They have one support person per 100 customers, 24/7/365 support. They sent me 4 emails, with all the information I need to start. ftp accounts, cpanel logins. Their customer interface is clean, easy to understand and you can log into your cpanel from there. I’m beginning to really like these guys.

Did I mention there’s a 30 day money-back guarantee? I looked for an affiliate program,. but for $15 a year, if I’m happy with the service I’ll recommend it to my clients before the sites that offer affiliate programs.

The thing that really impressed me is .. they have a Twitter account to keep in touch with their customers. It’s the first company that I’ve seen using Twitter as part of their Customer Service platform.

I like to support innovation, I appreciate a company that really takes customer service seriously and as a small business owner, I want the best value every dollar I make.

I’m moving one of the domains that’s been parked at GoDaddy in the next couple of days and I’ll write another blog post next week, with the results of my testing.

Google likes blogs and rewards blogs who post new content often with higher search ranking that a static website. The new content also encourages your visitors to return to your site to read your latest post. Changing content on a static site is painful and usually expensive.

You do need to have a plan for your blog content, to ensure you have a consistent message and engage your readers. My favorite blogs have a point of view. I dont even have to agree, as well as their opinion is well stated and makes me think.

Do you have a blog .. are you expressing your point of view ..

I’m a tinkerer .. I don’t understand how anyone can plan every detail of a website in advance .. code the whole thing and then have major drama when you need to change anything. Up until an hour ago, I didn’t even know I wanted a poll on my blog. If this had to be planned months ago it wouldn’t have happened.

In my past life, I worked on major projects. Months of user input and planning, endless design meetings, an infrastructure had to be built, coding started, project meetings, we’re already over budget and behind schedule and we’ve barely started coding, QA kicks in, user testing starts, wait .. we forgot a feature, is this really what we agreed to?, people come and go .. months pass and if the stars align the end result more or less delivers the original requirements. If not, put it in the budget for next year and create a new project to add “new features”. That’s the same process as building a static website.

A WordPress blog design can be quickly adapted to your immediate needs. With a little bit of knowledge, you can add a feature in minutes. You do need an overall plan, otherwise you blog design could start to look cluttered. Take a look at other blogs. What do you like about the design? Hire a graphic designer from ifreelance to help with the overall design.

I was reading Jim’s Marketing Blog this morning and was admiring his design when I noticed his poll. A poll … why didn’t I think of that? I suggest polls to my clients all the time. Maybe I should take my own advice.

If it was during the week, when I concentrate on client tasks, I would have put it on my todo list for the weekend. Yaro Starak (get his free ebook from a link on the right) tells his students they have to post content and market their blog before making design changes. Taking his advice, I get to tinker with my design (which I love to do) because I’m writing a blog post about the process.

Adding a poll to a WordPress blog is easy. I went to the free WordPress plugin site, searched for poll, then read the descriptions of the most popular plugins. WP-Polls plugin does exactly what I want, so I read the details on his site, checked out the demo and downloaded it. Unzipped and ftp’d it to my hosting site and voila! it’s there. I created a poll, added the widget to my sidebar and I’m done. It took me longer to write this blog post than it did to install the plugin.

Do you have a poll on your blog? And don’t forget to take my poll.

The first decision you need to make is why you want to blog. Because a speaker at an event convinced me it’s the way of the future, or everyone else seems to have one, or I read it will shoot my website to the top of the Google search engine rankings are not reasons to blog. They may be reasons to investigate whether a blog is the right vehicle for you.

You have to ask yourself what you want to accomplish with a blog. It can help with your Google ranking, but simply recycling your newsletter for the past two years is probably not going to accomplish the result you want. For one thing, the information may not be relevant any more, or your target market may have changed; or the content of the newsletters may not be relevant to online readers.

What message do you want to convey to your readers? A blog is a marketing tool, it’s part of your brand, so consistency is important. The look of your blog should complement your website (if you have one). The current advice is that your blog and your website should not look identical. That confuses the readers.

