So Happy New Year and welcome to 2010 (however you want to pronounce it) and a possible new decade (however you want to do the math.) What else can I blog about? Let’s give you some off the top of my head personal predictions for the next year(s)…

• Personalized search results are going to mess up SEO guys.
• Social Media ninjas are going to keep designing more websites to afford their throwing star habit.
• More businesses will realize they need an eCommerce site to sell to the masses, or make it easier for their existing customers (or themselves.)
• People are hopefully going to start creating multiple Twitter accounts for their different businesses, ideas, hobbies, etc . . . so they don’t dilute their brands / main identity.
• I think 2010 may be the year for WordPress MU with normal WP install, but this seems kind of like the Mac Tablet rumors.
• Consumers will finally get sick of AT&T service and iPhone battery life and slowly migrate to new and better phones.
• Due to all the fake money we have printed, there will be major inflation and President Obama will be known as the next Jimmy Carter.
• Mister Rogers Neighborhood will no longer be on the air after 2010, and our children will not be able to watch real television – and I’m not talking about Reality TV.
• The Indiana Pacers will let many contracts expire and start all over with the young guys.
• Andy Kaufman will finally announce that he is alive, tour the country and wrestle women. It will be phenomenal.

Here’s to 2010!

Related posts:

1. The First Blog I Started Five Years Ago
2. Don’t Worry, Be Happy about using Social Media to Increase Your Website Traffic

One seriously no-talent photographer, mediocre gear, no corporate website, no references. Available for small events that you really don’t care to remember.

Are your expectations low enough?
Allow me to lower the bar a bit farther…

Never been to photography school.
Available whenever my real job doesn’t interfere…which is almost never.
Photoshop??!! You’ve obviously mistaken me for someone who…..
Never published. Never won an award. Never tried.
Not terribly fond of cats, kids or spiders.

If you’re still reading, you either have a twisted sense of humor or you’re terribly desperate for someone to shoot some photos.
Both are cool with me.

You might have guessed by now that I don’t take myself or my photography too seriously. (I don’t do it for a living so I can afford that luxury.)

I shoot for fun, new experiences or a bit of adventure.
I really don’t want to shoot your wedding, (unless you’re getting married while naked bungee jumping at a roller derby or some other ‘less traditional’ forum).

Even then, most of the photos will probably be of the prettiest girl in the wedding party. (Just want to make sure your expectations weren’t starting to rise).

Do I have any positive aspects?
Well…I don’t scare easily.
Lifestyle, culture, guns, tattoos, nekkid people, piercing, religion, death, sexual orientation…all those other buzzwords that some folks get all bent out shape over….they really don’t bug me. I’m well-traveled. I haven’t seen it all; but I’ve seen a lot….and I like to photgraph it along the way.
That’s about it. No more positives.

If for some reason you’re still interested, just reply to this ad.
No ’standard’ fee. I charge depending on:
How much time it takes (more time = more $)
How far away it is (more miles = more $)
How interesting the event is (more interesting = less $)
How pissed it will make my wife (more pissed = less $)

I don’t do this to put a roof over my head…just trying to put a few more lenses in the bag.

If you have a once-in-a-lifetime event, spend the money to hire a photographer who will lose his house if he screws up.

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Just go for it. Trust me, this whole social media strategy stuff is just a big ole’ waste of time. All you need to do is sign up for Twitter, post only one Tweet proclaiming your presence (something like “Welcome world to my Twitter page!) . . . and you’re off to the social media races. Those people that you follow on Twitter check their emails, find out you have only one tweet and immediately follow you back for no reason. Social media is awesome!

Listen folks, I’m a social media ninja. Drink beer, tweet and repeat. Then bug your friends on Facebook about your business. It’s that easy!

(Note to sensitive social media types: </sarcasm>)

Related posts:

1. Show Me How You Can Get Business With Social Media!
2. Don’t Worry, Be Happy about using Social Media to Increase Your Website Traffic
3. My Social Media Experience with Businesses

Doug Karr recently added a few posts to his blog about website design, Wordpress and money. He claims you can easily make a Wordpress website yourself that looks good and works great. Don’t spend a bunch of money with a website design firm, just buy or download a free Wordpress theme and away you go! You get your web$ite for nothing and the clicks for free . . .

I agree with Doug. Well, I’m biased because I’ve been using Wordpress for five years, and I have made nice websites for businesses using Wordpress. They look good, do great in search engines and clients can upgrade their website whenever they want (without being charged each time for a simple update.)

