"Companies are looking for new ways to sell their products and engage customers. Social media is an effective and low cost marketing strategy that allows you to compete with larger brands to gain visibility with your target audience. Whether your company is interested in testing social media by creating a corporate blog, creating a funny video and sharing this with people on YouTube, or establishing personal connections through your own brand profile on Twitter, there are many ways to take advantage of social media to create memorable brand experiences and grow your business."

While this is an effective way of getting the word out, it also makes it harder for your true fans to be able to find you. (The last time I searched for my name, I came up with over 9,000 true hits on Google!) If I am trying to work some personal branding, how am I to manage what is going on in so many locations?

A Central Place for Branding

The answer is to bring all these places together in one location—a central place for your personal brand. This could be the info box on one of your profiles, a Google profile, a company website, or a domain of your own name—it is up to you. The idea is to gather all the links to everything you are doing and put them all in this one location. This gives you one central location to base from, one single link to put into your e-mail signature, or a solid link to provide in the profiles for all the various websites you belong to. It helps focus your marketing efforts, keeps things simple, and lets people know where you are without having to Google you.

Virtual Business Cards

One way to create a central repository is to make yourself an online business card. Services like card.ly, Retaggr, PeoplePond, or Dandy ID provide fast and easy ways to create an online business card, even for a novice user. For those with a bit more advanced knowledge, you can make a vcard site using your own domain name like Tim van Damme and all the people he has inspired on his Wall of Fame. With either method, the idea is clear: keep it simple, make it precise, and keep it professional.

Social Media Spots

For those with an existing website (or existing websites), establishing a section of the site for social media and other connections is the best way to centralize your marketing efforts. For example, Sonya Ferreira of Sonya Lee Weddings & Events created a special "Connect With Me" section for all her links and social media connections in an eye-catching location on her new blog. She says:

"Social media marketing does have great benefits for my business, but I feel like having all these various profiles and websites really fragments my branding efforts. Having a blog (Brides with Passports) that I can brand with a centralized social media section has definitely simplified things."

Many modern themes for Wordpress come with a social media focus, offering plug and play configuration for connecting all your social media accounts. Some examples of this include:

• Therapy and AntiSocial by WooThemes
• Urban Elements by Press75
• Cherry Truffle by Elegant Themes

You could also add a plugin to an existing installation, like Social Media Page for WordPress.

LifeStream

For the ultimate mashup of all your social media sources, I offer the LifeStream Plugin for WordPress. You can use this anywhere from a sidebar on your regular site to a main selection for the site itself. MyTechTeam uses the LifeStream plugin in a sidebar to bring in feeds of interest to their customers as well as their own blog and Twitter feeds. I recently built my own lifestream site to look like my Twitter page that incorporates everywhere on the net that you can find me professionally.

Not good with programming? You can create your own (business)lifestream with Tumblr, Twitter, or a Facebook Page. There are many options that will take your feed from one site and post it to another (such as twitter feed), creating one page that is your centralized source of everything you!

Nikole Gipps is the face behind the superhero character at That PHP Girl, a web development help service for DIYers and non-tech pros.

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Nikole Gipps is the principal of NHG Consulting, a web design and marketing firm. She can be reached through her StartupNation profile, her company website, or her Small Business Essentials site.

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Confused by what "mashups" and "feed readers" are?

• A mashup is a web page that displays data from many sources in one place. See Mashup (web application hybrid) from Wikipedia for more information.
• A feed reader is a mashup in itself—it combines all the feeds from your favorite sites into one place so you can read them. See Save Time with Subscriptions for more information.

Nikole Gipps is the principal of NHG Consulting, a web design and marketing firm. She can be reached through her StartupNation profile, her company website, or her Small Business Essentials blog.

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What is sketchcasting?

