Blog Action Day

Blogs are becoming a great media tool. A way to quickly get your information to a lot of people. Why not blog for a cause?

Oct. 15 is blog action day, a day set aside to blog for the environment. Bloggers all around the world will be blogging in support of our environment. Thanks to Jeanie Marshall for the heads up in her post:

Announcing the October 15 Blog Action Day: A Day to Blog for the Environment

You don’t have to go off-topic on your blog, put some thought into it over the next few days. What is one thing in your field that you can share to help the environment? Do some brain storming. Click on the link below for more information, and sign up your blog as a participant.

blog action day

Thanks,

Heidi

Women’s Media Summit

You ever notice how some people just seem to have all the luck? Their name and business pops up in the newspaper, magazines radio, on the TV. Maybe even on YouTube.

But is it really luck? Or with a little hard work can you have your own paparazzi following you around? Of course I’d rather be on the other end of the camera, I hated to even put my picture up on this blog. But your business can’t grow by being invisible.

What are the benefits of public relations and media marketing? How about a chance to listen to those who have been there, done that and learn what they’ve done to get free media publicity. Get a sneak peek at the upcoming October event at Women’s Media Summit today!

Ducking out so the paparazzi won’t find me,

Heidi

Firefox Extensions

My son Tim, kept telling me use Firefox, it is safer, a better browser. And I’d still be using Internet Explorer. Not all websites work with Firefox, and I don’t want to learn one more thing.

Then I was learning CSS and asked Tim for some help and he had this cool extension with all kinds of tools which made my life simpler. I downloaded Firefox. Later I learned a few more Firefox extensions and how to use them (beats figuring it out yourself) from Marketing Ice. And I’ve kept my eyes open for new tools. I had no idea a browser could do so much. My list:

  • FirefoxDownload your free version.
  • WebDeveloper The first Firefox tool I was shown, many features, tools to help with webdesign, what sold me was being able to edit css to see what the changes will look like before uploading files to your website. Many one click tools.
  • FireBug I find myself using this one more than webdeveloper. Another cool webdesign tool. My favorite tool. I’d be lost without these first two.
  • Diigo tool Bar Great help for bookmarking, categorizing places you visit.
  • Search Status Gives me feedback about the page I’m on, shows nofollow links, links, page rank, etc.
  • Colorzilla A quick way to find the number code for any color on a webpage, a handy tool I wish I’d bumped into earlier.
  • Measure It A handy little ruler which you can use to measure pixels on a website, I found it will searching for the color tool.
  • GreaseMonkey An easy way to add code, I really don’t get this one, but know several who use it and say it is great. I know it is an easy way to add some kind of code and have only used it when someone walks me through it.
  • IE tab Let’s you click a button and see what the page you are viewing will look like on IE browser, often it is a little different. Habits are hard to break and I often just open an IE window.

Now what did I do before Firefox and all these cool tools. Please share your favorites.

Heidi

Connecting with Friends

Yesterday my thoughts were very much with my daughter who lives halfway across the country. She has been in the hospital 3 times since Friday, still there. She is expecting a baby in 2 months but having complications. I was so wishing I could be there with her right now. We did spend time on the phone throughout the day, but not the same.

As I was having a hard time concentrating on anything else, I did the next best thing and connected with some friends close by who are almost homebound on a regular basis throughout the year. One friend I visited is a very cool lady in her 80’s. She still gets around great, takes care of herself, just doesn’t drive that much anymore. I’d kept meaning to visit her, I’d send her cards from time to time, and I’d got a card back thanking me for the great card with my grandson on the front. Then in great big letters:

“I MISS YOU! COME VISIT!”

Yep, it’d been too long since we’d visited. So I put visit her on my to do list. Time passed. Urgent things kept creeping onto the list ad visit postponed. More time passed. More than I’d realized or intended. So I dropped everything and stopped by. Not only was she happy to see me, but I felt happier too.