Do you have the time to blog? You should blog at least three times a week. If you’re writing-impaired like I am, it takes time to write (and spellcheck) a blog post. What am I going to write about? Often I have a great idea for a blog post, that’s on-topic and fits with my current content and I sit with the title and that’s all .. get up, get a glass of water, a cookie, check Twitter, check my e-mail .. I’ve wasted an hour I could have used following up with potential clients. Save the post, unpublished and move on. If you’re having bloggers block .. make those follow up calls and come back to your blog.

If you have the resources, you may want ot hire someone to write your blog posts. You can hire someone at ifreelance to write ten or twenty blog posts, for those times you are too busy, or have bloggers block.

Should it be a page on your website? My question to you is .. do you even need a website? Several one-stop-shopping products are beginning to emerge based on a hosted WordPress platform. My advice is to hold off a major redesign of a static website if you’re an infopreneur. One of these products may be more suited to your business model.

Bottom line, having your web designer add an extra page to your website titled "Blog" and adding a hosted Word Press blog with the default theme then recycling old newsletters without a plan is a waste of time.

What planning did you do before you started publishing your blog? How long did it take you to find the purpose or message for your blog? Do you still have a traditional website?

The first thing you need to analyze is your website. If you’re going to promote your website to be “above the fold”, it needs to be effective. You want them to buy something, even if it’s buying into your point of view.

• Is your landing page cluttered?
• Do you have a call to action on your landing (home) page?
• How easy is it to buy your product?
• Do you have an offer that will allow you to capture e-mail addresses, then do you have a newsletter to keep in touch with your new customers?
• Do you have Google Analytics (or another product) installed and have you analyzed the data you collect?
• What’s your conversion rate, where are your customers coming from? Which pages are your customers reading?
• What products are your customers buying? (or not buying)

If you don’t know the answers to most of those questions, you may need to make changes to your website to take advantage of the new customers/business you attract using a blog.

Depending on your business, you may not even need a static website. A hosted WordPress blog can be customized to accomplish the same objectives as a static website. Howard Olsen’s High Output Business Training site is a good example of the effective use of a customized Word Press blog theme. Using a Word Press theme allows you to make changes quickly. It’s built in … you don’t need to pay extra, or learn yet another application, or pay a web designed to make the changes to content.

Blogging can be time consuming and you need to post to your blog three to five times a week. If you don’t have the time, or don’t enjoy writing, you can hire someone to write your blog for you. You can also encourage someone from within your organization to write the blog.

Once you’re comfortable with your website, you need to define the goals for the blog. Is it to drive new traffic to your website, or to increase sales from your current customers, to capture e-mail addresses, or to sell your e-book?

Do you need a business blog? Almost every business can benefit by using a blog, but you need a strategy to take advantage of a powerful marketing tool.

Do you have a strategy for your business blog? How successful has it been achieving your goals?

I recognized at least half of the nominees, and wondered why some others hadn’t made the list (others wondered that too, see comments at the end of the blog).

I’m subscribed to 256 RSS feeds .. there is no way I can keep up with that many feeds, even using the last-in scheme in Ed Dale’s video. Most Twitter users announce when they update their posts, so that’s how I keep up to date with blog entries from bloggers I follow.

Almost all the 50 Most Influential Women had links to Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and other Social Media applications right along side their RSS feed signups. They also had an E-book or Newsletter offer front and centre. You can also sign up for updates by e-mail instead of an RSS feed.

I didn’t have a link to my Twitter or Facebook account from my blog, although both my Twitter and Facebook accounts promote it. Give your readers every chance to stay in touch. I should know better .. almost 30% of my blog traffic comes from Google searches. I created a widget at WidgetBox as soon as I realized what was missing from my sidebar. I’m still having issues with an e-mail subscription for my WordPress blog using Feedburner.

