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BLOGGER, Thank You For Listening!

Friday March 16, 2012

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Over the past couple of years I have written about such things as designing for the guest experience and not being shy about offering a suggestion to a business, no matter how big or small the business entity. I have also talked about the importance of saying “Thank You!”

Today I want to share a story of how I made a suggestion to Google’s BLOGGER design team and at the same time say “BLOGGER, Thank you for listening!”

First a little background. It would be helpful if you Google this phrase: external links should open new window. You are going to see a lot of search engine result pages (SERP). Millions! The bottom line is this, good design promotes good user experience and if your web page or blog post includes links to other pages, then when the user clicks on the link a new browser page should open. After all, you want your reader/client/customer to be able to find their way back to your site and the cleanest way to do that is to open a new window.

If you understand HTML coding, then you know having a link open in a new window is a simple piece of code: target=”_blank”. But you need to know where to place the code and therein lies the problem with guiding and teaching clients on how to use a blogging platform and how to insure their external links will open in a new window.

Over the past few years I made the acquaintance of some of the BLOGGER team while attending Blog World Expo. And they always encourage you to send them suggestions. In January 2011, I sent an email to Brett Wiltshire which included the following suggestion:

“When inserting a link in the blog text it would be wonderful if the user could easily check a box in the EDIT LINK BOX that says “open in a new browser” . Some users know how to insert the html code < target=”_blank”>, but this can be very hard to teach to clients.”

About six weeks ago, I was working on a client’s blog and realized the BLOGGER team acted on my suggestion. Or I choose to think they liked my suggestion! See the screen shot below:

See the little check box “Open this link in a new window”? This little enhancement is such a time saver for the writer and the reader.

Thank you, BLOGGER, for listening.

Reading Time: 15 minutes

“Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got.
Taking a break from all your worries sure would help a lot.
Wouldn’t you like to get away?
Sometimes you wanna go..
Where everybody knows your name
and they’re always glad you came.
You wanna be where you can see,
the troubles are all the same.
you wanna be where everybody knows your name…”

Somewhere around 1982, Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo wrote these lyrics for the new sitcom “Cheers!” And for some strange reason when I think of Blog World Expo Los Angeles 2011(#BWELA) these lyrics just seem to fit. And yes I do know that many #BWELA attendees had not been born in 1982…but I am pretty sure they all know the lyrics and have felt the sentiment. Heck, I have even been to Boston’s Bull & Finch Pub which served as the exterior for “Cheers!” To me the lyrics fit because while many people in the on-line world may know your name…there is a pretty good chance they can’t pick you out in a crowd of 4000+, but it is a lot of fun trying and they really are glad you came.

This was my third time attending Blog World Expo having participated in BWE09 and BWE10. Many bloggers have already posted their reviews and I am going to link to a number of those below, but I just wanted to take a few minutes to give you my overview.

Blog World Team


Judy with Rick Calvert- #BWELA

I must start by talking about the Blog World Team. If you have ever planned an event – tea party, wedding, golf tournament, business meeting, Thanksgiving dinner…then you know just a tiny bit of what goes into pulling off an event of this magnitude. I am pretty sure by next week Deb, Lara, Allison, Julie, Nikki, Dave and Rick will be laying the foundation for Blog World 2012. Really? I am sure the infrastructure is already in the works for 2012. So to the Blog World Team I say thank you for a job well done, seamlessly presented and for making all of us feel welcome.

Exhibitors

We all like to go to conference exhibit halls. It really doesn’t matter the nature of the conference, the exhibit hall is like trick or treating…you walk around meeting new people, getting a few gifts and if you are lucky you can learn about new software or hardware and take home something tangible to share with your co-workers or clients. This year I met up again with Brett Wiltshire of BLOGGER. It was fun to reconnect with Brett and learn more about BLOGGER. I also stopped and talked to Tin Dizdarevic of ZEMANTA. I love Zemanta and have used it here on our blog and deployed it on client blogs for the last couple of years. It is just a great tool. My new find this year is POND5. It will be my mission to share information about POND5 with my teammates and clients. I don’t know about you, but finding just the right photo/video/illustration for a website can be exhausting and I intend to really check out POND5.

