Yes.

Let me explain.

We are all naturally drawn to the faces of others. There’s a reason it’s used so often in advertising. If  you’re an entrepreneur and you are your company, or at least the main representative of it, putting your face on your marketing is going to have several benefits.

If you are marketing locally, you are increasing the chances that people will recognize you, even if they’ve only met you once for 30 seconds. If you interact with them online and your photo is on your profile, they’ll be much more comfortable and open talking with you than they otherwise might be.

This is the same thing marketing people do every day with brands – building familiarity and trust by staying in front of their market.

Your photo should be up to date and represent your personality. Smile! Look directly at the camera. How would you want to look if someone were standing in front of you, about to shake your hand when you meet them for the first time?  The same ideas apply.

There is a fabulous post related to this with examples of eye tracking heat maps on a marketing page showing what the impact of a face in marketing can have on James Breeze’s blog. I highly recommend reading it.

WordPress is the most widely used platform for blogging that exists today. Many companies use it as a Content Management System (CMS) for non-blogging websites.

Like most things, there are some precautions to take – especially if you are a small business operating on a limited budget yet still wanting to customize options in WordPress.

If you’re buying (or downloading a free) WordPress theme, be sure it’s supported and check their documentation. If that is out of date, then there may be security issues with the theme itself.

Remember that the more fun options able to be edited through the WordPress admin, the more code you may be adding to your site. Some themes like this are wonderful, cleanly-coded marvels.   However, some are a hot mess of code that will do more harm than good for your site. It’s worth getting a 30 minute consult from someone who can tell the difference to help you find the right theme.

Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Professional

If you do have a small budget and can hire someone to do some simple customizing and setup, they should be able to answer several questions:

Will this theme use native WordPress features for the navigation menu and widgets (sidebars/footer)?

What plug-ins will be installed?

What does each plug-in do?

How is each plug-in rated?

Will you show me how to update my menu, widgets, blog posts and pages?

Get Several Quotes

Finally, I strongly encourage everyone to talk to 3 or 4 website designers before hiring help and ask them the questions above. Don’t just go with the lowest price, but with the one who will make it possible for you to update things on your own and who thoroughly understands how to work within WordPress.

When you don’t understand a lot of the technology, it can be difficult to find the right person to hire. I’ve worked with many clients who hired someone they liked or were recommended to, only to have problems that end up costing thousands of dollars to correct. Doing a little research into how things work up front will save you time and money in the long run.

If you’re a small business owner, you understand the importance of support. It comes from lots of places, from our families, clients, friends and sometimes from complete strangers. This post is going to focus on one of the major places I get support, and that’s from my business girlfriends. Women who understand my ups and downs because they face them too.

These ladies have been there when things were slow, when problems seemed insurmountable, and lately, we’ve been celebrating victories. They all started off as strangers that I met at networking events, then became business partners, and I now consider them to be friends.

I’m posting them in alphabetical order.  :-)

Mary Beth Dunn

Laura Flowers

Darla LeDoux

Debbie McCurry

Nikki Means

Crystal Theis

Karla Zachman

Ladies, thanks a million and I look forward to lots more laughs and brilliant ideas for all of our businesses!

Domain names are the cheapest part of building a new website. At $10-$15 per year, it’s common for businesses and website developers to have quite a few.

My advice on domain names is to setup an account yourself and buy your domain name. Most website development companies are happy to do this for you, but if you switch developers or hosting companies you are going to be glad you’ve got that integral part of your online presence available to you in your own account. The last thing you want is to have to change domain names on all of your marketing material and online profiles at various sites because your developer has disappeared. Sad to say, this does happen. It is possible to recover a domain name in this situation, but it takes time.

My recommendation- go to DomainIt, which is a local domain registrar in Cincinnati, and register your domain names on your own. It’s easy and inexpensive, and could save you a lot of grief later on!

Being self employed can be difficult. There’s a lot to think (and worry!) about, and in the end it all falls back on you to make your business a success.

It’s Friday, though, and I’ve had a  good week, so I’m going to focus on some of the best things about owning your own business and working from home.

1. If someone with a great cause that I believe in crosses my path, I can provide something truly valuable to that organization and be a part of something that helps others.
2. I choose when I work. This is often at 2am, but that’s when my creativity is at it’s best.
3. I can have something homemade and yummy everyday for lunch.
4. I choose who I work with, clients or contractors, which means I am surrounded by people I enjoy spending time with.
5. If my family has an emergency and I need to be with them, I just jump in the car and go.
6. I get to hang out with my puppy most of the day.

