After a website designer told me that all my Google "juice" was going to my website host due to the way they had my site routed, I emailed the host (no phone numbers provided - probably just as well since I don't have my daughter here to translate the Chinese for me!) to ask them to fix the issue. After a few days they finally replied that they had made the necessary change for the website to go to www.myhousehistory.net instead of www.myhousehistory.axspace.com. Great! The only problem is, now when you enter my website into the browser, it says that it cannot find myhousehistory.axspace.com. So my website is totally down, yet again.
When I did a follow-up with axspace, they now say that it is a problem with how my domain name is set up. The domain name is not with them of course, because that would be too easy. I tried to contact Yahoo Small Business, which is where the domain has been held since I came up with it in 2008. They say I don't have anything with them and they cannot respond to email support questions if you don't have anything with them. Talk about a Catch-22! I am very frustrated by all of this, and my site has now been down for about 2 weeks. I have emailed axspace again and asked them to restore the site to what it was before, because at least it was functional then. Once this is all resolved I think I will give them and Yahoo the boot!
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Show Me the Blog 2011
Last year I attended the first ever Show Me the Blog conference in St. Louis. You can see my recap here. Since then Danyelle Little has put together other blogging opportunities including Blogging Bootcamp and Wordpress Bootcamp. They have all been exceptional opportunities to learn the intricacies of becoming a better blogger.
This year the second annual Show Me the Blog conference was expanded to two days, on October 21-22. The first day was dedicated to social media, and the second covered different aspects of blogging. On Thursday night we had a pre-event gathering at Luna Lounge. It was fun to see some of the past Show Me bloggers as well as meet some first time attendees. I also won a fun MP3 player courtesy of Reliv International by correctly identifying @milligfunk as the person who rocked the boots at Show Me 2010.
Lumiere Place was the host of this year's Show Me event. Parking was plentiful and the meeting rooms were comfortable and spacious. Hostess with the mostess this year was the effervescent Roshini Cope. She is funny and organized - always a winning combination.
The first session of the day was "So You Want a Job in Social Media", a panel discussion which helped us all to understand the role a social media expert plays in a corporation. While I am not looking for a job in social media, as the mother of a senior in college who is majoring in Marketing Communications and has experience through internships in social media, it was gratifying to hear that her job prospects are pretty good!
Following that was lunch provided by sponsor Hardees.
Seriously, it may take two hands to handle a Whopper, but you will need a third to do justice to the Big Angus Burger! Amazing!
After lunch there was a choice between learning about social bookmarking or how to build real clients and supporters. I chose social bookmarking with Niles Flores. Social bookmarking sites allow your readers to share your posts with others. Examples include stumbleupon and digg. Niles advised placing these sharing buttons above your article's content. For my next session I listened to Lakesha Brown of XDWebSolutions speak about "Finding Networking Value & Putting it to Use for Your Gain". My main takeaway was to comment on other people's blogs and be sure to always leave a link back to your own website.
"SEO: Know It, Use It" by Will Hanke was my next session, where we learned about using keywords in our posts. The last session of the afternoon was "Being Social: How to Effectively Engage Your Audience" with Liz Jostes and Kristin Zaslavsky. The recurring theme of the day seemed to be participate on other people's blogs and respond to the comments made on your blog. Also, you can see how your Facebook page ranks by going to edgerankchecker.com. Photos and videos bump up your page rankings.
Day Two started out with a bang as Stef Pollack discussed "You Too Can Be a Rock Star Blogger". Not only is Stef an excellent speaker but she also had a fun Powerpoint presentation comparing Lady Gaga's transformation from a struggling lounge singer to a rock superstar to her own blogging evolution from few followers to thousands of readers who devour her unique cupcake recipes. Stef is a perfect example of how if you write good content and engage your followers, they will spread the word for you.
Hardees provided another great lunch for us on day two, this time offering up a taco and nachos bar! I hadn't tried either of these items at a Hardees restaurant, so it was great to have the opportunity to do so at the conference.
