New found love is an exciting, and beautiful thing. So much so, that some find it difficult not to share their excitement! If you’re fortunate enough to find yourself in that position, feel free to use my jeweled heart to help express your feelings. This Photoshop Resource is free to use for personal and commercial use! If you’d like to be the first to see what I do with these elements, make sure to “Like” my Facebook page.

Here is an example of a tag I made using the .psd download offered here, download the .psd file here :

Made with Facebook posting in mind. Share with your friends when you’re celebrating the fact that Friday, and the weekend has finally arrived! Download the .psd here.

So begins another weekend of doing what I love… managing social media for a growing small business, tweaking web designs, creating marketing campaigns, and whatever else I couldn’t finish that week in a bustling office atmosphere. I look forward to sitting down for a few hours at home on the weekend and delving into projects requiring focus and concentration.

I’ve been given the opportunity to create an interactive social network for a tightly knit, niche target market. At first, it looked a little more like a challenge to hurdle… how do I curate a very diverse group that share a very narrow, niche interest? But after some thought, and applying some of my past experiences as a New Media Specialist, I came to see that what I was facing was actually an incredible and rare opportunity.

Details, of course are confidential, but the theory and mindset are (or should be) common knowledge. Social Media is a historical opportunity. Never before have we as a society had an opportunity to communicate so freely with such a vast and global audience. When you decide to see that as a golden opportunity to create positive PR for your brand, you understand that it could also mean a detrimental amount of bad PR if managed poorly.

The positive opportunities of utilizing Social Media to strengthen your brand’s identity far outweigh the possible opportunities that land on the negative side because you allowed them to. Perhaps you approached them as challenges?

I’m not saying it’s easy to turn every situation into an opportunity, not at all. Sometimes it’s incredibly difficult to find the right balance between opportunity and challenge.

I’m finding that balancing act to be what I enjoy most about Social Media. Every potential challenge that I’m able to turn into a great opportunity is a win for me, and for society’s perception and understanding of Social Media.

Click to download free .PDF

As I work from home late into the night, I realize that there’s only so much that one person can do. As a full-time Social Media Manager, Web developer, Web Designer and Marketing Team Member for a local small business that’s growing exponentially… I find myself having to decline more client work then ever before.

Now, I’ve been using WordPress and StudioPress together to build full blown Content Management Systems for years so it should come as no surprise that I recommend the Genesis Framework for any site. Anything is possible with this framework, and I trust the developers to keep their themes and code as innovative as it is functional.

If you were hoping to hire me to build your site, allow me to recommend purchasing the Genesis Framework with one of their high quality Themes. They’ve really taken a lot of the guess work out of it for you by including intuitive widgets and easily customizable layouts.

If you’re not sure, download the .PDF they’ve made available to you for FREE. It’s like a step-by-step introduction to feeling like a web design rock star lol, no kidding! You’ll be shocked to see how easy all this web site stuff can really be.

It’s worth the download, trust me. It’s also a lot faster than waiting for me to have an opening in my client schedule! If you do choose to buy the Genesis Framework and Theme, you can rest easy knowing that the support forums are the main reason I continue to recommend them. I’ve never waited long for an answer to an issue, and the people are friendly and happy to help!

Click here to download The Genesis Guide for Absolute Beginners (PDF – 1.4 MB) 

Having a strong background in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is always a skill that’s in demand, so coupled with my Social Media (SM) and Blogging knowledge and experience I brought a lot to the table no matter where I interviewed. Having been out of the mainstream workforce for so long, I was relieved to find that the payscale for my area of expertise was actually fair. It wasn’t long before I was working full time, doing something I love. I am thankful for that every day.

In short, a New Media Specialist is kept busy with web development, site maintenance, SEO, Blogging, Social Media Management, Branding, Marketing, and to an extent, Public Relations (PR). In my opinion, PR and SM go hand in hand today. 

As an employed, full-time New Media Specialist I spend a lot of my time researching Internet and Marketing trends. As technology advances, it’s my responsibility to not only keep up with everything as it evolves, but I also have to be innovative enough to create my own strategies to take advantage of all that these brave new technologies have to offer. Companies that fail to keep up with the trends and advancements are failing to continue their past successes. Companies that embrace the changes (by hiring someone like me) are seeing increased sales, increased brand awareness, and their biggest worries are “growing pains”.