Keynotes

I attended four Keynotes this year.

Jim Farley

Shani Higgins presenting Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere was enlightening. Nice to know that 61% of bloggers are hobbyists! While Shani gave us a lot of statistics to chew on, it was Mikal Belicove of Entrepreneur Magazine that did as Jason Falls suggested in his session “asked better questions” of Shani. It was the exchange between Mikal and Shani that made the keynote powerful.
Brian Solis made us all feel welcome by offering us a free copy of his latest book “The End of Business as Usual” and Brian certainly did a great job of interviewing Jim Farley – Group Vice President, Global Marketing, Sales and Service, Ford Motor Company. Jim has a great story including the fact that his grandfather was the 389th employee hired by Ford Motor Company. Jim’s message: “Let people speak…listen…speak like them!” Enough said. I will make it a point to visit Ford Social and I will read Brian’s book.
Mitch Joel handily moderated the keynote session Building a New Media Empire with Lisa Stone, Deanna Brown and Michael Stelzner. A couple of great quotes from this session: “If you see a hole – you can build a business”, “the most successful people write about what they love”, and “provide service and band together!”
Jordan Cooper is funny and I am glad I got to enjoy his comedy as he introduced the closing keynote.

Sessions

When you purchase a two-day ticket, as opposed to the full conference – you risk missing meaningful and powerful sessions. Next year I will not make this mistake. That is not to say that I did not enjoy the sessions I attended, but a number of people that I wanted to hear and meet spoke on Thursday and I arrived Friday morning. In all I attended five sessions (there were hundreds!). Hmmm…

Jason Falls talking about B.S.

“The Use of Digital Application and Tools to Change Behaviors to Improve Health” was interesting, but probably would have been more so if I were in the medical field. But still good to know that the health field is trying to make the most of social media.
Jonathan Fields interviewed Chris Brogan and Leah Segedie in a “Lifestyle Makeover Roundtable”. This was a very intimate (small group of people) and personal discussion about going through a lifestyle makeover. There was great audience participation.
Jason Falls’ session “This Is All Such B.S.: How to tell and what to do when you’re being had in blogging, social media and beyond…” The title is enough to make you want to hear what Jason has to say. Jason had a lot to say but the big take-away was: “Ask better questions and do your own work!”
I happened upon “How Dad Blogging Can Bust the Fatherhood Stereotypes” featuring Bruce Sallan, Jim Lin, Ron Mattocks and Kevin Metzger. And yes, I know, I am not a father…but I had a great father and I wanted to listen to what these Dad bloggers had to say. Sadly this session did not have a lot of participants. It would have been better in a smaller room, but the content was over the top powerful. Each gentleman offered such wonderful insights and they were well prepared…I became so involved with listening that I forgot to take copious notes. But at the end Ron Mattocks gave me a gift of his book Sugar Milk and he signed my copy. I have started reading it…when a book can make you laugh out loud, then you know it is going to be great.

Live #blogchat

Mack Collier leading #blogchat at #BWELA

Live #blogchat was my fifth session. I have been participating in the on-line Twitter #blogchat for over a year. Every Sunday at 8:00PM Central time people get together on Twitter to chat about blogging. So to be part of Blog World’s live #blogchat with Mack Collier was much anticipated and Mack did not disappoint his live audience. The topper was Mack’s invitation for all of the live audience members to introduce themselves with their Twitter profile names. So much fun to meet @Sherree_W, @wordsdonewrite, @BruceSallan, and @kikolani and to sit next to @allison_boyer in this live #blogchat. Great event!

Meeting People

My favorite part of Blog World Expo is meeting people who I have come to know through their blogs/websites or twitter. For example, I have written about 501 Mission Place and finally I was able to meet Rob Hatch who is on the 501 Mission Place team. Also I was able to meet Chris Brogan, Jacqueline Carly, Mack Collier, Julien Smith, Justin Levy and get re-acquainted with Darren Rowse.

