In Good Company

There are many motivations for a small business owner to create a blog – increased awareness, supplemental marketing, sharing information, selling products or services, improving search engine ranking or monetisation via advertising.

For me blogging has primarily been about an opportunity to connect with people and share information that may be helpful, useful or interesting to them. So it is always a very pleasant surprise when someone acknowledges the Working Solo blog.

Long time small business commentator and blogger Martin Neumann last week announced his Top 15 Aussie Small Business Bloggers and I’m honoured to be on the list. Each one of the blogs mentioned is a great read and many are regulars on my own blog reading list. My good friend and colleague Des Walsh and his Thinking Home Business blog also gets a mention.

If you are new to blogs then you could do well by adding the 15 blogs that appear in Martin’s list to your RSS reader (as well as adding Martin’s blog as well).

Martin’s approach to listing his favourite blogs and then over the coming weeks reviewing them in more detail is a great alternative to the standard blogroll (which I agree with Martin are as boring as bat shit). A personal recommendation and even a review provides far more value to a blog’s readers.

Reader Question – What are Gravatars?

Q- I’ve notice more and more blog comments have pictures of the commentor (or another cartoon image) next to their comment. I was wondering what the are and how do I get one?

The images that you are noticing are called Gravatars - a shortened version of the full name Globally Recognised Avatars. An Avatar is a Sanskrit word and in the online world it is the indentifying image that represents a person. They have been in forums and games for many years.

Unlike an avatar being fixed within a single application, a gravatar is an avatar image that follows you from blog to blog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites.

In order to use it across multiple sites the gravatar is associated with a nominated email address and each time that you use that email address in a blog comment, on a gravatar enabled site, your gravatar will be displayed next to your comment.

Gravatars were initially created by the guys from Automatic, the same people that brought us Wordpress.

I expect that you are busting to get one and want to know the many convoluted steps, or special handshakes, needed to get one. Follow closely …

1. Go to www.gravatar.com
2. Click on the signup now link
3. Enter your email address
4. They will send you a confirmation link to setup your gravatar account
5. Upload the image you want to use as your avatar.

Tip: Make sure the image that you are wanting to use is already down at a reasonable small size (no more than about 80 x 80 pixels).

Once your image is upload then your gravatar will start appearing on blog comments everywhere.

I noticed that very few of the commentors here at Working Solo have a Gravatar so why not leave me a comment here and share your gravatar and thoughts.

Passionate about Technology and Sustainability

You may not be surprised that I’m passionate about technology but you may not realise how passionate I am about sustainability. Sustainable living, sustainable business, sustainable resources, and a sustainable lifestyle … my passion covers many areas.

This month’s theme at The Calm Space is passion and I decided to share my twin passions of technology and sustainability and contributed an article called It’s Not Easy Being Green in Technology. It shares tips on how you can take a sustainable approach to your technology.

There are many other good articles this month in the areas of writing, reading, relationships, organisation and others.  Why not drop by now, or over the next few weeks and be inspired.

Please No [More]

Warning: Soapbox moment ahead!

When I’m deeply engrossed in reading posts in Google Reader (my RSS feed reader of choice) the last thing that I want to do is click on a link to read the remainder of the post on the blog site.

So I have a few questions to the bloggers who choose to publish only partial feeds …

• Why, when I have invited you into my precious time and space by subscribing to your blog, do you break my flow of reading and make me click away from my reader and go to your site?
• Do you actually believe that I will click to your site?
• What benefit do you get by me clicking over to your site? Does it trump any benefit that I might have in reading your post in my reader of choice?
• How long do you think I will continue to subscribe if you don’t honour my choice to read via a reader versus being forced to your site?

In the majority of situations I just will not waste my time reading blogs who only publish partial feeds. Information is available from so many different places that I know I will not miss out on anything important. There are a couple of exceptions but they are true exceptions to the rule – I just love what they write.

One of those exceptions is the blog from the guys at Saasu. I was very disappointed when they moved from publishing full feeds to publishing partial ones and for a couple of weeks didn’t read on past the [more] link. But I must admit that I do like what they have to say. As they only publish occassionally and only when there is something worthwhile to be said I will give them the benefit of the doubt (at least for a little while longer – but if you want to change back to full feeds I would be very happy).

I’m interested in what your preference is … full feeds or are partial feeds OK?

Did you know that you were a genius?

Well according the the Blog Readability test you must be!

The genius level is the result I got when I tested this site using the Blog Readability testing tool.  Some may think that this is a good result, but when it comes to providing a website that is readable and understandable by a broad section of the small business community I may be missing the mark (unless all small business people are also geniuses).

