Now, before you click off, remember that even if you’re writing a blog or aren’t selling products as part of your business, there are still lots of ways you should prepare your site for this Monday.

1. Triple check your navigation. Run reports to check for 404 errors (and don’t forget to update that custom 404 page, just in case) and fix links where applicable.
2. Check your design and layout for problems. Did you insert some code a while back that screwed up your site’s layout but you never got around to fixing it? Is your sidebar too cluttered, distracting visitors from the important stuff?
3. If you’re selling products or services, create a “Cyber Monday” special (a discount, package deal, etc.) and make sure that it’s clearly highlighted on all entry pages to the site. Make a new banner or button, and make it the focus for your visitors.
4. If you’re not selling products or services, develop a shopping list or page using your affiliate links. I’ve got two on my b5media blogs right now, and while they’ve only been up for a couple days, there have already been purchases made. Every little bit helps, of course.
5. Promote special sales promos or pages in social networks like Twitter or FaceBook. If people are shopping online, they’re bound to be chatting up friends about deals and specials they’ve found. Toss yours into the mix and keep the conversations flowing so you’re not looking like a ridiculous spammer. If you’re not on Twitter or FaceBook yet, you’re missing the boat, so move that task above all of these first and foremost.

This list is of course not exhaustive, but it’s 5 major things that you actually might have the time to do over the weekend before Cyber Monday hits, that just might make a world of difference.

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Image via CrunchBase

My friend Aaron Brazell is extremely involved with WordPress and the development process. Whenever there’s a new update, he writes a really fantastic post, and this time is no different: 10 Things You Need To Know About WordPress 2.7 is not for the faint of heart, but only because of the major changes, which Aaron highlights and explains most thoroughly and thoughtfully.

I’ve grown so fond of Aaron’s “10 Things” posts, I’m going to feature them here so my clients can use them to learn more about their system when they first start blogging, or whenever we make changes to their version by way of an upgrade.

As always, I’m going to recommend holding off on upgrading to 2.7 off the bat. I know that 2.6 has been buggy for some people (the flash image uploader is giving one of my clients a serious migrane) and that the temptation to upgrade straight away is huge, but I almost always wait for an extended release, like 2.7.1 or something to do upgrades. It’s inevitable that there is something that needs more tweaking or changes, and plugins that worked before will stop working, designs, so on. So as far as my clients go, we’ll be holding off a bit, but it’s a great idea to read Aaron’s post and get a good idea of what’s on it’s way when we do.

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For those of you who might not know, along with the work I do that comes in for Ginkgo Consulting, i also blog on two sites for b5media, my personal weight loss blog, a personal finance blog (because hey, it’s popular right now), and a few other blog projects I have going on. Yes, I’m a busy girl!

One of the biggest problems that I’m finding myself and other bloggers go through is how to develop a good routine with blogging. I’ve talked to some bloggers who just post whenever the mood strikes them. They get an idea, write it, hit publish, and move on. Other bloggers do loads of research and writing and re-writing before they’re happy enough to publish something - bringing their frequency down to even less than once a week.

It’s a pretty well known fact that posting frequency is one of the many crucial elements to your blog’s success. If you post too much, you might “flood” your readers and annoy them. If you don’t post enough, you risk losing their interest, which is super hard to get back once it’s gone.

I’ll point to the two “inspirational” posts now, but I’ve decided to do an experiment to see if I can, first of all, get myself on a good routine, and also see how it affects things like readership, traffic, and income.

Tips on Finding Your Blogging Rhythm by Darren Rowse at Problogger
How to Develop an Efficient Post Frequency by Skellie

So here’s my plan:

Ginkgo Consulting - 3 posts per week
Weight Loss Blog - 5 posts per week
b5 Blog #1 - 4 posts per week
b5 Blog #2 - 6 posts per week
Personal Finance Blog - 5 posts per week
(I’ll worry about the other projects once I get these nailed down, but only because they’re not really “live” yet anyway.)