As I spend my personal time researching, I sometimes like to share what I’m finding. If you’re interested in bringing more success to your business, you may want to consider the information I share. If not, that’s cool… then I’ll just use this kind of post for my own reference, and steer the occasional client to them as information they NEED to know.

The Benefits of Using Social Media to Market Your Business

• It can help build reputation and give your business great exposure.
• It provides cost-effective free advertising.
• It helps you to connect with key people in the industry.
• It helps you to discover what the public likes through feedback.
• Your business gains new traffic and increased sales.
• It can assist in getting public opinions when launching new products and services.

*These are all great reasons to choose social media to help market your business.

Things you don’t want to find when researching a site you’re working on…

 Analytics – NONE

Add GingerWench on Google+

Being a Libra is tough… I see both sides of every conflict, and go through a ‘weighing’ process that helps me to make informed and educated decisions. Having said that, I still don’t know how I feel about the integration of our personal data into our global search results. I’ll be researching this a bit more before I allow any settings changes. Check out the Google introduction video for “Google Search plus Your World” below.

In a way, I’m looking forward to advances in technology that this kind of integration will allow. On the other hand, I hesitate to allow so much of myself to be open for anyone passing by to have access to.

I understand that there may be settings available for us to control the degree of exposure our data gets… but I think I’d still feel just a little more ‘naked’ than I’m comfortable with, due to technological details beyond my control.

“The competition issues raised by Google+ go to the heart of the FTC’s investigation into whether the company is giving preference to its own services in search results and whether that practice violates antitrust laws, said the people, who declined to be identified because the probe isn’t public.” Furthermore “users who opt for Google+ see personal information about their friends included from the social networking service when they enter a query. The changes sparked a backlash from bloggers, privacy groups and competitors who said the inclusion of Google+ results unfairly promotes the company’s products over other information on the Web.”

Unfortunately, after digging through the “spat” between Google and Twitter, the bottom line is that it’s time to utilize Google+ in Social Networking strategies… if you aren’t already.

In the end, exactly how Google search results came to be dominated by Google+ pages — either as a result of having little access to other social networks or by intentionally ignoring them — isn’t that important. The important question is whether or not this domination is good for consumers. An issue which, if a complaint from privacy watchdog EPIC is effective, could be settled by the FTC.

Edited to add: The day after I published this post, I found a similar (and much more in depth) post by Brian Clark. In it, he articulates the thoughts that motivated my post, more eloquently than I was able to given the time I’ve had to dedicate to the Google+ developments. I suggest you check out his post, “Why Google+ is an Inevitable Part of Your Content Marketing Strategy“.

Feel free to ‘weigh in’ for yourself in the comments, I’m interested in hearing how others feel about all this

Photo Manipulation Contest Winner

As I continue to book new clients, and divide my time among ongoing projects and brand new ones there are sometimes topics that I want to discuss but don’t have the time to address in a full blown blog post/article. The topic of reliance on 3rd Party sites is a topic deserving of much more in depth discussion than I have time for here, but needs to be something you think about as a small business owner building a presence on the Internet.

The 3rd Party Dilema

Sites like Facebook, and sites offering functionality such as the Disqus commenting platform are the types of 3rd party sites that we use to increase our exposure. Although it’s hard to imagine Facebook disappearing overnight, that’s exactly what has happened to similar sites in the past.

Sometimes it only takes a small change in a site’s TOS (terms of service, or TOU terms of use) to make content disappear. Imagine all the pictures, discussions, and notes you’ve published on Facebook suddenly disappearing because the site is no longer there, or they suddenly violate a newly imposed Term of Use.

Legal issues happen. Technical issues happen. Would you lose that content forever if this were to happen to a 3rd party site that you perhaps rely on too heavily?

Take responsibility for the ownership of your content. You work hard to create it, so make sure you never put yourself in the position of losing track of it. I would have lost the photo manipulation shown at the top of this post due to a hard drive crash, if I hadn’t found it on the site that held the contest. Back up any content you don’t want to lose!

• If you have sales pages on a 3rd party site, make sure to keep a copy of your HTML codes used and sales presentations. (ie: Etsy, IMVU, etc.)
• Download photos sent directly from your phones to any 3rd party sites.
• Quote the high quality discussions in a blog post, or “Best of” page on your site to preserve them in your ownership forever.