But, what is missing from this discussion? The knowledge and effort required to properly set up a web host, domain name, email accounts, Wordpress site, training the client how to use it, and continual updates of the Wordpress software and plugins. Let’s not forget having to possibly edit the Wordpress theme code to make it compatible with the latest Wordpress upgrades and internet browser software.

Granted, Wordpress makes upgrades a lot easier now with one click updates. But do you feel comfortable backing up your database before the upgrade? If not, you could possibly lose everything. I’ve seen dumb Wordpress mistakes from “professional new media agencies” with permalink structure, SEO, category names, URL choices, and bad Wordpress themes . . . so even a lot of the “good guys” can’t do it right. And they charge a lot of mullah.

Do you want to do it right? Well, consider saving the hours of time it would take to learn the ins and outs of Wordpress and hire someone with Wordpress experience. Ask to see their portfolio and find out how many of their sites use Wordpress. The more experience they have with Wordpress, the more comfortable you will feel with the process and result. Then you can take over your website, have total control and hopefully rule the search engines . . . and get some clicks for free.

Related posts:

1. How to Add Facebook Connect to Your Wordpress Website
2. Sexiest Social Bookmarking Plugin for Wordpress
3. Google Local Web Dashboard for Small Businesses

To give you a little history, four years ago I purchased a website called Indiana Barrister, but couldn’t stand the domain name. I spoke with my partner in crime Abdul, who is the sole contributor, but he had already been blogging for a while and liked the name. Honestly, I had to Google the word “barrister” to find out what it really meant. It turns out it’s another word for the wonderful term lawyer, which angry people also call Abdul. However, the website didn’t really focus on law, it covered politics and news from Indiana. I bought the domain names IndianaDiscussion.com and IndianaConversation.com, but Abdul wanted to keep the name.

He was up for a second site, so I planned to start up IndianaDiscussion.com on the brand new Ning.com platform. And I eventually did … I even have the header for the original site, but it’s not really worth looking at. So in less than 300 more words, why the heck am I re-starting another website and what challenges will I face?

Indiana Barrister is pretty popular. Based on Abdul’s blog posts, we get a lot of traffic and a ton of comments. In almost five years, we have nearly 24,000 comments and currently receive around 20,000 visitors a month. In 2009, Indiana Barrister was named one the of top political blogs in the country by The Washington Post. It’s a good site to launch off and start something bigger.

The visitors are engaged. Any blog post can get from 10, to 30, to 75 comments … the news Abdul provides definitely gets the community talking. However, their comments are kind of lost in a sea of a lot of comments. I wanted a way for them to feature their great comments; or better yet, be able to add their own blog posts, start discussions, etc.

What Challenges will I Face?

The majority of the visitors leave comments anonymously and do not want to register for a website. Several work for the government, school, police or fire departments and are afraid of possibly losing their job.

The registration asks too many questions for your typical political fan. They don’t want to give their birth date, zip code, or any other information that could possibly link them to their real identity. If they haven’t bothered to register for an anonymous email account, forget about them registering on the website.

A new site with no activity gives visitors no reason to join. We got around 20 people to join with the early announcement, but then it trickled off.

I don’t like taking a stance with politics in public. Ha, this is the best one. I shall never link my name with my political views on the Internet. That’s why I (and probably many others) do not comment on anything political on websites like SmallerIndiana.com (which requires a real name.) If I’m going to get the website going, it would definitely help to take a stance, but then the website appears one-sided which I do not want (at least not from me.)

Abdul already posts daily on Indiana Barrister, so how can I expect him to post more unique news on another website?

Political websites make no money, but I already knew that.

How am I going to face these challenges? Well, we’ll find out on IndianaDiscussion.com … or you can tell me!

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TJ Ford tweet from July 14th 8:08 AM

I am a huge Indiana Pacers fan, so I’m going to focus on the NBA, but this applies to the NFL, NBL, ABL, NHL and any other three letter combination you can think of. Or for that matter, any famous person or business.

Twitter has changed the way we communicate.

Maybe it started before that with anonymous bulletin boards, MySpace, Facebook and the like. People were talking to their “friends” and no one ever thought any of their comments could become public to strangers. Hello Twitter…

I guess some people feel like their Twitter followers are their friends, so once they become comfortable with Twitter, they pretty much say whatever they want. That’s what you will see from some guys in the NBA and other professional sports leagues.