So here’s to Blog World Expo and stopping by the Sheraton Hotel’s bar where many knew my name, but few knew my face!

Allison Boyer, Judy Helfand and Julie Bonner

Reading Time: 8 minutes

Image via Wikipedia

Webconsuls’ 2010/2011 Winter Newsletter

If 2010 was nothing else, it was a fast year. It seems only yesterday Dick Fay and I were working on our 2009 Winter Newsletter and now here we are writing our 2010/2011 Winter Newsletter. We want to take a few minutes to: Thank our Webconsuls’ clients, introduce our newest clients, highlight some marketing and software ideas, suggest two resolutions for you and support our not-for-profit clients who assist children in need.

Thanking our clients…

Webconsuls and our team appreciates our clients. We learn from each and every client by optimizing their sites, designing new sites, building blogs, coaching our clients on new software and responding to their marketing needs. As you may know, we have clients across the United States (actually in 11 states) and in two foreign countries, representing industries from hospitality to law, health care to home maintenance, real estate to retail, sports and recreation to performing arts. There is never a dull day.

Introducing our clients who joined us in 2010…

We invite you to meet our new clients and visit their websites.

Chiminy Cricket Chimney Sweep and Top Hat Air Systems

Clear View Business Solutions

Holbrook and Associates

Maneri Sign Company

Smile Design Dental Group

Renee Ponder Herbs

Tucson Floor Specialists

Highlighting some marketing and software suggestions…

We know the internet is fluid. It changes daily. We try to keep our clients abreast of these changes by writing this blog, researching our clients’ requests, providing news’ feeds on our website, and publishing our newsletter. Over the past few years we have blogged a lot about social media/Google/Twitter. We have built blogs for our clients, we have worked with our clients to establish their Facebook business page. Additionally, over the past year…

Dick has been particularly active assisting our clients by adding shopping carts with either PayPal or Authorize.net functionality.
Dennis worked with clients to add a LIVEPerson feature for online customer engagement.
Malik, our lead designer and web developer, is also proficient in designing clients’ e-newsletters using Constant Contact and Vertical Response.
Keith, our PPC specialist, works closely with several of our PPC clients to utilize phone conversion optimization software.
Alycia, our branding expert, has been focused on improving Client Web 2.0 and specific SEO-related enhancements.

Suggesting two resolutions for you…

The first is to start reading our Webconsuls’ blog on a regular basis. As we said above, with our blog we communicate new information that we think is important to on-line marketing and social media.

The second is to start and maintain your own blog. Our clients with blogs generally receive more traffic than clients in similar fields without them. Blogger now allows you to easily monitor your blog stats. A blog is easy and relatively inexpensive to create. Routinely writing posts can be a challenge, but it can be rewarding with more virtual exposure, traffic, and new business. You might start by also reading some of our clients’ blogs like – Delytes – A ‘green’ fine foods company or Attorney Carilyn Ibsen’s blog or Attorney Will Bruzzo’s blog.

Finally supporting our not-for-profit clients…

This year, as in years past, Webconsuls made a donation in honor of our clients to those not-for- profit clients who work to support children and families in need.

Olive Crest Homes and Services for Abused Children
Since 1973, Olive Crest has transformed the lives of over 50,000 abused, neglected, and at-risk children and their families.

The Promises Foundation Miriam’s House
The Promises Foundation is committed to restoring hope for families by creating a safe environment for mothers and their children to grow and develop the tools they require to live meaningful and self-sufficient lives.

Forrest General Healthcare Foundation

The Forrest General Healthcare Foundation is the philanthropic arm of Forrest General Hospital. The foundation helps ensure that the hospital’s vision of C.A.R.E. becomes a reality for the 17 county region that the hospital serves. Initiatives include the Inpatient Hospice Home Project, the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Renovation Project and the Spiritual Grounds at Pine Grove.

