The best way to make your site and business more popular online is to keep adding new content.
The first thing I’m always asked is, what do I write about?

You can write about anything you want. I always quote Matt Cutts (a Google guy)
“What do you know that no one else does?”

Some folks write a little others a lot. If you’re lucky enough to get legitimate comments, even better.
Don’t worry, it’s easy and can be very good for business.

It doesn’t have to be about your business, but remember it’s public.

People like bullets and lists

• tips of the trade
• funny stories
• schools, shows or events

1 – tips of the trade
2 – funny stories
3 – schools, shows or events

Google Places is a great way to promote your businesses online presence. It works well even if you don’t have a website. Business owners can have a listing on Google’s local database. So when potential customers search for you on Google.com or Google Maps they also see your ad.

Your business name, location, hours of operation and phone number displays on Google Maps. Potential customers searching for something else may find your business, too. You can also provide additional features like photos, videos and coupons so your business can really stand out on the map. You can great stats as well and best of all it’s completely free.

Put Your Business On Google Places

Several months ago I bought my wife a new HTC-HD2. They were having a great sale at T-Mobile and I couldn’t resist the price, even though I thought my non-techie wife, Nancy would like Android much better than Windows Mobile 6.

Neither of us liked the OS very well. It was not user friendly and there were very few good apps. Since then I’ve been following the development of an Android OS for this phone and last week I found one that works great. It’s called the FroyoStone Series by darkstone. It’s basically the OS for the Desire and it runs on the SD card so all I have to do to go back to Windows is to reboot the phone. After a week I can say that it’s been a great success. My wife is much happier with her phone now and there are only a few features that don’t work.

I think the worst thing is that the notification lights don’t work and if you want to connect your computer to the SD card you have to reboot and do it in Windows. Probably because you are running Android from the SD card. All the apps I’ve loaded so far work fine with the exception of Google Sky Map. None of these are a big deal compared to the ease and great features of using Android Froyo 2.2. I especially love the active wallpapers and I’m sure there will be many more soon as more phone update to Froyo.

I actually preferred my old Android G1 running 1.6 over her phone with such great hardware, but now I like her phone much better than mine. If you would like to try this out I highly recommend it. Since it runs on the SD card you don’t really have anything to lose. If it screws up or you don’t like it, just reboot your phone and you have your Windows back. I would recommend getting a new SD card or backing up your old one first then formatting it. I bought a new 8GB SD card on Ebay for $15.00.

Check out the FroyoStone Series by darkstone

Here’s a new blog called Google Small Business. It’s new, but looks like something that may provide valuable information for most any business.

I’ve already seen a couple of new tools that I plan to check out.

I recommend subscribing to Google Small Business

Sometimes I do my best thinking while out for my daily walks, sometimes it’s just silly stuff. Today there’s an old expression running through my head. I used to hear it quite a bit in my past lives, but I don’t much anymore, “People buy from people”.

It’s probably because so much shopping is automated these days that people don’t expect a personal relationship when they’re buying things, I know I don’t. It always surprises me when I feel a personal experience from a business I interact with online.

I think one of the best things you can offer your website visitors is a clear idea of who you are and what you can do for them. I’m a one man shop so it’s easy to be the face of me. The face of a company can also be many people, provided they’re all consistently delivering the same message. More important is listening to their customers and sharing what they are hearing with the rest of the group. Everyone needs to be on the same page so it’s important to meet regularly to discuss what they are hearing and what would be the best way to help the customer.

In my business everyone’s thirteen year old niece or nephew can build them a website. I would like to think that I’m better than most of them, but I will admit there are probably some that are better than me. So it’s my job to let my customers get to know me and give them confidence that I will offer them a better value.

A cup of coffee together is my preferred method, but it could be a phone conversation, email or text. Not every business can take their customers out for coffee and danish. Your visitors really just want to know they have been heard, that you are concerned about what they want. Any solution you offer them, as long as it tries to address their needs lets them know you’ve listened and is almost always better than offering them nothing at all.