So, that’s quite a bit, eh? 23 posts per week. It sounds a lot worse than it is, because by my own nature, I’m more of a get the thought, blog it, social media mark it, and be done with it type. Not that I don’t respond to comments on the posts (because I do), or that I just forget about the post once it’s done, but rather that I can sit down for two hours and crank out some decent quality stuff most of the time. Other times it takes a while, given research and so on, but I fancy myself a decent writer, so 23 posts per week doesn’t sound so scary to me.

Besides, if I can do that many, plus manage all the “regular” work through Ginkgo, and YOU, dear reader, have only one blog and/or a full time job… well, you can see where I’m going with this! You’ll have no excuses!

My goal is to mark out chunks of time to write for each site throughout the week. I love WordPress’s post-dating feature, so I can sit and write three posts and post date them for throughout the week, and be done with it until either something newsworthy comes up, or I reach my next chunk of time writing for that blog.

So, starting Monday October 27th, I’ll be posting weekly updates on “The Experiment” through the end of the year. We’ll see how things go, I’ll post traffic results and so on, and we’ll go from there!

Wish me luck, and let me know your thoughts in the comments…

• Do you have a regular blogging schedule?
• Are you a researcher/rethinker or do you just write, publish, and market as you go?

While I agree that the story seems fishy, I’m not keen on the “living in it’s parent’s basement” comment… What do you guys think?

Image via Wikipedia

I’m a huge fan of Leo Babuta’s Zen Habits blog. I’ve mentioned it before (My quarterly office checkup), and will surely do it again. I just read an AMAZING post about productivity: Productivity 2.0: How the New Rules of Work Are Changing the Game, and I wanted desperately to not only put this stuff into action for myself, but to share it with my clients and colleagues.

The topic basically goes into “old school” versus “new school” philosophies on work and productivity, and it clears up a lot of misconceptions of what really works versus what doesn’t. They can apply to blogging, your 9-5, web design, or basically any job you can think of where you have a little bit of freedom to manage your time (which unfortunately isn’t always the case for certain professions). I’m sure with a little tweaking, you can apply these “new school” habits to your career, and I know I’m going to work hard trying to accomplish that for myself.

In brief, as quoted from the post:

Don’t crank out tasks — learn to work with a deeper focus. Don’t plan and hold meetings and form committees — just launch the software or product or service and keep improving it. Don’t spend time organizing — you’ve got more important things to worry about.

I’ve been really focusing on time management for myself, and it seems the more strict I try to get, the more frustrated I get, but still the less I accomplish than I wanted to. Rather than focusing on “Finish. Now.” I’m going to work harder at getting each task on each project done, one at a time. For ongoing stuff like copywriting or blogging projects, I’m still going to have to work on deadlines and such, but for other things, it’s just a matter of focus.

In a newsletter to clients about the change in the company (Re-branding your business.) I mentioned a new payment system I’m implementing for ongoing projects. I promised a maximum 48-hour turnaround on requests, for the sole purpose of helping me stay on top of my tasks in a more manageable way. I’m using technology (Outlook 2007) to help me with this. Rather than calendars and post-its, I check my to-do list via email requests that have come in when I check my email first thing in the morning.

Do you have any productivity challenges you’re trying to work on? What do you think of Leo’s concept of “old school” versus “new school” productivity?

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If you didn’t see it there, well I have it right here:

Thanks for the interview, Shashi!

Image by Alex Osterwalder via Flickr

After nearly four years as “Anubis Marketing”, I made a decision to grow my company outward. It started as a simple design, SEO, and internet marketing business, but has since grown to so much more than that. It was time for a change.

I explain my logo here, which really has a lot to do with the naming of the new company, but what it boils down to is that I felt I needed a better representation of myself and my company than “The Egyptian God of Death and Resurrection”. Haha, that wasn’t my initial goal, but since Anubis has the head (and sometimes the body) of a hound (greyhound), it was something that meant something to me. The problem was, it was only a positive meaning to me, as a greyhound owner, and to the rest of the world well… not so much.

Ginkgo trees symbolize longevity, wisdom, and life. That’s more what this business is about, more what I’m about. I love the leaves, so it made sense to me. It should make more sense to others now, too.