Sketchcasting takes the concept of giving a presentation at the whiteboard and puts it into a simple video format so that you can easily share your ideas in a clear way. The idea is that you can present visual cues as you speak, giving you the ability to convey a very complex topic in a short amount of time. It combines the power of podcast audio (like the ones you can download here on SuN) with the visual aid of the whiteboard.

How do I make a sketchcast?

As outlined in this video, you will need:

• a computer (which you obviously already have)
• an inexpensive microphone (maybe $10-$20)
• software to record your on-screen movements ($50-$300)
• YouTube (free!)
• a drawing tablet or Tablet PC ($50-$150)

The process is pretty straight forward: you talk into the microphone as the program records your movements, save the file in a web-ready format (QuickTime video, AVI, or Flash file), upload to YouTube, and then link to it from your site or embed the video using YouTube’s code. For a more detailed explanation, see the video.

What can I use sketchcasting for?

The possibilities are nearly endless. Here are some of the ideas I thought about while watching the sketchcasting video:

• Project collaboration
  For example, say you have an engineer in Europe making a prototype of a new widget for you. You could open the drawings of the prototype in your drawing program, and then make a sketchcast of your comments while you are marking up the drawing.
• On-demand seminars
  You could add a sketchcast to your course outline to demonstrate concepts and give a lesson. By also adding commenting functions to the bottom of the sketchcast page, you could also start a conversation about that topic or lesson.
• Athletics
  Use sketchcasting to digram sports plays or techniques for your athletics-themed website, a la Madden and his TV chalkboard.
• How-to videos
  Demonstrate your actions rather than just talking or writing about them.
• Blogging
  You could spend half the time making your post if you were talking through it instead of writing and re-writing it. For a bonus, your natural speaking voice promotes you as an expert in your field. (Anyone can research and write an article. It takes a true expert to discuss a topic off the top of his/her head.)

How about you—would you try sketchcasting? Why or why not? What other uses can you think of for this technology?

For more information, and other great videos, check out sketch.basement.org.

Nikole Gipps is the principal of NHG Consulting, a web design and marketing firm. She can be reached through her StartupNation profile, her company website, or her Small Business Essentials blog.

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I don't have a landline. (Yes, in our house, we have 3 Nextel cell phones, in 3 area codes, but not a single landline.) So when a client needs an invoice faxed or wants to fax a print project markup to me, I end up having to get in my car and drive to Kinko's.

But not anymore! I've found GreenFax. It basically sends and receives faxes through my email for less cost than installing and maintaining a landline in my home. It was really easy to set up, and now I have my own dedicated fax number in my local area code! The messages are fast, too—someone sends me a fax and it's in my Eudora inbox instantly.

So check it out! There's apparently hope for those of use who are too high-tech to own a landline (and too cheap to own one just to get a couple of faxes a month).

Nikole Gipps is the principal of NHG Consulting, a web design and marketing firm. She can be reached through her StartupNation profile, her company website, or her Small Business Essentials blog.

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So what can you do?

• Make content your #1 priority.
  
  The goal of your site or blog should not be to merely toss the information up there and let it go. The problem, as I see it, is the ease and speed in which blog posts and site changes can be made. Your goal should not be speed, but quality. Review your content: Is it relevant to your readers? Have you edited it to remove anything unnecessary? Are you proud of that piece of work, and does it reflect positively upon your company? If it's not quality content, it belongs on the cutting room floor.
• Format your content to maximize readability for the web.
  
  Good content starts with good ideas, swings through heavy editing, and ends up with formatting your content for people, not machines. With so many site owners trying to format their content to rank high on the search engines, I believe the quality of the content goes down—so focus on your readers, not the search engines. (For more information on formatting your content, see Writing to be Read.)
• Reduce your posting frequency.
  
  I sometimes feel like we're all going to hyperventilate in the age of Twitter, as quantity has replaced quality. Too many bloggers are just rehashing the ideas of others instead of creating original content, or just linking to other posts instead of adding their own insights. You have this concept supported by places like Creative Weblogging, who asks new bloggers to make 7-10 posts per week. Let's reverse this trend by providing better content in fewer posts, and try to not be so vain as to think your readers have time to read daily posts from you that are not long enough to be of any real value.
• Participate in blog carnivals.
  
