Berta's Web

I spent the weekend at OpenCamp (#ocdfw) and it was very informative.  I talked about OpenCamp earlier in the month and that post is here so check it out to learn more and become involved next year.  There were many sessions from people who each have a successful presence on the web, either using WordPress®, Drupal®, .NET® or Joomla® platforms.  I’m a WordPress® person so I spent all of my time in those sessions.  Over the next few days and weeks I will be writing more about my experience and what I learned at OpenCamp.  Thanks again to all of the people who made it happen!

I really missed my Market Me Suite

Since I discovered Market Me Suite (then Market Me Tweet) I have been using it.  The first version left a lot to be desired and I didn’t use it much because of that but the promise of a much improved new release mid-year was promised so I waited it out….and it was!

2.0 was released the beginning of July and I love it.  They are still adding things and working on bugs here and there but so far, I really enjoy it.  I understand that an iPhone app is in the future so I’m looking forward to that because I do not like to tweet from my phone because I’m not getting the marketing benefit I so desire..

During OpenCamp, I used my phone because it was necessary.  Some of the great prizes they dished out were based on tweets so what’s a girl gonna do?

The Basics…

When you send a tweet from one of the popular packages, you get the “via _____” tag attached to your tweet.  Market Me Suite allows you to connect to Twitter and setup your own app which links to your website.  With each tweet you can specify which app/website displays.  Now, if someone clicks on the “via tag” it will say “via bertasweb” (because that’s me) and when people click on it, they will be directed to your site.  I also use if for RKCPromo….now you can see why I missed it so much.  Every time I tweet using something else, I feel like a traitor to my own brand.

There are other benefits which I haven’t really used yet and they’ve just added a new WordPress blog app called Blog Me which is promising..

It is not a free app and I believe that once you see the benefit you will appreciate the modest price tag.

If you want to give it a try, please click on the following picture..

I am an affiliate which means if someone purchases it by clicking on the link provided below, I will make a little change……

Drop us a line by commenting and be sure to leave your email address so we can send you interesting stuff.

Rarely a day passes when you don’t hear something on the news about and employee who is in hot water because they sent something using their work email or other related email account.  This something has now created controversy and guess what?  Your livelihood is now on the line because of it.

Often the person has been given the email with unspecified permission for it’s use.  People send email to friends, forward all kinds of stuff and don’t give another thought to the consequences.  Even worse, they use reply all without a clue who is on the list. This now connects all of the senders and recipients to your work or business email….it’s a vicious cycle.

This rant was triggered by the Tennessee Coach who sent (from what I’ve heard on the news, nothing is fact) not only a controversial song but was selling it per download using an email address which was provided by the school for his personal use because he coached on the side and the school didn’t want his side stuff to be confused with the school.  I haven’t heard the song nor is it likely I will because the song isn’t the point.

Okay, I get that…but I don’t get using that email to sell the song.  Get your own domain, website and email address…..they’re cheap enough today and easy to setup. You don’t even have to setup a website to use the domain email on most sites. And how was he selling the downloads?  He had to be using a service…so much more to learn about the situation but that isn’t the subject of this post!

There are lots of free ways to do stuff on the internet but I encourage anyone considering an option just because it’s free to at least consider protecting their stuff by buying their private resources!

Many of you have probably never heard of OpenCamp.  I hadn’t until I joined a local WordPress Meetup group a couple of months ago.

Per their Facebook page, OpenCamp is the SouthWest’s first multi-platform webmaster conference. With top speakers covering topics ranging from social media to web development, revenue generation and more. Webmasters & developers on any platform are welcome.

I became interested because I am jumping into this arena and am absorbing all of the information I can, when I can.  I run a full time promotional products distributorship but see this as an area of expansion.  I work with several small businesses who need a web presence and I want to be able to provide (or refer) whatever services I can.  I have a working knowledge of a wide variety of business topics and I see this as a plus for my clients.  Often times, I only need to know enough make a good referral.  A good referral means that my client and the referral are a good fit and each knows that my role as a liaison ensures my clients’ satisfaction.

Back to OpenCamp…I hope to learn a lot but I also hope to meet people who know a lot more and are able to provide those services which I am unable to provide.  I also see it as an opportunity to “pick the brains” of those who are more involved on a daily basis.  Anyone who knows me also knows that I am not afraid to look over your shoulder and ask questions, nor am I afraid to have someone look over my shoulder and ask the questions. Who knows?  I may learn that there is something out there other than WordPress^® for my stuff since there will be presentations on Joomla^® and Drupal^® as well.

If you happen to see me at OpenCamp, please say hello!  By the way, I’m registered as RKC Promotional Products since that is my primary business.

I am fairly new to Facebook (using it for less than a year) and have learned a lot.  Most people don’t read the terms of service (TOS) when they sign up and I must confess I didn’t pay much attention to it either. I had these brilliant ideas about how to use it for business and I learned all sorts of things about my family that I had no idea about.  It appears that they would tell everything on Facebook and I can’t even get a return phone call. 

When I decided that I needed to know more, I took a course on Social Media to learn about all available options to help me get where I need to go.  The first thing I learned is that Facebook has people, pages and groups.