So here I sat with this idea to change my company name, and now I have to deal with four years of incoming links to my old site. With the posts and pages and information on that old site. One good thing is that it was built on WordPress, so I can import the old posts over here, but now comes the trouble of letting my RSS subscribers know about the move and doing a permanent redirect from there to the new site, so that the search engines know where I am now, too.

Not that this is all that much trouble, mind you. It’s just a little scary sometimes. There are chances I could lose subscribers if I don’t write that post on the site compelling enough. There are chances I could lose new visitors who click a link expecting to see Anubis Marketing and find themselves at Ginkgo Consulting. There are chances that I won’t, too. So it’s a little unnerving, but it’ll be okay.

Other Changes

Along with the website changes, there are other things I’m implementing into the new business, like fee structure, payment programs, and services offered. Since I’ve had so many new experiences and projects, I wanted a new way to manage everything to help make it easier.

Eventually, I plan to offer “one stop shopping” for programs. If your site needs a “cleanup” on design for example, you’ll be able to come to the site, pay for it, and we can then hammer out the necessary details via email. Rather than spending my time “selling” a package or price, the goal here is to make it smooth and seamless by letting you know up front what’s included in full detail.

I’m also planning on offering premium WordPress themes that can be purchased right from the site and will be emailed directly to you upon payment. This is for people who might only need a “base” layout for their site, but prefer to do all the customizations and implementations on their own without paying additional fees for programming or development.

So, it’s an exciting time for me! I’m looking forward to our growth and expansion, and I’m seeing great things to come!

Have you ever put your blog or business through a major overhaul like this? Please share your story with us in the comments section!

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A couple weeks ago, I ran into some issues with my computer. I’ve got a Dell PC that’s about 4 years old, and one morning what chatting on Skype with a client, I spilled my coffee all over my beautiful ergonomic split-key keyboard (and my desk). I quickly typed the situation out to him, but as I was finishing it up, my keyboard stopped working.

Next thing you know, I was getting “low memory” errors on the screen. Now I know that the two things had little to do with each other, but it forced me to restart the computer. When I did, the keyboard didn’t work at all. Fortunately I had a few others in reserve, but they’re not the ergonomic ones, and it’s been torture on my wrists to get used to using a traditional keyboard since.

After the restart, I couldn’t get things working properly, so I called up my computer guy and bribed him with an extra large Dunkin’ Donuts coffee to let me bring the machine in immediately. It worked.

So I get there, we backup everything I can think of, and wipe the machine clean. Great. I now had dozens of programs to reinstall, password lists that I had to write down beforehand, and a hope that I didn’t forget anything. I also added another memory card, and things have been beautiful since. I’m still getting that software up and running, though.

So this brings me to a new plan.

Every three months, I’ve decided that I need to do a major cleanup of my machine. Delete images that I’m not using anymore or have been stored on a website somewhere, make backups of files and folders to CDs, backup photos I’ve taken that I want to keep in their original forms, and so on. Computers get a little touchy when you overload them - this wasn’t my first time finding this out - and they need to be maintained and kept “clean”.

On top of that, when I came back from Blog World Expo, I walked into my office and wanted to literally turn around and walk out. I’m really organized with client info, but not with everything else. Mail winds up in piles, CDs in stacks, notes and papers floating around, even one too many coffee mugs (ack!) sitting on the desk.

I remember when I used to actually go to work in an office, and coworkers would remark at how clean my desk was. I would take 10 minutes at the end of the day to organize the stuff I’d need for the next day in a pile, and everything else went in a drawer. I’d leave with a neat, short little pile of folders and a notebook sitting on the desk and that was that. It made life SO beautiful! Since working at home, I got out of that habit, and I’m going to make a concerted effort to get back to it.

It’s amazing how we can often let things in life “pile up” and get out of control. I’m really into reading about simplicity in life, organization, that kind of thing - I just have a hard time implementing it. Leo Babuta’s Zen Habits | Simple Productivity blog is really great motivation for me.

Do you have a plan to keep things neat and organized at your desk? Have you tried, but failed? Share your stories of “paperwork attacks” or computer crashes!

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I really tried to get way too much accomplished prior to attending the Blog World Expo 2008 conference in Las Vegas last week. I was in the process of upgrading the business, changing the name, offering more to potential clients, and get the new company website up. It was a LOT to take on in a very short period of time.