  Blog carnivals are collections of summaries and links to blog content, pulled together by an editor. By participating, contributing, and hosting a blog carnival, you are saying quality content is important to you, and you would like to reward those who write quality content with recognition. The oldest and best blog carnival for the business world is the Carnival of the Capitalists, which inspired this post because I happen to be hosting it today! Although hosting is a lot of work (I had to read through about 40 articles this weekend), it is worth it to me to support others in their quests to produce quality content week after week.
• Lend your support to the MBA by Blog project.
  
  The limitations of a blog carnival stop at their periodical nature: most carnivals are posted weekly or monthly. This is why the founders of the Carnival of the Capitalists created MBA by Blog, a celebration of the best business posts of all time. You can help out this project by suggesting new links any time you find a truly outstanding piece of information in a blog.

So readers, lend me your thoughts: What else bugs you about web content and how can we, as the writers, make that better?

Nikole Gipps is the principal of NHG Consulting, a web design and marketing firm. She can be reached through her StartupNation profile, her company website, or her Small Business Essentials blog.

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While he is now being investigated by the SEC, the legal implications of such a move are not the subject of this post. What I'd like to talk about is conducting your business online. I think there is a lesson to be learned from Mackey's behavior, and that is everything you do online reflects upon your company. With that in mind, I'd like to reiterate some general guidelines about the positive ways you can promote yourself online using blogs and forums:

• Conduct yourself fairly, honestly, and transparently.
  Secrets always have a way of coming out eventually—and when they do, the public will be left with a bad feeling about you and your company. Do you really want people to mistrust you?
• Only say something online that you would say to someone in person.
  Sometimes people forget that on the other end of the screen, there is a live person.
• Use your real name, but add a disclaimer if you need to.
  Matt Cutts and Robert Scoble fully tell you where they work, but they both have also added a disclaimer to tell you that their posts are their personal opinions—not the opinion of their respective companies. That being said, they still conduct themselves in a way that would not anger their employers!
• Be positive.
  Remember that when you post online, you are essentially marketing for yourself. Bad press and negative marketing is not good for your business, so promote yourself positively through your interactions.

On a related note, I see that Joel has updated the StartupNation Community Guidelines. (Great leadership, Joel!) I see these kinds of guidelines as less "playground rules", and more as evidence of StartupNation's continued mission to help you grow your business by establishing some best practices for you to use in the StartupNation community or anywhere you might be promoting yourself online.

If you'd like to find out more about Netiquette, you can check out this Wikipedia article on it.

Nikole Gipps is the principal of NHG Consulting, a web design and marketing firm. She can be reached through her StartupNation profile, her company website, or her Small Business Essentials blog.

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What is an expert anyway?

There was this great graphic a while back on the blog "Creating Passionate Users", in the post "How to be an expert". It basically says that experts are those who rise above in their field by trying to continually improve themselves and their craft.

So if you are that person, how you do turn that into a business advantage? The easiest (and free!) way to do this is by using technology to show everyone your knowledge and skills in your field.

Giving Answers

A recent "Answers" trend has popped up on the internet. Places like Yahoo! Answers and LinkedIn Answers allow you to read questions submitted by users, and then provide answers to these questions. This is a great chance for you to prove your expertise by scanning for questions you have knowledge about, and then providing well-thought-out answers.

Top contributors also get increased visibility, such as this user,  "imisidro" from Yahoo! Answers. She chose to answer enough questions in the General Business, Small Business, and SEO categories to earn her a "Top Contributor" award from Yahoo!. At this time, she is listed as having answered 11,528 questions … which means that at least 11,528 people looking for answers in these categories have seen her, and possibly continued on to her profile and website. (The actual number of people viewing her responses is probably 10 to 50 times higher than the number of questions asked, depending on the average number of people who view each question and read her specific response.) Additionally, in 82% of those answers, she was the "top answer", meaning that her answer appeared first! This is a powerful marketing tactic that has put her at the top of the list in small business expertise.