We wish you a healthy and prosperous New Year. Let us know if 2011 is the year you want to add some new features to your on-line marketing. We will be happy to discuss these opportunities and plan a strategy with you.

Sincerely,
Dennis, Dick and Judy

Reading Time: 11 minutes

This past weekend, October 14-16, I learned a little of how to be Webconsuls’ Chief Listening Officer (CLO). Yes, the C-Suite at many companies does now include a CLO and happily I attended Blog World Expo 2010 to learn how to listen, engage, and as @lizstrauss says “manage the present and create the future.” This is my second year participating in Blog World and I will tell you it was an entirely different experience in many ways. Here are my “outtakes” from this year’s conference:

FOUNDATION
Familiarity can make conference attendance a little easier. The on-line registration process was simple. Blog World’s Blog allows potential attendees to get to know more about Blog World and the key players at Blog World. In addition to their blog, you can also stay current and engaged by “liking” them on Facebook and following them on Twitter @blogworld.

I flew Southwest Airlines again this year direct non-stop from Tucson to Las Vegas. Last year I was a bit overwhelmed by their boarding process, but what a difference a year makes. I like Southwest!

This year the conference venue was the Mandalay Bay Resort and Conference Center. I cannot say enough good about Mandalay Bay. I hope to do another post just about this experience. It was great to be able to enjoy the conference and know your suite was just upstairs, a short walk and elevator ride away.

During the past several months I “met” Deb Ng, Blog World’s Conference Manager, Allison Boyer, a Blog World Blogger, and Rick Calvert, Blog World’s Founder via Twitter, Facebook and blogging. I set a goal to meet them in person.

Over the past year I have also met some very interesting people, like John McLachlan, so engaging them at Blog World was a major goal for me.

KEYNOTES and SESSIONS

Deb Ng did a fantastic job of putting together a diverse conference schedule. I hope this link stays live for a while so you can peruse what life is all about at Blog World. (Disclaimer: I took advantage of the Weekend Pass, so I was not in town for the October 14 events.)

Blog World sessions are designed by tracks. For example, if you are a TRAVEL blogger you can opt to attend only sessions that deal with the travel industry or if you are non-profit you attend sessions and learn from the social media experts on how to tweak your social media campaigns. But…you can mix and match.

I attended three of the Keynote addresses, but the most provocative was Friday morning’s State of Digital Communications in Politics with Mark Penn, Karen Hughes, Hugh Hewitt, and Reid Wilson. This keynote was moderated by Blog World’s founder, Rick Calvert. (I learned for the first time that Rick is a self-described “political junkie.”) For a few minutes Rick had to do some masterful moderating!

I chose sessions that had to do with SEO and monetization. The Social Media and Corporate America was very informative. Where else can you listen to expert strategists like Jeffrey Hayzlett (think KODAK), Frank Eliason (formerly of COMCAST, presently SVP of Social for Citi), Bonin Bough (PEPSICO) and Scott Monty (FORD Motor Company)? I think it was Mr. Hayzlett who cautioned us to remember “the customer owns the brand” and you better have a “Chief Listening Officer” in your C-Suite (no matter the size of your company).

I enjoyed meeting C.C. Chapman (I have been reading his blog for about six months) and learning from him on the panel “How to Hire a Social Media Agency.”

Liz Strauss, Carol Roth and Terry St. Marie (@starbucker) are very personable and they offered valuable strategies for building your on-line business, such as “Think BIG and value your time!”

Friday afternoon I attended the Monetization Super Panel (two hour session). Learning from successful bloggers like: Anita Campbell, Darren Rowse, John Chow and Jeremy Schoemaker was exciting. They talked about affiliate marketing, Commission Junction, and provided a road map of how one can monetize their blog. The next morning I ran into Darren Rowse walking through the lobby of Thehotel at Mandalay Bay. We had a nice conversation.

Socialization, Exhibitors and More

I did meet Deb Ng and Allison Boyer. This took a little time as there were over 4000 people attending the conference. You would be surprised how hard it can be to spot someone with PINK hair…hello Allison! I saw Rick Calvert a lot, but he was BUSY. I did not meet him personally, maybe next year.