Utilize 3rd party sites, but don’t rely on them

Using third party sites to increase your Brand’s exposure is simply smart business these days. It’s a delicate balancing act though. When posting, we have to remember that everything we post is out there forever as a reflection of our Brand. At the same time, we must be aware that any 3rd party site is outside of our control, and may change at any time. Knowing this, it’s our responsibility to preserve the best content created through a third party site on a domain that we can control. (Not to mention hard drives and storage facilities.)

Some thoughts from a Twitter discussion I instigated with a poll:

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/wwginger/status/42934572484280320"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/kimparsell/status/42946183727022081"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/wwginger/status/42965517237108736"]

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/andrea_r/status/42966628668944384"]

And my thoughts from a reply I made to a blog comment this morning:

No third party site should own any of your original content exclusively, I agree. I always suggest social media participation to my clients as an enhancement to their web site to increase their Internet presence.

(Yes, even though the comment I’m replying to is off topic, and my gut tells me it was generated by a bot, I thought I’d publish it anyway, simply because I had asked my Twitter friends what they thought about the new Facebook comments box. The result was a discussion about third party reliance by web site owners, and how it’s a bad idea to ‘put all your eggs in one basket’. Comments especially, are not something you want owned and hosted by a third party.)

It is for this very reason that I’m reconsidering the use of IntenseDebate here on my own site. My trust in Automattic is the only reason it’s still here.

Food for thought. Please continue discussion of this topic in the comments, there’s so much to consider when trusting a 3rd party with your content, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I’ve had a LinkedIn Account for well over a year now, and just haven’t made the time to ‘participate’ more than the occasional profile update. I went hunting for some “tips” articles, but found that most information about marketing your small business through LinkedIn is tied to a product for sale. Training ebooks and videos seem the most popular.

I’ve included a few of the articles I found useful below. I specifically tried to use articles by those I’m connected to on Facebook or Twitter, as trusted resources. I have not bought any products on this topic, but have repeatedly come to the same conclusion throughout the research process; People that utilize LinkedIn as a tool for marketing their services or products are simply too busy due in no small part to their participation as a professional, to write about their experiences.

LinkedIn is the Internet’s version of Traditional Business Networking

Yes, LinkedIn is primarily targeted toward ‘Professionals’, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be ‘social’. Any of these Social Media sites are as social as you make them, so that’s really all a matter of perspective as far as I’m concerned. When I was a bank manager, part of the corporate culture demanded a certain level of business ‘networking’. In my opinion, LinkedIn is the Internet’s answer to that type of traditional Networking.

The most useful part about any of these sites for me is the contacts within my own industry that I make. Sharing ideas, theories and information within a like minded group of my peers that are actually out there in the trenches doing the work that some only talk or write about. The sites work for me in that way because that’s how I choose to use them.

I’m left with the impression that LinkedIn can be as useful to you as you intend to make it. Again, like I tend to remind you in every discussion about Social Media… your participation will directly effect the success of any of these sites. Your personal attention to the contacts made through social media will build your online presence.

Should you add LinkedIn to your Social Media menu?

To my clients that are considering getting the most out of their social networking activities, I would suggest putting some thought into what you want to take away from your activities. Once you’ve identified your expectations for using a site like LinkedIn to gain exposure for your business or brand, then you can move on to forming a marketing plan towards that end.

Helping small business owners identify their goals, and compose a goal oriented plan of action for their social networking activities is only one of the things that I offer through my phone consultations. Tailoring a plan that specifically addresses your unique situation is something that I consider an investment in your business. Done correctly, the only thing it will cost you is time.

LinkedIn resources:

LinkedIn for Corporate Marketing – A Cheat Sheet for Busy People

5 Tips for Individuals to Help Companies Get More Out of LinkedIn

How LinkedIn Apps Can Promote Your Business

Are you willing to make the commitment of time required to make your social media activities successful? Let me know in the comments so we can ‘connect’!

To view the desktop wallpapers from the St. Patrick’s day collection, simply click the thumbnails below. If you’d like to download them to use on your computer’s desktop, right click the images below and choose to open in a new tab. This will display the full size image that you can then right click to save to your desktop, or file on your computer. I hope you enjoy these St. Patrick’s Day themed desktop wallpapers!

[View with PicLens]

There are also a couple of St. Patrick’s Day wallpapers in my DeviantArt Gallery from last year, if you’d like to add to your collection.