Another lady I didn’t know as well. She is wheelchair bound and raises several grandkids. But I’d promised to drop by and visit, months passed, the whole summer I think. I wanted to call but her phone was out, she’d moved and I didn’t have her new address. I’d gotten her new number and called. She thanked me very much. Turns out she was very depressed the past few months. She hadn’t been in the area that long, and had a hard time getting out and meeting new friends. No one came by, and she felt like no one cared. I apologized. She told me that sometimes just a phone call does wonders, or a card in the mail.

Another friend, has had multiple health issues. On oxygen through out the day. Yesterday, while my kids were at an activity, I visited with her on her front porch, enjoying the much cooler temperature. As I left, with one more big hug, I felt so much better.
Funny thing is, although these visits took a certain amount of time, having done so, left me so much more productive with my time.

Heidi

Who do you know that could use a card? Send one today!

Add This to Put an End to Blog Bookmarking Clutter

I ran into a cool plug for my blog that I just had to add as soon as I found it.

More social bookmarking sites each day, not everyone uses the same bookmarking tools. You want it to be easy for your readers to bookmark your websites. I have a button on my Firefox toolbar to do this. Others like to click on a button on your website. If you don’t have a button, those readers are less apt to bookmark you. But how many little icons do you want to add to your website? Gets cluttered doesn’t it? Now some wordpress themes have social bookmarking buttons built in, many do not.

Through my internet travels this morning I ran into a cool plug in by Add This. Installation was quick and easy, worked right out of the box. I now have a cool little dropdown bookmarking button at the end of each post. Check it out! While there go ahead and add me to your bookmarks. It is much appreciated. Thank you.

Add This can also keep track of your stats, how many have bookmarked your page and through which bookmarking tool and a similar button for your feeds. Enjoy!

Heidi

Blogging for Business – Come Listen and Learn

Believe it or not, once just a few short years ago I knew absolutely nothing about blogging.

“What are these blogs everyone is talking about?”

I even looked up the defination somewhere and saw online diary. Now why would I want an online journal? Personal stuff all over the internet, I don’t think so. I don’t even want my picture up. Then I learned more about blogs, and saw the benefit for personal and business use. So I started a blog, did the automatic install. Wrote a few posts, couldn’t find out how to even add my own custom banner, spent days researching and trying every trick in the book. Went back to doing other things.

I wanted some way to make my own business website, I wanted each page the same style, easier to just change the content. I spent way too much time learning html, css, php includes, found a web host, purchased domain names and went to work. A lot of work, and a website was born. Now websites need traffic and one of the tools to help with traffic is blogs.

No! Not the dreaded blog! So I went back to the blog, couldn’t get any of the edits to work, I called tech support. Guess what? the automatic installation was incomplete, missing parts, it wasn’t me. Finally I went to wordpress and followed instructions and re-installed the blog and it worked!! So I continued to read and learn and got my blog going.

Imagine how I felt when I realized that everything I wanted to do on a website, I could do with wordpress. WordPress was the tool I was looking for and didn’t even know it. Why did I waste time learning all that CSS, html, etc? Well, not a total waste of time, because now with the knowledge I’d gained, I could now design and edit wordpress themes at will. (Note, this is one of the K2 themes, where I just edited the graphics, changing the colors.)

Tomorrow, I’m honored to be interviewed by Heidi Richards at the First Fridayz’ Blogging for Business Event where I’ll share my thoughts and knowledge with other business owners.

Details:

1. Dial-In to your Conference Number 1-218-486-1300

2. Enter your Conference Bridge Number: 498386

You can also join us in the conference room at http://www.wecai.org/eWednesdayChat.exe

Friday at 12 Noon Eastern time. There are also have 3 other blogging experts later in the day. If you are interested in more information, visit First Fridayz
announcement.

See you there!
Heidi

Road Trip from East Texas to New Mexico

August Sunset in Farmington, New Mexico

Car stuffed full, kids in back, playing on laptop, long drive from end of Texas to the other, then we arrived in Farmington, NM. Here is the sunset that greeted us the next day. I thought it’d make a nice painting for a greeting card or something so I used Gimp, one of my favorite graphic editors. and used their canvas artistic filter, you can’t see all the canvas lines in this shrunk down version.

View of Shiprock Just Before Heading to Colorado

Shiprock was off in the distance, a famous rock named after it’s shape. Hard to miss!