I was able to meet and spend some good time with John McLachlan. You can see our photo here. We were able to attend some sessions together and had a nice dinner.

For the first time GOOGLE was an exhibitor, specifically BLOGGER. This was wonderful as Webconsuls is a BLOGGER house, that is we use and recommend the BLOGGER platform. Imagine my surprise to meet Brett Wiltshire manning the BLOGGER/GOOGLE booth. Brett has been working on a question we posed about BLOGGER, so it was great to meet Brett in person. Also, I answered a BLOGGER survey and received a BLOGGER T-shirt.

I have a friend MaryAnn Martinez; she is a news reporter for Fox5News in Las Vegas. MaryAnn called me Saturday afternoon to tell me she had passes to see Shakira. Shakira’s concert was Saturday night at the Mandalay Bay Event Center(see photo below). Can you beat that? What a night!

Finally, while leaving Las Vegas, I had $7 in quarters that Dennis has given me prior to leaving Tucson. I played a slot machine at the Las Vegas airport and won $120. I put it in my pocket and waited for my flight home.

Ok, that is about it. I need to get back to work. If you were at BWE10, let me hear from you.

Hope to see you at Blog World Expo 2011.

Credit Where it’s Due: Thank You BlogWorld Track Leaders (blogworld.com)
5 Things Learned While Working at BlogWorld ’10 (blogworld.com)

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Many Webconsuls’ clients have a blog associated with their website. These blogs give the client an opportunity to provide up to the minute news about their business, their industry, their staff, current events…you get the picture. Sometimes a client will ask me if there is an easy way to see how many times someone reads their blog or a particualr post. This is a good question and I am happy to report that on July 1, 2010, Google’s Blogger in Draft added an up to the minute “stats” tool. I learned about this news as I subscribe to the Blogger in Draft Blog and I hope you will, too.

Now you are probably wondering why I didn’t write about this news on July 1st. The reason is simple: I like to learn what I can about any new tool, so that I can explain its features and how to best use the tool. Here is a screen shot of the “stats” page:

I invite my readers and our blogging clients to take a few minutes to read the original post from Blogger in Draft(see link below). Then…sign into http://draft.blogger.com/ and click on your STATS tab. You are going to find the information very helpful. One word of caution: the stats only go backwards one month!

Let me know what you think about this new tool.

This message is intended for Webconsuls’ clients that use BLOGGER

Many of you have already received an email from Blogger Support (blogger.com) regarding their intention to shut-down FTP (File Transfer Protocol) technical support. If you have not received this email or have not read the email, then you can see it in its entirety below.

Webconsuls is writing today to let you know we are aware of this “change of service” and we are working on an appropriate protocol to assure that the integrity of your blogging activities is maintained.

Important Updates to the E-mail Notice Below:

The migration tool was released only on draft.blogger the evening of March 3, 2010, as opposed to February 22, 2010.
The new deadline for BLOGGER FTP support is May 1, 2010, as opposed to March 26.2010.

For our clients that have a blog that is part of their website, we are reviewing each of your blogger account/profiles and will stay in touch with you with the steps we will be taking to complete this transition. Until we receive additional information from Blogger, we are unable to ascertain if there will be any fees associated with these changes.

In the meantime: Please do not attempt to use the MIGRATION Tool on your own.

Sincerely,
Webconsuls, LLC
Dick Fay, Dennis Helfand and Judy Helfand
____________________________________________________________

Dear FTP user:

You are receiving this e-mail because one or more of your blogs at Blogger.com are set up to publish via FTP. We recently announced a planned shut-down of FTP support on Blogger Buzz (the official Blogger blog), and wanted to make sure you saw the announcement. We will be following up with more information via e-mail in the weeks ahead, and regularly updating a blog dedicated to this service shut-down here: http://blogger-ftp.blogspot.com/.

The full text of the announcement at Blogger Buzz follows.