Following a great lunch, you might think that we would all need a nap. Not so for the attendees who chose Hannah Mayer's session "Instant Blogging: Add Water". This woman missed her calling - she should be a stand up comedien! She provided us with a humorous look at how people end up finding her site (it has skid marks in the title so I will let you draw your own conclusions). I have not laughed so much at a conference for a long time. Okay, maybe never.
There were a couple other sessions in the afternoon, and then Danyelle made the right (or should I say Wright?) call by having Robyn Wright wrap up the conference with her prentation on "Building and Maintaining Relationships with Brands". She offered us her insights into the proper way to interact with brands, letting them know what you can do for them before asking what they can do for you. She stressed that you don't need to necessarily have a huge number of followers on your blog. The brand will be looking at your whole sphere of influences - blog traffic, Twitter followers, Facebook fans, LinkedIn network, and organizations to which you belong.
In summary, the main thing that I took away from the conference is the power of connections. I am excited to now have a relationship with a number of the attendees from this year's conference, as well as the fact that I met a number of other authors. I think Roshini said it best - "The answer is in the room". Congratulations to Danyelle and all her staff for another excellent and informative conference. The tentative date for Show Me the Blog 2012 is October 19th and 20th. Look for more details on the Show Me the Blog website.
The first session of the day was "So You Want a Job in Social Media", a panel discussion which helped us all to understand the role a social media expert plays in a corporation. While I am not looking for a job in social media, as the mother of a senior in college who is majoring in Marketing Communications and has experience through internships in social media, it was gratifying to hear that her job prospects are pretty good!
Following that was lunch provided by sponsor Hardees.
Seriously, it may take two hands to handle a Whopper, but you will need a third to do justice to the Big Angus Burger! Amazing!
"SEO: Know It, Use It" by Will Hanke was my next session, where we learned about using keywords in our posts. The last session of the afternoon was "Being Social: How to Effectively Engage Your Audience" with Liz Jostes and Kristin Zaslavsky. The recurring theme of the day seemed to be participate on other people's blogs and respond to the comments made on your blog. Also, you can see how your Facebook page ranks by going to edgerankchecker.com. Photos and videos bump up your page rankings.
Hardees provided another great lunch for us on day two, this time offering up a taco and nachos bar! I hadn't tried either of these items at a Hardees restaurant, so it was great to have the opportunity to do so at the conference.
There were a couple other sessions in the afternoon, and then Danyelle made the right (or should I say Wright?) call by having Robyn Wright wrap up the conference with her prentation on "Building and Maintaining Relationships with Brands". She offered us her insights into the proper way to interact with brands, letting them know what you can do for them before asking what they can do for you. She stressed that you don't need to necessarily have a huge number of followers on your blog. The brand will be looking at your whole sphere of influences - blog traffic, Twitter followers, Facebook fans, LinkedIn network, and organizations to which you belong.
In summary, the main thing that I took away from the conference is the power of connections. I am excited to now have a relationship with a number of the attendees from this year's conference, as well as the fact that I met a number of other authors. I think Roshini said it best - "The answer is in the room". Congratulations to Danyelle and all her staff for another excellent and informative conference. The tentative date for Show Me the Blog 2012 is October 19th and 20th. Look for more details on the Show Me the Blog website.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Top of the Class
It is hard to believe that my 6 week class on writing, publishing and promoting a nonfiction book is over. Of the 16 adults who took the class, 15 ended up completing it. Since I did not have the best experience when I took this class (in terms of some of the students in it, not the quality of the teaching or class content), I was a little apprehensive about teaching it. But I really enjoyed each and every one of my students. They had interesting topics, were great communicators, and actually did the homework assignments. The fact that all but 1 of them could tell me what their book was about in one sentence and completed the 10 questions assigned the first class is truly amazing. In the class I took two or three of us had the sentence down and no one besides me did any writing at all. You cannot have meaningful dialogue in the classroom if the students aren't doing the assignments.