Do you have to find enough free time to answer 11,000 questions to find this system beneficial? No, not at all. If you only have time to participate in a few, it will still give you the networking and exposure that you would not have had otherwise.

Writing Articles

Another method for spreading your expertise with technology is writing articles. If you have knowledge to share that is unique and interesting, put it in an article and submit it! Great articles usually do well with search engines, bloggers and journalists—which means increased exposure for you. To find out where to submit your article, check out this discussion on Article Marketing in the StartupNation community. To get some tips on writing a good article, read this information on Writing to be Read, Editorial Guidelines, and Writing a Great Article.

Become a Guru

Many sites have topic-based "guides" or "gurus" that provide expert information for the site's readers. A great example of this is About.com, where you can apply to be a guide in any open topic that you feel you are an expert at. By working with a large site like About.com, you get a high level of traffic that you would not be able to obtain on your own. Additionally, as guides are picked by hand through a rigorous selection process, the readers have confidence with regards to the information you are providing. So if you are an ATV Dealership or a Fly-Fishing Lure maker, you might want to head over there to apply for an open position to gain a lot of exposure for your business!

Don't Forget Your Tagline

Whether you are answering questions, submitting articles, or becoming a guru, don't forget your tagline! Use every opportunity available to you on each site—such as profile pages, signatures, and taglines—to promote your brand and your business. The goal is to provide enough information for the readers to find you if they want to learn more, but not too much so that your information doesn't appear to be spam.

Reader Question

I was searching for a site (which, yes, I should have bookmarked originally) in which people ask small business questions and the resident experts answer them. I happened to find it in one of my "lost in Google" escapades a few weeks ago, but now I just can't find it. Does anyone know what I'm talking about, and if you do - can you post the link in a comment? (This is a chance to prove your own expertise in small business websites, ha ha!)

Nikole Gipps is the principal of NHG Consulting, a web design and marketing firm. She can be reached through her StartupNation profile, her company website, or her Small Business Essentials blog.

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Upload and Label your Photos

The first step in this process is to set up your pictures. This design is meant for people who have product or service pictures that they would like to showcase on their site. If you don't have pictures, just skip the sections on photos and the widget.

Create an account at Flickr, Yahoo! photo sharing service. This account should be for your business use only - don't mix together your business and personal photos! Use your Yahoo account to log in, or make a new Yahoo account. Log in to Flickr. You can either use the "You" menu (at the top) to upload files six at a time, or download a Flickr Uploadr to upload your photos in large batches.

To better market your photos, make sure that you give each one a title, a description and tags. You can either do this just after the upload, or you can upload them all and edit them in the viewing mode. I have found flickr very easy and intuitive to use, but if you have trouble, there is always Flickr Help. Once you have uploaded all the photos, use the Flickr Organizr (Organize > All Photos at the top) to sort your pictures into sets, and add a description to each set. Why are you going all this just for your photos? All this tagging and describing is a powerful tool that can help people find you through the web!

Create your Website Account and Set it Up

Go to TypePad and create an account. (They have many options which I won't go into here, so you can find out more at their site. For most people, the basic $5 per month account will work just fine.) Select a theme for your blog, add a title, and chose your URL.
 

Add Photos to your Website Account

Once you are logged in to TypePad, click the "TypeLists" tab, and then "Create a New TypeList" from the top of the green column. Your list type will be "Notes" and the name of the list will be something like "Our Portfolio". Click "Create New List" and you will be brought to a screen called "Add Item".

