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.

Offer these things, and don’t ask for anything in return. OK, ask for an email address so you can send them more stuff. Share. And it’s more likely people will want to reciprocate.

Here are some online learning resources for marketing and self promotion. Most are geared to blogging, but you can get a lot from them no matter what you do.

• Copyblogger’s Internet Marketing for Smart People
• Free e-classes from Remarkable communication: Email and Content Marketing and The Marketing Toolkit
• The IttyBiz Free Marketing Courses

For establishing relationships through written communication, you need to develop some copywriting skills. Here are two places to start:

• Copyblogger’s Copywriting 101
• Men With Pens Better Writing

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

For an in-depth exploration of these strategies and more on the process, see the IGOR Naming Guide.

Search and re-search

Once you’ve started a list of potential domain names, it’s time for research. As your list develops, use Whois as you go to search for a domains’ availability.

Connecting with the dots

A domain suffix is the last part of a domain name that starts with a “dot.” They include “.com,” “.net,” and “.org,” but there are many more domain suffixes (see a list here).

“.com” is recognized as the suffix for a commercial website and “.org” for an organization. But since anyone can register each type of domain, the domain name suffix doesn’t always indicate the type of website.

If a .com domain is taken, and even if the .org is available for your domain and is the best fit for what you do, you may want to cross it off the list and move on. Or not. Choosing to register a name in the crowded domain landscape can be a complicated decision.

Every situation is different and there are no really hard and fast rules. But however you come up with your domain name, be prepared to roll up your sleeves — and be creative!

Tools you can use

Other than Google, one of the best groups of online tools that actually come up with ideas for you are at WordLab. Another name generator that also looks up a domains’ availability is NameBoy.com.

Want to dig deeper?

• Get serious with the IGOR Naming Guide
• For more inspiration, and some great logo examples, cruise their website at www.igorinternational.com
• Have fun Snark Hunting at www.snarkhunting.com

Do you have questions about choosing and registering your own domain? Contact us.

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.

Not limited to photography, scanned images of illustrations, plans or diagrams can all go on Flickr. Just design your original file for the end use. If you want the images to be viewed online only, then scanning at 72 ppi (pixels per inch) is fine. If you want to be able to print them, scan files at 150 ppi and output the original size on an inkjet printer.

On Flickr you have the ability to set the copyright for your work to All Rights Reserved, or set a Creative Commons License to restricted use, limited use or unlimited use. See www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ for the details on how this works.

You can have access to unlimited image uploads and storage with an inexpensive Pro account. Then forget any worries about losing your images when a hard drive fails or a disk is lost.

Do you have ideas for how Flickr might be useful to you? Want help setting up an account, or scanning and uploading images? Contact me for a consultation on using Flickr.