Yaro Starak tells his mentees that content is everything, that we need to write content and market our blogs every day before we spend time on themes and widgets. I’ve taken his advice too literally and keep putting e-mail subscription on the low-priority list. I understand his point of view .. as a geek, I’d spend all my time searching for the perfect theme and fine-tuning widgets.

I need to devote most of my time to my clients and to developing my two other online businesses, but I realize I need to make some changes to the look of my blog and add those pages I’ve been meaning to work on for the past month.

I urge you to take the time to get to know these amazing women. While you’re at their website and blogs, take a look at the information they present and start slowly add features that make sense to you.

Are you happy with the look of your blog?

A few months ago the Blog Squad recommended Twitter so I tried it. Okay, now I get it. And the really cool thing is .. you only have 140 characters. This is perfect for word-challenged geeks like myself.

I think and write in bullet points .. I’ve been IM’ing my team mates in the next office to mine for years. I can write a business plan using a mind map (as a matter of fact, I did that on Friday) Ask me to to string words and sentences together and I start to sweat. This blog would have a lot more content if I could just write it in bullet points. Geeks would get it .. the rest of the world would wonder why I didn’t finish the post.

Twitter is perfect for me .. in fact, I often have to shorten my Tweets .. I even get to shorten URLs ..

I use TweetDeck, I tried Twhirl .. it’s just okay. TweetDeck chirps at me when one of my Tweeple posts. I only follow people who have something to say, so if there’s a chirp then I should check it out .. right ??? What does that do to my productivity? You’re right .. drops to zero.

I used to check my e-mail first thing .. now I check Twitter. I don’t even bother with e-mail until I’ve read (and followed all the links) from the last time I checked Twitter .. I’ve counted .. there’s been eight Tweets since I started writing this post .. and I haven’t checked one .. what if someone had something important to say? .. and I missed it .. I’ve almost stopped writing (another Tweet) a few times to check out what’s being said ..

On the positive side, if you have Twitter open all the time, you can be one of the first to comment on your favorite blogger. That’s a good thing isn’t it? (another Tweet) You’re always aware of Twitter Trends, and you’re up to date on what’s happening (at least on the internet). (another Tweet)

Okay .. I can’t stand it any more .. I’m off to check what’s being said since I last checked. It’s almost like not being able to hear what the other kids are saying .. standing on the outside of a group of popular kids …

Are you addicted to Twitter?

I agree wholeheartedly with his main points:

• “Be a Reader of Blogs” – besides reading blogs in your sector, try to read post from the best bloggers, Problogger, Seth Godin’s blog, Daily Blog Tips. Reading these bloggers a couple of times a week will give you a model for successful blogging. (see my post with a link to using Google Reader effectively)
• “Don’t Stress it Too Much” – just start blogging. The more you post, the easier it is .. and if you don’t post 3 to 5 times a week for a while, just start up again.
• “Don’t adspeak” – think of your blog as a conversation with your best client. You have the opportunity to use your expertise and to express your point of view (see next point)
• “Tell a Story Without Ranting” – oh oh .. I’m known to express my opinon .. you don’t have to agree with me and I do warn you when I’m ranting.
• “Keep it Simple With Search Engine Optimization” – Most small business owners don’t have the time or the resources to master SEO, that’s not your job. A good resource for simple and effective SEO for blogs is the 30 Day Challenge training. Sign up for a free account and work through the lessons when you have time.

As a small-business owner, do you have a blog? How often do you post?

The free “stuff” at BWE08 was pretty lame. T-shirts and stickers. Since I’ve been in high-tech longer most of the population has been alive, I’ve been given T-shirts, fleece vests and ball caps from every project I’ve worked on and every conference I’ve attended. You better have a nifty logo or graphic on your T-shirt to get me to advertise your company. Didn’t happen there.

Lots of stickers .. stickers .. aren’t those for 8-year-olds? I did take a WordPress sticker, even though I got one at the WordPress camp I attended. Zannell wins the best give-away .. a lime green, yellow and blue yo-yo thingy that’s made out of that creepy plastic they make kids bugs out of. I play with it while I’m talking on the phone .. I can multitask .. the cat is creeped out by it though. Maybe she knows something I don’t. The best free pen award goes to .. SodaHead .. it’s my new favorite free pen.