For 3 of the weeks I brought in guest speakers - 1 who spoke on editing, plus Bobbi who talked about writing, 1 covering book design, and 1 who talked about her experience in self-publishing and traditional publishing. I think having other people come in helps break things up for the students, plus these people are experts in their fields. For the week when we covered promotion we ended up attending the monthly meeting of the St. Louis Publishers Association because their speaker, Lethia Owens, is a marketing expert. That was a good call because she was a fantastic speaker with a lot of good information.
The community college did not give me any evaluation forms, so I made up my own. I wanted to know what the students thought was most valuable, anything they didn't like, and what they would change if they could. I also was curious as to how the guest speakers were received. Overall I got great feedback from the class, and some good suggestions for how to improve the course. Several people wanted the class to last a couple more weeks, but at the moment I don't know what other content could be added to make that worthwhile.
Another big thing expressed both in class and on the questionnaire is that several of them would like for me to critique their writing. I did not feel like this was something that the class was intended to provide. My job was to help them understand how to write a book and get it published, not how to WRITE in general. At least that is my interpretation. I do not feel qualified to instruct anyone on the mechanics of writing. I am not an editor, nor am I a book coach. Maybe the program brochure needs to be more clear, but I thought I had emphasized at the beginning that I/we would not be reviewing the actual writing.
I had to let the community college know by the end of September if I would teach the spring session of this class. I thought they were making a big assumption that Bobbi would not be back, so I called to discuss this with her. At first we thought that we might team teach the course, but Bobbi has officially "passed the baton" (as she calls it) to me. So I told the community college that I want to change the night to anything but Wednesday since I don't want it to conflict with the St. Louis Publishers Association. I also asked if I could teach it at Hixson Middle School, since that is so much closer for me. So I guess the spring session will be at Hixson on Monday nights. I can only hope that I get the same caliber of students that I had this session. They made my first experience of teaching at the college level very rewarding.
For 3 of the weeks I brought in guest speakers - 1 who spoke on editing, plus Bobbi who talked about writing, 1 covering book design, and 1 who talked about her experience in self-publishing and traditional publishing. I think having other people come in helps break things up for the students, plus these people are experts in their fields. For the week when we covered promotion we ended up attending the monthly meeting of the St. Louis Publishers Association because their speaker, Lethia Owens, is a marketing expert. That was a good call because she was a fantastic speaker with a lot of good information.
The community college did not give me any evaluation forms, so I made up my own. I wanted to know what the students thought was most valuable, anything they didn't like, and what they would change if they could. I also was curious as to how the guest speakers were received. Overall I got great feedback from the class, and some good suggestions for how to improve the course. Several people wanted the class to last a couple more weeks, but at the moment I don't know what other content could be added to make that worthwhile.
Another big thing expressed both in class and on the questionnaire is that several of them would like for me to critique their writing. I did not feel like this was something that the class was intended to provide. My job was to help them understand how to write a book and get it published, not how to WRITE in general. At least that is my interpretation. I do not feel qualified to instruct anyone on the mechanics of writing. I am not an editor, nor am I a book coach. Maybe the program brochure needs to be more clear, but I thought I had emphasized at the beginning that I/we would not be reviewing the actual writing.
I had to let the community college know by the end of September if I would teach the spring session of this class. I thought they were making a big assumption that Bobbi would not be back, so I called to discuss this with her. At first we thought that we might team teach the course, but Bobbi has officially "passed the baton" (as she calls it) to me. So I told the community college that I want to change the night to anything but Wednesday since I don't want it to conflict with the St. Louis Publishers Association. I also asked if I could teach it at Hixson Middle School, since that is so much closer for me. So I guess the spring session will be at Hixson on Monday nights. I can only hope that I get the same caliber of students that I had this session. They made my first experience of teaching at the college level very rewarding.
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