This is a fun test for your site to waste a few of the pre-Christmas minutes where motivation may not be at its highest. BUT don’t neglect the more important message that it contains.  Can people really understand the messages that you are trying to get across?

5 Reasons I’m Not Playing re Priscilla’s Personal Development List

Des Walsh  is a cluey guy and one that I often agree with, and when it comes to the recent Personal Development List that Priscilla Palmer compiled then we are completely on the same page.

Much like Des, I was both surprised and honoured to be included on the Personal Development list -  although I am a little baffled how Working Solo’s technology and business ramblings fall into personal development.  I would have thought I was a little more professional development rather than traditional personal development.

I will acknowledge Priscilla for the work that she put into the list and will say that there are a number of blogs listed that I personally read (some a even clients of mine) but you won’t be seeing me “joining in” by reproducing the list here.

1. I’ve stopped playing tag – even though the list is a wonderful resource and Priscilla must have put considerable work into compiling the initial version, it struck me a little like the games of tag that have become popular on blogs.  I have participated in some of these in the past but this one strikes me as a little to much like the dreaded chain letter (you know the one where you need to add you rname to the bottom and pass it on to 5 friends – yuk!)
2. Duplication for the sake of it – this list can be found on many, many, many sites so there is little or no value in duplicating it here.  It might be nice for the “link-love” but I find lists of links without context are generally a short-lived exercise.
3. Should, must or have-to - ever since I was a kid whenever someone said that I “must” or “should” it was code for me to do the exact opposite.  There are some people on the personal development list that have been leaving comments for some who hadn’t joined in, trying to goad or guilt us into playing along by phrasing it in the form of a challenge.  For me it came in the guise of a comment from Mel.  Quite frankly I don’t find it “a challenge that you add additional sites that fit the theme and post the entire list” (many people that I am lucky enough to call a friend are wonderful personal development practitioners) and in fact such a “challenge” to do like everybody else is doing makes me want to stand-alone from the crowd.
4. Recognition where recognition is due – when I come across a site that deserves a mention, a comment or a recommendation I will do so and in doing so I will provide some further commentary and comment about what you the reader might expect by following that link.
5. Last but not least, my readers may not be interested in a long-winded list of names and sites.  The purpose of this site is to help demystify some aspects of technology for small business and to provide commentary on life as a “working solo” entrepreneur.  I am happy for you, my readers, to correct me on this one but I don’t believe that reproducing such as list provides much benefit to you.

Call me a grumpy old woman if you like but I’m happy with my decision.

Be prepared to loose your content with Blogger

Do you user Blogger as you blog platform of choice? If so are you also prepared to loose the content and or the branding effort that you have put into the domain name that your blog has (eg. yourname.blogspot.com)?

You may be lucky and never have any problems with you account but then again you may be like some of the hundreds (or possibly thousands) that have had their Blogger-based blog hijacked or closed.

Reg Adkins is one such person that has very recently had his Blogger-based blog, Elemental Truths, hijacked. My friend Rosa Say brought Reg’s Blogger issue to my attention -

In what I sincerely hope will be a temporary fix here for him, I have replaced the links here for Reg Adkins’ Elemental Truths blog with links to Faith Based Counseling, where Reg had initially begun his blogging adventures.

Earlier today, Reg found that his Elemental Truths site had somehow been high jacked! When you follow links to his site, they take you to something that looks like a political advertisement written by someone other than Reg!

Reg has contacted Blogger (and their parent company Google to get this situation rectified but the last I had heard there had been no response back from them).

Another client and friend Pete Aldin, was concerned enough to comment -

Unbelievable. What can he do to fix this? (What can we do to avoid it?)

Unfortunately Reg is not the first (just search on the phrase “hijacked Blogger account”), and probably not the last, to loose the result of all the effort he has put into his blog, Elemental Truths. Blogger is very attractive to many people due to its free nature. But with free you handover all control over what happens behind the scene.

A few years ago when many people started using Blogger it was the only low-tech, low/no-cost option available. Many people worked out that to move away from their Blogger account also meant that they lost the domain name and any branding that had been built up in that name (and also the link love that was pointed at the blog). So they stayed.

To Reg and the many other blogger’s whose business or professional image relies on Blogger my advice is to start developing a plan to take more control over the content, branding and the investment of hours that you put into your blog.

Start now with some simple steps -

• register a domain name, that you own, that can be used at the URL for your blog
• investigate other blog platforms that are available that will provide a blog platform from the point of view of security, flexibility of content delivery, reliability and support responsiveness.
• backup your current blog content on a regular basis (the same as you do for your computer … you do backup your computer don’t you??)