Last May, we discussed a number of challenges facing [1] Blogger users who relied on FTP to publish their blogs. FTP remains a significant drain on our ability to improve Blogger: only .5% of active blogs are published via FTP — yet the percentage of our engineering resources devoted to supporting FTP vastly exceeds that. On top of this, critical infrastructure that our FTP support relies on at Google will soon become unavailable, which would require that we completely rewrite the code that handles our FTP processing.

Three years ago we launched Custom Domains [2] to give users the simplicity of Blogger, the scalability of Google hosting, and the flexibility of hosting your blog at your own URL. Last year’s post discussed the advantages of custom domains over FTP[3] and addressed a number of reasons users have continued to use FTP publishing. (If you’re interested in reading more about Custom Domains, our Help Center has a good overview[4] of how to use them on your blog.) In evaluating the investment needed to continue supporting FTP, we have decided that we could not justify diverting further engineering resources away from building new features for all users.

For that reason, we are announcing today that we will no longer support FTP publishing in Blogger after March 26, 2010. We realize that this will not necessarily be welcome news for some users, and we are committed to making the transition as seamless as possible. To that end:

We are building a migration tool that will walk users through a migration from their current URL to a Blogger-managed URL (either a Custom Domain or a Blogspot URL) that will be available to all users the week of February 22. This tool will handle redirecting traffic from the old URL to the new URL, and will handle the vast majority of situations.
We will be providing a dedicated blog [5] and help documentation
Blogger team members will also be available to answer questions on the forum, comments on the blog, and in a few scheduled conference calls once the tool is released.

We have a number of big releases planned in 2010. While we recognize that this decision will frustrate some users, we look forward to showing you the many great things on the way. Thanks for using Blogger.

Regards,
Rick Klau
Blogger Product Manager Google
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Reading Time: 8 minutes

The last few weeks your Webconsuls’ team has been busy and our blog has been quiet. I don’t know about you, but it is amazing what you can learn in a month’s time. Here are this month’s five most interesting bits of information that I learned and I want to share with you:

1. Did you know that Gmail has a send limit? About a week ago we received a call from our client saying that she was sending out an email broadcast to her customers asking them to participate in a fundraiser for the victims of the earthquake/tsunami. All of a sudden she noticed that she could not send any email or receive any email. She called us and here is what I learned:

“In an effort to fight spam and prevent abuse, Google will temporarily disable your account if you send a message to more than 500 recipients or if you send a large number of undeliverable messages. If you use a POP or IMAP client (Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail, e.g.), you may only send a message to 100 people at a time. Your account should be re-enabled within 24 hours.” (Go here to learn more and keep in mind that many email services have a send limit, this is why some clients like to stay in contact with their clients by a newsletter service like or similar to Constant Contact.)

2. Twitter 2.0 seems to be just around the corner. Rather than have me rehash what someone else has discussed so eloquently, I will point you to the article. “Are We Ready for Twitter 2.0?”

3. Blogger does provide great on-line support. The other day I was on their site and I saw a section called “Recommended Articles and Discussion.” One of the discussions was entitled “Too Many Good Bloggers are Giving Up” . Now, this caught my eye!!! So I clicked on it and enjoyed the conversation. If you have a blog and you have given up or you are thinking about giving up, I invite you to read the posts and join in the discussion. You might just refresh yourself enough to keep on BLOGGING!

4. During the past few weeks our team has been discussing the nature of our Webconsuls’ blog. The questions raised are these: Should it be more technical? Or, do our readers want to learn more about the team as people and read anecdotal stories, as well? I will tell you that the team was split on this, but today I read an interesting article on an SEO/SMO newsletter. The article had to do with Social Networking pitfalls the 4th pitfall to avoid was this: “It’s not about sell, sell, sell! If all you’re doing when you visit the various sites and post your updates is pitch your latest program, product or service then it’s no wonder you’re not seeing results. Share information with your network, whether that’s your own information or you’re passing along information from clients and colleagues. The more you share, the greater your results will be. Whichever social networking arena you’re active in (and it may be more than one) remember the “social” in social networking – it’s to build relationships, make new contacts, and socialize. Inform your network, not sell to them.” I think based on this guidance and our own practical experience from being part of Social Networking sites, new clients may come to you naturally.

