard showing you that it is time to upgrade.  Click on Please Update Now

• Once you have click “Re-install Automatically”, you will be taken to this screen to upgrade.  Make sure to back up your blog before you upgrade.  Once you have backed up, click on Upgrade Automatically.

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For those who wish to get started on blogging, whether it be to make money or to keep in touch with family and friends, trying to figure out what to name your blog can be one of your biggest challenges.   I have an easy solution to what many find to be a big “road block” to moving forward.

• If you want people to be able to find your blog via the Internet Search Engines like Google, the fastest and easiest road there is to find a domain name for your blog that matches what people are searching for related to your subject matter.  If you have read earlier posts on how to get found on Google, you understand that the Google algorithms are programmed to help people searching on Google to find the most relevant results. Typically, the most relevant results to any search would be a domain name that matches the search term…right?  If you “Google” nadine blogs, the number one result is currently www.nadineblogs.com, because the domain name matches the search term.

• You may be asking yourself how exactly you figure what people are searching for…and again…pretty easy to figure out…IF you know where to look.

• Google has a “keyword tool” I like to use to help me figure out what to name my websites and blogs, which I STRONGLY encourage you to utilize before you name your blog or register your domain name.  The best way to use this tool is to type in different search terms that match the desired subject of your blog.  You will see a list of results with numbers that indicate the search volume for each term.

• Your best bet is to find a term that has the highest number of search volume and try to buy a domain name to match it.  To give you a good example, I will use one of my most recent clients, “Moore’s Martial Arts” in Livermore, CA.  Moore’s doesn’t currently have a website or domain name for the school located in Livermore, so we are starting from scratch.

• The steps I went through to find the “perfect” domain name are as follows:

• I search using the keyword tool for terms that included Livermore martial arts.  Martial arts being the most generic term I could think of to describe what they do.  Upon doing my research, I found that there are close to 600 searches each month for the term “Livermore Martial Arts“.  When you consider the amount of search volume for that particular keyword, it would make great sense to see if I can obtain the domain name “Livermore Martial Arts”, which is exactly what we did.

• IMPORTANT NOTE: It is important for me to note that just because I have identified a great domain name that matches the search term, it in no way guarantees this website will make it to the front page of the search engines.  What helps get you to the front page of the search engines is good content that is relative to the term you wish to be found for.  It is also VERY important to submit your site to the search engines by submitting your site map.  No site map…no search results.

• Learn more about submitting your site to the search engines on this recent post. Your site will not be indexed until you submit your site map.  Make sure to read this post.

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• If you have been following this experiment, you know we started on page 14, moved up to page 8, then it was slow moving to page 7…where we were stuck for a bit.  Click here to read first post.

• GREAT NEWS…we have moved to page 5 for the term “Door Hanger Printing”, which shows that paying attention to the Google Wonder Wheel can and does make a difference.

• Let me tell you some of the other steps I took to help “my cause” with Google.

• Though Google specifically tells you not to submit any page to the search engine which has a link from your home page, I did end up submitting the link after waiting…and waiting…and waiting for Google to crawl the page.  Submitting your site to Google

• Once Google finally crawled the page, we came up two more pages in the rankings to page five, in position #3.

• I have also added articles about “door hanger printing” to our PrinterBees Blog because as I have mentioned before, Google likes blogs because the content is fresh.

• You should also note that every time I have used the term “door hanger printing” in this particular post, I have linked back to the door hanger printing page on PrinterBees, creating another link.  ONE-WAY links pointing to your site are one of the factors Google considers when indexing all websites.  The more links you have, the better.  The more links you have from “authority sites”, even better!  I will explain “authority sites” in another post…it’s complicated.

• Use the above tips to help get your website/web pages linked on Google.  It really does work!

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Today, the FTC released updated guidelines for bloggers who endorse products and services.

• The updated guidelines from the FTC say the following:

• The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that “material connections” (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers. The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service. Likewise, if a company refers in an advertisement to the findings of a research organization that conducted research sponsored by the company, the advertisement must disclose the connection between the advertiser and the research organization. And a paid endorsement – like any other advertisement – is deceptive if it makes false or misleading claims.”

• Read the complete press release from the FTC here. To see the   complete guide published by the FTC, click here.  It is 81 pages and makes for great reading in the evenings you find it difficult to fall asleep. LOL

• It will be important to make sure people who read your blog know you are being compensated when you endorse a product.

• As I learn more about these new guidelines, I will post more.

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Let’s go over the advantages and disadvantages of both…

Do It Yourself:

• If you create your own blog, it will take time away from whatever it is keeps you busy now.
• Building your own blog without the help of a professional designer and the assistance of what to include/not include could keep your blog from reaching its full potential.
• If you consider yourself to be pretty “techy” and like this sort of thing, I encourage you to dig in and get your fingers “dirty”, if indeed you will actually follow through, the key here being…will you actually follow through and get it done?
• By creating your own blog, you are in control and don’t have to depend on someone else to make changes and updates that are often needed on any website.  You created it, so you know how to change it, update it or fix it if need be!
• If you don’t happen to have an eye for what looks good and create your own blog, you may get visitors to your blog that “bounce” the second they arrive because your blog isn’t inviting or looks cluttered.

If you do decide to create your own blog, we do encourage you to create a custom look and feel to your web blog and the easiest program to do that is Artisteer.  It requires NO PRIOR web design knowledge or experience and could not be more user friendly.  It is a great program and they do offer a free demo.  Visit this link for a full video tutorial on how to use the program.  The tutorial shows you how to build a simple, but completely custom blog theme in 5 minutes!  Yes, the video is 5 minutes with no outtakes or secret shortcuts.  The whole blog template is built in 5 minutes.  Watch the tutorial now.

Hire A Professional:

• Hiring a professional to set up your blog in most cases is a one-time fee because once a blog is set up it is done.  I have many clients who hire me to do exactly this because they either don’t have the time or just choose not to do it themselves.  It is not that time consuming for someone like myself that has done it many times and very cost effective if you have the funds available.  Feel Free To Contact Me For a Quote.
• A professional will most likely set up your blog to match your company website or be able to integrate your company logo by using design software that you may not be familiar with.  As mentioned above, check out Artisteer and the tutorials to see if this is something you simply wish to take on yourself.  It really is easy with a little video training!
• Hiring a professional will require a small investment, but typically when you have some “skin in the game” you are more likely to follow through with the actual blogging.
• Your blog will need to have some structure to it and a professional will obviously have more insight in to creating that structure.

NOTE: If you do choose to hire a professional to create your blog site, make sure that your agreement includes training on how to log in, create blogs, and manage the site.  There isn’t a lot to managing a blog other than adding “blogs” (content and articles) regularly, but you will need some guidance to get you started.  If your designer doesn’t include training, you are strongly encouraged to “pass” and find one that does.

As you can see there are benefits to both.  You may possible wish to try designing and creating your own blog if you feel you have the time to do so.  If you find you aren’t succeeding at it, then hire a professional.  What have you got to lose!

It is also important to subscribe to this blog because I offer ongoing tips on how to add “widgets” and plug ins on how to make money with your blog and stay consistent with it!  Subscribe now

If you aren’t sure exactly how to subscribe to an RSS or what an RSS feed is, click here to learn what it is and how to do it.  Once you learn about RSS feeds, you will understand how much time and energy they will save you!

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