Web Worker Daily

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” — Confucius

The bottom line for every business owner is this. If you can’t keep customers and clients, your business will fail.

Ironically, we tend to forget this fact by getting caught up in the “busy-ness” of running a business. We have to-do lists that are a mile long and, for a lot of us, don’t include real steps to move us any closer to securing new business on a regular basis. Read the rest of this entry »

Just the sound of the word “publicity” can make some of us want to run for cover. It brings to mind uncomfortable and awkward times in the spotlight, and while many of us want our businesses to succeed, it may take a while to adjust to the idea of being center stage.

I recently spoke with Nancy Juetten of Main Street Media Savvy about how to overcome the fear of publicity. The great thing about the tips that she offered is that many of them are things you might already be doing to some extent, which makes the whole idea of publicity a little less daunting. By becoming comfortable with these tactics, you’ll start inching your way into the limelight, and you’ll gain more attention for your business in the process. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I read the “Unconventional Guide to the Social Web,” and although I found a lot of useful information in it, one quote has stuck with me since reading it: “Your blog is your mothership. Don’t neglect it for lesser tools.”

This is an important thing to keep in mind when marketing your business online. There are tons of ways to build a web presence, including a variety of social media and networking sites, but nothing is as important as your blog.

Maintained correctly, your blog is the one tool that will get you the most traffic, and it’s the tool over which you have the most control. If you set out with the intention of posting three to five times per week, within a year, you will begin seeing significant activity around your site. Within two to three years, you could easily be an authority in your particular niche.

So, how can you make sure that you don’t neglect your blog (or your “mothership”)? Read the rest of this entry »

Personal blogs have innumerable benefits for web workers including establishing expertise on a subject, personal branding, online marketing and general desire for keeping your name up there in Google search results. The right hosted blog platform is a time-saver for web workers who may not be design or HTML-savvy.

I’ve been running my personal blog on TypePad since 1993 and the early adopter in me made me make the jump to trying out the new preview version as soon as I got the opportunity. Here are some of my first impressions about the impending update to this fee-based blog publishing platform.

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I recently wrote about why I think it’s more important to spend time creating great content instead of focusing on developing your personal brand. It even inspired reader Jordan Curzon to get back in the habit of regularly blogging, and in his post, he touched on an important point. Every blog post doesn’t need to solve some tough technology problem or cover breaking news. People tend to make blogging much harder than it needs to be.

Here are a few ideas for people who want to blog more frequently, but who sometimes have a hard time coming up with ideas. Read the rest of this entry »

Many web workers have their own blogs, which are usually shared with colleagues and clients. But a good professional blog is not just a matter of just setting up your blogging platform, typing whatever comes to mind, and clicking “Publish.” Most professional blogs would benefit from a well-planned content strategy. So, how do you develop one?

Know your objectives. Your objectives will determine all the choices you make regarding your blog, from the design to the content. What do you want to get out of blogging? Do you want to communicate your ideas to a broader audience? Are you planning to use it to attract more clients? Be clear about your objectives before planning your content. Read the rest of this entry »

I wanted to jump into the conversation about personal branding that we’ve been having over the past week or so. I really don’t spend much, if any, time worrying about my personal brand, but when I look at my presence online, I seem to have a fairly strong presence. Despite having a common name, people can easily find me on the major search engines. I didn’t put any work into personal branding to make this happen. Instead, I focused on something more important: content.

I write quite a bit of content across multiple web sites. On my blog, the content shifts based on my interests and has morphed from open source topics to online communities and social web topics over the past few years. On Twitter, I have a mix of personal and professional content. I have a passion for learning new things and sharing the interesting bits with other people, which naturally tends to result in content that people want to read. Read the rest of this entry »

“Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online,” by Andy Beal and Dr. Judy Strauss, was recommended to me by several online friends who are involved in PR and marketing. It’s a practical and comprehensive book that’s designed to help individuals and businesses manage their reputations in a world in which the old rules no longer apply, thanks to the advent of the Internet.

The book begins by providing background on the importance of managing your company’s reputation online and the potential consequences if you don’t. It follows with practical instruction on using tools like social media and search engine optimization as ways to be proactive about managing your online reputation in order to achieve your business goals. The final section is about online monitoring of your reputation and managing an online reputation crisis. Read the rest of this entry »