First Word

Here I am awake and ready to blog. I check my stats every time I go online. My curiosity piques as I see that in one day I had 350 page views, which for this blog is way off the charts. Now I'm curious, "Why?" I ask myself. What appeared and where that drove up traffic? Blogger allows you to see sources, but most of these sources came from Google, which is nonspecific. These systems rarely come with classes. When it comes to blogs or even social media, it's all "figure it out." Asking questions of others is always good, but the answers are varied and sometimes inaccurate. I think it's more trial-by-fire. We had a writers' group meeting last night. The focus was on building your followers on social media. What I noticed that was missing from the discussion was traditional marketing and promotion. So much emphasis exists on using the free and seemingly easy resources with Blogger, Facebook, Twitter and the many other tools that charge nothing but y...

Over the years I've figured out some unusual ways to do business on the cheap. Who doesn't want to save a buck, right? So, here are some cheap tricks to do business with less expense... Gmail is a great backup device . What I do is pay the annual $30 fee to buy extra storage space each year. I then have an automatic backup system for every document I send to my team, which equates to all of the documents. I don't have to buy extra storage devices. If I need to save something and back it up I send it to myself. Blogger is free . If you're not looking for links to other blog sites and just need a straight-up blog tool then Blogger works great. My only expense is the graphic design required to keep my brand consistent. This expense is recurring about once every couple of years just to update the look. You can't beat free. Pandora is mostly free . I listen to music all day long. I pay the extra $30 annual fee for Pandora for unlimited listening. I like Pandora ...

Blogging makes a great tool to market your business. Many free and paid services are available. I'm going to weigh in on my opinion based on observation and use of the tools. Blogger -- I obviously prefer Blogger. I use it for this blog, and I have been satisfied with its capabilities for what I do. And that is key to the process. What are you going to do with it? Now video blogging has become a big deal, and many marketers have promoted its use as popular. I see many sites now use video blogging, too. For what I do, video blogging isn't key. So my use of the video feature isn't as critical. Most sites now offer that feature (more or less in capability). Blogger allows you to insert a video. The problem I found is that my iPhone capabilities make it nearly impossible to send a video to my computer (too much bandwidth is required). So if you do intend to video blog, it's more dependent on whether or not you have the video-making capabilities. Additionally, some blogs ...

Do you know what are analytics? These are measurements of what your website or blog are doing (essentially a measurement of readership). Analytics measure things such as page views, click-thrus, sites where clicks come from, and where the clicks come from (countries), and more. If you use Blogger then you know analytics are also called stats aka statistics. If you're considering starting a blog, I recommend you take advantage of FREE services like Blogger. You can pay for services such as Typepad , which is more robust; but I have found for the average user the depth of a service like Typepad isn't necessarily worth it. Typepad does have two different levels of keyword searches and allows the user to break the blog into self-created categories. For example, on World Less Traveled's blog , it is broken down into categories such as vacation, travel tips, State Parks, recreation, etc. Her analytics measure pretty much the same things as Blogger, but you cannot see the depth ...

No, there are no magic elixirs or formulas for instant business success. The Blue Fairy won't make your business a "real" business with a wave of the wand nor will the evil witch change your fate with a potion (can you tell I've been watching too much Disney over the holiday break?). BUT I have some great news. You don't need wands or potions to be successful in business. I've been a business owner for seven years, and here is what I've learned over the years and what I know works in business. Here are three things every business owner should be doing to create a profitable, successful business. No. #1 -- Networking . Do you remember in college when your professor told you to go out and network and you thought, "Oh no! I would rather spend the evening in the frat house." The idea of going out and meeting strangers sounded about as exciting as a root canal. Well, reality is you have to network to be successful in business. You have to shake stra...

Did you know some marketing tools exist that cost either very little or nothing at all. Most small business owners in particular will whine they don't have a marketing budget (which I think is fool hearty no matter how much whining about lack of funds you insert into that conversation). What some of these folks don't know or don't take advantage of are the services that either don't cost much money or cost nothing at all. If you own a small business, at a minimum there is absolutely no reason you should use what is sometimes free to market or promote your business. Here are some of those inexpensive tools you should be using. Now your time is not free, but that is a whole other discussion. Blogger.com -- this blog is customized to blogger. It doesn't cost me a dime to have a blogspot . Other blog services such as Typepad cost a little extra and do have more bells and whistles such as built-in analytics; however, if you tie your blogspot site to google/analytics, ...