Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-23

August 23rd, 2009 Chris

• Cheers to one of the few dog-friendly patios: the Georgetown. http://twitpic.com/erz52 #
• Shooting video today for our app (our neighbourhood thinks we're doing porn). Pat from InMotion is fantastic! http://twitpic.com/eq96i #
• Xerox 10k plus 30 degrees = Hurl. #

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-09

August 9th, 2009 Chris

• The waitress at susir' new place just called Eric "buttercup", playing with his "little thing". http://twitpic.com/d911x #
• Don't know what it means but it sounds creepy. http://twitpic.com/d69wx #
• On the way to the boys weekend in Toronto http://twitpic.com/d2aol #
• Sixth times a charm. Looks like we finally have our place in South Beach… http://twitpic.com/d0jhy #
• I am jazzed. The Alpha of our application is up! Dynamic testimonials at: http://hashbrown.ca/test.html – just refresh and see the magic! #

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-02

August 2nd, 2009 Chris

• Eating sushi with the boys. http://twitpic.com/c78mg #
• Sitting with @StephenDuncan trying to quickly counter act the effects of our track workout. #
• Who could say no to this face? Oh, the condo board in South Beach. Only dogs less than 45 lbs? Arghh! http://twitpic.com/btdes #

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-07-26

July 26th, 2009 Chris

• Just landed back in Ottawa from Miami. First time below 30 degrees in 2 weeks. When does summer start here? #
• Ok. Attempting purchase number 5 in South Beach. What else could go wrong? We're due! http://twitpic.com/blu7c #
• Paris, not Montreal which is different (and delicously fatty)… Duck in a Can anyone? #
• Had dinner at Pied de Cochon.iT's the chain from Parishttp://twitpic.com/bizgq #
• Ok – giant loser: am http://www.Twitter.com/chrisvoice... Thanks Eric #
• Now on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/cvoice. Guess that makes me a laggard in the tech life cycle! #
• Ok – brave new world for me… Much simpler than writing a blog though! #

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Should I Stay or Should I Go

August 7th, 2008 Chris

Last night, I was out with a couple of friends for a couple of beers (kindest reader, it would be polite to now express some modicum of surprise). As it turns out, two thirds of the people around the table have a blog. One was mine and the other belongs to Ian at Eclipse.

Ian’s blog is about the Eclipse software development tool empire where he runs marketing. I used to work with Ian, where he was known for brilliant marketing and technology insights. He was not known for his graphical design capability. His blog is true to form.

The only reason the third gentleman doesn’t have a blog is that he’s just too darn busy (again, kind reader, any temptation to contrast his situation with mine should be avoided).

Anyways… the topic came up about whether to host your own blog or stick it on one of the popular hosting sites (workpress.com, blogger.com, etc…). Interestingly enough, there has been a fair bit of debate on this topic over the last couple of years.

Originally, the consensus from guru’s I spoke with was that you wanted to stick your blog on one of those hosting sites and then cross-link it with your normal web site. That way the search engines would give you extra credits for more cross-links.

However, in the interim, SEO credit for cross-links has been greatly diminished and you actually do much better having your blog on your site. Plus it makes it easy for everyone that visits your site to see the blog and vice versa.

At this point in the conversation, despite their high geek coefficient, my two friends asked: but is it complicated to host your own blog? To which I replied, boldly, Absolutely Not!

Having heard the concern that it’s complicated to host your own blog, I tell the story of how it took me about three hours to move Colleen’s blog to our company’s site. The steps were quite easy and it should take your web developer even less time given I’m a fledgling, self-taught web guy:

1. Download and install WordPress. Following the instructions and it should take 30 minutes (max!)
2. Customize the template to match your web site. This is the hard part but who ever did your web site should be able to do this.
3. If you have an existing blog, use the WordPress import tool to suck in your previous entries and comments.
4. Post an “I’ve Moved” notice on your current blog. We even have it automatically redirect after a couple of seconds (again, no sweat for a web guy).

Once you’ve moved your blog, there are a couple of cool things you can do to better promote and track your audience. More on that next time…

So, in short:

• If you don’t have a blog for your micro business, seriously consider starting one. It’s a great way to attract visitors. The sooner you start, the sooner you can build up your membership (it does take time).
• Host your own blog and don’t let anyone tell you it’s too complicated… You’ll reap the benefits of increased search engine performance for your site and you’ll get more blog subscribers.

C.

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