A widget is a small snippet of code that you will add to the site - this one happens to display photos from a Flickr account. Open a new web browser window and go to WidgetBox to get your Flickr widget. In "Widget Settings", add the name of your widget, the user name on your flickr account, the Count of the number of pictures you want displayed (I chose 5), "Random Selection" for your Display, "Vertical" for your layout, and "Thumbnail" for the Size. Click "Get Widget", "Get Widget Code", and then copy the text there.

Go back to your TypePad window and paste this text into the box that says "Note", leaving the "Label" box blank. To make sure your widget displays properly in your sidebar, type "<center>" at the beginning of the text you just pasted, and put "</center>" at the end. (Your final text will look like "<center>PASTED TEXT</center>".) Click Save, but don't click "Publish" yet.

Determine your Content Display

In TypePad, go back to "Weblogs" using the tab at the top of the screen, and click on your weblog name. Then click the "Design" tab, and the "Select Content" link which should be the third one down.

Once you are there, these are the items you want to check in your "Sidebar Modules" section:

• Pages
• About Page Link
• The TypeList you made earlier - ours is labeled "Our Portfolio (Notes)".

Leave everything else unchecked - for now. Also, uncheck everything in the "Weblog Posts and Pages" and "Weblog Archives" sections.

Click "Save Changes".

Now go to "Order Content", the fourth item down on the Design page. The page I made is a 2-column design, for which I suggest you have "About Page" on top of the sidebar and then "Our Portfolio". If you have a 3-column design, I would put the "About Page Link" module in the top of the left column, and then the "Our Portfolio" module in the top of the right column. Click "Save Changes".

Add your Home and About Pages

Back on your Weblog, click the "Compose" tab. This will bring up a blank posting page, but you won't be using this one. Click on the sub-tab that says "New Page". This is where you will be creating your home page. Give it a title and put your homepage text in the "Page Body" section, making sure to follow the rules of good copywriting. Once you are finished with your text, make sure that Posting Status is "Publish Now", Comments are "None", and Accept TrackBacks is unchecked. Then click "Save".

Now we need to put our new page front and center. Click the "Configure" sub-tab, and under "Front Page Preferences", choose "Display a Page on the front page" and select the name of the page you just made. Click "Save Changes" on the bottom, but you don't have to "Publish my Site" just yet.

For your final task before publishing, you need to make a page about your company. Click on the "Control Panel", then the "Profile" sub-tab, and then fill in your information under "Author Profile". When you are finished, click "Update Author Profile".

To get your new page to use your current template, you need to click on "About Page" in the same section, to the right of where you clicked on "Author Profile". Check the boxes of the parts of the profile you want to appear (I chose to also have my portfolio widget appear here), and then select your current design from "Choose a style for your About Page". Click "Save and Publish" when you are done.

Publish and Review

Now it is time to publish your site and get going! Click on the "Weblogs" tab, and then the name of your new site. Click the "Design" sub-tab, and then click on the "Republish Weblog" at the bottom of the page. Choose "Publish all Files" and click "Publish".

And there you have it! This entire process took me about an hour to get up. (You can see my final result here.) You may want to go back and change a few things here and there, make some adjustments, or add your own domain name to your TypePad URL (so your URL will be www.yourcompany.com insted of yourname.typepad.com/blogname/).

This is not meant to be your final product, just something professional looking to help you raise some working capital! I would definitely recommend returning later to redesign and expand your website once your company is running—there are many options for this, but I will save that for a later date! Good luck and happy webbing …

Total Time Spent: 1 hour

Total Cost for this Project, including optional costs:

• Domain Name: $8.95 per year from GoDaddy if I want a www.mycompany.com URL.
• Hosting: $4.95 per month or $49.50 per year from TypePad (although I paid nothing today because TypePad gives you a 14-day free trial).
• Photos: Free from Flickr, or $24.95 if I have a lot of photos and want a Pro account.
• Photo Widget: Free from WidgetBox.

Nikole Gipps is the principal of NHG Consulting, a web design and marketing firm. She can be reached through her StartupNation profile, her company website, or her Small Business Essentials blog.

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