As a fan of the Indiana Pacers, my favorite example is probably Marquis Daniels, and he won’t be back next year so it doesn’t really tarnish my team’s reputation. He started using Twitter heavily this summer, and not for the good. Bad words, weird comments, no mention of basketball, and grammar that needs a built in “Marquis Daniels translator” plug-in to figure out what he is trying to say. It’s that bad, and makes him look even worse.

Dahntay Jones Tweet

Another Pacers example is one of our newest players Dahntay Jones. Dahntay came from the Denver Nuggets to the Indiana Pacers this summer. The same week, he or supposedly his cousin, posted a long string of rap lyrics including the “n” word. At the end of the racially slurred lyric by Rick Ross, the message said: “the nuggets did me dirty.” When looking for his Twitter link, I noticed his most recent update says, “There’s nothing like 2johnny and cokes some smoke and my wife.” The reference to “smoke” is a little questionable.

Speaking of smoke, who could forget the biggest Twitter idiot of the month, or possibly year? That’s right sports fans, Michael Beasley of the Miami Heat. He just inspired me to finish this post with a picture of a tattoo he recently posted on TwitPic. As many have noted in the comments, if you look near the 7-Up bottle in the background, you will see something that looks very similar to a bag of marijuana. He was already fined $50,000 for using marijuana his rookie season, and now posted a picture on the Internet for all to see.

TwitPic from Michael Beasley

It just seems so weird to me. In front of a camera on live television, these professional athletes would never say the things they do on Twitter. They are speaking publicly on TV, but I guess they don’t realize they are speaking publicly on Twitter. Heck, when Twitter is on your cell phone in your front pocket, it makes it a lot easier to broadcast stupid messages to the world.

This is why the NBA and other professional sports teams should embrace Twitter. Encourage fans to follow the players, and feature a Twitter stream on the home page of the website with tweets from every player on the team. Make professional athletes aware that their Twitter comments are highly visible to the fans, just like when they are being interviewed on TV, and give them a sense of responsibility to represent their team while tweeting. Do it for the kids!

Related posts:

1. How the Indiana Pacers Can Improve Their Internet Marketing
2. Twitter for Business Example From the Indiana Pacers

How about we not even call it a blog? Let’s call it a news page, or a news website about your product, services, and people behind the company. It can be much more than just a press release once a month. You can give your potential and current customers a better understanding of your company and why they should do business with you. A blog news page also offers the flexibility to add content to the website that doesn’t easily fit in the site map or main navigation.

Most importantly, you can improve search engine ranking for specific keyword phrases (products or services.) The more news posts or pages you add to your site, the better ranked your website will be in the search engines. Improved search engine ranking is connected to the increased-traffic-bone, which is connected to the higher-conversion-bone, which is connected to the get-more-leads bone, and then it is your job to connect that to the close-more-business-bone. And that’s how we play the blog game with businesses.

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Do you want a hot, sexy Wordpress blog or website? If you’re reading the homepage, click the “Read the rest of this entry” link to see what the Wordpress plugin looks like in action. (Now your blog will look like mine, great.)

Check it out.

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1. How to Add Facebook Connect to Your Wordpress Website
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Here is a recent example from my Facebook friends on how to get business using social media. Maybe screenshots will make it easy to understand and remember.

How easy was that? A friend remembered that another friend did fence work, they used social media to make the connection, and then you have a lead and potential business.

So how did Chrissy remember that Rachel’s family builds fences? Maybe some of Rachel’s messages on Facebook used a creative way to remind her friends in need of a fence . . . here’s one:

Ask some of your best clients if they’re on Facebook and friend them. Follow what they’re doing, learn about them, make conversation, remind them about your business, and get more business. Luckily I don’t have to answer the weekly question anymore: “Show me one way you can get business with social media?” But if I did, I would just tell them to visit this post and see what Rachel is doing with social media to help sell fences.

You can even sell fences on Facebook? Yes you can.

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1. Don’t Worry, Be Happy about using Social Media to Increase Your Website Traffic
2. The Easiest Way to Fail at Social Media for Business
3. Twitter for Business or People?

Images are like text, do you want someone to copy your latest blog post and paste it on their website? Of course not, but the same rules apply to images. The images belong to the photographers, just like your blog posts should belong to you. If someone wants to share your blog post, you can give them permission . . . just like photographers do with the Creative Commons License.

Google has introduced a new Creative Commons Image Search feature that will help keep you moral and legal with your blog or website. You can search for images that are allowed to be used on your website without permission, and upload them without worry.

(BTW, Creative Commons Images = FREE images and pictures for your website that mostly look good.)

Google Creative Commons Image Search Info

Google Advanced Image Search for CC Images

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