5. Finally, as this Columbus Day Weekend gets underway, I know that our New England innkeeper, hotelier, restaurateur, livery, and entertainment clients will be busy beyond belief as the autumn brides and mountains blush and foliage season peaks; but won’t they be surprised to learn that Tucson, AZ has its own foliage season! And yes, Mt Lemmon is 2869 ft taller than Mt. Washington!

This week’s photos are from my days in New Hampshire. The one of the children is of Aaron and Dan enjoying a “Tom Sawyer” moment with children who were guests at the inn. Aaron and Dan were “teaching” them how to rake the autumn leaves and make Leaf People!

“Teach Us to Delight in the Simple Things”…Rudyard Kipling

Let me know what you think of Judy’s “bytes”…see you next week.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

You’ve seen the Digg button on most blogs but how often have you seen a tweet button?

Twitter has been growing since it was developed and is more of a social trend to be on twitter more than anything else. Now you can allow your business or personal blog posts to be tweeted.

Here is how it works, Tweet Meme allows you to tweet a specific page or a specific blog post and provides the code for it (very friendly). What it does not show you is how to add it on a blogger template.

Here is how you can modify your blogger template to include a tweet button how we have here (look on the top right).

1) Locate the following line: <BlogDateHeader>
2) Place the following code:
<div style=”float:right;”>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
tweetmeme_url = ‘STEP-3‘;
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js”> </script></div>
</script>

3) change STEP-3 to <$BlogItemUrl$>

A bit of HTML or blogger template experience may be required.

Contact Webconsuls to get a FREE quote on a custom personal or business blog.

Reading Time: 7 minutes

It was 1986 when Dennis and I purchased a country inn in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Our goal at the time was to live the lifestyle of Bob and Joanna of “Newhart” fame. You may remember this television show which takes place in Vermont and follows the goings-on of the innkeepers, their guests, employees, neighbors, and contractors (think Larry, Darryl and Darryl). We owned and operated Cranmore Mountain Lodge for eleven years. Someday I might write a book about our experiences as innkeepers, but today I want to discuss how marketing our inn would have been easier, if only we were able to communicate instantaneously via a blog. Keep in mind when we first purchased the inn our only means of immediate communication was the telephone line (and in this small town you “dialed” four numbers to call your neighbors). We did not own a personal computer, in fact, most people in 1986 did not own personal computers. We owned a standard typewriter!!

As the years went by we did purchase a PC and a dot-matrix printer! Around 1990, I came up with the idea of creating a newsletter. It was called Inn-Ovations. I was the reporter, editor, photographer and publisher. Twice a year we would create the newsletter with the assistance of a local graphic arts company, Express Graphics (but there was nothing express about the turn around time). When the newsletters were printed and ready to mail, we would struggle to print the mailing labels, debate first-class mailing vs. bulk mailing, and then we would gather with our employees to prepare the newsletters for the post office. Our usual distribution was around 2500, with the postage cost (first class) ranging from $700-$800 and after printing and prep costs each distribution totaled about $2500. And hopefully we reached 2500 American households!

While our newsletter served us well at the time (our repeat guests loved the newsletter and would actually call us to check when they could expect the next issue), the bottom line is that this process was time consuming, expensive, and really not timely. Today I am wondering how our stint as innkeepers would have been enhanced if we were to have had a “blog”, that is, a way to instantly communicate, interactively, with our guests and prospective guests. I can only imagine.

If there is any question as to the marketing efficacy of having a blog, I invite you to watch a video of the July 21, 2008, NBC Nightly News segment called “Bloggers-in-Chief.”

If you are having trouble viewing the video, you can see it here.