Looking back, I keep wondering if I should have kept the old business site up to date, handed out the old cards, and gone on from there. I met so many people that I directed to this site prior to it’s completion that I wonder if they’re out there thinking, “What the hell is this chick about?”

No matter what your industry, it’s quite likely that you won’t be the only person you know at a conference. At BWE there were probably close to two dozen associates, clients, and “coworkers” of mine I was going to meet up with there, and then of course they were going to introduce me to others I’ve yet to meet. That’s when the business cards came out. I twitched with every one because this site wasn’t finished, and I tried to explain that while this is a new brand for me, I’m not new to the industry at all. (I’ve got over 7 active years in the field and like most, over 12 years of “hobby” in it.)

So here’s a guideline of what I did in preparation of the trip, but learn from me, and start on this list as soon as you know you’re attending (rather than a week before the event)!

• Make a list of tasks and prioritize them. Despite feeling like I was taking on too much in my situation, making the list really helped a lot. I crossed things off when I completed them and left still feeling somewhat accomplished. It was a really good feeling to leave with 90% of my list completed.
• Refill your business card holder. Okay, so you’re going to be bringing a lot more cards with you than your holder can carry, but make sure you have a good solid stack of them to take along. I had mine tucked into every pocket, my bag, and even some in my badge holder. I didn’t have time to order mine ahead, but I made a batch of about 150 of them to take with me. The rest are on order from VistaPrint right now. (You can get some really great deals there, including free cards if you’re a new customer!)
• Make sure your website or blog is up to date. This one might take a little more finesse if you’ve got a static website that hasn’t been updated or re-designed in a while. I’ve had clients come to me for a “freshening up” with a fairly tight deadline, so it can be done. If you’re blogging, get some stuff up about the upcoming event, and if you haven’t blogged for a while, get a good backlog of posts up there. (This is one of the items on my list that didn’t quite make it, and I regret it.)
• Do some research on the city you’re going to. Obviously in Vegas there was TONS to do during off-conference hours. I’d never been before, so everything I did was exciting, and was often planned by others in my social circle. But even if it’s a city you’ve been to before, there may be some new stuff or other events going on since you were there last, so check it out and see if you can make some tentative plans. I wound up going to see a show and watching the fountains at the Bellagio over drinks with a client one night… way cool!
• Queue up your inner salesperson. No, I don’t mean you should have some rehearsed, repetitive “line”, but make sure you put your best foot forward and wear a smile, know what you’re looking to explain about your business to new contacts, and make the most of that 15 seconds you’re going to have to introduce yourself.
• Pack your bags and leave lots of room. Checking up on the city will help you decide the type of clothing to pack, but keep your load light. You’re going to come home with “stuff” and you’ll need the room in your bags. Be it conference materials, schwag (coffee mugs, stickers, binders, etc. all labeled with exhibitor logos), or gifts for the kids, you’re going to bring stuff home with you, guaranteed.
• Be early for your flight, take off, and have fun! All pretty self-explanatory, but it boils down to triple checking your travel arrangements, making sure you have all your financial stuff organized and in order, your documents and receipts for things like airfare and hotel rooms, and so on. Nothing can ruin the fun of an opportunity like this more than losing your identification or spilling coffee on your boarding pass!

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I also met a ton of fantastic people there. I’m going to say this, and I assure you it won’t be the last time I say it: Make plans NOW if you have to, to get to BWE ‘09 if you’ve got even a spark of interest in blogging. I don’t care if you’re business blogging, personal blogging, or corporate blogging - if you want to blog or get some feedback on your current one - make sure you head out for the next one.

One really cool part is that I got to hang with one of my clients (and a dear friend) Annie Teich. We roomed together and Sunday night went to see Cirque at the Bellagio. The “O” show. Omigod, it was amazing.

I’ll be posting pics over at my flickr account soon, and will write another post here once it’s done. I’m still in the process of getting over the lack of sleep for the past few nights and filtering through everything I brought home, business cards, etc. (Some of you have already emailed me, and for that I thank you! If we met, and you don’t hear from me, please drop me a line so we can keep in touch!)

Back soon with updates!