Thinking about a blog? Starting out with a free WordPress.com blog is one way to learn about blogging and blog software. You’ll get the feel of WordPress, try out the interface, and see what you think. Then you can decide if you want to move up to a more feature-rich standalone blog or use the WordPress platform for your website. Because though WordPress is blogging software, it’s also designed for use as a content management system for building websites.
If you need access to the expanded features provided by a standalone WordPress blog or website — one using your own web hosting account and domain name — we can help. If you want to start a blog, integrate one into an existing website, or build a complete site using WordPress, just contact us. Our packages come with training, so you don’t have to go it alone.
Still not sure? Go ahead and try out the free version at WordPress.com. You can always move your content to your own standalone blog or WordPress website later. Want help setting up your free WordPress.com blog? Just let us know.
It’s hard enough to get through a day working with the things we know, without the nagging little questions about things for which there’s not enough information. These questions can hold everything up. And sometimes they have to do with writing.
Enter the style guide. You reach for it, thumb through the index and read — and your question is answered and you can move on.
But some style guides are worth reading cover to cover. Dom Sagolla’s 140 Characters – A style Guide for the Short Form is one.
Terse communication is a skill that may be practiced anywhere. Consider the possibilities in headlines, email subject lines, signatures, definitions, instant messages or any small field. There are ways to lead with style and grace in each of these media. –Dom Sagolla
Communicating via social media sites like Twitter and Facebook requires saying more with less. If you use social media, or want to, this book covers form, etiquette and strategy. But consider reading it even if you don’t limit your writing to 140 characters.
Building a website or setting up a blog doesn’t guarantee visitors, you have to market it. If you’re lucky, you have a big family, a lot of friends interested in what you do, or best of all, an email list of contacts, colleagues and coworkers who want to be kept updated.
If you don’t have these resources, or want to move to the next level, it’s marketing you’ll have to do.
Hate the word? Don’t even know what it means? There are online resources, some of them free, for learning the art of self promotion. Because as an independent business person, an artist, a freelancer — or anyone just getting their feet wet with an online presence — marketing and self promotion mean pretty much the same thing.
And self promotion can feel awkward. But there are ways to break it down. Handing out a business card is self promotion. So is telling your cousins you’ve started a blog.
However, self promotion in the absence of a relationship IS awkward, at best impersonal, and not always effective. To establish new relationships — and get beyond the cousins — you need to have something to give. Put something out there. It could be a postcard. A free consultation. Some expert advice for people who want to do what you do.
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More than just a web address, your domain name defines your online presence. It’s like the impression formed in the first few seconds of meeting someone. So you want it to be good, or at least remembered.
Using your own name as a domain name seems like the obvious option. But your name needs to be unusual for it to not to be registered by someone else. If your name is available, consider whether it’s unique enough to stand out in the crowded online landscape.
If you have a company name or DBA, you probably want to use some form of it as your domain name. But if you haven’t already, google it and make certain no one’s registered it for their domain or business. If it’s not available, take the opportunity to use some of these other naming strategies.
Picking a direction
Used as a framework for coming up with an effective business or a company name, these naming strategies can be applied individually or together to select a domain name. As you brainstorm and create a list of possible domains, keep these four approaches in mind.
- Functional or Descriptive – WhatsOrganic.com: their name says what they do, which is to ask questions about organics
- Invented – Google rolls off the tongue and is easy to remember — and you know you’ve arrived when your made-up name becomes a verb
- Experiential – The names of web portals or browsers promise you new vistas: Explorer, Navigator, Safari
- Evocative – It has nothing to do with shopping and everything to do with how it feels to be a shopper: Amazon.com
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You CAN put all your eggs in one basket. Want to place your images online but keep them private, just share them with a select group of contacts, or create an online image archive? You can do any or all of these things with a photo sharing platform like Flickr.com.
A web 2.0 application, Flickr can be called social networking with photography. But there are more uses for it than sharing your flower photos. Flickr’s not designed for commercial use, and you might not want to put your original artwork there, but there are still plenty of ways you can use it to show images of what you do.
We set up a Flickr account for historical photos and illustrations associated with the Rochester Labor History map project. And one for Artist Marilyn Anderson, who wanted a way to share and store images from her gallery openings. Setting up multiple Flickr accounts is possible, but it’s easy to organize images from a single account into sets and collections by subject, project, event or work area.
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