And in the meantime, I can report that many of our clients now have blogs and the Google page rank for these blogs quickly jumps to a 3 or 4, in short order. Some clients use their blog to share news about their businesses, some for commenting on local or national news items, some to post short and timely articles about their field of expertise. I regularly read some of our innkeeper clients’ blogs and I have come to learn the award winning Lodge at Moosehead Lake is “going green” by installing an outdoor wood furnace which will greatly reduce innkeepers Linda and Dennis Bortis’ dependence on heating oil; Alice and Len Schiller, owners of the Inn at Stockbridge, just completed their 14th summer as innkeepers and over at Hartstone Inn their sous chef, Zeph Belanger, was named first runner up in a state-wide Maine lobster cooking competition, while innkeepers Michael and Mary Jo Salmon celebrated their 10th anniversary as innkeepers this past May. All great stuff from these innkeepers, each a blogger in chief.

Since I am Webconsuls’ Saturday blogger, I like to provide you with some lighthearted humor. In preparing my blog I decided to see if Cranmore Mountain Lodge’s present innkeepers have a blog. Guess what? They do. Here is a link to their blog. Enjoy!

Reading Time: 2 minutes

We regularly get requests from clients and prospective clients who say that they want a content management system for their web site. However we find that few clients that take the time to manage their content.

Some our clients do take the time to update their web sites. However, more often than not, the content is not updated as the client is too busy running a business to do the updating.

Content management systems require extra work to set up when compared to a web site that is updated by web development professionals. Search engines may have issues with finding all of the content. And if the updated content is not proofed, it can contain embarrassing errors.

This is not to say that content management systems are useless, only that if you want one you need to have the time and discipline to use it. Properly done a user updated web site can provide up to date information and fresh content which grows and grows providing rich source material for search engines.

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Scheduled blog post publishing, which was first talked about on Blogger in draft last month, is now live for everyone. So if you set a post’s date into the future, Blogger will wait to publish until that time comes!!!

It is now a cool Sunday morning in Souther California, I have a hot cup of coffee, and I am putting together Monday mornings blog post. So for all of you reading this Monday May 5th Happy Cinco De Mayo!

Scheduling a post is easy to do: on the post editor page, click the “Post Options” toggle to show the “Post date and time” fields. Then, type a post date and time that’s in the future. When you click the “Publish” button, your post will become “scheduled.” When the date and time of the post arrive, it will be automatically published to your blogger blog.

“Scheduled” posts appear in your Edit Posts list alongside your drafts and published posts. To un-schedule a post, simply save it as a draft any time before it gets published.

One quick note: If you want to give a post a date in the future but have it appear on your blog now, you’ll need to add in an extra step. First, publish your post with the current date and time. This will make it appear on your blog. Then, edit the post to change the date into the future and publish it again.

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Dallas Taylor the drummer for Crosby Stills Nash & Young was kind enough to have Webconsuls come visit and take some video with our new “Flip” video camera. 6 min, 1 take, Dallas is a true professional.

Need help getting started with your video podcasting?

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For all you visual learners who want to add features to your blog, but don’t have the patience to browse bloggers help articles, we’ve created the new Blogger Help YouTube Channel. There you can find videos that show you step by step how to use Blogger features.

There are only a few videos at the moment, and we’ve decided to start with the basics:

* How to Create a Blog with Blogger
* Purchasing and Setting Up a Custom Domain through Blogger
* Adjusting Your Blogger Privacy Settings

In the coming months they will be adding more videos. If you have a suggestion for a video you’d like to see, let them know by posting in the Help Group. In addition, you can give feedback on each video’s comment form. They are always trying to find new and better ways to help us use Blogger and they appreciate our feedback – thanks!

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Google has often heard that sometimes we would like to write a post now and have it automatically published at some time in the future. Like big posts that we would like to post into smaller sections. Some of you like to go on vacation in a dead cell zone! They listened, and are pleased to say that this feature is ready for us to try out on Blogger In Draft

Remember: Like all features described on the “Blogger in Draft” blog, Scheduled Posts only work when you’ve logged in thru http://draft.blogger.com/.

OUR BLOG

Category: blogger

BLOGGER, Thank You For Listening!

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