Reg, you deserve better than what has happened to you and I hope that it all resolves for the better.

For everyone, be careful of the company that you and your blog keep. I know that most aren’t ready to loose at that you have invested in it.

[tags]Blogger, hijacked, Rosa Say, Reg Adkins, blog problems, Pete Aldin [/tags]

Blog Subscribers – How Many?

This post is a question that I received from a client a week or so ago. You will see more of these sort of Q&A type posts from here on in as I start to offer, first clients and then open it to the general community, the opportunity to ask a question about any aspect of small business webs, blogs, tools and other technology.

Q – How do I find out how many people are subscribing to my blog?

The best option that I have found to manage and track subscribers to a blog is by using Feedburner.

Feedburner is a free service (recently purchased by Google) and it handles 3 main aspects about blog distribution. It helps you -

• Publicise your content and make it easy for people to subscribe.
• Optimise distribution so that your content is properly formatted for all of the major directories and can be consumed by subscribers wherever they are.
• Analyse your traffic to learn how many subscribers you have, where they’re coming from and what they like best.

Did You Know?
After Google purchased Feedburner the previously fee-based Pro Stats are now available at no charge to all feedburner users.

If you aren’t registered with Feedburner then I suggest you go there right now and sign up.

If you are using Feedburner the all you need to do to see how many people are subscribing is log in to Feedburner and in the main dashboard click on your blog’s name.

You will then see something like this ….

You can then click on links for the subscribers, the day of the week or other links to find out more details.

If you have a Wordpress blog then the other option is that you can install the plugin called Wordpress Reports (from Tan Tan Noodles) that takes the stats information from Feedburner and Google Analytics (if you are using it) and delivers some basic graphs straight into your Wordpress admin area.

The Times gives you 50 more blogs to read

If you are new to blog reading and don’t know where to look for high quality blogs, or are an experienced blog reader that just doesn’t have nearly enough blogs in your list of feeds to read<g>, The Times Online (UK) has come out with a list of the 50 Best Business Blogs.

One of the best things about this list is that you find more than the usual bunch of technology & marketing blogs on the list.  Who would have guessed that there are blogs in industries such as aerospace, global food industry, and a sheet metal fabrication shop.

Happy browsing!

Coaches should blog because …

It has been a number of months now since I was having a conversation with Rosa Say (Say Leadership Coaching) about why coaches should blog. Still her words hang in the air and I’m often repeating them and sharing them with some of the many life and business coaches that I know.

If you know Rosa you know the way that she has managed to build a community around her blogging. She actively uses her blog to publish her thoughts, interact with readers, and develop a vibrant conversation about her area of focus.

Instead of leaving her wisdom to be shared only with people I speak with I thought that you might enjoy reading them for yourself (seeing that May is blogging month here are at Working Solo).

There are several times I will blog best right after a coaching call or appointment; it becomes a type of debrief for me. So much of coaching is done in conversation, and afterwards, you often think of those brilliant things you should have said at the time and didn’t! Coaching conversations can make for some great blog articles, and then later, they are notes kept for the next time you follow-up with the person who had first generated the thoughts. Therefore, blogging can definitely help you hone your craft!

In my case, I don’t think of blogging as marketing for my coaching business, though it does market my book, and it does market me as a speaker. My coaching preference is in person, and not strictly over the telephone or virtually, and my blog audience is overwhelmingly continental USA and international versus here in Hawaii. Yet there have been a few exceptions, where people here in Hawaii find me because of blogging…

Blogging is about filling my capacities intellectually with new learning, emotionally and even spiritually with the Ho‘ohana Community and the relationships which develop. I do believe it makes me a better and more interesting person, and it’s kicked up my obsessiveness with learning several notches. However it seems to me these are effects everyone can get, and not because they are a coach… I’m not answering your question very well, am I!

Coaches should blog because they can interact with a much wider audience, and they can become more empathetic in their understanding of the human element; that’s probably the biggest reason in my view.

Blogging keeps us grounded and in touch with what’s real for people, and not academic or theoretical.

Blogging keeps us current, and in-the-know.

Blogging keeps us learning language, vocabulary, jargon, and about the incredible power of words.

Blogging keeps us social, playful, and more fun … we can get way too serious otherwise!

Rosa also wrote on her blog recently about her Five Self-Imposed Rules for Blogging. Interesting reading whether you are a coach or not.

So if you are a coach Rosa’s wisdom might have answered the question for you about why you should be blogging.

[tags]coach, blog, Rosa Say, why blog[/tags]

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