So, when I decided that an email list would be the ideal tool to offer my clients exclusive articles aimed at helping them bring fresh traffic to their sites and bring exposure to their ‘brand’, I decided to do things my way. Some may consider it flawed thinking, but I assume that there are others out there feeling the same way I do about email marketing.

I don’t want yet another ‘free’ ebook.

I don’t want yet another ‘free’ report sharing some miraculous over night method to gaining traffic.

Been there, done that. *So* over it!

I want the down and dirty details as to what’s going on TODAY on the Social Web, not last year’s regurgitated garbage that’s no longer relevant.

I want to know what’s trending NOW, not three months ago. Hell, things change so fast on the Internet these days that information that’s three WEEKS old is just not cutting it anymore.

My solution to the old school Newsletter dilema

Again, I realize that there are some out there that are going to read this and chuckle self-righteously to themselves thinking, “This GingerWench chick isn’t going to get anywhere going against the grain, is she nuts?”. Maybe I am. *shrug* All I know is that I have 10 years of experience building successful web sites that rank high in the search engines, and I’ve done pretty damned well building a social network for myself and clients.

I’m more than willing to let my experience speak for itself. Even when I was a bank manager, I valued experience over all that fancy book-learnin’. Heh.

After much careful thought, I decided to go with my strengths, and focus on my existing customer base. My position may be a little unique, so I’ll explain.

I’m pretty much booked as far as site management and design clients go. I’m lucky, I realize this. So, unlike most ‘newsletter’ publishers, I’m not focused on growing a list in order to sell my services. Word of mouth, and local event efforts have pretty much taken care of that.

What I needed was a way to communicate with my client base, a way to share the latest information I’ve gathered from my daily routine of maintaining commercial web sites. I needed a way to share what I’m learning on a day-to-day basis as a webmaster, web designer, and active social media advocate.

I needed a ‘Shareletter’, not a newsletter.

The term ‘Newsletter’, to me at least, now carries a somewhat negative connotation, bringing to mind an atmosphere of sales pitches and hyped up yesterday’s news. When I sign up for a newsletter, I feel like I’m giving someone permission to spam me in the hopes that there might occasionally be a bit of useful information shared.

It’s a very rare thing to have found a ‘newsletter’ that actually shares useful information on a regular basis. The only one that comes to mind is the newsletter I get from the guys over at ‘Digging Into WordPress“. I actually subscribed to their newsletter long before I bought their book because they send out actual code snippets that I can use in my day-to-day routine. Information that I could actually put to use immediately. It was that newsletter that convinced me that I needed to own their book. I’ve never regretted that subscription, and I still look forward to receiving their mails.

My hope is to share the same kind of useful information on a regular basis, to anyone that needs it.

Do-it-yourself webmasters, business owners trying to expand their market base, sole proprietors trying to make sense of today’s ‘Social Web’ and all that social media stuff that can seem so overwhelming.

I have nothing to lose by helping people grow their own business to success using the Internet. Rather than turn away business due to a full schedule, I’m offering my experience through a ‘Shareletter’.

Will my publication include affiliate links? Of course. Why wouldn’t it? Will my integrity and reputation allow me to spam my subscribers with link upon link to products only because the commission is high? Absolutely not! I only refer my clients and subscribers to products that I use myself. (This makes it a lot easier to offer support and training for these products, which is always included in my client contracts.)

Sharing information, techniques, and trend analysis. Sharing what I learn as I build sites that work for my clients. That’s not yesterday’s “Newsletter”… that’s today’s “Shareletter”.

Change is a good thing, if you allow it to be.

I’ve changed my thinking, and my approach to email marketing, and I’d love to know what you think about it. If you missed my first issue of Adventure Through the Social Web With Me, check it out in it’s web version.

I’m going to continue to send my clients and subscribers the kind of useful information they can use in their daily routines, and you’re more than welcome to join us.

I will tell you this… the articles I write for the Shareletter will not be published anywhere else. Period. My clients and subscribers deserve exclusive content, and that’s what I’m going to deliver on a somewhat regular basis. (I find it’s less stressful to say ‘occasional’ than weekly, and this gives me the freedom to concentrate on client projects when necessary!)

If you agree with my anti-newsletter thinking, and would like to receive original, relevant content… help me prove the Guru’s wrong, and subscribe to my Shareletter. I’d love for one of my future posts to be about how I conquered traditional email marketing with honesty and value!