• People are just that, people.  You must be a real person to have a Facebook profile.
• Pages are special profiles that may only be used to promote a business or other commercial, political, or charitable organization or endeavor (including non-profit organizations, political campaigns, bands, and celebrities). (Copied from the Facebook Terms page.)  Pages give you much more flexibility to reach your fans (people who like your page.)
• Groups are created to get people together to discuss topics of common interest.  I’ve heard rumors that groups will go away but that has not been confirmed.

Another thing to remember is that if a person sets up a page, they own that page.  So, if you’re having someone else maintain a page for you, you should use your profile to set it up and then give the other person administrative privileges.  You must set it up yourself.  If you have an employee who sets it up and they leave your employment, the ownership leaves with them.  Is this something you really want?  I almost forgot, Facebook can take your page name if they determine it is a violation of a trademark, etc.

The next thing I learned is that you must be very careful when naming your page because  once it is named, it cannot be changed.  Rhymes, doesn’t it.? Once you have 25 fans you can get a screen name for your page to make it easier to find.  I have a domain that points to mine.  I have several pages because I have several interests.

I still have so much to learn and I hope that what I’ve learned will help you as well.  There is a lot of stuff on the web if you have time to look for it but I have lots of friends who don’t leave Facebook so I’ll try to share some information with them.  You may also want to read my post “Your Name, Your Domain!”

I’m always learning something new by accident (a result of an inadvertent action on my part) but sometimes I learn something new on purpose.  My brain is usually on overdrive and ideas are constantly popping up.  When I have time I share this information freely for others who have time to learn.  Often times there are people who don’t have a lot of time but do have the resources to throw a few dollars at a project and I’m always willing to help with that as well.

The process of learning means that I often experiment on my own sites to be sure stuff that I think about will really work.  Sometimes it’s just a matter of seeing something on another site and thinking, “How did they do that?”  In the spirit of this thinking, I’ve setup my first custom Facebook page on my RKCPromo Fan Page at RKCPromo to place visitors at a “Featured Item” page.  If you’re “flying by the seat of your pants” on a project, chances are I’ve taken the same flight so maybe we have something in common or you can benefit from this blog.  Not to mention I’ve worked with a lot of geeks over the years and I follow them closely.

It’s really a sad state of the world when you are constantly at risk of being hacked for your personal information, identity or other reason.  It’s very important to have an up-to-date anvi-virus and firewall program installed on every computer.  It’s best to have something that can be updated automatically without your intervention and you will most likely have to pay for it.  You can still be protected using AVG (in the interest of full disclosure, I am a reseller and may have affiliate links on my site) Free.  You can use the free version for as long as you like. I used it initially while deciding what to use.  When I wanted more than just basic anti-virus protection, I went with AVG anti-virus and firewall.

I have used AVG since 2007 after being disappointed in the business practices of another popular product which I had used for close to 10 years.  There is always a chance that no matter what you do or how careful you are, someone will get in, but I like having better odds on my side.    You can also follow tweets and Facebook information as I re-post it here and or on my Facebook Page.

I hear a lot of comments about websites that are just an online brochure.  Personally, I think they’re better than nothing.  By nothing I also mean better than just registering a domain and letting it sit with an “Under Construction” page or worse yet, being an advertisement for your registrar.  There are so many ways to get something up quickly without spending your child’s college fund, probably even less than your monthly coffee budget.

You should always have a plan and always be looking toward it.  If you wait to put up anything until you have everything, you’ll probably be sitting without a website for another year or two wondering, what if………..I’m sure there are a lot of people who will disagree but this happens to be my blog and my opinion……..good luck with your web ventures!

I can’t believe it’s already Valentine’s Day with President’s Day the day after.  It seems like just yesterday I was taking advantage of the holiday break to setup my new blogs and reformat most of my websites to the blog format for ease of use.

I’ve always received a lot of spam, especially at my original email address which still receives several hundred junk/spam emails each week.  If I know I’m going to be put on an annoying email list that will probably be sold I always use that old address.  Yes, I look at most of them but there is an automatic junk filter which today has 740 emails in it that I most likely will never even look at much less know if I should move any of them back to my in box.

Then I set up blogs.  I had no clue as to the amount of spam comments I would receive.  My email box was filled with notifications to moderate comments.   A copy of the comment, complete with links was delivered to my email box.  Usually I would take a quick look to be sure I didn’t miss a real one then press delete.  If I was checking email with my iPhone I had to be careful not to accidentally “touch” one of the links.

It didn’t take long to tire of moderating so many spam comments.  So, I setup reCaptcha for WordPress.  You don’t really want to do it but it really is a minor inconvenience to lessen the attempts of unscrupulous marketers and potential hackers who are trying to use your site to victimize internet users.

Now, there are lots of things I don’t know about all of this internet stuff but what I do know I’ll share when I can, because what I know (because I learned it the hard way) and this site is all about helping others learn too.  I’m not talking about the marketer (like me) who is just trying to make a few dollars while also having a blog or website for their business or other activity.  I’m talking about the unkown/unidentifiable person/group/whatever you want to call it that is attempting to steal your identity, money or email lists.

Happy Valentine’s Day and Happy Surfing!

Periodically I will provide a link to another website to show you how something you put up might look with minimum work.  Today it’s a website which was put up as a tribute to my mother-in-law.  I registered her name as the domain then setup the site using a WordPress blog format.  I did have to do a little artwork to get the header up to give it a real personal touch but that isn’t always necessary for a personal site.  If you’re doing a business site, it’s important to be consistent with your graphics, headers, etc.  The website is normalkesler.com, please enjoy.