It is definitely time to make sure that your site is ready to go mobile.  All the top dogs are making sure that there sites are stipped down to text only.  What does this mean really?  It means stripping a website from all images and making it text only and viewable for mobile phones.

Well in all truth its not rocket science to get your site to be mobile.  If you run your website or blog on a WordPress platform, guess what, WordPress are already a step ahead of you and has a plugin called Mobile Press which you just install and activate.

BBC News – Facebook launches “Zero”

Social networking is the ability to communicate with an extended contact group. You initially build a group of contacts that you know and add to this group using the contacts of your initial contacts. Businesses can use the extended contact network to target other businesses. The extended contact network is built using the internet. This means that you can talk in sound bytes directly to the contacts of your contacts which increases your overall reach and influence.

The social part of ’social networking’ describes how the relationships need to be based upon more than business. In the same way that you would not go to a face to face networking meeting and do nothing but sell, you don’t only sell in a social networking environment. Share information and contacts as well as personal things about yourself – allow people to get to know a part of you (remembering that it is a global environment).

There are a number of applications that assist in the social networking process. Popular examples are LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Each site has its own use and allows you to reach your extended contacts in its own way. I use a combination of different social media sites in order to reach different audiences. There are a number of common themes between the sites however.

Strategy – Before you start social networking, work out your strategy. What do you want to get from the networking? Contacts, brand building, feedback from your customers, hits on your website, information or what?

Policy – You will need to check whether your company has a policy on social networking. If you are the owner, you can decide whether you want your employees to engage with the sites and if so, which ones and how.

Profile – You must register with a profile. This includes information about your business, a picture of you – probably not your business logo and a link to your website or blog. Your profile will be used to find you initially and once found, to promote your business and to encourage people to go to your website. Some sites only allow you 160 characters, others are limitless. It is worth crafting a number of different paragraphs containing your SEO keywords to use with different sites.

Etiquette – Your online presence should reflect your business, just like your face to face presence. If you would talk politely and thank your customers or contacts in a face to face environment, you should do the same online. I am amazed at the number of people that don’t thank me if I promote them through online media or in fact people who think it is OK to swear in an online environment.

Communication – Remember that you are talking to people – have conversations, share information and share contacts. Generally, I find “what goes around, comes around” is true for online networking as well as face to face networking.

Business versus Personal – There is definitely an overlap between personal and business networking. Some of your business colleagues may also be personal friends, but it is up to you to decide right up front how far you want that crossover to go. Some people share stories of their children and family – they will display pictures of their family on their Facebook page for example – that’s not what I choose to do. Do whatever you are comfortable with.

Global – Remember with all these sites that if you are using them for business, you need the world to be able to see them. There is no point using social networking to market your business, if you hide your profile so nobody can see it. But remember that everybody can see what you say – both positive, negative and personal!

There is no ‘right’ way to use Social Networking – just give it a go to benefit you and your business!

Author: Mary D Thomas
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Pressure cooker

Just when you get familiar with on application it is time to learn a new application.  For most it will probably be second nature because everyone these days has a Google account.  You need a Google account if you want to use any of Googles cool tools such as Analytics, Google Adwords, Google Wave, Feedburner, and….

Hearing that there is a new buzz in town of course I must go and check it out.  Well on first impression it looks and feels almost like a Twitter knock off.  Not sure at this stage whether it will catch on.  What is in Google Buzz’s favour is that everyone almost has a Google Account for one reason or another which other applications like Twitter do not.  But it is not Twitter and if you like me who loves Twitter, you just cannot compare.  I’ll have to keep my eyes on Buzz to see if it Buzz’s and start adding contacts to my very dorment Google Account to see what happens.

PS.  All you need to get buzzing is a gmail account.

What are your thoughts?

When I first thought of launching a blog of my own, I decided to research into available scripts and tools and see if anything surpassed WordPress in quality. I’d encountered a few subtle bugs in WordPress while working for my clients, so I wanted an alternative.

One of my friends sent me his commercial script for testing. He talked a lot about its benefits, but after a few hours of struggling with simple tasks (which take 5 minutes to solve in WP) I said no, thanks. Even the best product built by a solitary programmer can never beat something created by a team, so I looked into a directory of free scripts and soon found a couple of leading blog scripts built by teams. One of them seemed popular and had on its website a list of blogs powered by it. I visited those links one by one – only to discover that some of those blogs no longer existed, and the rest of them had been moved to WordPress.

I have set up a blog using Drupal – but Drupal is too heavy for a single blog, and lacks certain features. For example, its default comment form doesn’t allow your visitors to insert their website URLs. Unregistered visitors can’t enter their names either. And besides, setting up a blog takes more time than with WordPress.

So I gave up. My blog is powered by WordPress – as is this one. I’ve customised the theme, of course – modified it greatly, so nobody will ever recognise the original theme downloaded by me for free. I’ve also installed a few plugins – the necessary minimum: one for SEO, one for captcha and one for social bookmarking. WP’s subtle bugs have spared my blog so far (fingers crossed), but I’ve had more than one opportunity to appreciate the benefits of this particular script: flexibility, availability of good plugins for nearly every purpose, relatively small size of the script itself and intuitive admin interface. It also generates valid HTML code, which is an important consideration for a web perfectionist like me.