Everyone wants great search engine rankings, but most still don’t understand how to get there. (And there are those who think they know and don’t want to listen to anyone else…but that’s a whole other story.)
For the rest of us who always want to learn more, when it comes to natural or organic search engine rankings (as opposed to the kind you pay for, like pay per click), there are a number of issues to consider.
Back in the day, SEO (search engine optimization) copywriting wasn’t something most businesses even knew they were looking for. But all that has changed, and understandably so – these days, who isn’t trying to crack the Google code and catapult themselves and their business to the top of the search engine pages??
Most people do not (please don’t be offended) know how to write good, effective SEO copy – they just don’t. Good SEO copy needs to “speak” to two audiences – the target market who ultimately needs to make a buying decision AND the search engines. Both need to be spoken to within the same copy. And that same copy needs to do its job so well that both groups think that that copy is directed right at them.
A tall order, huh?
Learn more specifically what you need to know about good SEO writing for your website and other online marketing in my next blog entry.
Drop.io is a website that allows you to create a private chunk of space that you can use to store and share anything (pictures, video, audio, docs, etc) privately, without accounts, personal registration, or email addresses.
Only people that know the URL of a drop can access it. You can create as many “drops” as you want and password protect access to your “drops”. You can also select whether visitors can add files to your drop and when the drop should expire.
Drop.io recently added FREE faxing to their services.
To send a fax from your drop to a recipient:
1. Click on ‘send’ and then select ‘fax’ next to any document (.doc) or PDF
2. Enter the 10 digit fax number of the recipient (our service is US only)
3. Your fax is sent, end of story
Note: you can only fax out documents up to 20 pages.. Certain word documents with embedded charts, or other OLE objects PDF files made with Postscript 3 will not work.
To receive a fax into your drop:
1. Go to your drop and click ‘receive a fax’
2. Email the cover sheet to the person sending the fax to your drop OR click ‘this coversheet’ and send the custom drop.io cover sheet to the person sending the fax
3. The sender must put the drop.io cover-page on top of the fax.
4. The fax will appear in your drop as a .PDF
Note: So, the basic idea, to fax a document into a drop you must use the drop’s custom ‘cover page’ – give the cover page to the fax sender and you are in good shape (email it to them, print it and send it to them, whatever you want)
It seems that “building community” is back in vogue and once again on every one’s lips…Building community is now at the forefront of every marketing strategy and outreach effort…
At Webgrrls, since 1995, we have been building and maintaining our community of professional women all with the goal to help them to strive for and achieve success, however they define it…it is not just about building community, but, about seeding and fostering a relationship…it is not just the community, it is the conversation… the interaction.
It is not just a one-way or even two-way conversation either. It is an omni-directional conversation. You might seed the conversation but then the conversation takes on a life of it’s own within the community and having your conversation extend to other communities should be the goal.
A lot of companies are concerned about controlling the message but they are trying to control things that they can’t control anyway to a great degree…people talk…that is just the way it goes.
Companies will have to realize the power and speed of “word of mouth” and that the empowerment of your users, encouraging them to have a voice and to share it, is a winning strategy…and talk about cost effective…it is free marketing.
Conversations build awareness…awareness builds trust and trust makes for loyalty and loyalty increases participation…or if you are selling a product, sales.
Below are some tips to help you build and foster your communities:
Continue Reading “Tips on building and fostering online communities”
I wanted to share a handy tool called YouSendIt that I use quite a bit when I want to send large files to someone without the hassle of FTP servers. You just upload your file to the YouSendIt site, enter the email addresses of the people you want to share the file with, and then add an optional message to go with the email. YouSendIt then emails a link to the addresses you listed that allows people to view or download that file.
You can send up to 100 MB and 100 downloads for free. The link stays active for a few weeks (I couldn’t find the exact date in their help section).
Their free service has always met my needs, but you also have the option for paying for additional features, like:
- Files up to 2GB
- Password protection
- File tracking
I just wanted to pass it along because I find it a quick and useful way to shoot a file off to someone without having to upload it to your own server.
In recent years XML has gained a lot of popularity in the IT industry, mostly because of its ease of use. XML provides a standard method to access information, making it easier for applications and devices of all kinds to use, store, transmit, and display data.
XML has no dependencies on the programming language type, operating system platform, databases type, or even human languages and that makes it the perfect data format to allow programmers to build cross platform applications.
With the wide adoption of blogging, one of the most successful uses of XML has been RSS. RSS is a tool that uses the blogging data that is stored as XML and allows bloggers to push that data to ANY RSS reader on ANY device.
While XML is here to stay and is important to learn, it can be overwhelming to get started. Below are some great resources that will help you get on your way.
XML in 10 Points
Getting Started with XML: A Manual and Workshop
How Can XML be Used?
Using XML
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