Post #8–Two Women Business–Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler

If you read much about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your blog, you’ve probably heard that video is a fast, easy, and powerful way to improve your standing in Google. All well and good…but most authors and entrepreneurs don’t know where to start. “I don’t have a video camera,” they tell me. “Do I need some complicated piece of software?”

Inexpensive video cameras and powerful software tools do exist. But today I want to give you an easy alternative…something that will get you started with video. It’s a new browser-based screencasting tool called ScreenToaster. “Browser-based” means the tool runs on your Web browser. There’s no software to download. It runs equally well on both PCs and Macs. And it’s FREE. “Screencasting” is video technology that captures action on your computer screen in real time.

You can see a quick demo of ScreenToaster:

[click to continue...]

Post #7–Two Women Business–Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler

In my post yesterday I talked about the power of Web 2.0 to create a groundswell for products, whether that be a political candidate, ballot measure…or your book, service or latest widget. The case made by our recent elections serves as such a clear example that I want to follow up with a few numbers I’ve come across. The disparity in the social media presence between Senator John McCain and President-elect Barack Obama illustrates how Obama could raise record sums from so many small contributors.

• 150 million blog posts about John McCain v. 500 million posts mentioning Barack Obama (according to post on ReadWriteWeb).
• Just 224,254 MySpace friends for McCain v. 867,074 friends for Obama (figures as of 11/6/08)
• 4917 followers on Twitter for McCain v. 119,762 followers for Obama (figures as of 11/6/08).

So what do the numbers tell us? You should start building your ground game today. As entrepreneurs and authorpreneurs you can use social networking to create more than just buzz. You can connect with your customers and prospects (to provide a higher level of service) and build word of mouth support, both powerful marketing tools. And you can make sales. Social media translates into real dollars.

Your first step is to move away from your static Website and start running your site on a blog platform like WordPress. And when you start posting your blogs, aggressively use tags, keywords and search engine optimization. You’ll build valuable Web presence. While this is important regardless the market you are trying to reach, it’s absolutely essential if you target the Gen X and Gen Y markets (consumers 14 to 44). Fully 90 percent of the 130.5 million young consumers in the United States rely on the Internet for most of their information. Their collective annual income? Almost $6 trillion.

If you’re not sure how to start, let an Internet marketer help you develop a professional blog and create a blogging and social networking strategy. Getting started is not expensive, and once you’re up and running you’ll easily be able to manage most of the site yourself. This is a cost-effective strategy with huge potential for payoff.

Post #6–Two Women Business–Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler

It’s the day after our elections and there is one more winner that needs to be announced: technology. We call it by its many names–MySpace, Facebook, blogging, Twitter, YouTube videos, email campaigns, banner advertising, optin pages and list management–but make no mistake. Technology, Web 2.0, social networking (whatever you want to call it) was a real winner.

As authorpreneurs and entrepreneurs, I hope the significance of the Internet hasn’t been lost on you. Web 2.0 marketing has proved its potential–no, its power–by helping build and motivate the voter base from the ground up. Make no mistake.

The blog Mashable ran a post listing more than 65 sites designed to help voters prepare to exercise their franchise. Sites range from candidates’ home pages, background on the many Propositions, polling sites, and voting services (e.g., where to vote and how to get there). In addition to all the background and supporting sites, and major candidates’ social networking accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Digg, Twitter, and YouTube, tens of thousands of voters shared their thoughts and intentions openly…even aggressively.

This election season, Two Women Business had a personal experience with the power of the Internet to make a difference…in this case at the local level. The town of Gilroy, California, was preparing to put forward Measure F to support the construction of a larger, seismically safe library. Supporters of the measure had limited funds to get the word out. To augment the phone banks, publicity and community canvassing, we created a blog site to help get the community involved and keep them informed. You can see the site by clicking here. And the result? We did what many thought impossible. Measure F passed: We needed 66.67 percent voting YES for a super majority. We received 68.10 percent.

The 2008 election may indeed be a referendum on Politics 2.0. Don’t let the lesson be lost on you and your marketing strategy.

“I just don’t know what to blog about.” I can’t tell you how often I hear that one. While the obvious answer is, “Then don’t blog!” I suspect the problem is more fundamental. Many people who blog or think they should blog don’t know why they’re doing it…except that it seems everyone else is blogging. So before you start blogging…or give up on an apparently unsatisfactory blogging experience, consider these 21 steps. They’ll help you know how (or even if) you should go forward.

Now, as a twist today, I crafted this post in response to a challenge over at Copyblogger. Author Brian Clark suggested we all take a page from a current issue of PC World and create a post with a list headline. You can see his post by clicking here.

I’m not going to elaborate on any of these 21 items as my post would be impossibly long. But I promise to return to some of these subjects in future posts and explore them in greater depth. Also the items are in no particular order. Enjoy.

[click to continue...]