Make sure you give your visitors an easy way to talk to you and really listen to what they say. That’s the best way to let your customers know that you’re a good value for them.

It seems that whenever I speak to people about websites they are always more concerned with traffic and how to get more visitors than anything else. It doesn’t seem to matter that if their site looks bad or is not very user friendly, any traffic that they do get will probably leave right away.

I suppose it’s my job to make sure that my sites look good and work well, but there’s still that tricky part of turning your visitors into fans of your site and customers of your business.

I was reading an article on my local newspaper’s site this morning about a Pittsburgh company that seems to be doing just that. ModCloth is a clothing company that’s promoting their business in a very non-traditional way. They’re still spending on promotion, when I Googled their name I did see they are paying for clicks, but the newspaper article pointed out they’re doing much more. They’re actively listening to their customers, asking them what they want and for the most part giving them what they ask for.

They’re allowing their visitors to vote on items they want to see in stock, help name and describe products and suggest styling tips. They have ModStylists to guide customers and give advice from how to accessorize to what to wear to an event. It’s a really good lesson for anyone promoting almost anything.

Online fashion seller ModCloth finds social commerce strategy a good fit

Several years ago I wrote a post called Verizon and “Good” Security where I was very critical of their asking me to click on a link in their email to log in to their site and verify my password. I refused and they sent me the email several more times.

I haven’t thought about that in a long time and then this weekend I got a new one.

My first thought was that maybe someone, somewhere inside Verizon actually read my email. Probably not, but I am sure I wasn’t the only one to complain. In the end it doesn’t really matter because it looks like they listened to someone.

I think having an open Wi-Fi and you sharing bandwidth with your neighbors is probably a bigger issue to Verizon, but there are definitely risks to an open network, along with a few advantages.

What I really like in this email is first they talk about secure passwords. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve run into business website owners with passwords like their name or the business name. The password you use is the key to your store.

The second good thing is they talk about not clicking on a link in an email and entering any personal information, especially your password. This was my main complaint from three years ago.

I have been critical of Verizon’s security in the past and now I want to highlight the change for the good. Congratulations, Verizon. I don’t care why you changed your emails, I’m just glad you did.

Matt Cutts who is one of the faces of Google recently gave a great interview to The WordPress Podcast with lots of good tips on how to properly promote your site.

This is about an hour long, but well worth a listen. The beginning is a bit tech-ish, but hang in there it gets good.

http://wp-community.org/2010/07/20/google-matt-cutts-wordpress/

It’s happened again. I’m helping another business owner who isn’t the registered owner of their own name. This time, like the others, should end well, but after much hassle. I have heard of horror stories where the rightful domain name owner has had to find another name and move on.

I can’t tell you how many times this has happened. A customer wants to hire me and move their site only to find that the person they hired to *do everything* for their website has registered the domain name(s) in their own name, not their customers.

If you haven’t registered your website name yet, take a minute and do it yourself. Go to GoDaddy.com, Register.com or any of a thousand other reputable registrars and buy your domain name. They will probably try to sell you upgrades and other stuff, but all your really need to do is register your domain name in your name. GoDaddy charges less than $11.00 a year for this.

If you already have a website name see who is listed as the administrative contact.
There are many sites that will tell you this, like http://cqcounter.com/whois/
If you are not listed as the administrative contact, write to who is there and let them know you want it changed.

Once you are the administrative contact you are in charge. Any time you or someone else tries to move or change ownership of your site you will get a request for approval. It’s just as important to make sure the contact information for you is always current so you get those requests.

Read more about Controlling Your Domain

Android just released for everyone to use – App Inventor for Android.

“To use App Inventor, you do not need to be a developer. App Inventor requires NO programming knowledge. This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app’s behavior.”

This looks very cool, but I’ve just started to play with it. I’ll write more about this in a future post, but if you would like to play with App Inventor for yourself.

Use App Inventor for Android