I did talk to representatives from most of the exhibitors and there are a number of innovative new products for bloggers.

The neat new products I’ll be checking out and writing reviews on are: widgetbox, shopzilla, picapp, Yovia, Outbrain (best T-shirt), commission videos, lijit, and PRWeb. Here’s a hint for networking events and conferences. Write a note on the business card when the person hands it to you, or simply put an asterisk on it if you want to follow up. Makes it easier to sort out all the business cards and material you receive.

The take-away from the exhibitor floor was .. blog addons going to contain advertising. The product is free, but somewhere there will be an ad for something. I predict this will get old very quickly and these folks are going to have to rethink their strategy and start charging for the product.

<rant on> Hint to exhibitors .. Don’t start the conversation with “Are You Ladies Bloggers?” … WTF … What do you suppose we’re doing at a bloggers conference? I’m not sure if they asked everyone that question, but I found it annoying. Surely someone in the Marketing Department could have come up with a better one liner than that. <rant off>

I’ve vacationed in Las Vegas several times, but this is the first conference I’ve attended there, so we made a few newbie mistakes. It made sense to stay at a hotel right across from the Convention Centre. (The Marriot Residence Suites) It’s a great hotel, quiet, with no slot machines in the lobby (that’s a good thing) with breakfast and internet access included. On a map, it seems to be close to “The Strip” and there’s a monorail station right at the Convention Centre.

The monorail station is across the street but the system is almost useless, the stations dump you into the shopping area of a hotel that leads to the casino and then into the shopping and casino of another hotel until you finally find sunlight and have to walk another four or five blocks to get to your final destination. That’s okay if you have three days to wander from casino and shopping area to another casino and shopping area. Our free time was limited so we spent a lot of money on taxi’s that didn’t seem to know where the hotel was. Maybe the Marriot folks need to rename their hotels to more unique names.

Next time I go to Las Vegas, I’m going to do some research on their transit system. There seems to be lots of buses, but as a tourist it’s almost impossible to find out any information about routes and schedules. The Deuce bus is efficient, but doesn’t run near the convention centre except for very specific times.

Las Vegas isn’t about $2.95 buffets any more. We found Piero’s the first night we were there. It was some of the best Italian food I’ve ever eaten, even when I was in Italy. The the servers were there when you needed them, answered all our questions, joked with us and generally made us feel like rock stars.

The second night we were off to the BWE08 reception at the Hilton, so we ate at the Buffet at the Hilton. The buffet is Las Vegas tradition, and a reasonable $17.95 for a good selection of food, a surprisingly good roast beef and cinnamon bread pudding that worth going back for seconds .

Sunday night we went looking for a Steak House. We were on the strip and most of the hotels seem to have a good Steak House. Shelley went in search of the Apple store (more about that later) while we waited at the slots at Treasure Island. We were there, tired and hungry so we made a reservation their Steak House. Probably not our best decision. The prices were high end, but the service was impersonal and robotic. The food was passable but nothing to write home about.

We checked out both shopping malls on the strip and Fashion Show is the place to be. Five major department stores and 245 other shops. It’s worth checking out the multi-media display in the middle of the mall near the Apple store.

We’d signed up for a shuttle service through Allegiant Air which turned out to be an exercise in frustration. Showtime Tours dropped us off at the wrong hotel (apparently not the first time they’ve done that) and we had to telephone them 3 times to pick us up at our hotel. They finally showed up 45 minutes late.

Now we know what we’re doing, we won’t make the same newbie mistakes. I’ll stay at a hotel on the strip, near the Convention Centre end, check out the transit system ahead of time and head straight for Fashion Show and skip the other shopping areas.

More in the next few blog posts about BWE08, my observations and what I learned.

When was the last time your were in Las Vegas? What kind of tips do you have for getting around?