Queequeg (my Pekingese) hanging out while I work

“I feel cheated, my computer screens don’t fold. Where can I get a folding one? Are they expensive?”
-MJHalloran on Twitter

Nothing can get my love-to-debate-heart racing quite like talking about “the fold” in connection with website design. Let me break this down simply, and then get into the details.

1. Monitors are available in different sizes
2. Screen Resolution (for the non-techies, this is literally how much fits on your screen) can be adjusted for each monitor to a variety of settings
3. Different browsers display different proportions of a website, depending on how big the toolbar at the top is and how big the footer at the bottom is
4. In addition to #3, users can add extra toolbars that can take even more space away from displaying the webpage
5. Users don’t have to open everything to the full width and height of their screen resolution (they minimize the screen so they can have their email open while also browsing a website, especially prevalent with very wide screens)
6. Users know how to scroll and will do so instinctively, sometimes before they even really take in what’s at the top of the page

The quote at the top is meant to be funny, but there is a basis for discussion there. Why do we continue to try to apply ancient marketing ideas to every medium? The fact is that discussions about “the fold” are a carry-over from newspapers and the early days of the internet when mice didn’t come with click-wheels that made scrolling a page easy.

We’ve come a long way since then.

I’ve done a lot of user testing over the years and I know for a fact that even people who are nearly afraid of computers will scroll down a page if they don’t see what they’re looking for at a glance. The one thing they are not afraid to do is scroll.

Need some proof? Check out this lovely visual representation from IAmPaddy.com.

The problem, of course, is that unless you are a graphic or website designer, you probably have no idea how big a pixel is. Here are some screen shots, all from the CSS Zen Garden site, using the CSS Co. Ltd. stylesheet. These resolution settings are the most commonly used for visitors coming to my client’s websites.

As you scroll through, notice how in some, you get more white space around the content area. Also, some show much more of the left-sidebar.

 

Screenshot of 800 x 600 pixels – a rarely used resolution setting these days, but when I started in 2001, this was the standard size of all monitors.

1024 x 768 pixel resolution

1280 x 800 pixel resolution

1280 x 1024 pixel resolution - the resolution I use on my desktop monitor.

1366 x 768 pixel resolution - the default setting for my new laptop.

My final thoughts are that we need to stop focusing on buzz-word terms that are of no value. What leads users down the page are visual clues and a clean design that doesn’t overwhelm. Learning this lesson is getting more important with every notebook PC, tablet PC, and smart phone sale.

Happy fold-less and page-less reading!

Another new year is about to start. I’ll be taking some time this weekend to analyze my business for 2010 and make adjustments to my business plan for 2011. No, it’s not fun, really. I’d much rather be coding a website or creating a Facebook business page. I’ve learned, though, how essential it is to review, readjust, and plan to have a successful business.

Here are some of the things I’ll be reviewing. Maybe my list will inspire you, too!

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Facebook has over 500,000,000 active users. People use Facebook for many things; playing games, sharing pictures with family, staying in touch with friends, business networking, etc.

For far too many, though, there is information that anyone on Facebook can see about them. I have friends with teenage children who have fully public profile. I can see everything on their wall, their photo’s, and who their friends are. In an age where it’s not uncommon for us to post where we’ll be going tonight or where we are right now, this can actually be dangerous.

Some people blame Facebook, but the fact is that we are choosing to be on their network. Therefore, we all have to take responsibility for what and who we make public knowledge.

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A friend of mine who knows of my enthusiasm for social media pointed me to a great blog – Splendid Communications. Here’s my favorite part:

That’s the secret: social media is a conversation, not a technology. The first step to using social media effectively is to be social. Listen to the conversations already happening. Engage with others by chatting with them (and not just about your company or product). If you wouldn’t say something over a cup of coffee, don’t say it in social media.

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I like to share information I find useful online, which usually means I’m sharing a lot of links. Here’s a great little tip about tracking what you’re sharing- in case you are curious and ask yourself ““Does anyone click on the links I share?”.

There are several ways to do this, but my preferred method is to use the site bit.ly. First of all, how cute is that? It’s pronounced “Bitly” and is a way to shorten long links. I use it even when I don’t need a short link, though.

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